title
stringlengths 1
200
⌀ | text
stringlengths 10
100k
| url
stringlengths 32
829
| authors
stringlengths 2
392
| timestamp
stringlengths 19
32
| tags
stringlengths 6
263
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ElasticSearch with Node.js | Introduction
Working with documents in software is fun. It means that storage fit your code not the other way around. This removes the object relational impedance mismatch between how you model your application and how you store those models.
Even if you do not have immediate use of documents, learning how to use documents will broaden your perspective of storage systems.
Recently I have written a post about document databases in postgreSQL and build a small application using .NET Core. However, this time, I am going to use ElasticSearch as document persistence mechanism and Node.js to work with elastic-search. Elastic Stack (ELK) have other components e.g. Kibana, Log-Stash etc., but I will be only using elastic-search component for discussion.
Elastic Search and Index
Elasticsearch is a search engine based on the Lucene library. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Elasticsearch is developed in Java.
What is an Index
The word index itself has different meanings in different context in elastic-search.
Unlike conventional database, In ES, an index is a place to store related documents.
An index is a collection of documents that have somewhat similar characteristics.
The act of storing documents in an index is known indexing.
An index is identified by a name, which is used to refer to the index when performing indexing, search, update and delete operations against the documents in it.
We’ll see later how to create index, delete index and store documents in the index etc.
Installation
You can download installer for elastic-search from official website and install it or alternatively you can use some cloud services for same purpose.
For the demo, I installed it on my local machine and then browse to following URL to verify the installation.
Document
Before we start working with elastic-search, lets talk a little bit about documents. You can also read my previous post if you need more details about documents. Documents are essentially a set of key-value pair.
A document is a basic unit of information that can be indexed e.g. you can have a document for a single customer, another document or single product and yet another for a single order.
The document is expressed in JSON which is ubiquitous internet data interchange format.
Within an index/type, you can store as many documents as you want. You can imagine those records in a relational database thinking.
Elastic-Search Restful API
Elastic-Search has quite a few APIS:
“cluster” API: to manage clusters.
“index” API: Give access to our indices, mapping, aliases etc.
“search” API: To query, count, filter, data access multiple indices and types.
“document” API: to add data etc.
Here are few of the API calls using browser:
ElasticSearch with Node
Now we will build a simple Node.js application to perform some operations on elastic-search. I initialized the source-code folder with npm init command:
Install elasticsearch package
Next, I installed elasticsearch npm package as follows:
Connection to ElasticSearch
connection.js file encapsulate connection to elastic-search.
To verify the connection I add the following code:
Lets run it and see if the connection works:
Ok, our connection is working and lets continue to work with index and documents.
Build an Index API
NPM elasticsearch package expose many methods which we can use in our application. We can create index, delete them, add documents to them etc. Index name should be lower case. If index already exists, you get ‘index_already_exists_exception’. You can have an index for customer data, another for product catalog and yet another index for order data.
For this demo I will create an API IndexManager to encapsulate these concerns and then we can just use that API. I will keep the implementation simple, however, feel free to adjust as per your style. The API will have following functionality:
Create Index
Delete Index
Check if Index exist
Add documents to index
Here is the code for the API which is self explanatory, however if something is not clear, ask in comment:
Here is the method implementation code:
Client Code
Now, as we have functionality related to connection and working with index and documents, let execute these commands:
Create Index ‘Blog’:
Add document to Index
I created a class for Post and this will be searlized to json and save as document into index blog:
Lets update the code to save document into index:
and execute the code:
and we can see that data is inserted to elasticsearch:
Import documents (blogs) into ElasticSearch Index ‘Blog’
The following code will read the data from a josn file, parse it and then save it in the elasticsearch index. you can use this method to populate documents.
JSON data file
JSON data loader
the following code, read json data file and return the documents objects:
and also update the client-code, as follows:
here is the data of all documents after executing the code:
Summary
Elastic-Search is very powerful and easy to integrate option for your persistence mechanism. The REST api provides very useful services to work with elasticsearch. You can download the code for this application from this git repo. Till next time, Happy Coding.
References | https://medium.com/@jawadhasan80/elasticsearch-with-node-js-8198bc7e8b79 | [] | 2020-09-26 13:46:51.312000+00:00 | ['Elasticsearch', 'Nodejs', 'NoSQL'] |
Why I Don’t Recommend Dating Emotionally Unavailable People | Why I Don’t Recommend Dating Emotionally Unavailable People
My experience with one and three very important lessons I learned along the way. Patricia Vilchez Apr 25·6 min read
Photo by Yaopey Yong on Unsplash
I’ve read somewhere the following: emotionally unavailable boys will ruin you. And I could not agree more with this. I thought I could handle it but the next thing I knew is that it was causing me endless pain.
So what does it mean to be emotionally unavailable and what does it imply in a relationship?
In a nutshell, an emotionally unavailable individual is typically someone who is unable or unwilling to emotionally commit to an intimate relationship.
These types of people will often want to keep things casual and undefined in order to avoid dealing with the emotional commitments that characterize a regular serious relationship.
The preceding paragraphs describe my personal involvement and also a few lessons I've learned and mastered. So without further ado, this is why it didn't work out for me.
To start with, evidently, I wasn't aware of it on the first date. It took me about two months and a half (months in which I continuously tried to make things work) to realize that I couldn't make any progress with him. And for the next two weeks, I was thinking about ending things. Here’s what I wish I knew at the time. Lesson one:
1. You will never be good enough for someone that doesn't know what he wants.
You can be the most amazing partner and still it won't make any difference in how they treat you. You can’t make a tree bloom, no matter how hard you try. For the sake of your mental health, you need to accept that we can't change people, we can't fix them or heal them. That's something they need to do on their own. If they are not willing to do so, you can not make the self-growth or self-improvement for them.
This incessantly trying had left me incredibly frustrated and mentally exhausted. I was astonishingly supportive and understanding; exceptionally patient as well. He always had some sort of “emotional wall” between us. He bottled his emotions up. He was never truly vulnerable and intimate with me.
I kept my expectations low. Thinking eventually he would open up, be able to express emotions, and simply be himself. I didn't want to leave him. I believed I could keep him if I played the cool role rather than just admitting that I wanted him to be my one and only. Which brings me to lesson two:
2. Accept your feelings as valid.
We have to learn to say, these are my boundaries, you are not fitting into that, you are not meeting my needs, this is what I want and what I don't want. You are entitled to communicate how you feel. If you’re unhappy with the current situation don’t assume your lover is aware of your feelings. It’s okay to say this is not going to work. It wasn’t gonna work out from the beginning.
Most of the time what ends a relationship was there at the start. We just didn’t pay attention to the red flags. Even before we met he did say he didn’t want a relationship. I thought I wouldn’t want one either. But after a few encounters, I was hooked.
It’s alright if at the beginning you didn’t want a relationship and then, later on, you realize you do want one. This brings me to lesson three:
3. Know that you’re allowed to change your mind.
This obviously started as a no-strings-attached arrangement. I saw it as a non-threatening thing, super carefree, with no expectations whatsoever.
Even if such an arrangement works for you now, it might not work for you in the following weeks or months. And I didn’t change my mind overnight. It was a process. It’s okay to want something more defined, settled, and secured.
I reached the point where I no longer could stand the lack of clarity, the inconsistency, the constant uncertainty. Wondering every day what the hell was going on. At times it felt like things were falling into place or transforming for the better, but shortly after, they turn bad again.
The truth is that relationships aren’t supposed to be that difficult. They should add value to our lives, not the opposite. I hated the idea of not having him in my life, I had invested so much, it made it extremely difficult to let go. | https://medium.com/@pattu-v01/my-experience-dating-an-emotionally-unavailable-man-4434ff4c2416 | ['Patricia Vilchez'] | 2021-08-19 00:32:42.340000+00:00 | ['Dating Tips', 'Situationships', 'Dating Advice', 'Relationships', 'Life Lessons'] |
UAE’s leadership meets 2019 Special Olympics Games organisers | The leadership of United Arab Emirates received the Higher Committee and the organisers of the Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi 2019 on Monday at the Qasr Al Bahr Majlis. The meeting was held under the patronage of the crown prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, who praised the organisers for helping in spreading the country’s “humanitarian message” with the world.
He said, “Thank you to all who contributed to achieving the goals of the Olympics and delivering the UAE’s humanitarian message to the world about the importance of solidarity with people of determination and empowering them in their communities, which will enable them to participate and be active.”
As reported by the state news agency, WAM, Mohamed bin Zayed added that the success of the UAE’s hosting of the Special Olympics shows its efforts to empower ‘people of determination’, integrate them into the community, and activate their overall role in the national job market, as they are partners in achieving the country’s development and advancement while asserting that supporting people of determination has become part of the country’s strategic plans.
The Special Olympic World Games, which was held last week in Abu Dhabi, is one of the world’s largest humanitarian sports events, It upholds the cause of people with intellectual disabilities and spreads the message of acceptance and inclusion.
With staggering participation of 7,500 athletes and 3,000 coaches from more than 190 nations competing in the 2019 Special Olympics, it is the largest Games in its 5 decades of history.
The Gulf nation is promoting the cause of intellectual disability by not only hosting the Special Olympics Games but also by introducing Special Olympics inclusivity programme in all public schools. As part of the programme both the children, with and without intellectual disabilities, would participate together in sport and education to build inclusivity at schools. | https://medium.com/@newzwise/uaes-leadership-meets-2019-special-olympics-games-organisers-4b9efd0d18e9 | ['Rashmi Sacher'] | 2019-03-27 16:04:14.171000+00:00 | ['Uae', 'Intellectual Disabilities', 'Humanitarian', 'Sports', 'Special Olympics'] |
hummingbird hymns | hummingbird hymns
Photo by Mark Olsen on Unsplash
Three days in a row
She greeted me with laughter
A buzz so loud that
I could not come any
Faster. So rare a sighting
It feels like a gift
Whatever divine
Being orchestrated this
I offer a kiss
In meditation
Glorious, she’s there again
Perhaps reminding
Me to stay playful
Seek joy and silver linings
Therefore, finding bliss
Little warrior
You are full of good omen
Embracing nectar
Inspiring those who
Aren’t even looking, to
Enjoy life pleasures. | https://medium.com/@mycomeg/hummingbird-hymns-c09a15215a97 | [] | 2020-12-14 16:02:36.801000+00:00 | ['Haiku', 'Poetry', 'Hymn Reflection', 'Haiku Poetry', 'Birds'] |
Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness — But It Can Get You Beer. | Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness — But It Can Get You Beer.
Introduction to Data Analytics with Python
Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash
We have all heard the saying “Money cannot buy you happiness,” but what factors lead a person to a life of happiness? Like many questions in this world, the answers can be found by analyzing data.
But where can you begin?
Finding a dataset — For this project, I found a dataset on Kaggle titled Happiness and Alcohol Consumption. It gives units and descriptions for the columns. Kaggle has public datasets and resources to help get you started. Install and import your libraries — Here is the Pandas and MatPlotLib documentation to set up your notebook.
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
3. Read in, clean, and prepare the dataset — This line of code and taking the CSV file and converting it to a Pandas DataFrame.It is important to look for outliers, missing values, duplicates, etc.
df = pd.read_csv('HappinessAlcoholConsumption.csv')
If we take a look at the dataframe we get 122 rows and 9 columns. To look into datatypes and null values, you can run df.info(). | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/money-doesnt-buy-happiness-but-it-can-get-you-beer-e35e1c718db8 | ['Amelia Dahm'] | 2020-11-07 16:33:01.286000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Pandas', 'Flatiron School', 'Python'] |
Implementing State Machines In Java | What is a State Machine ?
Wikipedia defines a finite-state machine (FSM)() as:
an abstract machine that can be in exactly one of a finite number of states at any given time. The FSM can change from one state to another in response to some external inputs; the change from one state to another is called a transition. An FSM is defined by a list of its states, its initial state, and the conditions for each transition.
It is a way to program a model so that it is at one particular state at any moment.
The world is filled with state machines which we can see anywhere in our daily usage. Below are few
Road Traffic Signal Red -> Yellow -> Green
Coffee Vending Machine
E-commerce Portal Ordering
Online Trip Booking
Many Jobs
Implementing State Machines In Java
There are many ways in which we can implement state machines. In the Java world itself, we have many libraries using which we can model these states
* [Spring State Machine](https://projects.spring.io/spring-statemachine/)
* [Squirrel](https://github.com/hekailiang/squirrel)
We can also implement them using a standard `State Design pattern` [example] https://www.journaldev.com/1751/state-design-pattern-java)
What if we don’t want to add any external dependencies?
What if we want to have a simple state machine and control it via our own logic?
State Machines Using Enums in Java
Many of us would have used Uber or Ola at-least once. Let’s try implementing the trip booking state machine using Java Enums
What are the ideal states in trip booking?
Trip Booked
Driver Assigned
Driver Reached
Trip Started
Trip Ended
The above enum can be used across our application for maintaining the state of the trip. Even in a database, this can be used by using the string value of the enum. Example TripStates.TRIPCREATED.name()
Now we have implemented the state machine but how to ensure proper state transition happens. One simple way is to include a function within the enum and check it across whenever we are trying to change the state of a trip
The above function needs to be called wherever state changes need to happen. This helps in moving states in a forward manner.
But there is a problem with this. We will be able to move a trip from a trip created to a trip started. The above implementation might not solve the real constraint we would like to introduce like a trip cannot be marked as started without marking as reached.
How can we achieve this with just enum?
Java Enums can have additional fields to it. We can leverage that to solve this.
If you look we are maintaining validFromStates in order to easily expand this to other cases where a trip can end even from different states. Example: CustomerNotReachable etc..
The above is a simple implementation that can be used. But if we wanted to have more logic within these state transitions we can still leverage but we need to hook the above model with other design patterns.
Cross Posted from Personal Blog | https://medium.com/@balaaagi/simple-state-machines-in-java-ed2a3db35a34 | ['Balaji Srinivasan'] | 2020-12-06 15:27:42.037000+00:00 | ['Fsm', 'Clean Code', 'Enum', 'Java', 'Enumeration'] |
Lies People Spread About Writing | As NaNoWriMo approaches, here are some misconceptions to shed
Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash
Writing is an art form. Just like painting, sculpting, gourmet cooking, or photography. And yet, writing has always had the distinction of being the most democratic art form. You don’t need special supplies or a studio space to do it. You learn the basics when you’re in school.
For better or worse, then, nearly everyone wants to write a novel it seems. As a professional writer with an English degree, I’ve gone through the phases of creation and rejection. I’ve also spent plenty of time with aspiring and occasionally, successful writers. So I want to decode some of the nonsense I see spread around through popular sayings and on the internet these days about writing.
Everyone Has a Novel in Them
This is an old one. My father, an avid reader would always state this adage as fact, even though he himself never wrote a novel. I used to believe this was true, but I’ve come to realize it’s not. Not everyone can be a professional painter or a gourmet chef, so why do we believe that everyone can be a novelist?
Everyone has a story in them. A story is not the same as a novel. A story can just be a brief anecdote that one shares around at parties, or a collection of life lessons learned hard. Novels have structure, detailed plot lines (usually more than one), dialogue, themes… you get the point. If you hated writing 5-page papers in school, you’ll probably detest writing a 300-page novel.
This isn’t to discourage you, but to put it in perspective. Even if you enjoy reading or writing, it doesn’t mean you have to write a novel. You can have fun with short stories, poetry, or blogging. Novels are not the end-all-be-all of writing. And being a reader is a fulfilling hobby on its own.
Write What You Know
This saying is a bit double-edged. Some people strictly adhere to the idea that you should only write about your own personal experiences. If you’re an accountant from Missouri, your main character should also be an accountant from Missouri. Well, writing about only things you’ve directly experienced may get boring quickly (though it does explain why so many novels are written about writers trying to write a novel…)
Instead, think in broader strokes. Have you experienced grief or heartbreak? You now know those deeply human emotions and can authentically share them in your writing. People you’ve met and stories you’ve read are also part of what you know and can inspire you.
You Need to Write a Certain Amount Every Day
Obviously, if you’re participating in a writing sprint like NaNoWriMo, you’ll have a target word count every day. And it can be liberating to just pump out a huge collection of words if you’re always second-guessing or self-editing as you write. But there are a lot of quantity-based discussions on forums like Twitter. People will post their daily word count or keep a tally of how long their work in progress is in their username.
Perhaps it helps with accountability for some because writing is often a solo endeavor. You don’t have coworkers to chat with or to check in on your progress. However, this can lead to the feeling that there is a “right” amount of words to produce and that you really have to write every single day.
Everyone is different and creative processes vary wildly when it comes to professional authors. Quite simply, not everyone works the same way. Nor should they. If every writer wrote the same way, all books would be very similar. Many people don’t have the luxury of having hours of free time to work quietly by themselves every day either.
Writers Should Publish by a Certain Age
“30 Under 30” lists would have us believe that you should make your name as a writer in your 20s or else there’s no chance of having a career as a writer. This is completely false and, quite frankly, very elitist.
Publishing is a hard world to break into. Writing a novel takes hundreds of hours of unpaid labor. If you don’t have a support system that allows you to work what is basically a full-time job for free, it may take quite a long time for you to get a manuscript polished enough to submit for publication.
Agents and publishers get sent thousands of manuscripts every year, so unless you have some sort of connections, yours is just another one in the pile. It can take months just to hear back after submission. It’s a slow and tedious process.
Besides, writing is a craft that takes time to master. As you get older, you can keep honing your skills. Mark Twain first published at 41. Annie Proulx at 57. Toni Morrison didn’t even start writing until 39. Alan Bradley didn’t publish his first Flavia de Luce novel until he was 70 and now it’s a very successful mystery series.
You Have to Have a Big Online Presence to Get a Publishing Deal
While having an online following may help, ultimately when you’re writing fiction, it’s all about having a good manuscript. Even if you have 50k followers on Twitter, that’s no guarantee that your book will sell well if it’s messy and ill-conceived.
An online following is actually more important when it comes to non-fiction. If you’re writing as an expert on something, it’s important to have some sort of qualifications. For things like lifestyle, cooking, and self-help, people on the internet valuing your advice and experience is proof of that qualification, so a successful blog or YouTube channel can be a big help.
I’ve seen writers with virtually no online presence land a good publishing deal and only then start a Twitter account to help with promotions. Social media can be a great networking tool, but it can also be a distraction. You shouldn’t feel that you must engage in it if you don’t want to.
If You Write Something, You Have to Publish It
While many people may engage in other art forms just for the sake of doing it, writing seems to be an exception. You might paint a picture just for the enjoyment of expressing yourself and not seek to sell it or put it in a gallery. But for someone to write a novel just for the sake of it isn’t seen in the same way.
The assumption seems to be that if you write a novel, you have to seek publication, whether through traditional or self-publishing means. Just as any creative practice, it can be as personal or as public as you like. You can write just to explore an idea or character. You can write to work through trauma or grief. Or just for fun.
Maybe you want to share it with friends and family or as a blog. For a book to be ready to be published in a more professional way, it can take a huge amount of work in terms of editing and revising. Self-publishing asks you to do copy editing, layout, cover design, and marketing on your own — or to pay professionals to perform those services. Traditional publishing is a slow process that is rife with rejection along the way. | https://medium.com/from-the-library/lies-people-spread-about-writing-643f583fa5c9 | ['Odessa Denby'] | 2020-10-08 15:05:51.206000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Art', 'NaNoWriMo', 'Novel', 'Writing'] |
Tushar Singh Shekhawat: Some Effective Services That Can Your Wedding Memorable | Are you planning your wedding? If yes, then you can see there are many things and preparation that you have to complete on time. If you can’t manage things manually, you have to hire Tushar Shekhawat, as he is best wedding planner. It is somewhat overpowering as where to begin but finally, it all comes mutually. There are some people who utilize the service of wedding planner even as some other couples select to plan and execute the wedding on their behalf. No issue which method you decide on successfully celebrating your special day, you will want the help of dealers.
There are several methods that you can select to find out wedding services provider such as professional Tushar Singh Shekhawat. Some wonderful choices are to check with family and friends they can offer you some highly effective and wonderful services. They will consecutively ask from their friends and earlier than you identify it, you have some choices that you know are more reliable than directing your figure across the way to a structure.
There are lots of people who choose to crack open the contact book and begin examining the listings. The similar thing is true with contact books on the web. The wonderful thing regarding the online sources is that you can check almost any business and get the bad, the good, and the unattractive in just one click.
The very famous methods, is the utilization of directories to search suitable service for unique weddings. Directories of wedding are normally arrange to search by services or location. This confirms that you get just the vendors who will work within your specific region. In addition, when you look for online wedding services through these sources, you will be uncovered to some vendors that deal online strictly. It indicates that you may be capable to search online vendors which provide great charges on things like wedding favors, wedding invitations, bridal party presents and many more.
Though you complete your search, or even earlier stage of your search, you can search through some available articles that the directory have on their website. Directories of the wedding are acknowledged for providing some outstanding information that may assist you make a good plan for your wedding. On the other hand, you will even need to find that these online directories have expert people’s forums where you can discuss not just about wedding ideas and planning, but about dealers also. Understanding what it is like to do with a specific vendor when keeping a try to remove the selections normally helps the procedure along.
At the time you search, you must look for Tushar Singh that able to supply wonderful and useful information. It will permit you to get a wonderful snapshot of what the group is about and what they offer you. Even, it is a wonderful idea to build up a list with professional before you begin to call different places and arrange appointments. | https://medium.com/@tusharshekhawattushar/tushar-singh-shekhawat-some-effective-services-that-can-your-wedding-memorable-b2a68d50d1c9 | ['Tushar Singh Shekhawat'] | 2019-02-07 04:55:48.750000+00:00 | ['Weddings'] |
Street Fighter NFTs on WAX— My personal market analysis | My View on the current market
Let’s dig into how I view the current market, where it is and where it is heading. Remember that this is an opinion piece and if you do any trades based on this, those are on you.
Data from nfthive.io
There has been over 11.8M wax traded in the last few days, with over 70,000 transfer of Street Fighter NFTs in the last 24 hours.
Packs
The packs are already trading at a premium, and I do believe this will continue to be the case.
Today (2021–02–22):
Standard packs: $19–190% based on primary sale
Ultimate packs: $105–210% based on primary sale
In the past, we have seen some of the bigger named brands going up in the thousands of percentile of increase in value. This could likely be the case of the Street Fighter packs as well, considering the size of the brand and interest of the community.
NFTs
If you are lucky enough to get a Collectors Edition NFT, you basically won the lottery. The same can be said if you were quick at opening your packs and doing the first upgrades and got a low mint number. The Mint number represent the order they have been created, where the #1 is the first ever created of that type.
What would be considered a low mint depends on the size of the collectors community, those that want to complete full sets of the NFTs, or stack up and own many of some (that’s me :D ). On smaller size releases most often the #1–10 is what matters, but we have seen on GPK series 1 that up to 50 — 100 is still considered a good mint number and trade with a premium.
In the case of Street Fighter, we have a special mechanic that impacts price that I think many of the current collectors have missed. I base this assumption on the first two days of trading… The Build cards are more valuable than most of the upgraded versions. As of now, 69% of all minted build cards have been burnt for upgrade. Many of the low mint builds are gone, which means that my #20 poison build card is actually the 7th lowest minted build card that still exist. Because mint 1–5 and 7–14 have all been burnt in upgrades.
nfthive.io have great data on your WAX NFTs
This actually means that lowest 100 existing mints are in the hundreds, as seen with one of my F.A.N.G, #369 from the packs, but currently the #99 lowest mint still existing:
For someone that aims to collect the most valuable set of a rarity, the mint number will be the most important factor. The lower the mint, the higher speculated value that NFT will have, and the more valuable your set will be considered. these are the reasons behind why I have been sweeping up a nice build set over the last few days.
I do believe that build cards, specially the low mint ones, will sustain value better than most of the upgraded versions, exceptions being action and collectors edition. What I also believe is that build cards that can be upgraded to Collector editions, are likely going to stay at a higher valuation than those that are not.
If you get a Chun Li or Ryu, you might consider keeping that build card because they are already listed at a way higher price compared to anything else.
What would really add onto the valuation of these packs and NFTs is if the Street Fighter team, or another project on WAX adds value to the Series 1 NFT holders. Since these are NFTs, they can be incorporated into games and other schemes by other projects. Perhaps we will even see an official Street Fighter game on WAX??? — We can dream ❤
What could negatively impact the price of the SF packs is if the community is not growing, or if they find interest in something else and a lot of holders want to leave the Street Fighter market at the same time. We have seen this in the past where the ratio between collectors and traders have been off and there are more sellers than buyers.
What could really kill the value is if most of the buyers bought to make a quick buck and intend to sell it asap. That can easily result in a flooded market, we have seen this with projects in the past where the majority of buyers want to liquidate their collection in time for the next NFT release. They never wanted to hold anything but rather wanted to make money.
Best situation is when we have a bunch of traders adding liquidity to the market and collectors swooping up the NFTs to reduce available supply. Let’s hope that is what we will see in the near future.
Summary
I’m a happy NFT trader that live and breath the WAX ecosystem, I have made the wrong calls and also made the right ones over the last 8 months. With this experience of the ecosystem I hope I was able to give you some insight, if not in the market, at least into one of the active traders, collectors and community member that I am.
I do believe that packs, build cards (specially those that can become CE), Collectors Editions and Action Street fighter NFTs are those that will keep and sustain the best value over time. This is where I personally put my money, as you can see in my accounts. If you have been following my content for a bit, I am sure you know which accounts are mine WAX, if not, you can locate them from the above information.
Feel free to engage with me on twitter or in one of the WAX telegram channels. I’m everywhere…
If you like the content I put out, subscribe to my youtube to help me reach further with all my NFT and crapto related content.
Peace!
Anders — Anyobservation | https://medium.com/@anyobservation/street-fighter-nfts-on-wax-my-personal-market-analyze-19af524bfa7d | ['Anders Björk'] | 2021-02-23 07:10:52.596000+00:00 | ['Wax', 'Street Fighter', 'Waxp', 'Nft', 'Value'] |
People Love Taco Bell, and No, It’s Not Just the Food | Ask anyone their opinion of Taco Bell and they’ll fall into one of two camps. The first is the group who finds the food disgusting, complains about the ingredients, and says the eating there makes them physically sick (likely in more grotesque terms). The second camp, the one I fall into, loves the place in spite of its flaws.
When looking at young Americans, there seems to be a sizable population that holds Taco Bell in high regards. When there are so many fast food options out there, Taco Bell doesn’t seem as if it should be the champion of the young Americans. It’s not particularly new, it’s not healthy, and it’s not even Authentic Mexican.
Millennials have a reputation of opting for organic products, embracing social causes, and promoting small businesses. Taco Bell embodies none of these virtues, but they have a strong following in the Millennial and Gen Z crowds. Their strategy works, and for the past couple of decades customer satisfaction with the Taco Bell brand has trended upward.
American customer satisfaction index: Taco Bell restaurants in the U.S. 2000–2020 via Statista
The first camp of people out there will tell you everything wrong with Taco Bell. The other camp, the satisfied customers, so them doing so much right.
How Taco Bells Gets the Right Attention
Customers aren’t just happy because they can get a full meal for under $5. Satisfaction is increasing because Taco Bell gets the right people into their doors. They’ve set proper expectations, and customers are delivered the exact experience they expect.
Many people believe Taco Bell is a prime example of using social media well, but they’ve always had a way of playing with boundaries in their marketing. Even before the internet was commonplace, Taco Bell took the idea of marketing lightly. In 1996 they infamously ran advertisements in national publications claiming they purchased the Liberty Bell. This was an April Fool’s Day joke, but it was an effective one. The joke turned $300,000 worth of advertising into massive publicity and over $1 million in increased sales. Stunts like this proved that getting attention for the wrong reasons can move sales in the right direction.
The Taco Liberty Bell was a monumental prank for the brand, but this tone is mimicked in their current media strategy. They’ve earned some buzz when they’ve clapped back at other brands, such as when Old Spice questioned their fire sauce.
via Taco Bell’s Twitter
Of course, the exchange between Old Spice and Taco Bell is tongue in cheek, but it isn’t an unusual in the world of Taco Bell. People are more accustomed to brands who ignore other companies and only take subtle jabs at competitors. Taco Bell is not that brand.
On a daily basis, Taco Bell would rather make the jokes than be the butt of the jokes. They talk to their audience as if they’re friends and sharing memes with one another. It simple and inexpensive, but it has strong implications when it comes to gaining audience engagement.
via Taco Bell’s Twitter
Over time, their laid back presence translates into brand expectations. You don’t go to Taco Bell for a nice meal, but you do go for a judgement-free meal. Taco Bell wants you to have fun, enjoy your taco, and don’t take it too seriously.
Self Awareness Shines Through
In the fast food industry, any dollar is a good dollar. Taco Bell knows this, and they work to appeal to their customers. They are intentionally targeting a younger demographic of individuals 18–34. This means they need to know how these people behave and know how the brand fits into their lifestyles.
I remember growing up and seeing a Taco Bell campaign for their late night “Fourth Meal” menu which premiered in 2006.
via Taco Bell
I didn’t recognize this at the time, but this menu is targeting late night diners returning from a night of drinking. Of course, Taco Bell isn’t going to call these items “drunk food,” but they’re perfectly content feeding the 2 AM crowd.
While the Fourth Meal embraces the type of people who may eat at Taco Bell, the brand also needs to navigate its image when scandals arise. A few years ago they were challenged when it was alleged their tacos weren’t filled with real meat. The brand clarified that they use real meat and disclosed the exact ingedients is in their tacos. Yes, it’s all edible, but this would be damaging for a brand who is heavily health-focused.
Taco Bell uses these types of stories as permission to experiment. Perhaps they’re not known for their ingredients, but they know their food isn’t harmful to consume. Around the time of the meat scandal arose, Taco Bell responded with shells made of Doritos.
via Yahoo Finance/Joshua Blanchard/Getty Images
By knowing their reputation, Taco Bell can plan their next move appropriately. It’s not a game of avoiding criticism, it’s a game of keeping your audiences on your good side. When Taco Bell makes a shell out of Doritos, they’re essentially telling their audience they know they’re serving junk food, but it’s the tastiest junk food you can get.
When All Else Fails, Do Good
Many of Taco Bell’s changes over the years have been to make the brand become more fun. They’re aware of American culture, they hear the concerns of young people, but they’re still a fast food restaurant and can only operate within certain boundaries. Sometimes this means pumping a dose of lightheartedness into the world. After all, we can probably thank Taco Bell for getting the taco emoji on our phones.
If you only focus on their advertisements, you will only see the fun side of Taco Bell. For some, that’s enough, but if you dig a little deeper you will see their focus on change. Each year Taco Bell states its commitments for social progress and the development of their employees.
Going into 2020, the brand made the promise to introduce more recyclable packaging for customers. Vegetarians could look forward to seeing more options on the menu and carnivores can expect their beef is becoming more sustainable. The brand also focuses on their employees, pledging to provide leadership opportunities and educational support.
As the year progressed, Taco Bell faced challenges from COVID-19 and need to adapt further. During the pandemic, they began to emphasize a need for employee safety and contactless dining. For the customers who relied on their affordable meals they would see one clear message: Yes, we’re open.
The Taco Bell Generation
Perhaps young adults love Taco Bell because it’s relatable. When you look at its advertising and public image, the brand isn’t disguising itself as anything other than cheap fast food. In terms of marketing, they’ve identified their role in the food chain and they portray this image in customer engagement on social media. Through their collaborations and promotions, people have come to respect the brand without them needing to increase the quality of their food.
Customer satisfaction has risen over the years, and this is likely a result of multiple factors. Knowing Taco Bell has sustainable initiatives and employee development on their agenda may allow customers to dine with reduced guilt. However, their bigger accomplishment is attracting the right people into their stores. There are two ways to deliver a good experience to the customer: raise your quality and lower customer expectations. Taco Bell may be doing both, and customers are none the wiser.
It seems Taco Bell has more competition than ever. Over the past couple of decades Americans have watched the number of Chipotle and Del Taco locations multiply. Other fast food chains like Jack in the Box and Burger King have tried to entice taco eaters to drive through different windows with their budget tacos. With all of the competition, Taco Bell needed to establish its identity in the fast food market.
This is where the branding excels. Somehow, Taco Bell’s lax attitude and experimental menu has gotten the brand a lot of buzz. It’s almost an ironic lifestyle brand, one that contradicts every value held by traditional Millennials and Gen Zers. With this attitude, Taco Bell has become exceptional and they didn't even have to change their menu. | https://medium.com/swlh/people-love-taco-bell-and-no-its-not-just-the-food-d3358cb035df | ['Michael Beausoleil'] | 2020-12-28 21:49:57.106000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Food', 'Social Media', 'Business', 'Marketing'] |
ECOMI Collect Part 2: How Does ECOMI Collect work? | ECOMI Collect is an application that allows users to buy, sell and trade premium licensed, digital collectibles and other related virtual goods. Although the first release will be the ECOMI Collect mobile app, it is also being developed as a cross-platform tool (desktop, web etc…) for the delivery and storage of digital collectible content. This all sounds great, but let’s dive into the underlying tech so you can also understand just how it works, and why ECOMI Collect is poised to change the world!
Blockchain Protocol
ECOMI Collect is a marketplace where users can buy, swap, sell and store digital assets in the form of digital collectible non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The authenticity, scarcity, and ownership of digital collectibles are managed using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
ECOMI has recently partnered with GoChain to support our digital ecosystem with increased security and transaction speeds, scalability and the ability to operate at much much lower costs.
GoChain has built the world’s only full-service, enterprise-grade public blockchain protocol based on an industry standard codebase. It is the only network protocol that offers enterprise-level support, high transaction speeds, and upgradeable smart contracts.
“GoChain’s network has moved away from unpermissioned Proof-of-Work (PoW), to a secure and trusted network of validators via their Proof-of-Reputation (PoR) consensus. With these speeds, ECOMI users will be able to interact and buy/sell/transfer their assets in seconds, for 10,000ths of a penny.” — Adam Norris, GoChain Director of Marketing & Community
Token Standards, Minting, and Generation
The OMI token (ECOMI’s native token) will be deployed as a GO-20 token on the GoChain MainNet, whilst the NFTs will be based on the GO-721 standard. The NFT standard allows for a verifiable digital scarcity of collectible assets with proven authenticity, and immutable proof of ownership.
To facilitate the purchase and trade of digital collectibles, ECOMI Collect utilises the OMI token, built on the GO20 standard. When a purchase of a digital collectible is made, the OMI tokens will be exchanged for the NFT, and you will become the registered owner of a brand new digital collectible!
Moreover, ECOMI has and will continue to acquire the world’s biggest licenses and brands from pop culture to characters and series across a number of categories. In doing so, we are able to create collectible series’ from a single license, similar to the way physical trading cards bring out new series and characters over time.
In order to create a new digital collectible, we ‘mint’ a new NFT in our blockchain contract. Each NFT is provided with an associated URI which links that NFT to a set of metadata about the collectible, including the collectible name, licensor, brand, series, and links to the NFT’s various digital assets, such as clothing, actions, props, etc…
These identifiers also confirm that the collectible is legitimate, and allow you to trace/verify it’s ownership and sale history, ensuring that the collectible you’re receiving is the one you purchased. | https://medium.com/ecomi/ecomi-collect-part-2-how-does-ecomi-collect-work-52ed6a0420c7 | [] | 2019-06-30 19:24:46.405000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Collectibles', 'Distributed Ledgers', 'Blockchain', 'Digital Collectibles'] |
Getting the Best Out of Your Money | Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash
Instead of spending your time thinking how to save, why don’t you use the time to think how to earn more?
This has always been one of the popular questions asked in a personal finance management discussion. The idea isn’t wrong. Let’s be honest. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that as long as your income is more than your expenses, you are more than likely fare well in your life.
But just like trying to fill up a bucket with holes, there will be a limitation to how fast, and how much water you can scoop to offset the drainage. Not to mention, the emotional drain one incurred by doing what feels like a futile effort.
Regardless how much you earn, using your money with the best effectiveness is always a key to personal finance. Even big companies execute cost saving as one of their strategy to keep profitability high.
Credit card cashback/benefits
If money is evil, credit card is the devil. That’s a myth. Money is of course not evil, and credit card need not be frown upon. There is a multiple selection of credit cards that offer cashback and benefits. You just need to find one that suits your expenditure style. On a good year, I hit almost $3000 of saving by the cashback the credit cards that I hold. Go figure how much money you need to have in your fixed deposit or investment account to achieve that figure on an annual basis. Be careful though. You want to save on expenses that are unavoidable (like bills or household expenses), not spend more to save more!
Tax deduction, relief and rebate
Take advantage of any personal tax deduction, relief and rebate. In certain part of the world, you may get tax deduction for items like buying a laptop, incurring expenses on books or education, and investing in a retirement scheme (yes, there is such tax deduction, no jokes). Even businessman does this with their business. Know the law, break no law. Benefit from it instead. You’ll be glad to pay lesser tax or better still, get a tax refund at the end of the year.
Hold off that buying thought
Sure, we can’t run away from buying. What we can do though, is to make sure that we buy what we really want or need, instead of buying on impulse. How many times have you bought something, only to store it somewhere in the house (I don’t remember where) weeks later? Before proceeding to the next big and/or self gratifying purchase, sleep on the decision and give it a second (or third!) thought before pulling the trigger. This will hopefully keep your wallet closed and your home slightly clutter-free.
Stock up on sales
Grocery stores and supermarkets frequently have sales on a range of products on a rotation basis. Try to buy the essential items when they are on discount, not when you desperately need it. The trick is of course, to stock up (not hoard) the items that you frequently use in the household and make sure that you don’t buy them, only when you desperately need them. Think about it. A 10% discount’s saving could mean as much as 3 years of having the same amount of money in your fixed deposit saving.
Don’t skimp on good product/maintenance
Cost saving does not equate to cheaping out. Don’t skip the necessary maintenance. If your car needs maintenance, by all means spend a little more to maintain it so it could last longer. You would also get the benefit that new technology become cheaper over time. Buying a car now and buying a car next year with the same amount of money could mean a lot of difference in term of the gadgets or add-ons you’ll get. Likewise, if a better product could last longer but cost more, by all means, go for it. You’ll save more in the long run.
Spending your time fruitfully
Ever thought of doing some gardening at home? Interested to fix-it-yourself instead of getting rip off? Well, NOW is always the best time to start. With the current Internet age, you could learn something new easily from sources like YouTube. Take advantage of it. Learn something new that interest you in your free time. Grow some tomatoes or basil. It may not occur to you but those may very well bear fruits (pun intended) in the long run and save you some along the way. Even if it don’t, at least you’ll enjoy the process!
Live within your means
No amount of money in the world can sate one’s appetite if it knows no limit. Do you need the latest phone, every year? Do you need that newly released handbag? Do you still need the yearly oversea trip, having just purchased your dream house months ago? Instead of living a ‘dream’ in a foreign land, only to come back (to reality) a week later, shouldn’t you live your own dream, in your own dream house? Yes, you need to strive and aim higher all the time. But it should not stop you from being grateful with what you have.
Gamify the experience
Getting the best out of your money need not be a chore. The best way to do this effectively is to enjoy it and not dread it. Change your mindset. It could be as fun as a game. I personally took pride, and fun, when I’m able to beat the system. It’s not about the saving or the cost effectiveness anymore for me. It has become an amusing game. Remember. It’s not about being cheap. It’s not about cutting expenses until you take joy out of your life. Its about getting the best out of your money. | https://medium.com/@ctzes/getting-the-best-out-your-buck-ba6e0d8979ae | [] | 2021-02-02 10:35:17.830000+00:00 | ['Saving', 'Finance'] |
[Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Film C.O.M.P.L.E.T[STREAMING VF] .Français | Regarder Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini (2020) Film Complet en Français | Pixar Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini → Film streaming en [HD | DVD-Rip | HD-Rip | Bluray | HD-TV | HD-TV-Rip] Regarder de films Gratuit → WorldCinema.xyz
~LINK : _____⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇______
Télécharger |>>>https://tinyurl.com/y9679b2c
Diffusion |>>>http://play.123moviesfox.xyz/fr/movie/635302
Regarder |>>>https://tinyurl.com/y9679b2c
9 novembre 2011 / 1h 46min / Drame, Science fiction, Thriller
De Steven Soderbergh
Avec Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne
Nationalités Américain, Émirati
SYNOPSIS ET DÉTAILS
Enmu, la première Lune Inférieure, a été chargé de tuer Kamado Tanjirô pour devenir une Lune Supérieure et avoir plus sang de Muzan. Pendant ce temps, Tanjirô, Zen’itsu et Inosuke décident d’acheter des billets pour monter à bord du train de l’infini et ainsi rejoindre Rengoku Kyôjurô, le Pilier de la flamme, dans l’espoir d’en apprendre davantage sur la danse du dieu du feu.
Sortie: 2020–10–16
Durée: 117 minutes
Genre: Animation, Action, Aventure, Fantastique, Drame
Etoiles: Natsuki Hanae, Akari Kitō, Hiro Shimono, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Satoshi Hino
Directeur: Yuki Kajiura, Makoto Nakamura, Masahiro Kimura, Mitsuru Obunai, Tomonori Sudō
Une pandémie dévastatrice explose à l’échelle du globe… Au Centre de Prévention et de Contrôle des Maladies, des équipes se mobilisent pour tenter de décrypter le génome du mystérieux virus, qui ne cesse de muter. Le Sous-Directeur Cheever, confronté à un vent de panique collective, est obligé d’exposer la vie d’une jeune et courageuse doctoresse. Tandis que les grands groupes pharmaceutiques se livrent une bataille acharnée pour la mise au point d’un vaccin, le Dr. Leonora Orantes, de l’OMS, s’efforce de remonter aux sources du fléau. Les cas mortels se multiplient, jusqu’à mettre en péril les fondements de la société, et un blogueur militant suscite une panique aussi dangereuse que le virus en déclarant qu’on “cache la vérité” à la population…
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_Full_Movie
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_Pelicula_Completa
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_bộ phim_đầy_đủ
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini หนัง เต็ม
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_Koko_elokuva
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_volledige_film
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_film_complet
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_hel_film
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_cały_film
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_ فيلم_كامل
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_plena_filmo
Voir Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini film complet en ligne
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Full Movie en streaming en ligne dans la qualité vidéo HD 720p
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Full Movie
Où télécharger Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Full Movie?
Regarder le film complet Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Regarder le film complet
Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini en ligne
Regarder le film complet Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini HD 1080p
Film complet Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini
THE STORY
After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) forgoes the standard opportunities of seeking employment from big and lucrative law firms; deciding to head to Alabama to defend those wrongfully commended, with the support of local advocate, Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). One of his first, and most poignant, case is that of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx, who, in 62, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 2-year-old girl in the community, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and one singular testimony against him by an individual that doesn’t quite seem to add up. Bryan begins to unravel the tangled threads of McMillian’s case, which becomes embroiled in a relentless labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt unabashed racism of the community as he fights for Walter’s name and others like him.
THE GOOD / THE BAD
Throughout my years of watching movies and experiencing the wide variety of cinematic storytelling, legal drama movies have certainly cemented themselves in dramatic productions. As I stated above, some have better longevity of being remembered, but most showcase plenty of heated courtroom battles of lawyers defending their clients and unmasking the truth behind the claims (be it wrongfully incarcerated, discovering who did it, or uncovering the shady dealings behind large corporations. Perhaps my first one legal drama was 624’s The Client (I was little young to get all the legality in the movie, but was still managed to get the gist of it all). My second one, which I loved, was probably Primal Fear, with Norton delivering my favorite character role. Of course, I did see To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in the sixth grade for English class. Definitely quite a powerful film. And, of course, let’s not forget Philadelphia and want it meant / stand for. Plus, Hanks and Washington were great in the film. All in all, while not the most popular genre out there, legal drama films still provide a plethora of dramatic storytelling to capture the attention of moviegoers of truth and lies within a dubious justice.
Just Mercy is the latest legal crime drama feature and the whole purpose of this movie review. To be honest, I really didn’t much “buzz” about this movie when it was first announced (circa 206) when Broad Green Productions hired the film’s director (Cretton) and actor Michael B. Jordan in the lead role. It was then eventually bought by Warner Bros (the films rights) when Broad Green Productions went Bankrupt. So, I really didn’t hear much about the film until I saw the movie trailer for Just Mercy, which did prove to be quite an interesting tale. Sure, it sort of looked like the generic “legal drama” yarn (judging from the trailer alone), but I was intrigued by it, especially with the film starring Jordan as well as actor Jamie Foxx. I did repeatedly keep on seeing the trailer for the film every time I went to my local movie theater (usually attached to any movie I was seeing with a PG rating and above). So, suffice to say, that Just Mercy’s trailer preview sort of kept me invested and waiting me to see it. Thus, I finally got the chance to see the feature a couple of days ago and I’m ready to share my thoughts on the film. And what are they? Well, good ones….to say the least. While the movie does struggle within the standard framework of similar projects, Just Mercy is a solid legal drama that has plenty of fine cinematic nuances and great performances from its leads. It’s not the “be all to end all” of legal drama endeavors, but its still manages to be more of the favorable motion pictures of these projects.
Just Mercy is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose previous directorial works includes such movies like Short Term 6, I Am Not a Hipster, and Glass Castle. Given his past projects (consisting of shorts, documentaries, and a few theatrical motion pictures), Cretton makes Just Mercy is most ambitious endeavor, with the director getting the chance to flex his directorial muscles on a legal drama film, which (like I said above) can manage to evoke plenty of human emotions within its undertaking. Thankfully, Cretton is up to the task and never feels overwhelmed with the movie; approaching (and shaping) the film with respect and a touch of sincerity by speaking to the humanity within its characters, especially within lead characters of Stevenson and McMillian. Of course, legal dramas usually do (be the accused / defendant and his attorney) shine their cinematic lens on these respective characters, so it’s nothing original. However, Cretton does make for a compelling drama within the feature; speaking to some great character drama within its two main lead characters; staging plenty of moments of these twos individuals that ultimately work, including some of the heated courtroom sequences.
Like other recent movies (i.e. Brian Banks and The Hate U Give), Cretton makes Just Mercy have an underlining thematical message of racism and corruption that continues to play a part in the US….to this day (incredibly sad, but true). So, of course, the correlation and overall relatively between the movie’s narrative and today’s world is quite crystal-clear right from the get-go, but Cretton never gets overzealous / preachy within its context; allowing the feature to present the subject matter in a timely manner and doesn’t feel like unnecessary or intentionally a “sign of the times” motif. Additionally, the movie also highlights the frustration (almost harsh) injustice of the underprivileged face on a regular basis (most notable those looking to overturn their cases on death row due to negligence and wrongfully accused). Naturally, as somewhat expected (yet still palpable), Just Mercy is a movie about seeking the truth and uncovering corruption in the face of a broken system and ignorant prejudice, with Cretton never shying away from some of the ugly truths that Stevenson faced during the film’s story.
Plus, as a side-note, it’s quite admirable for what Bryan Stevenson (the real-life individual) did for his career, with him as well as others that have supported him (and the Equal Justice Initiative) over the years and how he fought for and freed many wrongfully incarcerated individuals that our justice system has failed (again, the poignancy behind the film’s themes / message). It’s great to see humanity being shined and showcased to seek the rights of the wronged and to dispel a flawed system. Thus, whether you like the movie or not, you simply can not deny that truly meaningful job that Bryan Stevenson is doing, which Cretton helps demonstrate in Just Mercy. From the bottom of my heart…. thank you, Mr. Stevenson.
In terms of presentation, Just Mercy is a solidly made feature film. Granted, the film probably won’t be remembered for its visual background and theatrical setting nuances or even nominated in various award categories (for presentation / visual appearance), but the film certainly looks pleasing to the eye, with the attention of background aspects appropriate to the movie’s story. Thus, all the usual areas that I mention in this section (i.e. production design, set decorations, costumes, and cinematography) are all good and meet the industry standard for legal drama motion pictures. That being said, the film’s score, which was done by Joel P. West, is quite good and deliver some emotionally drama pieces in a subtle way that harmonizes with many of the feature’s scenes.
There are a few problems that I noticed with Just Mercy that, while not completely derailing, just seem to hold the feature back from reaching its full creative cinematic potential. Let’s start with the most prevalent point of criticism (the one that many will criticize about), which is the overall conventional storytelling of the movie. What do I mean? Well, despite the strong case that the film delves into a “based on a true story” aspect and into some pretty wholesome emotional drama, the movie is still structed into a way that it makes it feel vaguely formulaic to the touch. That’s not to say that Just Mercy is a generic tale to be told as the film’s narrative is still quite engaging (with some great acting), but the story being told follows quite a predictable path from start to finish. Granted, I never really read Stevenson’s memoir nor read anything about McMillian’s case, but then I still could easily figure out how the movie was presumably gonna end…. even if the there were narrative problems / setbacks along the way. Basically, if you’ve seeing any legal drama endeavor out there, you’ll get that same formulaic touch with this movie. I kind of wanted see something a little bit different from the film’s structure, but the movie just ends up following the standard narrative beats (and progressions) of the genre. That being said, I still think that this movie is definitely probably one of the better legal dramas out there.
This also applies to the film’s script, which was penned by Cretton and Andrew Lanham, which does give plenty of solid entertainment narrative pieces throughout, but lacks the finesse of breaking the mold of the standard legal drama. There are also a couple parts of the movie’s script handling where you can tell that what was true and what fictional. Of course, this is somewhat a customary point of criticism with cinematic tales taking a certain “poetic license” when adapting a “based on a true story” narrative, so it’s not super heavily critical point with me as I expect this to happen. However, there were a few times I could certainly tell what actually happen and what was a tad bit fabricated for the movie. Plus, they were certain parts of the narrative that could’ve easily fleshed out, including what Morrison’s parents felt (and actually show them) during this whole process. Again, not a big deal-breaker, but it did take me out of the movie a few times. Lastly, the film’s script also focuses its light on a supporting character in the movie and, while this made with well-intention to flesh out the character, the camera spotlight on this character sort of goes off on a slight tangent during the feature’s second act. Basically, this storyline could’ve been removed from Just Mercy and still achieve the same palpability in the emotional department. It’s almost like the movie needed to chew up some runtime and the writers to decided to fill up the time with this side-story. Again, it’s good, but a bit slightly unnecessary.
What does help overlook (and elevate) some of these criticisms is the film’s cast, which are really good and definitely helps bring these various characters to life in a theatrical /dramatic way. Leading the charge in Just Mercy is actor Michael B. Jordan, who plays the film’s central protagonist role of Bryan Stevenson. Known for his roles in Creed, Fruitvale Station, and Black Panther, Jordan has certain prove himself to be quite a capable actor, with the actor rising to stardom over the past few years. This is most apparent in this movie, with Jordan making a strong characteristically portrayal as Bryan; showcasing plenty of underlining determination and compelling humanity in his character as he (as Bryan Stevenson) fights for the injustice of those who’s voices have been silenced or dismissed because of the circumstances. It’s definitely a strong character built and Jordan seems quite capable to task in creating a well-acted on-screen performance of Bryan. Behind Jordan is actor Jamie Foxx, who plays the other main lead in the role, Walter McMillian. Foxx, known for his roles in Baby Driver, Django Unchained, and Ray, has certainly been recognized as a talented actor, with plenty of credible roles under his belt. His participation in Just Mercy is another well-acted performance that deserve much praise as its getting (even receiving an Oscar nod for it), with Foxx portraying Walter with enough remorseful grit and humility that makes the character quite compelling to watch. Plus, seeing him and Jordan together in a scene is quite palpable and a joy to watch.
The last of the three marquee main leads of the movie is the character of Eva Ansley, the director of operations for EJI (i.e. Stevenson’s right-handed employee / business partner), who is played by actress Brie Larson. Up against the characters of Stevenson and McMillian, Ansley is the weaker of the three main lead; presented as supporting player in the movie, which is perfectly fine as the characters gets the job done (sort of speak) throughout the film’s narrative. However, Larson, known for her roles in Room, 6 Jump Street, and Captain Marvel, makes less of an impact in the role. Her acting is fine and everything works in her portrayal of Eva, but nothing really stands in her performance (again, considering Jordan and Foxx’s performances) and really could’ve been played by another actress and achieved the same goal.
The rest of the cast, including actor Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk and O Brother, Where Art Thou) as incarcerated inmate Ralph Meyers, actor Rafe Spall (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Big Short) as legal attorney Tommy Champan, actress Karan Kendrick (The Hate U Give and Family) as Minnie McMillan, Walter’s wife, actor C.J. LeBlanc (Arsenal and School Spirts) as Walter’s son, John McMillian, actor Rob Morgan (Stranger Things and Mudbound) as death role inmate Herbert Richardson, actor O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Long Shot and Straight Outta Compton) as death role inmate Anthony “Ray” Hinton, actor Michael Harding (Triple 2 and The Young and the Restless) as Sheriff Tate, and actor Hayes Mercure (The Red Road and Mercy Street) as a prison guard named Jeremy, are in the small supporting cast variety. Of course, some have bigger roles than others, but all of these players, which are all acted well, bolster the film’s story within the performances and involvement in Just Mercy’s narrative.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s never too late to fight for justice as Bryan Stevenson fights for the injustice of Walter McMillian’s cast against a legal system that is flawed in the movie Just Mercy. Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s latest film takes a stance on a poignant case; demonstrating the injustice of one (and by extension those wrongfully incarcerated) and wrapping it up in a compelling cinematic story. While the movie does struggle within its standard structure framework (a sort of usual problem with “based on a true story” narrations) as well as some formulaic beats, the movie still manages to rise above those challenges (for the most part), especially thanks to Cretton’s direction (shaping and storytelling) and some great performances all around (most notable in Jordan and Foxx). Personally, I liked this movie. Sure, it definitely had its problem, but those didn’t distract me much from thoroughly enjoying this legal drama feature. Thus, my recommendation for the film is a solid “recommended”, especially those who liked the cast and poignant narratives of legality struggles and the injustice of a failed system / racism. In the end, while the movie isn’t the quintessential legal drama motion picture and doesn’t push the envelope in cinematic innovation, Just Mercy still is able to manage to be a compelling drama that’s powerful in its story, meaningful in its journey, and strong within its statement. Just like Bryan Stevenson says in the movie….” If we could look at ourselves closely…. we can change this world for the better”. Amen to that! | https://medium.com/@davii606/demon-slayer-le-train-de-linfini-film-c-o-m-p-l-e-t-streaming-vf-fran%C3%A7ais-14200e2bc8d1 | [] | 2020-12-22 03:04:38.163000+00:00 | ['France', 'Demon Slayer Kimetsu', 'Online', '2020', 'Hd'] |
Three Methods to Convert Strings into Enums in C# | I recently had to solve the problem of converting strings into enums in C#. There are a few different solutions you can implement depending on your requirements. This article aims to show you some of these solutions and when to use each one.
Method 1: Enum.Parse Method
This is probably one of the simplest methods as it is built into .NET. It allows you to convert a string into an enum by matching the given string to the enum item with the same name and then returning that enum item.
It’s important to note that the string comparison is case-sensitive by default but can be configured to be case-insensitive.
Program.cs
using System;
namespace ConvertStringToEnum
{
enum Priority
{
High = 1,
Medium = 2,
Low = 3
}
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var result = Enum.Parse<Priority>("High");
// Match using case-insensitive string comparison
var result2 = Enum.Parse<Priority>("low", true);
Console.WriteLine($"result: {result}");
Console.WriteLine($"result2: {result2}");
// Try find an enum that doesn't exist
try
{
var result3 = Enum.Parse<Priority>("mid");
Console.WriteLine($"result3: {result3}");
}
catch (ArgumentException e)
{
Console.WriteLine($"Could not parse enum from string. Exception: {e}");
}
}
}
}
Advantages
Easy to remember and read
Can use case-insensitive comparison
Can return a typed enum using the generic type overload ( Enum.Parse<TEnum>() )
Disadvantages
Need to implement error handling with try-catch (catch the ArgumentException exception for when the specified enum item is not found)
exception for when the specified enum item is not found) The string has to match the enum’s item name (i.e. you cannot match on description or other attributes in the enum)
Method 2: Enum.TryParse Method
This method works the same as the previous method: it retrieves the enum item with the same name as the specified string. However, this method also takes care of error-handling for us making it much simpler to use.
Just like the previous method, this method is also case-sensitive by default but can be configured to be case-insensitive.
Program.cs
using System;
namespace ConvertStringToEnum
{
enum Priority
{
High = 1,
Medium = 2,
Low = 3
}
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Priority result;
Enum.TryParse("High", out result);
// Match using case-insensitive string comparison. We are also
// using C# 7.0's parameter type inlining feature here.
Enum.TryParse<Priority>("low", true, out Priority result2);
Console.WriteLine($"result: {result}");
Console.WriteLine($"result2: {result2}");
// Try find an enum that doesn't exist
if (Enum.TryParse<Priority>("mid", out Priority result3))
Console.WriteLine($"result3: {result3}");
else
Console.WriteLine("Could not find the specified enum item :(");
}
}
}
Advantages
Easy to remember and read
Can use case-insensitive comparison
Can return a typed enum using the generic type overload ( Enum.TryParse<TEnum>() )
) Manages error-handling and returns a bool indicating if the conversion was successful or not.
Disadvantages
The string has to match the enum item’s name (i.e. you cannot match on description or other attributes in the enum)
Method 3: Using Reflection
This method is by far the most complex but gives us a lot more control over retrieving the correct enum item based on the given string. We will use reflection to retrieve the correct enum item using the DescriptionAttribute assigned to each enum item. This attribute is powerful because our string does not have to match the name of the enum item exactly.
In the example below, we are implementing reflection inside a static method so that we can then call this static method to retrieve the correct enum item based on the given string.
EnumReflection.cs
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;
namespace ConvertStringToEnum
{
public static class EnumReflection
{
/// <summary>
/// Retrieves an enum item from a specified string by matching the string to the DescriptionAttribute
/// elements assigned to each enum item
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TEnum">The enum type that should be returned</typeparam>
/// <param name="description">The description that should be searched</param>
/// <param name="ignoreCase">Whether string comparison of descriptions should be case-sensitive or not</param>
/// <returns>The matched enum item</returns>
/// <exception cref="ArgumentException">Thrown if no enum item could be found with the corresponding description</exception>
public static TEnum GetEnumByDescription<TEnum>(string description, bool ignoreCase = false)
// Add a condition to the generic type
where TEnum : Enum
{
// Loop through all the items in the specified enum
foreach (var item in typeof(TEnum).GetFields())
{
// Check to see if the enum item has a description attribute
if (Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(item, typeof(DescriptionAttribute)) is
DescriptionAttribute attribute)
{
// If the enum item has a description attribute, then check if
// the description matches the given description parameter
if (string.Equals(attribute.Description, description,
ignoreCase ? StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase : StringComparison.Ordinal))
return (TEnum) item.GetValue(null);
}
}
// If no enum item was found with the specified description, throw an
// exception
throw new ArgumentException($"Enum item with description \"{description}\" could not be found",
nameof(description));
}
/// <summary>
/// Tries to retrieve an enum item from the specified string by matching the string to the DescriptionAttribute
/// elements assigned to each enum item
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TEnum">The enum type that should be retrieved</typeparam>
/// <param name="description">The description that should be searched</param>
/// <param name="ignoreCase">Whether string comparison of descriptions should be case-sensitive or not</param>
/// <param name="result">The matched enum item if it was found</param>
/// <returns>Whether or not the enum item was found or not</returns>
public static bool TryGetEnumByDescription<TEnum>(string description, bool ignoreCase, out TEnum result)
where TEnum : Enum
{
try
{
// We try to get the enum using our original method
result = GetEnumByDescription<TEnum>(description, ignoreCase);
return true;
}
catch (ArgumentException)
{
// If we cannot retrieve the enum item, set it to the default and
// return false
result = default(TEnum);
return false;
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Tries to retrieve an enum item from the specified string by matching the string to the DescriptionAttribute
/// elements assigned to each enum item
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TEnum">The enum type that should be retrieved</typeparam>
/// <param name="description">The description that should be searched</param>
/// <param name="result">The matched enum item if it was found</param>
/// <returns>Whether or not the enum item was found or not</returns>
public static bool TryGetEnumByDescription<TEnum>(string description, out TEnum result)
where TEnum : Enum
{
return TryGetEnumByDescription(description, false, out result);
}
}
}
Program.cs
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
namespace ConvertStringToEnum
{
enum Priority
{
[Description("Very important bru!")]
High = 1,
[Description("Look at it when you have a chance")]
Medium = 2,
[Description("Maybe take a look if you're bored")]
Low = 3
}
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Priority result;
EnumReflection.TryGetEnumByDescription("Very important bru!", out result);
// Match using case-insensitive string comparison. We are also
// using C# 7.0's parameter type inlining feature here.
EnumReflection.TryGetEnumByDescription("Maybe take a look if you're BORED", true, out Priority result2);
Console.WriteLine($"result: {result}");
Console.WriteLine($"result2: {result2}");
// Try find an enum that doesn't exist
if (EnumReflection.TryGetEnumByDescription("Not sure what this is", out Priority result3))
Console.WriteLine($"result3: {result3}");
else
Console.WriteLine("Could not find the specified enum item :(");
}
}
}
Advantages
Allows more flexibility in how an enum item should be picked based on a given string (you don’t have to use the DescriptionAttribute only)
only) Can use case-insensitive comparison
Can return a typed enum using the generic type overload ( Enum.TryParse<TEnum>() )
Disadvantages
I hope you found this article helpful. If you have any other ideas as to how you can convert a string into an enum item please mention it in the comments below. Otherwise, if you have any questions you can also leave them below and I’ll get back to you. | https://medium.com/@ivankahl/three-methods-to-convert-strings-into-enums-in-c-ivan-kahl-5c7ba6d58774 | ['Ivan Kahl'] | 2020-12-06 14:55:41.118000+00:00 | ['Dotnet Core', 'Dotnet', 'Csharp'] |
Messed up 3D Meshes: A case study in the limits of integer floating point | Ok, no noticeable visual change. We can reasonably rule out the optimization algorithm causing this change in geometry…well somewhat at least. However, the fact that we have the same general shape at different polycounts is still incredibly suspicious. Looking at the optimization logic we can then get the general gist of what it does:
Our unoptimized geometry optimizer https://github.com/BabylonJS/Exporters/blob/992d3d5025e9b10b6d929abded0733fe974fd1dc/3ds%20Max/Max2Babylon/Exporter/BabylonExporter.Mesh.cs#L894-L912
Essentially, we search all other vertices that we have exported to the current vertex that we are extracting from Max, and replace it if we already have an equivalent vertex with matching position, UV coordinates, and other relevant attributes:
Now why is all this relevant? It will all make sense soon, I promise! The key here is in the datatypes:
See Autodesk’s documentation for the IPoint3 type. Key point being that the coordinates of these points for our vertices are stored as integers, rather than the IEEE-754 floating point while we are working with them. The key benefit of using integer floating point opposed to the standard floating point format is that its error is consistent within its range, as opposed to floating point precision loss, where one encounters greater loss in precision the farther from 0 your value is:
Imagine this square as the set of all real numbers, while the intersection points are the ones that we can represent as IEEE-754 floating point. (Shamelessly borrowed from: https://www.pathengine.com/Contents/Overview/FundamentalConcepts/WhyIntegerCoordinates/page.php)
The relative precision of an integer floating point space
As you can see, integer floating point is great for representing incredibly large values, not so great for representing incredibly small values compared to your range.
Again, why is this relevant? If we go back to our original issue, I originally hinted at one crucial detail!:
The answer was in front of us the whole time
The affected meshes are only the ones scaled to be virtually invisible before export! This is a common technique for animating visibility within glTF’s current capabilities, and as a result, it exposed some flaw with how we were retrieving geometry:
Raise your hand when you see it… https://github.com/BabylonJS/Exporters/blob/992d3d5025e9b10b6d929abded0733fe974fd1dc/3ds%20Max/Max2Babylon/Exporter/BabylonExporter.Mesh.cs#L739-L753
We were retrieving the mesh geometry in world space, then converting the geometry to local space… Yikes.
Luckily enough the fix was simple enough, and the investigation was very fun, at least when it didn’t nearly bring me to doubt my understanding of digital math. Instead of retrieving all our geometry at 0.001x scale, then scaling it up to local space, we instead should have grabbed it at the appropriate frame of reference:
Use local space, dummy. https://github.com/BabylonJS/Exporters/pull/621/files
You can always check out the latest and greatest version of the exporters here:
https://github.com/BabylonJS/Exporters/releases | https://babylonjs.medium.com/messed-up-3d-meshes-a-case-study-in-the-limits-of-integer-floating-point-5ccfa2734d91 | [] | 2020-06-04 17:07:16.917000+00:00 | ['Math', 'Debugging', 'Babylonjs', '3d'] |
Svelte: Communication between components through the Store | Svelte: Communication between components through the Store
Implement communication between unrelated components using Svelte's built in store CertosinoLab Sep 2·3 min read
Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash
Svelte’s store: A short Introduction
In Svelte, state management is simplified by the presence of an internal store. This store translates into an object that has a series of methods, some are used to manage operations on it, others are used to notify the other parts of the application when the value of the store changes.
In Svelte we have three types of stores: Writable, Readable, Derived.
In this article we will only use the writable type.
Find more on: API Docs • Svelte
What we will build
A simple application with a button and a d3.js horizontal bar chart. There are two components: the button and the chart container
Getting Started
You can download and run the basic project template with following commands:
npx degit sveltejs/template svelte-d3-1
cd svelte-d3-1
npm install
npm run dev
In this tutorial we will use d3.js, so install it
npm i d3
Let’s Code
The data of the chart is stored in a store called sharedData.
Inside store.js, we got
import {writable, derived} from 'svelte/store'
export const sharedData = writable([30, 86, 168, 281, 303, 365])
sharedData have a start value of [30, 86, 168, 281, 303, 365], its the array that we will pass to d3.js chart.
This data change everytime you click on the Fetch Data button, as in the FetchButton component we have the fetchData method which, when invoked, change the store values.
Let’s take a look at our component: DataFetchButton.svelte
<script>
import {sharedData} from "../store";
function generateRandomNumber() {
return Math.floor(Math.random() * 600)
}
function setNewData() {
let newData = [];
for(let i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
newData.push(generateRandomNumber());
}
return newData;
}
function fetchData() {
sharedData.set(setNewData())
}
</script>
<style>
.fetch-button {
float: left;
cursor: pointer;
margin-top: 10px;
}
</style>
<button class="fetch-button" on:click={fetchData}>Fetch Data</button>
Now we can create our ChartContainer.svelte component:
<script>
import {sharedData} from "../store";
import { onMount } from 'svelte';
import * as d3 from 'd3';
let el;
let data;
onMount(() => {
data = $sharedData;
d3.select(el)
.selectAll("div")
.data(data)
.enter()
.append("div")
.style("width", function(d) {
return d + "px";
})
.text(function(d) {
return d;
});
});
</script>
<style>
.chart :global(div) {
font: 10px sans-serif;
background-color: steelblue;
text-align: right;
padding: 3px;
margin: 1px;
color: white;
}
</style>
<div bind:this={el} class="chart"></div>
as you can see, we assign $sharedData to the data variable, which is used to initialize data in the chart.
If you click on the button Fetch Data at this moment the data does not change, so the chart remains the same, to solve the problem one way can be to make a re-render of the chart component (obviously there are other ways to solve the problem).
So take a look at App.svelte component
<script>
import ChartContainer from './components/ChartContainer.svelte'
import DataFetchButton from "./components/DataFetchButton.svelte";
import {sharedData} from "./store";
let chartData;
sharedData.subscribe(value => {
console.log(value);
chartData = value;
});
</script>
<main>
{#key chartData}
<ChartContainer />
{/key}
<DataFetchButton />
</main>
<style>
main {
text-align: center;
padding: 1em;
max-width: 240px;
margin: 0 auto;
}
h1 {
color: #ff3e00;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-size: 4em;
font-weight: 100;
}
@media (min-width: 640px) {
main {
max-width: none;
}
}
</style>
Svelte have an awesome block called #key, to this block you can assign a property, everytime the value of this property change the component inside the block get re-rendered (of course this feature should be used with caution).
thanks to shared Data.subscribe every time the value of the sharedData store changes we change the value of the variable passed as a key (chartData), so we re-render the chart component
Github Repository
You can download the complete code here: GitHub — CertosinoLab/mediumarticles at svelte-d3–1
Thank you for reading! | https://medium.com/@certosinolab/svelte-communication-between-components-through-the-store-dbc898153437 | [] | 2021-09-02 16:53:21.877000+00:00 | ['Web Components', 'Svelte 3', 'JavaScript', 'Sveltejs', 'D3js'] |
The End Of Design Thinking As We Know It | For years, Stanford has been teaching non-designers to think like a designer. They called it design thinking. The term design thinking lowered the bar for people. You can’t teach people to become a designer in a two-day boot camp. That is ridiculous. Designers are people who follow a calling since their early childhood. They were the kids that could draw when everyone else couldn’t. They read design blogs, go to museums, and wear designer clothes. They live and breathe design their whole lives. There is no way one could catch up to that. It’s a lost race. But design thinking is something else. You don’t have to become a designer, you just have to learn to think like one. And since designers do more than they think, this shouldn’t be too hard right? Not everyone can be a designer but everyone can think like a designer.
But recently a fundamental shift happened. It might seem like a small thing but it is the start of a tectonic shift. Stanford d.school launched a new course. A three-hour course to teach people not design thinking, but design. Without the thinking. Plain design. In three hours. Now that design thinking has lowered the bar for people to learn about design, we are ready for the next step. Lose the thinking and do just design. Design thinking was just a way to make design seem more accessible. Left and right people are discovering that design thinking workshops and sprints don’t actually deliver the groundbreaking results people were hoping for. More and more people are starting to wake up to the fact that it actually takes skilled designers to design shit. Design thinking is no longer enough, we need design. It’s no longer enough to teach people design thinking, they actually need the doing as well. Without the doing, the thinking is useless.
I think this is a good thing. A natural development. A next step in the evolution of design and the problem-solving capacity it holds. Design thinking opened up doors. It made people aware of the power of design when it comes to innovation and complex problem-solving. Every designer knew that design is not a five-step process. Every designer knew that just thinking about the user won’t magically create good designs. Design thinking was designed to fail. It was beachhead for design to land on the continent of complex business problem-solving. And that worked perfectly. Design is now in every boardroom, in every business consultancy firm worth their salt. Design thinking was a Trojan horse to get design in the door. Now we can burn down the horse and take the city. In the end, it’s all about design and not design thinking. Design thinking was a brilliant construct. What did that even mean? Nobody knew. But it worked like a charm.
But there is a flip side to the whole design thinking story. Design thinking is not just for non-designers to get closer to design. It was also designed for designers to get closer to business thinking. It was a bridge for non-designers and designers. We saw a lot of non-designers taking design thinking classes and participating in design thinking workshops. Loads of people crossed the bridge from business land into design land. I did not see a lot of designers taking business classes. I did not see designers doing an MBA in one day (that actually exists and now it’s completely free (in Dutch): https://mbaineendag.nl/). For design to take the city, designers also need to cross the bridge to business thinking. The power of design to solve complex business problems only works if designers understand and speak business. If designers take the city and don’t know how to govern it, it will be a short reign. We need to do this together. Designers and non-designers hand in hand. It’s good that non-designers learn to design. Designers can make fun of that all day long. But instead of that, they could also learn business so we can all work together to solve the complex problems we face. I think we have enough of those right now to justify the effort. | https://medium.com/design-leadership-notebook/the-end-of-design-thinking-as-we-know-it-c96e64d3692c | ['Dennis Hambeukers'] | 2020-08-23 09:54:36.861000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'Design', 'Business Design', 'Design Leadership'] |
“What was your life for?” | Life is a short period of available time for taking creative actions. Being unique is essential for human existence. Although humans are mentally and physically different from each other, we share the same Universe simultaneously.
Thoughts become things
God created this Simulation so perfect that we call it Realty, so the current life is an illusion, and we need only one tool for getting into this dream: the human body!
Illness is the panic of the machine, so the physical death is the total pane of the tool we call body. This fantastic engine developed by God has one purpose: serving as a platform for the soul!
The short period we stay in the Matrix is supposed to be creative, different, unique and fruitful for both the Lord’s and Human’s intentions. We chose to be here! The Name created this “reality” for His and our advantage.
Life is a collective dream, and it’s co-creators are supposed to make it the most excellent place ever. The only way to make it happen is to act!
Nice to hear that all roads from your city lead home, however, it’s tragic to assume that most of the time we are at our comfort zone, not taking those streets that lead to incredible places, and wasting the precious time: the life. Only you can stop it!
Remember that any moment will never come back to you, so face now as a single opportunity for creating a new reality, or you’ll die having wasted your whole life having had the chance of utilizing it!
Once we are all going to die, we’ll arrive at heaven, then we may be asked there: “What was your life for?” We must be prepared to answer this! The only way to do it is to work in this World and rest on The Next World. | https://medium.com/@danielrapoport2003/what-was-your-life-for-a928b1fd9e5b | ['Daniel Rapoport'] | 2019-05-09 15:08:17.576000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Life', 'Matrix', 'Self Improvement', 'Humanity'] |
What Are The Next Steps In The Battle Over The Postal Service? | Rural delivery in Missouri in 1940. (From the Postal Service’s own website)
What Are The Next Steps In The Battle Over The Postal Service?
Democrats have a unique opportunity to strike quickly, score political points, and also do some good…
First of all, Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to call the House back into session. ASAP. (Hey, we just saw now she is!) We realize every single member of the House is up for re-election and they need to campaign. But the best campaigning they can do right now is be present on Capitol Hill. Do hearings; don’t drop the subject. One good move: the House Committee on Oversight, headed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D) NY, just called for Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to testify same week as what’s left of the Republican National Convention. (DeJoy was originally in charge of raising money for that event.) The Chair of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, who is the former head of the Republican National Committee (and also appointed by President Trump), is also invited to join.
But most importantly, maybe, the House has gotta pass a bill. A bill that’s only aimed at shoring up the Postal Service. Make it clear this is not a bill about elections and mail-in ballots exclusively, but really about protecting a sacred American institution. (And one that we’ve argued before is extraordinarily important even to many Trump supporters.)
Because really, we shouldn’t have to be talking about finding safe ways to vote that don’t involve the mail. (Even though there are many alternatives that will do just fine.) We should be talking about safeguarding the mail so that it’s OK to vote that way. And that means not just stopping removing mail boxes and sorting machines (as the White House now pledges — even though it’s not at all supposed to be in control of that), but actually putting things back to the way they were before. Which is the thrust of the bill being considered by the Democratically controlled House.
One thing of course that’s interesting, is the Postal Service is not even close to fully supported by tax dollars, nor is it meant to be. It is a public service. Taxpayers support it primarily by using and paying for its services, not by paying taxes for it to exist in order to provide services.
Now, we’ve read quite a few things recently, like this in The Atlantic, about how the post office is actually well funded enough already to withstand and handle a lot of mail-in ballots in this election. And it’s true that the threat has less to do with the post office’s ability to deal with a huge surge in letters around Election Day, and more to do with changes in rules about how and when any overabundance of mail can be delivered. After all, even if every single American of voting age cast their ballot by mail, it would account for only about 2/10ths of 1% of total Postal Service volume for the year. That stat is a little misleading maybe, since it lumps all types of delivery together, while letters and parcels are actually handled very differently. But you get the idea…
And parcels and packages is where business for the Postal Service is currently booming (whether or not they are being properly compensated or not). Letter processing is what would boom if there are suddenly a lot more mail-in ballots (although that would be made at least a little easier by the fact that a lot of that volume would be getting delivered to one address in each city or county, or would actually be getting fetched from a P.O. Box.)
Now that we’ve said all that: none of that matters right now. Because Trump has set up his own reality. Which is that without more funds, the Postal Service can’t do mail-in voting, and also, in general, it should not exist in its current form and services should be slashed and privatized and maybe it shouldn’t be delivering to so many rural areas where it can’t make a profit (where as we’ve written previously about 1 in 10 Americans live; among them a fair numbers of seniors and Veterans who rely on rural delivery routes for things like prescription medication.)
And for once, it will benefit Democrats to just accept that. Let Trump pay the price for getting at least temporarily mired in the deep pile of deep doo-doo he very deliberately waded into.
Don’t let him make excuses. Don’t lift him out.
So back to Capitol Hill: even if the House does pass a “USPS protection bill” (or “Delivering for America Act” as they’re calling it), what are the chances the Republican controlled Senate will pass it? Or even come back into session? Especially as it would probably coincide with what remains of the Republican National Convention.
Again, let the Senate show where they’re coming from too. And whether they’re willing to break from the President. Interesting thing about this, potentially, is Conservatives have been wanting to privatize the Postal Service for years. So that isn’t really a “Trump thing”. At the same time, deciding to do it in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of an election year, and at least in small part due to the fact that the President wants to punish Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for owning the Washington Post, does make it a Trump “own” at this point in time. So the President’s peculiar timing in launching this particular attack (which to toot our own horn a little, we warned about back in April), could actually do in plans many Republicans have had in mind anyway, for years if not decades.
Once a stand alone Postal Service bill passes in the House, what’s Senate Majority Mitch McConnell likely to do with it? In most cases he’d just do nothing and let it die. But he can’t. So probably he’d try to use it to revive discussions on a broader Coronavirus rescue plan, which is also needed, but would muddle this issue — which is singularly beneficial to Democrats right now — up. And that’d be the whole point. So it’s gotta stay separate, and in some ways that’s where the public comes in. Immense pressure must be brought to bear from voters all across the country to get their Senators to pass it and not bollocks it up by adding a bunch of other stuff on. (Congress can and should work on other kinds of relief simultaneously and in parallel, but they shouldn’t be mushed together.)
Then Trump would have to sign it (or not). But either way, if it’s a “clean” bill, it’d make him look weak. Because either he’d be seen as attacking a huge swath of the American population (including many of his supporters), or signing something that puts him in direct contradiction with his own stated words and objectives.
And maybe nothing would be a more shining example of how Trump really doesn’t believe in anything except getting himself re-elected. And has totally lost any appearance of having a consistent, central message as a result.
Or more simply, that the would-be Emperor really is wearing no clothes. | https://ericjscholl.medium.com/what-are-the-next-steps-in-the-battle-over-the-postal-service-e1eb21adf749 | ['Eric J Scholl'] | 2020-08-17 12:01:01.865000+00:00 | ['Donald Trump', 'Politics', 'Democrats', 'Elections', 'Voting'] |
Role of First Level IT Support Agents | The front line of a customer support system is extremely crucial as they are representing a business organization directly. It is also a busy environment for these agents with a string of phone calls, emails, etc. in the form of customer queries hurling towards them.
Rendering top-end support services depends a lot on the kind of individuals that are the first line to ensure customers enjoy an uninterrupted service. Top IT support companies like us, Sapizon Technologies, make it a point to assign this task to support professionals possessing valuable experience.
Here are a few pointers to explain how pivotal the role of a tech support agent is:
Representation:
The first point of contact to the customers, support agents can play a vital role in determining how an organization/company is being judged and perceived. The level of professionalism they maintain and the ease with which they interact with the customers is crucial here.
Let us suppose for an instance here that your customer is very happy with your support team and the way they are rendering services. They are very much impressed by you and will continue to seek your services on a continuous basis.
Knowledge Base:
Support agents are supposed to be familiar with most of the issues that customers encounter. This warrants them to possess sufficient knowledge of the domain that they are rendering services in. Agents who have comprehensive knowledge about the products/services are an asset.
They can help customers find solutions to their issues seamlessly. Quick and accurate resolutions to their queries are all that customers expect from a tech support team and having a proficient knowledge base goes a long way in helping customers achieve that.
Adequate Reports:
Creating reports and tracking the progress of certain products/applications is one of the major tasks that the support team performs. They can make a detailed report on what kind of queries they get regularly based on which the desired company can plan their upgrades.
With a contingent plan in place, it becomes very much easier for an organization to map their strategies for the future and improve the way they are operating. The reports that are made by customer support agents play a vital role in this as they provide valuable inputs.
Friendly Interactions:
Making their customers feel important is a must these days for every business because of the competitive nature of business. And experienced support professionals are more than well accustomed to doing that. They are well versed in how to interact with a customer and in what situation.
If customers feel valued, it also automatically increases the value of the desired business. Hence, this role played by the support agents can have a great effect on the progress of a developing and growing firm.
Ticket Management:
When customer issues start coming in at a brisk pace in the form of tickets, it is the support agents who are supposed to manage them in a smart and effective way to ensure the process does not lose its productivity. They can also use efficient CRM platforms like Zendesk and Zoho Desk to achieve this.
Seamless management of tickets paves the way for greater customer satisfaction and customer success. These are two attributes most of the tech support companies aim to achieve as part of their success strategy.
Conclusion:
The role of a first level support agent is more important than most of us assume it to be. They are a prime driving force in the CRM success model that companies aim to follow. Being one of the best tech support companies, Sapizon follows a similar path to success.
Ever since they started, they have completed more than 100 successful projects for their clients. With a flexible approach, they have managed to give their customers an impressive customer retention rate along with conversions. | https://medium.com/@sapnasapusapzion/role-of-first-level-it-support-agents-161b0db27fc8 | ['Sapna Sapu'] | 2021-02-09 09:38:14.447000+00:00 | ['It Companies', 'Support', 'Tech', 'It Support', 'Chat'] |
Principles of Relational Democracy | Grassroots to Global is exploring how we can make better collective decisions at any level by understanding how our emotions affect our ability to think clearly and relate to ourselves and one another. Here we are attempting a top level outline of key factors that support better decisions. We think these are true for Scotland and the UK. To what extent do they hold elsewhere?
Mitigating our worst aspects, supporting our best
We think the following is true of people in general, though culture will have a strong influence on how these features are expressed.
We are subjective beings and tend to in-group out-group thinking — this can usually be effectively addressed by informal, relaxed social contact and sharing of life experience, that are built into cultures in a range of ways.
— this can usually be effectively addressed by informal, relaxed social contact and sharing of life experience, that are built into cultures in a range of ways. Painful childhood experience continues to affect us as adults. Stress triggers these traumas, which we feel and express in unconscious ways, making us more reactive and less able to be empathic — in western culture dealing with trauma is almost totally privatised. It can be tackled obliquely through attending to process, ensuring that people feel welcome and supported. But we also need to consciously develop our culture towards greater transparency to ourselves and one another. We need new social processes that can support us when our trauma is triggered and which help us uncover the transformative potential of conflict.
— in western culture dealing with trauma is almost totally privatised. It can be tackled obliquely through attending to process, ensuring that people feel welcome and supported. But we also need to consciously develop our culture towards greater transparency to ourselves and one another. We need new social processes that can support us when our trauma is triggered and which help us uncover the transformative potential of conflict. We have an innate capacity for empathy , intuitively understanding others’ experience and wanting them to have a good life — as mentioned above, trauma can inhibit our ability to empathise, particularly with those outside our social group, so it is essential that our political processes feel safe and have ways to deal well with trauma and conflict when they (inevitably) arise, in a way that ensures everyone can feel safe and the sources of trauma can be addressed.
— as mentioned above, trauma can inhibit our ability to empathise, particularly with those outside our social group, so it is essential that our political processes feel safe and have ways to deal well with trauma and conflict when they (inevitably) arise, in a way that ensures everyone can feel safe and the sources of trauma can be addressed. We are creative, intellectual, practical and spiritual, we learn and develop our understanding in a wide range of ways — our political processes need to enable access and engagement through a range of different modes of thinking and being, not just those most socially valued, valuing everyone’s potential to contribute in a way that releases the energy caught in dualistic (superior/ inferior) thinking
Essential elements that relational decision making processes need to include:
Ensure that groups who are not usually listened to are included — ideally as partners in developing the processes. These groups are likely to be skeptical to begin with but their input is crucial to be able to see the whole picture
Have strategies for managing those whose conditioning means they over- or under-engage.
Actively support the development of relational skills e.g. listening, speaking clearly, self reflection, emotional self management in all participants
Have methods to anticipate, sense and deal early and well with conflict and trauma responses when they are triggered
Take a transformative approach to trauma, reaction and conflict, seeing them as complex, multi-layered, nuanced and full of incredibly useful information, while also recognising the need to maintain a feeling of safety to limit triggering of others.
There are different types of process needed for democracy to work well
Connecting processes
Many groups are marginalised and left behind by the current decision making processes. It is essential to identify as many of these groups as possible and build relationship and trust through early connection to ensure they begin to feel confidence in this approach and can actively input on how their social group can best be included.
It is ongoingly essential to maintain connection between all involved in decision making right the way through a process — only with trust and understanding will we be able to create the solutions and decisions needed.
‘People’s Assemblies’ — Creative thinking/solution generating processes: open to anyone who cares about the issue
Because people come because they care about the issue, they may need support to listen to and understand other positions
Can be done with very large groups (though splitting into smaller working groups is helpful for creative thinking processes)
Effort should be made to call in as wide a range of people as possible (see connecting processes above)
Should have a range of input from ‘expert witnesses’ (ideally with lived experience, and including those able to think outside the box) across the spectrum of opinion with methods to ensure their evidence is accurate.
May have a range of outputs including skills building, improved understanding and relationships, local action, proposals for decision making processes
‘Citizens’ Assemblies’ — Decision making processes: needs a ‘good enough’ representative sample, randomly selected from the population involved
Selection of participants needs to be a random yet representative sample, and also needs to ensure that those likely to be directly affected are well represented
Because these people are randomly selected, they may need support to engage with and become enthused by the area of focus
These are a locus of power, so must be protected against co option by vested interests
Should be set up and supported by a facilitated stakeholder group from across the spectrum of opinion on the subject at hand
Should be informed by ‘expert witnesses’ (ideally with lived experience, and including those able to think outside the box) across the spectrum of opinion with methods to ensure their evidence is accurate.
Should be facilitated by people dedicated to ensuring good process over any particular outcome.
Structured working working groups who will make sure that decisions are implemented.
Are a locus of power, so must be protected against co option by vested interests — this may include periodically opening their work to peoples’ assemblies to enable wider understanding, engagement and input
Need to be accountable to and report back to decision makers
Should contain a majority of those who work in whatever area they are dealing with
Decision making processes must be kept clear and clean so that they don’t become co-opted by special interests. Ways to do this include:
Ensuring that those at the margins are central to our processes
Facilitators with a dedication to the process over the outcome together with others skilled in conflict transformation, trauma and other essential skills
Emotionally intelligent design that ensures that the process is comfortable and engaging for participants and that trauma responses and conflicts are well held when they arise
14th December 2020 [email protected]
https://www.grassroots2global.org/
https://heartpolitics.squarespace.com/ | https://medium.com/@evaschonveld/principles-of-relational-democracy-9009eedf4d51 | ['Eva Schonveld'] | 2020-12-18 09:49:38.029000+00:00 | ['Trauma', 'Politics', 'Society', 'Change', 'Decision Making'] |
Our oceans are in deep trouble, can technology save them? | Written by Aleksandra Smelianska, Product Marketing Manager at The Gradient
If you have yet to freak out over the devastating UN report on climate change, we got you covered. The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages, wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the world population! Is that your anxiety level rising? Join the club!
But in times of despair, there is always hope; on a more positive note, this week has brought nations together in agreement to help clean up and preserve our marine life, a daunting task at hand, is there hope for our oceans?
Following the news on a huge victory for Arctic marine ecosystems, nine nations along with the EU signed an international agreement that will prevent commercial fishing in the fragile region for at least 16 years. The agreement will protect nearly three million square kilometers of the Central Arctic Oceanfrom unregulated fishing while scientific research is conducted to learn more about its marine life and resources.
Overfishing is one of the three major challenges that our oceans currently face. Plastic pollution is another major issue that technology can help solve.
By 2050, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight.
Technological innovation used on land has helped us immeasurably to clean up polluting industries and now it’s time to use it towards the preservation and healing of our oceans. So how can technology help clean up and prevent plastic pollution?
Rapid progress in the development of robotics, AI, low-cost sensors, satellite systems, and big-data are opening up whole new sectors of ocean use and research. Some of these disruptive marine technologies could mean a cleaner and safer future for our oceans.
One of the most interesting companies working on this field is The Ocean Cleanup, developing advanced technologies that are expected to be able to remove 90% of ocean plastic by 2040.
After 5 years of research, engineering and testing, in May 2018, the company launched its beta cleanup system, a 600-meter long floater that can collect about five tons of ocean plastic per month. Their floating boom system is estimated to clean up half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within the first five years.
The Ocean Cleanup has raised $31 million since 2013, with Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel among its major investors.
Although a cleanup will have a profound effect, it’s just part of the solution. We also need to close the tap, to prevent any more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place.
We can’t put all our hopes on ‘silver bullets’ of new technology. With trillions of pieces of trash floating in our oceans, it is important for everyone to start making changes today in order to protect our oceans for generations to come.
These days, a number of brands are starting to incorporate post-consumer materials into their product lines. But some companies are going even further, looking to up-cycle harmful waste from the ocean.
One of the most famous examples is Adidas’ collaboration with the environmental initiative Parley for the Oceans. On World Oceans’ Day, back in 2016, the company released its first batch of running shoes with uppers made using recycled plastic recovered from the sea.
In 2017, Adidas teamed up with Parley again to create a collection of swimwear that is made from up-cycled fishing nets and debris. The ocean plastic was converted into a fibre named Econyl, which has the same properties as regular nylon which is used to make swimwear. According to Adidas Director of Design, it’s possible to make over 1,000 swimsuits from a large fishing net.
Parley also worked with Stella McCartney on The Ocean Legends collection, where each piece in the collection was made from up-cycled marine plastic and is dedicated to pioneers of the ocean movement. The first product of the collection is a special limited edition Falabella GO backpack honouring Captain Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd — an international non-profit ocean conservation organisation.
Another great project created in collaboration with Parley is Clean Waves aimed at boosting the use of eco-innovative materials in fashion and industrial design. Their first collection of limited-edition sunglasses looks pretty neat.
Each pair of eyewear carries individual geographical coordinates of a specific place impacted by marine plastic pollution.
If you’re feeling the trend, we recommend trying out these bikinis made from fishing nets or these yoga pants made from plastic bottles.
Another interesting brand in this space is Ecoalf, an urban minimalist brand from Spain aiming to create garments and accessories with the same properties and design as the best articles on the market. The company has been creating using recycled fabrics from decommissioned fishing nets, plastic bottles from the bottom of the ocean, cotton waste, and used tires. They went as far as to turn discarded coffee grounds into a high-quality raw material used in jackets, shoes, and bags. With this approach, ECOALF contributes to reducing environmental impact and creating low resource consumption.
This article is co-written with Andrea Hernandez, Founder @Prettyeats
Originally posted here | https://medium.com/digitalagenda/our-oceans-are-in-deep-trouble-can-technology-save-them-7745fea18b0e | [] | 2019-03-27 10:47:24.347000+00:00 | ['Oceans', 'Sustainability', 'Tech For Good', 'Environment', 'Plastic'] |
View from the Monolith | According to Wikipedia, the fifth largest employer in the world in 2015 was the UK’s National Health Service, clocking in at a cool 1.7 million employees. I was one of them. My name is Rob Edwards, and I’m going through a period of adjustment as I move from that to the Finnish start-up scene.
Welcome to the view from the Monolith
That 1.7 million is a little misleading of course. The NHS is subdivided many times. I worked for a Trust in London that had ‘only’ 5,000 employees. (Probably. Our IT Training team needed to train all staff on a new IT system, and we were never quite able to nail down exactly how many people that would be). The Trust included four hospitals, and each hospital had its own departments run by consultants — doctors who made life and death decisions every day. Brilliant, amazing, talented, wonderful people, but put four of them in a room to decide something and you would get an average of 5 deeply held contradictory opinions.
And then there was all the oversight. Targets and budgets imposed by central government, a government whose policies were changeable thanks to the fickleness of politics. The NHS is too big to truly fail, but spontaneous it is not.
I love the NHS and am proud to have served, but crikey it was slow.
And now I’m here in Helsinki at The Shortcut, learning about the Finnish start-up culture. Four weeks in and I’m suffering whiplash.
Head… spinning…
Start-ups are so much smaller, so much faster. We’ve had some fascinating guest speakers in the first few weeks of the Catalyst Programme (learn more about that here). We heard from eighteen-year olds who started a company, PALS, two years ago and are already talking about revenue trebling in the last year, Taxify, a tech company also only a few years old, that are already major global players, and Naava, a company that is bringing cleaner air to offices using NASA tech. Fascinating, diverse and to me, astonishingly rapid.
If the pace of it all is bewildering, the acceptance of the potential for failure is remarkable. One Venture Capitalist told us that the model they used required a company they invested in be able to recoup the failure of nine other companies, because those were the statistics. We heard from one person who had been a Founder of four different start-ups, some successful, some not. He wasn’t blasé about the failures, but took them in his stride, as part of the start-up gamble.
Do I have the mindset to be an entrepreneur, to found my own start-up? Perhaps not. But the culture is exciting, the ethos fascinating. The thought that one big idea, hard work, planning and a dash of luck could set you on the path to being the next big thing? I can see the appeal.
I’d certainly throw my hat in the ring to join a start-up, and that’s the other side of the Catalyst programme, to prepare people for that culture shock. And I’m up for that, just as soon as the room stops spinning.
Thanks for reading, join me next time on View from the Monolith, when I’ll talk about some of the language of the start-up community. | https://medium.com/the-shortcut/view-from-the-monolith-65f65221b876 | ['Rob Edwards'] | 2018-12-11 09:00:16.008000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Healthcare', 'Startup', 'Stories', 'Accelerator'] |
Applying the Circular Theory | Visualizing zero as a circle.
Zero as a circle. (Photo Matteo Vistocco)
If I tell you zero is a circle, you will understand me, on some level. If I tell you, a triangle is a circle, maybe-not. So look up at the photo. What do you see? You see a boat in the middle of the water. A zero, and, a one. The outline around the boat, separates it from the water, how we get, the zero, and the one. I could also call this X and Y, X and X, X and X’.
So, in the middle of the square, above, is a shape that is not-exactly a circle. Except, as its outline, an actual perimeter, turns the boat into a zero, more technically, a one. So, this can seem confusing. Until I point out, you are using your mind to differentiate between the zero and the one (the boat and the water, in this case). This means your mind has to be pi.
Pi-diameter-circumference, is one-two-three, the basis point for numbers, mathematics, observation, and observer. Complementarity. Symbolism in general. Relativity in general.
Observer and Observation
So, let’s back up and relabel. You are the observer. There is a circle between you, as the observer, and the photo as the observation, n’est-ce-pas? This makes the observer and the observation a zero and a one, circumference and diameter. Or, in other words, X Y Z is zero-one-zero is zero-one. Pi-circumference-diameter, is one-two-three, is one-two-one, is zero-one (two has a double role). (Zero and one, is one, and two.)
We can go further. The photo is a square. The boat is a series of triangles. A square is four lines. A set of triangles reduces, and expands, to one triangle, three lines. Four lines, and three lines, reduces to one line, diameter (and circumference) of a circle. Any shape is made with lines. All lines are diameters, and, thus, circumferences, of circles (which you cannot see).
Two is the magic number. Everything reduces, and expands to two. Because a line is, also, a circle. A hidden circle between any X and-or Y (zero and-or one) turns everything into a circle (there is a circle between individual and group) (all systems) (disciplines).
Only A Circle Can Circle
If you draw a circle, you cannot say if you drew circumference or diameter because you have to have both in order to have either. So, normally, if you draw a circle, you would say you drew circumference.
Here’s the trick, that nature plays: let’s say the circumference is a tunnel. You are walking in the tunnel. In this case circumference is diameter.
This is an abstract concept. You cannot draw a circle. Only a circle can draw a circle. Meaning, pi, drew the circle. Pi, as I already pointed out, is mind. Your mind. My mind. Everybody’s mind.
A Circle Can Only Circle
Everything we do, results in a line, diameter of a circle. A verb (any action) involves movement. A noun requires a verb. So, above, you have row as a noun, and row as a verb.
Circle as a noun, more technically. Circle as a verb. Any movement is a line, diameter of a circle. Only a line can create a line, diameter of a circle, meaning the line is, technically, a circle.
This is the basis for observation in all systems (observation as a noun) (observation as a verb).
Conservation of the Circle
Takes some time to digest. Take the time. It will make your life much easier.
Don’t be confused by what you ‘know.’ And don’t be put off because it sounds crazy. It isn’t crazy, at all. It’s how we create reality (how nature creates us). How nature operates, and functions. How we operate, and function.
Conservation of the circle is the core dynamic in nature.
. | https://medium.com/the-circular-theory/applying-the-circular-theory-6f0dec19b2fd | ['Ilexa Yardley'] | 2017-08-02 21:39:21.238000+00:00 | ['Circular Theory', 'Deep Learning', 'Virtual Reality', 'Universal Relativity', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Angular: Create a Lazy-Loaded Tailwind Modal | Modal Container
To initialize the modal, the container, we create a new module modal.module.ts .
We then add the related component modal.component.ts , which does not do much except be created with a state display per default initialized to true and expose a function close .
As we are lazy loading the modals, these are going to be displayed upon creation, therefore the default state is open respectively, not closed.
The close function contains a small timeout so that the modal first graphically fades away before being effectively detached from the DOM by the service we just created previously.
The HTML code of the container is extracted from the free overlay example provided by Tailwind. We are using a section for which we apply a fixed position and to which we give a z-index of 10 . In addition, we are responsively styling the required spaces, shadows, and sizes.
Besides the UI itself, it is worth to notice that we are using the Angular content projection capability, ng-content , to be able to add any content in the modal respectively to make this dialog a generic container.
We also attach the close function to the section, and we stop the propagation of the $event on its content; otherwise, the modal will close itself each time one of its children is clicked or pressed.
Finally, we animate the opening and closing of the modal upon the style class open with some custom CSS. It might be possible to achieve this with some Tailwind utilities, but I felt more confident to solve it that way. | https://medium.com/better-programming/angular-create-a-lazy-loaded-tailwind-modal-73675c66acae | ['David Dal Busco'] | 2020-12-01 14:48:45.062000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Angular', 'Nodejs', 'Tailwind Css'] |
US Restarts Iran Sanctions | Terry H. Schwadron
Nov. 5, 2018
The official U.S. boom fell once again on Iran yesterday, with economic sanctions aimed at getting that country to re-negotiate an end to any planned nuclear weapons development and support for militants in the Middle East.
The United States, which withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with European partners, Russia and Iran last year, also wants Iran to stop testing intermediate distance missiles and to treat its own citizens better. At the time, the president denounced the Obama administration for having agreed to it, saying that the deal was terrible for the United States.
Making sanctions work may prove a little more difficult than announcing them, of course.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said President Trump was “putting the world on noticethat the terror regime which threatens Israel through Iranian funding of Lebanese Hezbollah, that the terror regime that attempted to conduct an assassination in Denmark over that past few weeks, that the terror regime that continues to fund Houthis launching missiles into Riyadh and into Dubai, that’s going to stop. That behavior must change.”
Asked what the administration would do if the Iranians restart their nuclear program, Pompeo replied, “We’re confident that Iranians will not make that decision.”
Since withdrawing from the 2015 deal, nuclear weapons testing has started in North Korea, and Iran has said it would not be bound by the U.S. decision, indicating it could restart its nuclear weapons program at any time.
Sunday marked the end of a 180-day deadline the United States set before the second round of sanctions lifted under the 2015 deal were to resume. Although the sanctions are against the financial and shipping sectors, the most significant measures prohibit purchases of Iranian oil, which provides 80% of Tehran’s tax revenue.
The Trump administration said that as of yesterday, all countries and businesses that buy oil from Iran risk secondary sanctions from the United States, and the administration has vowed to pursue offenders aggressively. Virtually all multinational companies that had started doing business in Iran after sanctions were suspended in 2016 have pulled out.
That has helped send the Iranian rial plummeting and hurt ordinary Iranians amid spiraling prices of basic goods.
Only a handful of countries support the U.S. action, and Iranian officials have said that the re-imposed sanctions underscore how isolated the United States is. Many Middle East analysts also are skeptical that Iran will change its behavior in any way, in a show of defiance.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Pompeo defended the administration’s decision to grant temporary waivers on oil sanctions to eight nations, including some of Iran’s biggest oil customers. The secretary of state has not named the countries, though Turkey has said it has received notice and is among them. China, South Korea, Japan and India also are expected to get waivers. Pompeo said all had made significant reductions in their Iran oil purchases already but “need a little bit more time to get to zero.”
In Europe, to allow companies to trade with Iran and not face stiff US penalties, the EU plans to implement a payment mechanism, a Special Purpose Vehicle, that will enable these companies to avoid the U.S. financial system, according to the BBC. Like a bank, the SPV, would handle transactions between Iran and companies trading with it, avoiding direct payments into and out of Iran. When Iran exports oil to a country in the EU, the company from the receiving country would pay into the SPV. Iran can then use the payment as credit to buy goods from other countries in the EU through the SPV.
The EU has also updated a statute that allows EU firms to recover damages from U.S. sanctions.
To make the sanctions work, the United States must increase its secondary sanctions against these European allies or threaten loss of all business with the United States. This is tricky at best. These allies have remained believers in the 2015 nuclear weapons deal.
Many see that it will be the Iranian people, as always, who will bear the brunt of the sanctions, making it more difficult to buy everyday goods, medicines and food. We have launched another America First weapon without a pinpoint plan for where it will land.
##
www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com | https://terryschwadron.medium.com/us-restarts-iran-sanctions-494b2ffcb13f | ['Terry Schwadron'] | 2018-11-05 12:35:10.938000+00:00 | ['Iran', 'Foreign Policy', 'Nuclear Weapons', 'North Korea', 'Economics'] |
Uniris Weekly Update N°51 — EN. News of the week of December 14, 2020. | The original condition: single sign-on and tenfold security
Whether you are in a subway station, an airport or a polling station, the device that authenticates you must be secure and infallible! Uniris has integrated a technical solution that guarantees authenticity for all devices, allowing tamper-proof identification and payment.
In other words, it is possible in the PoW to select a category of device to retrieve the associated cryptographic key. The addition of an additional “biometric” condition ensures optimal transaction security.
Example — electronic voting: this development guarantees that a person’s biometric identity is generated only by a recognized device, and not by any random or malicious device!
A major step forward for our Smart-contracts
We have successfully implemented the ‘smart contracts interpreter’. This improves the capacity of our smart-contracts at different levels:
Code detection ;
Transaction generation based on Smart Contracts triggers : minute by minute, hour by hour, etc… (see the weekly update n°50) ;
Utility function calls : regular expression, hash…
An in-depth guide to smart-contract generation and its deployment will be published very soon.
Uniris innovation: « Any address mechanism »
The Any Address Mechanism allows the use of the address of any transaction in the same chain as the destination address. In other words, it is not necessary to specify the last transaction in the chain to execute a new one.
More details on this advance in our Yellow Paper (Remark 1) p9. | https://medium.com/@unirislife/uniris-weekly-update-n-51-en-a77fa666a34a | [] | 2020-12-19 14:38:57.279000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Authentication', 'Technology', 'Smart Contracts', 'Biometrics'] |
Cyber Monday Mac Apps Bundle with Luminar 4, ForkLift 3, BusyCal 3, Dropzone 4 Pro, Edraw… | Cyber Monday Mac Apps Bundle with Luminar 4, ForkLift 3, BusyCal 3, Dropzone 4 Pro, Edraw MindMaster, Art Text 4, Gemini 2, PDFpenPro 12, Parallels Desktop 1y MacAppBundles Dec 1, 2020·2 min read
If you need to run your Windows Apps or older/newer MacOS versions on your current MacOS, or if you need to replace skies in photos faster, manage your PDF or data easily, organize your daily activities, create diagrams, remove duplicate files or increase your productivity with an amazing menu bar Mac App, then this bundle with 12 applications for 42$ (= 94% discount sale) is made for you.
Available currently for 42$ thanks to the code BFSAVE40 or CMSAVE40
Featured products: Luminar 4 for macOS 10.12 or higher (max 2 devices)
Here an example of Sky Replacement
ForkLift 3 for macOS 10.12 or higher (max 5 users)
BusyCal 3 for macOS 10.11 or higher (max 1 device)
Dropzone 4 Pro for macOS 10.13 or higher (max 5devices)
Edraw MindMaster for macOS 10.10 or higher (max 2 devices)
Art Text 4 for macOS 10.14 or higher (max 2 devices)
Gemini 2 for macOS 10.10 or higher (max 2 devices)
PDFpenPro 12 for macOS 10.13 or higher (max 5devices)
Parallels Desktop 1 year plan for macOS 10.13 or higher (max 1device)
Other products: Goose VPN Lifetime Subscription, Movavi Screen Recorder 2021, uTalk: Lifetime Subscription.
Please visit your dashboard and turn off the auto renew, remember to visit PayPal and remove Parallels from auto payments too!
You can do it via https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/autopay/
PS: You simply need to purchase with another Account/E-Mail, then open your dashboard, login with the main E-Mail and activate the license.
Archive.is Bundle Backup Version | https://medium.com/@macappbundles/cyber-monday-mac-apps-bundle-with-luminar-4-forklift-3-busycal-3-dropzone-4-pro-edraw-454812ad7a7 | [] | 2020-12-02 15:24:46.774000+00:00 | ['Macos', 'Software', 'Apple', 'Mac'] |
Blockchain Startups Wanted | A couple weeks ago we announced dLab/emurgo, a new blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) accelerator program operated by SOSV (“the Accelerator VC”) and our partners at EMURGO. The new program is designed to bring the resources of both organizations together under one roof with a mission to invest in, support, and scale early-stage startups who are tackling truly important problems in this space; startups who have ambitions to create society-scale outcomes. We’re looking to fund five of these for our first cohort in February.
What follows is a list together of some of the topics we’re interested in exploring with dLab. We expect this to evolve over time, and it’s in no way meant to be comprehensive. In fact, it’s usually the case that the best applicants to SOSV’s programs are working on ideas that we haven’t even yet considered.
However, solutions that address these particular topics are sorely needed, and our hope is to find some of you out there who are already tackling them. If you are, give us a shout. We’d love to talk to you (and if you’ve already applied, thank you — we’ll be in touch soon!)
Blockchain for the Masses
DLT faces many challenges. Lots has been written about Ethereum’s scaling challenges, for example. But the largest obstacle to widespread adoption isn’t transactional throughput but usability: we need more easy-to-use solutions that make tokens and associated services accessible to the next ten million users. This could take many forms, but integrated mobile and web multi-protocol wallets, user-friendly portfolio management, token custody services, and practical payments and point of sale solutions are some obvious areas where attention to user friendliness could be the defining characteristic. And it’s worth considering that the biggest opportunity, of course, isn’t in the first world, but in the developing world.
Developer Tools + Data Oracles
The other side to making decentralization technology more usable is making it more accessible to new developer talent. We need more high-level frameworks, libraries, tools, services, and educational resources in order to 100x the number of competent developers in the space. How do we incentivize entrepreneurs and developers to focus their efforts on ecosystem development? More creative alternatives to bounty systems are one avenue. And for dApps to bridge the divide and become more useful we’ll need to work with more external data sources, via new types of oracles where incentives are thoughtfully designed to guarantee accuracy and ongoing verification.
Governance + Self-Sovereign Identity
Many have written about the promise of blockchain for achieving a more open and transparent democratic process, for both organization management and government-level uses… as well as meta-level on-chain governance. Do we believe in a world where voting for change is transparent, immutable and audit-able? Of course. But there’s a lot of work to do before we get there. Rather than representative token ownership (where quantity of tokens is considered), many such applications require the notion of a singular verifiable digital identity, which means bridging online and offline identities in a reliable way. How is such individuality proven? Verified? What does it mean to stake your own reputation on verifying a peer? For those of us already in the first world, self-sovereign identities hold the additional promise of giving us more control over our data (medical history, social media, etc), removing power from companies who store and monetize it in proprietary databases. And for the billions of people who are unbanked in the developing world, a digital identity is the first step to gain access to financial services and to participate in the global economy.
Logistics + Supply Chain
There’s a lot going on here already. But there’s a lot to be done. Solutions that can prove origin, custody, and integrity of food and medicine are a good start. There is a startling lack of transparency as a product — whether it’s food, medicine or anything else — changes hands several times from its origin to its ultimate destination. Problems that occur, which may result in theft or spoilage or a reduction of effectiveness, are not obvious, or products arriving at the destination may be counterfeit. Paperwork, cost, and complex compliance are issues that can be addressed by using shared digital ledgers. Given SOSV’s involvement in disruptive food (FOOD-X; also based in New York) this is a particularly interesting cross-disciplinary area for us.
Decentralized Finance
It’s no surprise that the first major use case for immutable digital ledgers has been financial transactions. But ten years later, we’re still at the earliest stages of this transformation. What happens if anyone can build new types of financial products on top of open protocols like Ethereum (and whatever follows it)? And what if anyone can access those products, regardless of their jurisdiction or economic standing? The Decentralized Finance (DeFi) movement promises a remarkably open, transparent, and borderless financial infrastructure via stablecoins, crypto-collateralized lending, derivatives, issuance platforms (security tokens), insurance products, and other new instruments: all driven by smart contracts and tokenized assets. The market for these instruments, compared to the legacy financial system, is admittedly tiny, but it’s growing at Internet speed. To innovate in this realm used to be the exclusive domain of banks and other financial institutions; but now any inspired developer can test new ideas out on a live network. Proof of Stake blockchains also present new opportunities for validators, staking-as-a-service providers, and others who are exploring the evolving nature of custody.
Open Marketplaces + Data Driven Optimization
Any digital marketplace that exists today is built on top of a database owned by a corporation. In many cases, that makes perfect sense. In other cases, those systems could be far more fair, open, and efficient if they were decentralized and effectively ownerless. Decentralized energy markets are one particularly good example of this, especially when net metering is considered (and particularly so as battery storage costs drop). Does ride sharing need to be decentralized? Maybe. AirBnb? (c’mon you can be more creative than that) If all our sharing economy data ends up in blockchain-like ledgers, there’ll be plenty of opportunity to deploy machine learning techniques to analyze and optimize future exchanges. What can we learn from shared energy utilization data, for example? How could we use that information to optimize the ways that buildings collect and store (and share) energy? What about optimizing the way that taxis move about the city? Can a private data silo be better at that than independently incentivized developers operating off of an open data set?
Hardware, Intelligent Agents, and the Internet of Things
What does the wallet of the future look like? It’s probably not much like the hard wallets we’re seeing today, though they’re certainly a stepping stone. Do we expect a secure subsystem to exist in every phone in the future? If not, what else? What types of protocols are needed for efficient machine-to-machine communication and message relaying? What types of hardware will natively interact with these protocols? We’d love to see some applicants with hardware concepts as well, given our relationship with our hardware-focused sister program, HAX, in Shenzhen.
What are you working on?
Give us a shout. We’re currently accepting applications for the first dLab/emurgo program, to start in February in New York City. Applications close November 30th. | https://medium.com/dlabvc/blockchain-startups-wanted-8eec89ad32d1 | ['Nick Plante'] | 2019-07-31 22:05:46.512000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Venture Capital', 'Innovation', 'Startup', 'Blockchain'] |
These are the places where Pride parades were banned | Pride really is a protest in these countries
Last year, LGBTI activists were detained by police in St. Petersburg during a Pride march | Photo: Facebook/Russian LGBT Network
A few weeks into Pride month 2019, it is worth remembering not every country has the freedom to organize a parade.
In certain nations where being LGBTI is illegal — or the so-called ‘LGBTI propaganda’ is — governments and local authorities have banned Pride parades on multiple occasions.
Pride really is a protest
Taking to the streets to march in fabulous outfits and unapologetically affirm your identity is one of the crucial elements of most parades in Western, liberal countries. But a smooth march isn’t always the case.
Many LGBTI communities put their effort, time and money in parades that don’t always take place.
Whether authorities claim security concerns or blame Pride to promote ‘dangerous’ values, LGBTI events often don’t get the green light. And they might face violence by extremists groups if they do go ahead.
Pride in Cuba
In May 2019, communist authorities in Cuba unexpectedly cancelled the annual conga against homophobia. Activists then organized an alternative march on the same day, Saturday 11 May.
More than 100 demonstrators took to the streets of the capital, Havana.
Some said plainclothes security officers stopped them and used violence on them. Moreover, police arrested at least three people.
Tbilisi Pride in Georgia
Georgian LGBTI activists are battling with the police in order to celebrate Pride.
As the powerful Orthodox Church and extremist groups actively protest against the LGBTI community, police claim it won’t be able to protect Pridegoers during a public event.
Protests turned violent at an IDAHOBIT (International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia) event on 17 May this year.
Following that, police told the Tbilisi Pride team that going ahead with their planned five-day festival would be ‘impossible’ and that they could not ensure safety for all.
Jerusalem Pride in Israel
While Tel Aviv Pride has been taking place relatively peacefully since 1993, Jerusalem’s fourth LGBTI event couldn’t initially take place.
2005 saw a rare instance of religious leaders of Jerusalem’s Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities unanimously asking the municipal government to revoke permits. The court later canceled the ban, allowing the event to go ahead.
Kenya hosted the very first refugee LGBTI event
As homosexuality is a crime punishable up to 14 years imprisonment in Kenya, public LGBTI parades aren’t an option for local lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.
However, in 2012 the American embassy in Nairobi held the first ever Pride event in Kenya.
Furthermore, the Kenyan refugee camp of Kakuma, a town in northwestern Turkana County, hosted the very first refugee Pride in 2018. Many of the LGBTI refugees at the camp come from Uganda, where gay sex is illegal.
Despite organizers received death threats after the event, they said they plan to host another event this year.
Latvia hosted EuroPride in 2015
Latvia held their first Pride in 2005. The event had been previously banned by the council and the Prime Minister, but a court’s decision allowed the march to go ahead.
Prides in Latvia faced significant violence since that first parade and up until 2009 when Riga hosted Baltic Pride. The capital also hosted EuroPride in 2015, attracting 5,000 participants.
Lebanon never hosted a Pride march
Lebanon has never had an LGBTI parade. Over the past two years, police have banned the event for fear of offending ‘public morality’.
In October 2018, threats of violence also shut down a queer Halloween mixer at the American University of Beirut (AUB).
Despite opposition, embassies, activists and locals shops flew the rainbow and the trans flags on 17 May to mark IDAHOBIT. It was a historic day in a country where being gay is illegal.
Authorities have banned several Prides in Poland
In 2005, local authorities forbid Warsaw Pride. Then-Mayor Lech Kaczyński was among those opposing the event, which occurred nevertheless. The ban, in fact, was later declared a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Authorities have been trying to ban other Prides ever since, including Lublin and Rzeszow in 2018 and Gniezno in 2019. They went all ahead among the protest of nationalist, anti-LGBTI groups.
Russia has always banned Pride
Russian authorities have been banning Pride events for years in order not to promote LGBTI lifestyle to children. Former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov also labelled Pride ‘satanic’.
Federal laws passed on 29 June 2013 ban the distribution of ‘propaganda’ to minors encouraging ‘non-traditional sexual relationships’.
Despite being fined by the European Court of Human Rights in 2010 for interpreting it as discrimination, the city of Moscow denied 100 individual requests to hold Moscow Pride through 2012. They cited a risk of violence against participants as the main reason for the parade not to go ahead.
Moreover, the first government-approved Pride march in Russia got banned in August 2018 within 24 hours of approval.
Following the initial announcement by prominent local LGBTI activist Nikolai Alekseev, officials said they would not let the event go ahead. The parade was due to take place in the village of Yabloneviy, outside Novoulyanovsk, 500 miles east of Moscow.
What’s more, 30 participants were detained for trying to set an LGBTI march in St. Petersburg on 4 August 2018.
Pride in Serbia
Before becoming one of the biggest LGBTI events in the Balkans, Belgrade Pride was banned several times due to safety concerns.
The capital’s first attempt to hold a Pride event saw extremists injuring several people and clashing with the police.
In 2009, authorities moved the location of the march from the city centre to a space near the Palace of Serbia, therefore effectively banning the original Pride.
Authorities also banned every attempt of organizing the parade between 2010 and 2014.
In 2013, local authorities canceled Pride just one day before it was supposed to take place. Activists organized a protest, marching to the Parliament building.
Pride events in Turkey
Turkey has recently lifted its ban on LGBTI events.
Kaos GL, a Turkish LGBTI rights group, successfully appealed the ban at the 12th administrative court in April 2019. The ban had been in place since November 2017.
In the past, far-right groups have attacked Prides. LGBTI rights activists in Turkey have also experienced widespread discrimination and abuse from the authorities.
In July 2018, Istanbul police stormed an LGBTI event and fired rubber bullets and teargas into the crowd. The police raid happened after Pride organizers had reached a last-minute agreement with the authorities to allow the march.
Despite the ban lift, police in Ankara also violently ended a student-led march at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in May 2019.
Uganda had a secret LGBTI event
Ugandan laws prohibit both male and female homosexual activity. ‘Carnal knowledge against the order of nature’ between two males carries a potential penalty of life imprisonment.
Therefore, Ugandan LGBTI people have always struggled to hold marches and demonstrations publicly.
In September 2018, the Minister for Ethics and Integrity in Uganda Simon Lokodo tried to ban arts and music festival Nyege Nyege (which translates to ‘sex sex’). Lokodo claimed the event promoted ‘homosexuality’, ‘LGBTI’, and ‘open sex’.
However, the next day the minister backtracked, allowing the event to run.
In May 2018, Lokodo forbid the country’s IDAHOBIT event minutes before it was about to begin.
After Pride was banned in 2017, Ugandans lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people held a secret Pride in Kampala, the capital. | https://medium.com/@stephsarrubba/these-are-the-places-where-pride-parades-were-banned-ef56cbeecfea | ['Stefania Sarrubba'] | 2019-08-07 18:15:25.264000+00:00 | ['Russia', 'Pride', 'Poland', 'Homophobia', 'LGBTQ'] |
UX? UI? What? | So you want to build a website. Sounds simple, right? Do a quick search on Craigslist and you’ll find plenty of freelancers ready to help. But like most projects, building a website is more complex than it seems and it becomes readily apparent creating a site isn’t as easy as putting a little code online in a visually pleasing way. Because of web design’s inherent challenges, it’s not a one-man or one-woman job. Web design takes a knowledgeable team with a variety of skills as well as ample forethought in terms of audience, structure, message, layout, interaction, and emotion. This is where UX and UI design play a large role, and where the distinction between the two becomes important.
UX
UX stands for User Experience design. That’s all well and good, but what does a UX designer actually DO? Basically, the UX designer is in charge of the overall experience (obviously) the user has on the website or app. UX is the creation of the seamless flow of the site and it determines whether or not information can readily be found. Oftentimes, user experience is most successful when the user doesn’t even know it is happening because they are not hindered by the site.
User experience starts with research on the audience itself: How will they navigate the site? What is it they are looking for? Who is the primary user? Once the audience is understood, the UX designer creates a sitemap and architecture for the site. The site map and architecture show the hierarchy of the site pages, how many pages the site has (and what those pages are labeled), what the paths a person will use to navigate the site, and where specific information can be found throughout the site. In other words, if a website is confusing to navigate, that is poor UX design.
Architecture
Another important task a UX designer tackles is the creation of wireframes. A wireframe shows what content needs to be on a particular page. Not to be confused with design or layout, black-and-white wireframes give a basic structure to an individual page and give guidance as to what content needs to be found on that particular page. No color, fonts, or imagery have been chosen at this time, but the wireframes serve as a guide for their implementation when the UI Designer steps in.
Wireframes
This is not to say the UX Designer only tackles the aforementioned tasks. UX design is present throughout the process of web design and the UX Designer is there to make sure the site’s hierarchy and structure is clear from design to development. UX design can cover both large structural ideas of the site or focus on smaller details like the functionality of a single button. For example, when a user clicks a button, they expect it to act a certain way in relation to the rest of the site. Good UX design will ensure the button acts as expected. Ultimately, UX design is critical in making a website flow and make sense to the user and is ever-present in the web design process.
UI
UI stands for User Interface design and it can often bleed into UX design, just as UX design can bleed into UI. After all, the design of a website needs to be clean, clear, and coherent both in terms of functionality and visuals. But, in a general sense, UI design is where the color, layout, emotion, and story of the site come together. This is where the brand comes alive and the connection between brand and consumer becomes apparent. Using the audience research, wireframes, and the architecture provided by the UX designer, the UI Designer can then take those critical pieces of framework and start adding the details that unify the brand as a whole. This includes consistent use of typography, colors, and imagery.
UI is where color, fonts, and style come in
The UI designer can also determine the layout of the page, and places buttons or content where they will be most logically found. While the wireframes give an overall structure and general placement of content, the UI Designer can take that guide and move elements to better suit the goals of the site while working within their newly established look and feel. The UX designer, of course, can bring their input into this process as well.
It is then the UI designer’s role to work closely with the development team to ensure the layout remains as it was envisioned. Clear communication between the UI designer and the development team is key in overcoming any challenges or clarifying any questions that may arise through the development process. Needless to say, communication is critical throughout the entire web design process.
UI & UX: They work best together.
You can’t have one without the other. A design with excellent UX won’t necessarily appeal to the eye, and a design with great UI can be confusing and frustrating to use. When these two areas of web design work well together, you end up with an easy-to-use site that clearly represents the vision and personality of the organization. And, even better, the site will become a pleasant experience for the user.
At a minimum, UX and UI are crucial parts of any web project, but they are also just the tip of the iceberg. Web design is a collaborative process. It often requires content development from individuals with editorial expertise, a graphic designer to really dig into the final UI design and create iconography, an interaction designer who knows exactly how smooth actions and transitions need to be, and a back-end as well as front-end developer to maintain the site and bring everything to life on screen. So yes, creating a website isn’t as easy as 1–2–3, but, with the right team, it can become something beautiful, easy-to-use, and most importantly, help your organization achieve its goals. | https://medium.com/madison-ave-collective/ux-ui-what-876d5dfd2452 | ['Kyla Tom'] | 2017-03-02 14:32:00.564000+00:00 | ['UX', 'Design', 'Ux Ui Design', 'UI'] |
Providing Elasticity to Data Node Storage in Hadoop through LVM | Set up Master Node :
Configuring /etc/hadoop/hdfs-site.xml file :
Configuring /etc/hadoop/core-site.xml file :
Stop the firewall temporarily :
systemctl stop firewalld
Make a directory for namenode :
mkdir /namenode
Format the namenode directory :
hadoop namenode -format
Start the namenode :
hadoop-daemon.sh start namenode
Namenode has been started successfully :
Set up Data Node :
Configuring /etc/hadoop/hdfs-site.xml file :
Configuring /etc/hadoop/core-site.xml file :
Make a directory for Data Node :
mkdir /datanode
Start the Data Node services :
hadoop-daemon.sh start datanode
Data Node started successfully :
Check the hadoop cluster report :
hadoop dfsadmin -report
If you notice, entire hard disk has been allocated to the Hadoop Name Node!!
Integrating LVM with the Data Node Storage Directory :
Now, I’ve attached 2 new hard disks of sizes 5GiB and 4GiB. Run the below command to view the hard disks :
fdisk -l
In my VM, the names of hard disks are “nvme0n2” and “nvme0n3”.
First step is to create physical volumes from hard disks :
pvcreate /dev/nvme0n2
pvcreate /dev/nvme0n3
Check if the physical volumes are created or not :
pvdisplay /dev/nvme0n2
pvdisplay /dev/nvme0n3
Next step is to create a Volume Group for the two physical volumes created :
vgcreate hadoop_VG /dev/nvme0n2 /dev/nvme0n3
Check if the volume group is created or not :
vgdisplay hadoop_VG
Next, create Logical Volume from the Volume Group. Here I’m creating a Logical Volume of 6GiB :
lvcreate --size 6G --name hadoop_LV hadoop_VG
Check if the Logical Volume is created or not :
lvdisplay hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV
Now format the Logical Volume created above :
mkfs.ext4 /dev/hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV
Now, create a directory and mount the logical volume to that directory :
mkdir /dir
mount /dev/hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV
Check if the LV is mounted or not with the command “df -h” :
Now, update the directory name inside /etc/hadoop/hdfs-site.xml file of Data Node :
Stop and then Start the Data Node :
hadoop-daemon.sh stop datanode
hadoop-daemon.sh start datanode
Check the hadoop report :
hadoop dfsadmin -report
See, the DataNode is contributing only ~ 6GiB Storage to the cluster !!
Increasing the size of Logical Volume :
Command to increase the size of Logical Volume by 2GiB :
lvextend --size +2G /dev/hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV
We have to format the newly extended 2GiB storage with the command :
resize2fs /dev/hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV
Check the hadoop cluster report. The size of storage will be increased :
Let’s upload a file to the cluster :
You can view the file in web view of hadoop :
Decreasing the size of Logical Volume :
Stop the datanode :
hadoop-daemon.sh stop datanode
First unmount the logical volume :
umount /dir
Clean and scan the logical volume :
e2fsck -f /dev/hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV
Recreate Inode table upto the required size. I’m decreasing it to 3GiB :
resize2fs /dev/hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV 3G
Now reduce the size of Logical Volume with lvreduce command :
lvreduce --size 3G /dev/hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV
Now, mount the LV :
mount /dev/hadoop_VG/hadoop_LV /dir
Start the datanode services :
hadoop-daemon.sh start datanode
Check the hadoop cluster report :
So, we have successfully reduced the storage to 3GiB. Let’s check the Data inside file.txt created previously :
Wow!! The file and the Data inside it is safe!!
So, in this way we can provide elasticity to the Data Node storage. | https://medium.com/@asks1012/providing-elasticity-to-data-node-storage-in-hadoop-through-lvm-3d9296ccdcc3 | ['Akurathi Sri Krishna Sagar'] | 2020-12-27 10:07:15.157000+00:00 | ['Hadoop', 'Vimal Daga', 'Big Data', 'Elasticity', 'Lvm'] |
Mapping Indonesia’s Village Border with Plotly: Transforming Long Lat Coordinates to Shapefile Format | Mapping Indonesia’s Village Border with Plotly: Transforming Long Lat Coordinates to Shapefile Format
DKI Jakarta Map via Plotly (Image by Author)
Plotting geospatial information for Non US locations poses many challenges, ranging from data availability to the heavy lift in data preprocessing. For instance, shapely format for the vector is not always guaranteed, and even so the granularity might not be sufficient.
For a country as vast as Indonesia, having the ability to do spatial analysis at scale can have tremendous benefits for both scholarly and professional work. Therefore, when I came across this GitHub repo with village level GeoJSON granularity (taken from Duscapil), my first response is to fork it.
My aim is simple: to try and make it so that it’s ready for plotting and spatial analysis, for anyone to use. Finding reliable Indonesia’s spatial data reference to be used for analysis has been a challenge for me, and I’m sure some of you might’ve shared similar struggle.
Having said that, this writing mainly focuses on Geopandas and Plotly library, and the methodology is heavily inspired by this TDS post by Kerry Halupka.
Step 1: Data Extraction, Loading & Transformation in Google Colab
First thing First: Retrieve Data Frame from Github Repo
This step should be fairly simple. For the raw dataset, inside the Github repo the owner has given the fairly straightforward parsing method (see here). If you want to recreate the process I’d suggest to do it your local Notebook due to its file size. Extracting the data this way is also convenient as this allows us to locally convert it into csv, which can be then uploaded in database such as BigQuery.
The preview for the raw Data Frame is as follows:
Image by Author (from Github Repo)
Once we have the Data Frame, it’s time to transform it into WKT string geometry. Even though we can do the process locally, Google Colab is hands down better for portability (and more convenient for distribution), so to set it up I uploaded the then-converted-into-csv Data Frame file to google drive and load it into colab environment. Here’s some of the process needed.
Import Necessary Library in Google Colab
The library that we’ll be using are list down below. Import them first to properly setup the colab environment.
Load the Data Frame from Google Drive
As I’ve put the Data Frame in Google Drive, the next step is to mount the source file to drive and specify the path. In this case, my csv file for the Data Frame is located in extract-geojson folder within border-desa-indonesia-geojson folder (within Github May 21 folder inside MyDrive). After we specify the path, we can use Panda’s read_csv to read the file and name it df.
Then I copied the df Data Frame into dfx specifying for the columns that I need. With dfx.head(), if you get the following results, congratulations! You’ve successfully loaded your Data Frame in google colab.
Image by Author
Note: other way to do this is to store your file in github and connect your drive to your github folder, but this will not be covered in this article.
Transform Border Long Lat to Shapely WKT
We’re going to add a column named “geometry” to the data frame, and uses information on the border column to create a polygon or multipolygon which can be converted into wkt string as geometry.
The first step is to create a dictionary to then store the updated polygon/ multipolygon values from the transformed border column. You can choose any column from the dataset but in this case, I’m using border column for the initial dictionary. The use of enumerate ensures that we’re having similar values to the index of the Data Frame.
The second step is to iterate through the border coordinates list values and transform it in a way that’s similar to WKT string Polygon or Multipolygon format. Note that Multipolygon are usually a set of Polygons and can be identified by triple bracket “[[[“ at the beginning of border coordinates. You might want to explore the data to spot more of the subtler differences.
The following syntax has been possible after several iterations to spot both Polygon & Multipolygon while also replaces the irregular characters (such as extra commas or brackets) within each of the “border” column.
The third step is to create the column ‘geometry’ by mapping the data frame index against the newly updated border_dict dictionary. Don’t forget to check on the Multipolygon to confirm if the for loop if logic is working as intended.
If the result is as follows, then congratulations! You’ve loaded the WKT string and is one step closer to having your shapely spatial data reference across (nearly) all of Indonesia.
Image by Author
Error Handlings: How to Know Your Geometry is Valid
So you’ve generated the geometry values and would like to store the data somewhere, maybe in your BigQuery dataset. But how do you know that ALL of the geometry is actually valid?
In order to prevent the hassles of needing to return to data pre-processing, we can iterate through the geometry and check if any error is raised.
If the above code does not generate any error message then you can be sure that the geometry works!
Note: you can also change the None into any values or strings to make your search for error values (if there’s any) be more convenient for you.
Optional: Download Your Updated Data Frame
This optional step is for you who wish to download the data frame. Since we’re using colab, this can be done by files download.
Step 2: Visualize the Map!
Select the Intended Area
First, let’s select in which area of Indonesia do we want to highlight more. For example, say we want to highlight DKI Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. You can see the code example below.
Here I’m also generating a random integer just to illustrate the use cases (they can be used to color code). In real case, the random integers can be replaced with values/metrics that interest you, i.e populations, households, income, etc. Also don’t forget to also cast the geometry column to WKT geoseries beforehand so that the column data type is recognized as geometry.
Here’s how it translates to after adding pop as column:
Image by Author
Note: if you’d like to visualize all villages in Indonesia it should be no problem, but due to its size you might not be able to do it on google colab.
Optional: Visualize it in GeoPandas
Visualizing it in GeoPandas is much simpler than in Plotly. This optional step is to check quickly the map you’re trying to visualize. Using pop random number as the color code you can run through the following codes:
If you’re running the code and the result is as follows, then you’ve successfully created your GeoPandas map!
DKI Jakarta Map via Geopandas (Image by Author)
Note: Notice there’s a slight missing white vector in the north-middle part of DKI Jakarta. This might indicate that the original dataset does not actually contain geo information on that area. Fixing the white area is out of scope of this writing, but given the small size it shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Visualize it in Plotly
Lastly, here’s the step to visualize it in Plotly. Note that you’re going to need access token before you can proceed. Simply sign up (free) for Mapbox account and generate your key there. There’s also a short tutorial here.
Once you have the key, copy paste it to MAPBOX_ACCESSTOKEN and don’t forget to specify your center starting coordinates. Also as Plotly takes input as geoJSON you should create one from your data frame, in this case I named it x_json.
Finally, once you run the code you should get an beautiful map like this.
DKI Jakarta Map via Plotly (Image by Author)
Now you can simply change your location filter and you’re ready to explore Indonesia with your map! For example, here’s one for Semarang.
Semarang via Plotly (Image by Author)
Happy exploring! Please note however, that not all of the area is properly mapped, i.e for Malang & Surabaya I can still find some missing areas and improperly defined long lat coordinates so exercise with caution :) | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/mapping-indonesias-village-border-with-plotly-from-long-lat-coordinates-to-wkt-strings-975fd002326e | ['Taufiq Bashori'] | 2021-06-30 08:57:04.964000+00:00 | ['Indonesia', 'Geopandas', 'Geospatial', 'Python', 'Plotly'] |
Tutorial on How to Merge Django ORM with SQLAlchemy for Easier Data Analysis | Development of products with Django framework is usually easy and straightforward; great documentation, many tools out of the box, plenty of open source libraries and big community. Django ORM takes full control about SQL layer protecting you from mistakes, and underlying details of queries so you can spend more time on designing and building your application structure in Python code. However, sometimes such behavior may hurt — for example, when you’re building a project related to data analysis. Building advanced queries with Django is not very easy; it’s hard to read (in Python) and hard to understand what’s going on in SQL-level without logging or printing generated SQL queries somewhere. Moreover, such queries could not be efficient enough, so this will hit you back when you load more data into DB to play with. In one moment, you can find yourself doing too much raw SQL through Django cursor, and this is the moment when you should do a break and take a look on another interesting tool, which is placed right between ORM layer and the layer of raw SQL queries.
As you can see from the title of the article, we successfully mixed Django ORM and SQLAlchemy Core together, and we’re very satisfied with results. We built an application which helps to analyze data produced by EMR systems by aggregating data into charts and tables, scoring by throughput/efficiency/staff cost, and highlighting outliers which allows to optimize business processes for clinics and save money.
Note: the code samples may be displayed improperly because of markdown. We recommend to continue reading the original article on our blog to make sure all the examples are displayed properly.
What is the point of mixing Django ORM with SQLAlchemy?
There are a few reasons why we stepped out from Django ORM for this task:
For ORM world, one object is one record in the database, but here we deal only with aggregated data.
Some aggregations are very tricky, and Django ORM functionality is not enough to fulfill the needs. To be honest, sometimes in some simple cases it’s hard (or even impossible) to make ORM produce the SQL query exactly the way you want, and when you’re dealing with a big data , it will affect performance a lot.
, it will affect performance a lot. If you’re building advanced queries via Django ORM, it’s hard to read and understand such queries in Python, and hard to predict which SQL query will be generated and treated to the database.
It’s worth saying that we also set up a second database, which is handled by Django ORM to cover other web application related tasks and business-logic needs, which it perfectly does. Django ORM is evolving from version to version, giving more and more features. For example, in recent releases, a bunch of neat features were added like support of Subquery expressions or Window functions and many others, which you should definitely try before doing raw SQL or looking at the tools like SQLAlchemy if your problem is more complex than fixing a few queries.
So that’s why we decided to take a look at SQLAlchemy. It consists of two parts — ORM and Core. SQLAlchemy ORM is similar to Django ORM, but at the same time, they differ. SQLAlchemy ORM uses a different concept, Data Mapper, compared to Django’s Active Record approach. As far as you’re building projects on Django, you definitely should not switch ORM (if you don’t have very special reasons to do so), as you want to use Django REST framework, Django-admin, and other neat stuff which is tied to Django models.
The second part of SQLAlchemy is called Core. It’s placed right between high-level ORM and low-level SQL. The Core is very powerful and flexible; it gives you the ability to build any SQL-queries you wish, and when you see such queries in Python, it’s easy to understand what’s going on. For example, take a look into a sample query from the documentation:
q = session.query(User).filter(User.name.like('e%')).\
limit(5).from_self().\
join(User.addresses).filter(Address.email.like('q%')).\
order_by(User.name)
Which will result into
SELECT anon_1.user_id AS anon_1_user_id,
anon_1.user_name AS anon_1_user_name
FROM (SELECT "user".id AS user_id, "user".name AS user_name
FROM "user"
WHERE "user".name LIKE :name_1
LIMIT :param_1) AS anon_1
JOIN address ON anon_1.user_id = address.user_id
WHERE address.email LIKE :email_1 ORDER BY anon_1.user_name
Note: with such tricks, we don’t fall into N+1 problem : from_select makes an additional SELECT wrapper around the query, so we reduce the amount of rows at first (via LIKE and LIMIT ) and only then we join the address information.
How to mix Django application and SQLALchemy
So if you’re interested and want to try to mix SQLAlchemy with Django application, here are some hints which could help you.
First of all, you need to create a global variable with Engine, but the actual connection with DB will be established on first connect or execute call.
sa_engine = create_engine(settings.DB_CONNECTION_URL, pool_recycle=settings.POOL_RECYCLE)
Createengine accepts additional configuration for connection. MySQL/MariaDB/AWS Aurora(MySQL compatible) have an interactive timeout setting which is 8h by default, so without pool_recycle extra parameter you will get annoying SQLError: (OperationalError) (2006, ‘MySQL server has gone away’) . So the POOL_RECYCLE should be smaller than interactive_timeout . For example a half of it: POOL_RECYCLE = 4 * 60 * 60
Next step is to build your queries. Depending on your application architecture, you can declare tables and fields using Table and Column classes (which also can be used with ORM), or if your application already stores tables and columns names in another way, you can do it in place, via table ( table_name ) and column ( col_name ) functions (as shown here).
In our app, we picked the second option, as we stored information about aggregations, formulas, and formatting in our own declarative syntax. Then we built a layer which read such structures and executed queries based on the provided instructions.
When your query is ready, simply call sa_engine.execute(query) . The cursor would be opened until you read all the data or if you close it explicitly.
There is one very annoying thing worth mentioning. As a documentation says, SQLAlchemy has limited ability to do query stringification, so it’s not so easy to get a final query which will be executed. You can print query by itself:
print(query) SELECT
role_group_id, role_group_name, nr_patients
FROM "StaffSummary"
WHERE day >= :day_1 AND day <= :day_2 AND location_id = :location_id_1 AND service_id = :service_id_1
(This one looks not so scary, but with more complex queries it could be about 20+ placeholders, which are very annoying and time-expensive to fill manually to play later in SQL console.)
If you have only strings and numbers to be inserted into query, this will work for you
print(s.compile(compile_kwargs={"literal_binds": True}))
For dates, such a trick will not work. There is a discussion on StackOverflow on how to achieve the desired results, but solutions look unattractive.
Another option is to enable queries logging into the file via database configuration, but in this case, you could face another issue; it becomes hard to find a query you want to debug if Django ORM connected to this database too.
You May Also Like:
Testing
Note: Pytest multidb note says “Currently pytest-django does not specifically support Django’s multi-database support. You can however use normal Django TestCase instances to use it’s multi_db support.”
So what does it mean — not support? By default, Django will create and remove (at the end of all tests) a test-database for each db listed in DATABASES definition. This feature works perfectly with pytests also.
Django TestCase and TransactionTestCase with multi_db=True enables erasing of data in multiple databases between tests. Also it enables data loading into second database via django-fixtures , but it’s much better to use modelmommy or factoryboy instead, which are not affected by this attribute.
There are a few hacks suggested in pytest-django discussion how to work around the issue and enable multi_db to continue pytesting.
There is one important advice — for tables that have Django-models, you should save data to DB via Django-ORM. Otherwise, you will face issues during writing tests. TestCase will not be able to rollback other transactions which happened outside from Django DB connection. If you have such a situation, you may use TransactionalTestCase with multi_db=True for tests which trigger functionality, which produces DB writes through SQLAlchemy connection, but remember that such tests are slower than regular TestCase .
Also, another scenario is possible — you have Django-models only in one database and you’re working with the second database via SQLAlchemy. In this case, multi_db doesn’t affect you at all. In such cases, you need to write a pytest-fixture (or do it as a mixin and trigger logic in setUp if you’re using unittests) which will create DB structure from SQL file. Such a file should contain DROP TABLE IF EXISTS statements before CREATE TABLE . This fixture should be applied to each test case which manipulates with this database. Other fixture could load data into created tables.
Note: Such tests will be slower as tables will be recreated for each test. Ideally, tables should be created once (declared as @pytest.fixture(scope='session', autouse=True) ), and each transaction should rollback data for each test. It’s not easy to achieve because of different connections: Django & SQLAlchemy or different connections of SQLAlchemy connection-pool, e.g in your tests you start the transaction, fill DB with test data, then run test and rollback transaction (it wasn’t committed). But during the test, your application code may do queries to DB like connection.execute(query) which performed outside of transaction which created test data. So with default transaction isolation level, the application will not see any data, only empty tables. It’s possible to change transaction isolation level to READ UNCOMMITTED for SQLAlchemy connection, and everything will work as expected, but it’s definitely not a solution at all.
Conclusion
To sum up everything above, SQLAlchemy Core is a great tool which brings you closer to SQL and gives you understanding and full control over the queries. If you’re building the application (or a part of it) which requires advanced aggregations, it is worth it to check out SQLAlchemy Core capabilities as an alternative to Django ORM tools.
Read on to learn how to make building advanced queries for data analysis projects easier. Find out how we managed to mix Django ORM and SQLAlchemy Core and what we got from it.
This article about Merging Django ORM is written by Gleb Pushkov — Senior Software Developer at Django Stars | https://medium.com/hackernoon/merging-django-orm-with-sqlalchemy-for-easier-data-analysis-75b85e2cc0b9 | ['Django Stars'] | 2019-11-07 14:06:43.978000+00:00 | ['Data Analysis', 'Orm With Sqlalchemy', 'Python', 'Sqlalchemy', 'Programming'] |
Rending | Rending
A Poem
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash
On climbing downhill
the shadows detach from their bushes
and trees
tracings for you to step on
You didn’t follow your heart
on your walkout
of the restaurant
and you fell on your pillow
like it was a sword
when you reached your new room
Paper separates people
the gashing of the walls
streetlights turning to each other
trying to determine what code to use
The snow peels itself
harshly off the ice
the congealing footsteps of a remembered
misery confining the lost diseases
for the moment
Pills in hand now
book resting on the laboring chest
the lights are out nowhere
and something is still pulling me away | https://medium.com/the-rebel-poets-society/rending-1b43087fc967 | ['J.D. Harms'] | 2020-11-24 02:43:46.611000+00:00 | ['Image', 'Inspiration', 'Musing', 'Love', 'Poem'] |
Ortam Kurulumu ve Hello Spring Örneği | 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/kodcular/ortam-kurulumu-ve-hello-spring-%C3%B6rne%C4%9Fi-9b88816e3c67 | ['Barış Dalyan Emre'] | 2021-01-01 18:54:18.270000+00:00 | ['Eğitim', 'Yazılım', 'Spring', 'Türkçe', 'Java'] |
Important Update: Exchange Deposits | Today, we have an important update about why deposits are closed on exchanges — and what we’re doing to open them as soon as we can. Since we launched Gen 3, our priority has always been the safety of our users, the security, and stability of our network. That’s why we’ve temporarily closed deposits while we complete testing to guarantee this is the case.
As with any emerging technology, there will be challenges along the way; these should be expected, and prudent behaviour should be appreciated by the community, as it protects the community. In the cryptocurrency space, Energi is at the cutting edge of the industry. By combining smart contracts, a treasury system and masternodes into one coherent whole, we’ve pioneered and built what hundreds of other projects are still striving to achieve, pushing the limits of blockchain technology. This is uncharted territory and there will always be obstacles along the way.
During the migration to Gen 3, scammers attempted to steal over 200,000 NRG from our community. This would be catastrophic not only for the victims, but for everyone in the Energi ecosystem who would have suffered from major market dumping of these illicit gains. We successfully prevented these attacks, and due to our new governance blacklisting feature, the funds were frozen and are in the process of being returned to their victims. To see more about our new governance blacklisting feature, read our recent blog.
Meanwhile, our blockchain had another issue that arose: chain splits. This happens when there are blocks that are out of sync with the main, dominant chain. We immediately jumped on the issue and our dev team has been working tirelessly to resolve them. To ensure the safety of our users and exchange partners, over the next couple of weeks we are performing a thorough review and testing process so that we can be sure there will be no more chain splits. To prevent this from occurring again, we need to test the network to ensure stability. We’ll reopen deposits as soon as we are confident that the network is stable.
Once again, we hope you agree that security is of the utmost importance and appreciate our cautious approach toward getting our new Gen 3 blockchain fully online. Building a new technology, and a whole new financial system, will always involve some trial and error — and together, we can continue to pave the way for the entire blockchain space.
As always, if you need to get in touch, reach out to our Freshdesk live support or message us at [email protected].
The Energi Team. | https://medium.com/energi/important-update-exchange-deposits-8aad7a120b3e | ['Energi Cryptocurrency'] | 2020-04-19 13:48:30.799000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Exchange', 'Deposit', 'Gen 3', 'Energi'] |
Still Frightened by High Fever and Not Being Sure What to Do? | The majority of people still fear high body temperature and firmly believe it to be harmful if left unattended. They fear that the body is sick, malfunctioning, and they must help it lower the temperature.
I am not trying to imply one should disregard the fever. But some time and critical thought need to be spent on the topic before deciding further. I have a biased opinion and writing by my research and experience. But I tried to present mostly referenced medical statements and judgment, adding some of my own experience.
I am sure that there are many experts on Medium that can confirm or disprove my writing. I will be happy to see any comments to correct my opinion in the right direction. After all, it does not matter who is right. As long as we solely want to understand, we are moving forward.
Who is fallible?
On one side, a human body — an incredibly well-orchestrated organism, which we widely still do not understand. Nature-driven, evolving, and perfecting throughout the centuries. In ideal conditions, the human body can thrive and operate without serious issues.
“Just one living cell in the human body is, more complex than New York” — Linus Pauling
On the other side, science — regularly argued as the only proven truth — and often taken as the ultimate one. Though we all know that science is immensely fallible, limited in understanding anything other than the currently available technology can validate.
That seems rather evident and natural. All systems in nature learn and evolve from their own mistakes. And both science and technology are growing, advancing, and improving their mistakes throughout their entire history.
Technology, currently experiencing an incredibly accelerating speed of change and growth — is continuously uncovering old scientific myths and blunders.
But lately, some difficulties seem to appear to help science grow and evolve. Has the current zeitgeist made science inherit a human characteristic — to cultivate an ego?
It tends to believe its theories are absolute. And it is becoming increasingly inclined towards deceiving and misleading to see those theories accepted.
Or, as I described in the linked article above. It acts similarly to the immune system of the organization — defend against potentially dangerous and destructive behavior.
Are we so unaware of the human body’s capabilities that we think we need to control and regulate our body temperature? Do we believe our organism is incapable of taking care of itself safely and efficiently?
“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.” — Emerson M. Pugh
One could easily replace the brain in the quote above with the human body.
My personal experience
My son has experienced a febrile convulsion at four years of age — a high fever seizure. It is (supposedly) an episode of brain contracting, caused by a high fever (above 39°C/102,2°F).
It is a very frightening event for any parent or doctor. I have written about it in another article.
Fever Management
The World Journal of Clinical Pediatrics published a detailed study on Fever Management in 2012. Results of the research have drawn noticeable conclusions:
Most pediatricians agree that treating a febrile child with antipyretics is mostly for relieving the symptoms of fever.
Many tend to prescribe antipyretics for any child with a fever.
with a fever. With fever (unlike hyperthermia), human body temperature is well regulated. A hypothalamic set-point balances heat production and heat loss very effectively. The temperatures do not climb up relentlessly and do not exceed an upper limit of 42°C . Within this upper range, 40°C to 42°C, there is no evidence that the fever is injurious to tissue .
and . Within this upper range, 40°C to 42°C, . “If there is morbidity or mortality, it is due to the underlying disease . The associated fever may well be protective.”
. The associated fever may well be protective.” Febrile seizures are usually benign. They do not cause brain damage .
They do . Prevention of febrile seizures is difficult and may not be achievable .
of febrile seizures is difficult and . Antipyretics can not prevent febrile seizures, while they are known to cause adverse reactions and some fatalities.” (WJCP, 2012)
Antipyretic for the fear? Whose fear?
I have witnessed doctors, too, being very skeptical and timid about febrile convulsions. There was a column in the national online medical journal. The Head of the pediatrics department, a respected university professor, expressed his concerns about the prevailing fear among medical society towards fever.
The fear mostly originates in a failure to understand this protective mechanism.
If seizures are merely the results of high fever spikes — and deemed as usually harmless — treating these can not solve the root cause.
“Antipyretic agents are ineffective for the prevention of recurrences of febrile seizures and for the lowering of body temperature in patients with a febrile episode that leads to a recurrent febrile seizure.” (JAMA Pediatrics, 2009)
Elevated body temperature differentiates as lower and higher fever. Why do doctors nowadays treat 38,5°C (101,3°F) as the limit before administering antipyretics? Preventively or out of fear? No unwanted side-effects in case of unnecessary administering?
Similarities
Treating a headache, for example, is quite similar. I believe headache is merely a bodily mechanism, forcing us to calm down during some intensive process, inflammation, or deficiency.
Does eliminating symptoms like taking a painkiller help? Or do we act against our organism (and later wonder about the potential appearance of unexplained consequences)?
Similarly, the harmful effects of antibiotics are widely recognized. In this case, doctors are well aware of the present-day overuse and warn the public about it.
Conclusion
What exactly do the measured numbers tell us?
When we have a fever, we are not in a mood for anything other than rest. What difference does 37,3°C (99,14°F), in contrast to 37,8°C (100,04°F), mean to us? How about 38,5°C (101,3°F) against 38,9°C (102,2°F)? No clue? Any point in measuring it at all?
Does our organism ‘fire up the system’ and accidentally put a ‘block of wood or two too many on fire’?
Or does it require a specific temperature for a particular condition for a defined time? Are we sure we know enough to want to play with our centuries-perfected immune system? And its mechanisms that have kept us safe for so long?
I might be wrong. It feels very contradictory and often conflicts with the prevalent beliefs. What you take away from my thoughts is entirely up to you. Build your own perspective and understanding.
I am not a medical expert to give advice. I only collect research and studies from medical professionals, link them together, trying to understand. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/still-frightened-by-high-fever-and-not-being-sure-what-to-do-ac8e9141fbf6 | [] | 2021-01-11 06:05:09.279000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Parenting', 'Body', 'Life Lessons', 'Healthcare'] |
Infinity, A Fool’s Theory! | Photo by Reuben on Unsplash
What might have made me think in this direction, it is the concept of “Forever”. I certainly believe in the concept which can be proved correct in real-life experiences. Over the years in my journey, I have adopted some thoughts and improvised many. I would never prefer believing something without a fact check or critical thinking.
Example to it, I think Indian society was cruel in the past. Today I read stories of child marriages, Sati-pratha and Castism and find it purely evil. It reflects the character of the community. Where in the world, a woman is killed because her husband died. This is the history of India!
If history repeats itself, then no wonder India will not leave its ruthless character. But, we will only glorify “Budha”, and refrain from addressing woman safety. The reason is we are still ok in — teaching our girl manners, not our boys.
You were taught a concept of forever and infinity. But you know your life reality is the result of the creativity or blockage of your mind. Your weakness is someone else strength then do you really believe in the permanent problem or solution. Have you seen anything forever or infinity?
Zero is true, and the other truth is creation, destruction and reformation. There is nothing like infinity. It is a fool’s theory. After all, you are writing it as infinity because you failed to reach an edge. It’s beyond your scope. Infinity is a myth.
You are writing your limitation of belief as “ Infinity”.
Amita Chaurasia | https://medium.com/@amitachaurasia/infinity-a-fools-theory-fb2fb02f1d51 | ['Amita Chaurasia'] | 2020-12-18 06:09:47.937000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Mindfulness', 'Zero', 'Nothingness', 'Infinity'] |
.Net 5 Geçiş Süreci | 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/abisteknoloji/net-5-ge%C3%A7i%C5%9F-s%C3%BCreci-4a5860de8a4c | ['Ethem Boynukara'] | 2020-11-27 20:40:36.691000+00:00 | ['Dotnet 5', 'Yazılım Geliştirme', 'Net5', 'Dotnet', 'Dotnet Core'] |
What is your startup’s valuation? | Any entrepreneur who is thinking about fundraising has to be prepared for the unavoidable investor question “What is your startup’s valuation?” This question becomes increasingly difficult when posed to early-stage entrepreneurs who are usually asked another equally difficult follow-up investor question which is “How did you come up with your valuation?”
Experienced entrepreneurs know that the answer to such a daunting question does not lie in a particular magical number, but instead the answer that investors would like to hear from founders relates to the method/s that the founder has employed to reach the claimed valuation.
The ideal answer to such a question would actually be to relate that several structured valuation methods were used to establish the startup’s target valuation.
The rationale underlying the use of valuation methods, such as the Scorecard method or the Risk Mitigation method, is that it helps entrepreneurs and investors alike answer key questions such as:
How much experience does the founding team have?
How much money has been invested so far?
How does the startup compare to other startups in the industry segment?
How big is the target market?
How have similar startups been valued?
By using multiple valuation methods, startup founders and investors can properly prepare for valuation negotiations and truly illuminate the progress of the startup, the capability of the founding team, and ultimately a good target value for the startup.
Given that early-stage startups do not have any historical financial data that can be used to calculate the value of the startup, investors focus on the value derived from the startup’s qualitative aspects.
The most well-known methods used in valuing early-stage startups are Checklist Method, Step Up Method, and as mentioned above Scorecard and Risk Mitigation Methods.
Startup Falcon’s AI-powered, automated valuation calculator was built based on the logic of these methods. The specialized valuation form that investors/entrepreneurs fill on their online platform inspects the quality of such qualitative aspects of the startup as the ones mentioned above (quality of the founding team, past investments, target market size, similar startup valuations, and more).
Their engine then quantifies the qualitative answers from the form to determine the final valuation amount per valuation criterion (team, product, business model, legal) and per valuation method. Providing both investors and entrepreneurs with a valuation they can use with confidence.
Startup Falcon Valuation Calculator: Try it out for free.
Stephen R. Poland, the author of Founder’s Pocket Guide: Startup Valuation | https://medium.com/startup-falcon/what-is-your-startups-valuation-c96f41ea6f46 | ['Eiass Muhanna'] | 2021-03-19 10:01:21.340000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Startup', 'Valuation', 'Fundraising', 'Investing'] |
How to Overcome the Team Barrier [Part 1] | In today’s corporate and academic landscape, there is a lot of discussion about interdisciplinary collaboration. Traditionally, teams have been multidisciplinary; every member worked in a relatively independent setting, to develop on their particular function. This has worked to some extent, but now companies have to be ready to reinvent themselves every three to four years as opposed to a decade or more in the past. Being complacent puts them at the risk of being dethroned by a startup which perceives the problem with a fresh pair of eyes.
A setup wherein people with different backgrounds collaborate by going through the user’s journey, identifying specific pain points and stakeholders in order to solve the right problem is essential. The last thing you want to do is build a product that nobody wants.
As an example, Interdisciplinary teams have been utilized to a great extent in the healthcare domain. Numerous articles discuss the pros of implementing them into your system, but, for the scope of this article, I will focus more on how to make them more efficient.
Team Dynamics
Research suggests that all high functioning interdisciplinary teams share a set of characteristics including, but not limited to, a decisive leadership, a supportive team climate, effective communication, clarity of vision, appropriate mix of skills and an understanding and respect for all diversity in backgrounds and cultures. To get more clarity on the topic, let’s delve a bit further into some of these characteristics and what forms they take in practice.
1. Varied Leadership.
Interdisciplinary teams generally possess a flatter structure as opposed to a traditional hierarchical structure. Every member of the team has collective accountability towards the end goal and most decisions are taken through consensus with a bit of guidance from mentors or other stakeholders. With that said, when individual personalities interact with each other, the dynamics of the team shifts and evolves in a certain kind of leadership environment
A) Two or more self-appointed leaders. This is a rare scenario wherein two or more individuals exhibit a greater sense of project ownership and initiative. Clashes are fairly common in this kind of setting as both the drivers frequently have different approaches to and opinions on a problem.
How to deal with it: If you are one of the drivers, take some time at every cornerstone to understand the other’s point of view, quickly discuss the pros and cons of both ideas and take the team’s consensus on what would work best. I emphasize on ‘quickly’ because this situation often leads to extended meetings and inefficiency, be mindful of the team’s time. As someone who is on this team but not driving it, do not hesitate to put forth your opinions. Having others take the lead allows for the rest to focus more on the depth and the details of a project which is a big plus.
B) One self-appointed leader. This is a typical case when only one person takes the charge on setting up the basic strategy, timelines, workflows etc. The way the team perceives this self-appointed leader depends a lot upon the personality traits and leadership style. There are times when voices of other members of the team go unheard, people feel discouraged, disoriented and start to lose faith in the team.
How to deal with it: If you believe you’re helping the team plan and execute tasks better, but, receiving a lukewarm response, it is time to reflect upon your leadership style. The easiest way to begin is by enhancing communication, let everyone put forth their perspectives and contribute. In addition to that, being upfront and asking for peer feedback on your performance will help you learn and evolve in the long term. As a member of this team who doesn’t want to take a lead, but focuses more on the details, make an extra effort to make your opinions heard. Remember, democracy over dictatorship.
C) No self-appointed leader. There are certain cases where everyone on the team prefers working on their particular function in silos but there’s no one to rattle the herd. They believe in working independently and then coming together to merge their work. This working style has some merits in reduced conflicts, saved time and an overall increase in individual productivity which is usually how companies measure performance. However, when it’s time to synthesize the final product, there’s a realization that some critical interactions between product functions were overlooked, some tasks overlapped, and everyone had a slightly different idea of what the end product would be. This is disastrous.
How to deal with it: In any kind of collaborative effort, communication is vital. Members of this type of team are all to blame for the lack of it. As most people feel more productive when working by themselves, often, teams reach a consensus of postponing a meeting or conducting it remotely. Taking initiative is the way to go here; discuss with your team that specific issues might arise in the future and express the need to meet and strategize at every milestone so that everyone moves in the same direction. When you make this happen, the combined productivity of the team far outweighs the sum of individual efforts.
2. Supportive Team.
When individuals from different backgrounds come together, they bring with them the biases associated with their field. For example, an engineer usually focuses more on utility and would want to add as many features as possible in a release, whereas someone experienced in user-centered design would realize that bombarding users with a plethora of options is usually not the best strategy. They would like to make it minimalistic and as intuitive as they can. A crucial part of building a product as a team is that everyone has trust in each other’s capabilities and respect the differences in ideology.
There are lots of team building activities that aid in this process. Moreover, as an individual, enhancing your listening skills is a good start. Being on an interdisciplinary team is all about understanding the different aspects of a product, effectively making trade-offs and managing to deliver the right product to the right market and at the right time.
‘Varied Leadership’, ‘Supportive Team’, ‘Having the Right Mix of Skills’, ‘Clarity of Vision’, and ‘Overcoming Cultural Differences and Communication Barriers’ are also pertinent to excelling in an interdisciplinary team. For the scope of this article, the first two characteristics were discussed, I’ll leave the other three for the next segment.
Closing note
I am a student of Product Development at Carnegie Mellon University’s Integrated Innovation Institute and all the thoughts and opinions expressed in this article are developed through my personal experiences.
If you found this article helpful, please feel free to like and share, make suggestions for helpful resources that I missed in the comments, and reach out to me on LinkedIn! | https://medium.com/cmuinnovation/how-to-overcome-the-team-barrier-part-1-ffb9aef184fe | ['Tejas Kashyap'] | 2019-11-19 05:43:46.950000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Organizational Culture', 'Collaboration', 'Team Building', 'Cross Disciplinary Teams'] |
Where is Your HQ? | Before your business gets fulling rolling you will want to give some thought into where your team will be located. You can decide to have an office, work from home, or sign up at a co-working space. You also should think about where your team members will work as you grow the business. If your team will not be located with you, then you need to figure out how and when you will meet in person, if at all. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended expectations for company locations, and everything may change when the virus is controlled. Either way, your want your approach on this subject to be deliberate and not something where you just wing it when new team members are needed.
The first decision around your business location starts with you. Where do you want to work each day? Do you even have choices if you are reading this post and it is still COVID times? Try to think about how you are most productive. Is that with headphones on jamming away on your own? Do you need a quiet place you can make phone or Zoom calls all day? Or do you perform better with other people in the room to feed off their energy? Beyond what is best for you, make sure to consider your budget. Co-working places generally cost $50–150 per person monthly. They also usually come with benefits for your business beyond just a place to sit. There might be networking opportunities or business services, make sure to factor those into your decision too.
As you add other people to your business, do you want them right next to you where you can coordinate all day or do you feel comfortable with them being in a different location? If working separately is acceptable, think about how often you will want to meet in person. It is fine if you say “not necessary” but make this a choice not an afterthought. If your co-founders or employees are not in the same place as you, you might want to consider a plan to meet up in person on a regular basis. Even as the video conferencing options are rapidly improving, there is typically no substitute for being in the same room to get the team on mission.
More businesses today are choosing to be fully remote, and I think this will be powerful for some. To be successful remotely, you will need to put in place a strong onboarding process to ensure your business culture and processes are persistent. Consider who new team members will need to meet virtually to do their job and how they will feel welcome. Also consider what equipment they may need to work from home. Put the effort in upfront to make this a smooth process.
Thanks for reading today’s post. Sorting these issues out upfront will help avoid confusion or missed expectations in the future. | https://medium.com/@brianzwerner/where-is-your-hq-7981f791d632 | ['Brian Zwerner'] | 2020-12-17 13:28:43.947000+00:00 | ['Startup Life', 'Entrepreneur', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Startup Lessons'] |
Five apps for determining the UV index | Five apps for determining the UV index
Our Sun is able to give not only warmth and a bronze tan, but also helps moles to go over to the side of evil and be reborn in skin cancer. To prevent this from happening, you need to clearly understand how much you can be under the rays of the sun and when you need to protect your skin from excess ultraviolet light. UV index tracking apps help with this, and this review is dedicated to them.
Evaluation criteria: ease of use, compatibility with the device(Android 8.1.0), bonuses.
Before we start looking at applications, let’s understand the theory.
The level of ultraviolet light on the surface of our planet is usually measured by the UV index (UV Index). It is necessary to understand when to use sunscreens.
The index values range from 0 to 11+. The larger the value, the higher the potential threat to the skin and eyes of a person, and, accordingly, the less time you need to be in direct sunlight.
In clear weather, the UV index is calculated based on the following indicators:
the concentration of the ozone layer, the location of a certain territory;
sun positions;
albedo (reflectivity) of the earth’s surface;
the number of aerosols and their composition;
the calculation takes into account the waves, the length of which is 100-400 nm.
So, with the theory finished, let’s start looking at the applications.
UVLens
The app has 3 sections: directly calculate the UV index with the clock.
The MySkin section, where a small questionnaire is added to determine the type of skin
and personal recommendations for skin protection, which can be found by clicking on the icon with a bottle of cream
Settings. Here you can choose a language, register an account, add temperature and UV icons to the desktop screen, and support the app developers. At the very bottom of the page, you can see an ad for the SkinVision app for tracking moles.
Review of the SkinVision app can be read here.
Ease of use — 5 stars
Compatibility with the device — yes
Bonuses — calculation of sunscreen, language selection.
UV index global
The app also has 3 sections, but unlike UVLens, each section has a lot of additional information and visual accompaniment.
The Home screen shows the UV index, and also makes a breakdown with radiation readings by the hour and gives tips on how to protect yourself from the sun.
The second section, “Skin type”, helps you determine your skin type using a detailed questionnaire, and then get recommendations on how to behave in the sun. The section ends with a mini-test to test your knowledge about tanning and solar activity.
The third section Cities allows you to compare the UV indices of different cities for the week ahead.
Ease of use — 5 points
Compatibility with the device — 5 points
Bonuses — lots of additional information and tips, no ads.
UV index
The application has only one screen, which shows the UV index for the day with a mark of what it is now.
Geolocation is determined automatically, and if you want to see another place, you will have to enter the geographical coordinates manually. At the moment of viewing the index, a full-screen video ad suddenly turned on, which can not be missed.
To remove the ad, you will have to pay $3.64
Easy to use — 3 points
Compatibility with the device — Yes
Bonuses — non-switchable advertising.
UV index Microsis
The app has only one screen and the UV index is also shown based on the location of the device. You will not be able to choose another location in the free version. Paid $0.99
Little information on how to protect yourself from the sun can be found in the collapsed menu.
Ease of use — 3 points
Compatibility with the device — Yes
Bonuses — advertising and the paid version.
UV skin protection
The application has 4 sections. Directly UV index, which is determined only by Geo. No other location can be selected.
The Today section will tell you about the change in the UV index during the day
The Forecast section did not show anything
And the Setting section, where you can see your account details, if it is created, and also keep in touch with the developers.
Ease of use — 3 points
Compatibility with the device — Yes
Bonuses — beautiful design.
Conclusion
The main task of UV applications is to show the index of ultraviolet radiation in a certain place. And only you will have to choose what is better-a minimum of data or extended information with hints.
As for accuracy, you can see that the readings are different, even if the geoposition was the same during use. And the cherry on the cake - when the review was written, it was raining outside the window, but this did not prevent some applications from setting a dangerous UV index of 9 points.
Screenshot App
Early diagnosis of skin cancer at the price of a smart watch | https://medium.com/@nota.mt/five-apps-for-determining-the-uv-index-4e051f9e72d8 | ['Nota Mole Tracker'] | 2021-06-17 08:56:33.123000+00:00 | ['Devices', 'Uv Index', 'Sun', 'Skin Cancer', 'Skincare'] |
D’Decor Teams With HeiQ! Launches Antiviral & Air Purifying Range of Furnishing Fabrics | D’Decor Teams up With HeiQ to Launch Antiviral Range and Air Purifying Range of Furnishing Fabrics
Mumbai, India: D’Decor Home Fabrics is proud to partner with Swiss textile innovator HeiQ to help their customers live safe and live beautiful.
The D’Decor antiviral and air purifying range of products live up to the philosophy of safe and beautiful home spaces. Textiles provide a large hosting surface for bacteria and viruses that allow them to remain active from days to months, in the current pandemic time, people look for hygienic home solutions more than ever. D’Decor Home Fabrics wanted to find a solution to this problem and render their textiles antiviral and antibacterial. They entered into an exclusive partnership with HeiQ to launch ViroGuard by D’Decor and AeroFresh by D’Decor.
ViroGuard by D’Decor, powered by HeiQViroblock is an antiviral range of home textile products. Fabrics treated with HeiQViroblock have been previously tested effectively against coronavirus, influenza, avian flu, swine flu and respiratory syncytial virus and achieves 99.99% reduction of the virus. ViroGuard aims to destroy viruses and bacteria within a short time and last long on the fabric. D’Decor Home Fabrics will offer upholstery fabrics, curtain fabrics and bedding with this technology.
AeroFresh by D’Decor, powered by HeiQ Fresh, is an air purifying function that uses UV light to improve indoor air quality. Indoor air hygiene has been a major growing concern with increasing risk of human health hazard, and indoor air contains volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are released from household furnishing, carpets, glues, cleaning sprays, aerosols, flooring, etc. D’Decor Home Fabrics has adopted HeiQ Fresh, HeiQ’s breakthrough air purifying textile technology on their custom-made curtains to help users improve indoor air quality. It works by turning any textile surface into an air purifying surface by immobilizing the VOC molecules in the air and then decomposing them using light. It works quickly (within 24 hours) and lasts up to 20 washes.
D’Decor Home Fabrics is the world’s largest maker of woven upholstery and curtain fabrics. Founded in 1999, they are proud to be ‘globally local’, understanding the aesthetic sensibilities of every country their products are used in. As the partners for premier furniture makers and retailers for upholstery and curtain fabrics around the world, D’Decor has evolved to making bedding products as well.
Based in Mumbai, India, D’Decor Home Fabrics owns five state-of-the-art production plants with cutting edge equipment and the country’s first robotic warehouse. The award-winning company is led by a core team of visionaries, innovators and leaders to create a strong company that has been in business for over two decades.
HeiQ is a three-in-one company: scientific research, specialty materials manufacturing and consumer ingredient brand, all working together to improve the lives of billions of people by perfecting the everyday product of textile. They continue to differentiate and innovate with their partners to create some of the most effective, durable and high-performance textile technologies in the market today.
“D’Decor has always been about beauty and variety. But we feel, that given today’s scenario and the fact that our products form such an integral part of the home, we want to ensure that our products go beyond beauty and actually provide a level of safety and hygiene to our consumers. In HeiQ we’ve found a perfect partner that can augment our creativity and quality with the bleeding edge of technology, with solutions like Viroblock and Fresh.”
Home Furnishing is the most touched surface at home right from the time you draw your curtains, to rest on your couch, cuddle with your cushions or sleep on your bed. With ViroGuard and AeroFresh by D’Decor we are offering our valued customers a promise to help them Live Safe and thereby Live Beautiful,” Ajay Arora, Managing Director — D’Decor Home Fabrics.
“HeiQ is excited to collaborate with D’Decor Home Fabrics to treat their products with both HeiQViroblock and HeiQ Fresh to protect and improve the lives of consumers in their home surroundings,” says Hoi Kwan Lam, HeiQ Group CMO. | https://medium.com/@realtybusinessreview/ddecor-teams-with-heiq-launches-antiviral-air-purifying-range-of-furnishing-fabrics-b8ed30b24b55 | [] | 2021-06-26 05:44:16.570000+00:00 | ['Fabric', 'Home', 'Home Decor', 'India', 'Home Improvement'] |
How To Provision Infrastructure on GCP With Terraform | How To Provision Infrastructure on GCP With Terraform
A Beginner’s Guide with an example project
Terraform is an infrastructure as a code tool that makes it easy to provision infrastructure on any cloud or on-premise. Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions.
Configuration files describe to Terraform the components needed to run a single application or your entire datacenter. Terraform generates an execution plan describing what it will do to reach the desired state, and then executes it to build the described infrastructure.
In this post, we will see how to provision infrastructure on the Google Cloud Platform.
Get Started With Terraform
Prerequisites
Example Project
What is Backend
Configuring Backend
Provisioning Infrastructure
Inputs and Outputs
Destroying Infrastructure
Summary
Conclusion
Get Started With Terraform
The first thing we need to do is to get familiar with Terraform. If you are new to Terraform, Check the below article on how to get started. It has all the details on how t install, Terraform Workflow, Example Projects, etc. | https://medium.com/bb-tutorials-and-thoughts/how-to-provision-infrastructure-on-gcp-with-terraform-6e2825909ff2 | ['Bhargav Bachina'] | 2020-11-12 05:30:30.452000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Cloud Computing', 'Programming', 'Terraform'] |
Gem | pixabay.com
The gem
is a gift
of energy.
The ruby,
the sapphire,
the diamond
reflect to us
what we could be
when have
the bravery
to mine them.
© Jacqueline Ann 2020 | https://medium.com/crescent-moon/gem-622317688272 | ['Jackie Ann'] | 2020-12-06 19:27:17.975000+00:00 | ['Poetry On Medium', 'Spirituality', 'Poetry', 'Spiritual Growth', 'Poems On Medium'] |
Potty training, the child will need to build a bridge to get to the other side of potty training. — You can help your child. | Rewards systems, can make it fun, but it can also be like positive punishment and associations creating problems.
Stickers, every time one went to the potty or toilet, is a thing from trends with nannies we had in the EU, also it is a reward system. It is a bit to force the child. We still need a child that is ready to be potty trained. It is not natural, but about awareness and adding positive rewards, during training. It is not hanging the child on time above a toilet and naturally behaves a certain way, over time the child is doing all the things themselves, as they never did anything else than go on time to “the toilet”.
These writers, Zeavon and Silverbrush (2020), do not mention the stickers, in that book, but the bridge they talk about, could be also used to the use of rewards, like stickers. A child not relating stickers to the potty training, will not understand the process, so, awareness is more important than having a system of rewards.
You could add them there, but you do not need them, and you might not always want it, as it is a motivator, but you need to be aware of the other influences that could be associated with the motivators, as explained in the skinner experiment. | https://medium.com/environmental-psychology/potty-training-the-child-will-need-to-build-a-bridge-to-get-to-the-other-side-of-potty-training-5bb5d5a9c573 | ['Jiska Hachmer'] | 2020-12-30 04:11:38.209000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Diaper Free', 'Child Development', 'Bridge', 'Potty Training'] |
Wanted: New Tools To Tame the Wild West of the Internet | Wanted: New Tools To Tame the Wild West of the Internet
It is time for a coordinated effort between government, law enforcement, and developers to create an Internet we can trust.
The digital revolution has transformed our lives and our economy. It has changed how we shop, socialize, eat, exercise, love, and learn. As we stay home during the coronavirus pandemic, our online lives have intensified. Work meetings, play dates, happy hours, and birthday parties have been replaced with Zoom, Hangouts, and Teams.
Instead of getting on the bus in the morning, many of our children log onto Google Classroom and Learn with Homer, followed by countless hours on Netflix and PBS Kids. We anxiously check Twitter and Facebook for news about COVID-19’s spread, then take a break to share silly videos on Snapchat or TikTok and ask Alexa what the weather will be like today.
This forced digital explosion is introducing vast new uncertainties. The intimate personal details of our lives, families, and health conditions are harvested, bought, and sold in increasingly sophisticated ways by companies around the globe.
We receive apologetic alerts informing us that institutions with which we have shared sensitive, personal, and financial information have unwittingly shared our secrets with unscrupulous actors. We learn that the apps we have downloaded on our phones have been tracking our locations in alarming detail. We shudder to discover that unfamiliar companies have been covertly collecting information about our health, sleep, and even fertility. We worry about the information our children may be irrevocably revealing about themselves as they play Minecraft, Fortnite, and Clash of Clans. Cable news breathlessly covers stories of campaigns colluding with foreign governments to microtarget deceptive ads at U.S. citizens using dossiers of personal data collected via social media.
When we download apps onto our phones, we hastily scroll down and click through the dense, jargon-filled privacy policies containing terms and conditions we barely understand. We realize that data — our data — is increasingly central to the business models of the companies that offer us products and services. And we accept that bargain, up to a point.
But it is hard to escape the uneasy feeling that the rules governing how we deal with each other on the Internet are broken and the institutions that are supposed to be protecting us from misuse of our data online are time and time again letting us down.
Over the past few months, the Future of Privacy Forum, a nonprofit which brings together industry, academics, advocates, and others to tackle the challenges of tech innovation and privacy protection, has been incubating a new effort called the International Digital Accountability Council. Led by an experienced team of international lawyers, technologists, and privacy experts, IDAC will convene stakeholders from industry, government, civil society, and academia to explore what other structures can be put in place to proactively identify and resolve risks and harms in the developer ecosystem and provide meaningful, accountability.
The Internet has grown increasingly complex and laws and regulations have struggled to keep up. We now have a patchwork of privacy rules that change depending on where you live, with dramatically different laws in Europe than in the United States and different rules in California than in Kentucky. There is no baseline set of privacy protections on the Internet.
Seven years ago, I worked in the Obama administration when we proposed a consumer privacy bill of rights. Since then, the European Union has passed an ambitious framework called the General Data Protection Regulation and states across the U.S. — led by California — have put in place new consumer data privacy laws.
Recently, there has been emerging momentum around the need for national legislation. Before the coronavirus eclipsed all other policy priorities, the chances of federal privacy legislation in this Congress were the best they had been in decades. Now, meaningful action is less certain — even as the risks have vastly expanded.
Meanwhile, there has been a frenzy of law enforcement activity at the federal and state level. The Federal Trade Commission has settled cases for record-breaking amounts while state Attorneys General have actively held a number of companies accountable for unfair and deceptive trade practices laws. Regulators in Europe and around the world have actively conducted investigations into numerous allegations of data misuse.
While this work has been valuable and impactful, law enforcement alone is poorly equipped to keep up with data misuse on a global scale in an ecosystem as vast and complex as the software that powers our mobile devices and computers. Platforms like Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter, and Microsoft host an enormous array of apps, plugins, and complex integrations with software created by tens of thousands of third-party developers.
Part of the solution is to demand that platforms play a more active role in policing the third parties they contract with for offering services through their app stores and integrations. But just as it is impossible for law enforcement to police the entire ecosystem, it is unrealistic to believe that the platforms alone can keep up with all that is happening on their own sites.
Solutions that aim to increase accountability online should take a broader view of oversight. Protecting privacy and other user rights in this complex digital environment demands that government, industry, academics, technical experts, and other stakeholders engage in a coordinated approach that prioritizes developer education, compliance, accountability, and oversight of data practices.
It is time for a coordinated effort between government, law enforcement and developers to create an Internet we can all trust, where the rules are clear and fair. Companies that play by the rules should be able to succeed online. Users should be able to trust that their data will be treated with respect. With the help of an independent, international watchdog like IDAC, governments and nonprofits can work together to make sure that everyone’s rights are protected online no matter where they live.
Quentin Palfrey is President of the International Digital Accountability Council, a Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and former Senior Advisor for Jobs & Competitiveness in the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. | https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/wanted-new-tools-to-tame-the-wild-west-of-the-internet-126bb58ac639 | ['Quentin Palfrey'] | 2020-04-28 16:26:12.892000+00:00 | ['Data Privacy', 'Technology', 'Data', 'Digital'] |
Solving Business Problems with Analytics: Workload Evaluation (1.3) | Recap (You can skip this section to the next heading if it’s still fresh)
We determined that to solve all these problems, we must first start with the information we have available to us. We know that we have some employees, and we know that we have some volume of work to accomplish. Okay, easy enough so far. The most important thing we need to do is to determine how to measure the total work volume that is required of us. Each of these problems is dependent on the solution to this one; This must be our starting place.
How do we measure the total work volume? Well, this is going to require that you research the potential variables in the real world. Every manager you talk to will probably have a different answer to this, so collect all the features you can for this evaluation. For our example, we came up with some general ones to use: purchases, invoices issued, and purchase dollar value. We need to evaluate and make a determination of the best of these measurement for each scenario. Then, we will have to normalize these measurements and add them together to get the total work volume. Since we are trying to measure work, the best measurement will have the most linear relationship to the effort of accomplishing the unit of volume. While effort is a really hard thing to measure, we can infer this value by looking at its cost; The cost of effort is time in an organization. Therefore, to evaluate the best potential measurement of work volume we will evaluate the correlation coefficient for each volume measurement, and the highest value will be our choice.
ρx,y = co-variance(x,y)/(σₓ*σᵧ)
Where x = effort, and y = volume
effort = 1+((x-μ)/σ)
volume = sum(units)
volume_category = {category|max{ρ(effort,vol_measure):∀vol_measure}} normalized_units = ∑{units/max(units)|volume_category}
_________________ relative_volume = effort * normalized_units
So now that we have our total work volume measurement, everything else falls into place naturally. The next hurdle is to determine how much work to expect from a single contributor.
To evaluate this we take the average total work volume divided by the average time required to accomplish that work to give us a measurement of work efficiency. To determine how much to expect from the average contributor, we’ll take the average of our efficiency measurement and return the average volume contribution where the efficiency is within a standard deviation of the population mean.
avg_volume = avg(relative_volume)/employee
avg_efficiency = avg_volume/avg(time)
_________________ exp_vol_contribution = avg_volume <--- avg_efficiency - σ < avg_volume < efficiency + σ
Now that we know how to measure total work volume and the expected contribution of an employee, we can answer the rest of our questions pretty easily.
To evaluate the employees required, we just take our total work volume and divide it by the expected contribution. To evaluate our current workload capacity, we take our current employees and multiply it by the expected contribution.
req_contributors = relative_volume/exp_vol_contribution
capacity = exp_vol_contribution * count(employees)
We can now answer each of the questions we’ve been presented with. Now to see this solution in practice we will first have to generate some test data. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/solving-business-problems-with-analytics-workload-evaluation-1-3-30d2bf287891 | ['Mark Styx'] | 2020-03-05 17:56:37.038000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Business', 'Analytics Life Cycle', 'Workload Management', 'Data Science'] |
it’s not what you do, it’s who you are | Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash
We are so much more.
At what point did we begin to tie our value, our worth, our identity into our occupation. Why is there so much value in that space?
We’re always in a rush. We always work extra hours. Pick up side projects. Measure our worth through productivity. Always on go, always in a rush. Trying to make it, trying to make more money. Trying to make it through the day. Stretching ourselves as thin as we can without completely snapping, but anymore pressure… we cut it so close.
Why?
Why, when set against odds of time are racing against us. Against tragic incidents, only then are we forced to see our lives with such clarity. We know then, where our value truly lies. When did we forget?
But, I think deep down we all know. So, maybe not forget. But, why do we still choose?
We work to make a living. At least that’s the idea.
An idea.
You are, we are so much more. We hold value in our hearts. Our minds. Our loved ones. We live this life for ourselves, but for others.
I don’t think we were meant to deteriorate under the thumb of corporate America. It’s hard to shine that way. There’s got to be a balance, somewhere.
Occupation doesn’t hold any true value. I think that anything worth valuing is intangible… maybe you agree, maybe you don’t. But, I think the truth is somewhere in between.
I think that the only time it matters is if your job is simply a vessel to do what your passion and heart drives you to do. To express your gift, your love, your genius to the world. If you’re lucky, you can live you life just like that.
Maybe just be more mindful of the life you’re trying to live. Show up for things that matter the most to you. Only you know what that is. But, if you don’t choose, someone else will for you. | https://medium.com/@preciouspioneer/its-not-what-you-do-it-s-who-you-are-afc58a793ebc | ['Precious Pioneer'] | 2020-11-23 01:11:47.829000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Corporate Culture', 'Occupation', 'Essentialism', 'Values'] |
Joe Rogan is a Colossal Hypocrite | I was not a fan of Fear Factor. It seemed wrong to make people do such unpleasant things for money. Not only that it does not really put Americans in a good light to see us chasing money in that way. Joe Rogan even admits he got the gig because he did not even take it seriously.
In the years since, Rogan has risen to fame as a podcaster. My sons had turned me on to him a few years ago. I have found him interesting and EARNEST. The importance of being earnest and honest cannot be underestimated…IMO. He has given a platform to many an outlier personality.
I do not agree with many of the man’s opinions, BUT I do support the many personae non gratae and taboo subjects he brings onto his show. This is apparently where “journalism” has gone. People who have lots of money and can ward off lawsuits and law enforcement because they have deep pockets. It is why Joe Rogan has been able to explore many illicit substances on his show.
However, one would be foolish if one were to surmise being in California did not HELP Joe achieve his success and explore these taboo subjects. He has been an extremely vocal proponent of cannabis. Of course, cannabis is legal in California so there is no problem. Yes that WAS true.
Now Joe has made a BIG DEAL about moving to Texas, because he thinks California sucks. He thinks Texas is better. It certainly is if you have money and are willing to talk trash on California. It seems Texas law enforcement is just as hypocritical as Joe Rogan. Texas law enforcement has no problem breaking down the doors of hapless dope smokers. They have been doing it for decades. However, Joe seems to be able to smoke cannabis IN Texas with NO CONSEQUENCES.
How can this be? Are not Texas law enforcement sworn to uphold Texas law? A state where more than half of the prison population is made up of non-violent drug offenders. Texas is really pretty hard core about incarcerating drug offenders. Texas law enforcement KNOW exactly where Joe Rogan is, yet they do not break down his door.
Is it because he picked the “sanctuary city" of Austin? Most likely that is why he chose Austin as the city council has given the police department a directive to make pot enforcement a low priority. They didn’t make it legal as in NO priority, just LOW priority. That means if Joe pisses anyone off in law enforcement, they can still bust down his door any time they want. The truth is Joe REALLY can’t be Joe in Texas. He cannot completely throw caution to the wind can he? Can Joe be Joe and thumb his nose at authorities in Texas?
I have a Fear Factor challenge for Mr. Rogan. Why don’t you start stumping for legalization in your new state. Better yet, use your podcasting reach and power to free many of the cannabis offenders rotting in Texas jail. I dare you to do so Mr. Rogan. Show your fans and America what a GREAT state Texas REALLY is. Otherwise you can wear the big H on your forehead! Such hypocrisy! I am deeply disappointed in someone I thought was intellectually consistent and earnest. I guess I was wrong. | https://medium.com/@atrigueiro/joe-rogan-is-a-colossal-hypocrite-7bc4de533299 | [] | 2020-12-14 03:26:17.834000+00:00 | ['Cannabis', 'Marijuana Legalization', 'Marijuana', 'Joe Rogan'] |
The Curious Alchemy of Cheesemaking | ”Milk’s leap into immortality” — Clifton Fadiman
The ancient Swiss Alps method of cheesemaking required 100 days of manual labor. The summer, so hot in the valley, was the perfect season to take the herds into the mountains. There was plentiful wildflowers, grasses, and herbs to forage. The cheesemaker could work with the herd to capture the nutrients of the season and provide for the community through the winter. They did this by turning milk into one of mankind’s oldest foods: cheese!
Milk contains all the nutrition you need to stay alive, and turning that milk into cheese is a way of preserving that nutrition. Mountain cheeses are a bit of sun on a winter’s day.
All around the country, such old time cheesemaking traditions are being fostered. Curious about the process and how hard it really was to make your own cheese, I headed over to the home of a friend who had recently begun the care of a small herd of goats.
It takes a while to make cheese, so we start early. We were going to make feta from scratch, as well as some chevre.
To start our feta from scratch, Ann took out two jugs of her goat’s milk, unadulterated from her herd. This means raw and unpasteurized.
All good cheese starts with good quality milk, and what makes good milk depends on good feed, good health, good environment, and lack of stress on the animals.
The first step is to warm the milk to 86 degrees and add in a starter culture and lipase.
Once the milk is poured, microbial culture is added. Starter culture it’s called. The cultures are microorganisms that are eating the sugar lactose in the milk and producing lactic acid, in a “lacto” fermentation.
In old world European methods, the barrels were made of wood, the better to hold in microbial culture. Or, one might use cultured whey from a previous batch. Much like continuing a sourdough bread culture, cultured milk contains live probiotics, especially if it’s raw. Today we are using starter culture specifically designed for feta.
We wait 45 minutes for the starter culture to work it’s magic.
At this point, rennet is added, an enzyme that causes the milk to coagulate.
Rennet for cheesemaking was made for a long time from the stomach of suckling calves. Since digestion turns milk into cheese, consumption of milk technically predates humanity, starting with the first mammals. The stomach acid of a prehistoric baby mammal nursing separated the whey and curds of milk. How did we ever find this out? It is believed that ancient humans carried milk in the dried stomach of animals, and that on a hot day it curdled, and they found that it both was edible and preserved longer.
Rennet is a protease enzyme that causes the proteins in the milk to coagulate, causing it to separate into solids (curds) and liquid (whey). Don’t worry, nowadays, rennet can be extracted from lots of different, including vegan, sources. Even non-GMO fungal sources, or vegetarian options like nettle and yarrow.
When we peer under the lid 45 minutes later, it’s an amazingly different consistency.
The rennet has done it’s job. The milk has turned from pure liquid into curds and whey.
The next step is to cut the curd: this separates the curd from the whey. After cutting the curd, you must mix it up every ten minutes while alternately letting it sit still.
Every ten minutes we give it another swirl.
Next, the curds must be scooped out and strained through a cheesecloth.
The curds are pressed into small molds. For feta, we use small plastic molds, though anything could be used. The remaining whey can be cultured as well, into ricotta cheese.
In this feta method, the weight of the curds themselves is what ends up pressing out more of the whey and pressing them into each other; it knits itself together. It works surprisingly well, and quickly. An hour later they were ready to flip, and had already formed their own unique masses.
Before air drying, they need to be salted. If you didn’t live near the sea and had access to salt, such as in old time chèvre making in France, you’d use ash.
They can age for as long as you desire. Traditionally, as cheese ages in caves, it begins to change pH, and as it ages, new microorganisms take root to imbue it with even more and subtler flavor profiles. Cheese, it turns out, is very much alive. It’s its own ecosystem. As many as 2,000 species of organisms can be thriving on cheese. This battalion of probiotic bacteria keeps the bad ones at bay.
Aging the cheese brings together pollens, molds, and yeast in the air, and incorporates them into the flavor of the cheese. This is where the countless variations of texture, flavor, and consistency arise; from the terroir not just of the grasses, animals, and milk, but from a wild microbial array growing on the cheese.
The final feta of the process is tangy, salty, and delicious. It seems to taste all the better when you’re sitting on the same farm it came from. Whether terroir is detectable or not could be debated, but the knowledge of the place, animals, and creative labor that goes into the cheese seems to add a sweet flavor indeed.
It’s a curious narrative nowadays — people are heading back to the land to produce artisanal food products. Books adorn shelves with titles like: “One city-dweller’s radical move to the country!” “Couple drops all to invest in small family farm! ” Artisanal cheesemakers are on the rise. Real cheese is making a comeback.
One cheesemaker calls it America’s cheese revolution. An artisan revival of dairy heritage. A resurgence of connection to people and place.
Historically, traditional local cheese said quite a bit about the person who made it; their identity. If they produced Cheddar cheese it meant they were from Somerset County in the United Kingdom, nearby Cheddar Gorge, that they were milking cows, and had access to salt.
Your regional cheese spoke of where you were from: your geography, kin and home. Your belonging in the word.
In the same way, making local cheese could be a connection of people and place. Working with its textures and flavors, coaxing something delicious out of your environment with your ingenuity and perseverance, food in context becomes a story. Deeply satisfying; cheese for the soul.
A well earned breakfast: goat milk chevre drizzled with local honey. Yum! | https://tarnaska.medium.com/the-curious-alchemy-of-cheesemaking-b8266d8ac1fa | ['Jennifer Tarnacki'] | 2019-11-23 10:29:02.375000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Resilience', 'Cheese', 'Homesteading', 'Food'] |
Are You Hungry to Beat the Competition? | 11 Tools to Put Your Cultural Virtues Into Practice
Once you’ve established the wants and needs of your organizational culture, it’s time to get down to brass tacks and start implementation. I may be stating the obvious here, but building and changing culture doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years of effort and leadership design, but by following the tools outlined below, you can start putting your cultural virtues into practice.
Cultural Familiarization
If you want your organization to behave a certain way then it makes sense to tell them explicitly. As the saying goes, “you only have one chance to make a first impression,” so your first step is to incorporate some form of cultural familiarization into new-hire orientation. This is your first and best opportunity to set the tone and let your new employees know what the organization is all about.
Set the example
This should be obvious, I hope. You must lead by example. No culture can thrive, regardless of how great its design, unless the leader who implements it shows a passion and energy for it. If you don’t practice the virtue yourself, then don’t expect it to become part of the culture you’re trying to implement. Inconsistent behavior will undermine everything you’re trying to do.
“Do as I say, not as I do never works… what you say means far less than what you do.” — Ben Horowitz
Provide context
Help your employees remember your virtues by providing the context behind each one and what it means to the organization. When the team understands the “why” it gives the virtue meaning and purpose. The context prevents them from merely memorizing a list and helps them understand the best way to make the organization a success.
Hold focus groups
A great way to layer on the context is to hold focus groups. Break down each virtue and bring small groups together to discuss what it means to them. You can even create booklets or guides that break each virtue down into component parts, with examples to help drive the context home.
Governing directives
This is more than a code of conduct posted on the company’s website. It needs to be an encompassing set of rules meant to dictate how people behave. The samurai had Bushido which provided specific guidance, on and off the battlefield. The honor and discipline attributed to the samurai warrior class were in large part due to the Bushido governing their way of life.
Keep these 3 points in mind to ensure your directives are effective:
Your rule must roll off the tongue. Bushido was mostly unwritten for hundreds of years, yet it was still effective in governing samurai behavior. That’s because the rules were easy to remember through the use of stories and parables. Your teams must understand the context behind the rule. Force them to ask themselves, “why?” Strike the right balance of rule specificity. They should be specific enough so there’s little room for interpretation, but not so specific that they hardly ever apply. If it doesn’t need to be used frequently and often, then no one will remember it exists. Use practical examples where you can so that employees more easily understand.
One example of a governing directive that meets these criteria- Amazon’s no PowerPoint rule. In his 2017 Letter to Shareholders, Jeff Bezos explained his approach:
“We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of “study hall.” … They are brilliant and thoughtful and set up the meeting for high-quality discussion.” — Jeff Bezos
As you can see, this meets all three of our criteria for a good governing directive:
It’s simple and easy to remember. The context behind it is clear- memos are more thoughtful than slides and set up a meeting for high-quality discussion. Daily meetings mean the employees encounter the rule often, so it’s constantly on their minds.
One of my favorite examples of a creative governing directive is from Ben Horowitz’s book, What You Do Is Who You Are, which discusses instilling a culture of respect. To do this, he did not focus on respect per se, but on being on time for meetings. Ben says:
“If you were late for a meeting with an entrepreneur, you had to pay a fine of ten dollars per minute. Avoiding the fine took practice and hard work, and embedded a number of great habits into our culture. You had to plan your previous meeting correctly, so it wouldn’t conflict with the meeting with the entrepreneur. You not only had to end that meeting with discipline, but you had to run it with discipline, so everything got done in the time allotted. You had to avoid being distracted by random texts or emails. You even had to think about when to go to the restroom.”
In the end, he says he never really collected a lot in fines, but it went a long way in building a culture of respect. This is an example of a perfect governing directive.
Deconflict using ethics
Over time, as your cultural virtues and norms grow, there will be instances where they conflict. For example, the virtue of “putting the client first” may conflict with “doing the right thing” if the client is asking for something illegal. You need to deconflict these ahead of time by placing ethics and integrity above all else. In other words, not all virtues are created equal. As I mentioned under governing directives, use practical examples and specific rules to address conflicts ahead of time and avoid ambiguity in the moment. Keep in mind that it’s next to impossible to design a culture without these conflicts, but it’s imperative you address as many as possible ahead of time. In the end, you must be explicitly clear with what your organization must never do by prioritizing your cultural virtues.
Go deep
Don’t use surface-level platitudes that have no meaning. Go deep and use virtues that stand out from the norm. Remember, your culture needs to be memorable. Give your virtues deeper meaning so that they’ll have a real impact. This goes back to context, forcing your employees to ask “why” and ensuring they are equipped with the answer.
Incorporate your virtues into the decision-making process
If you’re faced with a decision where the culture comes into question, make sure your employees see how you use your cultural virtues to help make the decision- especially if it’s a tough one. Seek out ways in which you can use your virtues to demonstrate cultural priorities.
Let’s go back to my example where “put the client first” conflicts with “doing the right thing.” Go one step further and offload clients who would even put you in a position where you had to make that call. This is all about prioritizing your culture in the long-run by potentially sacrificing short-term deals and financial wins. By doing so you ensure the long-term viability of the organization because nothing can bring a company down faster than a toxic culture.
Be mindful of outsiders
Your virtues should serve as a holistic guide for how to behave. Not just behavior inside the company, but outside as well. The way you and your employees treat clients and outsiders will impact the culture inside the company. The behavior of you and your team should be universal. This is because behavior outside the workplace is often indicative of how a person most likely behaves at the office as well. We’re simply not that good at compartmentalizing.
Keep top of mind
The best way to instill a culture in your organization is to keep it on the top of their minds, continuously exposing the team to your virtues. The best way to do that is by holding frequent meetings. I like to use a Lean management technique called daily huddles to accomplish this. Huddles are 5 to10-minute meetings to cover the day’s work, but I find it’s the perfect time to reiterate virtues and expected behaviors.
Create a sense of urgency
Any time you create a sense of urgency, people will move quickly to implement that change. Make your employees feel the need to hold themselves to the standards set in your culture. You can do this effectively by addressing the cynics and providing incentives.
Cynics: The cynics are difficult because if they don’t get on board, the only real option is to let them go. This won’t be easy, but it sends a clear signal to the rest of the organization on what the new culture is all about.
Incentives: On the bright side, you can use incentives to help drive certain behaviors. Whether that’s awards or bonuses, figure out some way to reward and reinforce the behavior you want.
I’ve mentioned this already, but it’s worth repeating: culture is not a “set it and forget it” thing. You need to be constantly vigilant and focused, and not just when you’re first championing your new culture. You will face threats to it constantly- in the way your employees behave, in the way you behave, and in the way you respond to external events. | https://medium.com/chapters-interludes/are-you-hungry-to-beat-the-competition-d6826e92abe7 | ['Jared R Chaffee'] | 2020-12-23 00:31:27.888000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Culture', 'Leadership', 'Leadership Development', 'Business Strategy'] |
Part 2: Stop Using If-Else Statements | APPLIED DESIGN PATTERNS: STRATEGY
Part 2: Stop Using If-Else Statements
Let’s have yet another look at how you can replace if-else statements.
Okay, we both already agree using If-Else statements everywhere is an awful practice.
You’ve without a shred of doubt met If-Else statements that made your head ache six ways from Sunday. Nasty branching and unclear responsibilities. We might as well slap some goto in there while we’re at it just for sh*ts and giggles.
Instructors and teachers love If-Else. It’s their hammer and everything’s a nail. Gotta decide which logic to execute? Use If-Else. Want to create a factory? Use If-Else. You get the point already…
We’ll be refactoring this illustrative hot piece of mess below to something extensible and production ready.
Terrible to look at. And, yes, it could have been implemented with switch as well. This kind of code is nevertheless prevalent.
You know it’s bad. But it’s fixable. A bit of refactoring and we’re back to highly extensible and maintainable code that’ll make you sleep like a baby.
“So, how do we replace these pieces of pain inducing If-Else statements?”
With strategy objects and type discovery.
You’ve likely already heard of the strategy pattern, but might still secretly wonder what the fuzz is all about. Here’s a brief introduction to a pattern that’ll change how you write branching in the future.
We often need to determine which logic to execute based on some condition. By creating a group of classes with a common interface, in combination with type discovery, we can easily swap which logic to execute, without the need for If-Else.
Nice, huh? We just call a specialized object’s method instead of extending our application with a nightmare of endless If-Else branching statements.
We’ll be refactoring the code above, ensuring we adhere to the SOLID principles. Especially with the Open/Closed principle in mind.
Demo time
1 First we start by extracting the the logic out of the horrible If-Else statement, and place it in separate strategy classes. At the same time, we create a common interface.
Each strategy class implements the common interface. Also, I’ve applied an attribute on the class, which provides us the opportunity to give the strategy a friendly name. The attribute class is define later in this article.
2 Then, we create a method in the Order class which takes the strategy interface as a parameter. Here’s a snippet of the entire Order class.
This allows us to delegate the logic to the specialized class, instead of writing horrible, not-easy-to-extend if-else statements.
3 Now the part where we actually remove the If-Else hell from the illustrative example at the beginning.
This provide some real extensibility to our application.
Let’s briefly walk thru the type discovery process.
We’re building a dictionary containing all the types that implement the common interface, and use the name from the attribute as the key.
Then, we let the user enter some text into the console that will match one of the output formatters name.
Based on the input, we first find the correspond type in the dictionary and create an instance of that type.
The instance is passed to the Order’s GenerateOutput method.
It’s more code, no doubt. But it will allow us to dynamically discover new formatter strategies as they are added to the solution. Something If-Else won’t provide you with, no matter how hard instructors try to push it.
One more thing…
If you wonder about the [OutputFormatterName("")] , above the strategy classes, the implementation looks like this below.
A very simple attribute class that provides us with a friendly display name.
“What to do if I need a new way to format the output?
You create a new class that implements the IOrderOutputStrategy . It’s honestly that simple. The type discovery process will take care of “registering” the new formatter with the application.
By defining the GenerateOuput method on the Order, we don’t need to branch our code using If-Else. We just delegate the responsibility to the specialized class.
“Again, you’re creating a lot of classes to do something simple!”
Sure, it’s a lot of additional classes. But they are insanely simple.
They have meaningful names derived from the functional requirements. Other developers would recognize their purpose from the get-go.
I can also walk thru logic with business people and they’re completely onboard with what I’m talking about with only a bit of handholding — it’s code after all.
Should we really limit our expressiveness, just to accommodate people who are stuck with If-Else?
“But won’t there be situations when If-Else is okay?”
Sure. Sometimes… If you’re into competitive programming, writing something that needs to be highly optimized, if you know something will absolutely not change (until it does)— or doing a college assignment. Instructors love that sh*t. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/part-2-stop-using-if-else-statements-ae4b0bec5bad | ['Nicklas Millard'] | 2020-08-06 19:30:52.182000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Software Engineering', 'Csharp', 'Programming', 'Software Development'] |
The cuStreamz Series: Checkpointing Through Reference Counting in RAPIDS cuStreamz | Introduction
Checkpointing is a necessary feature for production streaming data pipelines and one of the major milestones in bringing cuStreamz into reality. It saves a record of the application’s position in a data stream, so it can be restarted from where it left off in case of failure. cuStreamz is built on top of the Python Streamz library, much of which operates asynchronously. We cannot know when data has been completely processed unless there is some mechanism for tracking when these asynchronous operations complete. For example, if a checkpoint is made only upon reading data from a source, it is possible that the processed result can be lost in the pipeline. The application hosting the pipeline can be terminated before the processed result of the data is written to the target. To prevent data loss, a checkpoint can only be created after each micro-batch has been successfully processed.
In this post, we walk through how a technique involving metadata and reference counting can be used to determine when a checkpoint should be created to achieve a zero data-loss, high-speed pipeline with at-least-once semantics.
Summary
cuStreamz has an assortment of functions that can be used to manipulate streaming data and control the flow of the pipeline. These functions can be tied together into a pipeline by defining which functions receive the output of other functions. In the pipeline, metadata is passed downstream to accompany the associated data. This metadata contains a reference counter that is incremented for each function node. It enters and decremented when the node no longer holds a reference to the associated data. When there are no longer any nodes holding a reference to the data, it is assumed that the data has exited the pipeline.
For the purposes of checkpointing, we can categorize the functions in cuStreamz as either synchronous or asynchronous.
Synchronous functions return only after emitting data downstream every time it is received.
Asynchronous functions may have a cache, a delay, or drop data. They may emit data at some time in the future, but they may return before emitting the data.
Metadata
Metadata is a common feature in data pipelines. In Kafka, for example, the message key is often used to save details about the value. It proved useful for future use cases to implement metadata and use it as the container for the reference counting. This container is what is passed downstream.
For most of the functions in cuStreamz, managing this container is a simple matter of forwarding it downstream without making any changes. However, the asynchronous functions require more attention due to the fact that they do not always immediately emit data downstream. For these functions, the metadata must also be retained with the associated data. In other functions, data is combined from multiple streams. We must carefully consider how to merge the metadata from each stream. Also, functions that collect data, and eventually emit data as tuples need solutions on how they will emit the metadata. The main rule on how metadata is handled is that it must be emitted with the data to which it is tied, even if that data is emitted multiple times. This means that some of the nodes cache and group the metadata in order to obey the rule.
Reference Counting
Reference counting is a method often used in memory management. When an object is instantiated, the number of references to that object is maintained in a counter. When the counter reaches zero, then the memory used by the object can be freed. The same technique is used in cuStreamz to determine if any of the functions in the pipeline still hold a reference to a datum. When the reference counter associated with a datum reaches zero, we can say the datum is “done.”
In practice, most users will be reading data from an external source. Using this provided data source has the reference counting built-in, and it will work out-of-the-box with Kafka’s existing checkpointing mechanism. Notice in the following example; the user does not need to define anything more than the group.id parameter for Kafka to specify the consumer group in Kafka.
args = {
'bootstrap.servers': 'localhost:9092',
'group.id': 'my-group'
}
source.from_kafka_batched('my-topic', args, npartitions=1) \
.map(work) \
.sink(print)
How It Works
For synchronous functions, it is simple to know when data has exited the pipeline. In cuStreamz, when the user invokes a function like .map() or .sink() the functions are not immediately executed; they are only staged. The functions only execute on the data when data is emitted into the pipeline with a call to .emit() . During execution, each stage will have an .update() function that is called from the previous stage. This causes the call stack to grow until the end of the pipeline is reached, at which point, the stack is unwound back to the starting point as each function completes. If you are unfamiliar with the APIs in the following examples, please see the Streamz documentation.
To illustrate, take the following example:
# Example UDF
def inc(x):
return x + 1 # Stage the pipeline
source = Stream()
L = source.map(inc).map(inc).sink_to_list() # Create the reference counter and pass it into
# the pipeline via the metadata
ref = RefCounter()
source.emit(1, metadata=[{'ref': ref}])
Note that the user should not have to create a RefCounter in most cases. It is already managed by the source. When .emit(1) is called, the call stack will evolve like so:
call-stack
time offset frame
0 0 source.emit(1)
1 1 map.update(1) # first call to map
2 2 self._emit(2) # from map
3 3 map.update(2) # second call to map
4 4 self._emit(3) # from map
5 5 stream.sink_to_list(3)
6 # Unwind the stack 0
We can see that a call from the user to .emit(1) from the code above will not return until the result has been returned from the last function in the pipeline.
The difficulty arises when asynchronous functions are introduced into the pipeline because they often return before calling the next function in the pipeline. The following example illustrates this using the .buffer() function.
# Example UDF
def inc(x):
return x + 1 # Stage the pipeline
source = Stream()
source.map(inc) \
.buffer(1000) \
.filter(lambda x: x % 2 == 0) \
.sink(print) # Will be called when the data is “done”
def done_callback():
print('Your data is done!') # Create the reference counter and pass it into
# the pipeline via the metadata
ref = RefCounter(cb=done_callback)
source.emit(1, metadata=[{'ref': ref}])
This example will produce the following series of events:
call-stack
time offset frame
0 0 source.emit(1)
1 1 map.update(1)
2 2 self._emit(2) # From map
3 3 buffer.update(2)
4 0 # buffer returns. unwind stack to 0
n+0 1 self._emit(2) # from buffer at time n
n+1 2 filter.update(2) # "2" passes filter
n+2 3 self._emit(2) # from filter
n+3 4 sink(print)
n+5 0 # The stack unwinds to 0
Here we can see two problems. The first being that the asynchronous node creates a disconnect in the pipeline. The .emit(1) call will return after the data is cached in the buffer. The data will be emitted from the buffer at some unknown time in the future. This means that relying on when the original call to .emit(1) returns is not sufficient in determining when data has been completely processed. It is possible that an error can occur after .buffer() has emitted the data downstream. Secondly, the pipeline is split into two pipelines. How can we track that the data has been fully processed from both pipelines?
With the use of reference counters, we can better track when data has exited the pipeline. In this technique, a counter object is created and emitted into the pipeline to accompany the data. The counter provides a callback to notify the original sender when the count is decremented to zero. The callback is an asynchronous notification to indicate that data has been completely processed. Before the data is emitted forward in the pipeline, the count is incremented by the number of downstream functions. After each function completes, the count is decremented by one. If an asynchronous function receives and caches the data, it is responsible for incrementing the counter by one, and decrementing the counter after it is no longer holding a reference to that data.
Let’s revisit the previous example and add reference counters. | https://medium.com/rapids-ai/checkpointing-through-reference-counting-in-rapids-custreamz-f9ded03674f5 | ['Jarod Maupin'] | 2020-11-18 00:46:30.933000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Data Streaming', 'Data Science', 'Gpu', 'Open Source Software'] |
Who am I? | Living in a beach side city doesn’t leave a lot of candidates for temporarily camping in deep natural woods. Of course, there are state parks in the area, but according to Google Maps satellite images, the closest deep wood that might not get me arrested when building a fire, was nearly twenty miles away.
A few nights before the date I planned for the rite, I found myself free from work just after midnight and decided to scout out the potential terrain.
As I had never been on that land before, I was skeptical that it would be friendly to me on my first visit. Boy was I right!
I had the foresight to pack a small offering of apples and honey, in case I found a suitable clearing for my work, but otherwise I was only armed with my cellphone as a flashlight and my diving knife that always stayed in my car.
My Hike | Copyright Bookflurry Inc.
From an overhead view on Google it looked as if a clearing was no more than 3/4 of a mile North of where I had parked on the outskirts of the forest. The entire perimeter of the wood was full thicket, but I decided to try my luck traveling as the bird flies. If I could get past the initial underbrush, I thought it may thin out and become an easier hike. Yet, after 30 minutes of thorns, marshland, and unrelenting brambles I had moved only a small blip on the GPS. It would take many hours at that rate!
Finally, I accepted defeat on that front, and doubled back to skirt around the perimeter of the wood until I got closer to the clearing.
A wide lane had once been forested in order to accommodate power lines. It ran North along the West side of the wood. While it was very overgrown, it seemed most suitable to remain under cover as I made my way closer to the spot.
I hiked through the head-high weeds for half a mile before my little blue dot appeared to be parallel of the supposed clearing on the map. It looked impossible to enter the thicket, but as before, I hoped it would thin out if I kept my resolve.
I estimated that it was about a quarter mile to the clearing.
It was rough going, pushing aside mangrove bushes, navigating cypress roots and vines, and then, when I was no more than 100 yards in, the land turned to marsh and I was wading in water up to my knees.
Frustration began to set in.
I squatted down to rest. Loathe to let my frustration turn me into what my emotion was suggesting, I instead brainstormed on how best to proceed.
Hacking away at the reeds and mangrove with my diving knife would serve no positive end! If Merlyn were here, I could really use being turned into a fox. Then I could toe my way underneath all of this rubbish!
I got down on all fours and became as much a fox as possible. I put my flashlight in the mesh bag and began crawling beneath the mangrove in the mud. Climbing over in some spots, and under in others, I finally felt that I had managed at least five hundred yards, but the way was no easier than it began!
Marshwort | Copyright 2020 Bookflurry Inc.
I stopped from exhaustion and took out the phone to check my location. Just as before, my little dot had hardly moved in the grand scheme of things. I was utterly defeated. And what was worse, I was getting unsure that I would be able to make it back out, as the effort thus far was debilitating.
As I breathed, I wondered if perhaps the forest was trying to tell me something. Why was I fighting so hard and getting nowhere? It had passed two o’clock in the morning and I had no more hope of getting to that clearing than if I had been sitting back in my car.
My frustration finally waned. Either through absolute defeat, or deciding to heed my very own intuition. I looked again at the satellite image and saw if I were to have just followed the path of the power lines I would have eventually made it to a thinner swath of forest.
Now, I was faced with the decision of an hour return struggle, the way I had come, or the risky choice of continuing on in faith. Momentarily, I thought of just lying down and falling asleep till morning right there in the bog!
I stood up as best I could and tried to compose myself. I wouldn’t be defeated! I would just have to listen to the forest.
“Take the path of least resistance,” I told myself.
I decided to turn North and head for what might be sparser forest rather than the clearing I had been so focused on. Then, something miraculous happened.
After not more than twenty feet, I came out on the trail exactly where I had entered! I was utterly confused, as I had been tracking my progress East. But rather than question the stroke of luck, I simply smiled and thanked the Gods for the double fortune of both insight and direction.
I personally vowed not to fight the forest again!
I headed North through the saw grass toward my new goal, determined to follow whatever trail I could until close enough to consider diverting.
After about another quarter mile I spied some large oaks off to my right and remember thinking, “That’s the type of wood I am looking for.”
But, the satellite image suggested that a sparse woodland was just ahead, so I continued on.
When the trail finally turned away from my goal I looked for the friendliest looking area to start out East again.
I climbed a small mound and started my way into a reedy area that quickly became marshland. At least there wasn’t thick mangrove blocking every inch! I checked my satellite again, and it seemed I was headed in the right direction so, I continued on.
Suddenly, in the thickness of the reeds, there came a sawing noise. I stopped and listened. When the reeds stopped swaying the noise ceased. I took another step, and beside me thrashed a huge disturbance.
Chills ran down my arms as I pictured a mountain lion leaping from the grass.
The large animal sent the reeds clamoring. Cat tails nodded away as the beast moved through the six foot grasses to get away from my spying eyes.
“Where there is no imagination, there is no fear,”
I repeated to myself for the better half of five minutes.
It was just calming me down when my next big step fell on unsupported ground. I sunk in the mud up to my waist and swamp poured in around me.
“What am I doing?”
Here I was, again. Fighting the forest. Wasn’t there an easier way?
Then, as if in answer, I saw the big oak trees off to my right. I looked down at the Google Earth image and saw that my little blue dot was right in the center of what should have been a clearing. So much for that!
I glanced back at the old oaks and put my cell phone into the mesh bag for good. For now on, I was following my intuition!
I trudged my way up out of the mud and started parting the reeds toward the oak trees.
I climbed up a small rise from the wetlands and had to push through some eight foot saw grass, but once I was under the welcoming canopy of the oaks, I knew I was on the right track.
The Forest | Copyright 2020 Bookflurry Inc.
Stretching out before me was a wide lane of low growing marshwort, bordered on both sides by ancient oaks. The nature’s road ahead seemed to stretch unending into the dark. I ventured forth.
There were few interruptions along the path. A fallen log or two, home to some interesting mushrooms, a couple of giant spider webs with orb-weavers as big as my hand.
“Where there is no imagination there is no fear,” I said, ducking beneath them.
And then, there it was. The nemeton.
Some thick vines hung from the canopy, nearly dragging the ground before looping back up into the trees. A giant ancient oak stood guardian on the left of the clearing. It was here that I decided to leave my offering of apples and honey.
Image Courtesy of New Forest Centre, NY
I quickly unpacked my Tupperware and emptied its contents at the base of the trunk. Then, I placed a hand on the tree and awoke it to my cause, following the rite outlined in The Lost Books of Merlyn by Douglas Monroe.
It was past 3am when I turned and headed back the way I had come.
I paused only once at the spot I had entered the stand of oaks from the swampland, but quickly reminded myself to follow my intuition. Instead, I continued down the natural lane, and behold! I emerged directly onto the path where I had eyed the giant oaks at first!
If I had only followed the forest’s lead to begin with!
It only took forty minutes to return to my car following my memory and sense of self-direction, a chore that had whittled away four hours relying on an overhead satellite image by Google!
Soaked to the core and exhausted, I headed for home. | https://medium.com/illumination/who-am-i-f3a450443b75 | ['Jay Horne'] | 2020-11-15 11:35:12.371000+00:00 | ['Wizards', 'Nature Writing', 'Past Lives', 'Witchcraft', 'Druidismo'] |
How Can B2B Predictive Analytics Reinvent your Business? | If qualified leads are what get a B2B business going, meaningful insights from marketing data can make or break their sales processes. A MarketsandMarkets survey claims that the predictive analytics market size is expected to grow up to USD 12.41 Billion by 2022.
SaaS-backed predictive analysis helps B2B marketing experts revise the way they approach their core functions. Not only does it take the burden away from marketing strategies, but processes like predictive modeling, machine learning, and data mining allow a thorough analysis of current and historical data to come up with useful insights and predictions of future business outcomes. This leaves B2B marketers free to create search intent relevant content and devise campaigns that cater to the specific needs of their target audience. The result is focused on creating high-value content for big-ticket clients. Businesses that hire software developers successfully leverage the potential of predictive analysis for their business processes.
How Can B2B Predictive Analysis Reinvent your Business?
Predictive analysis can help marketing and sales teams leverage available data optimally and focus on driving better ROIs. We tell you how:
B2B businesses backed by predictive analysis can easily spot prospects and leads due to their ability to identify and pinpoint profiles with similar behavior patterns on the basis of their actions. Even simple actions like a buyer’s purchase intent, content downloading, or contract renewal add to the data repository and help predictive models identify similar prospects early on in the sales cycle by prioritizing them, reaching out to them, and leveraging advanced opportunities to market what they have got.
In legacy arrangements, B2B marketers need to categorize their prospective clients and leads on the basis of factors like industries and job roles. However, this segregation remained a laborious effort often initiated by manual intervention. Predictive algorithms help with analysis and automate the categorization process by identifying and creating relevant segments. Thanks to predictive analysis, B2B marketing professionals can execute campaigns that provide adequate assistance to leads.
B2B salespeople used to embrace account segmentation, but due to the amount of knowledge updating it requires, that sales model has become ineffective due to its inconsistent results. It is often the culprit behind poor resource allocation and the use of different sales strategies without any common point. The use of predictive analytics in sales planning lets resources is effectively allocated to the right projects. The technology can revamp the way businesses look at sales talent and field expertise.
In the End
While the use cases of predictive analysis in B2B business setup can well be numerous, decision-makers must keep their problem statements insight to figure out the exact goals they seek to achieve using the tech.
Using predictive analytics in combination with AI can summarize KPIs for sales control and accelerate the often slow-moving side of the sales management process. Not only does it add immense value, but it also saves time. B2B businesses must choose predictive analytics software that is easy and quick to implement in the sales process. This way, the outcomes, and insights can be implemented with a short-term horizon, and the returns can be huge. | https://medium.com/@optimalvirtualemployee/how-can-b2b-predictive-analytics-reinvent-your-business-23d3b232c12c | ['Optimal Virtual Employee'] | 2021-06-17 11:31:09.487000+00:00 | ['Predictive Analytics'] |
Your Work Is Not Your Worth | Your Work Is Not Your Worth
Zlatovic Vickovic
I used to be fancy. A bold-faced title, a six-figure salary, and a Brooklyn prewar brownstone. Business cards that would drive Patrick Bateman to wield a chainsaw down five flights of stairs. Ink still wet on equity partnership papers. I had a towering inferno of pretty finery. Supple kidskin leather handbags imported from Italy and London, stacks of handknit sweaters, sapphire glitter heels that cost more than monthly mortgage payments — pristine and unworn because I liked the look of all my pretty, expensive things but rarely handled them. All because I had a job, a career, a title, and a paycheck that was slowly killing me.
No one tells you about the weight you gain because you’re chained to your desk working on a deck into the late evening, cozying up to SeamlessWeb. You wake and sleep to the hum of fluorescent lights. You type type type while kind women empty your trash. You cry in bathroom stalls. When you have to fire people, you’re trained to parrot, “It’s a business decision.” Even when the person’s — whose life you’ve temporarily ruined — hands quake. Your boss tells you it gets easier, and you suspect he’s a sociopath because it never gets easier.
But no matter. Your co-workers click click click and this gets you thinking that it’s been months since you’ve seen daylight. No tells you about the time you lose. No one tells you maybe this job isn’t worth it because of what you’re forced to give.
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=videos-fraiburg-v-gerta-v-yt2-1dpu-11.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/videos-Pacos-de-Ferreira-Boavista-v-en-gb-dqi-.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=Video-fraiburg-v-gerta-v-yt2-1qat-9.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/v-ideos-Pacos-de-Ferreira-Boavista-v-en-gb-jcl-.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/videos-Pacos-de-Ferreira-Boavista-v-en-gb-euu-.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/v-ideos-maribor-v-aluminij-v-sl-sl-1kjb-8.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=video-fraiburg-v-gerta-v-yt2-1xfy-11.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/v-ideos-ujpest-Budapest-Honved-v-en-gb-pqo-.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/Video-Pacos-de-Ferreira-Boavista-v-en-gb-ein-.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=Video-fraiburg-v-gerta-v-yt2-1gfe-8.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/Video-Pacos-de-Ferreira-Boavista-v-en-gb-wbl-.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/videos-ujpest-Budapest-Honved-v-en-gb-tsi-.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/videos-granada-v-betis-v-yt2-1vxf-9.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/video-granada-v-betis-v-yt2-1jcp-11.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=v-ideos-AZ-Alkmaar-Willem-2-Tilburg-v-en-gb-1suy-8.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/Video-ujpest-Budapest-Honved-v-en-gb-xyd-.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=video-AZ-Alkmaar-Willem-2-Tilburg-v-en-gb-1erc-14.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/v-ideos-granada-v-betis-v-yt2-1ayy-8.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/videos-Espanyol-Almeria-v-en-gb-iuw-.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/Video-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1tob-9.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/video-Arouca-SC-Covilha-v-en-gb-vkf-.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=videos-AZ-Alkmaar-Willem-2-Tilburg-v-en-gb-1etb-5.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/v-ideos-granada-v-betis-v-yt2-1hbw-13.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/v-ideos-Espanyol-Almeria-v-en-gb-jdr-.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/video-Espanyol-Almeria-v-en-gb-kwp-.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/videos-granada-v-betis-v-yt2-1tql-13.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/videos-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1voo-3.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/Video-Espanyol-Almeria-v-en-gb-ggf-.php
http://esc.vidrio.org/clr/v-ideos-Medeama-Liberty-Professionals-v-en-gb-rqr-.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/videos-Espanyol-Almeria-v-en-gb-sik-.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/Video-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1myu-11.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/video-Mouloudia-Oujda-Renaissance-Zemamra-v-en-gb-1wxo-13.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/v-ideos-ujpest-v-budapest-honved-v-hu-hu-1pdr-14.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/Video-Espanyol-Almeria-v-en-gb-tmn-.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/video-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1rui-8.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/videos-ujpest-v-budapest-honved-v-hu-hu-1vgu-10.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/Video-Mouloudia-Oujda-Renaissance-Zemamra-v-en-gb-1nmo-6.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/video-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1bgf-1.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/Video-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1ovr-3.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/video-ujpest-v-budapest-honved-v-hu-hu-1xxc-12.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/video-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1odh-1.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/video-Mouloudia-Oujda-Renaissance-Zemamra-v-en-gb-1yyr-5.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/Video-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1zhy-10.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/v-ideos-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1vpo-7.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/videos-Ethnikos-Achnas-Doxa-Katokopias-v-en-gb-1hiy-.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/videos-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1fcx-17.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/Video-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1fqu-15.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/Video-ujpest-v-budapest-honved-v-hu-hu-1uta-6.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/v-ideos-Jagiellonia-Bialystok-Gornik-Zabrze-v-en-gb-1xbw-5.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/Video-Ethnikos-Achnas-Doxa-Katokopias-v-en-gb-1uux-8.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/v-ideos-Jagiellonia-Bialystok-Gornik-Zabrze-v-en-gb-1dck-5.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/Video-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1esz-5.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/Video-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1guf-19.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=v-ideos-espanol-v-almeriia-v-yt2-1vxi-14.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/video-Ethnikos-Achnas-Doxa-Katokopias-v-en-gb-1eai-7.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/Video-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1pjs-4.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/Video-sassuolo-v-milan-v-yt2-1ubx-15.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/v-ideos-Jagiellonia-Bialystok-Gornik-Zabrze-v-en-gb-1nbx-2.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=Video-espanol-v-almeriia-v-yt2-1jqz-3.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/Video-Granada-Real-Betis-v-en-gb-1llo-4.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/video-Granada-Real-Betis-v-en-gb-1mwp-.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=Video-espanol-v-almeriia-v-yt2-1dst-5.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/video-ujpest-Budapest-Honved-v-en-gb-dmx-.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/Video-besiktas-v-erzurumspor-v-tr-tr-1yjc-9.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/Video-pontedera-v-juventus-u23-v-it-it-1zsy2-1.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/v-ideos-ujpest-Budapest-Honved-v-en-gb-xse-.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/video-Granada-Real-Betis-v-en-gb-1czk-4.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/videos-Granada-Real-Betis-v-en-gb-1vwd-17.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=v-ideos-espanol-v-almeriia-v-yt2-1fvj-11.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/v-ideos-ujpest-Budapest-Honved-v-en-gb-xck-.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/Video-Granada-Real-Betis-v-en-gb-1urh-15.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/videos-pontedera-v-juventus-u23-v-it-it-1dsa2-13.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/video-besiktas-v-erzurumspor-v-tr-tr-1fbg-13.php
http://esc.vidrio.org/clr/video-Medeama-Liberty-Professionals-v-en-gb-yik-.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/videos-Granada-Real-Betis-v-en-gb-1rfg-1.php
https://cartaodosus.info/video.php?video=v-ideos-espanol-v-almeriia-v-yt2-1dak-11.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/v-ideos-besiktas-v-erzurumspor-v-tr-tr-1qcg-5.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/videos-pontedera-v-juventus-u23-v-it-it-1lrf-6.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/v-ideos-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1uab-16.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/video-besiktas-v-erzurumspor-v-tr-tr-1nct-10.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/v-ideos-pontedera-v-juventus-u23-v-it-it-1rcu-15.php
https://kleinoot.nl/yry/videos-granada-v-real-betis-v-es-es-1hli-3.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/video-granada-v-real-betis-v-es-es-1vqa2-2.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/Video-pontedera-v-juventus-u23-v-it-it-1uow-5.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/v-ideos-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1xgv-3.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/Video-besiktas-v-erzurumspor-v-tr-tr-1hiv-5.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/video-granada-v-real-betis-v-es-es-1rxi2-9.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/Video-Besiktas-BB-Erzurumspor-v-en-gb-1cbj-.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/videos-granada-v-real-betis-v-es-es-1ofe2-16.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/videos-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1kbs-18.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/video-Besiktas-BB-Erzurumspor-v-en-gb-1qjt-5.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/video-Besiktas-BB-Erzurumspor-v-en-gb-1qyi-12.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/videos-jagiellonia-bialystok-v-gornik-zabrze-v-pl-pl-1cqh-19.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/Video-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1zaf-4.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/video-granada-v-real-betis-v-es-es-1hbm2-1.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/Video-jagiellonia-bialystok-v-gornik-zabrze-v-pl-pl-1clj-15.php
http://multi.provecracing.com/pfs/videos-granada-v-real-betis-v-es-es-1oip-3.php
http://tanum.actiup.com/nue/v-ideos-istanbulspor-v-bursaspor-v-tr-tr-1nln-14.php
http://mix.gruposio.es/gci/Video-lorient-v-rennes-v-fr-fr-1dqt-8.php
https://test2.activesilicon.com/rta/video-jagiellonia-bialystok-v-gornik-zabrze-v-pl-pl-1vgd-10.php
Hold on, now. What’s with the war metaphors? This is life, not a battlefield.
I grew up poor and believe me when I say there’s no romance in subsisting on a bag of potatoes for an entire summer. To have to kiss for knishes. To sit in the dark because Con Ed cut the lights again. To working a hot plate when the gas turns off. To shouting at your friends’ windows from the street because luxury is a dial tone. To do quick math in your head before you hit the register because no one wants the shame in having to decide what to put back.
On television, people used to preach money never made you happy. Well, those motherfuckers have never been poor. From the womb, my mother warned me about the other kids on the block. Get good grades, go to college, get a job, make money, buy a house, get married, have a kid, maybe two, but don’t overdo it because kids suck the light and life right out of you — no offense — and keep making money until they spatula dirt on your face and drop you deep underground. That’s the life you need, my mother said. Not this nonsense, she said, gesturing to the kids on the stoop.
For the first three and a half decades of my life, I believed money solved everything. Money kept the lights on, filled fridges with food, and made sure you had somewhere to lay your head. What I didn’t realize was that there was a difference between the kind of money that sustained you and the kind that consumed you. I only knew the binaries of want but there were subtle gradations.
Nearing midlife, I was confused. I did nearly everything I was reared to do. I got the degrees. I got the job. I had a fancy apartment in Park Slope. I made the money. I was no longer the child hocking our belongings on 13th Avenue. I was no longer the kid stealing money for food. I had all the things, yet I was sick, exhausted, and miserable.
When you’re crushing it, killing it, destroying it, no one tells you about the misery. No one tells you maybe this isn’t what you need or want.
Seven years ago, I was crying in my boss’s office. Back then, I had two—the company president and the CEO—and the two men couldn’t be more different. You should know this was some serious business because I was not a crier. When I got hit by a car when I was 10, I didn’t cry. I laid on the ground and said my shoulder hurt. By the time I was 30, I could count on two hands the number of times I cried.
But here I was sobbing in front of one boss (the president) complaining about the other (the CEO). The man who set my teeth on edge. A man who I had begun to hate, but a man who was also signing my paychecks. My boss was a man who had no problem working me to the bone so he could earn even fatter paychecks while he constantly reminded me that I was insignificant, small. He would forever overshadow my shine and savor my sorrow. And while I made his companies millions, while I had paperwork to prove that I was an equity owner, while everyone around me could see how sick I was from all the stress — he always wanted more. More money, more hours, more work until I had nothing left to give.
Who quits their job when they’re making a fuck-ton of money?
People, I sobbed through my sweater when my boss asked if I was happy. He said the words quietly and slowly. “Felicia, are you happy?”
What do you mean, happy? Define happiness, I said. And he smiled and repeated the question until I shook my head and said no. No, I was most definitely not happy.
Then quit, he said. He might as well have said, well, just walk into X’s office, chop off his head, and put it on a stick. Because who quits their job? I was of the generation that told people to deal with it. Specifically, who quits their job when they’re making a fuck-ton of money?
“People who aren’t happy. People like you who have the luxury of finding another job,” my boss said.
A week later, I quit.
That year, something odd happened. I could’ve easily gone to another agency — my reputation was gold. I scored interviews at companies you’ve definitely heard of. But I did something that, back then, I would’ve considered out of character for me. Instead of negotiating compensation and benefits, I asked about the company’s culture and character, what they valued. Did they have values? Did they have integrity? Did they treat their employees more than just line items on a P&L?
One recruiter laughed and said, you’ve basically alienated 90% of New York.
Over pancakes, a former colleague who was much younger and smarter told me to make my own rules. If what I value is integrity and respect, why not build my own business rooted in those values instead of trying to find them in other companies? Create instead of settle. I had the luxury and privilege of doing it, and so I did.
I’m 44, and only last year did I realize, really realize, that my work is not tied to my worth.
If I’m being completely honest, the journey was the hardest of my career. I was no longer tethered to a title. I didn’t have the security of being affiliated with a company and brands people know. And I most certainly did not have the paycheck and health benefits I once took for granted. Here I was watching people who reported to me crushing it, killing it, destroying it, and while I was proud of them because they deserved it, I also felt small.
I’m 44, and only last year did I realize, really realize, that my work is not tied to my worth. My work is what I do to make a living, but it’s not my character or the whole of who I am. It’s not the relationships I cultivate or the people I love and respect. It’s simply what I do.
I had my war, can I now have peace?
Don’t get me wrong, my work challenges me because I’m a persistent, curious student. My work lights me up because I get to choose the people with whom I work. I’ve designed a business rooted in values of respect, transparency, integrity, and collaboration. I have firm boundaries, and I’m finally protective of my time. Clients know that — unless they’re lying bloody in the street — I’m not available after business hours and on the weekends. Friends know that I’m not answering their calls and texts in the morning because that’s the time when I’m in flow — I’m doing research, I’m thinking through a brand’s positioning, and I’m building their platform.
And with that came other changes: I realized that true wealth is about fulfilling your basic needs and a little more for extras. Meaningful wealth is about having time to spend with the people who matter most. It’s about realizing that you are not your title, your job, your paycheck — you are more beautiful and complicated than a job description.
You are more than what you do. You are infinite. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, you are large. You contain multitudes.
You don’t have to be roaring and conquering to be successful. There are nobility and honor in living a quiet life that flies below the radar. I don’t need “big names.” I want to work with decent, honest people. I don’t need “big money” because I know how much it could ruin you. I don’t need things because things will never fill you if your wants are bottomless.
And I don’t need that fancy life because I had it. Goodbye, and thank you very much, but I’m off living my one great, sweeping, magical, crazy life, and I don’t plan on revisiting the wreckage. | https://medium.com/@sommerjobb/your-work-is-not-your-worth-79496eab8f9f | [] | 2020-12-20 09:55:56.281000+00:00 | ['Babies', 'Health', 'Life', 'Self', 'Coronavirus'] |
How To Survive Quarantine With The Help Of Some Old Jokes | There will come a time when this pandemic becomes history. I hope to live long enough to talk about what these past few months were like with a new generation. The fear. The isolation. The sounds of non-stop ambulance sirens. The inescapable smell of hand sanitizer. The anger that we could have done more to stop the spread of the virus but we couldn’t bother to put forth the effort.
I will remember missing my own family in Texas. My glasses fogging up because of the face masks. The endless grim statistics. The not knowing. I will also remember standing on the lawn of Emilyn’s family’s house and staring at her mother and sister from six-feet away as the funeral home loaded his body into the back of a van. A few moments earlier, the bag had been unzipped so his daughters could say good-bye, at a distance.
This is the pandemic, at least to me. It’s not photos of sourdough bread posted on social media nor is it jokes about not wearing pants to virtual meetings. It’s not even the politicians who failed the country — cowards, every one of them. No. The pandemic of 2020 will always be two sisters and a mother unable to console or comfort one another.
A few days later we held an online video conference service for friends and family which was better than nothing. One old Jew noted, “at least there’s no bad seat on Zoom!”
The last time I saw Richard alive was at a funeral a month or so before he passed. A relative had died, suddenly. It was a tragedy. I think all funerals should be Jewish funerals: the deceased is put into the ground as soon as possible. Then loved ones gather around, cry, and are reminded that only family and community and God matter, and then everyone shovels a little dirt on the coffin. It’s humble. Honest. Connected to the now and to the beyond. And it makes me angry he was denied this because of the virus.
“Funerals are for the living,” he said to me as we walked back to the car. It was a gray day but his eyes still twinkled.
On the ride home I told Emilyn what her dad had told me about funerals being for the living. She confirmed that was one of his many sayings. She then told a joke that was one of his other go-to’s. She imitated the Yiddish accent he would put on when asking old friends “nu?” Here it goes: | https://medium.com/humungus/how-to-survive-quarantine-with-the-help-of-some-old-jokes-6881b0412835 | ['John Devore'] | 2020-05-04 16:11:56.282000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Culture', 'Books', 'Religion', 'Humor'] |
Sage MAS 500 Receives 5-Star Rating | Earlier this month Sage MAS 500 grabbed another 5-Star Rating in this year’s review of High-End Accounting Systems by The CPA Technology Advisor. The product received nearly perfect marks in all 6 review categories — Module/Scalability; Usability/User Experience & Security; Extensibility; Integration/Customization; Reporting and Support/Training & Help.
Check it out here. | https://medium.com/aloktyagi/sage-mas-500-receives-5-star-rating-ee20570b8c7f | ['Alok Tyagi'] | 2017-03-08 21:02:06.040000+00:00 | ['Accounting Solutions', 'Sage Software', 'Erp'] |
Let’s Stop Only Protecting The 1% of the Animal World | Let’s Stop Only Protecting The 1% of the Animal World
…And why I don’t care about Pandas and Monarchs.
Green Blue Metallic Bee at Wall Paper Flare
I walk through the old farm field by my house, large orange lilies blooming at the edge, where the grass meets the outhouses. A large bumble bee bumps into the flower of a black-eyed susan, bending it into an upside down “U” with its weight — sitting just long enough for me to pet the back of this soft, furry monster — a popular activity of my 10 year old self. A hawk moth, easily confused for a hummingbird, buzzes my head, on a beeline for the thistle. Back then I did not think much about how important native pollinators were to all of the plants and wildflowers growing around me.
So, given that it’s all at once officially Pollinator Week, Insect Week and the decade of Biodiversity, it seems important to highlight these fuzzy, and not so fuzzy monsters that make sure we still have nature to visit in the future. Unfortunately we spend too much time protecting the charismatic megafauna like the pandas and polar bears and microfauna like the monarchs and honey bees, the 1% of the animal world.
As an entomologist, I am hopeful we can get beyond protecting the furry and feared wildlife and start expanding our palette a bit.
By focusing on only a few species we are missing the opportunity to make a larger impact — and if we don’t take action as many as 500,000 insect species could be lost due to human action and inaction — the largest loss in nearly 66 million years. This could have drastic consequences for $235–577 billion in crops that require pollinators, among a laundry list of other losses.
Fortunately people do care about pollinators. According to a 2019 poll, nearly all Americans (95 percent) agree special efforts to create designated areas where plants support the health and growth of pollinators, like honey bees and butterflies, should be made. But it’s more than just these species.
Charasmatic Megafauna…and Microfauna
I grew up in the age of the age of panda bears and giraffes — those charismatic megafauna we should all want to protect because they do cute things in the zoo like wrap their tongues around a piece of bamboo or throw a big red ball to their mates. The wildlife we could imagine making a stuffed animal out of and snuggling ourselves to sleep with. I fondly remember pasting the World Wildlife Fund panda sticker on my mom’s car window — and later using alcohol and elbow grease to scrape the adhesive off.
I’ve always been curious why we are so obsessed with the flashy, cute creatures in this world. Some researchers have tried to define what makes these species so charismatic and attractive to us. They found these five characteristics make us so intrigued by these animals. They are Rare, Endangered, Beautiful, Cute, Impressive, and Dangerous — about 20 species in the world are included. This research reminds me of my childhood movie nights where my parents had me watching Nightmare on Elm Street one day and Moonlighting the next — a mix of beauty and fear.
Flash forward 30 years and we now have charismatic microfauna. The age of the monarchs and honeybees. Not a day goes by where we don’t hear about the precipitous decline of the monarch migrations and the death of honeybee colonies. I’m not sure these are great stuffed animals, but the same principle applies. Of the millions of species of insects and pollinators in the world, why have we focused on two species in the U.S., one of which is not even native, the honey bee? And at the end of the day, will protecting these species really save the earth? No.
I’m not saying these species are not worth protecting, but this is just a small slice of the wholesale loss of ecosystems we are experiencing globally. According to a 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 1 million of an estimated 8 million animal and plant species worldwide are threatened with extinction as a result of habitat loss, exploitation of nature, climate change, pollution, and invasive alien species.
Monarchs and Honey Bees
Beehives (libreshot.com)
Every day we seem to hear about the plight of the 1% — the spiraling decline of monarchs and honey bees. A recent NY Times article asks us to empathize with the plight of the honey bee, essentially another form of industrialized farming, where bees are trucked around to farm fields, in a highly artificial and human managed system. Honey bees are essentially an introduced livestock species in North America, and only one of about 4,000 kinds of bees found in North America — and they only pollinate 25–40 percent of our plants. In fact, honey bees compete with our native bees and can spread diseases to them.
The Monarch butterflies are also seeing precipitous declines — down as much as 53% in the past year. Now, this is more concerning and some of the same reasons are likely impacting the other 3,998 pollinators species in the U.S. — habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. But this is still one of many native pollinator species. And one of the top recommendations being given? Plant more milkweed. Unfortunately people are planting milkweed willy nilly, in seed bombs and gift bags. Even worse they are often planting the wrong species of milkweed or planting it where monarchs are not even present — an act that can harm native species and even spread disease among monarchs.
In 2016 the White House created a “national strategy” to reverse America’s declining honeybee and monarch butterfly populations . The goal of the plan was “Creating a Federal Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators.” Other pollinators meaning the other 200,000 native pollinator species in the world. Out of the 22 page plan, 16 pages are spent just on honey bees and monarchs, leaving the other species in the dust.
Native Bees Rule the Roost
When it comes to saving the planet and our food system, native pollinators rule the roost — but nearly a quarter of them face extinction in the U.S. Four species of those fuzzy monsters, the bumblebee declined 96 percent in the last 20 years, and three species are already extinct. They go silently, without a single news article from the NY Times.
As an entomologist I remember impressing my teaching assistant with all of the “cool and weird” wasp and bee species I discovered on the old farm I grew up on in rural Maryland. But, I’ll admit my favorite is the cuckoo wasp. This little guy disguises itself as an iridescent flashy innocent bee, but secretly invades another bee nest, leaving behind it’s eggs and defending itself with that flashy armor. Much better than that honey bee waggle dance if you ask me. But that’s just me.
At the end of the day, beyond their beauty and diversity, native pollinators are the key to our food security. Like figs? Well there’s only one wasp that pollinates fig trees.
In a study of 41 different crop systems worldwide, honeybees only increased yield in 14 percent of the crops. Who did all the pollination? Native bees and other insects. For example, in watermelons, native bees do 90 percent of the pollination. Native bee pollination creates twice as much fruit as honey bees in blueberries. In tomatoes, native bee species increase fruit production significantly. This is just the bee species. Pollinators also include vertebrates, such as birds, bats, and small mammals, and other invertebrates, including flies, beetles, butterflies, and moths.
Orchid Bee (Insects Unlocked)
Saving the other 99%
Fortunately there are many things you can personally do to protect a greater diversity of pollinators. The Nature Conservancy and Xerces Society share some of these. | https://medium.com/greener-together/lets-stop-only-protecting-the-1-of-the-animal-world-3dcd0bc9a393 | ['Marcus Griswold'] | 2020-06-30 03:00:40.544000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Pollinators', 'Nature Writing', 'Biodiversity', 'Bees'] |
Introducing Lucra, a new live streaming platform for ticketed events | Today, Streamlabs, a leading provider of live streaming tools and brand of Logitech, is announcing Lucra, a new live streaming platform for creators to monetize their content and connect with their audience through exclusive events. Lucra’s ticketed event system gives creators a new way to build their business. Viewers can purchase tickets to gain access to private live streams and interact with their favorite creators in a more personalized setting.
Lucra is meant for creators of all types. From artists, musicians, health and fitness experts, gamers, teachers, and more, Lucra provides an easy to use solution for anyone to create an event, connect with their audience, grow their business, and build their community.
“The growth of the live streaming industry over the last few years was accelerated in large part due to the gaming community on Twitch,” said Ashray Urs, head of product at Streamlabs. “But as platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok place a greater emphasis on live video, we see larger adoption from brands and businesses using live video to connect with their customers.”
Creating a live event on Lucra takes seconds. Visit Lucra.live and click ‘create an event.’ After entering the title, description, and the day and time of the event, creators will receive a unique URL that they can then promote and share with their audience. Fans can then visit the event page and start buying tickets to the event.
“Many traditional live streamers earn a living through tips from their audience or by working with paid sponsors. However, these methods aren’t a practical approach to building a business for new brands and content creators looking to utilize live streaming,” said Tom Maneri, founder and lead engineer of Lucra. “We researched different ways to introduce additional growth opportunities for creators within the live stream ecosystem. Ultimately, we believe a live pay-per-view system will help provide a stable foundation for brands, businesses, and content creators to see meaningful growth.”
Paid live events are free to create and run. Lucra handles payment processing and ticket sales, and creators can set the price of their event. Lucra comes with event analytics, so creators can track in real-time how many tickets they have sold, where their visitors came from, and how much revenue they have made.
Lucra is compatible with all major streaming software. When the event is ready to start, visit the event page and copy the Streaming Key and Streaming Server into your streaming software of choice. Live chat functionality allows fans to interact with each other and enables the creator to engage with their audience in real-time.
Additionally, live events on Lucra can be embedded into a personal website. Visit the event page and click the share button just below the video player. From there, copy the code for both video and chat, which can then be placed on any other website.
Lucra is completely free to use and comes with paid options to upgrade with additional benefits. Under our free tier, creators will earn 70% of the proceeds from ticket sales of the event while Streamlabs Prime members earn 100% of ticket sales.
To learn more about connecting with audiences and monetizing live streams, please visit our website.
About Streamlabs
Founded in 2014, Streamlabs is a leading provider of tools for professional streamers. Its groundbreaking software, Streamlabs OBS, offers dozens of features that professional live streamers use to broadcast, better engage with their fans, grow audiences, and improve monetization.
Streamlabs is a brand of Logitech International. Founded in 1981, and headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, Logitech International is a Swiss public company listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (LOGN) and on the Nasdaq Global Select Market (LOGI). For more information about Streamlabs please visit our website or follow Streamlabs on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Discord. | https://blog.streamlabs.com/introducing-lucra-a-new-live-streaming-platform-for-ticketed-events-57bc6ca0fc25 | ['Ethan May'] | 2020-11-19 16:57:53.898000+00:00 | ['Streamlabs', 'Gaming', 'Obs', 'Twitch', 'Live Streaming'] |
Video: The Human in the Machine — Identifying Fraud Victims to Take On Bias in ML | The Human in the Machine: Identifying Fraud Victims to Take On Bias in ML — Reka Eszter Bodo
This is the golden age for data: data points, models, anomalies, patterns and more. We can learn so much from the data, but so can hostile people and organizations, turning the people into the weakest links in fraud detection. The elderly and other vulnerable communities are being scammed in phishing attacks, social engineering, and other fraud attacks. One of our biggest challenges in this age is protecting the users from themselves.
In this talk, Reka shares on how attackers can use the lack of knowledge of those communities, how we can fight it, and what is our social responsibility in protecting them.
Originally from Hungary, Réka has been living in Israel for the last ten years. She made aliyah after years of work and volunteering in the Hungarian Jewish community. Studying Talmud at the Hebrew University and working as a vet technician in JPSCA were short detours before she started working for Riskified as a research analyst three years ago. Her job includes analysing patterns and anomalies, training models and creating optimization to performance by constantly monitoring fraud trends.
This event was a collaborated event with Fraud Fighters IL community.
*Talk is in English | https://medium.com/riskified-technology/video-the-human-in-the-machine-identifying-fraud-victims-to-take-on-bias-in-ml-bf9fcef6d706 | ['Riskified Technology'] | 2020-10-01 08:07:51.261000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Vulnerable', 'Videos', 'Fraud Detection'] |
She Got Used to Being an Angel | Fiction Friday
She Got Used to Being an Angel
The coffee wasn’t bad either.
Photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash
Aerin maneuvered nimbly between the tourists, day trippers, and other slow walkers. No one would keep her from arriving at work on time today.
Her coffee was waiting on the window next to the counter. The morning sun blazed in and the radiator kept the coffee ready for her daily grab and dash.
Aerin slid through the door into the coffeeshop, beating jabbering admins from the 11th floor. The young, sweating man behind the counter swung around and jerked her bag from the shelf.
She saw it coming before he did. The bag was soaked through and ruptured when he picked it up. Her life-essential cups of coffee splattered on the floor.
“I’m so sorry!” The handsome man looked genuinely upset.
“That’s okay. Two large black coffees, please?” Aerin eyed the restive line of customers. She was allowed to cut in front of them since the coffeeshop broke their sacred covenant by serving her coffee to the floor.
“Light and sweet, right?” He pushed dark curls off his forehead, leaned back to call to the coffee server.
“Straight coffee. Just plain, nothing-in-it coffee.” Aerin restrained herself from charging behind the counter to get it herself.
“No,” the man looked perplexed. “They told me. You always buy two large coffees, extra light and extra sweet.”
“That’s what I get. But that’s not what I want.” She didn’t have time to explain why she’d been drinking coffee made wrong. It had been going on for so long she’d kind of developed a taste for it.
“What do you want, Angel Face?” Her coffeeshop nickname sounded ridiculous coming from a young man.
“Two large coffees, just plain black. And my name is Aerin, not Angel Face. Call me Aerin.”
The man scrunched his forehead as if it was hard to process her words.
“But, everyone told me….” Something in her expression silenced him.
“I’m so sorry. I thought…I just wanted to… Please. I need this job.”
Aerin blinked.
“It’s not that big a deal,” she said. “I’ll take whatever you got.”
Apparently relieved, the man wearing the upside down JOE name tag grinned blazing white teeth at her. He filled the two coffee cups himself, shrugged at the other customers, and bagged them after double checking that the lids were securely fastened.
“Thanks. I pay on Fridays,” said Aerin, glancing at the clock. She’d make it if the light was in her favor and she ran and there was an elevator waiting for her.
“My treat, Aerin Not Angel Face,” said the man called JOE. He smiled.
The light was in her favor, the coffee didn’t spill on the dash across the avenue, and the cute new guy held the elevator door open for her.
Her boss smiled when she saw that Aerin was at her desk on time. It was strange being the first two people in the office. There was nothing going on and nothing much to do until the others showed up, but this was how her boss liked it.
Aerin sipped steaming hot coffee made the way she used to like it.
Only she didn’t like it that way any longer.
Now, she wanted her coffee light and sweet. She liked being late if it meant she got more sleep and didn’t lose her job. And she wanted to be called Aerin Not Angel Face again by that handsome man with a kind face. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/she-got-used-to-being-an-angel-f64857dcf369 | ['Louise Foerster'] | 2020-12-25 13:02:41.128000+00:00 | ['Fiction Friday', 'Coffee', 'Fiction', 'Relationships Love Dating', 'Love'] |
Lithium Benefits in Your Bass Boat | Waiting for a morning bite can make it hard to sleep at nighttime. As you patiently wait for the sun to peek over the horizon you check everything on your checklist. Other than that one significant piece of the puzzle that you forgot unexpectedly strikes you and you understand that you never ever charged your trolling motor batteries. Fortunately, you made the choice to change those old lead-acid batteries you had for lithium-powered batteries and you can be charged up enough by dawn to restore the journey.
Worry-free boating
Each part of a boat should work together in order for you to perform those memorable bites that every angler follows. A flaw in your boat’s system can immediately convert a picture-perfect day into a nightmare. Frequently, we think about all the devices we desire to include in our bass boats to make them more practical and to enhance our chances of capturing those evasive giants, yet we pay less mind to the power plant of our innovations. At Melasta we desire to make it clear and really basic as to why lithium batteries are the finest option for your bass boat.
A bass boat requires reliable marine batteries as they are essential for both starting and running your fishing device. Regardless, lithium batteries provide options to every angler’s requirements.
Charging Time
Time to charge is a significant aspect of each and every battery. Our lithium batteries can be charged in as quick as an hour, however, we advise utilizing a charge rate that charges them in 2 to 5 hours. Lithium batteries are partial charge tolerant making them best for on the go or perhaps even for the absent-minded angler.
Weight of the Battery
At very first look the expense of changing to lithium batteries might appear not practical in contrast to lead-acid however when you break down the information, they paint an extremely different image. Lithium batteries last up to ten times longer than their lead-acid equivalents and they still offer 80 % capacity after 2000 cycles. Lithium batteries have 50 to 60% less weight than lead-acid batteries and in some cases, the weight cost savings from changing to lithium batteries can go beyond 100 pounds.
Battery Capacity
For the days when the bite raves from dawn to sunset or even on the days when you grind it out for that one single catch, lithium power will be with you all the way. Lithium iron phosphate supplies more functional capacity than lead-acid. With 25 to 50% greater capacity than lead-acid batteries with full power throughout discharge, lithium batteries remove the voltage drop that is all too typical with lead-acid.
Look, we get it, you are a little concerned about making the switch and wish to ensure it is the ideal move for both your wallet and your boat. We absolutely comprehend however we likewise desire you to understand that the long-term advantages of changing those obsolete and heavy lead-acid batteries will enhance your boating experience. You will have the team at Melasta supporting you and we will address all your concerns and issues.
For more details talk to our experts at [email protected] | https://medium.com/@melastabattery/lithium-benefits-in-your-bass-boat-980d9327743f | ['Melasta Battery'] | 2021-08-23 06:49:19.346000+00:00 | ['Marine Life', 'Fishing', 'Battery', 'Lithium Battery', 'Mariners'] |
Fun Things To Do in London | Stonehenge
Built over 1000 years ago, archaeologists and anthropologists are finding out more about Stonehenge through scientific studies. A must-see if you visit London, Stonehenge is a short walk from the interactive museum, where you can purchase a fair-trade sheep hat for 25 pounds!
Salisbury Cathedral
Right outside of London, you can visit the home of the Magna Carta from 1216. Salisbury Cathedral, with its flying buttress medieval style architecture, will astound and amaze cathedral goers. Check out the Salisbury Cathedral by visiting Salisbury SP1 2EJ, United Kingdom.
The Shard
Modern buildings are usually tall, rectangular edifices towering high into the sky. While The Shard is the latter, the design of this building will blow your mind! Towering up hundreds of feet into the air, The Shard looks like a giant dropped large shards of glass into the ground, to where they stuck, leaving their pointy edges skyward. View The Shard from any location in downtown London or visit at 32 London Bridge St, London SE1 9SG, United Kingdom.
Tate Modern Museum of Art
Tate Museum of Modern Art has no admission fee! Visit floors of modern art, sculptures, and multi-media. Wonderful exhibits, along with a beautiful skyline view of London when you travel to the 10th floor of the building. Visit the Tate at Bankside, London SE1 9TG.
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
See wonderful plays at the Shakespeare Theatre along the waterfront. View Shakespeare Theatre’s show schedule here and find out more about this fascinating theatre by visiting 21 New Globe Walk, London SE1 9DT, United Kingdom.
Borough Market
Food, fun, and friends are to be had at the Borough Market, where you can purchase locally sourced produce and other market items. Make sure to check times of the Borough Market and get there early for the best selection. The market is located at 8 Southwark St, London SE1 1TL.
Winchester Palace
Walking along an unassuming London side street, you’ll come across the ancient ruins of Winchester Palace nestled in between modern apartments and the street. Visit Winchester Palace at Winchester Palace, Pickfords Wharf, London SE1 9DN, United Kingdom.
Shakespeare Mural at Southwark
A brilliant and colorful work of art painted mural on the brick architecture of a historic building in London, this piece is really beautiful. Visit the mural on South Bank in downtown London.
London Bridge
Built-in the late 1200s for the locals to move across the river, London Bridge has been burned down to the ground and rebuilt more than once. Walk across the bridge and take the tour inside this architectural accomplishment and monumental symbol of London London SE1 9RA, United Kingdom.
Millennium Bridge
A foot traffic bridge for pedestrians only, take a walk across the bridge for spectacular views of London.
Bermondsey District
Bermondsey has a fun and funky vibe, with amazing restaurants and wonderful small shops. I found a variety of gluten-free foods in the local shops in Bermondsey. My husband and I stayed in Bermondsey District. For reasonable rates at a great location in downtown London, I would suggest staying in this district.
Hay’s Galleria
For a great latte and local shopping, Hay’s Galleria is a teeming outdoor mall with elaborate iron bridging connecting the two sides. Check out this local mall at 1 Battle Bridge Ln, London SE1 2HD.
Tower of London
If ever there were one location which represents London, England, and the Queen, the Tower of London would be that place! Purchase a pass and spend time perusing the courtyard where you’ll meet period characters going about their daily life, the Crown Jewels, history of the British coin and history of the tower itself. You’ll even see the modern guards walking across the courtyard. St Katharine’s & Wapping, London EC3N 4AB, United Kingdom
All Hallows Church
Baptismal place of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, was baptized at this church on October 23rd, 1644.
The British Museum
Rooms and rooms of historic artifacts from Egyptian artifacts to historic artifacts of London, there is so much to see! Easily spend half a day perusing the exhibits at this place of history and knowledge. Find current exhibits, traveling exhibits, and location on their website here.
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Tower and Pharaoh Cat Statue
This tower is an original piece from Egypt, brought over to London in the 1800s. You can view this stone monolith in Westminster on the embankment next to the walking trail.
Buckingham Palace
See the changing of the guard, but get there early if you want an up-close and personal view. If you stand behind the circular driveway, you can see the guard at the street level and still get a great feel for this monumental event, which happens twice daily. Learn more about Buckingham Palace by visiting their website.
St. James Park
Next to Buckingham Palace in St. James Park where you can sit, relax and enjoy the small creek and family of ducks. Also a great area for picnic lunches.
Westminster Abbey
Home of famous dead people, you’ll have to be invited to be buried in this abbey. A most recent addition to the abbey is Stephen Hawkins, who was buried in the Abbey in May of 2019. Grab an audio and video guide, included in the cost of admission and roam several hundred years of history.
The Albert Memorial
Located in Kensington Garden, the Albert Memorial is a beautiful monument. A great place to sit on the steps, admire the beauty of this monument and take a break from a long day of walking!
Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park
A beautiful trail runs through the gardens and park where you can visit the monument to the late Princess Diana. Diana Princess of Whales Fountain is a gorgeous stone structure similar to a modern stone river, where children play in the inches deep water flowing through the man-made stream. Diana loved children and I believe she would have loved a monument in which so many children play.
World’s Highest Ferris Wheel
Stop by Lambeth in Waterloo along the waterfront walk in London for a ride on the world’s largest Ferris wheel. When you’re finished, you’ll want to conjure childhood memories with a ride on the carousel just a few feet away!
For great advice on how to travel gluten-free, grab my Guide to Traveling Gluten-Free on Amazon today! | https://medium.com/@travelglutenfreepodcast/fun-things-to-do-in-london-5334ffaebf87 | [] | 2020-05-13 12:31:01.150000+00:00 | ['Vacation', 'Travel', 'London', 'Gluten Free', 'Buckingham Palace'] |
“Never Give Up: You May Be Closer to Success Than You Think.” | Looking at my last MPP payout data, I tried to conjure the good feels and confidence of the comic that’s kept me moving ever-forward all these years, but I know too much now because I’m a member of two Facebook groups that support and encourage Medium writers.
What I’ve learned from this generous community is that several writers who have a similar number of followers to me (800) and post a similar number of stories each week (5–8), are earning 5 to 12 times more than I am from their effort. Where my MPP payout for April was $85, other comparable contributors posted earnings of up to $1,000 for the 5-week period.
Now, not only was I questioning the wisdom of diverting so much of my potential income-earning hours to the pursuit of making money writing about topics that interest me on Medium, I became concerned that I’d been faking it as a technical ghost-writer for the last 20 years.
I even drafted an email to let my core clients know theyd been duped. But I didn’t send it since I worried it wasn’t well-enough written.
I can’t stop imagining my confidence-building comic, now a little bit altered. The man in the top frame is still enthusiastically pickaxing his way to success, but it’s a woman in the lower frame—one who bears an uncanny resemblance to me. She is joyfully hacking away on the wrong wall.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
This doesn’t surprise me since I am 90% consistent in turning left when right is called for.
Write what you know? But, what if what you know is, you know, wrong?
There is actual neuroscience that proves there are people (like my husband) who have an intuitive sense of direction and people (like myself) who feel like the operating system that governs navigation was never uploaded to their brain.
What if that broken navigational O/S is at play with my Medium efforts?
That is the question that was plaguing my sleep.
What if I was taking a left turn with my stories when I should have stayed the course or veered slightly right?
What if my story pick-axe was smashing away at the wrong wall?
What if, instead of chipping away at the Wall that Pays, my stories have been working toward busting a hole in the Pay Wall? I don’t even know what that means but I know that a) just because I don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s not true and b) that would be just like me to hear “Wall that Pays” and set my GPS for “Pay Wall.”
After dropping my axe and hitting the wall with my skull to hit the wall for three weeks, I did something unthinkable: I popped my head of out my cave and asked for help from the wonderfully supportive and successful writers here on Medium.
They were specific—brutal and loving all wrapped up in honest feedback. They spun me around, handed me a clear map, and said, “Good luck!”
Three days later, I was curated. Twice. And then a third time. That was nine uncurated stories ago. I haven’t lost the map but I have put it down to write some things that feel right for right now.
I’m no longer feeling the desperate need for validation from the anonymous, faceless elevators. I have been seen now. Perhaps like a shooting star, now gone from their view. But seen once means I can find my direction again—to crack more holes in that wall—maybe even enough to reach the diamonds that are waiting on the other side.
And, if I don’t, these hours and months sharing on Medium will become part of my future success story with Enterprise Idea number 9 or 14 or even 26. | https://medium.com/love-and-stuff/never-give-up-you-may-be-closer-to-success-than-you-think-532c101c8e6 | ['Danika Bloom'] | 2019-06-21 23:06:59.876000+00:00 | ['Advice', 'Life Lessons', 'This Happened To Me', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Writing'] |
Ceilings in CSS | Ceilings in CSS
In a lot of ways Startups = Growth whether they are venture-funded or not. Creating something from nothing and putting it in your users' hands, sometimes many millions of users' hands, is what makes the journey of starting or funding an early-stage venture so thrilling. Sure you can fail (and then try again), but who knows how far you can grow? :)
Around 3 years ago I published a post called ‘Ceilings in SaaS’ that discussed the idea of recognizing where early-stage SaaS companies will end up hitting a glass ceiling and stop growing by roughly losing as many customers as they are adding new ones. In this post, I want to apply the same concept to consumer software subs (CSS) or mobile subscription startups, as the higher churn in that business model also makes it more important to identify those that can push through those ceilings and get to of $100m+ yearly revenue.
As a refresher, I used the above graph to describe three rough categories of scale reached, with the tricky part being that they look the same at t(???):
Feature scale at ca. $1m ARR+
Product scale at ca. $10m ARR+
Company scale at ca. $100m ARR+
Now let’s look at some of the differences when evaluating consumer subs. For simplicities sake, I am assuming 100% of annual subs (and no monthly/quarterly plans) in my example.
Got habitual users?
Since retention is typically a lot lower for consumer subs companies, the most important thing in my eyes is to look closely at the long term cohort retention. Consider this graph for a second and tell me which number is more important to know: Y1 or Y2 (retention)?
C = Cohorts i or %
My answer: Usually Y2, though it seems like most VCs disagree. 🙃
Why? Because user churn is typically not linear for consumer subs. Whereas Y1 retention might give you a very good indicator for what Y2ff churn will be for SaaS companies, this is not usually true for consumer subs. Y1 retention often is a very steep drop and it could almost be considered a (long) paid trial in which a user either decides to stick with the product — or churns. However, once a user has been using a product for 24+ months and got hooked, I consider her a habitual user and expect her to stay around for a long while.
That’s why Y2 is more important to me. As indicated in the graph above, there is a degradation in churn in the outer years, and in fact, the best consumer sub-companies’ retention can look very close to SaaS if you normalize it in Y2 or Y3. This means that churn vs the prior year gets into the 90%+ range after the Y1 churn has occurred. So if you do the math and consider that the Apple tax drops from 30% to 15% in Y1ff, you might just find out the majority of LTV is actually driven in the outer years — by habitual users that stick with the product for multiple years. Sure, this is even more true for SaaS companies, but the big difference here is that most investors (and founders) wrongly assume cohorts to decrease linearly and therefore overlook opportunities to fund or build a business based on long-term sticky cohorts. Plus, I advise all consumer sub companies I work with to steer paid marketing so that they break even on the paid acquisition on Day 1; therefore cash for users that churn in the 1st year is recovered instantly vs SaaS, where payback is considered good if it is below 12 months.
But, but…
You might ask how to figure out Y2 retention at an early point in time? Good question! It is certainly not an easy feat, but there are tools you can use to get a sense for Y2 retention early on. However, they do require at least a few months of engagement data. Besides comps from other companies with similar user behavior and best guesses (both derived from external factors), I generally dig into the user behavior in M6 of the cohorts. (You can also use M3 but it will be less accurate, the longer out in the cohort, the better.) At that point in time you can usually differentiate between 3 different user cohorts:
Habitual users that use the product very regularly Casual users that use the product infrequently Breakage of users that will churn over time
I then use a formula like 90% of the cohorts in segment 1, 50% of segment 2 and 0% of segment 3 to get a proxy for the retention in Y1 and a lower weighted formula for Y2 and beyond (e.g 80%, 30%, 0% etc). This is, of course, a forecast and won't be 100% accurate, but it is a lot better than having to wait for 2 years and typically pretty close to the real thing.
What else?
I will save some of the below points for future posts, but to give you a high-level idea of what other factors can determine where the ceiling for your CSS business will be: | https://medium.com/@ncsh/ceilings-in-css-9ed360450e55 | ['Nicolas Wittenborn'] | 2020-05-19 12:57:11.583000+00:00 | ['Subscription', 'Consumer', 'SaaS', 'Mobile', 'Consumer Behavior'] |
Flutter — Tinder like swipe cards | Implement Tinder like nice swipe card feature using flutter is quite easy because of the powerful widget provided by Flutter SDK. In this article, I’m gone a show you how to implement swipe card function in Flutter using several known widgets.
You may know the everything in the flutter is some kind of widget. The Draggable widget will give the ability to drag the child widget and we can control what we need to do when we drag the widget.
Solution breakdown
First of all, you need to think about the widget Structure. This is the widget structure you need to follow.
Create a Card widget using the card class.
using the card class. Wrap the Card widget inside the Positioned widget .
. Positioned those card widgets inside the Stack widget .
. Wrap the card inside Draggable widget to give the ability to drag and drop.
Implementation
Let’s think about what are the properties need to change for each card.
First, we need to change the colour and the position from the top of the stack widget. If we don’t change the position from the top, each card will be stack the top left corner and we cannot see each card separately. Because that’s the default behaviour of the stack widget.
So Let’s start with Creating MatchCard Class. You can set the color and the position for each card using this MatchCard class.
class MatchCard {
int redColor = 0;
int greenColor = 0;
int blueColor = 0;
double margin = 0; MatchCard(int red, int green, int blue, double marginTop) {
redColor = red;
greenColor = green;
blueColor = blue;
margin = marginTop;
} }
The next step is creating a list of cards to stack inside the stack widget.
Make a list of cards
In here you can to define a function to get a list of cards. In here I create 3 cards and append those cards to the Widget List.
List<Widget> _getMatchCard() {
List<MatchCard> cards = new List();
cards.add(MatchCard(255, 0, 0, 10));
cards.add(MatchCard(0, 255, 0, 20));
cards.add(MatchCard(0, 0, 255, 30));
List<Widget> cardList = new List(); for (int x = 0; x < 3; x++) {
cardList.add(Positioned(
top: cards[x].margin,
child: Draggable(
onDragEnd: (drag){
_removeCard(x);
},
childWhenDragging: Container(),
feedback: Card(
elevation: 12,
color: Color.fromARGB(255, cards[x].redColor, cards[x].greenColor, cards[x].blueColor),
shape: RoundedRectangleBorder(borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(10)),
child: Container(
width: 240,
height: 300,
),
),
child: Card(
elevation: 12,
color: Color.fromARGB(255, cards[x].redColor, cards[x].greenColor, cards[x].blueColor),
shape: RoundedRectangleBorder(borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(10)),
child: Container(
width: 240,
height: 300,
),
),
),
)
);
}
return cardList; }
The _removeCard method is not defined yet and I will define it in the end. You can see some interesting attributes inside the Draggable widget. Let’s discuss what are those attributes.
feedback — We must provide some kind of Widget for this. This is the widget which is shown when a drag event is happening. In this scenario, we need to show the same actual card widget when dragging.
— We must provide some kind of Widget for this. This is the widget which is shown when a drag event is happening. In this scenario, we need to show the same actual card widget when dragging. childWhenDragging — The widget to display instead of [child] when one or more drag is underway. For that, you can give an empty container. Then It will don’t show any child widget when dragging.
— The widget to display instead of [child] when one or more drag is underway. For that, you can give an empty container. Then It will don’t show any child widget when dragging. onDragEnd — This call when the drag ends. We can remove the card when drag gets completed.
Next, we need to call _getMatchCard() inside the initState method and assign those List of the widget to the List<Widget> cardList.
initState — This is the first method called when the widget is created (after the class constructor, of course.) https://flutterbyexample.com/stateful-widget-lifecycle/
Finally, you need to remove the card after each drag gets completed. For that, I am gone to define a method called _removeCard. Inside that method I am gone to call setState and inside that you can remove each card widget.
void _removeCard(index) {
setState(() {
cardList.removeAt(index);
}
); }
Check the full code
Flutter — Stack of Card using Stack Widget
References
https://flutterbyexample.com/stateful-widget-lifecycle/
https://docs.flutter.io/flutter/widgets/Draggable-class.html
https://docs.flutter.io/flutter/widgets/Stack-class.html | https://medium.com/codechai/flutter-tinder-like-swipe-cards-2c189ca516eb | ['Ishan Fernando'] | 2019-10-05 11:10:21.238000+00:00 | ['Flutter Draggable', 'Flutter App Development', 'Flutter Tinder App', 'Flutter Stack Widget', 'Flutter Swipe To Delete'] |
Life on Mars: No one makes it out alone. | Life on Mars: No one makes it out alone.
We need to stick together if we are going to survive!
Photo courtesy of Christian Lischka — Upsplash
It’s torrid here. Oppressive. Life on Mars is changing!
It grows hotter and stranger by the minute.
There are happenings. Each day is a revelation more shocking than those that came before. It’s as if Mars itself is sweating with anticipation. Crying salty tears of perspiration that cover the ground each morning when I wake. A daily reminder of what lies ahead.
‘The Fear’ is among us and it is growing. Tension pulsates with the collective breath, needing nothing more than a spark to ignite the ferocious firestorm they force upon us.
It is a virus, ‘The Fear.’ I can see it spreading. They say it is invisible, but I can see it. I can feel it! Feel its reach taking hold of hearts and minds. It’s written on faces, drawn on walls and translated in body language; eyes cast down, mouths closed, distance maintained.
‘The Fear’ is everywhere, spreading like weeds in a bewildered garden. I am trying to supress it. Trying to stay away from the carriers, but I am beginning to realise that I too may be a carrier. It may be too late.
The divide widens with the spread. What were once rivers of separation turn rapidly into oceans; a collection of souls flanking either shore, there is no middle ground. Factions form as we each pick sides for the final battle. Some have chosen to cover their faces — for protection — told by them it will stop escalation of ‘The Fear’; instead it exacerbates it, encourages it.
It’s been months since I’ve seen a smile from a stranger.
Their plan is working. They spread their messages of hate with every means possible. Flashing images on screens invade our subconscious minds, whilst sound bites on repeat scream in our heads. They use their corporate machines to spread ‘The Fear,’ twisting truths with their bureaucratic trickery and corporate conniving.
Image courtesy of Author Simplyclp
Everywhere you look they are cultivating it. Feeding it! The mighty titans of industry, the politicians, news platforms, radio stations, the ‘gram and the ‘book all feeding ‘The Fear.’ They want us to fight each other and it has already begun; there is fire in the streets and loathing in our homes.
They are liars and thieves; we know this. We ALL know this, but still we buy into their illusions. Still we listen to their stories, making them our own. Helping them with their mission to spread the pathogen, to infect the masses, by repeating, reposting and retweeting their hyperbolic bullshit, instead of following what is in our heart, instead of listening to the war cry of our souls.
For those living in shiny glasshouses on the hill, ‘The Fear’ is good; an opiate for the masses, keeping us in our place with an ‘invisible’ veil of control.
I know this too, deep down in the dark recesses of my mind I know it, as do you, but it is getting harder to remember with each passing day.
We must stay vigilant.
Image courtesy of Author Simplyclp
By dividing us they are making us weak. They usurp our collective power with their messages of hate; shining a light on our differences. They tell us resistance is futile. They tell us we are fighting ‘the common enemy,’ yet they divide our strength by pitting us against each other. Pushing us to rebel and revolt, but not against them — against each other.
Not everyone sees it, some are too far-gone. ‘The Fear’ runs deep in their blood and there is little hope for those lost souls.
Ha! Hope! That is quickly becoming an archaic concept. I read books on it once, before there was chaos in the cities, before the planet was burning, but there is little time for that now. All of my focus is on staying cool and keeping the dogs of fear at bay. They howl day and night for my attention, becoming harder to ignore with each passing hour.
It’s exhausting.
I try to tune out the noise, but even for me this is difficult — and I am strong. It is the others I worry about, those that are already addicted to the noise, already afflicted by ‘The Fear.’
For them it is already too late!
They gaslight us with the promise of a cure, they tell us we should be patient while the planet burns around us. They use this thread of hope as misdirection to control us. They say that if we keep following the rules everything will be ok, we will stop the spread.
I can’t help but think it was ‘the rules’ that delivered us here, brought us to this desolate place of hatred and despair.
There is fear written in the rules you see. It has always been this way.
If history teaches us anything it is that progress is made not by following the rules, but by breaking them. Change happens when we burn the ‘book.
Revolution is coming. I can feel it crawling down my spine like a spider, casting its web of lies and deceit across the planet. The question is not if, but when. The question is not will you fight, but which side of the ocean will you be on?
I try to stay optimistic. To believe there is still a chance we can make it, an inkling of a possibility that we will harness our collective power to rise up and stand together — not against each other, but against them. If only we focused our energies on nourishing the home fires. If only we realised that with enough stones we could shatter the glass facades that protect them.
I can’t do it alone. No one can, but together we can take back control. If we could only overcome ‘The Fear.’ If we stood together we could shatter their mirror of deceit and end the hatred in our hearts to live out the rest of our days in peace and harmony.
Maybe that is nothing more than a pipe dream now? An idea already well past its sell-by date.
That is what they want us to believe. That is what they force-feed us with their silver spoons. But it’s not too late. I can’t, I won’t accept that.
Life on Mars can be good again, much better than before.
We can win this war if we stand together in unity against them.
We just need to hold hands!
Image courtesy of Author Simplyclp
Claire Pinckney is a freelance writer, fashion designer and content creator. For more articles like this from Claire and other members of the 5R2 community please subscribe at www.5reasons2.com
You can also check out @fivereasons2 on IG for a daily dose of encouragement and positivity | https://medium.com/the-innovation/life-on-mars-no-one-makes-it-out-alone-da68bc5a50d5 | [] | 2020-09-10 19:16:05.327000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Life', 'Hope', 'Fear', 'Conspiracy Theories'] |
5 Tips for Better TypeScript Code | 5 Tips for Better TypeScript
JavaScript has a lot of problems. TypeScript has a lot of solutions — But some of them take a little bit of digging to find.
Very early in my frontend journey, I figured out that TypeScript was the solution to a lot of problems JavaScript had. Passing incorrect parameters, unorganized switches, or null access all came up daily during my development.
Adding a TypeScript layer on top of my JavaScript skyrocketed my productivity. I’ve been learning the ins and outs of TypeScript, and I’m here to share what I’ve learned with you.
If these tips aren’t advanced enough for you, I recommend you head over to this article, where I’ve written 5 advanced TypeScript tips!
1. Null Coalescence
Sometimes automatically, TypeScript will insert a question mark into a property access field. Something like let t = myObj?.property and then t ends up with the value: property | undefined . This is great, but it’s important to know exactly what’s happening here so that you can use it as a tool, rather than a byproduct of TypeScript autocomplete.
If we used a regular property access, myObj.property , and myObj was undefined, we’d get an error: Cannot access property 'property' of undefined. This clearly isn’t want we want, so using the .? means that if myObj is undefined, we “stop looking” there and just assign t as undefined.
This is incredibly useful to avoid errors, but sometimes we want a default case. For instance, what if we have a text field that the user never activates, and thus the inner text is undefined? We don’t want to send undefined to the backend. We can chain the optional access operator (what we just learned, .? ) with the null coalescence operator. It’d look something like this:
sendFieldToServer(textField?.text ?? '')
This is incredibly resilient code, that handles lots of cases very safely. Infact, it’s impossible for undefined to be passed into the function. TypeScript is aware of that, so if sendFieldToServer takes a property of string , it’d work!
This is because the null coalescence operator makes it so that if what is on the left-hand side is undefined , we instead pass in what’s on the right, an empty string.
In JavaScript, it’d be easy to forget all the places where your code could possibly be undefined. Thankfully, TS handles this and would warn you here that sendFieldToServer can’t take undefined. By using the question mark operators, you now have code that is 100% safe.
2. Don’t use default imports
One reason why TypeScript is superior to JavaScript is the code autocomplete. because in TypeScript, the compiler knows exactly what object you’re working with at the time, it knows exactly what properties are available to you. If you have a dog object, we know we can access the bark() method.
That is, if dog is in scope.
If we exported dog in dog.ts with a default export, like this:
default export interface Dog {
bark: () => void,
}
then the import can be anything. I can import dog as cat from another file, if I’d like:
import cat from 'dog.ts' cat.bark()
That’s valid TypeScript code. That means that if we do:
let t: dog = {
bark: () => console.log('woof!')
}
TypeScript doesn’t know what dog is. There’ll be a little red line under dog saying dog is not defined. You’d have the find where dog was defined, and import it manually — and then make sure to name it dog.
This is where regular exports come in. Exporting dog like this:
export interface dog {..} //export without 'default'
Means that now, in our other file, when we type let t: dog , typescript knows to look for an interface called dog ! That means that you’ll get the import placed in your file automatically, and that TypeScript knows that you can bark.
Code autocomplete is a great feature. I find that there’s no reason to prefer default export, as the regular export system is actually much more useful. Even if you’re only exporting one thing, regular export still handles that with a breeze.
eslint has a no default export rule that can make it so that any default export gets flagged.
3. Use constrained string fields
Enums are this planet's gift to programmers, so when JavaScript decided to not have enums, it went from an S tier language to a B at best.
While TypeScript has enums on its own, it might be surprising to say that… you don’t 100% need them. Enums add a little bit of overhead by having to define it. TypeScript has something even better.
t: "left" | "right" | "middle" = "middle"
This functionally operates as an enum. You can switch on it, you can’t assign t to anything but those 3 values. But we defined it in a single line, and TypeScript knows not to allow anything else in there. If I tried to do t="center" , TypeScript would error out. I can 100% be certain that the value of t is one of those 3 values, so I can do things like switch on those 3 strings and not have to worry about a default.
As a bonus, t is still just a string. So if we wanted to display the value to a user, we could pass it into string fields and it’d work just fine.
4. use Map<T>
One thing JavaScript does have going for it is the flexible prototyping system. You can add any key onto any object without even batting an eye. myObj.nonExistantField = "Is This" + 12312 + "A string or a number? Who Cares!" * 4 is valid. But, let me in one some secrets…
It’s not fast. It’s not easy to iterate through (you need Object.keys(myObj) or similar) It’s hard to work with if every programmer is just tacking on fields to their objects The existence of a field does not mean its value is defined
You can also do the same thing in TypeScript, and allow the value to be any, but I’m not even going to show you how to do it because I don’t want you to.
Instead, there exists Map . It exists in JS too, but in JS it’s not type constrained so it’s not as useful. Here’s how it works:
let myMap: Map<string, string> = new Map()
This creates a map that solves all the problems that I mentioned with prototype-based mapping.
It’s fast: HashMaps are O(1) to check and are fast to add to. It’s easy to iterate through, with map.forEach() You can still throw anything in there, as long as the key and value are of the the correct type undefined cannot be in it (as long as you don’t define the typing as undefined)
Maps are great, and there’s a reason they’re the most commonly asked about data structure in interviews. They’re, in my opinion, strictly better than prototype based mapping. If you’re ever trying to allow the user to define the keys of an Object, perhaps you’re working with the wrong data structure.
5. Figure out your eslint config / tsconfig
The greatest part about TS and JS in general is the amount of customization that you can have in the code. For instance, I come from python, where I am partial to the no-semicolon style. So I said “no semicolons!” in my eslint config, and now my compiler yells at me when I accidently put in a semicolon.
keeping double quotes consistent makes the code look prettier, in my opinion, because you often use ‘ in strings but not “. So I made it so that in my eslint config, I have to use double quotes.
I am a big fan of forcing exhaustion in pattern matching, so I made that be mandated in my tsconfig.
I prefer no-default-export, so I made that be forced.
I highly recommend you take an hour out of your day to go through all the values in a .tsconfig and .eslintrc file and set all options to what you like. Then, save those files somewhere on your computer where you can easily paste it in when you start a new project. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/5-tips-for-better-typescript-code-5603c26206ef | ['Anthony Oleinik'] | 2021-01-17 17:46:49.364000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'Typescript', 'Front End Development', 'Clean Code', 'Programming'] |
Data, Visualization and Society. Using t-SNE to map Data Visualization… | I created three derivative styles from the original graph styling the data points from 0–5 for each category. As the inputs were the aggregate score for each category and the hour of sign up, the results are clusters of users with similar aggregate scores (across all three categories) who signed up at the same hour of the day.
One of the first interesting take aways, is the large cluster of very modest users who rated themselves as zero (or close to zero) across all three categories.
I find it interesting that a greater number of users rated themselves (4–5) on their skill with data than on visualization perhaps suggesting that a decent percentage of members feel fluent in data but less confident in data visualization.
A quick take away from the society graph might be the larger percentage of blue (0–1) scores compared to the other graphs reflecting that a greater percentage of users rate their interactions with or contributions to the data viz community more modestly than their skills.
Finally, Graphafi also allows you to create 3D plots of your high dimensional datasets. As a quick bonus, I made a 3D t-SNE plot using the same DVS dataset. You can get a quick sample of the result in the video below. | https://medium.com/maptian/data-visualization-and-society-47066432ae6 | ['Dan Mccarey'] | 2019-03-26 16:24:22.345000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Data Science'] |
Building a Feature Store to reduce the time to production of ML models | A new problem in the industry
Within the world of software development and especially in the area of Machine learning, times assigned to analysis, development and deployment are key to the success of an organization. At Mercado Libre, we are not exempt from this problem and since it is a leading company in Latin America, much less. The staggering growth of Machine Learning development has no doubt meant new problems to large companies. Today there’s no denying that for many teams to work on the same backend, it is a standard practice to use a microservice infrastructure, but what happens when many of these autonomous teams also develop Machine Learning models?
On Mercado Libre’s backend there are several entities that are consulted by many teams. For instance, we call “item” to the publication that a seller makes in our Marketplace. These items or publications contain, at least, a title, description, photos, interactions with thousands of users and a collection of structured information. Since our business needs are usually based precisely on these types of entities, at this level of abstraction, many teams have had to generate some type of model based on items such as a binary classification to know if an item should be moderated or not for breaking a rule, a classification by product category or a search for similar items to feed recommendations, to name a few.
Whether to do classification, regression or search for close neighbors, all these initiatives have had to go through a similar feature engineering process in order to generate representations of the item that would allow for the training of models. So we have the problem at sight. On the one hand, we have repeated effort across teams (and not a minor one). The feature engineering process can take time and is key to model development. On the other hand, not all teams can boast of a Machine Learning expert or of developers with significant experience in a tool or business area and even if they can, there may be no simple mechanism for other teams to take advantage of their knowhow.
Suppose a team wants to train a new binary classifier of items to separate them between those to be shipped in boxes or in bags. If it could start with a well-resolved representation of the item, this team could bring down the lead time of its first model from days to hours. It is at this point where we propose a Feature Store.
What is a Feature Store?
It is a centralized place where teams can consult the features of an entity. There are several approaches to implement this solution.
If we think of features in the traditional sense, as a characteristic of the entity understandable by a human, the feature store could be an API on a database engine that allows extracting specific information, for example “the number of publications visited by some user in the last 30 days”. At Mercado Libre, we have this type of solution, which contributes to many use cases and needs, but it is beyond the scope of this article to delve into it — interesting topic for another article, perhaps.
Another alternative — and the one we will actually be exploring — is to think of features as an intermediate level of abstraction which is not human-readable but which may have certain properties that make it useful for a model. Just as there are models that can generate arbitrary text embeddings, we can create models that generate embedding-like representations (n-dimensional vectors) from any entity we’re interested in (for example, items or shipments). The meaning of these vectors may not be clear to a human but they could have interesting properties. For instance, the vectors representing items (publications) corresponding to the same type of product can be close in the n-dimensional space; or the vectors that represent payments may be largely grouped so that we can set aside and review those whose representation is far from that group. This would enable us to find fraudulent transactions.
The properties of the representation will be tied to the underlying optimization process that generated them so if we use browsing sessions to infer the representations, 2 items will be similar under that representation when visited in similar contexts.
A solution proposed
Image courtesy of Pixabay
Service vs. Lib
One way of allowing any developer to transform an entity into a vector is through an API, though we’ve found some drawbacks in this strategy. The team developing the feature store has to build and be in charge of the maintenance of a specific micro service for this matter. This micro service has requirements (e.g.: latency, scalability, availability or costs) that are under the scope of the team that develops the user application and not of the one accountable for the feature store. Moreover, there could be several machine learning models that depend on the same micro service, which is likely to generate problems; for instance, the model that generates vectors may be adjusted to improve the performance of one of the models that consumes it, damaging the others. Even though this last point could be mitigated with a correct versioning of the API, it would entail a greater investment in the development and maintenance of the feature store.
Therefore, we’ve opted for the TensorFlowHub strategy which comprises a repository or “Hub” of models and an API to download them. After downloading, the developer becomes the owner of that object and is totally independent from our Hub. Thus, the application that uses it is only dependent on the feature store in the training stage and afterwards it can work in a completely self-contained way.
Only known tools
In addition, we decided that these models that transform entities into embeddings would be shared in python libraries with a scikit-learn interface. In other words, they can be installed with “pip” and are objects with fit and transform methods. This facilitates their adoption by our machine learning devs (who mostly already use python) not only to integrate them into sklearn pipelines but also to use in combination with other tools (for example, we have PyTorch models using these representations).
Versions
Yet another issue worth pointing out is that the same model could be used to represent different data sets (like publications in Spanish or Portuguese) and there could also be models trained with different hyper parameters (for example, to generate vectors of different dimensions). This is why these models have “versions.” To better illustrate this, we add an example for using our lib:
What we achieve by this
The solution we propose has the following advantages:
Fast MVP
Since a good start-up solution for feature engineering is already available, you can have an MVP or proof of concept in a few days or even hours.
Less duplicate effort
Since we allow entity-to-feature transformations to be shared across teams.
Widespread expert knowledge
The knowledge and expertise of Machine Learning experts can be available to all teams.
Improvement of existing models
Embeddings can be combined with the features of models that are already in production, which can render improved metrics with very little effort.
Resource Optimization
Reducing redundant work not only saves developer hours, but also model training hours and infrastructure costs.
Next steps
Setting up a Hub of models that generate embeddings is one of many strategies to have a collaborative feature engineering system. Although we are still developing this valuable time-saving tool, we have been able to validate its effectiveness as proper embeddings allow us to train models with good initial performance in a short time.
Our challenge now is to ensure that the Hub continues adding new models and that its use keeps on growing in the company, maximizing synergy across teams. This implies understanding what information each machine learning developer (our user) needs in order to find the model that best solves their problem. | https://medium.com/mercadolibre-tech/building-a-feature-store-to-reduce-the-time-to-production-of-ml-models-8b9abbf214ed | ['Tomás Moreyra'] | 2020-11-24 14:39:14.660000+00:00 | ['Feature Engineering', 'Mercado Libre', 'Mercado Livre', 'Word Embeddings', 'Machine Learning'] |
Podcast Episode #2: Perspectives of Shannon Ellis, Academic Data Scientist | Shannon Ellis is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Cognitive Science Department, and has taught COGS 9 Introduction to Data Science, COGS 18 Introduction to Python, and COGS 108 Data Science in Practice. In this podcast episode, Shannon reflects on her experiences in academia, her projects, and how she transitioned from her biostats-focus at Johns Hopkins to her generalized teaching position at UCSD.
During Shannon’s undergraduate experience, “Data Science” wasn’t a word defined in her vocabulary — nor was the discipline offered at her undergraduate institution. Inspired by her high school biology teacher, Shannon sought out to study genetics at King’s College in Pennsylvania, where she got her first taste in research. From inputting data she spent years collecting into a software program, she became fascinated with the software and how it gave her immediate answers. This fascination carried Shannon into her graduate programs, where she learned to program and experiment with data analysis. By the end of her PhD, she was performing computational analysis on large datasets, and was exposed to Data Science in the genetics domain.
Deciding she wanted to go down a route of analyzing data and not dedicating the entirety of her career to “answering one question,” Shannon went on to pursue a Postdoc doing research at the Leek Group, a Data Science lab in the biostatistics department at Johns Hopkins. Shannon talks fondly of the Leek group, and recalls her mentor, Jeff Leek, fostering a more entrepreneurial environment in academia and differentiating himself from other mentors by trying out “bonker ideas”.
When asked how she got into the field of biostatistics, Shannon jokingly says she “back-doored [her] way” in, not having any prior experience or degree in the subject. At the end of her Postdoc, she was faced with the dilemma of continuing a career in research or teaching. “Those who can’t do, teach”, was a saying that stuck in her head, and almost convinced her that teaching was simply a fallback career. However, after much deliberation, she concluded that she wanted to teach and continue to experiment in different domains instead of pursuing a proper line of research.
At Johns Hopkins, she taught undergraduates on public health biostatistics, where her students experimented with public health datasets using the R programming language. Afterward, she applied to universities and education-focused positions at government programs and startups. Her transition to UCSD came after she encountered a job posting from the university’s Cognitive Science Department, and after following the much needed encouragement from her advisor, she decided to apply. She has now been teaching at UCSD for a year, and continues to teach a little bit of computational genetics as part of the Data Science Capstone.
Shannon worked on two projects during her Postdoc, the first of which is Cloud Based Data Science (CBDS). As the Curriculum Lead for CBDS, Shannon develops the content for the courses. Through offering a set of online courses that can be taken for free, CBDS aims to democratize Data Science education. The program sets starting points for people with limited math or comprehension skills, and was built to go in concert with CBDS +, an in-person tutoring program. CBDS was developed during a time when Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) were revolutionizing education, and CBDS had hundreds of thousands of applicants. But when looking at their applicants’ backgrounds, they discovered that they were all educated with a masters degree.
“We don’t want hundreds of clones of the same person,” Shannon says. She further emphasizes that she wants CBDS to help educate people from different works of life. CBDS targets those who are economically under-privileged, particularly those “who can’t take time out of their life to just study.” The program aims to improve their students’ financial conditions by helping their cohorts obtain entry-level jobs, and teaches them the basics of data analysis and data wrangling.
Her second project, Recount, is more biostatistics focused. “Biologists have gotten really good at publishing data”, but unfortunately, it’s not easy to get or use. In response, the team took all publicly available RNA-Seq data (measures gene expression levels), and processed 70,000 human samples in a single pipeline to make it easier and more accessible for biologists to work with. Shannon worked on phenotype prediction in this project, using a self-coined term called “in-silico phenotyping”, which utilizes Machine Learning to predict the kind of tissue, sex, age, and a variety of factors pertaining to the individual without going back to them for validation.
If interested, check out Shannon’s personal website to learn more about her, or the Leek Group to learn more about their projects! | https://medium.com/ds3ucsd/perspectives-of-shannon-ellis-an-academic-data-scientist-99cafe573f86 | ['Kashika Rathore'] | 2020-07-31 05:25:42.105000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Public Health', 'Data Science', 'Biostatistics'] |
Quarterbacks & Coaches (You Do You, Boo) | “I don’t know, Craig…I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what’s changing. But I know that something is. And it’s big, and I see it…”
My friend and — aside from my wife — longest-standing partner in work and ministry, Michelle Russell, sent me a message not long ago. Apparently, the changes she’s seen in me throughout the past few years and — perhaps especially — more significantly realized in the recent few months’ worth of releasing these episodes, have been significant enough to raise her eyebrows.
Maybe she’s not the only one who sees it.
Maybe she’s not the only one asking, “What’s next?”
Let me back up.
I want to talk about sports.
I love football. Maybe you’ve heard of it? God knows my editor hasn’t, so I guess he’ll have a field day (pun intended) with this one.
I’ve been to more games than I can count, and I’ve written about many of the best of them here, salted throughout this season of Craig Brain. Super Bowls with my dad. Packer games with my son, Nolan. What I can’t attend in person, I make up for in the fantasy league. (Nolan’s beat me a couple of times, which is annoying, but hey… “raise your child up in the way he should go…”)
The average age of a professional NFL player is 26.6 years old. I don’t want to sound like the walking dead, here, but as a forty-two-year-old man, twenty-six-year-old-me may as well have been Gumby or some claymation character from MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch who could twist and contort himself in ways that allowed for the kind of pummeling that the present (my friends might say rickety) me can no longer imagine…
Which is how I got to thinking about Tom Brady.
By some absurd miracle, the forty-one year old New England Patriots quarterback has taken his team to the Super Bowl eleven times (more than any other team), boasts six wins (more than any other quarterback), and plans to continue jerseying up through his mid-to-late forties, hoping to bump George Blanda out of his number one spot as the oldest NFL player in history.
Two years ago, a commentator from CBS asked Brady how much longer he hoped to play the game.
“Five to seven years.”
I hope he makes it (and that’s coming from a cheesehead), but I also know that — regardless of when — the end will come, as all things do.
You can’t play football forever.
A couple of weeks ago, Ron Jeremy and I flew to the University of Kentucky to argue about porn with one another. We’ve been hosting The Great Porn Debate together since 2008. This time, my friend and co-worker, Carl Thomas, joined us there in Lexington, and asked me a question:
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
After all of this time — after all of these years spent assuming that I’d be playing quarterback for XXXchurch until… forever — I couldn’t answer him, but I do know that if this ministry is a field, it’s time for me to step off and over to the sideline.
I’ve played this position since 2002, now. I know who to pass the ball to, and how to throw it well. I know how to call the audible. I know how to orchestrate the team. I’m not comparing myself to one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, but I do know that — like Brady with the Patriots — there’s something special about playing on the same team for an entire career. A trust that forms. We’re about the same age, and I do know that — whatever life you’re living — there’s a wisdom that comes with each decade invested on our respective field.
There’s also a reason that most pro players’ average age lies in their mid-twenties. One’s body only allows for so much thrashing. One can only take so many concussions. One cannot demand thin air for extra stamina that no longer lies inherent within his bones.
I’ve been running up and down this field at a sprinter’s pace for twenty years, and I’m coming up on empty.
It’s time for me to step off the field.
Perhaps the trail of breadcrumbs left throughout each of the lessons I’ve learned in these journals I’ve been writing is more glaringly front-facing than I realized up until now:
I cannot do it all.
I don’t know what lies in Tom Brady’s future, but I do know that I am moving from quarterback to coach. Humility is one of wisdom’s hardest-taught lessons, but I know that there are stronger players out there, hungrier for the ball.
When Carl asked me about my five-year plan, I knew, like a gavel struck the block: I don’t want to play this role anymore.
So there it is.
Michelle called it: something’s changing. And for me, it’s huge.
It’s bittersweet.
I don’t want to disappear, but I can’t play this position anymore. I always thought I’d play quarterback forever. Maybe my jersey will still say that, sometimes, but as of now, I’m transitioning out of the player role on this team.
Over the course of the past few years, I have been learning new skills and working in new ways. Frankly, it’s a long story, but if I were to summarize it…
In my opinion, one of the best projects we at XXXchurch ever released was called My Pilgrimage. What is visible and front facing — the book and video series and every related resource — is amazing, but the work behind it all began years before it ever materialized into a full-on ministry program.
Seth and David Taylor were the main authors on that project, and before I ever agreed to publish any of it, I wanted to dive into their perspective, myself. I wanted to see where they were coming from, as — though not entirely out of the left field — their proposals about how to approach pornography addiction were more nuanced than some of the work we’d released in all of our years prior.
During that learning and vetting process, one of the experiences we had together took place in Alaska (which is why we eventually started including our “Alaska Pilgrimages” for the men in our final program). It was 2013 and — though I’ll spare you the intricacies here — I felt as though that trip led to some major breakthroughs in my health, life, and future.
I heard two things, clear as day:
Go, as planned, to the opening day of the new 49ers stadium. Even though your dad died. Even though it will be hard to go without him…go. Don’t avoid the pain — run toward it, however difficult it may be. When the schedule came out, their season opener was against the Chicago Bears. I smiled and called one of my best friends — David Dean — who is a die hard Bears fan, and he came with me. It was a special night, and I’ll never forget it. Step away from XXXchurch.com.
The first “Go & Do” was difficult for me, but I did it.
The second made zero sense whatsoever and, given my personality (and at this point, I think I can say ego), I assumed that meant “leave immediately.” I knew stepping away then and there wasn’t possible.
As I write this today, six years have passed. It’s July 2019, and I have never forgotten about that process or the words I heard through it. Still, though, Levi was the only person I ever told about that sense of direction shifting.
I kept quiet.
I did start working on another project, though. One that existed separate from the ministry. I worked with an online influencer who I happened to be friends with, and I really enjoyed it. It was the first time in my adult life that I worked behind the scenes, as opposed to being the front-facing, talking head of everything. The expertise I had to offer really did end up making a difference. We were able to scale his business, and we were able to start offering that scalability to others, too.
I have never struggled with confidence. I suppose I don’t think that I need more of it, but since this thing is called “Craig Brain,” maybe you’ll understand that I simply needed a purpose to run toward, as opposed to simply running from something else. So, I thought, maybe it’s this current venture?
As it turns out, it wasn’t, but it did help me clarify a few realities that were only ever cloudy in my mind. It helped me realize that a whole different path — an entirely new trajectory — could be possible, even at my age. So, while Michelle says something is changing, let me clarify that this change has happened at a snail’s pace.
I don’t like quitters, and there is a part of me that has never allowed myself to even think about walking away because doing so makes me feel like one. Mike Foster, my friend who started XXXchurch with me, left after two years in the game. He told me that he believed I could take it further, and entrusted me with that responsibility. If I’m honest, I harbored ill feelings toward Mike for a long time. A really long time. Because he quit. I get now why he couldn’t do this for longer than he gave it. Me walking away now — or jumping into a new role — is not me quitting.
I’m not losing.
I’m not running from but rather toward new ideas that I’m excited about. Toward whatever’s next.
Six years removed from that day in Alaska, I’ve got a bit more clarity on what next means, and I believe that this step — this chapter, this announcement — will only further act as a means toward that end.
I am finally following not just my brain, but my heart and my heart is telling me that it is time.
Moving forward, if and when I lead a huddle, it won’t be for XXXchurch.
All of that said, none of this means I don’t care any longer. And it doesn’t mean you won’t still see me on the sidelines, coaching my team. With any luck, maybe I’ll even be something like a Belichick (even though, gosh — as a Packer fan — I hate that guy)…
But it does mean that — particularly for those of you who have followed this ministry closely throughout the years — you’re going to begin to see some changes take place as I transition from QB to Coach.
So much of this season — whether of Craig Brain, or life in general — can be summarized by “lessons in self-awareness.” Or maybe: self-realization. I’ve changed. The process (maybe something like puberty) has been some tornado of awkward and painful and new and exhilarating.
I’m still growing. I’m still finding my sweet spots. I’m still developing new passions.
I’m coming to the realization that — as a ripe old blue-haired dadager — I can’t time-in for quite as long, or play quite as hard, and have begun to save up some of my remaining field-time for whatever’s coming next.
I’m switching sports here, but Steve Kerr was Michael Jordan’s right-hand man with the Chicago Bulls for years. He wasn’t ever the superstar, but Jordan trusted him, and at this point — as coach for the Golden State Warriors — he’s gone on to break his own player records for most wins in a NBA season.
I hope I can be that kind of coach. I hope that the future of XXXchurch is brighter than it’s ever been. I hope that I can be some kind of Belichick or Kerr to a Brady or Jordan, and that ours will be a legacy defined by having introduced freedom to generations of men and women and families whose lives have been completely transformed by the gospel’s power to break every chain and redeem every year that pornography and sexual addiction — like a locust — has stolen.
As coach to the team that I founded and love, then, I want to make sure that our next QB has the arm for the job, the passion for the work, and the love for the people that XXXchurch will continue to seek and serve.
As we move further in the direction of finalizing this transition, I’m sure that the ins and outs will be more fully realized on a public scale. I’m not writing this, today, for the sake of getting into the weeds about each and every detail, but at the very least, I wanted to move out of my brain and into my heart.
To announce the shifts.
To let you know that — as my 18 years in this position come to a close — I want to “end” well, and we want to set this ministry up for another 18+ successful years.
How to end this one? How to conclude a chapter on a season that’s just beginning? I suppose this will be a story that continues on, and will likely weave its way in and out of whatever stands to follow. Until then…
Thank you for allowing me, my wife and our family the privilege of functioning in this role for so many years. This life has harbored everything from utter joy to seasons of deep despair and back again, but every high and low — every valley and mountain top — has, from this vantage point, made for gorgeous terrain, beautiful to have traveled through. I am honored to have participated in what I can only call recreation for so long, and I am excited about what the next chapter holds for this team, for the next QB and for myself.
Yours truly,
Coach
P.S. On Friday, I plan to announce the next QB of XXXchurch.com. We’ll do so on that website and through those channels, as Craig Brain won’t be the place for what is sure to be an ongoing conversation about this role, specifically. If you are interested in how this transition unfolds, please follow along there, I look forward to introducing you all when the time comes.
Watch the Video
Listen to the Podcast | https://medium.com/craigbrain/quarterbacks-coaches-you-do-you-boo-73a0112f1e03 | ['Craig Gross'] | 2019-07-09 15:57:01.197000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Craig Brain', 'Workmanship', 'Xxxchurch', 'Craig Gross'] |
Blockchain applications in Airlines | Currently, travelers are required to show their IDs at multiple checkpoints — from entering the airport to the luggage drop-off to buying stuff from the duty-free shops. Further, the long queues at security check-in and border control checkpoints are some of the other key pain points that travelers have to go through. Blockchain technology has the potential to simplify this process and eliminate the need to shuffle your bag repeatedly for taking out IDs and various other documents for verification.
Digital ID on Blockchain
With a Blockchain-based system, a user will be able to create his digital ID, entirely controlled by him. In other words, he can decide who can view his information stored on the ID, and he can even decide what part of the information should be shared with any specific viewer.
For this, first, the user will be required to download the Blockchain-based Digital ID creator app for uploading his personal verification documents like passport, visa, etc., and biometric data like fingerprints, eye scan, and voice. This data will then be uploaded on the Blockchain, and a unique hash will be generated for the user’s information.
Creating digital ID on Blockchain
Now, this data will be sent to a government agency for verification. This agency will check and verify the user’s data against the central database and will either approve it or disapprove it. The verification status of the uploaded documents and ID will get stored on the Blockchain.
When a user needs to take a flight, after reaching the airport, he can then simply go to a self-check-in security booth, where the user will be required to share his verified digital ID. After this, the user’s biometrics like the fingerprint or facial recognition will be captured by the booth and will be verified against the verified digital ID provided by the user. On verification, a QR code will be generated, which can be scanned by the user through his mobile app and can be used in further rounds of verification done at the airport. Thus, saving him a lot of precious time and unwanted hassle to take out his passport and other documents again and again to verify his credentials.
At the self-check-in booth, a QR code is generated after the verification of digital ID, which can be used for further verification done at the airport
In the case of international travel, the user can also share his verified digital ID with the border agencies well before his arrival dates. This will initiate the risk assessment in advance, and the actual process would be much faster and smoother when the user actually arrives at the border site. As the digital ID is government verified, the user can even be saved from the hassle of showing the passport.
Baggage Tracking through Blockchain
What comes to your mind when you think of travel. Packing your bags and leaving for that vacation you have been planning all month long. With your bags ready, you leave for the airport thinking about the wonderful beaches that you will hit or the unconquered mountains you will conquer. But as you leave your bags at the baggage drop-in counter, a slight sense of skepticism creeps in, and you become slightly worried about your luggage carrying all your important stuff and gears. You just wish that it gets loaded on the right plane, and in case you have a connecting flight, your concern reaches the next level. And all of this happens because you have no clear visibility of your luggage. In the current system, there is no way to track your luggage even at a single point during your whole journey.
The main reason behind this is the lack of data exchange among the parties involved in the luggage transfer. The responsibility for every luggage item repeatedly changes during the journey. And when the baggage changes hands, the relevant information is uploaded and stored in their respective local and private systems. This information stored in the local systems is not shared with other stakeholders. Thus, making the backtracking of any luggage difficult and complicated. This is especially applicable to multi-stop flights because an increased number of airports and authorities are involved in the luggage transfer, which in turn makes the data sharing complex and confusing.
When baggage changes hands, information is stored in local systems, which is not shared with other stakeholders
But in a Blockchain-based system, the data stored will be secure, immutable, and accessible to all the stakeholders involved. Each bag will be marked with a unique code or number, and each traveler will be given a corresponding unique number to track their luggage.
When the bag moves through a security scanner or tracking system, the data will be uploaded and recorded on the blockchain. Every stakeholder on the Blockchain can track the entire journey of the baggage. Through this, every passenger can see the location of their bags in real-time. This will give him the mental satisfaction that his bags have been loaded into the right plane, even during multi-stop flights. Further, it will also fasten the tracking of lost baggage as every stakeholder will have a clear picture of the luggage, its last tracking point, and the authority responsible for it. Thus, leading to a significant improvement in the customer experience for the flyers.
Tracking bags in real-time on the Blockchain
Redeeming Loyalty Points on Blockchain
Loyalty points and air miles are some of the very crucial ways through which airlines tap repeated customers. But in the current system, customers have to wait until they have substantial loyalty points accrued in their account. Further, the usage of these points is limited to very specific places, which leads to a lot of points being left unused or expired.
But with Blockchain-based royalty points, the points can be redeemed at various other partner outlets. Thus, increasing the usage and attractiveness of these points to the consumers. Very recently, a Blockchain-based loyalty program has been launched by Singapore Airlines for its flyers. They have developed a digital wallet named Krispay, in partnership with Microsoft and KPMG where their flyers can convert their air miles into units of payment that can be used at partner outlets in Singapore. Customers are provided with a mobile app. Using this app, the customers can convert their miles into units of payment and use these units to pay at registered outlets by simply scanning a QR code.
Flight Insurance Payout using smart contracts
Many airline carriers and their travel partners sell flight delay insurance along with flight tickets. But when the flight gets delayed, we don’t know whom to approach to get our insurance claim. The whole claim process is opaque, and no one knows what steps are involved or what compensation they will get if their flight gets delayed.
But with Blockchain and smart contracts, the process will be simplified. This has been implemented by AXA, where Flyers can buy flight delay insurance by paying a premium. Under this insurance scheme, if the flight gets delayed by more than 2 hours, the smart contract gets executed, and the insurance claim amount gets automatically transferred in the accounts of the flyers.
Flight Insurance payout on Blockchain
For buying this smart contract-based insurance, a person needs to first register their flight details on the service provider’s platform and fill in their identity and account details. Then they can pay and buy the insurance plan. And if the flight gets delayed more than the stipulated time defined in the smart contract, an automatic payout is triggered by the smart contract into the flyer’s bank account. This payout is done without any manual intervention from any of the stakeholders involved. Thus, making it swift and transparent.
Thanks for reading! | https://medium.com/techskill-brew/blockchain-applications-in-airlines-36cc7b86afe5 | ['Techskill Brew'] | 2021-12-17 07:05:06.938000+00:00 | ['Airlines', 'Blockchain', 'Aviation', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
The Social Dilemma. The Social Dilemma is a documentary on… | Pun Intended!
So I watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix over the weekend. I must say this is one of the most interesting documentary I have seen recently. In the movie, former employees of Facebook, Google & other tech companies are talking about how these social media platforms are impacting the society. Social media can be addictive is not a big revelation to anyone who uses it, but the fact that addiction & privacy breaches are features, not bugs, of these platforms is disclosed with facts .
The movie shows a horrifying image of how social media platforms are becoming so addictive and impacting the humanity knowingly for their own profit. Infinite scrolling and push notifications keep users constantly engaged. Kids are spending their entire day with their phones isolated from the world. It also shows how the social media companies are collecting your data, building predictive machine learning models, using persuasive technologies and AI to change user’s behavior and manipulate their action. YES, manipulate users’ behavior and action. Machine Learning is not just used to predict the weather :-).
Having myself worked on the Data Engineering side in Ad tech companies for the last couple of years, I could relate to and agree with many things depicted. Every action we take online is getting tracked by some company or other for building predictive data models, ads targeting or consumer type classification. I agree with the fact data privacy needs better regulation, also that social media can be really addictive and detrimental. These social media platforms play a major role in shaping society but we as an individual also need to act responsibly. Self-discipline is necessary in everything we do. Just blaming the advertisers or social media companies is not the solution. Not using any of these platforms is also not possible in today’s day and age. What we really need is a balance. The lesson for us from the movie is to practice self-discipline and learn to live with these platforms. I would definitely recommend everyone to watch it!!
Some of the things that can be done to make these platforms less addictive.
Reduce the time you spend on FB, Instagram and other such platform — (This one goes without saying) Disable all notifications from your phone or even better do not install the apps on your phone keep it limited to laptop. Practice social media fasting and promise yourself not to use it for certain number of hours/days Keep track of your screen time for all apps. This will help in staying more disciplined Along with connecting with outside world, try connecting with your inner-self as well. Go inwards. Learn Pranayama and Meditation.
Some of my favorite one liners from the movie are:
“If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product!”
“You check your phone before you pee in the morning or while you are peeing in the morning, because those are the only two options”
“How much of your life can we get you to give us?”
“Our attention is the product being sold to advertisers” | https://medium.com/@nitinpoddar/the-social-dilemma-reviews-3aa5da6fa417 | ['Nitin Poddar'] | 2020-12-27 23:38:23.196000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Facebook', 'Netflix', 'The Social Dilemma', 'Social Media'] |
5 ways you can fight climate change in 2020 | Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
It really shouldn’t have come to this. As we embrace this new decade, we are faced with the daunting task of needing to halve global CO2 emissions to limit the increase in global average temperatures to the ‘safe’ level of 1.5°C above pre-industrial times. This is despite not yet managing to find a way to arrest the relentless rise in emissions — global emissions have increased by 4% since the Paris Agreement was struck in 2015.
It is tempting to point the finger at others for getting us into this mess — oil companies, governments, lobby groups, capitalism. However, this would be tantamount to admitting defeat and besides, it would do little to solve the problem. We simply do not have enough time to play the blame game. Everyone urgently needs to urgently pitch in if we’re to stop runaway climate change — it will be the fight of our lives. We may not be able to control the situation, but we can certainly change how we respond to it.
A successful — yet morally questionable — artist once sang ‘if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself then make a change’. And that’s the perfect mantra for tackling climate change.
What better time to start than today? There’s no need to take things to extremes, just do what you feel you’re able to. A large number of people making smaller changes can have a greater impact than a small number of people making drastic changes.
Here are 5 ways you can make a big impact in the fight against climate change. You might even save yourself money and improve your health in the process.
1. Consider switching your retirement savings to an ESG fund
Although you probably rarely think about it, your largest single investment other than your home, is likely to be your retirement savings fund (e.g. pension, superannuation or 401(k)). If you are invested in the default option, chances are you are inadvertently funding projects that are inconsistent with limiting climate change, such as new coal mines or coal-fired power plants.
Money talks. Widespread divestment from unsustainable companies will adversely affect their valuations and increase their cost of financing, rendering new projects unviable.
Funds that consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors have experienced rapid growth in recent years as awareness of and demand for sustainable investments has increased. For most pension plans, you will have the option to switch your balance to ESG themed investment options. If you don’t, ask your employer why not.
Investing in ESG does not necessarily mean sacrificing investment returns, in fact, the opposite may be true over the long term. ESG data is patchy and historical periods are relatively short, so it is difficult to draw firm conclusions on relative performance at this stage. However, early studies have found that companies that adopt sustainable approaches are more likely to outperform over long-term investment horizons.
ESG conscious investors have had significant wins by influencing heavy polluters to adapt their corporate strategies. For example, asset managers under the Climate Action 100+ coalition co-filed a shareholder resolution, which forced BP to adopt a business strategy that is consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Note: Choosing your investments is an important financial decision and you should consider all of the factors relevant to your situation, such as your risk appetite and investment horizon. This article is not financial advice. Please speak to a financial advisor if you are unsure.
2. Eat less meat
The simple act of putting food on our plates is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The IPCC’s fifth assessment report found that GHG emissions from agriculture, forestry and changes in land use represent 25% of total emissions. Almost half of these emissions are driven by livestock (both direct emissions and land use), despite meat and dairy providing less than 20% of the global calorie intake.
Livestock also uses almost 80% of the world’s total agricultural land and is a major source of deforestation and biodiversity loss. Reducing your meat intake is one of most significant steps that you can take to reduce your environmental footprint.
In 2019, the IPCC released a special report, which estimated the potential annual GHG emission savings by 2050 if the world adopted different diets. A vegan diet would reduce emissions by 8 GtCO2-e per annum. To put that in context, the annual emissions of the USA — the second largest emitter — were just over 6 GtCO2-e in 2018. The global Veganuary campaign is a good opportunity to try a vegan diet for a month.
In practice, a vegan diet is likely to be a step too far for most people. If that sounds like you, then other dietary options can still have a significant environmental benefit (see chart below).
Source: Analysis based on IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, Chapter 5
A ‘flexitarian’ diet — where three quarters of meat and dairy consumption is replaced with plant-based alternatives — provides most of the environmental benefits of a vegan diet, but allows occasional indulgence in meat in dairy.
Easier still, simply switching from beef and lamb to less intensive meats like chicken, would achieve almost half of the GHG emissions benefits as a full vegetarian diet. The chart below shows the GHG emissions per gram of protein.
Source: Our World in Data, based on data from Clark & Tilman (2017). Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice. Environmental Research Letters, Volume 12, Number 6.
3. Lobby and protest
The year 2020 is a critical one for climate action. The five-year ‘ratchet mechanism’ for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement will kick in, requiring countries to either update or communicate a new NDC. Under the agreement, the NDCs should be “ambitious” and represent a “progression over time”. In theory then, we should see a round of stronger commitments announced at COP26 in Glasgow at the end of the year. However, it would be healthy to be sceptical that this will occur unprompted.
Currently, the sum of NDCs is inconsistent with the Paris Agreement objective of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2°C relative to pre-industrial times, targeting 1.5°C. Even if all of the NDCs are met, we are still on course for a 3.2°C increase, which would not avert the worst effects of climate change and may breach tipping points resulting in runaway global warming. Further, most countries are not even on track to meet the low bar of the current NDCs.
Citizens need to hold their leaders to account to ensure that they increase their NDCs in line with the Paris Agreement and that they put in place concrete plans for achieving these targets. In some countries — such as Australia, Brazil and USA — this is even more important given the alarming rhetoric and poor environmental record of their leaders. In the USA, the primary goal would be to immediately reverse the process to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which Trump formally commenced in November 2019.
In 2019, Greta Thunberg demonstrated how powerful a democratically voiceless cohort of society can be. Imagine what would happen if voters around the world mobilised in the same way as schoolchildren have. We urgently need to strike fear into politicians’ hearts before delegates are sent to COP26 later this year — the planet cannot afford COP26 to be a flop like COP25 was.
There will plenty of opportunities to get involved over the year. Your degree of commitment and your means of protest is entirely up to you — the most important thing is to add your voice to the movement.
Aside from emissions reduction targets, there are plenty of other worthy environmental campaigns to support, such as halting deforestation and limiting single-use plastic. Patagonia has launched a platform to help people find local grassroots campaigns called Action Works.
4. Plant trees and restore ecosystems
Nature can be a powerful ally in the fight against climate change, but only if we let it. Healthy ecosystems can help lock away carbon, reduce biodiversity loss and provide myriad other benefits.
A 2019 study found that planting trees is the cheapest and most effective way to mitigate climate change and identified land that could support 1.2 trillion trees without encroaching on farmland or urban areas.
The concept seems to be catching on, with political parties in the UK having an arms (or limbs…) race on tree planting policies leading up to the December 2019 election. The Tories promised 30 million per year, the Lib Dems and Labour promised 60 million and the Greens promised 70 million. Meanwhile in America, a social media campaign called #TeamTrees successfully raised money to plant over 20 million trees.
It is not just about the number of trees that matters. Planting swathes of monoculture forests on unsuitable land could potentially have adverse impacts on biodiversity and be less effective at absorbing CO2. Widescale planting should involve a mix of (ideally) native trees that are suited to the local environment. New woodland also requires a strategy for regular maintenance.
If you’re lucky enough to have a backyard, you can give wildlife a helping hand and fight climate change by planting native trees and shrubs. If not, you can join a tree planting day or perform conservation work with a local charity. There are plenty of opportunities even in cities, for example, Trees for Cities runs planting events in cities across the UK . These events are always rewarding and are a good outdoor workout.
You can also help from the comfort of your own home by donating to environmental charities, which plant trees, restore ecosystems or combat deforestation. There are a number of worthy charities to choose from, so find one that speaks to you. A few examples are listed below:
· Woodland Trust — plants trees and protects woods in the UK to create havens for wildlife.
· Tree Aid — helps poverty-stricken Africans generate an income through planting trees.
· Eden Projects — works with local communities around the world to restore forests.
The Trillion Tree Campaign has created an app, which provides a list of tree-planting charities along with details such as survival rates. It also includes a tracker of progress against the trillion trees target.
Finally, another simple and free way to plant trees is to switch your search engine to Ecosia. They have planted over 79 million trees to date by donating their profits to projects across the world.
5. Fly less
The concept of Flygskam (or flight shame), which encourages people to fly less, has taken off in recent years. Greta Thunberg helped raise awareness by choosing to travel across Europe by train and to America by sailboat. Given the significant CO2 emissions associated with flying, Greta and the Flygskam movement have a valid point.
A single economy class flight from London to New York emits almost a tonne of CO2, which exceeds the entire annual emissions of an average person in 56 counties. A return trip is equivalent to almost 30% of the average European’s current annual CO2 emissions. It is difficult to see how further growth in the aviation industry can be accommodated at the same time as reducing global emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.
A UN scheme called CORSIA aims to ensure that any increase in international aviation emissions above 2020 levels are offset. However, the scheme will not become mandatory until 2027 — the first voluntary pilot phase starts in 2021. Further, there is debate around what offsets will be allowed and some doubt as to how effective these will be.
Some airlines are responding to concerns by going further than the CORSIA agreement. UK based operator EasyJet became the first major airline to commit to offsetting all emissions across its network. Airlines are also working with aircraft manufacturers to develop hybrid and electric aircraft, although these are unlikely to be commercially viable any time soon.
In the meantime, the best thing that you can do is to avoid unnecessary flights. The second best thing you can do is to pay to offset your flights. That great deal you spotted online may not seem such a bargain once you factor in the cost of emissions. | https://traviselsum.medium.com/5-ways-you-can-fight-climate-change-in-2020-e928043d1649 | ['Travis Elsum'] | 2020-01-01 10:12:04.814000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Environment', 'Resolutions', 'Esg Investing'] |
Successful Team Building with Shamir Kumar Nandy | “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” -Phil Jackson
Microsoft, Apple, Alibaba Co., JPMorgan Chase are companies everyone has famously heard of… They are known worldwide for their excellent services, products, and customer satisfaction. Always receiving awards for one or the other thing, always in the news for breaking top records, always being the new definition of success. It’s incredible how these companies, which once started with basically nothing but a small capital and a few trusted colleagues, are now some of the most successful and well-earning businesses today. Everyone sees it, the profits they make, the recognition they receive, the charts they top but does anyone really know what goes behind the back doors of these eminent firms?
Today, Shamir Kumar Nandy, a professional business Coach from Selangor, Malaysia who helps business firms reach business goals reveals the secret to the success achieved by top companies: TEAM BUILDING!
In this pandemic, not only is it difficult to run businesses but even more difficult to manage employees. Empathy, trust, loyalty, and hard work is what a good team is compromised of. Here are a few points to keep in mind as a firm manager or owner.
Corporate Team Building Exercises For Your Dream Team
The Thorn In My Rose
This amazing game stimulates empathy towards your coworkers, something they will definitely need to act upon with, to be a part of a strong team. This activity will not only do so but also will help you to know a bit about them, their thinking and mindset, likes and dislikes which will form a bond of intimacy and thus bring about a sense of trust and faith towards team members.
Time: About 1 minute per person
Open Mic
This activity is a good way to help your employees to come out of their shell and loosen up with their coworkers. They will get to know each other’s way of thinking through the game and also crack a joke or two! Lots of dad jokes coming your way, make sure to have your awkward fake laugh ready, just in case!
Ask the players or team members to share about themselves, tell a joke, a funny story about how their cat jumped off the roof, why they think the egg came before the chicken, play their flute. Honestly, anything they’d like to share.
‘Oh you think so’
This activity is actually a lot more than just an icebreaker. Since your employees will be a team, it will include a lot of sharing views, accepting, exchanging, and question opinions. You can test their analysis, communication skills, speech manner, and courtesy in just a few minutes. Basically, it’s like an important meeting or high school debate in a nutshell.
Decide upon a topic or the latest bit of news, a controversial topic, a game of ‘situation or what would you do?’ 5 minutes into the virtual meeting, tell your employees the topic you settled on, or do it how we do, leave it as an open question. Ask them to present their opinions on the same, with facts and logic. Also, save the last 10 minutes for open discussion and rebuttal
The physical distance of remote work will rapidly translate into an emotional distance, leading to alienation in turn.
And they would not be happy working with their fellow teammates while the staff feels alienated! This is why building a relaxed team atmosphere that can be counted on by virtual employees is critical. In order to add more human contact to remote, team bonding projects consist of many strategically developed techniques, games, and events. And thus, Mr. Shamir Kumar Nandy, the very man who has brought us these incredible yet fun ideas must be thanked! | https://medium.com/@shamirkumarnandy/successful-team-building-with-shamir-kumar-nandy-9510be467c5f | ['Shamir Kumar Nandy'] | 2020-12-15 09:04:25.983000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Team Building', 'Shamir Kumar Nandy', 'Business Development', 'Business Coaching'] |
A Beginner’s Guide to Hierarchical Clustering and how to Perform it in Python | It is crucial to understand customer behavior in any industry. I realized this last year when my chief marketing officer asked me — “Can you tell me which existing customers should we target for our new product?”
That was quite a learning curve for me. I quickly realized as a data scientist how important it is to segment customers so my organization can tailor and build targeted strategies. This is where the concept of clustering came in ever so handy!
Problems like segmenting customers are often deceptively tricky because we are not working with any target variable in mind. We are officially in the land of unsupervised learning where we need to figure out patterns and structures without a set outcome in mind. It’s both challenging and thrilling as a data scientist.
Now, there are a few different ways to perform clustering (as you’ll see below). I will introduce you to one such type in this article — hierarchical clustering.
We will learn what hierarchical clustering is, its advantage over the other clustering algorithms, the different types of hierarchical clustering and the steps to perform it. We will finally take up a customer segmentation dataset and then implement hierarchical clustering in Python. I love this technique and I’m sure you will too after this article!
Note: As mentioned, there are multiple ways to perform clustering. I encourage you to check out our awesome guide to the different types of clustering:
Table of Contents
Supervised vs Unsupervised Learning Why Hierarchical Clustering? What is Hierarchical Clustering? Types of Hierarchical Clustering
1. Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering
2. Divisive Hierarchical Clustering Steps to perform Hierarchical Clustering How to Choose the Number of Clusters in Hierarchical Clustering? Solving a Wholesale Customer Segmentation Problem using Hierarchical Clustering
Supervised vs Unsupervised Learning
It’s important to understand the difference between supervised and unsupervised learning unsupervised learning before we dive into hierarchical clustering. Let me explain this difference using a simple example.
Suppose we want to estimate the count of bikes that will be rented in a city every day:
Or, let’s say we want to predict whether a person on board the Titanic survived or not:
We have a fixed target to achieve in both these examples:
In the first example, we have to predict the count of bikes based on features like the season, holiday, workingday, weather, temp, etc.
We are predicting whether a passenger survived or not in the second example. In the ‘Survived’ variable, 0 represents that the person did not survive and 1 means the person did make it out alive. The independent variables here include Pclass, Sex, Age, Fare, etc.
So, when we are given a target variable (count and Survival in the above two cases) which we have to predict based on a given set of predictors or independent variables (season, holiday, Sex, Age, etc.), such problems are called supervised learning problems.
Let’s look at the figure below to understand this visually:
Here, y is our dependent or target variable, and X represents the independent variables. The target variable is dependent on X and hence it is also called a dependent variable. We train our model using the independent variables in the supervision of the target variable and hence the name supervised learning.
Our aim, when training the model, is to generate a function that maps the independent variables to the desired target. Once the model is trained, we can pass new sets of observations and the model will predict the target for them. This, in a nutshell, is supervised learning.
There might be situations when we do not have any target variable to predict. Such problems, without any explicit target variable, are known as unsupervised learning problems. We only have the independent variables and no target/dependent variable in these problems.
We try to divide the entire data into a set of groups in these cases. These groups are known as clusters and the process of making these clusters is known as clustering.
This technique is generally used for clustering a population into different groups. A few common examples include segmenting customers, clustering similar documents together, recommending similar songs or movies, etc.
There are a LOT more applications of unsupervised learning. If you come across any interesting application, feel free to share them in the comments section below!
Now, there are various algorithms that help us to make these clusters. The most commonly used clustering algorithms are K-means and Hierarchical clustering.
Why Hierarchical Clustering?
We should first know how K-means works before we dive into hierarchical clustering. Trust me, it will make the concept of hierarchical clustering all the more easier.
Here’s a brief overview of how K-means works:
Decide the number of clusters (k) Select k random points from the data as centroids Assign all the points to the nearest cluster centroid Calculate the centroid of newly formed clusters Repeat steps 3 and 4
It is an iterative process. It will keep on running until the centroids of newly formed clusters do not change or the maximum number of iterations are reached.
But there are certain challenges with K-means. It always tries to make clusters of the same size. Also, we have to decide the number of clusters at the beginning of the algorithm. Ideally, we would not know how many clusters should we have, in the beginning of the algorithm and hence it a challenge with K-means.
This is a gap hierarchical clustering bridges with aplomb. It takes away the problem of having to pre-define the number of clusters. Sounds like a dream! So, let’s see what hierarchical clustering is and how it improves on K-means.
What is Hierarchical Clustering?
Let’s say we have the below points and we want to cluster them into groups:
We can assign each of these points to a separate cluster:
Now, based on the similarity of these clusters, we can combine the most similar clusters together and repeat this process until only a single cluster is left:
We are essentially building a hierarchy of clusters. That’s why this algorithm is called hierarchical clustering. I will discuss how to decide the number of clusters in a later section. For now, let’s look at the different types of hierarchical clustering.
Types of Hierarchical Clustering
There are mainly two types of hierarchical clustering:
Agglomerative hierarchical clustering Divisive Hierarchical clustering
Let’s understand each type in detail.
Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering
We assign each point to an individual cluster in this technique. Suppose there are 4 data points. We will assign each of these points to a cluster and hence will have 4 clusters in the beginning:
Then, at each iteration, we merge the closest pair of clusters and repeat this step until only a single cluster is left:
We are merging (or adding) the clusters at each step, right? Hence, this type of clustering is also known as additive hierarchical clustering.
Divisive Hierarchical Clustering
Divisive hierarchical clustering works in the opposite way. Instead of starting with n clusters (in case of n observations), we start with a single cluster and assign all the points to that cluster.
So, it doesn’t matter if we have 10 or 1000 data points. All these points will belong to the same cluster at the beginning:
Now, at each iteration, we split the farthest point in the cluster and repeat this process until each cluster only contains a single point:
We are splitting (or dividing) the clusters at each step, hence the name divisive hierarchical clustering.
Agglomerative Clustering is widely used in the industry and that will be the focus in this article. Divisive hierarchical clustering will be a piece of cake once we have a handle on the agglomerative type.
Steps to Perform Hierarchical Clustering
We merge the most similar points or clusters in hierarchical clustering — we know this. Now the question is — how do we decide which points are similar and which are not? It’s one of the most important questions in clustering!
Here’s one way to calculate similarity — Take the distance between the centroids of these clusters. The points having the least distance are referred to as similar points and we can merge them. We can refer to this as a distance-based algorithm as well (since we are calculating the distances between the clusters).
In hierarchical clustering, we have a concept called a proximity matrix. This stores the distances between each point. Let’s take an example to understand this matrix as well as the steps to perform hierarchical clustering.
Setting up the Example
Suppose a teacher wants to divide her students into different groups. She has the marks scored by each student in an assignment and based on these marks, she wants to segment them into groups. There’s no fixed target here as to how many groups to have. Since the teacher does not know what type of students should be assigned to which group, it cannot be solved as a supervised learning problem. So, we will try to apply hierarchical clustering here and segment the students into different groups.
Let’s take a sample of 5 students:
Creating a Proximity Matrix
First, we will create a proximity matrix which will tell us the distance between each of these points. Since we are calculating the distance of each point from each of the other points, we will get a square matrix of shape n X n (where n is the number of observations).
Let’s make the 5 x 5 proximity matrix for our example:
The diagonal elements of this matrix will always be 0 as the distance of a point with itself is always 0. We will use the Euclidean distance formula to calculate the rest of the distances. So, let’s say we want to calculate the distance between point 1 and 2:
√(10–7)² = √9 = 3
Similarly, we can calculate all the distances and fill the proximity matrix.
Steps to Perform Hierarchical Clustering
Step 1: First, we assign all the points to an individual cluster:
Different colors here represent different clusters. You can see that we have 5 different clusters for the 5 points in our data.
Step 2: Next, we will look at the smallest distance in the proximity matrix and merge the points with the smallest distance. We then update the proximity matrix:
Here, the smallest distance is 3 and hence we will merge point 1 and 2:
Let’s look at the updated clusters and accordingly update the proximity matrix:
Here, we have taken the maximum of the two marks (7, 10) to replace the marks for this cluster. Instead of the maximum, we can also take the minimum value or the average values as well. Now, we will again calculate the proximity matrix for these clusters:
Step 3: We will repeat step 2 until only a single cluster is left.
So, we will first look at the minimum distance in the proximity matrix and then merge the closest pair of clusters. We will get the merged clusters as shown below after repeating these steps:
We started with 5 clusters and finally have a single cluster. This is how agglomerative hierarchical clustering works. But the burning question still remains — how do we decide the number of clusters? Let’s understand that in the next section.
How should we Choose the Number of Clusters in Hierarchical Clustering?
Ready to finally answer this question that’s been hanging around since we started learning? To get the number of clusters for hierarchical clustering, we make use of an awesome concept called a Dendrogram.
A dendrogram is a tree-like diagram that records the sequences of merges or splits.
Let’s get back to our teacher-student example. Whenever we merge two clusters, a dendrogram will record the distance between these clusters and represent it in graph form. Let’s see how a dendrogram looks like:
We have the samples of the dataset on the x-axis and the distance on the y-axis. Whenever two clusters are merged, we will join them in this dendrogram and the height of the join will be the distance between these points. Let’s build the dendrogram for our example:
Take a moment to process the above image. We started by merging sample 1 and 2 and the distance between these two samples was 3 (refer to the first proximity matrix in the previous section). Let’s plot this in the dendrogram:
Here, we can see that we have merged sample 1 and 2. The vertical line represents the distance between these samples. Similarly, we plot all the steps where we merged the clusters and finally, we get a dendrogram like this:
We can clearly visualize the steps of hierarchical clustering. More the distance of the vertical lines in the dendrogram, more the distance between those clusters.
Now, we can set a threshold distance and draw a horizontal line ( Generally, we try to set the threshold in such a way that it cuts the tallest vertical line). Let’s set this threshold as 12 and draw a horizontal line:
The number of clusters will be the number of vertical lines which are being intersected by the line drawn using the threshold. In the above example, since the red line intersects 2 vertical lines, we will have 2 clusters. One cluster will have a sample (1,2,4) and the other will have a sample (3,5). Pretty straightforward, right?
This is how we can decide the number of clusters using a dendrogram in Hierarchical Clustering. In the next section, we will implement hierarchical clustering which will help you to understand all the concepts that we have learned in this article.
Solving the Wholesale Customer Segmentation problem using Hierarchical Clustering
Time to get our hands dirty in Python!
We will be working on a wholesale customer segmentation problem. You can download the dataset using this link. The data is hosted on the UCI Machine Learning repository. The aim of this problem is to segment the clients of a wholesale distributor based on their annual spending on diverse product categories, like milk, grocery, region, etc.
Let’s explore the data first and then apply Hierarchical Clustering to segment the clients.
We will first import the required libraries:
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline
Load the data and look at the first few rows:
data = pd.read_csv('Wholesale customers data.csv')
data.head()
There are multiple product categories — Fresh, Milk, Grocery, etc. The values represent the number of units purchased by each client for each product. Our aim is to make clusters from this data that can segment similar clients together. We will, of course, use Hierarchical Clustering for this problem.
But before applying Hierarchical Clustering, we have to normalize the data so that the scale of each variable is the same. Why is this important? Well, if the scale of the variables is not the same, the model might become biased towards the variables with a higher magnitude like Fresh or Milk (refer to the above table).
So, let’s first normalize the data and bring all the variables to the same scale:
from sklearn.preprocessing import normalize
data_scaled = normalize(data)
data_scaled = pd.DataFrame(data_scaled, columns=data.columns)
data_scaled.head()
Here, we can see that the scale of all the variables is almost similar. Now, we are good to go. Let’s first draw the dendrogram to help us decide the number of clusters for this particular problem:
import scipy.cluster.hierarchy as shc
plt.figure(figsize=(10, 7))
plt.title("Dendrograms")
dend = shc.dendrogram(shc.linkage(data_scaled, method='ward'))
The x-axis contains the samples and y-axis represents the distance between these samples. The vertical line with maximum distance is the blue line and hence we can decide a threshold of 6 and cut the dendrogram:
plt.figure(figsize=(10, 7))
plt.title("Dendrograms")
dend = shc.dendrogram(shc.linkage(data_scaled, method='ward'))
plt.axhline(y=6, color='r', linestyle='--')
We have two clusters as this line cuts the dendrogram at two points. Let’s now apply hierarchical clustering for 2 clusters:
from sklearn.cluster import AgglomerativeClustering
cluster = AgglomerativeClustering(n_clusters=2, affinity='euclidean', linkage='ward')
cluster.fit_predict(data_scaled)
We can see the values of 0s and 1s in the output since we defined 2 clusters. 0 represents the points that belong to the first cluster and 1 represents points in the second cluster. Let’s now visualize the two clusters:
plt.figure(figsize=(10, 7))
plt.scatter(data_scaled['Milk'], data_scaled['Grocery'], c=cluster.labels_)
Awesome! We can clearly visualize the two clusters here. This is how we can implement hierarchical clustering in Python.
End Notes
Hierarchical clustering is a super useful way of segmenting observations. The advantage of not having to pre-define the number of clusters gives it quite an edge over k-Means.
If you are still relatively new to data science, I highly recommend taking the Applied Machine Learning course. It is one of the most comprehensive end-to-end machine learning courses you will find anywhere. Hierarchical clustering is just one of a diverse range of topics we cover in the course.
What are your thoughts on hierarchical clustering? Do you feel there’s a better way to create clusters using less computational resources? Connect with me in the comments section below and let’s discuss! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/a-beginners-guide-to-hierarchical-clustering-and-how-to-perform-it-in-python-3ea26de2bc20 | ['Pulkit Sharma'] | 2019-06-17 06:42:14.622000+00:00 | ['Hierarchical', 'Unsupervised Learning', 'Clustering', 'Python', 'Machine Learning'] |
1st Week in Review — October. Andreessen Horowitz Opens School… | -
Andreessen Horowitz Opens School Focused on Crypto Startups
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced on Oct 3 of opening a school specializing in startups aiming to develop cryptocurrency-related projects saying that it intends to “encourage more tech entrepreneurs to start crypto projects and help crypto-curious builders navigate the idea maze.” An array of industry players has rolled out education-related initiatives in recent months. Privacy-centric computing network and app ecosystem Blockstack announced partnership with skills-based online school Lambda School. Students enrolled in the program can reportedly now learn how to code Blockstack apps and earn monthly revenue through its App Mining Program.
Japan’s Kanto Region to Track Surplus Solar Energy with Power Ledger
Power Ledger, Australian tech firm will run another blockchain-enabled energy trading trial in Japan’s Kanto region with Japanese solar provider Sharing Energy and electricity retailer eRex by December 2019. The new Power Ledger’s trial will track surplus solar energy levels and electricity trading, integrating blockchain-enabled P2P platform with household smart meter systems in the Kanto region, the second largest sub-national economy in the world after California in the United States. The trial is expected to affect over 500,000 solar energy consumers. It intends to demonstrate the benefits of distributed energy systems in countering the significant feed-in-tariff (FIT) reduction, allow trial participants to set prices and track energy trading in real time to demonstrate settlement of surplus solar transactions.
Samsung-Backed Blockchain Firm Launches in UAE After Securing $16M
After securing successful funding of $16 million, Blocko, a South Korean blockchain provider, launched in the United Arab Emirates partnering with SEED Group, a member of the Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum in the UAE. The Fund raise took place in funding rounds. South Korea’s oldest bank, Shinhan Bank, as well as KEB Hana Bank, LB Investment and Dadam Investment are among those who participated in the funding round. The blockchain company is set to bring its Aergo platform to the Middle East. Blocko previously completed 38 full-scale enterprise blockchain solutions in South Korea for companies like Samsung, Hyundai Motors and Cisco.
Algorand Integrates Tech to Bring Users Detailed Analysis of Largest Blockchains.
PARSIQ monitoring system is enabling the ability to analyze the largest blockchains to Algorand’s platform. PARSIQ is a monitoring tool for compliance officers, market analysts, blockchain developers and researchers. It makes the “broad view” of the blockchain easier for users, from interpreting reams of data to tracking and analyzing movements on the network. “There’s a need to both simplify experiences and also give people better information about network application performance, and we think the work PARSIQ is doing will be a great addition for people developing on the Algorand blockchain.” Said by Algorand CEO Steve Kokinos.
Written by Colin Kaye, chief writer at Nvelop Holding, a middle east based investment firm focussed on Blockchain and fintech. | https://medium.com/@Nvelopholding/week-1-review-october-ee62ebe0dfc7 | ['Nvelop Holding'] | 2019-10-08 12:33:35.200000+00:00 | ['VC', 'Crypto', 'Startup', 'Samsung', 'Blockchain'] |
The Alt-Right X-Files: Conspiracy Theories and Fake News | A lot of us have heard a least one conspiracy theory such as that aliens exist (thanks Tom Delonge) or that 9/11 was an inside job (sorry, with the weight of the plane and office equipment, the steel beams could have totally melted) but many of us do not understand exactly what conspiracy theory means. According to Aaronovitch, these theories are “unnecessary assumptions of conspiracy where other explanations are more probable”.
“Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement” -Red Hot Chili Peppers
For example, to refute a popular theory that the moon landing was faked, it’s actually likely that we did land on the moon because it’s easier to put a man on the moon than convince the hundreds of people that would be involved in that type of forgery to keep quiet.
What this means is conspiracies are used to explain the world around us. So since some people believe we didn’t have the technology to make it to the moon in 1969, these people fabricated a story, that in their minds, made more sense to them. Sometimes conspiracies are used to make sense of tragedies because some people need a better answer than just some radicals were able to hijack a plane and kill thousands of people. 9/11 was such a tragedy that people coped through changing their understanding of the event, an event of this scale must have some deep rooted conspiracy behind it and can’t be the responsibility of a few men. However, these were the conspiracies of yesterday, no longer are conspiracies used to explain the world around us, now they are a vehicle for fake news and those who wish to undermine our trust in the upper echelons of society and the government.
Tom Delonge, former Blink-182 front man who quit the band to study aliens
I’ll be the first to say that conspiracy theories used to be fun. I remember growing up and checking out books on bigfoot and grey aliens, swearing up and down at least once a month that I had seen evidence of their existence. The X-Files also made conspiratorial thought fun but this is longer the case. Conspiracies have become the playground for far-right groups bellowing about the ‘leftist deep-state’ who are ‘destroying america’. These theories are no longer aimed at trying to understand the world around us, they are used to spread fear and misinformation. However, it is not just the theories themselves that are dangerous, its is the reach they are able to obtain through twitter, facebook, reddit, 4chan, various forum boards and so on. Moreover the internet has allowed people who at one point only had a local voice to reach a national audience with the perfect example being Alex Jones.
Donald Trump’s son was caught liking a tweet referring to the Parkland Shooting crisis actor conspiracy theory
By now most of us have heard of the volatile InfoWars host who screams about the government testing “gay bombs” that are “turning the freakin’ frogs gay” and popularized the phrase ‘feminazi’, obviously in reference to the feminist movement. Before the internet, his radical alternative right views would probably only reach the outskirts of his home state of Texas, if he was lucky, but now he can reach billions of people with just one website.
Alex Jones has since been banned from youtube but a few of his choice clips are still available
Although we like to laugh at his antics, his conspiratorial thought has begun to have some real world consequences, most notably his theories on the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting and “crisis actors”. The December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, CT to this day remains the deadliest school shooting in history, and although national tragedies have long been the subject of conspiracies, the Sandy Hook shooting and Jones theories stand out from the rest (I would say is the first marker of how conspiratorial thought is changing). Whereas the 9/11 conspiracies were formed in part of an attempt to rationalize such a brash act of violence against a civilian population, the Sandy Hook theory was used to spread mistrust in the government, especially in the case of gun control.
Alex Jones has also been banned from twitter, but he still has a large following that posts his content and his website still exists
Jones and many other Alt-right conspiracy theorists claim that the government employs crisis actors (people who act out a school shooting scenarios with no actual casualties) so Government can justify gun control and take away all their guns. And while conspiracy theories in the past either took years to fester or where perpetuated by people with a small reach (ie. The Lone Gunmen from the X-files), any random thought of conspiracy can now be shared by anyone, at anytime to billions of people.
Alex Jones claims his first amendment right when discussing these theories but that does not absolve him of consequences of violating the terms of a private company (twitter)
The Sandy Hook shooting (and other mass shootings) have received the same treatment from talking heads like Alex Jones but these theories have begun to bleed more into fake news. As I stated before, the Venn diagram of conspiracy thought vs. fake news is nearly circle, meaning the concepts behind and the people who share them nearly overlap.
Start your kids young on the danger of QAnon and Pizzagate
Confirmation Bias has a big role to play in the sharing of conspiratorial fake news. Someone who does not like Hillary Clinton may see the pizzagate story (which I could go into but you should probably research that rabbit whole for yourself, if you have the stomach) and as ridiculous as it sounds to us, their hate for her may trump their reason.
Now what can make conspiracy theories so dangerous is its inherent nature and close tie to fake news. Nancy L. Rosenblum author of A Lot of People Are Saying, states that “liberal democracy requires a minimum amount of mutual trust among citizens, and conspiracy destroys it”. The reasons Bigfoot, aliens and even 9/11 don’t pose the same threat as QAnon (similar to Pizzagate)and Pizzagate is because, for one, they weren’t relevant to the context of society and they did not have the same reach and support from talking heads like Alex Jones. I would argue that 9/11 conspiracies could have reached the same traction as these other theories but if they were to be true, the government responsible would have been the republican government under Bush (which would not fit into their anti-liberal rhetoric). And of course, conspiracy theories are not one sided and do exist on the far left side, too, but I would go so far as to say they have nowhere near the support or impact of the Alt-Right kind. The biggest conspiracy theory that has stemmed from the left is the Russian hacking scandal, which ironically, was true in some aspects. I myself am trying to be as unbiased as possible but the difference between conspiratorial thought on alt-right vs the left, well, obvious… to say the least. | https://medium.com/@scoughl3/the-alt-right-x-files-conspiracy-theories-and-fake-news-718d145c3260 | ['Sammy C'] | 2019-08-01 05:56:11.411000+00:00 | ['Conspiracy Theories', 'News', 'Politics', 'Alex Jones'] |
The Complete Robot Vacuum Cleaners Buying Guide | A robot vacuum cleaner is a great house keeper to your home as it can complete day-to-day cleaning tasks without you having to pick up a vac yourself, saving your time and energy both. Plus, if you’re short on space, thanks to its compact size, it won’t occupy much room in your home.
If you’re brand new to robot vacuum cleaners, you might be overwhelmed by the number of features and models available. Before you jump the gun and going to buy the first model you can find, ask yourself: what do I really need?
This comprehensive robot vacuum buying guide is intended to provide you with all the information you need to make a wise and informed choice.
To get started, ask yourself these questions first:
How big is your house? Do you have carpets or hardwood? Do you have any budget limits? How often do you clean your floor? Do you mind water stains after mopping the floor? Will you need the robot vacuum to clean your house while you’re away? Do you live in an apartment complex where excessive noise might disturb your neighbors? Do you want your robot cleaner to have both vacuum and mop features? Would you prefer a robot vacuum that can clean every corner of your house?
Now that you have brainstormed and prepared this initial information, it’s time to understand more about this product and the options available.
Why should you get a robot vacuum cleaner?
A robot vacuum keeps things relatively clean and saves you the hassle of hauling out the heavy canister vacuum every time bread crumbs fall on the floor. Robot vacuums are great for daily tidying — picking up stray crumbs, hair of all types, dust bunnies and everything else that finds its way onto your floors.
Many robot vacuums can be scheduled to run as often as multiple times a day, and some app-enabled robots allow you to watch their progress as they clean. If you’re concerned about allergies, Narwal’s product is designed with HEPA Filter, which can prevent allergies.
What are the benefits of a robot vacuum cleaner over upright vacuumer?
If you’re considering bringing a robot vacuum cleaner into your home but aren’t sure whether to take the leap, here are some of the benefits of these autonomous little cleaners.
Time-saving: one of the best aspects of a robot vacuum cleaner is the fact that it cleans your home all by itself. A robot vacuum cleaner saves you valuable time and leaves you one less chore to do yourself.
one of the best aspects of a robot vacuum cleaner is the fact that it cleans your home all by itself. A robot vacuum cleaner saves you valuable time and leaves you one less chore to do yourself. Cleans while you’re out: you can program the robot to run on specific days and at specific times. You can also schedule cleaning for when you’re at work and enjoy the feeling of coming home to a clean house.
you can program the robot to run on specific days and at specific times. You can also schedule cleaning for when you’re at work and enjoy the feeling of coming home to a clean house. Better reach: thanks to their small size, robots can get under heavy furniture that you wouldn’t usually be able to clean yourself.
thanks to their small size, robots can get under heavy furniture that you wouldn’t usually be able to clean yourself. Vacuum and mopping: many of the newer robot cleaners are dual functions, with mopping capabilities as well as vacuuming. In addition, Narwal solution has an innovative self-cleaning function. The base station auto-detects mops’ dirtiness and wipes out the dirt. Then, the dirt gets stored in a separate tank to be dropped.
many of the newer robot cleaners are dual functions, with mopping capabilities as well as vacuuming. In addition, Narwal solution has an innovative self-cleaning function. The base station auto-detects mops’ dirtiness and wipes out the dirt. Then, the dirt gets stored in a separate tank to be dropped. Space-saving: the compact and minimalistic design means robot cleaners take up much less space in your home than a traditional vacuum cleaner. Actually, Narwal’s high-tech design makes them a spotlight in your house.
the compact and minimalistic design means robot cleaners take up much less space in your home than a traditional vacuum cleaner. Actually, Narwal’s high-tech design makes them a spotlight in your house. APP control: You can operate and control the robot vacuum through a smartphone app. At your fingertips, you can set virtual no-go zones and choose multiple scenarios and cleaning plans.
What to look for in a robot vacuum cleaner?
While using a robot vacuum is easy enough, shopping for one can be overwhelming. Here are the main aspects to look for when considering which one to buy.
Size:
The dimensions of a robot vacuum cleaner determine how well it can get into tight spots, such as under your kitchen cabinets and low-clearance furniture (couches and recliners). If it’s too tall, it won’t be able to reach into these spots, or worse, it will get in and get stuck until you physically free it. Besides, the bigger robot vacuum, the larger dustbin. Robot vacuums don’t use expandable bags like many of their stand-up brethren do, so when it comes to debris capacity, what you see is what you get.
Cleaning modules:
Most robot vacuum cleaners feature the ability to change suction and other cleaning functions to adapt to different floor surfaces, either automatically or with input from you. As for Narwal, you can adjust its suction power and the humidity of the mopping pad through the app.
Filter:
The filter captures small particles and incisible allergens efficiently.
Navigation:
The allure of robot vacuums is their promise to complete their task with minimal management from you. In order to do that, they must be able to navigate a room’s unique layout, maneuver around furniture and other obstacles, and avoid hazards such as falling downstairs and smart-avoiding obstacles.
Mapping:
Robot vacuums with mapping capabilities usually come equipped with an onboard camera or laser reflections to produce a 360-degree view of the room. This allows the robot vac to create a map of the space and locate itself within that map. When the robot maps a house for the first time, speed and accuracy are two key points. The advantage of mapping is the robot will know which areas it has already cleaned and which it hasn’t, to avoid going over the same spot unnecessarily. This feature also reminds it from where to resume cleaning if it must stop and recharge on the midway through the task.
Extra features:
The “Child Lock” feature can protect your child’s safety. This function was designed to help prevent children from getting hurt while improperly using the robot.
Robot cleaner daily cleaning tips
Using a robot vacuum cleaner is usually a pretty straightforward task, but you can help it perform better with these easy tips:
1. Tidy up
Even the most hi-tech sensors can’t navigate around piles of Lego or dirty laundry, so to give the vacuum the best chance of success, have a quick tidy before you leave.
2. Use the timers
Robot vacuums work best if they clean every day. Learn how to use the schedule and set it to clean when you know you’ll be out of the house.
3. Place the Base station in a good location
The Base station should be placed against a wall with enough space on either side of the station and open space in front of it. The open space allows the robot to properly orient itself when it’s sent on a cleaning run and helps it find its way home.
4. Stay home for your robot vacuum’s first 3–5 runs
Many homes have hot spots — a weird door jamb, a lumpy rug — where you will need to rescue your vac. Do a quick run-through beforehand for robot booby traps, like ribbons and pieces of string.
Narwal robot maintaining tips
Robot vacuums will do most of the hard work while you do something else. But even smart vacuums need maintenance to keep them performing at their best. Here are some tips on how to make the most out of your robot vacuum cleaner for longer:
1. Empty the dustbinand wastewater tanks
Depending on how dirty your home is, you will want to empty your robot vacuum’s dustbin after every use. If you run your robot vacuum daily and don’t have pets, you should empty the dustbin at least once a week. In addition, the water tanks also need cleaning.
2. Clean the filter and dustbin
Cleaning the filter is important because the vacuum doesn’t clean as well when the filter is dirty. You can clean most models’ filters and dustbins with water. Each week, you can clean and thoroughly dry the dustbin while letting the filter air dry. Make sure the filter and dustbin dry completely before you use them again.
3. Clean front wheel, brushes, sensors, and charging contacts
You should do this every two to four weeks. Most robot vacuums come with a cleaning tool with a brush on one end and a cutting blade on the other. Use these to cut out hairs that are wrapped around the brushes and wheel and brush away debris. You can also use a soft dry cloth to dust the sensors and charging contacts of your robot vacuum cleaner.
Follow these tips and you’ll be prolonging the lifespan of your robot vacuum cleaner. If these are not enough, we have gathered other useful suggestions for you:
Shake off the filter every few sessions and replace it every few dozen sessions
Clean the bearings on the caster, and side brushes every few weeks
Replace filters and side brushes a few times per year, the mopping padsabout once a year, and the battery as needed — probably every second year, though that depends on how often you use the robot vacuum cleaner
To Wrap it Up
Vacuuming is one of the most loathed household chores. Robot vacuums don’t have unwieldy cords or hoses to contend with, and they require little effort from you: You can run one from your couch using a smartphone app, and the higher-end models can be programmed to wake up and start cleaning without any intervention at all. Robot vacuums also easily dispose of the most common household debris — including food crumbs, pet hair, dust — making them ideal for routine maintenance and quick cleanings when you’re expecting a guest.
Narwal vacuum robot has a white minimalist design and operates quietly. The noise level is 45 dB when you mopping the floor and 60 dB when vacuuming. In addition, our product also offers self-cleaning, fast charging, strong suction, and APP control.
Check out here to know more about the product! | https://medium.com/@ehaisocial/the-complete-robot-vacuum-cleaners-buying-guide-a2115a75f7be | [] | 2022-01-14 09:20:15.914000+00:00 | ['Holiday Gifts', 'Robot Vacuum Cleaner', 'Cleaning', 'House Cleaning', 'Christmas Gifts'] |
Ask the Expert: Creating harmonious couples relationships with Dr. Joshua Coleman | Whether you’re freshly dating, newlywed, or celebrating your 50th anniversary, you’ve probably found yourself at odds with your significant other at some point. Disagreements are inevitable, but they don’t need to end in disaster. We were glad to have LifeSpeak expert, psychologist and author Dr. Joshua Coleman join our Ask the Expert session this week to help our users navigate such conflicts and create more harmony. Dr. Coleman is a psychologist in private practice and is Senior Scholar of the Council on Contemporary Families. He has been a frequent guest on the Today Show, NPR, and The BBC, and has also been featured on Sesame Street, 20/20, Good Morning America, America Online Coaches, PBS Life Part 2, and numerous news programs for FOX, ABC, CNN, and NBC television. His advice has appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London, Fortune, Newsweek, The Chicago Tribune, Slate, Psychology Today, U.S. World and News Report, Parenting Magazine and many others.
Here are the highlights from our webchat with Dr. Joshua Coleman. Please keep in mind all user participation is anonymous.
Managing finances together
QUESTION — “Is there a good way to bring up finances with your partner? My boyfriend and I just got engaged and anytime I try to discuss finances (i.e. setting a budget), the immediate reaction is that ‘we’re so broke what does it matter?’. We’re not broke (we have a house, vehicles, pay our bills on time, etc.), but we’re just not rich. I really want to discuss this in a positive way so we can plan our financial future as well…”
Dr. Joshua Coleman — “Money is a common source of conflict in marriages. Studies show that with difficult topics, it’s useful to have a conversation where you both try to empathize with the deep and underlying values of the other. For yours, they might be based around security and not having to worry. For him, a ‘live for today’ mentality may make life feel more carefree or fun. Avoid getting into the right or wrong of your perspectives and try instead to really get why each person feels the way that they do.”
Being supportive through grief
QUESTION — “My husband’s mom is in another country and has terminal cancer. How can I support my husband through the tough times ahead?”
Dr. Joshua Coleman — “Many if not most men have a hard time talking about their feelings, so try to strike a balance between asking frequently enough about how he’s feeling so that he doesn’t worry about burdening you or being too emotional, but not so much that it feels intrusive. Simply empathizing with what he’s feeling is the most valuable thing you can offer him.”
Navigating ideological differences
QUESTION — “My boyfriend and I have been together for five months now and have quite a significant age gap (19 years). I think that this is a large part of the reason why we disagree on political views, and he also doesn’t understand my reasoning behind being vegetarian. He is very passionate about these topics, and every time they get brought up in conversation we end up getting in an argument. The thing is, our opinions will always differ and sometimes it’s hard to avoid these conversations. Do you have any advice on how to approach these topics in a respectful manner when our opinions are so vastly different?”
Dr. Joshua Coleman — “Sometimes couples fight over political or other issues because they haven’t resolved the underlying issues in the marriage. So he may complain about your being vegetarian or politically different from him as an expression of your not being as close to him as he’d like, or more independent of him than he’d prefer. Either way, some topics are better left avoided if they’re never fruitful. Don’t feel obligated to discuss or defend your values or your positions. You can say, ‘I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about that.’ or ‘I don’t think these conversations are very productive so I don’t really want to go there. What else do you want to talk about?’”
Don’t miss our next Ask the Expert session!
If you weren’t able to catch our webchat with Dr. Joshua Coleman, you can always sign in to your LifeSpeak account to read the transcript. And be sure to log on March 25th at 12PM EST to chat with registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator Constance Brown-Riggs, who will be answering your questions about rethinking nutrition. If you don’t have a LifeSpeak account, please have your HR team reach out to us about your company subscribing.
What is Ask the Expert?
Our Ask the Expert sessions allow our users to have regular access to our experts in real-time, which allows them to have their pressing questions answered. This opportunity provides our users with practical and easily implemented tips to help them make real changes in their lives. To learn more, don’t hesitate to book a walk-through. | https://medium.com/lifespeak/ask-the-expert-creating-harmonious-couples-relationships-with-dr-joshua-coleman-1b2960047a5a | ['Lifespeak Inc.'] | 2020-03-03 14:07:15.387000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Marriage', 'Love', 'Couples', 'Dating'] |
Stay In The Moment | Stay In The Moment
And Other Takeaways from Buddha's Birthday Celebration
The parking lot was difficult to navigate through. Tents were propped up in the front lawn. Music played loud enough to pass through my car windows. People filled the streets: young, old, men, women, people covered head to toe and those wearing spaghetti straps.
I’m not going to lie; this wasn’t exactly the picture I had in my mind when my friends and I decided to visit the Guang Ming Temple for their celebration of Buddha’s birthday. The previous night I remember texting my friend asking how ‘modestly’ to dress, and questioning whether a Buddhist Temple would have any sort of problem with me wear pants as a woman. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened.
In all actuality, I was pretty nervous about attending a Buddhist Temple for the first time. The girls I was going with weren’t raised Buddhist (though one of them lived in Japan for a year and had found interest in many of the Buddhist principles). I had spent so much time and energy researching Judaism and Islam over the past months, that it felt confronting entering into this brand new space.
What if I regret it? What if I’m not dressed right? What if I don’t like it? What if I get weirded out? What if they don’t like me?
None of these worries seemed to matter ultimately. Guang Ming is Orlando’s biggest Buddhist Temple, and hosts this celebration each year, finding itself more embedded into the community as a cultural event as time goes on. They want people of all backgrounds to attend their events, regardless of how well-versed they are in the faith: hence, spaghetti straps and slew of politicians.
They did a lot to introduce the attendees to the way this specific temples did things, especially in comparison to other temples. For instance, they prayed to the Buddha. Guests were seated in chairs, not on the ground. Everyone kept their shoes on. They also stressed the Chinese aspects of practicing their faith both in speech (much of the service was in Chinese) but also in the ways they decorated the space for Buddha’s birthday.
After the service, they provided many workshops for additional learning, including chronicling the founding on Buddhism, practicing Chinese calligraphy of Buddhist proverbs, engaging in a traditional Zen Tea Service, and finally one called The Path to Happiness.
I wasn’t so keen on entering this last workshop. I thought happiness was kind of ridiculous, quite frankly. The room was almost empty, though set with about thirty chairs. A couple sat in the front row discussing concepts from a sheet of paper with the Buddhist representative, a middle-aged white man in a smock representing the temple. The green sheet had a list of about fifteen dimensions to happiness that Buddhism prescribes.
Then he said it, as I took my seat, a thought that has perplexed me since he said it some time ago.
“90% of the negative emotions we feel in life are a result of thinking of the past or future.”
At first, I thought this could not be true. Life had to be more complicated than that. There had to be some factors, some history, some situations that could produce these negative feelings that were not a result of such thinking. I personally felt I was feeling negative emotions (like hurt and anxiety) often.
We then went on to the Zen Tea ceremony on the top floor where my two friends and I sat criss-cross on the ground in a silent room with a tea master who prepared tea for us. She wore a pink floral gown with sleeves draping long. There was a whole process she led. Tea leaves could only be placed in the pot a certain way. Pouring the tea could be done in one direction for half the cups, and in the other direction for the remaining cups. No one spoke, just complete silence.
By observation, we understood that we were meant to close our eyes as we smelt and drank from our small, porcelain cups of green tea. The words of the man rang in my ears.
“90% of the negative emotions we feel in life are a result of thinking of the past or future.”
In the silence of this room, I realized that there had to be some truth to this. Whenever I felt hurt, it was often because of things that had already happened in the past, rather than happening in the present. Furthermore, many of my anxieties had to do with things that were not yet to come: my career, bills, my final exams, how I was going to make it to my next appointment later in the day.
None of these hurts or anxieties were actually present in the present. They did not exist in the room. They could not get to me if I focused on what was in my hands. Just me and my tea.
In essence, this reflects one of the main principles of Buddhism as I understand it: stay in the moment. Be there. Let go of the things you can’t control.
I reflect on the worries I had the day before or earlier during the day.
What if I regret it? What if I’m not dressed right? What if I don’t like it? What if I get weirded out? What if they don’t like me?
These were mostly a result of hurt based on past experiences and anxieties about the future. These were negative emotions that were inflicting on my ability to stay in the moment and be happy where I was.
I have much to learn from Buddhism life and thought still, but ultimately this first experience was a very rewarding one. It caused me to rethink what happiness could be and how our Western view of ‘staying in the moment’ deviates from the rich wisdom Buddhism can provide, even and especially alongside other faiths. | https://medium.com/interfaith-now/stay-in-the-moment-1a391612c2d9 | ['Allison J. Van Tilborgh'] | 2019-08-22 02:28:34.193000+00:00 | ['Buddhism', 'Religion', 'Spirituality', 'Mindfulness', 'Self'] |
Quotos by the Maya Angelou that changed my life | Remembering the late activist and literary icon’s most uplifting words of wisdom.
A legendary author, poet, activist and all around inspiring woman, Maya Angelou touched the lives of many through her work.
Maya angelou is a restorer and a transformer she is a woman whose practice is based in the ancestral connection to the african concept of hecka which is the evocative power of language to accomplish what one wil aswell does she use words as next to catch a restore an renew our spirit and soul.
Quotes:
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
“It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself: to Forgive. Forgive everybody.”
I´VE LEARNED THAT MAKING A LIVING IS NOT THE SAME THINGS AS MAKING A LIFE.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
“If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”
A WISE WOMAN WHISES TO BE NO ONE’S ENEMY; A WISE WOMAN REFUSES TO BE ANYONE’S VICTIM.
“The desire to reach the stars is ambitious. The desires to reach hearts is wise and most possible.”
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”
“Love recognize no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its desination full of hope.”
“I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”
NOTHING WILL WORK UNLESS YOU DO
“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world,but has not solved one yet.”
“I am grateful to be woman. I must have done something great in another life.”
“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”
WE MAY ENCOUNTER MANY DEFEATS BUT WE MUST NOT BE DEFEATED
“No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”
IF YOU’RE GOING TO LIVE, LEAVE A LEGACY. MAKE A MARK ON THE WOLRD THAT CAN’T BE ERASED. | https://medium.com/@iqra-farah/quotes-by-the-maya-angelou-that-will-change-your-live-forever-3c7e77f5e686 | ['Iqra Farah'] | 2020-12-24 15:59:38.178000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Maya Angelou', 'Life Lessons', 'Quotes', 'Poetry'] |
How to focus on digital transactions and keep customers away from cash withdrawal | How to focus on digital transactions and keep customers away from cash withdrawal Markswebb Team Follow Aug 27 · 6 min read
It is hard to motivate customers to carry out more non-cash transactions especially if the bank’s geography historically shows vast cash circulation. To do so, it’s important to look into detail of the bank’s processes, explore customers’ journeys and their behaviors, and review the functionality and convenience of online channels. However, the most insightful tool is in-depth customer research.
In this article, we show how we solved that kind of task for a large Russian bank.
The in-depth interviews and the field research are the sourcessource of insights
The primary samples of customers are designed with formal indicators we got from the bank’s internal systems:
Customers who instantly withdraw all the money they got paid with. Customers who actively use a bank card for purchases. Customers who applied for a card themselves (not for salary). Customers who make all of their payments in a mobile banking app. Customers who make their payments with the internet-banking instead of the mobile banking app. Customers who lately applied for a loan or a credit card.
Conversations with clients helped us find out how they keep and handle money, transfer it and make purchases. The very first interviews showed the link between how customers get money and how they spend it. Customers don’t seek to replenish their cards or withdraw cash with no significant need; and they prefer spending money the way they get it.
The results of the interviews were supplemented with our field research: we made purchases in local stores and public eating places, had a chat with retailers, made payments and money transfers, used digital services, and observed customers and the bank’s staff in its branches.
Why do people still use cash
The vast cash circulation can be explained by the nature of the region where a lot of small and micro businesses are represented. These businesses prefer using cash: taxi drivers, private tour guides, small vendors, street sellers, etc. It can also be explained by the lack of habitual digital services as the region is poorly developed digitally. The bank can affect most of these factors only indirectly by teaching customers and forming new digital habits.
People store cash because there are a lot of places that only accept this type of payment. The travelers withdraw cash in advance, and the locals don’t seek to replenish their bank cards as they don’t want to take extra action with money. The interest on the deposit doesn’t provide any benefits and cannot motivate people to store money in a bank account as most people live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have much money. A lot of customers don’t know that non-cash payments are easy and convenient. Financial institutions refuse to tell people about the possibilities and convenience of digital services, and they don’t use onboarding within digital services. Customers don’t understand the profit provided by the loyalty program as the bank explains its details very poorly, the discounts can’t be accumulated, and the amount of cashback isn’t that big. Customers can only wonder how much they can save. Small businesses aren’t interested in cards acquiring and using POS -terminals. The free-of-charge acquiring conditions are very high, and this type of payment and its pros are alien to entrepreneurs as customers continue using cash. Customers aren’t used to transferring money to friends as it’s easier and more convenient to exchange cash. Some people even hesitate and think that money transfers can attract too much attention from the bank and the tax authorities. Furthermore, wire transfers take more time than exchanging cash. The bank doesn’t make it clear for customers that bank cards can be used for online shopping. Usually, customers get cards from other banks which they can surely use for online purchases. Customers don’t think that the mobile banking app is easy and convenient to use for regular tasks. For example, one can’t fill in the description of the money transfer or add comments for recipients. Some important services aren’t available in digital channels. Online payments and services are a crucial driver for the use of digital banking but customers couldn’t use these services because of some UX problems.
The audience thresholds for using non-cash payments remain because of the region’s nature, low financial literacy and inconvenient digital banking services.
Framework for digital transactions’ growth
To retain customers from withdrawing cash and motivate them to use digital channels, we needed to solve 3 global tasks:
Make more payment features, and make payments easier and more convenient — for those who already use digital channels.
Make it possible to switch to digital channels, increase motivation and lower the entry thresholds — for those who prefer using cash.
Establish conditions throughout the region to involve as many participants ininto digital transactions as possible.
Here are some particular initiatives that banks can take: | https://medium.com/markswebb/how-to-focus-on-digital-transactions-and-keep-customers-away-from-cash-withdrawal-cbc6047fc5fb | ['Markswebb Team'] | 2021-08-27 08:14:19.066000+00:00 | ['Cash', 'Digital Transactions', 'Startup', 'Banking Technology', 'Fintech'] |
Why should you outsourcing to Vietnam? Top 5 Reasons | 1. Stable politics, promising economy
Thanks to being a country led by a single party, Vietnam has a stable political background, Risk of terrorism, ethnic and religious instability is something you won’t find in Vietnam, Stable society is the foundation for the country to realize its economic determination. The Communist Party of Vietnam has set a target that by 2045, Vietnam will become a developed, industrialized nation with high incomes [7].
The government of this country wants to catch up with the industrial revolution 4.0, so they have developed a national strategy on research, development, and application of Artificial Intelligence [8]. By 2030, Vietnam aims to become one of the four leading countries in ASEAN and among the top 50 countries in AI globally. The Vietnamese government itself also clearly sees benefits from the way businesses have foreign investment. They issued Decree 29 in 2019 to facilitate labor outsourcing [9]. Accordingly, the term of the work permit is increased from 36 months to 60 months, removing the 12-month restriction on hiring outsourced employees, and increasing the number of jobs that are allowed to be outsourced.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc experienced ordering food with Misa, a robot integrated with artificial intelligence, on January 15, 2019. Source: vietnamnet (https://vietnamnet.vn/vn/cong-nghe/thu-tuong-nguyen-xuan-phuc-tham-trien-lam-cac-san-pham-cong-nghe-make-in-vietnam-502874.html)
These actions show that the Vietnamese government attaches great importance to maintaining social stability and developing the country’s economy. This is also what has been repeatedly affirmed in the COVID-19 prevention and control strategy, which is “both to prevent and control the epidemic, and to promote production and business”. This is also the reason that helps Vietnam suffer less damage from the epidemic but still increase GDP by 2.9% in 2020 [10], one of the highest growth countries in the world.
2. Great human resources for the software industry
According to TopDev’s 2021 report [11], Vietnam currently has about 430,000 software engineering engineers and 55,000 software graduates every year. Highly qualified Vietnamese programmer, ranked 5th by Kearney Global Services Location Index 2019 and 18th in the Tholons Top 100 Outsourcing Destination 2016. Nearly 55% of developers in Vietnam are between the ages of 20 and 29 [11]. The survey from TopDev on the age of developers will give you a full picture of the youthfulness of the majority of developers.
Infographic made with Infogram. See details at: https://infogram.com/age-developers-in-vietnam-in-2021-by-topdev-1h7j4dv0erqev4n?live
More and more Vietnamese are assessed as capable of learning many new technologies, well-trained, professional manner, able to compete fairly with engineers in other countries.
3. High-quality technical education
Figures from TopDev 2020 show that there are more than 153 information technology training schools. TopDev also said that 70% of programmers are educated at universities and colleges. This shows that most programmers in Vietnam are well trained. Recently, the Ministry of Information and Communications of this country has approved a draft of the development orientation of the information and communication industry to improve the level of human resources in the software field of this country. In fact, so far, there are some Vietnamese students have demonstrated their ability to reach out to the world. In 2020, a group of 4 students from the University of Technology — Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, became one of the 10 winners of the Google Solution Challenge 2020 [12]. They created the Shareapy application to help support online psychology. This shows that talent in the software field can always be found in Vietnam.
Students from Vietnam present Shareapy at Demo Day. Source: Google Developers (https://youtu.be/63RTBxRyFX8)
4. Labor costs are lower than in industrial countries
Vietnam has an abundant labor force, meeting the demand for high qualifications. People in the software sector in Vietnam have better wages than other fields, but their incomes are still lower compared to other countries, especially compared to industrial countries. This gives Vietnam the advantage that labor costs are much cheaper than in industrialized countries like the US, and among the lowest in the world. To make it easier for you to imagine, we have created an infographic comparing the income of some positions in the software field between the US and Vietnam.
Infographic made with Infogram. See details at: https://infogram.com/comparing-developer-salary-by-positions-between-us-and-vietnam-in-2021-1ho16vogv0qjx4n?live
Some positions are about 3 times different, some are more than 10 times. It shows that Vietnam’s labor cost advantage is still very attractive but may not be in the future.
Not only labor costs but warehouse operating costs in Vietnam are also among the lowest in the world [13]. Savills conducted research in 21 countries with 54 cities. According to Savills, warehouse operating costs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are the lowest in the world. Savills assesses that the boom in e-commerce drives warehouse demand in the majority of the market. The increasing pressure on warehouses makes this also an advantage of Vietnam in attracting investment.
5. English is not a barrier for Vietnamese people and Vietnam is a convenient location
More and more foreign companies are setting up headquarters and recruiting Vietnamese employees. This leads to increasing demand for English communication among Vietnamese employees. They have constantly improved their communication skills so that English is not a barrier in the working process. In Vietnam, English is taught from grade 1. To graduate from university, almost all schools in Vietnam require an international English certificate to ensure students’ ability to work in English. Therefore, you do not need to worry about communication problems with IT engineers in Vietnam. This should be mentioned with another advantage, which is Vietnam’s favorable position in the trade. It only takes you a few hours to get from Ho Chi Minh City to the tech hubs of Asia. Currently, direct flights are established between Vietnam and the US, Vietnam, and Europe, allowing you to travel directly to these places in less than a day.
Original Content: https://www.speranzainc.com/why-outsourcing-to-vietnam-5-reasons-you-should-do-it/
Source:
[7] https://vietnamnews.vn/politics-laws/870284/13th-national-party-congress-sets-out-bold-path-to-prosperity-for-viet-nam.html
[8] http://www2.chinhphu.vn/portal/page/portal/chinhphu/noidungchienluocphattrienkinhtexahoi?_piref33_14725_33_14721_14721.strutsAction=ViewDetailAction.do&_piref33_14725_33_14721_14721.docid=5058&_piref33_14725_33_14721_14721.substract=
[9] http://vanban.chinhphu.vn/portal/page/portal/chinhphu/hethongvanban?class_id=1&_page=1&mode=detail&document_id=196496
[10] https://www.gso.gov.vn/du-lieu-va-so-lieu-thong-ke/2021/01/kinh-te-viet-nam-2020-mot-nam-tang-truong-day-ban-linh/ [
11] https://topdev.vn/page/bao-cao-it-viet-nam#2021
[12] https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/07/dsc-global-students-solutions-with-code.html
[13] https://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/industries/vietnam-has-lowest-warehouse-operating-costs-4256600.html | https://medium.com/@suman_39198/why-should-you-outsourcing-to-vietnam-top-5-reasons-3e8a632db83e | ['Speranza'] | 2021-12-16 07:40:44.106000+00:00 | ['Offshore Development', 'It', 'Speranza', 'Vietnam', 'Outsourcing'] |
Jersey Shore: Family Vacation < "Season 4 :: Episode 7" > FULL~EPISODE | ⭐ Watch Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Season 4 Episode 7 Full Episode, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Season 4 Episode 7 Full Watch Free, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Episode 7,Jersey Shore: Family Vacation MTV, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Eps. 7,Jersey Shore: Family Vacation ENG Sub, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Season 4, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Series 4,Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Episode 7, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Season 4 Episode 7, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Full Streaming, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Download HD, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation All Subtitle, Watch Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Season 4 Episode 7 Full Episodes
Film, also called movie, motion picture or moving picture, is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound, and more rarely, other sensory stimulations.[7] The word “cinema”, short for cinematography, is ofMTV used to refer to filmmaking and the film Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, and to the art form that is the result of it.
❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream refers to the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, rather than the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies specifically to telecommunications networks, as most of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio CDs). There are challenges with streaming conMTVt on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the conMTVt. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain conMTVt.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet conMTVt in real-time much as live television broadcasts conMTVt over the airwaves via a television signal. Live internet streaming requires a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the conMTVt, a media publisher, and a conMTVt delivery network to distribute and deliver the conMTVt. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the conMTVt before watching or lisMTVing to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to start playing digital video or digital audio conMTVt before the entire file has been transmitted. The term “streaming media” can apply to media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are all considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONMTVT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[7][7][7][7][7] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is inMTVded to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[7][7][7] 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 ofMTV 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][7][4][4][4] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[4]
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 exMTVd 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 inconsisMTVt.[4]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 4 to 7 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[7] 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.[4]
❏ 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.[7] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exMTVsible 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.[7] Credit is exMTVded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘Jersey Shore: Family Vacation’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ MTVween China, U.S.
MTV’s live-action “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” was supposed to be a huge win for under-represented groups in Hollywood. The $7 million-budgeted film is among the most expensive ever directed by a woman, and it features an all-Asian cast — a first for productions of such scale.
Despite well-inMTVtioned ambitions, however, the film has exposed the difficulties of representation in a world of complex geopolitics. MTV primarily cast Asian rather than Asian American stars in lead roles to appeal to Chinese consumers, yet Chinese viewers rejected the movie as inauthentic and American. Then, politics ensnared the production as stars Liu Yifei, who plays Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, and Donnie Yen professed support for Hong Kong police during the brutal crackdown on protesters in 477. Later, MTV issued “special thanks” in the credits to government bodies in China’s Xinjiang region that are directly involved in perpetrating major human rights abuses against the minority Uighur population.
“Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” inadverMTVtly reveals why it’s so difficult to create multicultural conMTVt with global appeal in 2020. It highlights the vast disconnect MTVween Asian Americans in Hollywood and Chinese nationals in China, as well as the exMTVt to which Hollywood fails to acknowledge the difference MTVween their aesthetics, tastes and politics. It also underscores the limits of the American conversation on representation in a global world.
In conversations with seJersey Shore: Family Vacationl Asian-American creatives, Variety found that many feel caught MTVween fighting against underrepresentation in Hollywood and being accidentally complicit in China’s authoritarian politics, with no easy answers for how to deal with the moral questions “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” poses.
“When do we care about representation versus fundamental civil rights? This is not a simple question,” says Bing Chen, co-founder of Gold House, a collective that mobilizes the Asian American community to help diverse films, including “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation,” achieve opening weekend box office success via its #GoldOpen movement. “An impossible duality faces us. We absolutely acknowledge the terrible and unacceptable nature of what’s going on over there [in China] politically, but we also understand what’s at stake on the Jersey Shore: Family Vacation side.”
The film leaves the Asian American community at “the intersection of choosing MTVween surface-level representation — faces that look like ours — versus values and other cultural nuances that don’t reflect ours,” says Lulu Wang, director of “The Farewell.”
In a business in which past box office success determines what future projects are bankrolled, those with their eyes squarely on the prize of increasing opportunities for Asian Americans say they feel a responsibility to support “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” no matter what. That support is ofMTV very personal amid the Jersey Shore: Family Vacation’s close-knit community of Asian Americans, where people don’t want to tear down the hard work of peers and Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.
Others say they wouldn’t have given MTV their $4 if they’d known about the controversial end credits.
“‘Jersey Shore: Family Vacation’ is actually the first film where the Asian American community is really split,” says sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, who examines racism in Hollywood. “For people who are more global and consume more global news, maybe they’re thinking, ‘We shouldn’t sell our soul in order to get affirmation from Hollywood.’ But we have this scarcity mentality.
“I felt like I couldn’t completely lambast ‘Jersey Shore: Family Vacation’ because I personally felt solidarity with the Asian American actors,” Yuen continues. “I wanted to see them do well. But at what cost?”
This scarcity mentality is particularly acute for Asian American actors, who find roles few and far MTVween. Lulu Wang notes that many “have built their career on a film like ‘Jersey Shore: Family Vacation’ and other crossovers, because they might not speak the native language — Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Hindi — to actually do a role overseas, but there’s no role being writMTV for them in America.”
Certainly, the actors in “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation,” who have seen major career breakthroughs tainted by the film’s political backlash, feel this acutely. “You have to understand the tough position that we are in here as the cast, and that MTV is in too,” says actor Chen Tang, who plays Jersey Shore: Family Vacation’s army buddy Yao.
There’s not much he can do except keep trying to nail the roles he lands in hopes of paving the way for others. “The more I can do great work, the more likely there’s going to be somebody like me [for kids to look at and say], ‘Maybe someday that could be me.’”
Part of the problem is that what’s happening in China feels very distant to Americans. “The Chinese-speaking market is impenetrable to people in the West; they don’t know what’s going on or what those people are saying,” says Daniel York Loh of British East Asians and South East Asians in Theatre and Screen (BEATS), a U.K. nonprofit seeking greater on-screen Asian representation.
York Loh offers a provocative comparison to illustrate the West’s milquetoast reaction to “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” principal Liu’s pro-police comments. “The equivalent would be, say, someone like Emma Roberts going, ‘Yeah, the cops in Portland should beat those protesters.’ That would be huge — there’d be no getting around that.”
Some of the disconnect is understandable: With information overload at home, it’s hard to muster the energy to care about faraway problems. But part of it is a broader failure to grasp the real lack of overlap MTVween issues that matter to the mainland’s majority Han Chinese versus minority Chinese Americans. They may look similar, but they have been shaped in diametrically different political and social contexts.
“China’s nationalist pride is very different from the Asian American pride, which is one of overcoming racism and inequality. It’s hard for Chinese to relate to that,” Yuen says.
Beijing-born Wang points out she ofMTV has more in common with first-generation Muslim Americans, Jamaican Americans or other immigrants than with Chinese nationals who’ve always lived in China and never left.
If the “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” debacle has taught us anything, in a world where we’re still too quick to equate “American” with “white,” it’s that “we definitely have to separate out the Asian American perspective from the Asian one,” says Wang. “We have to separate race, nationality and culture. We have to talk about these things separately. True representation is about capturing specificities.”
She ran up against the Jersey Shore: Family Vacation’s inability to make these distinctions while creating “The Farewell.” Americans felt it was a Chinese film because of its subtitles, Chinese cast and location, while Chinese producers considered it an American film because it wasn’t fully Chinese. The endeavor to simply tell a personal family story became a “political fight to claim a space that doesn’t yet exist.”
In the search for authentic storytelling, “the key is to lean into the in-MTVweenness,” she said. “More and more, people won’t fit into these neat boxes, so in-MTVweenness is exactly what we need.”
However, it may prove harder for Chinese Americans to carve out a space for their “in-MTVweenness” than for other minority groups, given China’s growing economic clout.
Notes author and writer-producer Charles Yu, whose latest novel about Asian representation in Hollywood, “Interior Chinatown,” is a National Book Award finalist, “As Asian Americans continue on what I feel is a little bit of an island over here, the world is changing over in Asia; in some ways the center of gravity is shifting over there and away from here, economically and culturally.”
With the Chinese film market set to surpass the US as the world’s largest this year, the question thus arises: “Will the cumulative impact of Asian American audiences be such a small drop in the bucket compared to the China market that it’ll just be overwhelmed, in terms of what gets made or financed?”
As with “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation,” more parochial, American conversations on race will inevitably run up against other global issues as U.S. studios continue to target China. Some say Asian American creators should be prepared to meet Jersey Shore: Family Vacation by broadening their outlook.
“Most people in this Jersey Shore: Family Vacation think, ‘I’d love for there to be Hollywood-China co-productions if it meant a job for me. I believe in free speech, and censorship is terrible, but it’s not my battle. I just want to get my pilot sold,’” says actor-producer Brian Yang (“Hawaii Five-0,” “Linsanity”), who’s worked for more than a decade MTVween the two countries. “But the world’s getting smaller. Streamers make shows for the world now. For anyone that works in this business, it would behoove them to study and understand Jersey Shore: Family Vacations that are happening in and [among] other countries.”
Gold House’s Chen agrees. “We need to speak even more thoughtfully and try to understand how the world does not function as it does in our zip code,” he says. “We still have so much soft power coming from the U.S. What we say matters. This is not the problem and burden any of us as Asian Americans asked for, but this is on us, unfortunately. We just have to fight harder. And every step we take, we’re going to be right and we’re going to be wrong.”
☆ ALL ABOUT THE SERIES ☆
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.[7] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exMTVsible 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.[7] Credit is exMTVded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘Hausen’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ MTVween China, U.S. | https://medium.com/jersey-shore-family-vacation-series-4-episode-7/watch-%E1%B4%B4%E1%B4%B0-s4-e7-jersey-shore-family-vacation-series-4-episode-7-full-episode-efae15655733 | ['Jade Harvey'] | 2020-12-25 20:49:17.673000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Lifestyle', 'Coronavirus', 'TV Series'] |
What is Bort? | What is Bort?
Bort, is the new and more optimized version of BERT; which came out this October from amazon science. I came to know about it today while parsing amazon science’s news on Facebook about bort. So Bort is the newest addition to the long list of great Language models with extra-ordinary achievements.
Why is Bort important?
Bort, is a model of 5.5% effective and 16% total size of the original BERT model; and is 20x faster than BERT, while being able to surpass the BERT model in 20 out of 23 tasks; to quote the abstract of the paper,
‘ it obtains performance improvements of between 0.3% and 31%, absolute, with respect to BERT-large, on multiple public natural language understanding (NLU) benchmarks.’
So what made this achievement possible?
The main idea behind creation of Bort is to go beyond the shallow depth of weight pruning, connection deletion or merely factoring the NN into different matrix factorization and thus distilling it. While methods like knowledge distillation, weight and parameter pruning, connection removal and matrix factorization have proved significant and created essentially interesting results; like distillbert( which is 40% lesser size, 60% faster and almost 95% accurate as BERT); here in amazon, researchers went ahead and created a more depth.
They tried to find out a solution where they not only essentially shed the model, but become able to re parameterize its structure, and thus they reformed the problem of finding an optimized new network from a neural network.
In a 2020 october paper, Mr. de wynter of alexa, found approximate solution to the computationally hard problem of finding out optimal architectural parameters from a deep neural network.
While the details of this paper is extremely riddled with theoretical computer science and hard mathematics for me to understand, this paper establishes a approximate algorithm which in turn lets you trade off the brute force time of reaching the optimal solution versus the amount by which you are left off. The process also ensures that only in such a pareto optimal way, you will be on path to be near optimal architectural parameters; in all other case it will be sub-optimal at most.
Using this paper’s finding, amazon’s applied scientist Daniel J.Perry and de wynter, found out the optimized architecture of the existing big BERT model. They optimized it using another algorithm called Agora, which helps optimize a model by taking a help of a development set. While that algorithm in itself is again complicated, it is, to layman’s term, helped the pre-Bort model reach to its Bort-level accuracy, using further developmental training set’s help.
Finally they reached the Bert level accuracy and surpassed it in most cases. It is not necessary to say at this point of the article that this is a very different and significant change rather than random trial/error or other empirical procedures people have been following to optimize on Bert for quite a few years from Bert’s origination now.
Codes and implementations:
While the codes for the original research are available under the repository Alexa’s code for Bort from the authors directly, Hugging face doesn’t yet support Bort. Someone has opened a PR for the new model; but A.d.wynter mentioned that it is not in their current roadmap to provide a code for that; although he would like it. Now that is 28 days ago this comment was done. So I guess we still have to wait a bit for a hugging-face version of the model. But if one is interested then one can download the model from the Alexa repo and work on it I guess.
Final thoughts:
While having Bort out there helps medium level researchers and their companies like mine to get more power in their hands; research wise questions can now be raised on what improvements wynter’s algorithms can bring on GPT-x( x>2) and models like google’s performer and Big Bird models.
I will try to contact myself both the authors of Bort and let’s see if I can get some of my answers. I will come up with a better analysis of both the papers and if possible showcase some new results if pre-trained models are out in market already. Till then, thanks for reading!
Further resources:
(a) The main paper on Bort
(b) The agora algorithm paper
(c ) The optimal sub-architecture extraction(OSE) paper
(d) Review of google Big Bird model
(e) A introduction to hugging-face transformer library using summarization | https://medium.com/@shyambhu20/what-is-bort-32b368b6ceff | ['Shyambhu Mukherjee'] | 2020-12-04 06:20:24.624000+00:00 | ['Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Bert', 'Machine Learning', 'Transformers', 'Neural Network Algorithm'] |
Middle East Entrepreneurs Respond to COVID-19 Pandemic | Although the IMF anticipated a large increase in SME failures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, some entrepreneurs have found opportunity among the fallout. In particular, a number of Middle Eastern start-ups specialising in healthtech have filled gaps in their government’s COVID-19 responses.
While Arab countries have not been hit hardest by the pandemic, many states in the region have weak healthcare systems, only exaggerated by recent upheaval and the COVID-19 pandemic, and have thus welcomed private sector participation. In Egypt, for example, the government’s response to COVID-19 has received mixed reviews. Although under 7,000 Egyptians have reportedly lost their lives due to coronavirus, a relatively low number when compared to countries of a similar size, critics have called the state’s response inadequate. Vezeeta, a health start-up launched in Egypt in 2014, has stepped in to help the government’s fragile healthcare infrastructure respond to the crisis. The start-up raised $40 million in its Series D round just months before the pandemic and has become a leader in dealing with COVID-19 in Egypt. Although Vezeeta originally focused on connecting patients to doctors for in-person appointments, it has now pivoted to telemedicine. This March, Vezeeta, the Egyptian Ministry of Health, and global pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca signed an agreement to tackle the spread of COVID-19 through digital awareness. Another Egyptian start-up, Quibix, has imported shipping containers to be transformed into mobile health clinics deployable to both urban and rural areas. Although Quibix previously furnished its containers for restaurant, office, or home use, it has now focused exclusively on equipping its containers as safe, efficient, and comfortable environments for both testing and treatment.
In Libya, where access to healthcare is significantly more challenging, one doctor’s app has proven instrumental. Mohamed Aburawi created Speetar in 2016, a telehealth platform that allows doctors living abroad to connect with patients in Libya. A recent agreement made Speetar the official platform for government health services during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Aburawi, this online triage service will prevent those who do not need medical attention from visiting clinics, a move that could slow the spread of infections. Libya not yet been hit hard by the pandemic, perhaps due to the fact that civil war has kept visitors — and the virus — away. The Speetar team hopes that if their app can help Libya avoid the full-blown effects of the pandemic, it can be expanded to other countries such as Egypt and Pakistan.
While many of these start-ups are still operating at a relatively small scale, investors are paying attention. A new $60 million dollar fund led by Silicon Valley veterans pledged to focus its investments on healthtech. There is precedent for large-scale investment in Middle Eastern tech successes, such as Uber’s acquisition of ride-sharing app Careem in 2019, and online marketplace Souq, purchased by Amazon in 2017. As the global economy adapts to a still-shifting landscape, it’s evident that a start-up’s ability to pivot quickly and provide essential services may prove key to its long-term resilience and value. | https://medium.com/@katherine-pollock/middle-east-entrepreneurs-respond-to-covid-19-pandemic-7cbc4855bf3f | ['Katherine Pollock'] | 2020-12-02 11:52:39.178000+00:00 | ['Middle East', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Covid 19'] |
Ready, Steady, Connect. Help Your Organization to Appreciate Kafka | The Chicken and Egg Problem
The value of Kafka for other teams rises with the growing number of data streams offered. To get more people to use Kafka we must simplify the data consumption and production. It’s a chicken and egg problem. We do not get more people using Kafka if there is no data. The main objective is to convince data producers in enterprises to publish their data as real-time events in Kafka. One reason these events do not exist can be that they do not have the Kafka knowledge or the system they run does not provide the Kafka connectivity out of the box.
To get to the tipping point where Kafka is fully used in the enterprise we need to convince the critical mass to use and learn Kafka. So you need to make it as simple as possible to add and consume event streams from or to external systems like databases, document stores, S3 or whatever data source you might be using in your enterprise. We need some kind of training-wheels for Kafka, where teams that are not yet fully Kafka-savvy can learn and get some experience with Kafka and real-time events from these external systems.
Apache Connect to the Rescue
Apache Kafka Connect is a framework for connecting Kafka with external systems. With Kafka Connect we have connectors allowing us to bring data into or out of Kafka in a standardized and reliable way from different data sources. A connector itself is just a JAR file that defines how to integrate with that external system. The connector itself can then be configured over a REST API which is provided by Kafka Connect. With these connectors, we have standardization of how data is produced and consumed from these external systems. Connect can be run in a standalone or distributed mode. In distributed mode, Kafka Connect will store the metadata (connector configuration, offsets, etc) in Kafka. The standalone mode is great for trying things out, but not meant to run in production. So when you consider running Kafka Connect the way to go is to run it in the distributed mode which provides scalability and automatic fault tolerance out of the box.
The connector itself can be a sink or source connector. Sink connectors write data from Kafka to a specific system and source connectors bring data from these systems to Kafka. Kafka Connect also supports different Converters which handles the serialization and deserialization of different formats like JSON Schema, Avro and Protobuf.
There is also support for some transformations before the data is written to Kafka or the external systems. These transformations are called Single Message Transformation (SMT) and as the name suggests the transformation can only be applied on a message. They are very useful when the sink or source format can not be modified and you want to add, remove or rename some fields in the message. When you want to do complex transformations, like combining or splitting messages, Kafka Connect is not the right tool and you would have a look at Kafka Streams.
There are already a lot of connectors available as commercial or open-source licenses for different systems. If you don’t find a connector that suits your needs you always have the possibility to write a connector yourself in Java. The nice thing about this is it is not really that complicated for people who are used to developing software applications in Java.
Self-Service Data Consumption and Production
In the current IT-landscape we have moved the past years from a monolith architecture to a distributed Microservice architecture where teams have full responsibility for their applications. This means “you build it and you run it”, better known as DevOps. With Kafka Connect we have a centralized component that you can see as infrastructure which is shared by multiple teams.
In our case, to enable teams we went to the conclusion to look at Kafka Connect as a Microservice which is run by the teams themselves for a specific purpose. For example, a data warehouse team would run their own Kafka Connect instance to load Kafka events into their staging area. One reason we think teams should run their own Kafka Connect is you have clear boundaries who is responsible when you receive alerts, have failed deployments or errors.
But with this approach, you need an infrastructure Team which provides the tooling for monitoring and the lifecycle management so that the DevOps teams can easily set up and run their own Kafka Connect instance. The goal must be that the DevOps teams run a productive Kafka Connect within hours and they have a high level of automation for deploying connectors and upgrading to new Kafka Connect versions.
Conclusion
Kafka Connect is a great enabler for teams to integrate external systems with Kafka. Kafka Connect allowed us to solve repeating integration problems in a standardized way which is reliable and fault-tolerant. Once our team had some experience with a specific connector the integration with the same type of connector was done very quickly.
As a Java Team, we also had good experience writing connectors ourselves. The main reason was the system we had to integrate was very specific and there was no existing solution to our problem. The Connect Java API, which is part of Kafka, is straightforward and was quite easy to write our own connector and transformations. The tutorials you find online gave us a good start, but I would recommend you have a look at the source code of some of these connectors in GitHub to get some inspiration on how other connectors or transformations were implemented.
It would be nice to hear what you think about the centralized vs. decentralized approach in running Apache Kafka Connect or in general what is your experience with Kafka Connect.
Reach out to us here in the comments, through www.agoora.com, or through Twitter. | https://medium.com/swlh/ready-steady-connect-help-your-organization-to-appreciate-kafka-8ed6cfcfd6d8 | [] | 2020-10-21 14:33:41.871000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Kafka Connect', 'Event Driven Architecture', 'DevOps', 'Apache Kafka'] |
How Easy Is It to Change Someone’s Mind? | Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash
Have you watched the Social Dilemma on Netflix yet?
If so, what was your reaction? A mere shrug, and yeah we all know or did you throw your devices out of the house?
I was one of those that threw the phone to the other end of the room. Watching the show I had light bulb moments as to why you see the small dots wiggle when someone is replying to you.
Obvious when pointed out, but. I. had. no. idea.
And now I’m pissed off because all they want is my attention and my being — not much, but time is one thing you can never get back.
Yet what chilled me to the bone more than anything during that documentary was when one of the developers mentioned his fear for the future: a civil war.
Far fetched? maybe, but maybe not.
Take the UK. The UK has a long history of civil wars, the earliest recorded was in 1088, the most recent 1649–51.
Now fast forward to 2020 and we are living the polarity that 24/7 algorithms programmed to drain your attention have produced. They are designed to re-enforce your opinions, keep you in your echo chamber of beliefs and generally keep you feeling you’re in the right.
Perfect for dividing friends, families and nation-states.
Yet I’m old enough to remember when you could be best friends with someone you disagreed with. Now you simply get cancelled and struck from Facebook friendship.
It’s all so clever, and yet so stupid!
An example used in the Social Dilemma to highlight the ways the algorithm pushes you down a rabbit hole was by using the idea that the world is flat. If you believe this and are looking into it, you will get more information to re-enforce that idea. It doesn’t matter if what you are searching for is true or false, you will get more information/fake news to confirm your bias.
Which is crazy, right?
And which leads me to the question, can you change someone's mind in such a divisive world?
I believe we can if we can bring back the art of conversation. Not only can we bring back empathy and understanding this way, but also an agreement to disagree without cancelling out another person; we can bring back the art of a right proper chin wag.
Which is actually enjoyable.
Entered into with the spirit of learning and understanding, exploring others opinions can be an interesting experience.
When was the last time you felt your brain changing gears as it took in new information that challenged you?
When did you last feel it digest, rub up against existing thoughts, beliefs and opinions, and then the breakthrough as you learn something new, becoming humble for a minute, maybe even uncomfortable, growing as a person and see ing the world in slightly different colours?
Harvard University has published an article about changing minds in a business setting, but I believe we can use the ideas expressed for the personal too.
They give a couple of suggestions, it’s a basic 2 ways to do x article, but they start with the suggestion of first finding the root of the disagreement.
The ‘why’ the other person disagrees. And you do this without judgement.
Find out where that other person is coming from, why do they hold that opinion? What is it about the life that has led them to X?
Then they suggest you note the inclusion or absence of emotion.
This to me is the crux of the matter.
We are emotional beings and despite what anyone tells you, they rule the roost. If there are emotional factors driving opinions, then they need to be treated differently to unemotional ones.
If someone is emotional, you can lay all the facts out in front of them and they will very often refuse to see them.
E.g. showing someone they will save money by buying X over Y is a logical, unemotional (most of the time) situation.
Showing someone that doing something in a different way may be better than the way they have been doing it, is not so easy, because there will be emotions invested.
So how do you do it? How do you change minds?
Harvard gives two examples, the cognitive conversation and the champion conversion.
The cognitive conversation is as it sounds, it’s less emotional and is about presenting a strong argument. Using a strong presentation, minimal emotion and relying upon the other person being unemotional and logical. Think back to the idea of X being cheaper than Y.
The champion conversion is more about building relationships. It’s about getting to know the other person, maybe bringing in someone they admire and like to the conversation.
I would add here finding common ground is always a good move, and generally, this is a more long term strategy.
Once you know them well enough, you can have slightly more controversial conversations with them, areas where you may disagree. When you know someone on more than a superficial level, you can communicate with them on a deeper level, and they will hopefully be more open to listening to you too.
Then the real conversations can take place, and perhaps minds are changed.
It is this art that we are losing; the art of the conversation. Included in that art is the art of relationship building, the art of listening, and the art of willing to disagree without hatred because sometimes we can’t change another’s mind, no matter how hard we try.
And sometimes, that’s OK. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-easy-is-it-to-change-someones-mind-2e1a60e5f73c | ['Katie Knight'] | 2020-10-24 15:32:48.613000+00:00 | ['Netflix', 'Psychology', 'Humanity', 'Social Media'] |
Increasing Dev Velocity and Customer Experience through Bug Dives | Debugging can lead engineers into the dark corners of a codebase, giving them time to gain a deep understanding of some section of code, but this vital information — the bug and the fix — often stays in the brain of the engineer who worked on the issue.
What happens if a similar bug appears in the future? Do you task another engineer with shipping a fix or is it best to pull the original engineer away from their existing work? In this blog, we’ll dive into best practices for sharing knowledge within the engineering organization for startups.
Bug dives: Unifying Engineers and Developer Success Teams
At Nylas, we use collaborative bug dives to help educate our team about bugs, debugging strategies and the associated parts of the codebase that caused them. During a bug dive, the engineer who solved the bug explains their approach and ultimate solution to the engineering and developer success (Nylas’s version of customer success) teams. This is beneficial not just for other engineers, but even more so for the technical customer success team to get more context on the best way to communicate about issues other users might experience and how they might diagnose similar technical issues in the future.
How to Structure a Bug Dive Meeting
For bug dives at Nylas, the engineering and customer success teams gather together every two weeks to share learnings. We use Zendesk to track customer issues, so the engineer who is spearheading the bug-dive will share the Zendesk ticket with the team to add context, or, if the bug was reported internally, they’ll show the relevant logs, error messages, or stacktraces.
Then, we’ll discuss:
The engineer’s initial hypothesis about the bug
How they were able to replicate the issue
If the original hypothesis was disproven, how was it disproven
What debugging strategies were used
What monitoring tools were consulted
Finally, they present the ultimate fix and walk through the code that solved it.
The engineering and customer success teams leave with a better understanding of that part of the codebase and gain exposure to new debugging techniques. All bug dive presentations are archived in Dropbox, where they are easily discoverable for anyone to reference in the future.
Tips for Making Bug Dives Successful
Schedule bug dives at a regular cadence
— To keep up attendance, choose a specific time every two weeks and add it to the team calendars. It’s a good idea to select a time before or after another event so that engineers won’t have to pull themselves away from existing work. At Nylas, we have bug dives right after lunch and it’s a great way to digest and recharge before heading back to work.
Come up with a creative name and summary about why the bug is interesting
— Share this when messaging about the bug dive to build excitement for the topic. You will likely get lower turnout for an event titled “Bug dive about db queries” than for events with captivating bug specific titles like “What happens when you query the database for an object named X?”. For the first title, engineers will likely think “I already know about db queries, I’m not going to waste my time” but the second title will pique their interest.
Anyone can lead a bug dive!
— You can think of bug dives as mini technical talks. Giving technical talks and communicating challenging ideas are important skills for all engineers to have. A bug dive is a great, low stakes way to practice and help engineers develop their public speaking skills for larger audiences. Don’t restrict bug dives to senior engineers, it can be nice role reversal for junior engineers to teach more senior engineers a thing or two.
How Bug Dives are Different than Traditional Knowledge Transfer Sessions
Bug dives go really deep on a specific topic. Because it’s incredibly hard to convey a deep level of understanding on a large system in 30 minutes, bug dives are more focused and cover a narrow slice of the system in detail. Instead of high level discussions, bug dives dive into the code for a particular system.
Learning about bugs in the code exposes the team to neglected corners of the codebase. Only challenging or unexpected bugs are presented at bug dives. The content covered in a bug dive is dictated by where the bug occurred, which means that the content of bug dives is often lesser known systems. Bug dives help the team get acquainted with the code in more peripheral systems that often deserve more attention.
The engineer presenting the bug doesn’t have to do more work. Apart from organizing information, since the engineer just solved this bug, they are already familiar with their hypothesis and the holes in it. They will probably have some notes, have bookmarked the relevant monitoring pages, and can easily pull up the code changes.
This process celebrates the hard work that the engineers did to debug the issue. Bug crushing can be a laborious and thankless process — you’re fixing something that shouldn’t be broken in the first place. But bug dives provide an arena to celebrate the engineer’s grit. The engineer can bring the audience through the woes of subpar code and bad monitoring and end with the satisfying conclusion of the fix.
Bug dives are self-sustaining. Because bug dives are both celebratory of the presenting engineer and beneficial for the audience, they are self-sustaining. There will always be more bugs. The engineers who figures out a bug will always want to share their feat and be celebrated. And the rest of the engineering organization will always be curious about the cause of the unruly bug and what debugging strategies were used to identify it.
Conclusion
Apart from small questions, it’s not often that you get to learn from engineers on other teams. Bug dives unify the engineers by providing an arena for cross-team knowledge transfer. This unity can lead to more productive decisions about the design and execution of our entire product.
At Nylas, our engineers like to share their perspective on a variety of industry-related topics. We’d love to hear about your bug dive stories and what’s been successful for you. For more about Nylas, and to join the discussion on twitter, click here. | https://medium.com/@Nylas/increasing-dev-velocity-and-customer-experience-through-bug-dives-9e88d580f43f | ['The Nylas Team'] | 2019-01-10 19:52:47.917000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Productivity', 'Bugs', 'Debugging', 'API'] |
5 Wealth Management Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make | 2. Only Invest in Intangible Assets
Many people only think the investments should be stocks, securities, and bonds only. Perhaps these investments are cheaper for entry and higher liquidity, it does not mean that these types of investments are the best in the market.
Many investors understand the values of physical assets, such as properties, and they have been investing in private and commercial real estate in different places. Likewise, they have been investing in land, gold, expensive watches, artworks, and even wines.
Real estate is the most popular assets in their portfolios because it can balance out the volatility of stocks. Also, some stocks are considered as high-risk investments. Although it is important to invest physical assets, the lack of liquidity and the high investment price turn off many smaller investors.
On the other hand, the physical assets are not susceptible to market swings. They pay off over the long-term (i.e. 10 years or even longer). | https://medium.com/business-startup-development-and-more/5-wealth-management-mistakes-you-shouldnt-make-42c206cd1b24 | ['Tony Yeung'] | 2017-04-03 10:34:42.647000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Business', 'Money', 'Wealth Management', 'Finance'] |
How successful leaders look forward, not back | Our latest book, Now what do we do?, is all about how business leaders can, and should, take the first step to respond to this disruption. In the midst of all the change and uncertainty, we’ve been helping our clients find their feet. The book shares the process that we know works, and stories from organisations that dare grab the opportunity to build back better. To mark it’s digital launch, we brought together hundreds of change makers, innovators and business leaders to swap notes on making 2021 a success.
Bernie Hickman, Margarete McGrath, Sharon Cooper, Tom Whitwell and Jenny Burns at Fluxx Talks.
Here’s our top takeaways from Fluxx Talks.
Tom Whitwell, Fluxx’s Editor in Chief, started writing the 2020 book back in January. Inspired by Apple’s story of the first ipod that took 49 weeks from inception to the shelves, he’s used to working fast and lean. By March the book wasn’t relevant anymore so it had to be rewritten. The working title of this year’s publication was originally ‘Stop F*cking Around’. It would have been a collection of stories about leaders and organisations who make stuff happen. Now what do we do? is all about finding the opportunities and ways of being successful in the new world. Legal and General recognise that climate change is the biggest challenge this generation faces. They announced their ambitions to become net-zero by 2030 just before the pandemic hit. They could’ve pulled the plug on the project that would deliver on their goal. Instead, the project became even more important, as they prioritised and drove what was core to the business’ values, and sent a clear message to employees and customers that the climate couldn’t wait, not even for a pandemic. (Bernie Hickman, CEO of Legal and General Insurance. Read more.) Making change in large, complex organisations can be done, but it isn’t easy. All organisations are complex, no matter what the size. Understanding what makes them complex and working out how to focus on that is a great starting point. Being laser focused on simple, incremental transformation creates lasting movements for change. (Sharon Cooper, CDO The Economist Intelligence Unit). Less presenteeism, more trust. Effective leadership in a hybrid working world calls into question traditional notions of ‘Productivity’. In the future we’ll see greater employee autonomy and organisational silos disbanded. A resilient workforce needs to have responsibility (and ownership) of decision making spread across a business, not just at the top. (Margarete McGrath, CDO of Dell Technologies also cited this article.) Creating local, global cultures. By celebrating local cultural events as a global team, the Economist has fostered inclusion and connection. City drinks have gone virtual and global. With team members joining from Tokyo at 2am when they can’t sleep. They might be having a cup of tea instead but it’s really nice and a new kind of office ritual.
It’s been a hard year for everyone, and it’s also a year of change and opportunity. So we asked our business leaders what they would take into 2021: “Collaboration, and the momentum from this year.” Bernie Hickman “The connection with my colleagues, it’s the more human touch and I don’t want to lose that.” Sharon Cooper. “Balance. It makes me a better leader.” Margarete McGrath
Thanks to everyone for joining the discussion — it doesn’t end there we’re kick-starting the new year with a toolkit of curated events brought to you in partnership with some Fluxx Friends. Join LinkedIn, Miro, Bupa and Telefonica O2 amongst other speakers at the Work Reimagined Festival from the 18th January 2021. The virtual festival is designed to help businesses and individuals set up for success. For more info an to sign up to one, some or all of the sessions head here. | https://medium.com/fluxx-studio-notes/how-successful-leaders-look-forward-not-back-4666bd095393 | ['Jassi Porteous'] | 2020-12-15 13:57:47.726000+00:00 | ['Digital', 'Disruption', '2021', 'Leadership', 'Transformation'] |
Global Life Science Analytics Market to be Driven by the Growing Use of Digitisation as a Strategy in the Forecast Period of 2021–2026 | Global Life Science Analytics Market to be Driven by the Growing Use of Digitisation as a Strategy in the Forecast Period of 2021–2026 Sofia Williams Dec 27, 2021·4 min read
The new report by Expert Market Research titled, ‘Global Life Science Analytics Market Report and Forecast 2021–2026’, gives an in-depth analysis of the global life science analytics market, assessing the market based on its segments like product, end-use, application, and major regions. The report tracks the latest trends in the industry and studies their impact on the overall market. It also assesses the market dynamics, covering the key demand and price indicators, along with analysing the market based on the SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces models.
Request a free sample copy in PDF or view the report summary@ https://www.expertmarketresearch.com/reports/life-science-analytics-market/requestsample
The key highlights of the report include:
Market Overview (2016–2026)
Historical Market Size (2020): USD 23 Billion
Forecast CAGR (2021–2026): 12.7%
Forecast Market Size (2026): USD 47 Billion
Pharmaceutical companies have been increasingly considering digitisation as a strategy in recent years which can help transform various components of their value chain and make them more efficient and profitable. Companies are increasing their manufacturing skills, sales and marketing effectiveness, and compliance management with the aid of digital technology like mobility and ubiquitous computing, big data, and analytics. Analytics technologies are being incorporated into manufacturing processes to automatically capture unit operations data, and several research and development labs are going paperless. This method has aided in the reduction of process times and errors, which is expected to be a major factor that will drive the growth of the market over the forecast period.
Industry Definition and Major Segments
Analytics has emerged as a useful tool for a number of pharmaceutical, biotechnological, and medical device companies, as these options help solve data integration problems and improve operational performance.
Explore the full report with the table of contents@ https://www.expertmarketresearch.com/reports/life-science-analytics-market
Based on product, the industry is divided as:
Descriptive Analytics
Predictive Analytics
Prescriptive Analytics
Based on end-use, the industry can be segmented as:
Clinical Research Institution
Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Companies
Medical Device Companies
Others
Based on application, the industry can be divided into:
Research and Development
Supply Chain Analytics
Sales and Marketing
Others
Regionally, the market is classified into:
North America
Latin America
Europe
Middle East and Africa
Asia Pacific
Market Trends
One of the primary drivers driving the market’s favourable outlook is significant growth in the life science industry, which is accompanied by an increased demand for analytical insights for clinical trials. Other growth-inducing factors include technological advancements such as the creation of new telemedicine, mhealth, and e-prescribing systems. These analytics solutions are also commonly used to generate precision and tailored medicines, which rely on precise genomic data from patients with specific medical needs. Improvements in existing healthcare infrastructure, and intensive research and development (R&D) operations, are expected to propel the industry even further. The market is also growing due to the extensive usage of life science analytics solutions for data standardisation in the management of chronic diseases.
Key Market Players
The major players in the market are Accenture PLC, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, IBM Corporation, MaxisIT Inc., Oracle Corporation, IQVIA Holding Inc., SAS Institute Inc., SCIOInspire Corp., TAKE Solutions Limited, and Wipro Limited. The report covers the market shares, capacities, plant turnarounds, expansions, investments and mergers and acquisitions, among other latest developments of these market players.
About Us:
Expert Market Research is a leading business intelligence firm, providing custom and syndicated market reports along with consultancy services for our clients. We serve a wide client base ranging from Fortune 1000 companies to small and medium enterprises. Our reports cover over 100 industries across established and emerging markets researched by our skilled analysts who track the latest economic, demographic, trade and market data globally.
At Expert Market Research, we tailor our approach according to our clients’ needs and preferences, providing them with valuable, actionable and up-to-date insights into the market, thus, helping them realize their optimum growth potential. We offer market intelligence across a range of industry verticals which include Pharmaceuticals, Food and Beverage, Technology, Retail, Chemical and Materials, Energy and Mining, Packaging and Agriculture.
Media Contact
Company Name: EMR Inc.
Contact Person: Sofia Williams, Corporate Sales Specialist — U.S.A.
Email: [email protected]
Toll Free Number: +1–415–325–5166 | +44–702–402–5790
Address: 30 North Gould Street, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA
City: Sheridan
State: Wyoming
Country: United States
Website: https://www.expertmarketresearch.com
*We at Expert Market Research always thrive to give you the latest information. The numbers in the article are only indicative and may be different from the actual report. | https://medium.com/@imsofiawilliams/global-life-science-analytics-market-to-be-driven-by-the-growing-use-of-digitisation-as-a-strategy-5a524d93e46 | ['Sofia Williams'] | 2021-12-27 10:18:34.550000+00:00 | ['Market Analysis', 'Market Research Reports', 'Market', 'Market Report', 'Life Science Analytics'] |
Understand the Network to Design for Growth and Defensibility | The network properties (dependent on the type of relationship between supply and demand)
We have identified so far a set of seven key properties of a network (or better of the relationship underlying the network):
the level of supply commoditization/differentiation; the symmetry or asymmetry of the core relationship (likely a supply-demand relationship); the flexibility of location: Locally or globally bound; the single tenancy or multi-tenancy; the transaction frequency and lifetime; the value of the transaction; the monogamous or polygamous nature of the relationship.
“Network Types” an illustration: from the Growth Module of our certfication Bootcamp.
Level of supply commoditization/differentiation
This property describes how the perception of the value of the demand side of the spectrum perceives the supply side. Is every supplier different? Are all perceived as comparable? what value is attributed to the supplier?
A good explanation of this property comes with an archetype of the platform economy: ridesharing. It doesn’t matter how good a Uber driver is, she will be always perceived as a cost to be minimized, as the landscape putting in competition different alternatives for local mobility is largely price competitive. Furthermore, the very nature of the experience notoriously caps the value perceived by the user at a certain point: you don’t want your car to arrive in less than 3 minutes (this wouldn’t even let you time to say goodbye) and this effectively caps the “need” for suppliers to a certain extent. Much different is the situation in which, let’s say, a learning marketplace where every different provider of a certain learning experience can specialize in infinite niches, the object of the exchange is heavily praised as a key aspect of our lives, and therefore is much harder to imagine a commoditization process: supply, in this case, is heavily differentiated.
Symmetry or asymmetry of the core relationship (likely a supply-demand relationship)
Most of the networks have asymmetric weights of their supply and demand for a very simple reason: suppliers can normally serve many more customers than the other way around. This is clearly true in, again, a ride-hailing service or in a short distance food distribution platform (such as The Food Assembly) but may not be true, for example in marketplaces that connect non-professionals (e.g.: with second hand reselling marketplaces).
The flexibility of the location: is the network locally or globally bound
Another very complex aspect to understand in network properties is related to the degree to which the relationship between suppliers and demand is more or less constrained to a certain location. The flexibility related to that attachment limits or enables the growth of the network. One extreme of this spectrum is a network that needs both locally residing providers and consumers (à la Thumbtack, or Rover where the providers and the suppliers are both insisting on the same area for the long term), and the other extreme is when there’s no relationship whatsoever between the place of living and the consumption of services (think Upwork). Related to this property we often talk about a key concept, the so-called canonical unit (Dan Hockenmeier spoke about this in this seminal conversation at Venture Stories). The Canonical Unit is the unit where liquidity needs to be sought: as an example, in a network such as that of Thumbtack, according to Hockenmeier people seek for a particular profession — such as a plumber — at a particular location, such as New York. Overall, in networks where local implications are bigger, competitive advantage is harder to sustain and the chance that a more traditionally managed model can outperform a marketplace are higher. When — instead — there’s at least one player in the network that is global, the advantages may be harder to displace and the nature of the network may help the growth engine: think Airbnb; despite growth was hard to attain in a city, the “spillover” effect (travellers coming back home with the idea to start a room rental activity) helped the platform organically land on new cities.
Single tenancy or multi-tenancy
When participants from the supply and the demand side of the experience are able to juggle through multiple platforms, we call this phenomenon multi-tenancy. Normally platforms do not have the capacity to enforce “single-tenancy” if not by artificial constraints (e.g.: terms of services, regulation).
Transaction Frequency and Lifetime
It is defined as how often a participant goes through the key transaction/experience in the platform and how long this can last. Sustainable growth is hard to attain in contexts where transaction frequency is very low: this is also why in Real Estate platforms — for example such as Crexi or Zillow — the focus is often also on realtors and real estate agencies because they are transacting more often than actual buyers (one, or few, transactions in a lifetime). Particularly interesting on this topic is the podcast episode at Two-Sided featuring Crexi on “embracing the middlemen”.
Transaction Value (AOV)
Clearly, also the Average Order Value exchanged within the network has an impact on the network effects and defensibility and it’s important because it is connected with the frequency of transactions and nonetheless with the lifetime value of a user — that is an essential part of the unit economics. The sweet spot would clearly be that of a high frequency of transactions and a high AOV, like it may happen in some cases such as holiday booking, or space rental platforms like Spacebase. A low AOV must be compensated by really high-frequency transactions to make unit economics stand (we’ll see this later and in other posts). Paradoxically, very high AOV doesn’t ensure great defensibility for marketplaces and ink towards more managed approaches to the market, just because the size of the transaction makes the case for more efforts to be poured into making them happen, especially if the frequency is low and the network is local.
Monogamous vs Polygamous
Another obvious key aspect to keep in mind is the relationships between the two parties involved in the exchange: sometimes these relationships may require relevant time, effort or trust between the demand side and the supply side in order to create a relationship. In that case, the relationship tends to be long term and stable (monogamous): a good example would be the relationship between a caregiver and an elderly person, the relationship between a student and a teacher or the one between a cleaning person and a homeowner. Some others just need a quick check-in or even a “plug&play” interaction (polygamous) with less trust required. | https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/understand-the-network-to-design-for-growth-and-defensibility-1c544018c5e7 | ['Simone Cicero'] | 2021-06-09 08:02:10.707000+00:00 | ['Growth Hacking', 'Marketplaces', 'Growth', 'Platform', 'Network Effect'] |
The Space Between Stimulus And Response | Emotional Agility is the ability to ‘Be’ with Ourselves
Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash
We’re told and think that we have to be happy and positive all of the time. Like it’s a natural thing to want to be successful or fit and healthy or have a really good career or job. These things are put on us by our peers and that is how life is. It can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety though and because it’s such a normal thing we can end up chasing our own tails.
When we're emotional we tend to do one of two things: We either judge them, belittle them, rationalize them and push them to one side or we brood on them and we get stuck in them.
We didn’t choose these circumstances that we find ourselves in with this pandemic and things are tough, having to isolate and forego mixing in society.
Viktor Frankl was a survivor of the German death camps and he made the most profound human statement when he said, “There’s a space between stimulus and response and in that space is our power to choose and it’s in that choice that lies our growth and freedom.”
We naturally get caught up in what we are doing, whether that be scrolling our Facebook or Twitter feeds, getting emotional at what we read or hear, engaging with the news, and getting angry. We get hooked where there is no space between stimulus and response. We catastrophize and things get blown up out of all proportion.
Now is a time when we need a space between stimulus and response and we do that by being open about what we are experiencing by saying “what do I need to do here to think about that space?”
Emotional agility is the skill that is foundational to wellness within ourselves to be healthy within ourselves, every day.
Applying emotional agility in today’s climate.
Right now we need to bring those skills with greater courage and strength to the situation that we are all now spending more time by ourselves without socializing or getting distracted by normal everyday things, like commuting to work or being distracted outside of our homes, so we are really having to start thinking about ‘what have I got in this space in this context right now?’
When we think about Social Distancing a better way for all of us to be thinking about it is Physical Distancing.
We need to be able to look for meaningful quality interactions that are really critically important to us right now.
Loneliness can come to anyone even in a crowd. You don’t have to necessarily be ‘alone’ to feel lonely. Loneliness is a function of whether our interactions are meaningful or not and emotions tell us a story and behind our most difficult emotions are signposts to the things that we care about.
If you’re finding yourself feeling lonely, as an example, what is that loneliness the signpost of? The loneliness is often the signpost that you value presence and connectedness and that you don’t have enough of it right now. That loneliness is telling you that there is something that you value that you need to be moving more in the direction of.
I listened to a renowned psychologist this morning giving a TED talk. Her name is Susan David, Ph.D and she’s South African by origin, it was a joy listening to her and it amazes me how some people can have such brilliant minds. This post is taken from that talk. She used a phrase which was Sawabona which means “I see you and by seeing you I bring you into being.” It means to look at the person beyond the person, looking behind the eyes, looking into their soul and the love and light and heart in the person in front of you.
It’s a connection where we can use meaning that will bring us out of loneliness. With meaning that brings us out of social isolation that is really profound.
When we feel lonely or sad or angry we immediately say that that is how we are, which is a normal default way of describing how we’re feeling.
That is not how we are.
When we say that, we are saying that we are our thoughts & emotions.
Thoughts and emotions don’t own us, we own them.
What we are doing is saying that “I Am” — “All of Me”, 100% is those emotions or thoughts.
That singular experience.
What we are doing with that is we are starting to define ourselves by our emotions. We are not our emotions, we own them, they do not own and define us. What we do is to show up to our emotions with compassion and curiosity but we also don’t want to get stuck in our emotions.
A simple strategy that can be really helpful is instead of saying “I am sad”, label your thought, your emotions, or your feelings for what they are. They are not facts! They are thoughts and emotions, they are a feeling so you might say something like, “I’m noticing the feeling that I’m sad.” “I’m noticing the urge to keep going on my social media feed or that I’m noticing that I’m getting the urge to shut down the conversation with my spouse.” “I’m noticing the thought that things are never going to get any better.”
This is all a Mindfulness technique where what you are doing is you are labelling your thoughts, your emotions, and your feelings as, thoughts, emotions, and feelings, and when you do this what you start doing is to create that space between stimulus and response.
No longer are you defined, you’re now able to see them for what they are and then you can start saying, “I’m noticing that I’m feeling sad”, and ask what is that telling me about what I care about?
As well as doing something huge to help someone it’s the small, values connected actions that make a difference. A phone call where you could be that person's day today.
Being compassionate with yourself in that you look at how you are feeling and you are aware that what you are feeling is normal and that it isn’t you. That it’s ok to feel bad or sad or angry or lonely.
Being compassionate moves us away from the judgement and the labelling and the ‘not enough’ and ‘never enough’ and into the space of resilliance.
Coming together as a community and being value connected and saying “how can I help? What are the little Big ways that we can help?” is fundamental.
This right now is the Marker of our ability as humanity to come together and to fight back against this Pandemic.
Things can be seen to be going either of two ways. The world’s conducting this massive psychological experiment that we’ve never had done before.
Some people worry that we are going to drive each other crazy, that we are going to bring out so much fear and anger. There’s already a blame game going on between nations and possibly between different communities which in some scenarios gets very dark and on the other hand there are thousands and thousands of just amazing stories with help & love & creativity. Are we overall going to find a way of persuading each other to be our better selves?
In psychology, there is a term called ‘Mortality Salience’. Which is the idea that our death becomes moved from something that we can conveniently avoid to something that is much more at the periphery, even if we aren’t directly experiencing something it’s much more salient to us.
When we experience this mortality salience we tend to become much more ‘us and them’, we become more biassed and there are a lot of predictable psychological responses when we experience this.
We also know that human beings have through time, had a well of wisdom and humanity.
We try to solve the world’s problems with our minds. This is a time where we actually need to move away from our minds and into our hearts, into our breathing, our seeing, our compassion, our wisdom, our fortitude.
When we look at the psychology of generosity and community you can see that through history there is this experience of human beings coming together.
We can come through this, but it comes from a place of being able to see ourselves and the other and to see with comapssion.
Compassion doesn’t mean saying that the man who hoards toilet rolls is doing either the right or the wrong thing, but it’s saying “what is this person experiencing inside of themselves that might be driving a particular response?
Our collective stimulus is to stay safe and our response is to keep ourselves to ourselves.
The openness of the beauty of who we can be as human beings is the sustainable way forward and our space. | https://medium.com/an-idea/the-space-between-stimulus-and-response-9d880bd9c8c8 | ['Rob Walker'] | 2020-12-16 18:12:13.451000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'Compassion', 'Emotional Health', 'Emotional Wellbeing', 'Psychology'] |
Subsets and Splits