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Six Golden Rules That Will Change Your Writing Life | Six Golden Rules That Will Change Your Writing Life
Apply these rules and watch your writing pop
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Writing is a craft, which means it can be studied, understood, and learnt. It’s natural for you to feel inadequate after reading the works of some excellent writers. But here is the good news, you can be a better writer if you are ready to do the work.
After wrestling with a bouquet of books, I have encountered some of the world’s best writers. George Orwell is one of such beautiful minds that blessed the world with greats gifts such as Animal Farm, 1984, The Road to Wigan Pier amongst many others. His exceptional use of allegory in Animal Farm made him stand out amidst his peers.
However, not many people know his real name — Eric Arthur Blair. In fact, his tombstone bears “Eric Arthur Blair.” But even in his death, the world continues to celebrate the works of Orwell for his ability to explain social injustice, autocracy, democratic socialism to the common man. This is a popular quote from his book, Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
In “Politics and the English Language,” an essay published by Orwell in 1946, he handed six golden rules to all writers of the English language. They are six cardinal points that can guide your choices of words and embellish your works with brilliance.
After applying these six rules to my writing, my paragraphs started shining. I thought of sharing them with you, maybe it can help you in your journey of becoming a better writer. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/six-golden-rules-that-will-change-your-writing-life-226c23e4e8e8 | ['Samuel Osho'] | 2020-06-25 08:49:06.378000+00:00 | ['Writing Tips', 'Writing Life', 'Writing', 'George Orwell', 'Writers On Writing'] |
Start your Data Science Journey in 4 Steps | Start your Data Science Journey in 4 Steps
An opinionated path guide for beginning your Data Science career
Until September of 2018 the term “Artificial Intelligence” had literally no meaning to me. I was posting letters for Royal Mail and curious as ever to learn a skill that didn’t require me to physically exert myself. The thought of programming did come to mind, but I didn’t think I was smart enough — by trade I am an athlete after all and did not have proper formal education after High School (unless you want to include my Level 3 Coaching badge and BTEC in sports).
Just under 2 years on, I have received what I deem to be a major achievement in my journey: I am now a Top writer in Artificial Intelligence on Medium.
After initially being filled with joy, my mind switched and before I knew it I was reflecting on where I have come from…
Every major action that I have taken has come as a response to a difficult situation, but it does not have to be that way!
I sucked up my fear of programming, and the fact I hadn’t done an inch of math in 5+ years no longer concerned me, however, that was only because I had lost my job as a Postman — I had no other option. I began my Medium journey in December 2019, but only started posting regularly because the Covid-19 outbreak left me furloughed — I needed to do something productive with my time or I’d just be bored at home until I am wanted back at work (if I am wanted back that is).
Realising that my reactive approach to life is unnecessarily strenuous, I’ve made a decision to be proactive and hope to make a mark in the Data Science field.
You don’t need to be like me! If you are reading this now then you have an opportunity to decide to be proactive today! On that note, I aim to provide you with the tools that have helped me to reach where I am now so that you can kickstart your career. | https://towardsdatascience.com/start-your-data-science-journey-in-4-steps-f5b5a6e7e80b | ['Kurtis Pykes'] | 2020-07-17 13:36:01.087000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Deep Learning', 'Towards Data Science'] |
Introducing the 5 Pillars of Data Observability | A better way to monitor the health of your data.
Image courtesy of Magnus Engo on Unsplash.
As companies increasingly depend on rich, unstructured data to inform decision making, it’s mission critical that this data is accurate and reliable. Unfortunately, the reality is that data can go be missing, be improperly added, erroneously changed, or otherwise go “down.” By applying similar principles of DevOps Observability (think: traces, logs, and metrics), data teams can achieve similar levels of visibility into the health and reliability of their data. Here’s how.
Bad data spares no one, least of all the data engineers and analysts working directly with the workflows, pipelines, and dashboards responsible for aggregating, transforming, and visualizing it. Industry leaders call this problem “data downtime,” and it refers to periods of time where data is missing, erroneous, or otherwise inaccurate.
Image courtesy of Barr Moses
To prevent data downtime, data teams need to keep a pulse on the health of their data, which is often easier said than done. When I was at Gainsight as VP of Operations, a day would rarely go by when one of these questions weren’t asked by one of my stakeholders:
Is the data up-to-date?
Is the data complete?
Are fields within expected ranges?
Is the null rate higher or lower than it should be?
Has the schema changed?
Not having the answers would lead to confusion, frustration, and not to mention embarrassment when an exec or customer would ping me to ask “what happened to my data?”
Perhaps you can relate?
After speaking to over 200 data teams over the past few years, the desire for answers to these questions came up time and again. Across companies and industries, the results of not having reliable, accurate data were often the same: (1) tedious, time-consuming data fire drills (5 a.m. wakeup calls, anyone?) (2) loss of revenue to the tune of millions of dollars per year and (3) erosion of customer trust. Data reliability was fundamentally important to the success of any business, and yet there wasn’t a holistic, dynamic approach to achieve accurate data.
Fortunately, there’s a better way: Data Observability.
Data Observability refers to an organization’s ability to fully understand the health of the data in their system, eliminating periods of data downtime by applying best practices of DevOps Observability to data pipelines. Like its DevOps counterpart, Data Observability uses automated monitoring, alerting, and triaging to identify and evaluate data quality and discoverability issues, leading to healthier pipelines, more productive teams, and happier customers.
Similar to the three pillars of DevOps Observability, I discovered that Data Observability can be split into five key pillars representing the health of your data, including freshness, distribution, volume, schema, and lineage.
Freshness
In this data downtime incident, we have a view of a table that gets updated periodically and then a large gap of time when it’s not being updated.
Data pipelines can break for a million different reasons, but one of the primary culprits is a freshness issue. Freshness is the notion of “is my data up-to-date? What is its recency? Are there gaps in time when the data has not been updated and do I need to know about that?” among many other questions.
Distribution
In this incident, a distribution error occurs when the percentage of null values reaches above .60 %.
The second pillar focuses on distribution, which relates to your data assets’ field-level health. Null values are one metric that helps us understand distribution at the field-level. For example, for a particular field, if you typically expect a specific percent null rate, and then suddenly that spikes up in a very significant way, you may have a distribution issue on your hands. In addition to null values, other measurements of a distribution change include abnormal representation of expected values in a data asset.
Volume
In this incident, we see volume drop significantly between November 13, and November 15, indicating an anomaly in this particular data set.
Volume quite literally refers to the amount of data in a file or database, and is one of the most critical measurements for whether or not your data intake is meeting expected thresholds. Volume also refers to the completeness of your data tables and offers insights on the health of your data sources. If 200 million rows suddenly turns into 5 million, you should know.
Schema
In this incident, we see that a particular field is changed, resulting in errors surfacing in downstream reports.
The fourth pillar is schema, in other words, a structure described in a formal language as supported by a database management system. Oftentimes we find that schema changes are the culprits of data downtime incidents. Fields are added or removed, changed, etc. tables are removed or not loaded properly, etc. So auditing or having a strong audit of your schema is a good way to think about the health of your data as part of this Data Observability framework.
Lineage
In this incident, table-level lineage is depicted, but lineage can be displayed at even the field or job level.
The last, and perhaps most holistic pillar, is lineage. Lineage helps us put all four of the preceding pillars together in one so we can paint the map of what your data ecosystem looks like. In fact, when data breaks, the first question is always “where?” Data lineage provides the answer by telling you which upstream sources and downstream ingestors were impacted, as well as which teams are generating the data and who is accessing it. Good lineage also collects information about the data (referred to as metadata) that speaks to governance, business, and technical guidelines associated with specific data tables, serving as a single source of truth for all consumers.
Lineage helps us tell a story about the health of your data, for instance, “upstream there was a schema change that resulted in a table downstream that had a freshness problem that results in another table downstream that had a distribution problem that resulted in a wonky report the marketing team is using to make data-driven decisions about their product.”
The future of Data Observability
Thanks to our friends in DevOps, we have an easy lens with which to view the importance of observability as applied to data. By surfacing data downtime incidents as soon as they arise, the five pillars of Data Observability provide the holistic framework necessary for true end-to-end reliability that some of the best data teams are already applying as a standalone layer of their data stacks.
A Data Observability layer literally “observes” data assets from end to end, alerting data engineers and analysts when issues arise so they can be addressed before they affect the business.
In future articles, we’ll discuss what Data Observability looks like under the hood, but until then: here’s wishing you no data downtime!
Interested in learning more about Data Observability? Reach out to Barr Moses and the Monte Carlo team. | https://towardsdatascience.com/introducing-the-five-pillars-of-data-observability-e73734b263d5 | ['Barr Moses'] | 2020-12-04 19:35:23.604000+00:00 | ['Data Observability', 'Data Engineering', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'DevOps'] |
How to Solve Your “Lack of Motivation” Problem | How to Solve Your “Lack of Motivation” Problem
Hint: Understand that lack of motivation is a lie.
Photo by Taisiia Shestopal on Unsplash
I know what it feels like to have no motivation. I’m talking zero motivation.
Here’s a list of some of the laziest things I’ve done:
I used to watch Law and Order SVU marathons for 8 to 12 hours at a time, never leaving the house.
I drank and/or smoked weed daily for at least a full year.
I’ve had a major porn addiction.
I got a 0.00 GPA one semester in college and wasn’t even smart enough to drop out. I paid for the classes and didn’t go.
I’ve been there.
You feel like you have all the talent in the world to be successful, and you do, but you continue to cling to this identity that you’re not a ‘motivated person’. And each time you do try to clean up your act and fail, it further solidifies that identity.
If you have no motivation and want to change that, you have to change your identity. To change your identity, you have to adopt actions that disconfirm your old identity and gradually help you to build a new one. To adopt the right actions, find something that excites you and compels you to work hard.
From someone who’s been on both sides, I’m confident in telling you that going from having no motivation to tons of motivation is more than possible. If you follow the path I’m going to describe, you won’t even feel like the old you existed. You couldn’t fathom that you were ever that lazy at a certain point in your life.
So…what do you do? How do you fix your seemingly perpetual laziness problem? | https://medium.com/mind-cafe/how-to-solve-your-lack-of-motivation-problem-d38e02025628 | ['Ayodeji Awosika'] | 2020-03-17 10:10:51.773000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration', 'Life', 'Psychology'] |
Market trends bulletin — Insights 2.0 vol 2 | Overall Market Analysis:
Bitcoin is currently trading at 6322$ (as of 12 August 2018, 9.38 PM (IST)). Bitcoin fell sharply on Wednesday after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed a decision on a proposed bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Bitcoin (BTC):
Bitcoin is currently trading at 6322$ (as of 12 August 2018, 9.38 PM (IST)) with rise of 1.41 % in last 24 hours.
Our Insights 2.0 edition last week(Vol 1) traced a trendline (June 2017 high, Sept 2017 low and June-July 2018 low) and as anticipated, BTC has tested and bounced from this uptrend line. This trendline support looks strong and less likely to break. BTC broke weekly the downtrend line resistance 3 weeks back which is also acting as a retest support now. So this combination of uptrend line and downtrend line with Fibonacci 78% retracement level is acting as Support 1 (6100–6200$) for BTC as shown in chart. If bitcoin holds the crucial Support 1 then bulls will try to test a first resistance level of 7500$. The second major support on the bitcoin chart is in the range of 4500$-5000$ which was the selloff zone of a strong rally in the mid of August 2017. If the price of bitcoin rallies on strong volume and give a close above resistance level of 7500$ then a strong acceleration can be expected on the upside. However, a failure to hold 6100$ will see bitcoin testing lower support levels.
As per daily timeframe, trend reversal candles are acting as Support (6100–6200$). The daily chart shows BTC daily candle have formed Bullish tweezer bottom pattern which represents that market has found the bottom and uptrend may begin. So we may have a Bullish scenario, if BTC hold this Support level (6100–6200$) and we will witness an uptrend. But if BTC break this Support level (6900–6200$) then it may start moving towards 4500–5000$, a Bearish scenario.
Ethereum (ETH):
Ethereum is currently trading at 322$ (as of 12 August 2018, 9.38 PM (IST)) with rise of 4.50 % in last 24 hours.
The daily trend of Ethereum is bearish followed by a continuous formation of lower highs and lower bottoms. ETH has broken all major supports and tested weak support 1 (300–312$). ETH daily candle represents the heavy sell off that happened, but few Bulls filled their bag at weak support 1(300$) and closed daily candle at 317$. The volumes for the last week gone by has remained on the lower side further substantiating a bearish outlook. There exists a weak support on 300–312$ if this level gets taken out than move can accelerate on the downside to the levels of 260–270$. So the Bullish scenario will be, if daily candle closes with some bullish pattern and then uptrend may begin. While we might have a Bearish scenario, if Bulls fails to hold this weak Support level 1 (300–312$) and we see breakdown towards next Support level 2 (260–270$).
Zilliqa (ZILBTC):
ZILBTC is currently trading at 566 Sats (as of 12 August 2018, 11.59 PM (IST)) with fall of 1.55% in last 24 hours.
On the 4-hour chart ZIL has formed a double bottom pattern which indicates that the downfall in the price on an hour basis will be restricted. A positive divergence can be observed where RSI has strengthened but the price action has been muted. If the 4-hour candles close with some bullish pattern, a decent rally with a positive bias can be expected. On the other hand, if ZIL is unable to hold on to 566 Satoshis support level then ZIL can see downward levels in zone of 487 Satoshis which is the next support level. | https://medium.com/koinex-crunch/market-trends-bulletin-insights-2-0-vol-2-265ceb65735 | ['Team Koinex'] | 2018-08-13 11:59:29.518000+00:00 | ['Zilliqa', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Analysis', 'Bitcoin'] |
Fiat Panda and VW Gol turn forty | Piccolo here, klein there
Fiat created its model to deal with Italians’ need for affordable transportation. It was suffering the effects of the oil crisis, so any new car should be small, nimble enough for urban streets and fuel-efficient. Beauty wasn’t a priority here, which made it clear that this was a rational purchase. Domus magazine says Giorgetto Giugiaro’s infant son quickly nicknamed it “refrigerator” due to its boxy design. The focus was to offer a spacious cabin with reduced external size at low prices.
Volkswagen, in turn, wanted to replace the Beetle in Brazil, but couldn’t use the European Golf for reasons you’re going to read here in a while. The solution was a regional project that closely resembled siblings like the first-generation Passat and Scirocco. Since low consumption was also important there, the Gol featured a much shorter rear fascia than what the buyers were used to see. That and the angular design earned it the nickname “axe-cut”, which lasted a couple years.
1980 Fiat Panda and 1980 Volkswagen Gol
Although the models were born in such different circumstances, they shared the trait of having a small cabin. The Panda mitigated that problem through solutions such as converting the dashboard into the full-width storage area shown at the photo, and front seats which could be folded up to the point of forming a small bed along with the rear ones. The Gol came with a much more common cabin, but it took a toll on its capabilities to satisfy its target customers: the cramped interior became fodder for criticism up to the end of the first generation’s cycle, in 1994. | https://medium.com/cardesignchronicles/fiat-panda-and-vw-gol-40-years-of-differences-and-similarities-770c0b2be559 | ['Danillo Almeida'] | 2020-05-14 02:49:45.263000+00:00 | ['Cars', 'Design', 'History', 'Past', 'English'] |
Earth’s Blood | Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
Among the stones and winds
Tree’s tress swam yawning free
And its roots unyielding to defeat.
Earth’s sap that would coalesce
The ambition to climb higher
But is consumed by the tree’s thirst.
A power beyond yet so drawing —
Is the thirst for earth’s blood and it’s tears
For when it’s creatures aren’t fed.
Now the tree would consume what has suffered
And bequeath homes from its roots lifted
Yet n’er is it destroyed. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/earths-blood-8326acfb2f29 | ['T.S. Narkissa Luna'] | 2019-10-25 18:35:17.238000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Earth', 'Spiritual', 'Environment', 'Life'] |
How to Prepare and Send Your New Year Message Card with Python | If the program is executed without parameters, it will enter the interactive mode. Otherwise, it will get values from parameters. The entry point function is like the below.
Interactive mode will be handled with the following function by asking the user the required or optional parameters one by one. If the user presses enter without a value, default values shown in parenthesis will be used.
During taking parameters, the message header will be constructed first with the following MessageHeader class.
Since multiple recipients are allowed, to_email instance variable is constructed as a list from a comma-separated string, a file, or a single mail address.
Then the MessageContent class will be used to get parameters to construct the message as HTML with the construct_html_message method like below.
Background, text, and border colors are updated according to given parameters. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/how-to-prepare-and-send-your-new-year-message-card-with-python-6ad4a8d01d00 | ['Coşkun Deniz'] | 2020-12-28 17:17:45.324000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Technology', 'Email Automation', 'Christmas', 'Programming'] |
How to deploy Python Dash app on App Engine, which interacts with Flask app on Cloud Run using Firebase authentication | How to deploy Python Dash app on App Engine, which interacts with Flask app on Cloud Run using Firebase authentication Takashi Nakamura, PhD Follow Nov 10 · 10 min read
In a business context, we are often interested in creating dashboards, which enable us to show images, graphs, tables, etc. There are many frameworks to create dashboards (a.k.a. frontend applications). For Python users, Plotly/Dash would be one of the options. Regarding platforms, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides a fully managed serverless platform, App Engine, where we can readily deploy a frontend application.
In a previous article, we discussed how to deploy a Flask app on Cloud Run with authentication. With the previous example, we are going to demonstrate two things:
how to deploy a Dash application on AppEngine; how to configure the App Engine instance to interact with a Flask application on Cloud Run with authentication.
In terms of the first task, we can find numerous “How To” articles (e.g. by Data Science Campus) since it is not complicated. On the other hand, the second task is not straight-forward. We are going to demonstrate two different authentication methods, using either GCP Service Account Credentials or Firebase SDK in order to establish an interactive frontend on App Engine to Cloud Run instance.
This article is based on an example in the previous article.
Step 1: Create a Dash application
We are interested in a simple Dash application, which enables us to talk to a Cloud Run instance. Note, our Cloud Run instance is protected with Cloud Endpoints. Therefore, we need to keep in mind that:
The frontend (Dash) application sends HTTPS requests to the Cloud Endpoint; The frontend application creates jwt as the authentication token for Cloud Endpoint.
Regarding the second point, we are going to show an example using a GCP Service Account Credentials first. However, the method is less flexible than an example using Firebase SDK. We will discuss this later.
No authentication process between user and App Engine
In this example, we created a very simple Dash application. The functionality is,
When users click submit_button , create an HTTPS request to Cloud Endpoint instance ( endpoint_url ), which is already deployed based on my previous article steps; jwt is generated by App Engine using a function generate_jwt since a GCP Service Account Credentials file is saved in the same folder; Once the request is successfully made, display the response from Cloud Run.
Here is a sample code for the Dash application.
Dash application. Create a jwt using a GCP Service Account Credentials
Step 2: Deploy the Dash application on App Engine
We are able to provide our own runtime by supplying a custom Docker image in order to deploy an application on App Engine. In this example, we need six files:
The main python script for Dash ( main_v2.py ); Create jwt for authentication ( create_jwt_from_sa.py, my_credentials.json ); Configuration file ( config_appengine_v2.yaml ); Docker related files ( Dockerfile, requirements.txt )
dashapp-ae-v2
├── main_v2.py # Main python file
├── create_jwt_from_sa.py # File to create jwt
├── config_appengine_v2.yaml # Config file for App Engine
├── my_credentials.json # GCP service account credentials
├── requirements.txt # List of python packages
└── Dockerfile # For Docker build
For create_jwt_from_sa.py , you can find the details in my previous post. The details of Dockerfile and config_appengine_v2.yaml are below:
# Dockerfile FROM python:3.7.5
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
COPY . /app
WORKDIR /app
EXPOSE 8050
CMD python main_v2.py
The template for App Engine config file can be found in the link.
# config_appengine_v2.yaml # Run by Python 3.7
runtime: python37
instance_class: B2
manual_scaling:
instances: 1 # Machine config https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard instance_class: B2manual_scaling:instances: 1 # Timeout is 60sec
entrypoint: gunicorn -b :$PORT main_v2:app.server --timeout 60 --workers 1 # Instance name
service: dashapp-ae-v2
handlers:
- url: /.*
script: auto
secure: always
Once these six files are saved in the same directory, deploy the application on App Engine.
$ gcloud app deploy --project=$MY_PROJECT_ID config_appengine_v2.yaml
Go to the App Engine tab on the GCP console. The application is named dashapp-ae-v2 . If we have never used App Engine, we might need to create an instance called default . Click the name of the instance and check whether the Dash application is successfully deployed or not.
GCP console, App Engine tab. We can see the deployed Dash application instance
Common error: If we see message Error: Server Error when we open the instance, we need to check out the logs of the instance. Normally we forgot to write specific python packages on requirements.txt .
A typical error message when we could not deploy the instance on App Engine correctly
It is time to check the functionality. If successful, the Dash application on App Engine sends an HTTPS request to Cloud Run, protected by Cloud Endpoint.
Results: The message from the instance is Hello from body, John Doe , which is the expected result. Therefore, we are able to deploy a Dash application on App Engine, which communicates to our existing API on Cloud Run. Great job!
The Dash application on App Engine can talk to Cloud Run API protected by Cloud Endpoint
Step 3: Problem formulation
Someone might have noticed that this application is vulnerable and less flexible as:
The Cloud Run instance is protected by Cloud Endpoint though, the GCP Service Account Credentials file is available on App Engine instance; Therefore, if anyone knows the App Engine instance location (i.e. URL), they can readily “break into” Cloud Endpoint and Cloud Run instance; Regarding general web applications, we would like to switch users on the same application; however, the App Engine instance has a single user only — the user of the GCP Service Account Credentials file.
There are multiple techniques to address these three problems, but this article elaborates on a solution using the Firebase account. Firebase is a platform developed by Google for creating a web application and can be readily connected to GCP projects.
Current application
Anyone can access the App Engine instance from URL;
The App Engine instance owns a GCP Service Account Credentials file (e.g. .json );
); Therefore, the App Engine instance creates jwt as an authentication token for the Cloud Endpoint;
as an authentication token for the Cloud Endpoint; Consequently, anyone can have an access to the Cloud Run instance from the App Engine instance.
Current application: No authentication process between the user and the App Engine instance
Updated application
The authentication process is required to access the App Engine instance from URL (based on Firebase);
The App Engine instance does not own a GCP Service Account Credentials file;
The App Engine instance enables to generate id_token using the Firebase SDK, NOT using a GCP Service Account Credentials file;
using the Firebase SDK, The Cloud Endpoint instance accepts the id_token , generated based on the Firebase SDK. NOTE: the id_token based on the Firebase pertains to jwt formats.
, generated based on the Firebase SDK. NOTE: the based on the Firebase pertains to formats. Consequently, anyone, who can have an access to the App Engine instance (in other words, verified users of the web application), is able to talk to the Cloud Run instance.
Updated application: Added an authentication layer between the user and the App Engine instance
Action plans for the updated application
Set up Firebase account;
Create a web application on Firebase;
Update the Dash application adding Firebase login functionality;
Update the Cloud Endpoint instance to accept id_token , generated by the Firebase SDK.
Step 4: Set up Firebase account
From the GCP console, go to the Firebase console and “start with your GCP project”.
Once the Firebase account is linked to the GCP project, create a user account from the Authentication menu on the left tab. In this example, the identifier is the user’s email address.
Step 5: Create a web application on Firebase
Next, we create a web application on Firebase, and we are going to connect this web application to our Dash application, using Firebase SDK. The step-by-step official documentation can be found from the link.
First, create a web application from Project Overview.
Register the application with a nickname.
Once the application is created, from the main page, select the application and see Settings.
From Settings, we are able to see Firebase SDK snippet for the web application. We need to use this HTML code snippet for our Dash application.
From Settings, we can find the code snippet
Step 6: Update the Dash application using the HTML snippet
In order to include the Firebase SDK snippet on our Dash application, for convenience, we split the main dash code into two files.
File 1: app.py
app.py initialises Dash application, and includes the Firebase SDK snippet. In short, we would like to create a login page before the main function. To this end, we utilise the idea of Customising Dash’s HTML Index Template to modify the default HTML Index Template. (In app.py example, the idea starts from line 25: app.index_string )
Note: My JavaScript, CSS, HTML knowledge is not as proficient as my Python. Useful links for adding the Firebase SDK snippet on Dash is below:
File 2: main_v3.py
The differences from the previous Dash application ( main_v2.py ) are below:
The main html.Div is named as main_app_div , which is not visible ( style={"display": "none"} ) by default; Once the login is successful (i.e. using Firebase authentication), we are able to fetch id_token ; A new callback and login_process check whether we are able to fetch id_token from cookies. When we can fetch id_token , the main_app_div become visible ( {"display": "Block"} ); The id_token will be used as jwt for an HTTPS request to Cloud Endpoint (we will configure the Cloud Endpoint instance later). Therefore, the GCP Service Account Credentials file is not needed.
Note: For simplicity and convenience, the example only focuses on adding Firebase SDK snippet on the Dash application. There are many sophisticated techniques to make the application robust (e.g. using session cookies etc.).
Step 7: Deploy the updated Dash application on App Engine
The updated application needs these five files:
The main python script for Dash ( main_v3.py ); A supplemental python file to configure Firebase SDK ( app.py ); Configuration file ( config_appengine_v3.yaml ); Docker related files ( Dockerfile, requirements.txt )
dashapp-ae-v3
├── main_v3.py # Main python file
├── app.py # Sub file including HTML snippet
├── config_appengine_v3.yaml # Config file for App Engine
├── requirements.txt # List of python packages
└── Dockerfile # For Docker build
Note: There are some minor changes in
config_appengine_v3.yaml : Change the entrypoint: and service: Dockerfile : Change the last line CMD python main_v3.py
# config_appengine_v3.yaml # Run by Python 3.7
runtime: python37
instance_class: B2
manual_scaling:
instances: 1 # Machine config https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard instance_class: B2manual_scaling:instances: 1 # Timeout is 60sec
entrypoint: gunicorn -b :$PORT main_v3:app.server --timeout 60 --workers 1 # Instance name
service: dashapp-ae-v3
handlers:
- url: /.*
script: auto
secure: always
Once all of five files are saved in the same directory, deploy the application on App Engine.
$ gcloud app deploy --project=$MY_PROJECT_ID config_appengine_v3.yaml
Go to the App Engine tab from the GCP console again. Click the new instance dashapp-ae-v3 and check whether the Dash application is successfully deployed or not.
GCP console, App Engine tab. We can see the deployed Dash application instances.
If successful, we are not able to see the main application page, but a login window. In other words, we need to login first before we use the application. This authentication is based on the Firebase account.
Once we fill the registered email address and password on the window, we are able to see the main window, where we are able to create an HTTPS request to the Cloud Endpoint instance.
However, since we have not configured the Cloud Endpoint instance yet, the id_token generated by App Engine is not yet authorised by the Cloud Endpoint instance. Consequently, the message from the instance is {"message":"Jwt issuer is not configured","code":401} .
The id_token generated by the App Engine instance based on Firebase is not authorised by the Cloud Endpoint instance.
Step 8: Update Cloud Endpoint to accept Firebase user accounts
As well as my previous article, we shall configure the Cloud Endpoint instance, which authenticates users based on different methods. Previously, we configured the authentication method using a GCP Service Account Credentials.
To support the Firebase authentication, we need to configure .yaml file again. The official documentation can be found from the link.
The basic structure of the .yaml file is the same as the previous example. We need to add firebase parameters under securityDefinitions and security parameters for paths .
Once the configuration file for Cloud Endpoint is updated, re-deploy two Cloud Run instances (i.e. one for the Flask application, the other of the Cloud Endpoint). The series of actions are summarised in Step 3: Add authentication endpoint on Cloud Run in my previous article.
New Cloud Run instances are deployed. V3 accepts the Firebase id_token.
Step 9: Check the Cloud Endpoint and the Dash application on App Engine
It is time to check the application. To begin with, we need to change the URL on main_v3.py to send an HTTPS request to the updated Cloud Endpoint.
endpoint_url = "https://flaskapp-cr-v3-gateway-yerjarnciq-ue.a.run.app/"
Once re-deployed our Dash application on App Engine, we shall log in to the App Engine instance again and see the response from the Cloud Endpoint instance.
The id_token generated by the App Engine instance based on Firebase is now authorised by the Cloud Endpoint instance.
The id_token generated by the App Engine instance based on Firebase is now authorised by Cloud Endpoint. Well done!
Consequently, we don’t need to deploy instances with a GCP Service Account Credentials file together to create jwt .
Conclusion
The authentication based on Firebase is more elegant and easy to maintain multiple users. Embedding the Firebase SDK on the Dash application was challenging for me at first. Hope this article mitigates the technical difficulties and helps someone who is interested in deploying a multi-user web application on Cloud Run and App Engine. | https://medium.com/fullstackai/deploying-a-python-dash-app-on-app-engine-with-a-flask-cloud-run-backend-and-firebase-auth-120049f7dedd | ['Takashi Nakamura'] | 2020-11-10 19:11:10.987000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Data Science', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Dash', 'App Engine'] |
Geopoetry: Space and Time | Maps based off of Müller et al., (2008): Müller, R.D., M. Sdrolias, C. Gaina, and W.R. Roest 2008. Age, spreading rates and spreading symmetry of the world’s ocean crust, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 9, Q04006, doi:10.1029/2007GC001743.
Plate reconstructions modeled in Gplates, e.g: Müller, R. D., Cannon, J., Qin, X., Watson, R. J., Gurnis, M., Williams, S., et al. 2018. GPlates: Building a virtual Earth through deep time, in: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 19. doi:10.1029/2018GC007584. | https://medium.com/spiralbound/geopoetry-space-and-time-104e80295938 | ['Claire C. Mckinley'] | 2018-10-17 13:53:08.335000+00:00 | ['Geology', 'Claire Mckinley', 'Comics', 'Science', 'Oceans'] |
Leveling up your UX Maturity | Leveling up your UX Maturity
and how a design agency can play a pivotal role in doing so.
A ways back I had the opportunity to give a talk at a meetup whose theme revolved around building and growing your team’s UX competencies. My co-presenters were there representing the companies of ASML and Brightcape. I was there on behalf of digital design agency Hike One to discuss how companies can go about leveling up their UX Maturity as a catalyst for change and what role a design agency can play in this. Below you will find the summary of my talk, but for those not in the mood to read I have uploaded the meetup in its entirety so that you can listen to my silky silver-tongued voice as a white noise backdrop while you toil away at home during these remote times ;)
TLDR:
Maturing your UX processes takes both time & effort (duh!) Identifying which level you are on is the first step towards leveling up. Watch the talk I gave below if reading just isn’t your style;
My presentation is from minute 29–44
For those that dare to read;
What is UX Maturity, and why a pyramid?
UX maturity is defined as being the level of integrated user-focused processes within a company’s business, technological, and design decisions. As a UX/UI designer, I define a company’s UX Maturity as its gradual growth towards having a user focus at the forefront of strategic decisions. This gradual growth in itself has distinct milestones that the company undergoes. While there are many models out there for mapping these milestones, for my presentation and this article I used the model laid out by Charlie Kreitzberg as inspiration. In Charlie’s model, he states that a company experiences the maturing of its UX processes through six distinct levels that build upon one another. We can see these six levels as a pyramid, where the bottom is level one and the top is level six.
The heaviest blocks are on the bottom of the pyramid
The bottom level of this pyramid consists of the biggest and heaviest blocks to set in place. These blocks in themselves serve as the foundation for which the rest of the pyramid is built upon. This takes enormous amounts of effort to set into place.
The top levels cannot be built until the bottom ones have
The top levels of the pyramid cannot be built until the bottom levels have. This takes time to occur as no top can be built without a stable foundation. If these levels represent a company’s gradual growth to being a mature UX company then it is concluded that UX maturity takes time and effort. Time being something that we commit to and effort as something we act upon.
It takes time and effort.
So what are these levels to maturing your company’s UX process?
01 — The total lack of UX awareness.
The total lack of or awareness that UX even exists. Which doubles to say that the user needs are either not in scope or simply unknown. You will hear statements like; who is the UX designer and we don’t need or have time for design.
02 — The on-demand user experience.
The on-demand experience. It can feel as if the UX/user focus is treated as simply a phase in a project rather than a sustained endeavor. You will hear; we need designs for these screens, we don’t have time for exploration we need validation, and my favorite we need some UX here.
03 — The isolated UX project.
The door here is cracked but key stakeholders and departments are still hesitant to get fully involved in UX processes or see the potential of its impact. Our designers say that our users are saying this about our product. Close but the stakeholders are still not hearing the user’s needs for themselves and only from secondary resources
04 — The growing business of UX
At this level we see the user focus to start to play an important role in how decisions within teams are being made. This is the Tipping point! You will hear Stakeholders begin to say more and more that we need to talk to and understand users meaning that you are changing from viewing your users as a step in the process to instead being a valuable source of insight and data.
05 — UX as a strategic weapon.
Here the user focus happens earlier and earlier on in the process and we see cycles of iterative design and research processes take place. Having a user focus now becomes a weapon in creating impact in that the team is understanding user insights and utilizing them to create future plans and decisions. You will a change from “ we need to talk to our users to more of we need to understand our user first before we build anything.
06 — The integrated UX.
Here a user focus is integrated throughout your company and is an integral part of strategic planning and decisions. Here you will hear all that all disciplines are working collaboratively together to integrate their needs with the users in developing the roadmap strategy for the company’s product.
The levels of UX maturity
So, how do I level up!?
So how do you level up from where you are to the next level on the pyramid? Below are examples and activities that can assist a company in their processes in leveling up their UX maturity.
Level 01 → Level 02: Patience
Patience is key, if you are at level one it's going to be quite the journey. The first thing you should do is hire a design team to move forward with. At the bare minimum, this is two people, a manager, and a designer. Secondly being an advocate for a user-driven focus at every moment is another.
Level 02 → Level 03: Document everything
You need people to start believing that having a user focus can be a strategic weapon. It all starts with building a body of work and then sharing this with everyone, transparency and accessibility are key.
Level 03 → Level 04: Measure improvements
Nice that everything is documented but you also need to show how all the user focus endeavors are actually improving the product and the experience. How you can do this is by standardizing your processes to build uniformity in what you communicate to stakeholders and team members.
Level 04 → Level 05: Working together more closely
Moving to this level revolves around going beyond just sharing your insights and data with your team members and stakeholders it's about getting them to take ownership as well.
Level 05 → Level 06: Tweaking and innovating the processes
If you are here then you are well on your way, and here it becomes about replicating and evangelizing your UX processes across all teams and departments within your company.
Getting to the next level
How a Design Agency helps level your UX maturity
So, how does a (digital) design agency help you level up and mature your UX processes? You should see a digital design agency as a sort of vitamin pill. Not there to fully replace your processes but rather instead to enhance them and make them much more sustainable and effective. This pill I have observed during my time at Hike One can be taken in one of three ways;
Inserting a role in your team.
Undergoing a UX project with a team provided by a design agency.
Educating your team not the latest UX practices, tooling, and methodologies
A. Inserting a Role
Inserting a role into your team is exactly what it sounds like. A design agency, such as Hike One, supplements your team with a role that is currently needed or missing within your team. This can be anything from a UX/UI designer to a Scrum Master or Design Lead. This insertion of a role fills the needs you currently have and helps you fill out your team so that there is no delay in your company’s UX endeavors. Ultimately you take in a role to become a part of your team.
B. Project UX
Project UX, unlike inserting a role, revolves around the digital design agency taking in your team as a part of theirs and ultimately getting you to where you want to be. A common example of this is a design sprint as a Project UX. Here the design agency takes your team along in the process making sure all the activities and roles are fulfilled, resulting in the delivery of a tested prototype with end-users. Utilizing a digital design agency for Project UX aids you in overcoming the hurdles of not having the capacity nor knowledge necessary to bring your UX endeavors to full fruition. A Project UX is a manner in which you can showcase how UX ideally can become involved in business and strategic planning and decision making.
C. UX Education
The most sustainable of the three ways a design agency can act as a catalyst for leveling up your UX processes is to milk them for the knowledge they possess. By having a design agency educate your team on their processes and own ways of working you are literally leveling up the knowledge of your own team. Whether this is on how to run a design sprint or conduct a structured usability test, a design agency serves as being an incubator for the latest UX tooling, processes, and methodologies. Why not utilize them to level up the competencies of your team and fill any knowledge gaps that are present.
To summarize, design agencies help you level up and mature your UX processes by;
- Being the spark plug to support the competency gaps within your own team - To get you to where you want to be and showcase how the process can be repeated. - Giving you the tools and know how to level your UX maturity yourself.
Wrapping up
If you would like to hear more on my thoughts on this topic of leveling up your UX processes, please feel free to reach out to me. If you want to get more detail of what I discussed, watch the video at the beginning of this article to see not only my talk but as well as the other two.
For those wanting to know where I got this knowledge, everything I learned either came from my observation in my day to day as a UX Designer at Hike One or was inspired by the following article by Sandro Meyer | https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/leveling-up-your-ux-maturity-ccc100c34316 | ['Lodovico Marchesini'] | 2020-12-29 12:47:52.760000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Maturity', 'Digital Design', 'Designops', 'UX'] |
How to Break Into AI? Harvard CS50AI: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Course Review | Why is this particular course useful to your career as a beginner? Because it starts with the basics of Artificial Intelligence. You can’t run before you walk, so that’s why Week 0 of CS50AI is dedicated to basics algorithms like Breadth-First Search, Greedy Best-First Search, and Minimax.
You probably want to jump right to Machine Learning, which is on Week 4, but there are some necessary foundational topics before that, such as Propositional Logic (Week 1), Probability (Week 2), and Optimization (Week 3). You can rest assured that your journey will be smoother if you learn those topics before doing Machine Learning.
Now, let’s talk about the pros and cons.
CS50AI is comprehensive
As I have already mentioned, CS50AI starts with the necessary essential topics that will make you a more well-versed person in AI. For four weeks, before introducing the concepts of Machine Learning and Deep Learning, Brian Yu teaches the fundamental algorithms and concepts that serve as the foundation for later lectures. By making things clear in the beginning, the course lays a solid foundation for your future.
During those four weeks, you will accomplish the following projects:
Applying the Breadth-First Search algorithm on the IMDb database to find the shortest connection between two actors. Using the Minimax decision rule to build an AI that never loses at Tic-Tac-Toe.
Demo Gif from my GitHub repo
3. Representing knowledge in propositional logic to build an AI that plays Minesweeper optimally.
Demo Gif from my GitHub repo
4. Simulating the basic version of Google Search Algorithm, PageRank.
5. And many other projects.
CS50AI is challenging
In the last three weeks of the course, Brian will introduce you to the cutting-edge technology dominating the field. Those are:
Machine Learning, with the concepts of Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, and Reinforcement Learning. You will actually get to build a reinforcement learning model based on Q-learning that will train AI to play the game of Nim. It was a brave step to include an assignment on reinforcement learning as it is not beginner-friendly, but believe me, it will be the first time you might think, “Is AI alive?” Deep Learning, with the concepts of Neural Networks, Computer Vision, and Convolutional Neural Networks. CS50AI will introduce you to the holy grail, TensorFlow. By the end of Week 5, you will build a Road Sign Recognition Project, using the provided data set, TensorFlow, and Open-CV. You will get hands-on experience with these awesome frameworks, such a treat. Natural Language Processing, with the concepts of Context-Free Grammar, Markov Models, and Naive Bayes. Ever thought about how Amazon Alexa understands your commands and responds to your questions like “How old is Bernie Sanders?” You will learn just that. One of the projects for Week 6 is building a system that responds to your questions using a popular library, NLTK.
CS50AI is everywhere
Just like its older brother, CS50, the course has communities everywhere. Discord, Quora, Twitter, Facebook, you name it. If you ever get stuck, any of those communities are there for you. If you have a problem installing a Python library, understanding the assignment, or debugging, there is always someone to ask.
This leads to the cons of taking the course.
CS50AI is long
You might have a natural question if there are so many challenging projects, how do they check my work? Unfortunately, due to the complexity of things, the projects are evaluated manually. Once you finish your project, you must record its functionality, upload it to YouTube, fill out another Google Form, and wait. How long does it take to receive a grade?
…we have your form and it will be graded within three weeks. — CS50AI
Yes, another human being has to check your code and see if it functions correctly, which is quite unusual for a MOOC. On the bright side, the person who checks your work provides some useful feedback if your submission did not pass.
Waiting three weeks for the grades to roll in is not an easy process. Especially if you cannot start the next week until you learn the grades for the current week, but it is worth waiting.
CS50AI is not as fun
If you have seen CS50 2019 with David Malan, you know how much fun it is. Watching Harvard students engaging in activities would bring the sense that you are a part of the classroom.
This is not the case with CS50AI. The pandemic had probably started by the time they recorded the videos, so it is only Brian you will see through the series. He does not make jokes (it is still interesting to watch, though).
Do it!
Now that I have mentioned the good and bad sides of the course, I can only say, “start taking it.” I do not think I have ever seen a course that would take you across all of the topics in AI and let you get hands-on experience in each. CS50AI will bring you to the basics of Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing within the realms of trending Python and libraries like TensorFlow, Open-CV, scikit-learn, and NLTK.
Quick tip: You don’t have to pay for the edX Verified Certificate at all. CS50AI will provide you with one upon the completion of all their assignments. Their certificate looks like the one in the beginning, and you can share it on LinkedIn.
What to do after the course?
Take Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning course on Coursera if you are interested in Machine Learning.
Otherwise, take IBM’s Data Science on Coursera if you are interested in the more business-oriented use of data. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/how-to-break-into-ai-harvard-cs50ai-introduction-to-artificial-intelligence-course-review-fe14b78e6575 | ['Damir Temir'] | 2020-12-27 12:37:16.124000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Neural Networks', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Deep Learning', 'Data Science'] |
The Top 10 Skills People Want to Learn in 2019 and How to Learn Them | #7. Photography
Me taking a portrait photo of my wife in Nepal
My definition: Learning to use a camera to take good photos.
Photography is a very broad skill, much like drawing. More and more people are interested in photography due to the rise of smartphones and DLSR technologies. It’s now easier than ever to learn and is a great satisfying skill to both learn and apply.
Sub-skills
Terminology
Framing
The rule of thirds
Composition
Reading the histogram
Types of cameras
Understanding the basics: Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO
Portrait photography (has many sub-skills)
Landscape photography (has many sub-skills)
Object photography (has many sub-skills)
Action photography (has many sub-skills)
Macro photography
Long Exposure photography
Photo editing in Camera Raw
Photo editing in Photoshop
Photo editing in Lightroom
and many many more!
My story with Photography
I used to not care for photography at all. When I bought my iPhone 6 a few years back, it was the first time I was armed with a good enough camera. I started taking shots and playing around with them on various apps. I started enjoying it.
When I took a trip to Iceland, I decided I should probably step it up if I wanted to take beautiful photos. It turns out the little bit of research I did paid off and I started taking decent photos.
Then I travelled around the world for a year. I took over 15K+ photos on that trip. I got a lot better and people thought I was actually a photographer. So I decided to buy my first DSLR in India and continued the trip with it. I learned a whole lot.
I was later contracted to take professional photos of NGO operations for Sundara and the opening of a new WeWork location in Bangalore, India.
I’m learning portrait photography this month and will be practicing with these beautiful people: Carla Diaz, Diana Jabba, and Kevin Nguyen.
How to learn it?
The best 80/20 I found was to learn about the rule of thirds. You can learn that in less than 5 minutes and instantly, your photography is at least 2x better.
The rule of thirds is one of many framing techniques and it’s worth it to look into the other ones too. Many amateur photos are good but lack proper framing skills. Note that you can and should crop your photos during post-production to frame them better.
Another very important as aspect is to learn proper exposure. Learn what is perfect exposure, what’s underexposed and what’s overexposed. Learn to read the histogram. Learn to use that to your creative advantage.
Both of these things don’t require expensive gear. A DSLR helps for exposure, but you can expose a photo properly with a phone too.
For a month, practice a specific style you’re interested in. I started with landscape. In retrospect, I actually find it to be the hardest one to create photos that stand out.
When ready to purchase a camera, find one that comes with a lens that allows you to shoot the style you’re interested in. You’ll learn that, in most cases, the body doesn’t matter as much as the lens.
I’d suggest learning a new style only once a month. Focusing on one style at a time will give you enough practice to become good enough at it.
Resources
Free
Paid | https://medium.com/skilluped/the-top-10-skills-people-want-to-learn-in-2019-and-how-to-learn-them-a37ce262bcd2 | ['Danny Forest'] | 2019-12-30 00:00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Personal Development', 'Education', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Inspiration'] |
Instagram Is About to Get a Lot More Boring | Instagram is about to implement changes to its community guidelines. And depending on the type of content you create or like to consume, they could completely change the way you use the platform.
When I started writing about sex, I made a conscious decision to do it using explicit language.
I didn’t see any reason to hold back and make my content more family-friendly. I was writing specifically for adults and I wanted my words to reflect that. And when I published articles about porn, it just seemed silly not to do it with X-rated writing.
I tried to write things that were a little more proper. I started off using more clinical and sanitized language. Some of my earlier articles used words like “penis” instead of “cock.” It got the message across, but it felt so flat and dull.
I wanted to write the way I actually spoke. When I finally gave myself permission to do that, the words felt more alive. There was an energy, an excitement when I was vulgar and casual that I couldn’t achieve when I tried to keep things clean.
I also went dirty because that’s the kind of content I’m drawn to.
I love crude jokes, naughty dialogue, and women who are unapologetically horny. My Twitter feed is full of tits and ass. I follow people on Instagram just so I can see when they post lewds.
I personally think most things are better when you throw some sex in the mix. So, I write for people who feel the same way.
Doing it was liberating, but it also meant I’d have a few obstacles.
I knew some people wouldn’t take me seriously because I was the girl with the filthy mouth.
I also knew others would be drawn to the dirty words but wouldn’t pay attention to whether my writing was any good.
And more importantly, I had to find the right place to put all my work.
Before I started blogging, I wrote erotica. Amazon was the natural home for my stories and novellas, but its terms of service were less than hospitable to them. I had to be very careful with what I uploaded to the site, especially given some of the kinks I have.
Medium made more sense for me, since it seems to have a decent respect for sex and sexually explicit written content.
But anyone who wants to try making a living off their writing knows that very few people can just stick their words online and let them speak for themselves. You also have to find ways to promote yourself, in part by building a presence on social media.
Plus, you’ll probably have the urge to express yourself in other ways. You’ll want to start a podcast, give Twitch streaming a try, create YouTube videos, share some photos, or find a way to broadcast those stray thoughts that are too short to post on your blog.
In my case, that meant posting to Twitter, starting a podcast, and launching a Patreon page. I also got slightly involved on Facebook before realizing it just wasn’t the right place for me.
And until recently, Instagram was a big part of that. But now that they’re rolling out changes to their policies, I’ll need to find a new home for everything I was doing there — and so will anyone whose content is related to sex.
Why I Fell in Love With Instagram
Instagram was the first social media platform I genuinely enjoyed using.
I’m a writer and a podcaster, so I express myself primarily through my words. But deep down, I’m a highly visual person.
Most of my inspiration comes from visual media. In a lot of ways, the biggest influence on my writing isn’t other bloggers — it’s YouTubers, TikTokers, and influencers with a flair for photography.
Instagram puts images front and center. There’s plenty of text to read if you want to, but it’s always presented as a companion to the visuals.
Scrolling through my feed gives me an endless stream of gorgeous, eye-catching, and highly stimulating content and I simply love it.
It also feels a little more private than platforms like Twitter.
I know that’s weird to say given that it’s a highly accessible and public social media platform. But every conversation on Instagram feels like it’s contained in its own little universe. Each of them takes place in the responses to a photo or a video, and that’s where it stays.
Twitter feels more intrusive. Comments on posts you don’t care about show up in your feed. People you don’t follow poke in because someone you do follow liked one of their posts. The more I used the site, the less personal and personalized it felt.
Instagram also has more permanence to it.
Yes, it’s a feed that constantly refreshes, but it never feels like it’s being flooded. Going to someone’s account and scrolling through their posts felt like looking through a collection of their highlights instead of a mess of replies and responses.
That was really appealing to me as a creator. Some of my photos and videos take hours to create. Behind every shot, there’s a pile of invisible labor, from staging the area and setting up the equipment to working every angle to find the right one and meticulously editing the images to get every detail right.
The thought of throwing it up on Twitter and having it basically disappear within a few hours is heartbreaking.
So, I made Instagram my social media platform of choice.
I learned to ignore most of my DMs because that’s where all the trashy stuff, the dick pics, and the sexual harassment took place. So, no, it wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I loved posting there and I actually felt good after spending time on it.
It’s where I put all my best stuff, my most polished photos and posts, and where I tried hardest to build a following.
And starting next week, all that hard work might not amount to much.
Instagram’s New Sex Negative Community Guidelines
Instagram was already an uneasy space for sex content.
On Twitter, it’s not unusual for my feed to fill up with endless vulgarity. Sex workers can freely post nudes in positions that no one would ever call tasteful. Porn creators promote their work by sharing montages of themselves tit dropping, sucking dick, and sticking dildos wherever they damn please.
It’s all part of the free-for-all atmosphere that makes Twitter both a garbage fire and a refreshingly open corner of the internet.
But Instagram was the place where sex workers would have their accounts shut down. It’s where people whose content was even remotely sexy ran the risk of being shadowbanned.
By and large, though, if you were willing to play within the rules, you could find a way to promote yourself, connect with followers, and point them to the raunchy stuff you really want them to see.
About a month ago, Instagram announced changes to Community Guidelines that would make it impossible to promote sexually explicit content without running up against its rules.
The site’s new Community Standards come into effect on December 20th, and I got increasingly dismayed as I read down the list of four items listed under the “Do not post” label.
The first item bans people from using the platform to coordinate any kind of sex work.
Then, it expands those restrictions to include content that only implicitly or indirectly involves any kind of sexual solicitation.
Even cheekily selling nudes, porn, or sex by using suggestive emojis is on its way out. I can only imagine it’s a matter of time before we hear of people being banned for using the peach emoji while having their OnlyFans listed in their LinkTree.
It even bafflingly includes nudity that is covered up. I guess Instagram is so hungry for censorship that even hiding your naked body isn’t good enough anymore.
Then there’s the porn clause.
As someone who reviews porn and promotes adult sites on my podcast, that’s a problem for me.
I could just leave the URLs out of it. But it’s kind of a dick move to mention porn videos, porn creators, porn sites, or any kind of adult content and not at least giving them a link.
And then there’s the final item.
This is the one that makes me worried about the content I already have up on my account.
I review sex toys. I talk excitedly about using them. I naturally imply or mention my horniness, since that’s the whole point of those things.
My podcast is about sex and it’s as filthy as I’m comfortable being. So, my posts promoting it are often a little naughty.
The more I think about the different ways I could run afoul of the new rules, the more I realize how wide their effect is going to be. It’s still not entirely clear where the boundaries are. But what is clear is that it will be very easy to cross them.
Where Will the Horny People Go?
Instagram isn’t going to flop because of this. It will still be a hub for a lot of influencers, amateur photographers, and people who like to share shots of their daily lives.
It will still have some enjoyable content and I might check my feed once in a while.
But for people like me, Instagram after December 20th will be like Tumblr after its porn ban — a site that has lost some of its charm and a lot of the things that made it fun.
For people who create sex content, the big question isn’t whether to leave the platform. At this point, that seems to be a given. The question is which one to use instead.
I’ve thought about rolling the dice and seeing how long I can keep using Instagram before I get booted from it. But that would mean working hard to build a following and create a presence knowing that it could all be wiped out overnight.
I’m also hesitant to keep promoting and supporting a platform that’s so shitty to people who sell sex. I don’t consider myself a sex worker, but I have nothing but respect and admiration for them.
Plus, it would be hypocritical of me to subscribe to a few cute girls on OnlyFans or jill off to amateurs on Pornhub and then shrug when their ability to promote their work and profit from it is threatened.
I’ve still got Twitter. I don’t love it as a platform, but at least my work feels safer there.
I’m also kicking around the idea of starting a free OnlyFans. That’s the platform that comes closest to giving me the Instagram vibe that drew me to it in the first place.
None of the options I have are perfect. They don’t give me the gorgeous, smooth, and vibrant feel of scrolling through Instagram. But a fantastic aesthetic experience can’t make up for all the sex negativity. | https://medium.com/love-emma/instagram-is-about-to-get-a-lot-more-boring-dcd835b72f5a | ['Emma Austin'] | 2020-12-16 09:21:22.720000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Social Media', 'Writing', 'Sexuality', 'Sex'] |
How to Give a Perfect Answer | How to Give a Perfect Answer
(And Four Dangerous Mistakes to Avoid)
How do you give a perfect answer?
The tongue of the righteous is choice silver;
The heart of the wicked is of little worth.
-Proverbs 10:20
How do you communicate wisely? Especially when writing online in a blog or on social media?
The perfect answer is not some “end-all” retort.
The perfect answer is the mature answer.
So our basic question is: “How can we be more mature when we communicate online?”
If you’ve ever discussed important ideas on a social media or a blog, you’ll know why this is important and why it is difficult.
To communicate effectively in writing is a special, learnable skill.
Before you can learn it, you must want it.
You must admit you don’t have it all together. It is too easy to say something in the moment and to think your words are “choice silver” — only later to realize the words ring of tin.
(Don’t ask me how I know!)
The solution:
Choose your principles ahead of time.
Choose the principles carefully, and follow them even when you feel like breaking them.
Put some careful thought into your principles now, while you are most clearheaded, and then stick with them in the moment of decision.
Keep in mind: The moment you feel like breaking your principle is probably not your best time to be reconsidering your principles.
We learn what maturity and immaturity look like by trial and error. I have made (or at least considered making) each of the mistakes I’m about to describe.
You may not completely agree with the four principles I’ve chosen. But think through them. It will make it easier to get started creating your own top principles.
My four principles for being mature when I write:
Don’t make it personal Don’t make it painful. Don’t make it demanding. Don’t make it rude.
Mistake #1: Don’t Make It Personal
Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense,
But a man of understanding remains silent.
-Proverbs 11:12
If you’re going to be a critic, focus on critiquing the thoughts — not the thinkers.
Keep the discussion in the realm of ideas. The moment you begin to talk about the other person’s attitude or behavior, you make it personal.
It’s an easy mistake to make.
You ask them a question, but they answer a slightly different question. Then you say, “Why didn’t you answer my question?”
Guess what? You just made it personal. You are no longer poking their idea — you are poking their character. And they won’t like it.
What should you do instead?
Ask your question again in a different way. Use cunning, not brute force. Influence the conversation without trying to assert direct control.
Be like Odysseus with the Trojan Horse — use your mind instead of a frontal assault.
“Using your mind” doesn’t mean always having the best proof. It means having common sense about how to engage others winningly.
Anytime you have strong emotions, you are in danger of making it personal.
Don’t react emotionally. If someone else acts immaturely, give them grace. Remember how hard it is to be mature. (You’re reading an article about it, after all.)
Be the better person. Be the leader.
Assume the best about others. Failing that, at least resolve to act as if you assume the best.
Keep in mind that public disagreement is public criticism.
It never feels great to receive criticism. But public disagreement is part of the purpose of writing. People know that. They are willing take some ego hits. But you need to help people know you aren’t hitting them for the fun of it. When you disagree you must soften the blow.
An example:
On a forum I saw someone ask:
“Should we take away people’s rights in order to make the world safer? If so, how far should we go? Wouldn’t a totalitarian dictator use this kind of reasoning? What constrains it?”
To me, it looked like a helpful question.
But then I saw another person argue that this was “fear-mongering language.”
Ouch.
Can you see what happened? The discussion moved from ideas into personal territory, impugning style and motive.
Don’t hit the other person’s pride. It’s immature. Don’t go near it. Don’t make it personal.
Mistake #2: Don’t Make It Painful
There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts,
But the tongue of the wise brings healing.
-Proverbs 12:18
An online discussion is like a party or a game. People come because they want to have fun, grow, and learn about others. It takes courage to put oneself out there. It’s a risk to one’s pride. That is the cost of playing.
Try to keep the entry cost low.
Otherwise people won’t want to play. Your words will either bring people in or push them out. If you want your ideas to be heard, you can’t push people away.
What makes people feel welcome? Why do they come? People come for the chance to be heard. It is exciting to engage your mind, to make a choice, and to say your piece.
Don’t take away that joy.
Meaning: Don’t jump on a person too quickly, even if they are completely wrong about something.
Don’t squash their interest by showing that you can disprove them in thirty seconds. (They won’t come back.)
Mature communicators let the other person “save face.”
Ip Man is my favorite illustration for letting others “save face.”
He was a master of the Wing Chun martial arts style. Let me give you an idea of his talent:
He was Bruce Lee’s master.
Ip Man training Bruce Lee
Part of Ip Man’s heroism was his great wisdom in preserving the other man’s pride. He won his matches, but he never gloated.
In the 2008 film, Ip Man even went so far as to say to another master, “Thank you for letting me win.”
Don’t lose the big picture.
A forum is not for “winning” arguments.
Your words go to a person. Don’t write to impress other listeners. They are not voting on who “wins.”
You probably won’t change people’s minds very often or quickly. Minds don’t turn on a dime.
The big picture:
A blog or a social media discussion is about stimulating the thought process — in yourself and in others. It is a chance to learn new views, to see how others react to your ideas, and to hone your ability to express an idea wisely.
People take a chance every time they open their mouths and say something. You don’t know how much of a person’s heart went into what he said.
Say “thank you” early and often.
Reaffirm the relationship and don’t make it painful.
Mistake #3: Don’t Make It Demanding
A fool gives full vent to his spirit,
But a wise man quietly holds it back.
-Proverbs 29:11
An immature person makes too many demands on others.
In a forum there are several things I find too demanding. You may have a different opinion. It depends on the context and the relationship. But if you’re worried that you may have crossed the line and been overly demanding — just ask.
Please don’t comment with a five-paragraph essay on someone else’s Facebook post.
Someone might read it, but only begrudgingly. If you do this too often, other people will begin to ignore everything you say. (I’ve seen this happen.)
Here’s the worst case I’ve seen:
There was a forum with 20+ worship leaders participating. One young man felt the need to refute each of the other participants individually. You could count on it that every time someone posted, he would respond with 800 words about where they were right and where they were wrong. Truly.
When you speak, you make a demand.
By the very act of speaking you are asserting that others should focus on you — because you think you know something they don’t know.
Let that sink in.
There is a reason Job’s young friend Elihu spoke last (Job 32:4). To speak is to make a demand, so measure your words carefully.
Don’t make demanding assumptions.
Don’t assume people have read every preceding item in an online discussion. Maybe they skimmed. Maybe they read part of it two days ago and they don’t remember it.
If you want the forum to be an inviting place, don’t tell people they need to go back and read or reread everything. That would be overly demanding.
Likewise, if you post a link to an article or video, you can’t demand that anyone read it or watch it. They didn’t come to the forum to get a homework assignment. Do post external links. But don’t try to control people.
The biggest offender: Don’t ask demanding questions.
This means: Don’t ask too many questions. Group participation is a value, so ask the group a question.
If you need to single out an individual for a question, make sure you don’t make it personal. Pose questions casually to leave the person a way out if they don’t want to answer.
Remember that a question is a demand.
My favorite hero in this connection is Robert Goren of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.”
Goren’s job is to interrogate people. But he doesn’t pepper the suspect with questions. He is selective.
He goes into the interrogation already knowing who did the crime. He doesn’t ask questions about what he needs to know. He asks questions about what the other person needs to go on record as saying.
It’s very crafty.
Goren understands that you can either close people down or open them up, depending on what kind of question you ask.
Finally, don’t ask rhetorical questions.
For a variety of reasons, these are unhelpful. A rhetorical question tends to sound sarcastic, and that’s hard to pull off in writing.
The reader doesn’t have much information to go on.
(He may even think your rhetorical question is sincere, in which case he will question your intelligence.)
Rhetorical questions can be interpreted multiple ways, so they are the opposite of clarity.
Be plain. Be clear. Be brief.
Don’t make it demanding.
Mistake #4: Don’t Make It Rude
When words are many, transgression is not lacking,
But whoever restrains his lips is prudent.
-Proverbs 10:19
Abraham Lincoln teaches us about maturity and immaturity in communication.
Gifted in words, as a young man he once publicly brought a political adversary to tears.
One of Lincoln’s letters to the editor nearly resulted in a dual.
But by the time of his presidency, Lincoln had learned restraint. He learned to make his words serve a broader purpose than mere emotional catharsis.
After Gettysburg, upon learning that Gen. George Meade had let Robert E. Lee escape, Lincoln wrote a “hot” letter.
But he did not send it.
The letter was found much later, sealed, and labelled “never sent, never signed.” Lincoln reasoned that the letter would not have strengthened Meade’s faltering resolve or contributed toward resolving the crisis.
Rudeness doesn’t pay. We know this. But how we overlook it in the small things.
Let me tell you five mistakes you will probably make at some point. Do what you can to work against them.
1) Don’t put words in others people’s mouths.
There is hardly a faster way to annoy somebody than to tell him, “So you are saying X,” when he is not.
You may think statement W logically entails statement X. But if he doesn’t think that, then he has not said it.
The principle can be summed up:
You should state an opponent’s case in a form he finds recognizable.
Check out this helpful TGC video on the issue.
2) Don’t change the subject.
Or at least acknowledge it when you do.
Make it easy for the other person to see where you’re going and what you want.
When you are asked a direct question, try to answer the question that was asked, not some other question.
3) Don’t ramble.
Forums have distinct posts and threads for a reason. If you have a new idea to discuss, consider starting a new post or thread.
Especially important, avoid putting more than one topic within a single post. Don’t leave other readers guessing about the relationship between disparate topics.
4) Don’t be dismissive.
Make sure to end conversations well. If you have been exchanging thoughts with someone and you are ready to stop, you can say so.
Say, “This has been a fun discussion. Thanks for the interaction.”
It’s important to not check out when someone else thinks you are in the middle of a conversation.
End positively. Even if you can’t agree on an idea, at least tell them you appreciated the chance to talk.
5) Don’t sound like a know-it-all.
Don’t sound like you think you’re the only one with anything valuable to say.
For me, this is the hardest lesson of the series.
I love to speak up. But the more I say, the more it looks like I only want to be heard.
So I’m working on keeping my comments shorter. And I’m working on expressing openness and teachability.
If you want to give a perfect answer, a Beatles song sums it up:
“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad…”
That’s the goal of online communication.
Don’t make it personal, painful, demanding, or rude.
Jesus said, “Be ye perfect” (Matt 5:48). Interestingly, the word means “mature.”
The perfect answer is the mature answer. | https://medium.com/christian-intellectual/how-to-give-a-perfect-answer-81c30f1768ce | ['Cody Libolt'] | 2018-04-21 00:38:37.302000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Writing', 'Personal Growth', 'Strategy', 'Social Media'] |
Avoid Overfitting with Regularization | You are not alone if you had a hard time understanding what exactly Regularization is and how it works. Regularization can be a very confusing term and I’m attempting to clear up some of that in this article.
In this article I’ll do three things: (a) define the problem that we want to tackle with regularization; then (b) examine how exactly regularization helps; and finally (c) explain how regularization works in action.
What is the problem?
Data scientists take great care during the modeling process to make sure their models work well and they are neither under- nor overfit.
Let’s say you want to predict house prices based on some features. You start with one feature, floor area, and you build your first regression model.
house_price = a+ b1*floor_area + e
But you know very well that floor space is just one criteria, there are many other factors — such as the number of bedrooms, garage condition, neighborhood characteristics, school district and many more— that a buyer potentially considers before making a purchasing decision. So your first model is clearly an underfit.
At the other extreme, you could end up selecting 200 different features that can potentially impact house prices. So you built a really complex model and tested it on the training data and found that it performed great! However, when it comes to making predictions on unseen/test data the model does poorly. Why is that? One reason is — the complex model that you just built “learned” every bit of noise but missed the signal in the training data.
So how to find the sweet spot where a model is NOT too complex but complex enough to pick up the signal and performs relatively well in out-of-sample data?
Regularization finds that sweet spot.
How exactly regularization helps?
Ideally, if we had a large number of features, we’d add in features one by one and in different combinations to see their impacts on model performance and choose the best model based on the performance metric.
house_price = floor_area + garage_condition — — — — — — — (model 1)
house_price = garage_condition+ bedrooms — — — — — — — -(model 2)
house_price = floor_area + garage_condition+ bedrooms — —(model 3)
… and so on.
Do you see the problem here? If we did feature selection that way, we’d end up running thousands of models with different feature combinations and parameter values.
It works differently in machine learning. We choose an algorithm, then select all the features at once, run the model and evaluate model performance at the very end. But aren’t we overfitting with lots of features that we actually want to avoid?
That’s where regularization comes in handy. Even if we have redundant features, regularization controls their effects and makes them less sensitive and sometimes lets them go. It is done by shrinking model coefficients towards zero.
How does it work in practice?
Let’s start with the cost function (a.k.a objective function) that we want to optimize in regression.
You know what a cost function is, right?
The difference between a predicted and an actual value is called the error. Every data point in a dataset creates such errors, and the role of a cost function is to quantify these errors. And in linear regression, the objective is to minimize those errors to find the best fit model.
There are several cost functions out there such as Mean Squared Error (MSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) etc. but they all do the same thing — quantifying errors.
As an example, this is how MSE works:
it takes differences between observed and predicted values (Y — Y-hat) for each data point (i),
squares the difference,
repeats the process for all points,
sums them up, and finally
takes an average by dividing by the number of data points (n).
It is the value of MSE that we want to minimize to find the best model.
So if our regression model is Ŷ = α + θi Xi (where θ is the coefficient of X), then the cost function following MSE formulation above is:
So the purpose of regularization is to add a small bias in the error function:
Cost(x, y) = Error(x, y) + Regularization term
There are two kinds of regularization terms — L1 and L2. Depending on which term is used, a normal multiple regression is called by different names.
Ridge regression
We call a normal regression the “Ridge regression” when it uses L2 Regularization. The purpose of L2 is to shrink feature coefficients to close to zero, but not exactly zero (can you guess what if coefficients are zero? The answer comes next).
So the cost function we want to minimize with Ridge regression is:
LASSO regression
LASSO regression goes a bit extreme. It sets some feature coefficients to zero through L1 Regularization. This process essentially eliminates those features from the model instead of minimizing their impacts.
Hyperparameter λ: So in both L1 and L2 regularization, we have a parameter λ, which is called a hyperparameter in machine learning lingo. This is the only parameter responsible for penalizing the features.
So the question is — what values does λ take and how to find the perfect value? One thing to remember — λ adds bias to our model, so we don’t want to add a too large value. Instead, we want to get away with a small bias as possible while achieving our main goal — reducing feature sensitivity.
There are several ways to find the λ value. How each method works is a discussion for another day for today, but know that two popular methods are: gradient descent and cross-validation. | https://towardsdatascience.com/avoid-overfitting-with-regularization-6d459c13a61f | ['Mahbubul Alam'] | 2020-12-28 19:58:44.727000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Regression', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Regularization', 'Data Science'] |
3 Medium Writers You Should Follow | Typically, when I post a Top 3 article, I focus on three stories I enjoyed reading on that particular day. Today, however, I felt like doing something a little different and a bit broader. A few months ago, I posted an article listing three of my favourite writers on Medium. You can check out the original right here:
In that post, I stated that I planned on expanding the list every month. While my intentions were good, my execution was a major fail. So, today is the day that I’ve decided to finally make good on my promise.
There are so many fantastic writers on Medium, that it was hard to narrow it down to just three … which was the reason I had wanted to make this a monthly column in the first place.
The list below represents three writers whose work I tend to seek out very frequently. Their writing inspires me and speaks to me on an emotional level. It is this connection that continues to draw me to their work, and makes me want to support them as fully as possible when I see they’ve posted something new. If your name isn’t on this list, please, please don’t take offence. You may just be on the next list! | https://medium.com/top-3/3-medium-writers-you-should-follow-5f2aa274d9cc | ['Daryl Bruce'] | 2019-12-16 23:58:10.962000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Writers On Writing', 'Medium', 'Writers On Medium', 'Sex'] |
Remember, Every Purchase From Best Buy Comes With Our ‘Black Mirror’ Guarantee | We live in a time of unprecedented change, from shrinking supercomputers to programmable thermostats that somehow convince us to kill ourselves. As a consumer, you rely on technology vendors to match the demands of the market without compromising your safety, and that’s why for every item that leaves our stores, Best Buy proudly offers the ‘Black Mirror Guarantee’.
What does that mean? That you can shop with confidence. That your purchase will not only include recent updates and safety measures — but the promise that you won’t be plunged into a technological nightmare with broad satirical undertones through the use of it.
Let’s take high-definition televisions. Our HDTVs offer unparalleled color and resolution — while at no time becoming so realistic that you mistake them for reality, trapped in an unresponsive, coma-like state as your genuine human relationships atrophy. Likewise, the DVR systems included in most models will never begin to display your worst thoughts and impulses in an unstopping flood until the pain becomes unbearable. Guaranteed.
Smart Assistants are all the rage. Who doesn’t want an extra brain around the house? As your device learns about you, all collected data will be stored with maximum encryption and deleted at your request, and should your Smart Assistant begin to impersonate a deceased loved one with chilling accuracy, to the degree where you can no longer distinguish between your desperate need to hear their voice again and your own swiftly deteriorating sense of right and wrong, a quick call to our hotline will restore the device to factory settings and allow you to resume a more appropriate position along your path of grieving.
Wearable is hot, hot, hot! Whether you’re a fitness buff monitoring workouts or an email junkie taking your office on the road, your device will be ready when you need it — not fused to your body in the first phase of your transformation to a mindless automaton. Best Buy will not let that happen. We also offer waterproofing.
Today’s game systems offer a level of escapism like never before... with an equally unexplored potential for ironic damnation. Rest assured, before each game leaves the warehouse, Best Buy’s QA inspectors declare it free of all devastating twists, including, but not limited to:
Events in the game occurring to your own family.
Your body withering and fading while your game avatar grows stronger.
Being sucked into a past or parallel world where monstrous beliefs are now unquestioned law.
Your unconscious mind being programmed to commit acts of violence against game manufacturer’s real-world competitors.
Impregnation by a simulated character in effort to become real.
Deceased loved one appearing in game after manifestation via Smart Assistant thwarted.
Any path resulting in your head exploding.
By now it’s clear: through the ‘Black Mirror Guarantee’, Best Buy wants to maintain technology’s presence in your life as that of a friendly companion — not a monkey’s-paw style trap that pairs your worst flaws with thematically satisfying punishments. So, thanks again for your continued trust.
To verify acceptance of this offer, press your thumb onto the pad below.
You will feel a small prick — but do not pull away.
Everything you experience from this moment onwards will be only what you deserve. | https://mistersniffen.medium.com/remember-every-purchase-from-best-buy-comes-with-our-exclusive-black-mirror-guarantee-e82662a717e1 | ['Tim Sniffen'] | 2019-01-12 18:07:16.639000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Retail', 'Science', 'Satire', 'Black Mirror'] |
【対談してきた】時間感覚の合うVCと組むべし：PLAID柴山氏（前編） | Open jobs at 株式会社プレイド - Wantedly
On Wantedly, 株式会社プレイド is now listing their recruitment information for Engineer / Programmer, Director / Manager… | https://medium.com/%E6%96%87%E7%B3%BB%E3%83%95%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6-%E9%A3%9F%E3%81%B9%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%81%91%E3%82%8B%E3%81%AE/%E5%AF%BE%E8%AB%87%E3%81%97%E3%81%A6%E3%81%8D%E3%81%9F-%E6%99%82%E9%96%93%E6%84%9F%E8%A6%9A%E3%81%AE%E5%90%88%E3%81%86vc%E3%81%A8%E7%B5%84%E3%82%80%E3%81%B9%E3%81%97-plaid%E6%9F%B4%E5%B1%B1%E6%B0%8F-%E5%89%8D%E7%B7%A8-4beb662127eb | ['Yusuke Kuroda 黒田 悠介'] | 2016-11-05 11:46:24.589000+00:00 | ['Interview', '日本語', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Venture Capital'] |
OSGi. What’s That? | Have you ever heard of OSGi? Do you know what’s its purpose?
If you haven’t, I’ll do my best to introduce you to this wonderful piece of software.
Origin
Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say:
The OSGi Alliance, formerly known as the Open Services Gateway initiative, is an open standards organization founded in March 1999 that originally specified and continues to maintain the OSGi standard.
Some OSGi Alliance members are Bosch Software Innovations, Software AG, IBM and more companies whose businesses target the Internet of Things market.
Purpose
OSGi is a Java specification, or simply put, just a set of interfaces.
It aims is to define a way to develop modular Java applications and to utilize the concepts of a microkernel architecture, also known as a plug-in architecture.
This architecture consists of two primary components:
System core — the minimal set of functionalities that are considered to build up the heart of a software system.
— the minimal set of functionalities that are considered to build up the heart of a software system. Plug-in modules — also called bundles in OSGi, they represent independent and stand-alone pieces of software which are meant to bring additional features to the core system, thus expanding its functionalities.
Figure 1 — Definition of an OSGi system
We can imagine bundles as separate mini-programs that operate over an OSGi core system.
Bundles can be plugged into the core system at runtime, and they can start working immediately without the need for a system restart which makes the software very flexible and extendable.
Bundles can also be easily reused in other applications. And hey, it’s better to reuse whole components rather than just objects, right?
Furthermore, the plug-in architecture offers strong loose coupling between modules which makes them easy to test and the software easy to develop since different modules can be developed in parallel because they’re independent from each other.
Figure 2 — Example of an OSGi system
Now let’s take a look at Figure 2.
It demonstrates an embedded system that can read or write commands to multiple sensors through the serial port with the help of the Serial Port Library module, it can also persist each sensor’s data using the SQL Database module and can send data to a cloud service through the HTTP Client module.
Here the cool part is that If we want the system to support a new sensor, e.g. a temperature sensor, we just develop a temperature sensor bundle and introduce it to the system. Additionally, If there’s a need for more functionalities like data compression, for an example, we’ll again develop a data compression bundle then install it to the system and use it.
Key concepts
Bundles
An OSGi bundle, or as we earlier said — plug-in module, is an ordinary JAR file containing a manifest file with some additional OSGi-specific headers. Its idea is to be an extension to an OSGi system.
Bundles can export functionality and import functionality from other bundles in the system.
Every bundle should introduce abstractions to its business logic through interfaces and export only those interfaces to other bundles, thus allowing its business logic to vary independently. This strategy ensures loose coupling between bundles.
Bundles have their independent life-cycle. When they’re installed to a system they start running if their dependencies are met, otherwise they just stay inactive, on stand-by. Additionally, while running if some dependencies drop, the bundle is stopped until the dependencies are met again.
Figure 3 — Bundle life-cycle
Services
Services are the concept which bundles use to import and export functionality from and to other bundles.
In OSGi, any Java object can be registered as a service.
To illustrate the service concept, let’s consider the following example: Let the Earth be the OSGi core system while people are plug-in modules. Now let’s consider one exact person. We know that he has multiple friends —also plug-in modules. He can request favors from his friends who are computer scientists, lawyers, doctors, etc. Every ask for a favor is basically a use of service. Moreover, he doesn’t necessarily need to know how exactly will his friends do his favor, he just needs the results. This way his friends’ plan for how to do the favor can vary independently, because this won’t affect the final result. This shows how bundles don’t export their inner logic, instead they export only an interface to it.
Figure 4 —Services example
Why do we need OSGi?
OSGi makes complex software look like a Python “Hello world” example.
It offers a nice development flow which works towards a loosely-coupled, nicely divided into modules application with reduced complexity.
The modularity which OSGi provides eases not only development complexity and development speed but also maintenance and testing of an application.
Furthermore, we can
Add or remove functionality during runtime.
Reuse whole components instead of just objects.
Efficiently encapsulate business logic and export only interfaces to it.
Resolve the Jar Hell problem via bundle versioning.
etc.
Here’s a note from the OSGi Alliance showing what kind of software is built with OSGi.
The OSGi component system is actually used to build highly complex applications like IDEs (Eclipse), application servers (GlassFish, IBM Websphere, Oracle/BEA Weblogic, Jonas, JBoss), application frameworks (Spring, Guice), industrial automation, residential gateways, phones, and so much more.
What’s the “Hello world” of OSGi?
Let’s create a simple calculator usage example which demonstrates core OSGi principles.
We’ll create a calculator provider and a calculator consumer.
In order to prevent cluttering, only the key parts of the code samples will be shown here and a link to the complete source code will be left below.
Calculator provider
First, we’ll describe what functionality will our calculator support.
Provider’s Calculator interface
Then we’ll start implementing the functionality straight ahead.
Provider’s Calculator implementation
Note that we’ve used the OSGi @Component annotation to mark our calculator’s implementation as a service component. This way we register it to a place called SCR or Service Component Runtime which will manage our component and ensure that it can be accessed through its interface by other components later in the future.
That’s all from the provider module’s part.
Calculator consumer
Now let’s inject our calculator provider module’s interface via the @Reference annotation.
Consumer’s Calculator usage
We also used the @Activate annotation to mark a method as a first-to-run when the component is instantiated.
Observation
In this example, we clearly see that the calculator’s implementation has the freedom to vary independently. For instance, we can change the calculator’s multiplication operation to use multiple addition operations instead of direct multiplication, and we won’t break anything in the system. All bundles will continue to use the calculator but with the updated implementation instead.
Sources and guides
You can find the complete source code and further setup details in the GitHub repository below.
Conclusion
Relatively old and proven to be stable, OSGi makes complex software manageable, flexible, extensible and robust.
It’s basically a standardized ‘go-to’ solution for enterprise Internet of Things solutions. | https://medium.com/swlh/osgi-whats-that-f15183822805 | ['Daniel Gospodinow'] | 2020-05-29 17:11:51.790000+00:00 | ['Modularity', 'Osgi', 'Java', 'Specification', 'Plugins'] |
Teach Me How to Love You Again | This was the best part of his day. This is what he looked forward to each day, his hour lunch break. He would sit, enjoy his food and think about happier times.
He would think of home, think of his family, of his life when he was a boy. He would reminisce on how much simpler life was back before he moved to this country.
For that hour he would get away from the tribulations of work, get away from the noise. For that hour he had his own corner of the world.
He had his life back.
But before that he had to conquer the microwave.
He took his newly bought Pyrex dish, which held his food, and placed it in the microwave.
He didn’t notice the fork still inside.
The microwave chirped at him as he opened the door. Closing it, he stared dumbly at the machine confused by all the buttons and pictures.
For a moment he wished for the old microwave. Back then it was only two buttons “Start” and “Stop” with numbers for the timer.
Defrost, deheat, reheat, recook. Dambele had no idea what these symbols meant.
Hesitating, he pressed “One” and hoped that it meant one minute. The microwave churned to life and he waited.
The pyrex plate twirled around like a ballerina. He stared at his reflection in the microwave. Looking back at him was a sad, tired, ancient body, with white hair, hunched over.
After about fifteen seconds, something popped in the microwave. The break room went silent. Everyone turned an eye to Dambele and the microwave, before warily continuing back to their conversations.
At the same time one of the managers came in, Bradley.
Bradley was a top director at the company. Handsome guy, fairly young and wore nice suits. Dambele liked him because even though he was a boss, he always made sure to say hi to everyone.
“Hey DB! What’s on the menu today?”
Dambele pointed at the microwave “Food from my country. My wife made it.”
Bradley smiled at Dambele.
“Smells good man. I might have to try some, your wife can’t keep spoiling you like this”
Dambele blushed at the showering of praise, slightly embarrassed but swelling with pride in his wife’s cooking.
There were twenty seconds left on the timer when Bradley walked out. As he left the breakroom, he looked into the microwave.
“Sure does smell good” he thought and walked out. Then he realized.
“Wait D did you leave your for-”
BOOOM
The microwave exploded, blowing Dambele back, throwing him against the wall, propelling him right out of his shoes.
People came rushing in to see what happened. They saw Dambele on the side of the wall.
His white hair was smoking, bewildered face charred, and his clothes slightly were burned.
Then they looked at the microwave and saw his food burned to a crisp, still smoking, and the fork he left, lying on the ground.
They all started laughing.
“Damn DB, you must really want that workers comp!!”
“Twenty years in and he finally had enough!!”
They laughed on the way out leaving Dambele alone.
He walked gingerly back to the microwave and looked at the mess. His food was ruined.
All that was left was a smoking pile of shit.
His last piece from home was gone.
And with it losing the only corner of the world he had left. | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/teach-me-how-to-love-you-again-a6600c4a3139 | ['Jesse Ya Diul'] | 2020-11-11 13:50:55.638000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Writing', 'Life', 'Immigration', 'Short Story'] |
Introducing Vega-Lite | Support programmatic generation, sharing, and reuse. Like Vega, Vega-Lite can serve as a standalone file format for visualizations. In particular, Vega-Lite is designed to be a convenient format for automatic visualization generation by visual analysis tools. Examples of applications that use Vega-Lite are Voyager, a recommendation-powered visualization browser for data exploration, and Polestar, a web-based visual specification interface inspired by Tableau. Moreover, one can reuse Vega-Lite specifications across datasets with similar schemas.
The online Vega editor shows the Vega-Lite specification and the compiled Vega specification side-by-side.
Leverage Vega’s performance, flexibility across platforms, and expressivity. Vega-Lite specifications are compiled into Vega specifications and rendered using Vega’s runtime, which supports both browser-side and server-side rendering via SVG or Canvas. Vega-Lite directly benefits from Vega’s architecture. While Vega-Lite focuses on commonly-used charts, one can create more advanced designs by starting with Vega-Lite and then further customizing the resulting Vega specification.
The Future of Vega-Lite
With the 1.0 release, Vega-Lite provides a useful tool for visualization on the web. That said, we are even more excited about what comes next.
Composition and Interaction. A powerful aspect of modular approaches to visualization is the ability to create sophisticated graphics by composing simple ones. A static visualization typically provides at most a handful of insights into the data. The true power of visualization lies in the ability to interact with data and see it from multiple perspectives. So, we are building new methods for composite, interactive visualizations in Vega-Lite. In the coming months, Vega-Lite will add support for both layering and composing views side-by-side. We are also developing ways to describe not just visual encodings, but interaction techniques using a concise, composable, high-level syntax. For example, we will support linked views with cross-filtering.
Brushing and Linking in the Vega cross-filter example, inspired by Mike Bostock’s Crossfilter.js library. Vega-Lite will support describing this kind of interaction techniques in the near future.
Scalability. As Vega-Lite is a declarative language, we can reason about its behavior and automatically optimize and distribute computation. For example, a server could pre-aggregate data and send data in a compressed binary format to the browser. As a result, visualizations of large data sets can load more quickly and be more responsive. Moreover, this optimization should be possible without any changes to a Vega-Lite specification!
Lyra, a visualization design tool.
Design Tools. Creating visualizations with Vega-Lite should be easy, but we hope to make it even easier. We are developing a design validator that helps identify potentially ineffective visualizations. For example, a horizontal bar chart with an x-axis starting at a non-zero value is a valid specification, but it might cause readers to misinterpret the relative differences between values. We will also introduce support for theming in both Vega and Vega-Lite to customize the default look-and-feel. Plus, the next version of Lyra, a visualization design tool, will use Vega-Lite’s rule-based system for rapidly creating visualizations.
Learn and Use Vega-Lite
If you are interested in taking Vega-Lite for a spin, you can start visualizing and join the community today by:
This post was authored by Kanit “Ham” Wongsuphasawat, Dominik Moritz and Jeffrey Heer. We would like to thank all of the Vega-Lite contributors and the UW Interactive Data Lab for their assistance in the development of Vega-Lite. | https://medium.com/hci-design-at-uw/introducing-vega-lite-438f9215f09e | ['Uw Interactive Data Lab'] | 2016-05-20 21:21:54.507000+00:00 | ['Visualization', 'D3', 'Data Science'] |
Classifying Malignant and Benign Breast Cancer Tumours with a Neural Network | Classifying Malignant and Benign Breast Cancer Tumours with a Neural Network Joshua Payne Follow Jan 5 · 5 min read
Code from this article was based off a tutorial found here. A/N: This article assumes a basic intuitive understanding of neural networks. For background, check this out.
Using this dataset, I created a neural network capable of classifying breast tumors. The features are measured characteristics of cell nuclei within the tumor, including perimeter, concavity, and smoothness. The labels are 0 or 1, representing benign and malignant diagnoses respectively. With my network, I mapped the relationship between these two variables.
Here’s how I did it
We’ll first import the following libraries.
import numpy as np import tensorflow as tf from tensorflow.keras.models import Sequential from tensorflow.keras.layers import Dense, Dropout import pandas as pd from sklearn import preprocessing from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
We’ll then use pandas to read in our features and labels data by assigning each of the sets of data to variables x and y. In pandas, these are called dataframes, which are basically the same as datasets.
We’ll then scale our features data as part of the preprocessing stage.
x = preprocessing.scale(x)
It’s now time to split our data into testing and training data. Training data is what our neural network uses to learn how to map our features to our labels, and testing data is what we use to see our model in action on data samples it hasn’t seen before. 20% of our data will be testing data, and 80% will be training data.
x_train, x_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(x, y, test_size=0.2)
Let’s now convert our training and testing data into numpy arrays so that we can use them with a Keras neural network.
x_train = np.array(x_train) y_train = np.array(y_train) x_test = np.array(x_test) y_test = np.array(y_test)
Let’s now build our actual model. We’re simply building a feedforward neural network, so the Sequential model easily suffices. Our model is composed of dense layers with ReLU activation functions and 20 nodes, and then ends with 1 node representing the final classification prediction. To learn more about what the activation functions sigmoid and ReLU mean here, check this out.
Our input shape represents the shape of our feature arrays.
model = Sequential() model.add(Dense(20, input_shape=(30,))) model.add(Dense(20, activation=’relu’)) model.add(Dense(20, activation=’relu’)) model.add(Dense(20, activation=’relu’)) model.add(Dense(1, activation=’sigmoid’))
We’ll now compile our model. The Adam optimizer is highly effective, and binary_crossentropy is a go-to loss function for classification problems of 2 classes. It rounds are sigmoid output to an integer and then compares that against the dataset’s output to measure error. The ‘output’ represents the predicted or actual diagnosis for breast cancer — 0 for benign and 1 for malignant. We’ll use the accuracy metric so we can understand how accurate our model is at classifying these types of breast tumors.
Afterward, we’ll fit our model to our training data, pass over the data 500 times and have a validation split of 0.3. This means that 30% of our data becomes validation data, which our model tests its validation accuracy upon. These are different from testing samples as those are used for our own predictions, outside of our model’s training. We’ll then save the history of our neural network.
model.compile(optimizer=’adam’, loss=’binary_crossentropy’, metrics=[‘accuracy’]) history = model.fit(x_train, y_train, epochs=500, validation_split=0.3) history_dict = history.history
It’s now time to plot our training loss and validation loss measured during the model’s training on a graph, to better understand how our network is operating.
loss_values = history_dict[‘loss’] val_loss_values = history_dict[‘val_loss’] plt.figure() plt.plot(loss_values, ‘bo’, label=’training loss’) plt.plot(val_loss_values, ‘r’, label=’validation loss’)
After training the model over 500 iterations, here were the metrics for the final epoch and our graph.
Epoch 500/500
317/317 [==============================] - 0s 155us/sample - loss: 0.0851 - accuracy: 0.9621 - val_loss: 0.1539 - val_accuracy: 0.9270
Labels and legend added by me :)
We are obviously super successful! With uber-low loss rates and high accuracies for both validation and training data, our model was highly successful.
Let’s see it in action!
We’ll use the first data sample in our testing data, and see what our model predicts as its label. This means we’ll be using x_test[1].
x_test[1] = [1.096e+01 1.762e+01 7.079e+01 3.656e+02 9.687e-02 9.752e-02 5.263e-02 2.788e-02 1.619e-01 6.408e-02 1.507e-01 1.583e+00 1.165e+00 1.009e+01 9.501e-03 3.378e-02 4.401e-02 1.346e-02 1.322e-02 3.534e-03 1.162e+01 2.651e+01 7.643e+01 4.075e+02 1.428e-01 2.510e-01 2.123e-01 9.861e-02 2.289e-01 8.278e-02]
However, when making predictions with Keras, we need to have commas and pass a list of a list. Let’s make a new variable so that these requirements are accommodated for.
x_test_1 = [[1.096e+01, 1.762e+01, 7.079e+01, 3.656e+02, 9.687e-02, 9.752e-02, 5.263e-02, 2.788e-02, 1.619e-01, 6.408e-02, 1.507e-01, 1.583e+00, 1.165e+00, 1.009e+01, 9.501e-03, 3.378e-02, 4.401e-02, 1.346e-02, 1.322e-02, 3.534e-03, 1.162e+01, 2.651e+01, 7.643e+01, 4.075e+02, 1.428e-01, 2.510e-01, 2.123e-01, 9.861e-02, 2.289e-01, 8.278e-02]]
An output of ‘0’ means the tumor is predicted to be benign and an output of ‘1’ means a malignant prediction. By creating a classes variable we can modify our output to say the type of tumor, not 0 or 1.
classes = [‘benign’, ‘malignant’]
We can now actually use our model! The numeric label, 0 or 1, that’s predicted for the first testing data sample, is used as an index for the classes variable. If 0 is predicted, benign is the prediction, and if 1 is predicted, malignant is the prediction.
prediction = classes[int(model.predict(x_test_1))]
Let’s see what our model predicted!
print(prediction)
>>> benign
We can now check if this prediction was accurate, because we know what the label actually is on the dataset. The model is predicting the label (y) of the first testing data sample, which we have in our testing dataset to crossreference.
print(classes[int(y_test[1])])
>>> benign
The actual diagnosis was benign, meaning our model successfully predicted whether the input data belonged to a benign or malignant breast cancer tumor! | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/classifying-malignant-and-benign-breast-tumours-with-a-neural-network-ab470562d0e | ['Joshua Payne'] | 2020-02-20 20:16:13.943000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Breast Cancer', 'Neural Networks', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Expectation | Expect positivity
When it comes to receiving in life what it is you deserve, it is important to maintain a standard of living which you expect from yourself, and all the things which make up the environment around you.
This means that each day, you hold yourself to a certain standard of being, doing, interacting, thinking and performing.
It is by setting up these expectations for ourselves, that we are able to filter and properly set up a system for determining which experiences add value to our lives, and which experiences detract from our quality of living.
By filtering out the negative, and embracing the positive, we multiply the positive even more, and live a life which exceeds the expectations we initially set up. | https://medium.com/live-mighty/expectation-b6c0bf5072b1 | ['Yunus Celik'] | 2017-02-01 02:07:36.926000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Life Lessons', 'Personal Development', 'Life', 'Personal Growth'] |
How Distractions Can Help You Manage Your Mental Health | Many times, when you are managing your mental health symptoms, engaging in a distraction can help you. When you have depression or anxiety, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by your emotions. When you focus on your negative emotions it can increase them or cause them to spiral out of control.
A distraction can be an effective short-term tool to help you regain control of your feelings.
It is important to remember to make use of distractions in a healthy way. You do not want to allow a distraction to become a tool of avoidance. It is one thing for you to take a time-out in order to re-group and come back in a better headspace to handle your problems. It’s an entirely different thing to ignore your problems while you binge-watch 12 seasons of some show.
Using distractions in a positive way can refresh you so that you are better able to manage your mental health challenges and your life. Avoidance, if taken too far, can allow your problems to fester until you have a catastrophe on your hands.
Here are some suggestions for healthy distractions that can give you some respite when your mental illness overwhelms you.
Music
Music can be an excellent distraction. It is important that you carefully create playlists for your different moods. If you feel overwhelmed by depression, don’t listen to sad songs. Have a happy peppy playlist. If you are anxious, calmer songs are great. Maybe even some classical music if that works for you.
Be careful with triggers. If part of your anxiety is fearing that your spouse will cheat on you, don’t have songs about infidelity on your playlist. Some triggers may be permanent. Some may be temporary. My boyfriend died a year ago and I’m still grieving. I don’t listen to sad songs or love songs at all. Even some happy songs, if they reference relationships too directly, are on my no-go list. Eventually, they will be okay again, but not now.
Binaural beats are also a good option. I first learned about them a few months ago. I use them frequently to help me focus. Use common sense in you include binaural beats in your playlist. If you are driving, don’t listen to the sleep or relaxation ones.
Games
Games are another quality source of distraction. They can take many forms. Video games. Card games. Board games. I like games on my tablet. Things like Candy Crush. They are challenging enough that I don’t get bored, but not challenging enough to trigger my competitive instincts. I’m a type-A competitive person and it would not relax me to compete. I don’t play other types of games very often.
You will have to decide for yourself what kinds of games will distract you. If Monopoly always makes your family fight, skip it. If you always end up screaming obscenities as your blood pressure soars during Call of Duty, find a different game for distraction.
The game should be something the takes you away from your stress without replacing it with other stress.
Friends and Family
Friends and family are contingent on their behavior. If you have understanding friends or family members who will distract you without trying to psychoanalyze you, then they will be good distractions. Sometimes loved ones want to sort out the problem and help you fix it. That might be fine in another situation (if that is what you want), but not as a distraction.
You want someone you can have coffee with and discuss celebrity gossip. Or discuss quantum physics. Whatever you find fun.
Choose carefully. If none of your loved ones fit in this category, that does not mean they don’t love you. It just means they are not good distractions when you are feeling overwhelmed.
Pets
This is my personal favorite. Most pets are extreme positives in people’s lives. They can distract you in numerous ways. Play fetch with the dog. Break out the laser toy for the cat. Petting and cuddling are never a bad idea.
Pets provide you with love and support at a level you can’t get easily from humans. If you have a pet, take advantage of that.
Exercise
Many kinds of exercise can be both a distraction and help with your mental illness. Try yoga or stretching to relax. Go for a swim or run to release some endorphins. Take a walk or hike to enjoy being in nature. Even doing some chair-based leg lifts can help distract you from the negative stuff going on in your brain and are physically accessible to almost everyone. | https://heatherashman.medium.com/how-distractions-can-help-you-manage-your-mental-health-289d4f9c47b8 | ['Heather Ashman'] | 2019-11-22 01:28:35.768000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Self Improvement', 'Anxiety', 'Self', 'Mental Health'] |
An Introduction to Nutritional Psychology | These days, it seems like every diet is always somehow inextricably linked to mental health — whether it be some foods groups claimed to trigger a slew of hormonal release, causing imbalance, or instead hold stance of the opposing argument, such as fish oil’s antidepressant effect. Research and studies have followed suit, with a scrambling barrage of evidence all over the internet about diet and its impact to the human mood.
The link between diet and mood may seem far-fetched and mere headline-grabbing stunts, but the theory behind nutritional psychology is actually pretty sensible and straightforward. Dietary changes, such as cutting back on junk foods — highly processed meats, sugars, unhealthy oils — can change the way our brains function on a cellular level. This in return triggers a positive impact on mental health.
Dr. Eva Selhub, a Clinical Associate of the world-renowned Benson Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, says that the fuel that keeps our brain running comes from food, and so what you eat directly affects the structure and function of your brain and, ultimately, your mood.
Your diet is a lot like fuel for your car, and like an expensive car, your brain is able to function at peak levels when it gets only premium fuel. Makes sense, right? “Eating high-quality foods that contain lots of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants nourishes the brain and protects it from oxidative stress, which can damage cells”, says Dr. Selhub.
And just like an expensive car, damage is inevitable if you consume anything other than premium fuel. If contaminants from impure oil (such as what you get from processed or refined foods) get to the brain, it has little ability to get rid of them. When translated to day-to-day functioning, impairment will ensue.
Dr. Eva Selhub claims that “diets high in refined sugars, for example, are harmful to the brain.” We’ve all heard of the horrifying effects that sugar poses to weight gain, but Dr. Selhub adds that “[sugars] also promote inflammation and oxidative stress. Multiple studies have found a correlation between a diet high in refined sugars and impaired brain function”. And guess what, studies have found that sugars can even worsen symptoms of mood disorders, such as depression.
How does that happen? Well our gastrointestinal tract, or what we often refer to as the gut, plays a major role in here. As the unit responsible for the entire digestion process, our gut is lined with millions of epithelial cells, which helps absorb nutrients, specialised cells, which helps produce digestive enzymes, and nerve cells. In fact, there are over one hundred million nerve cells in the gut.
The nerve cells act as a supervisor who overlooks the entire digestion process, to ensure they work in unison, as needed, when needed. But that’s not the only role it plays. It also produces 90% of our body’s serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate sleep and appetite, mediate moods, and inhibit pain. So as a collective system of organs and cells, our gastrointestinal tract do not just help digest food, but also guide our emotions.
The food we eat greatly affects the types of bacteria that reside in our guts, and that matters since that’s where our serotonin power-plant is located. Two papers published in 2019 showed that when microbiota-containing fecal matter humans with schizophrenia or depression is transplanted into rodents, the animals exhibit behaviours that are similarly seen in humans.
Dr. Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist and professor at Columbia University, says that “if you’re missing certain nutrients, such as vitamin B12, iron and omega-3 fatty acids, you may get depressed.” Additionally, studies have also shed light on the unseemly health effects of the western diet, showing that it is associated with changes in the size of the hippocampus, a tiny organ in the brain that’s responsible for memory and learning.
The evidence don’t end there. There is a growing body of research revealing previously unknown correlations between diet and mental health. This 2015 paper highlights that certain foods increase systemic inflammation, which may be a key aspect for the development of chronic diseases, including depression.
The gut microbiome is again called into action here, as they protect the intestinal lining by forming a barrier to ensure the body is well protected against toxins and potentially lethal pathogens. The collective impacts of a healthy microbiome sees your nutrient absorption improve, suppresses inflammation, and activate neural pathways via serotonin to control mood and appetite.
The latest research on probiotic consumption — composed of live microorganisms which boosts your gut microbiome — also show improvements in symptoms for depression and anxiety.
Though these findings are promising, let’s not forget that the field of nutritional psychology is still quite young. Most studies are currently based on animal models and employ short-term observations, which may shield us from vital clues and information as to the long-term efficacy and safety of diets formulated based on these findings.
This promising field has already birthed new institutions and courses, which offer certifications in nutritional psychology in as short as 9-month courses — most of which even lack requirements for prior certification in science. This is an obvious red flag, signifying the lack of important safeguards, such as standardised treatment protocols or formal training requirements — or regulations of any kind.
“That’s reason enough, experts say, to take a good, skeptical look at anyone who calls themselves a nutritional psychologist before signing up for their take on yesterday’s breakfast”, writes science journalist Brittany Risher. The theories seem sound, the framework is there, and the people seem ready, but we just have to be a little bit more patient.
One piece of actionable advice we can take away from this is to start becoming more thoughtful with the foods we eat. Pay attention to how eating different foods makes you feel — not just as you’re eating — but the next day. Dr. Selhub suggests “eating a ‘clean’ diet for two to three weeks, cutting out all processed foods and sugar, and then seeing how you feel.”
After evaluating your feelings and overall wellness, slowly re-introduce foods back into your diet, one by one, while taking notes about how you feel, noticing even the slightest changes in mood or other feelings.
“When some people “go clean”, they cannot believe how much better they feel both physically and emotionally, and how much worse they then feel when they reintroduce the foods that are known to enhance inflammation.”
Considering the current circumstances, now seems like a good time to experiment with different food groups. Perk up your mental ears, sink your thoughts into your feelings, and observe how your feeling and mood changes with different meals. And don’t forget to social distance, exercise, wash hands, and rest well while you’re at it. | https://jonathanoei.medium.com/an-introduction-to-nutritional-psychology-1327404ce145 | ['Jonathan Adrian'] | 2020-05-21 02:54:48.815000+00:00 | ['Diet', 'Nutrition', 'Life', 'Food', 'Psychology'] |
In Defense of the Over-Complicated Life | Confucius is attributed with saying that “Life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated”. Whether or not this is a Westernized version of the legendary Chinese philosopher’s work, the push for “simplicity” encapsulated by this quote is unmistakably echoed within contemporary Western life. Life, in fact, is not simple. Being alive is such a morbidly complex ordeal that we create ambiguous gods to streamline our existence; gods found not only in religion but in nationalism, economics, and even science. However, in separating ourselves from these ready-made gods, we complicate life; we see through the hollow simplicities that so often facilitate our equanimity. Distancing ourselves from the cultural lies we systematically repeat would allow us to live more truthful lives, but by no means would it enable us to be happier.
Photo by Joel Naren
Here is a direct problem that faces those who subscribe to the dominant ideology in the West. The current ideology conflates happiness with Truth, or more accurately, prescribes Truth as a means to achieve happiness. Once you find Truth, then you will be happy. Of course, this is psychologically impossible. Any glance into a mental health treatment centre will tell you otherwise; schizophrenics come so close to the Truth of their (human) condition that they must create their own delusions and live inwardly. Even depressives fail at reproducing the agreed-upon performances of society, and so they refuse to live and surround themselves with guilt — the only remnant of the symbolic self they have left. Kierkegaard knew this in 1849; Becker reaffirmed it in 1973.
In other words, to be happy is to be unaware of Truth. Inversely, to know Truth is to understand the horrifying nature of reality, of a perplexing existence. Before I proceed any further, I would like to acknowledge the “holier-than-thou” character that I may exude in my prioritization of Truth with a capital T; after all, who am I to belittle the efforts of others to lead happy lives? What experiences do I have that enables me to claim an understanding of Truth? The answers are, respectively, no one and none. However, as someone who has become sociologically-minded, it is difficult to fall into automatic behaviours and discourses without questioning why I am doing so, as I discussed earlier. Though I am somewhere between a hedonist and a schizophrenic in terms of my happiness and understanding of Truth, I certainly have fallen into the “truth leads to happiness” trap. All of my goals and pursuits in academic research have surely been based on this ideology. Even when conscious of the control ideology has on my cognitive functions, ideology seems to persist, though perhaps in a slightly tinted way.
Even during the search for Truth, happiness slides into my mind, granting me the obliviousness, the simplicity, that is so necessary for my well-being. However, there is a catch: happiness does not make genuine promises.
To understand why happiness is so problematic, we must know what makes people truly happy. It is not the fulfilment of desire as is commonly believed, but the promise that desire brings. We think getting what we want will make us happy; but when we do get what we want, we adjust to our new reality and move on to our next desire. What makes humans far happier is almost getting what we want, as Slavoj Zizek points out in a 2019 lecture. Having all our wishes fulfilled without failure, as is commonly experienced in the privileged Western world, allows us to habituate to consistent gratification. This is why multi-millionaires and billionaires in North America can live miserable lives, and alternatively, why people in modest financial positions can be entirely satisfied. In the latter case, the economic situation is sufficient enough to provide for basic needs and perhaps occasional luxuries, but the situation is precarious enough to not provide for these needs or luxuries. Thus, in order to appreciate these objects, it is necessary to (sometimes) be unable to attain them. Otherwise, the steady stream of objects becomes the norm, and no longer warrants appreciation.
Photo by Proxyclick Visitor Management System
Let’s turn our attention to another typical desire: the dream job. Desiring this job makes us feel good. We know deep inside that we are competent, unique, intelligent enough for this job. All we have to do is apply, and our lives are sure to change. “Once I get this job, I’ll be happy”, we tell ourselves. But the job itself will hardly bring us happiness; any workplace is crawling with stressors. There’s the urban professional boss who acts like your best friend; the chatty co-worker who’s always eating salad; the company software that needs an update every three seconds; the traffic-laden commute; the petty cubicle dramas; etc. In desiring the dream job, we can idealize the workplace and ourselves, painting ourselves in the most flattering of lights and assuring us of what we already “know”. Getting the job would destroy this fantasy, and perhaps force us to reshape our self-perceptions. However, almost getting the job would allow us to maintain our illusion in self-perception, knowing that we did well but “it just wasn’t the right time/company for me” or “this is an opportunity to find an even better job”. The latter is an exercise of framing and is indicative of a more contemporary ideological approach to happiness that increasingly influences our thinking: positive psychology.
The empire of positive psychology can be observed in any self-help bookstore, and increasingly permeates our ideology. Behind the movement toward eudaimonia (or “the good life”) is Martin Seligman, who made it his mission in 1998 to move the discipline of psychology toward wellness and fulfillment as the head of the American Psychological Association. Largely a continuation of the earlier humanist work of the mid 20th century, positive psychology has undergone countless meta-analyses and seems to yield quite impressive results. While happiness is at the forefront of this movement, and this may seem to be a good thing, the success of positive psychology can be attributed to its correlation with positive illusion. High positivity has been found to limit one’s ability to self-reflect, grow psychologically, and is correlated with maintaining discriminatory beliefs, such as racism. On the other hand, negativity has been found to foster groundedness, and to defend against depression.
Positive psychology can most likely take the blame for such recent social phenomena as the minimalist materialism of Marie Kondo, the ambiguous goal of “living one’s best life”, the integration of wellness practices into the workplace/educational sphere, and other forces toward wellness that emphasizes individual agency in mental health. This reframing of mental health which idolizes happiness indicates a broader shift in Western consciousness today; we are constantly protecting ourselves from psychological and social peril, from discomfort to trauma. We see this in trigger warnings, land acknowledgements (which seem to protect white guilt more than urging us to engage with privilege), and even curated news feeds a la Facebook. (I am not suggesting any of these practices are wrong; however, we should acknowledge why they have come into being and address each underlying issue accordingly). Perhaps these practices may conserve our happiness, but they distance us from reality, from Truth.
Photo by Bench Accounting
In fact, as I was researching self-help articles by various bloggers, I came across a couple of worrying commonalities. First, every single article was a listicle (but perhaps I am being overdramatic with my stylistic opinions). And second, many bloggers expressed distaste for the news media; that news should not be consumed because it is too stressful and uncomfortable, and frankly “not worth it”. To isolate oneself from the reality of global affairs, military conflicts, political decisions, etc., leaves one with a dangerous obliviousness, and a delusional happiness.
This pursuit of oblivious happiness has begun to shape Western consciousness and perhaps is embodied most in one particular ideological actor: Western Buddhism. Though having more to do with an eclectic fetishization for Eastern thought than Buddhist principles itself, the emergence of Western Buddhism in everyday life reflects a certain dissatisfaction with the late-capitalist reality. Many people struggle to find meaning in the consumer society, which seeks to commodify even the individual. This leaves the individual as a hollow shell of Instagram externalities, with nothing firm to grasp in the way of identity. Western Buddhism allows the individual to tune out from the superficiality of the consumer system for a while through mindfulness practices, positive affirmations, meditation, etc.. When one has found enough “inner peace”, one can return to the market as an enlightened consumer, with increased productivity and happiness. Of course, Western Buddhism in itself involves consumption (whether it’s mindfulness paraphernalia such as incense or services such as spiritual gurus, wellness groups, etc.).
Photo by Lesly Juarez
Both positive psychology and Western Buddhism have seeped into our lifestyles through the mechanism of ideology, granting us the happiness we so desperately desire (however fleeting and neglectful it may be). In fact, both ideological giants offer us the same protection against trauma, hurt feelings, and other uncomfortable situations. Western Buddhism lets us opt out of reality at any moment of stress through mindfulness breaks or simply “me-time”. Positive psychology allows us to ignore the negative by focusing on our own flourishing without attentiveness to our deficits (and those of the larger society). Both movements seem to favour a happily-tinged ignorance, and both are perfectly placed within late-capitalism and neoliberalism, which pin systemic issues onto the individual; thus, social problems become individual responsibilities.
Given this system of neoliberalism which seeks to thrust every facet of life into the free market, including wellness, it is understandable that many people would rather succumb to simplicity. But we should be wary of how these seemingly innocent ideas trickle into our lives, reinforcing the dominant ideology and those who stand to benefit from it. Perhaps living with an eye toward Truth involves more suffering, more complications, without the warm gratifications of market-oriented happiness. However, I would argue that it is a more fulfilling life; a type of life that such ideologies of happiness so often promise. With no disrespect to the multi-talented Bobby McFerrin, perhaps a more philosophically valid song would have instructed us to “worry, don’t be happy”. | https://ethandshapiro.medium.com/in-defense-of-the-over-complicated-life-a7c334539fba | ['The Schmendrick'] | 2019-08-18 02:04:46.317000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Sociology', 'Happiness', 'Life', 'Psychology'] |
Explaining UX writing. How I learned over five months that my… | Explaining UX writing
How I learned that my writing skills are in high demand for digital content.
UX Writing is more than just card sorting
What is UX Writing?
If I had a dollar for every time someone said, “What?” when I told them I was taking a course in UX writing and they gave me that look, well, I’d have a good chunk of change by now.
For the past five months, I have been participating in the UX Writing Hub’s online course founded by tech entrepreneur Yuval Keshtcher. This course teaches the fine art of micro-copy for apps and websites and shows by example and through practical exercises what the industry will eventually come to call UX writing.
This job is still called many other things like “content designer” or “technical writer,” or more recently “content strategist,” but generally the task itself can be called UX writing. The final word is not yet out on whether the title “UX Writer” will prevail, but for the sake of this article and the fact that I just finished a course on UX writing, I’ll keep using the phrase.
Once I began learning myself and then explaining to my confused friends and family what I was up to, they got it. In fact, as users of digital products, they — and most everyone alive today — already know good and bad UX writing when they see it. We recognize cute and helpful text and appreciate it, like this e-commerce communications page:
Examples of microcopy
Breaking up is hard to do. Or not, with Grovemade
Or these extensive pop-up blue tooltips for Patreon’s convoluted new benefits, tax, and payments system:
Patreon…you need a special certification just to collect donations as an impoverished artist.
Not just like copywriting
But there’s more than just genuine, clear and even clever writing involved. You know when you keep clicking on a button or text box in an app or on a website thinking you are supposed to do something and only to discover that the words on the button don’t match the action in the flow of the task?
This is a common bad user experience. It’s not a given that how a developer or designer creates a product that will match how end users will actually use it. It turns out there’s a lot of work that goes into creating all that good writing and those great user experiences. User research, design, style and tone guide, and testing. Writing is just one part of the larger job description of a UX writer.
Don’t assume your user is just like you!
My 73-year-old mother uses Mailchimp and was quite familiar with their famous style guide (also featured in the course as best-practices). What she didn’t know how to use well was her outdated Android phone, and as I showed her how to click around in the settings, I felt just as clueless. As a long-time iOS user, functions I assumed would be located in one section were in another altogether, and it took a while to ‘unthink’ my way from iOS into an Android mindset.
This is another example of what one designer or product creator might think of as given, is not self-evident at all for the end-user.
My mother doesn’t have a lifetime of “click” or “swipe” experiences to draw on. In many digital products, sometimes there might only be a tiny shaded area indicating that swiping left or right might reveals new content, but if you’re not thinking of that as an option — like my mom — then you’re left wondering why it just “doesn’t work.”
Why your business should care about UX writing in your product
The above types of frustrating experiences lead to high abandonment rates. If people are annoyed by your product, they won’t waste time with it or give it a second chance these days. I know myself how many times I’ve downloaded an app, only to delete it without even getting through the on-boarding process because of some overly complicated, cumbersome, or even patronizing wording or process.
Or maybe I begin the process of buying something online and just as I get to the checkout the many steps push me over my patience threshold, either the price changes due to added costs, or the payment doesn’t go smoothly—and I quit.
UX writing as part of UI
So, it’s not just the way a site flows, and how the user journey moves from one step to the next where UX writers can apply their skills, but also which words guide the user through the flow. The tone and implications of even one word can have a high impact on the success of a business. To find out which words are best, UX writers can conduct user research, and A/B testing on copy to see whether certain words lead to improved performance and a better user experience. This is especially obvious in error pages.
Error Pages
Sometimes pages don’t work. That’s just part of digital life. But what does the user experience when they get to an error page? In the screenshot below, Metlife apologizes in a self-deprecating way and gives us immediate steps to continue on our journey. This makes us feel relieved. It’s not our fault! And we can give them a break because they are admitting their error and vulnerability. And we are empowered to stay engaged in the process by trying again.
Metlife’s Error Page
Writing still matters in the digital era
There are countless ways where UX writing can affect the success of a digital product. About as many ways as there are digital products—which by this point is about 5 million apps and 1.5 billion (yes, billion!) websites. There will be work for UX writers for the next thousand years at this rate. Assuming the robots haven’t taken over by then.
Microcopy text can appear in so many places, from the basic landing page to the entire checkout process or internal user flows for B2B or B2C SaaS products. Writers have a role to play, and thankfully, the industry is waking up to the importance of the role of UX writer.
Resources:
If you are looking to get into UX Writing, I recommend checking out the UX Writing Hub and the Facebook group also run by Yuval for Microcopy, and the UX Collective, the community of writers, designers, and many other related roles is an inspiring and fun community of people. | https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/explaining-the-need-for-ux-writing-88adcd164ed4 | ['Bettina Hindes'] | 2020-10-25 17:38:36.279000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Writing', 'Ux Writing', 'UX', 'Resources'] |
Understanding the LightGBM | EFB (Exclusive Feature Bundling)
Datasets with a high number of features are likely to have sparse features (i.e. lots of zero values). These sparse features are usually mutually exclusive which means they do not have non-zero values simultaneously. Consider the case of one-hot encoded text data. In a particular row, only one column indicating a specific word is non-zero and all other rows are zero.
EFB is a technique that uses a greedy algorithm to combine (or bundle) these mutually exclusive into a single feature (e.g. exclusive feature bundle) and thus reduce the dimensionality. EFB reduces the training time of GDBT without affecting the accuracy much because the complexity of creating feature histograms is now proportional to the number of bundles instead of the number of features (#bundles is much less than #features).
One of the challenges with EFB is to find the optimal bundles. The researchers at Microsoft designed an algorithm that converts the bundling problem to a graph coloring problem.
In the graph coloring problem, the features are taken as vertices, and edges are added between features which are not mutually exclusive. Then a greedy algorithm is used to produce bundles.
To take it one step further, the algorithm also allows bundling of features that rarely have non-zero values simultaneously (i.e. almost mutually exclusive).
Another challenge is to merge the features in a bundle in a way that values of original features can be extracted. Consider a bundle of 3 features. We need to be able to identify the values of these 3 features using the value of the bundled feature.
Recall that the histogram-based algorithm creates discrete bins for continuous values. To overcome the challenge of merging features, exclusive values of features in a bundle are put in different bins which can be achieved by adding offsets to the original feature values. | https://towardsdatascience.com/understanding-the-lightgbm-772ca08aabfa | ['Soner Yıldırım'] | 2020-09-15 15:36:38.965000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Lightgbm', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Predictive Analytics'] |
Self-awareness Becomes a Challenge When You Are Comfortable in Your Own skin | As a little girl, I knew how important it was for me to be comfortable in my own skin. I was a spoilt child but a happy one, because I accepted my self the way I was. I never tried to change a thing about myself. Everything was about me being happy and carefree.
Now as a grownup, I deeply regret the moments when I was discourteous to my parents while everything they did was only for my own benefit.
I wonder why I was always contented with myself no matter what I did. I had high expectations from people around me but I never tried to change myself.
As a teenager, I would never listen or accept critical feedback even if it were from the people I deeply loved. I always thought I was perfect with my faults until I realized, I was way below my own standards of perfection.
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
~Ernest Hemingway
Ignoring your flaws may prevent self Improvement
When you accept yourself the way you are, you leave no room for improvement. It hinders your personal growth and success.
It puts you in a situation where you do the same thing day after day without analyzing your actions and their consequences. Physically or mentally you are just relaxed with who you are and lack the spark of change.
The moment I realized I was not who I wanted to be, I became very uncomfortable and self-conscious. This anxiety and discomfort led me to change my self for the better.
Science explains my experience as follows
Back in 1908, psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson explained that a state of relative comfort created a steady level of performance In order to maximize performance, however, we need a state of relative anxiety — a space where our stress levels are slightly higher than normal. This space is called “Optimal Anxiety,” and it’s just outside our comfort zone. ~Alan Henry and Rebecca (MIND HACKS)
Self-help comes with self-awareness
With time life taught me the concept of self-awareness, I started analyzing my actions, thoughts, and emotions. I studied the reactions of people around me and how they made me feel.
I started to associate my actions with my values and tried to comprehend how people I loved perceived me.
If someone’s conduct bothered me I looked within to check if I had the same trait.
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
~Carl Gustav Jung
When we are aware of our actions, strengths, weaknesses, feelings, thoughts, and values it becomes possible for us to become better versions of our own selves.
Change is complicated but it can bring contentment
When you have been happy with your self for years it is extremely hard to change. Stepping out to know your self is just the beginning.
Operating in ways that contradict our habits can evoke similar negative reactions. With a habit, our brain creates a shortcut and moves from stimulus to response without thinking, saving both time and effort. But non-habitual behaviors require us to think about a situation, consider choices, make a choice, and then demonstrate the behavior that aligns with that choice. This takes work. The auto-pilot efficiency of habits is what make them so hard to change. It’s easier and more pleasant to default to an old habit than it is to invest the energy in creating a new one ~Jennifer Porter (Harvard Bussiness Review)
Self-improvement required me to take a closer look at myself, acknowledging my flaws, and then making conscious efforts to change them.
Self-improvement is not changing yourself for others
It is about focusing on what matters to you and overcoming any mental hurdles that might be stopping you from being a better person.
It is to give your life a purpose and being happy with your little achievements. Each improvement will strengthen your self-confidence and escalate your progress.
“The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself. What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it’s your responsibility to be that person you want to be with”. ~C. JoyBell C.
It is a life long process
Knowing your self and crafting each aspect by understanding your flaws is a vital quality for life.
When we are working on ourselves we want results very quickly but that is not possible. Self-improvement is a slow and steady process that never ends. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/self-awareness-becomes-a-challange-when-you-are-comfortable-in-your-own-skin-d46d19129573 | ['Sumera Rizwan'] | 2020-12-24 14:14:33.962000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Self', 'Self Love'] |
Serious Sam’s Baffling Stadia Exclusivity | Serious Sam’s Baffling Stadia Exclusivity
Google keeps the iconic shooter franchise off consoles into 2021
Serious Sam Collection Stadia screenshot taken by the author.
We’re just a few weeks away from the release of Serious Sam 4, the latest installment in the long-running hardcore PC action shooter franchise. But if you’re a console player hoping to test the game out on your current machine or one of this fall’s new consoles…you’re out of luck until some unspecified date next year.
You see Croteam, the makers of Serious Sam, signed a multi-game exclusivity deal with Google’s Stadia platform this past spring. Serious Sam 4 will not launch on any consoles this month, and will not come out in the lucrative launch window on this November’s new platforms, instead debuting on Steam and Google’s underused and oft-derided streaming platform.
This same deal also brought the Serious Sam Collection to Stadia, which is actually a finished version of Serious Sam Fusion, a beta experiment first launched on Steam that was abandoned over a year ago. Collection bundles all the content from the HD remakes of the first two Serious Sam games alongside Serious Sam 3 into one big awkward uber-game.
Serious Sam Collection Stadia screenshot taken by the author.
Once again, Collection won’t launch on other “consoles” until some unspecified date in the future. That’s a shame, because Stadia is a much worse way to play these games than the PC originals. Serious Sam Fusion included numerous graphics settings and experimental tweaks, all of which are disabled and hidden in the Stadia release.
Serious Sam is also a very fast and twitchy game, requiring precise timing and control for maximum play. It’s one of the most intense and hardcore action franchises ever made and it never slows down. Stadia’s latency performance has improved dramatically since launch, and it’s a testament to the state of the service that the Sam games function at all. But it never manages to feel quite as crisp and fun as playing on your own PC.
At least Stadia Pro subscribers were able to snap up the Collection as a freebie at its launch a few months ago, but otherwise Stadia users derive no obvious benefit out of this deal. The Sam games, while always gorgeous, are also so well optimized that they also don’t necessarily need the beefy hardware back-end that Stadia provides. I have no doubt that the new game will run well on mid-range PC’s and even the current base level consoles whenever it finally launches on those machines.
Serious Sam Collection Stadia screenshot taken by the author.
Signing this deal means Croteam is missing out on a huge opportunity this fall. The launch lineups of the two upcoming consoles are sparse, and both Serious Sam 4 and Collection would have been perfect “second games” for people to play when the launch hype wears off and they’re antsy for new content. I think Collection would also be perfectly at home on Switch.
Instead of gaining great benefit from the marketing and hype surrounding these new machines, not to mention Nvidia’s upcoming 3000 series GPU launch, the Serious Sam franchise will instead spend the next several months under-performing on Stadia. Google hasn’t done enough to secure a large library for their fledgling platform, and their marketing budget for the service is essentially zero right now, outside of a small dedicated group on Reddit who will tell you it’s the best “console” they’ve ever used.
I do think Stadia has a lot of potential. I think that Serious Sam is an interesting demo of both the benefits and the pitfalls of the service. But this iconic twitch-based action franchise deserves to launch platforms that can actually provide a fast lag-free experience, and on platforms that will actually market their games. Hopefully, Serious Sam 4 will do well enough on Steam that Croteam can afford a big push when the game finally comes to consoles next year. | https://xander51.medium.com/serious-sams-baffling-stadia-exclusivity-adf70d56cb16 | ['Alex Rowe'] | 2020-11-30 19:23:51.532000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Technology', 'Tech', 'Business', 'Google'] |
Too much work and no play makes Jack a dull boy | Too much work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
Creativity flourishes with a spirit of playfulness.
This is an excerpt from Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo.
There’s a moment that occurs in every writer’s life when your fingers begin to cramp into a claw-like formation as you madly type toward another word-count milestone. “Perspiration trumps inspiration,” you chant, but the problem is that your brain is so fried that it feels like a wet noodle. (I’m using clichés and mixed metaphors at the same time, so I must be in such a state now.)
Too much work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, as the saying goes. I never underestimate the propulsive powers of self-discipline in any creative endeavor, but self-discipline’s bark can resemble a nasty drill sergeant.
Self-discipline can divide the self in half, into the good parts and the bad parts. We’re often told that if we don’t conquer the bad parts — our emotions, our daydreams, our aimless wanderings, not to mention long periods of time in a Jacuzzi — we can’t truly progress. Self-discipline gives us control of our lives, leads us to our goals, and fluffs up the comfy chair of living a rational life, yet there is more to life than rationality and control, isn’t there? The heart knows nothing of grids, lists, spreadsheets, and timelines.
Too few stick up for loosening the reins of discipline to frolic in our baser selves. Socrates said, “An undisciplined life is an insane life,” but letting a mood, an appetite, a passion flow through you is as necessary for your stories as pen and paper. Repeatedly subjecting yourself to completing the task at hand can become numbing — and anything, even your wonderful novel, can become unlikable when you feel like an ox pulling a plow through clods of dirt. You are not an ox, and your creative life shouldn’t be about getting whipped every day to work harder and harder.
Every once in a while, it’s good to go the way of the insane.
Every once in a while, it’s good to go the way of the insane, leave your writing boot camp, and go to a different side of your writing life — a rollicking party, where you can revel with your inner clown, give a big hug to every wacky thought that comes your way, and put some proverbial flowers in your hair. “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing,” said George Bernard Shaw.
Do you remember when you were a child and rolled down a hill just for the sake of getting dizzy? How often do you do that now? I never do it, but recently when I was in the park with my daughter, she challenged me to a spin-off, and we both twirled around until one of us lost our balance and fell. I discovered that if I allowed my body to move in such a silly way, I actually thought differently afterward. My linear, problem-solution mindset wobbled all about, which was exactly what my writing project needed — not perspiration, but a fanciful twirl or two.
The mind needs to wander. The mind needs to feel unfettered. Answers to thorny problems tend to present themselves when you’ve stopped trying to figure them out — when you play. Have you ever seen a cockroach or a worm play? No. They’re not problem-solving animals. But dogs, cats, chimps, and humans are born with frolic in their DNA because play allows us to experiment, test limits, and jovially joust with the world.
I want my writing to be merrier, not drudgier. I want to gambol through my novel, not grind.
Laughter opens us up, physically and mentally, allowing wonder to bloom and grow. Goofiness is liberating, if only because it is unruly, nonsensical — a breath of another world where anything can happen. Mistakes and pratfalls ring with a different musical truth. When you’re laughing hard, tragedy seems impossible. We don’t think when we laugh, yet we’re at a pinnacle of life, exhilarated, and intoxicated, as if experiencing a rush of love.
“If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer,” said Ray Bradbury.
Take that, inner drill sergeant. I want my writing to be merrier, not drudgier (which sometimes means using words that don’t exist). I want to gambol through my novel, not grind.
Discipline without motivation is nothing, and being undisciplined can rekindle our motivation. Remind yourself how to let loose, in big ways and small ways. It’s necessary to get out of the grind of daily production — to celebrate the ability to be playful, capricious, and irresponsible.
Take a respite from the work of your novel and indulge in a moment of play before pushing forward again. Build a fairy village out of sticks, pebbles, and leaves. Trade Mad Libs with your friends. Let laughter jostle you all about, intoxicate you. And then skip back to your keyboard — and write with diligence, perseverance, and gusto toward the finish line!
Try This: Make Your Day a Playground
This is a rare one. Take a day off from writing. Go to a playground and swing. Get in a water gun fight. Climb a tree. Don’t plan too much — you want to go with the wind. Carry this playful energy with you to your writing. Think to yourself, Let’s make this a playground. How does your mood shift? Do you discover other entry points to creativity.
Grant Faulkner is the author of Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo and the co-host of the podcast Write-minded. His essays on creative writing have appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer.
For more, go to grantfaulkner.com, or follow him on Twitter at @grantfaulkner. | https://medium.com/nanowrimo/too-much-work-and-no-play-makes-jack-a-dull-boy-a05c740c0202 | ['Grant Faulkner'] | 2018-11-08 17:21:10.917000+00:00 | ['Creative Process', 'Writing', 'NaNoWriMo', 'Creative Writing', 'Inspiration'] |
Data Types in Python | Variables in Python
A variable is a named storage location where you can save some value when you execute your code. It takes some space in your RAM and its value persists till the time your code is executing.
E.g
# Without variables
# Add two numbers
print(10+20)
#With variables
a=20
b=20 print(a+b)
The benefit of saving your values to a variable is that the values and calculation (addition in our case addition) can be reused in some further parts of the code.
Comments
A comment is a line in your code that you don’t want to run but write them just for some reference in your code like explaining what your code is doing.
E.g
#this line do addition c=a+b
In python, comments can be done using a ‘#’ symbol in the start of the line. It will inform the interpreter not to execute that line.
Data Types in Python
A data type in python refers to different formats of data that we can use in python. We are not always working with the same type of data. For example, to store the details of a student I will need different values like
Name: ”Tarun” Age: 18 Percentage: 89.5 Subjects: [‘Maths’,”English”,’Hindi’,’Sci’,’SST’]
In this above example, we can clearly see that the data with which we want to work is in different formats like the name is a string type, age is an int type, the percentage is a float type and subjects is of type list.
Following are the different data types supported by python:
Integers
Float
String
List
Dictionary
Boolean
Set
Tuple
int (Integers)
An int data type is used to save a whole number. It does not support numbers with decimal places. There are two ways in which you can create an int variable
SYNTAX:
<variable-name>=int(<value>)
<variable-name>=<value> #value is a whole number
float (Decimal numbers)
A float data type is used to save numbers with decimal values like 10.2, 52.223. There are two ways in which you can create a float variable
SYNTAX:
<variable-name>=float(<value>)
<variable-name>=<value> #value is a decimal number
str(Strings)
A string data type is used to save the values of type strings like names, addresses, etc. In python, anything enclosed in single quotes (‘) of (“) is considered as a string.
SYNTAX:
<variable name>=str(“<value>”)
<variable name>=str(‘<value>’)
<variable name>=“<value>”
<variable name>=“<value>”
Strings are internally treated as a list in python (List data types are covered next). Strings various functions in which are pre-defined and can be used in the python code. Some of the functions are as follows:
Capitalize ()
Capitalizes the first letter of the string
Count (str, beg= 0, end=len (string))
Counts how many times str occurs in a string or in a substring of string if starting index beg and ending index end are given.
endswith (suffix, beg=0, end=len (string))
Determines if a string or a substring of string (if starting index beg and ending index end are given) ends with a suffix; returns true if so and false otherwise.
find (str, beg=0 end=len (string))
Determine if str occurs in a string or in a substring of string if starting index beg and ending index end are given returns index if found and -1 otherwise
index (str, beg=0, end=len (string))
Same as find (), but raises an exception if str not found
isalnum ()
Returns true if the string has at least 1 character and all characters are alphanumeric and false otherwise
isalpha()
Returns true if the string has at least 1 character and all characters are alphabetic and false otherwise
isdigit()
Returns true if the string contains only digits and false otherwise
islower()
Returns true if the string has at least 1 cased character and all cased characters are in lowercase and false otherwise
isnumeric()
Returns true if a Unicode string contains only numeric characters and false otherwise
isspace()
Returns true if the string contains only whitespace characters and false otherwise.
istitle()
Returns true if the string is properly “title cased” and false otherwise
isupper()
Returns true if the string has at least one cased character and all cased characters are in uppercase and false otherwise
join(seq)
Merges (concatenates) the string representations of elements in sequence seq into a string, with separator string
len(string)
Returns the length of the string
lower()
Converts all uppercase letters in a string to lowercase
lstrip()
Removes all leading whitespace in string
replace(old, new [, max])
Replaces all occurrences of old in a string with new or at most max occurrences if max given
split(str=””, num=string.count(str))
Splits string according to delimiter str (space if not provided) and returns list of substrings; split into at most num substrings if given
startswith(str, beg=0,end=len(string))
Determines if a string or a substring of string (if starting index beg and ending index end are given) starts with substring str; returns true if so and false otherwise
strip([chars])
Performs both lstrip() and rstrip() on string
title()
Returns “titlecased” version of the string, that is, all words begin with uppercase and the rest are lowercase
upper()
Converts lowercase letters in a string to uppercase
In the Next Blog, we will know about the List, Set, Dictionary and Tuple Data Types.
Thanks For Learning with me and subscribe for learning more and get notifications for new blogs and videos:
Blog link: TechScouter
Channel link: The Data Singh | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/data-types-in-python-c23b8178f96d | ['Japneet Singh Chawla'] | 2020-10-18 13:15:01.280000+00:00 | ['Python Programming', 'Python Tutorial', 'Python', 'Pythonprogramminglanguage'] |
Hemingway rewrites ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ | He was a young man, a boy, really, who was, like the girl, also from Michigan but he was from the southern side of the biggest city in the state of Michigan. They called it Detroit or sometimes Motor City but that did not make much sense to the boy because they did not build so many cars there any longer. He was a city boy and had been born and raised there. Anyway, it being a very big city did not make it a better city to him and he had decided to leave that place.
He walked into the station and also purchased a ticket for a train that night, a train that would leave also at midnight. It was going anywhere, which was just where he had wanted to go, so in that way he was lucky. The French have a word for this but it does not translate well.
It was the same train that the girl had purchased a ticket on.
After the train, there was a room filled with smoke. Besides the smoke, there was also the smell of wine and of perfume that did not cost much. Even though the price of the perfume was not large, the size of the price did not make it smell any less. Someone was singing in this smokey room and you could barely hear it through smells of the wine and the cheap perfume. So there it was then.
The singer, the smokey room, the smell of wine and also cheap perfume. All those things were in that room, and them too. There were so many things.
If you looked through the smoke maybe you would see a girl with the kind of smile that you could share the night with. And maybe it would be one night or maybe it would go on. And on. And on. And on. Which is many times to go on and on, four if you counted, but you didn’t. You did not know, not really, what counted and you couldn’t.
So you had to believe. If you stopped believing it might all go away. That’s how it was with journeys.
Later, as you looked both up and down the boulevard you could see many strangers and sometimes behind them you could also see their shadows under the streetlights. Some of them were only shadows and that is all that you saw and then you didn’t even know what they were searching for or even if they were alive enough to find emotion. On those sort of streets that called themselves boulevards, in the manner of the French, there were many different things hiding in the dark of the night. The French have a word also for boulevard. It is boulevard. They also had a word for night, but it was something else. The French were difficult.
In these times, I had been working very hard and trying to get my fill.
If you do the work right and it goes well then there is a special kind of thrill you can get and it is the type of thrill that everybody wishes to have.
You do your work and then when you are done you pay what you have to, pay anything, really, in effort to roll the dice. And then to roll them again. Again and again and on and on and on and nada y nada y pues nada.
“Just one more time,” you think, even though you know that rolling dice is like life and when you roll them on the deep green felt, some will end up winners and some will end up losers. But you do not know which and maybe that is the game, the not knowing.
Paying anything to roll the dice…just one more time.
The red dice make their own kind of music when they roll across the felt and when some people throw them and lose then you know that they are the sort of people who sing the wrong songs, the kind of songs that are sad and hurtful and songs that are not red like the dice or green like the felt, but dark, like the darkness of the boulevard. Songs that are sad and dark and so blue so that they call them The Blues as if there only one type of blue. For some people who are not born to win, the type that are losers, these are the only kind of songs they will sing. There are indeed people who are born that way. Some are.
Then after the train which was going anywhere and the smokey room and the playing of the dice and the singing of The Blues then there were boulevards again even though there had been boulevards before there would always be boulevards. That’s the way it is with boulevards. So you mentioned them again as you would a chorus or a refrain or a zen koan.
Then whether they are winners or losers, they are all starring in a movie of their own lives and so to them it has no beginning or ending. It just goes on and on. And on and on. The movie that never ends.
Even as the movie goes on and people walk still up and down the boulevard you had to tell yourself that still you had to have faith. You had to believe or none of it meant anything at all, like fighting a war without a cause.
“Don’t stop believing,” you said to yourself and then you tried to hold on to that feeling so that it would not go away. | https://medium.com/emphasis/hemingway-rewrites-dont-stop-believin-aed49bb13732 | ['Scott Stavrou'] | 2019-12-16 14:03:24.412000+00:00 | ['Hemingway', 'Humor', 'Writing', 'Songwriting', 'Satire'] |
Playne Wants Players to Focus on Themselves | A number of changes have been made to the game since its initial release. It now offers guided meditations for those that need a helping hand, different ways to focus or practice breathing, and even a sandbox mode. A lot of care has been put into this game in order to make meditation more accessible and interesting to a wider audience.
When I first started, the prospect of meditating each day felt like work. I didn’t know how I would turn my brain off and focus on my breathing. Sessions were short and would end with dozens of thoughts piling up. I thought that I was doing something wrong. Maybe meditation was just something I would never be able to do.
But Playne understood my frustrations and nudged me to try at a later time. Days passed before I mustered up the courage to open up the game again. The grove was unchanged, and the fox was still waiting next to the campfire with words of encouragement. So I tried again. And again. And again.
After a while, the time between meditation sessions shortened, and each one lasted longer. Thoughts weren’t as frequent, and I began to step away feeling calm and refreshed. It was actually working.
Meditating with thought pages. Source: Vismaya
The implementation of thought pages, however, is what cemented the game in my daily routine. During the first thirty minutes of my day, I use this mode to write whatever thoughts are stuck in the recesses of my mind, getting them out of my head and onto the page. I find that I need this as a way to ease into a day of writing. Playne distorts the text enough so I can’t reread anything I’ve already written, cementing the idea to just let words flow while I focus on my breath. At the end of the session, I offer those words up to the campfire, causing it to roar to life as I leave behind past worries and focus on the day’s work.
This game has done a lot to bring peace into my life. I most likely wouldn’t even be writing this article right now without the habits this game has instilled in me. It was the push I needed to keep going when I didn’t know if I could. | https://medium.com/super-jump/playne-wants-players-to-focus-on-themselves-eb7a8165cade | ['Peter Cacek'] | 2020-11-07 10:02:34.280000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Review', 'Self', 'Mental Health', 'Features'] |
Is a 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat Right for You? | Years ago, if I had accidentally wandered into a Vipassana retreat, I would have assumed it was some sort of cult initiation.
Imagine: 80 participants forbidden from speaking, touching, or making eye contact for 10 days. Men and women kept separate. A 4:00am wake-up bell every morning. Meals prepared by invisible volunteers and eaten without a word. No books, media, internet, games, or group activities allowed: just 10 hours of meditation every day, sometimes directed by the disembodied voice of the esteemed master, S.N. Goenka.
And every evening, in a dark room, with entranced faces glowing in the light of two old TVs, a climactic break from the austere silence: a 75-minute video lecture from Goenka. A chance to gaze upon a friendly human face and to laugh at his humor. An invitation to reflect on what must surely be profound spiritual truths, gradually escalating in authority as the week progresses.
By all appearances, this is a perfect recipe for indoctrination into a strange religious sect of some kind. I recognize some of these tactics from the church experiences of my youth; it’s not the first time I’ve been force-fed metaphysical claims while in a vulnerable state. I walked away from religion years ago and I have no interest in returning. I’m happy as an atheist.
So what was I doing here?
I didn’t wander in accidentally — I was there because I signed up for it. I smiled up at the master, too; I chanted “sadhu, sadhu, sadhu” along with everyone else, obeyed the precepts, and put my full effort into the meditation practice.
And, while my mind readily identified and disregarded the various supernatural claims I was presented with, I found loads of value in the experience. It was unlike anything else I’ve ever done. I’d recommend it to most people. I’d love to do it again.
My goal is to help you identify whether you would benefit from this experience too — or if it could be harmful to you, as it has been for some. I’ll describe what the retreat was like for me, why it’s an outstanding resource, and how it can also be dangerous for the wrong person.
Ten days living like a monk
I had tried meditation a few times in my life but never quite got the hang of it. I could never quite climb out of the river of words that constantly flowed through my mind, and my attempts to do so were sporadic.
I didn’t see much benefit because I was never disciplined enough to gain traction with my practice.
The Vipassana retreat gave me no choice but to go deep. It was carefully set up to remove every distraction. By the end of the 10 days, I had meditated for 100 hours; and instead of reaching that number with hundreds of consistent choices to sit down and practice, I only had to make one choice — to drive to the retreat and follow the instructions. From there they held my hand the whole way through.
Our first task was to learn how to quiet our minds and think about nothing.
Most people assume they’re bad at meditation because they are unable to sit quietly and stop thinking. Their minds continue to run full speed no matter how many times they direct their attention back to their breath.
It was no different for me. I would try to focus on my breath, and 10 seconds later my mind would be zooming across all kinds of memories, hypotheticals, conversations, and other thoughts and feelings. 15 minutes later I would remember, “oh, right, let that go and pay attention to the breath.” 10 seconds of mindful breathing and my mind was off and running again.
As I practiced for tens of hours, though, I got better at it. By the end of the 2nd day, I found that I was able to set aside all thoughts and observe my inhale and exhale for 10 uninterrupted minutes. When my mind started to wander again, it was less than a minute before I recognized it and drew myself back in.
By the 4th day, it had become easy for me to sit an entire hour without thinking a single thought.
People wonder why it’s hard to quiet their minds, and the answer is simple: it takes a long-ass time to build up to that skill level, and a lot of focus. Most people never invest that much time or energy into it.
Imagine trying to gain muscle by only visiting the gym once a month. A Vipassana retreat is like quitting your job, moving into the gym, and hiring a full-time personal trainer. You’re going to see a lot more progress that way.
Now that we had spent 30+ hours learning how to stop thinking, the real work began.
I don’t want to describe the practice in too much detail, because if you decide to try a retreat, I don’t want to give you too many preconceived ideas about what it’s going to be like.
In short: the Vipassana technique deals with noticing sensations in your body and training yourself to react to them impartially.
The idea (based on Buddhist teachings) is that we all have attachments — cravings and aversions — that are the root cause of our suffering. They exist as heavily-used neural pathways; habit patterns of mind and body. When we are presented with various stimuli, our brains automatically go down these pathways that land us in various emotional states. Our lives become miserable because each day we are at the mercy of random, impersonal phenomena that are beyond our control; we chase certain stimuli and run from others, which leads to all kinds of anxiety and poor health.
If you sit still and scan through your body, you’re bound to notice many sensations, both pleasant and unpleasant. The automatic reaction is to revel in the pleasant ones and try to avoid the unpleasant ones.
Instead, the goal of Vipassana is to notice these sensations in all areas of the body while remaining impartial to them, experiencing them with complete detachment and equanimity, in a purely objective way. Some part of you feels warm and comfortable? So it does. Move on. Another part of you feels tense and achy? So it does. Move on. All of these things are temporary. They will all change. They are nothing but electrical impulses. You don’t need to assign a big emotional reaction to them.
If you can learn to accept the good and the bad with equanimity, with the understanding that nothing lasts forever, your brain can experience greater peace, freedom, and happiness… and ultimately you can come to terms with the fact that life eventually ends too, and that’s OK.
As the days go on, all sorts of feelings and realizations can hit you out of nowhere. Some people say trauma is stored in the body, and you’re examining your body closer than ever. You might have some kind of repressed memory resurface, or you might feel overwhelmed with hard emotions. If you can learn to watch that happen without reacting, you can rewire your brain to get rid of the automatic distress response to those wounds.
This style of meditation falls in the category of “insight meditation” because it tends to help you understand new things about yourself and the world.
A few of the experiences that surprised me:
Meditation can put me in a similar mental space as psychedelics. The last few days of the retreat felt like I was constantly experiencing the pleasant fade-out of a mushroom trip, where sanity and realistic perception have been restored to my mind but there is also a deep lingering feeling of calm, peace, and ease.
The technique offered me an incredibly direct and thorough way to explore my mind-body connection. I discovered some patterns I had never noticed before — tension in my legs, neck, and shoulders; habitual contraction deep inside my left side-body. My body felt better than ever, and I noticed my mobility and range of motion were significantly increased when I tried yoga poses, which was not an expected result from sitting in the same posture for hours on end.
I deconstructed some of my ideas about gender and sexuality. I felt myself become more open to the idea of connecting intimately with other men. Part of that came from being surrounded by a group of sincere, intentional guys who really wanted to work on themselves. Part of it was inside my own body as I listened to sensations that I had previously silenced.
When I was at the Vipassana retreat, I was going through a difficult time in my life: my step-mom was dying from cancer. She was the parent who best understood my life choices and encouraged me along my unique path. She’s the one who helped me become interested in bodily awareness, joyful movement, and developing a loving acceptance of others.
Of course, I already knew I was devastated by her impending death, but the retreat revealed how deep my ocean of grief was. I cried a lot. It was very upsetting. There were times when I was curled up in bed, completely overwhelmed, and the bell sounded to summon us to the meditation hall. The last thing I wanted to do was sit quietly and examine myself. I wanted a distraction. I wanted my normal coping mechanisms back.
But I went anyway. I sat. Amidst all the pain, I set aside my worry and turned my attention back to the fleeting sensations in my body. I saw that all the heartaches in life, and all the joys, were ever-changing and temporary. It grounded me in reality and gave me peace, in a much more holistic and durable way than my distractive coping mechanisms ever could. I found that meditation was the most helpful for me when I least wanted to do it.
I left the retreat feeling like a different person, with a sense of calm and patience I could not have imagined before. I soon went to stay with my step-mom and helped administer her home hospice care; I used my new meditation skills to remain receptive and attentive when I might otherwise have been overcome with feelings of despair. She died a week later.
I am glad the Vipassana retreat gave me a chance to process my step-mom’s death before it happened, so I could be intentional about the rest of the time we had together.
In the five years since the retreat, I have often used Vipassana-style meditation as a tool for maintaining sanity in my daily life. It feels like the mental analog of cleaning my room. It clears away the clutter, organizes my thinking, increases my focus, and helps me make difficult decisions.
The benevolence of the Vipassana organization
One reason I decided to trust this organization is because of the revolutionary way in which it operates. I don’t know of any other program that offers so much for free: when you take a course, you are provided with 11 days of wholesome food, adequate lodging, and dozens of hours of instruction — at no charge whatsoever. Most multi-day meditation retreats cost hundreds of dollars, at least.
The organization is entirely volunteer-run, sustains itself purely on donations, and you aren’t even allowed to donate unless you complete a 10-day course. Nobody keeps track of whether or not you donate; and if you don’t have money, you can give back by volunteering or helping to spread the word.
It’s brilliant, really, because it lets the effectiveness of the practice speak for itself. The organization continues to grow because people are so pleased with the results that they give generously to help it continue. Also, as someone who lives well below the poverty line, I appreciate that the course is accessible to the poor.
Every communication I received from the organization was dripping with mindfulness, compassion, and clarity. From the application process, to the pre-course emails, to the way they engaged us on orientation day, it was obvious that a good deal of intention had been put into the information that was shared with us.
They worked hard to create an environment where we could leave behind all the distractions of our daily lives and dive deep into a new practice. All course messages after the orientation day were conveyed via signs rather than verbal announcements so as not to intrude on our headspace. At mealtimes, they would simply ring a bell when the food was ready, and we’d walk into the vacant dining room and serve ourselves from the buffet table, eating in silence. I savored every meal with profound gratitude. Even without the sensory deprivation, I would have considered the food excellent; vegetarian, healthy, and delicious.
I hope it is clear that I have a high level of regard for Vipassana as a meditation technique. It has made a big difference in my life, and there are many things I appreciate about the organization, too.
So, where is the danger that I alluded to before? Why not just write about the benefits, recommend it enthusiastically, and call it a day?
For all the good aspects of this organization, it is important to remember that it is still a religious one, and they ultimately want you to join them. Some of the persuasion tactics are intense and could be harmful for vulnerable people.
The unfortunate coercive practices
As someone who grew up under religious programming and later went through the process of deconstructing that experience, I’m hyper-aware of manipulative dogmas. This awareness comes in handy when people are trying to talk me into accepting their belief systems.
I never felt like I was at risk at the Vipassana retreat because I know how to think critically about spiritual claims. If I heard something questionable, I automatically applied a healthy level of skepticism.
However, not everyone has experience navigating these things. Some people are naturally susceptible to spiritual coercion; others are in a life situation where they are desperate to find guidance and authority. The programming isn’t exactly sinister, so a moderately malleable person is not at great risk, but I’ve seen some people take the information to such a literal extreme that it becomes harmful for them.
My main issue with Goenka’s method is that he ramps up his specific variety of Buddhist messaging — and the insistence that you must maintain the Vipassana practice for 2 hours every day, forever, if you want to be enlightened — at the same time as he’s leading you into an extremely vulnerable and impressionable mental state.
You’re reassured ahead of time: “the Vipassana technique is non-sectarian. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice it. It is compatible with any religion. Everyone should feel comfortable coming to learn the technique.”
Technically, it’s true that the technique itself should not conflict with any pre-existing religious beliefs. It only involves attention to the breath, body-scanning, and finding equanimity. There’s no invocation of spiritual forces or deities.
But the course itself absolutely functions as an “intro to Buddhism”, and I don’t recall that being advertised ahead of time. Maybe I was naive, but I don’t think I’m the only one.
On the day you arrive, there is a sort of initiation meeting where they present you with the five precepts of Buddhism and ask you promise to follow them:
to abstain from killing any being; to abstain from stealing; to abstain from all sexual activity; to abstain from telling lies; to abstain from all intoxicants.
Those are reasonable rules for a meditation retreat. You’re essentially agreeing to live like a monk in a monastery for 10 days.
But, also, there is a “repeat after me” section where they ask you to say “I take refuge in the Buddha.” If I had still been a Christian, I would have been extremely uncomfortable with that request. You might as well have asked me to say “I hereby invite demons into my heart.”
Early on in the course, Goenka sets a certain open-minded tone about his own method: “Evaluate the technique for yourself, give it a fair trial, and if it provides tangible benefits in your life, for yourself and the people around you, only then should you accept it.” This seems fair, even noble. It encourages you to let your guard down because you think “This guy isn’t going to coerce me into anything. He’s just offering something, and I can take it or leave it.”
Certainly, the technique does deserve a fair trial for evaluation! One must then decide if it works for them or not. Anyone can get on board with that.
But as the days go on, his tone changes. He presents the theories behind the meditation — and Buddhist ideas such as karma, reincarnation, and “full enlightenment” — as facts. He claims practicing Vipassana meditation for two hours every day is the only way to find true happiness and meaning in life. He proclaims that Vipassana is actually the original kind of meditation that the Buddha taught and that it was passed down by a secret line of masters for 2,500 years — only to emerge into popular use via his personal teacher in the mid-1900s, which (by the way) the Buddha prophesied.
By the end of the course, rather than saying “see if it works for you”, he’s saying: “This technique has been proven to work for many thousands of people around the world, so there can be no question that it works. If you try it and it doesn’t work for you, you aren’t practicing properly, and you need to talk to an instructor to determine what you’re doing wrong.”
Wow! That’s a totally different message than we heard at the start.
A similar bit of logic is found in Christianity. The promise is that if you give your life to Jesus he will come into your heart, change you, and show you perfect love. However, if you give Jesus a fair trial but ultimately leave the faith because it does nothing for you after all, it is commonly insisted that “You must never have been a true Christian. If you had sought Jesus authentically, you never could have wanted to leave his love.”
This is a “no true Scotsman” fallacy and it exists to protect the legitimacy of the faith — because, if people give it a fair trial and reject it, the clear implication is that it doesn’t work for everyone, and then the main tenets of the faith are thrown into question.
Instead of insisting that those who don’t benefit from Vipassana are doomed to be miserable, Goenka could have said “Thanks for giving it a try! If this meditation doesn’t work for you, try to find some other way to gain control of your reactions and develop equanimity in your life.” That would have demonstrated a legitimate concern for the student’s well-being rather than a primary goal of gaining followers of his technique.
He used the same kind of manipulative logic I faced inside of Christianity, and I lost respect for him at that moment.
Despite my disappointment with this tactic, I was able to brush it off easily and focus on the parts that were valuable to me.
But from the conversations of people around me on the last day, I could tell that many people were getting sucked into the same kind of salvationist mindset that Christianity pushes: they needed to make a big effort to maintain this practice if they want a good life, even when the day-to-day reality of it is a massive struggle.
Striving for a perfect practice is yet another form of attachment and suffering. If the goal is to free people from those things, why place these demands on students, setting them up to feel like a failure if they don’t practice for an hour every morning and evening? Two hours a day is 1/8 of your waking life. That’s an even bigger ask than a 10% tithe.
The retreat is incredibly intense and difficult, especially for someone with no meditation experience. A person might enter a rather delicate mental state when you isolate them from all contact with everyone they know, all touch and communication with others, and ask them to sit still and quiet for 10 hours every day with nothing but their own subconscious for company. It pushes some people to the brink of insanity — or beyond, in the case of this young woman who committed suicide soon after her course.
Goenka himself describes the process as a “deep surgery” which can have negative results if you aren’t careful. The organization does try to take some measures to protect you; there is a resident assistant you can talk to if you’re experiencing problems, and they try to screen for mental health problems beforehand.
However, I have read stories of people being in distress and wanting to leave, but being strongly encouraged to stay. You’ve given them your keys and your wallet for safekeeping, so if you want to leave, you have to talk someone into giving those things back to you, and they’re not always eager to comply. “It will be more damaging if you leave halfway through. You need to stay here and keep working.”
The combination of mental vulnerability, loss of autonomy, and religious programming can create a traumatizing situation for some people.
In conclusion
With proper awareness of the risks, most people in sound mental health can find a great deal of value in this kind of meditation retreat. It has the potential to take you past your limits in ways you’d probably never try otherwise, and it leaves you with a powerful practical technique for finding equanimity in your body and mind. It might change your life.
If you’re in a highly vulnerable state, or if you don’t think exposure to the coercion I described would be healthy for you, it’s probably wise to find a less extreme way to learn about meditation.
Despite my complaints, I would recommend a 10-day Vipassana course to most people. Even if you don’t continue the practice afterward, you can still gain some deep personal insights from the 10-day experience.
I would simply encourage you to be on the lookout for manipulation and not to worry too much about how well you maintain the practice after the course ends. There are many kinds of psychosomatic practices that can help you find peace in your life. Maybe Vipassana is the one for you — or maybe not, and that’s OK too. | https://medium.com/interfaith-now/is-a-10-day-silent-meditation-retreat-right-for-you-f59688fed9c8 | ['Joe Omundson'] | 2020-12-19 17:00:04.795000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Buddhism', 'Mental Health', 'Vipassana', 'Meditation'] |
To Change Yourself Quicker, Try Writing an “Identity Manifesto” | Write an Identity Manifesto
Understanding the concept of identity change, I decided to write my own identity manifesto. For instance, in my desire to be athletically fit, I formed the following identities —
I’m the kind of guy who does not use elevators. I like taking the stairs.
I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t miss workouts.
I’m the kind of guy who does not eat sugar or fried food except for once a week.
In my desire to have a better relationship with my girlfriend, I formed the following identities —
I don’t use the words ‘never’ and ‘always’ when I’m in a fight. This is because relationship psychologists suggest avoiding using such extreme words in a fight.
I don’t take arguments to bed, and I wake up with a fresh perspective.
And I know those examples sound self-centred. But that is the point. You need to attach these identities to your ego so much so that even the thought of breaking those identities hurts your ego. Since I formed these identities, I’ve really changed as a person.
Here’s how you can write your own identity manifesto as well. You can do it digitally or even in your journal. But since it’s going to be something you’re going to keep adding to, you should do it digitally.
Form Categories
Categories will help you keep it organised. Form categories like —
Fitness
Career
Relationship
Financial Life, etc.
Form Reinforcable Habit-Focused Identities
Don’t form identities that are abstract and are hard to reinforce. For instance, — “I’m a guy who is financially wise.” This identity doesn’t tell you exactly what to do and is hence hard to reinforce.
On the other hand, a habit-focused identity like, “I’m the kind of guy who invests 20% of my earnings every single month without fail.” directly tells you what to do and hence is enforceable.
Protect Your Identity in Decisive Moments
Say amazon sends you a notification recommending you to buy the latest Macbook. And you’ve just received your salary as well. You could buy the Mac, but it would prevent you from investing 20% of your salary. What do you do?
Both the external world and your internal desire for instant gratification will want you to break your identity. But don’t let that happen. If you break your identity once, it becomes easier to break it again, forming a vicious circle. Protect your identity from the world and yourself.
Know When It’s Okay to Break Identities
I don’t miss workouts out of laziness. But if my body tells me that it needs a break, I listen to my body. Life’s not perfect. You won’t be able to keep up with your identities always. For instance, you may not be able to invest in the month you get unforeseen medical bills. Learn to recognise the situations when it’s okay to break your identities. And don’t beat yourself up over it.
Keep Adding Identities
As you keep learning, you’ll find other habits to help you grow in particular areas of life. Instead of just trying to follow those habits, add them to your existing identity manifesto and become that person. Instead of trying to do, decide to be.
Keep Revisiting
Life is chaotic. Humans are lazy. With time, your external environment, in collaboration with your weak reptile brain, will weaken your desired position. So keep revisiting your identities to remind yourself of not who you want to be, but who you already are. Then, recalibrate your actions to your identity. | https://medium.com/mind-cafe/to-change-yourself-quicker-try-writing-an-identity-manifesto-8f2e22aada17 | ['Akshad Singi'] | 2020-12-11 07:20:08.379000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Self', 'Advice', 'Psychology'] |
Five Children’s Books You Should Read as an Adult | With so many books and so little time, it’s only realistic to understand that you may have missed a few good ones along the way. I realized, well into my life, that I had missed some children's books and young adult books that were worth reading even as an adult. Some I discovered on my own, some during my teaching career, and others reading to my children when they were young. Here are five that I think are worth reading as an adult — even if you don’t have a child to read them to!
Bridge to Terabithia, Newberry Medal Honor runner-up by Katherine Paterson
I sat hunkered down in the driver’s seat at the baseball field, sobbing as I turned the last pages of this beautiful book. My son was at practice and I was too embarrassed to get out of the car because my throat was clenched in tears. I couldn’t pull myself away from this page-turner. It’s one of those books that seems so simple on the surface but underneath lies a myriad of themes for both children and adults. Even now as I reflect back on the book and as others pull out parts that have impacted them, I realize how rich this story is about friendship and loss.
“It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength. ”
The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
I discovered this book by accident at a thrift store and read it to my children. I then read it to my teachers who worked with struggling readers. I then bought them each a copy. I hope they still have it! Mr. Plumbean is an eccentric neighbor who is misunderstood by the residents on his street. Think HOA and you’ll get it. However, Mr. Plumbean refuses to fit in and eventually his ways help all the homeowners on the street understand the value of being oneself. A great lesson for children and adults who feel the pressure to conform.
“Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams.”
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Lyrical, winsome, and delightful. If you’ve seen the recent rendition of this beloved classic on Netflix but haven’t read the book, let’s just say you need to get a copy. While I appreciate some of the liberties that Netflix has taken with this story and their casting is, as always, impeccable, I think the original tale is beautiful as is and needed no embellishment. Anne of Green Gables will make you cry and cheer and believe in the power of hope and love. We all long for belonging and home and Anne never lets her circumstances deter her from finding her place in the world.
“Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.”
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
I recently signed up for the trial version of Disney Plus and this was one of the movies I watched, although I’d seen it several times. It’s that good and so is the book. Of course, I always recommend reading a book before seeing the movie but sometimes we find the movie first, and as they say: Never judge a book by its movie. If that’s your case, please go back and read the book too. Although very true to the story, the movie needs the book to support it. Good versus evil, growing up, family, sacrificial love, adventure and more are all explored as the Pevensie children stumble into the magical world of Narnia. Of course, the symbolism of Christian faith is evident as C. S. Lewis intended, but this is a story for all ages and all faiths.
My Side of the Mountain, a Newbery Honor Book by Jean Craighead George
I almost regretted reading this book with my young son because I thought he might get the idea to run away and live by himself on a mountain which is exactly what the character, Sam Gribley, in this story does. While this story sounds alarming in today’s highly connected, helicopter-parent society, it makes sense in the context and setting of the story. Sam’s family owns land in the Catskill mountains and his parents understand his need for adventure. They keep a close eye on him but Sam, to me, is like a younger version of John Muir or Henry David Thoreau, living out his life on his own terms connecting to and attending to nature. My son didn’t run off and try to live in the woods but I do think this book fueled his adventuring spirit — and maybe mine too!
“Well, I came because I thought the only way to know nature was to live with it. Like Thoreau. You know? And I came because of my experiments. I learned all about algae under the conditions of nature. And I learned about survival. And… I learned about myself.”
Old Yeller, a Newberry Honor book by Fred Gipson
As I read the ending of Old Yeller, I looked up from the book through a wash of tears and saw my first-graders with stricken looks on their faces. I’m surely going to be fired for this, was my thought! Maybe first grade is too young for this story but it’s definitely one you have to force yourself to read. The love between a boy and his dog is a storyline that never grows old. Growing up and understanding that love sometimes means having to do hard things is a lesson we all need to be reminded of. | https://medium.com/raise-a-lifelong-reader/five-childrens-books-you-should-read-as-an-adult-7a676b2cf2ba | ['Mary Gallagher'] | 2020-01-04 20:16:00.235000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Reading', 'Childrens Books', 'Literature', 'Stories'] |
Do Something Nobody Will Hear About | Do Something Nobody Will Hear About
You may find out how much of a badass you truly are
When was the last time you did something no one knew about? When was the last time you wrote a piece no one would ever read? Or finished a book worth of articles and your Facebook feed had no clue?
Sometimes, and a lot more so now, I hide my personal victories because my sense of confidence and worth grows when I know what I am capable of, and I know that no one else knows this.
It’s a refreshing exercise I have started getting into; holding on to projects I’m working on until I’m ready to ship; working, for weeks, months even, and not telling a soul.
Only my wife sees how early I wake and how late I lay, but even she has no idea what exactly I’m working on.
Yes, she has the big picture, but the small things I am most proud of, go unnoticed by her.
And that’s intentional.
I noticed that when I didn’t get the feedback I thought I deserved, I’d start doubting myself. I hated that need for validation I had developed: it sent me watching stats and refreshing my feed to see if anyone had commented. I knew it wasn’t healthy. I knew I had to find a way out.
But How?
When I came across a video positing this idea of doing something and not telling anyone, a lot that I had been thinking about clicked: I started small.
I’ll write today, but I won’t publish. I’ll make a collage of pictures but I won’t share. I’ll make a playlist for myself.
Little by little, I noticed I spent more time doing, than waiting.
Now, I feel the tug between sharing what I have done — or what I am doing — and keeping it until it’s ready. I love how it makes me feel: more patient, more grateful. And mostly, more proud of myself.
I’m learning all these things I actually care about and planning to use them when I want to use them. I’m empowered with each step I take because I feel a lot more in control of my actions. No amount of external validation can beat that.
Not yet anyway…
So, how can you do this?
Start small. Pick something you want to do, simply because you want to, and do it. It could be making up your bed or watching a movie you like. It could be binge-watching a show. Yeaup. All that matters is that you do it and don’t tell anyone.
The more exciting it is, the stronger the urge to tell someone would be. So, it’s important to start with something you know is only exciting for you.
I picked an anime — Baki. That was months ago. The only other person I know who watched this show was my friend C. Befoune and I found out just two weeks ago.
You’ve picked your thing. Now what?
Pay attention to your impulse to share. Do you want to post a picture of you watching it? Do you want to make a story or write a review? Whatever it is, pay attention and ask yourself why.
Are you sharing to add value? Or so that you’ll look cool? Do you want a specific person to see this, or for the world to know?
This exercise is to help you notice your personal validation triggers: the things that prompt you to seek someone else’s take on your life.
There’s a difference between getting feedback for an article and wanting someone to approve of your idea (unless your work for a magazine and you do need approval for your idea if it has to go to print!)
There’s a difference between sharing things with the world to make the world more beautiful and casting junk that no one needs.
With practice, you’ll learn how to stop this need for approval. You’ll get to a new kind of excitement: one that keeps you up and night and wakes you early because you’re doing something you want to share with the world and you know you have to wait for it to be done.
It’s that excitement that you’ll carry with your first 10 podcast episodes before you announce your launch date. It’s the one you’ll use to work on a 30-second intro only one person will notice and comment ( this happened to me). It’s the same excitement that will carry you through your book outline and first draft or your first failed digital product.
It’s not everything you do that the world needs to hear. No. It’s what you know the world needs to hear and you’re willing to do everything for it to be ready to be heard. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/do-something-nobody-will-hear-about-477b7c9b926f | ['Kamga Tchassa'] | 2019-07-06 11:20:01.558000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Startup', 'Personal Development', 'Work', 'Validation'] |
How Bullet Points are Killing the Art of Communication | A call for writers to end our incessant list-making in favor of well-crafted sentences.
Copyright: Roadbully / 123RF Stock Photo
Communication as we know it has been pruned, cropped, repackaged and resold. Letters and phone calls have been overthrown by texts, emails and social media commentary. Bullet points have moved in and taken over all content remotely educational or informational. Those little black dots now pervade every type of format, from business plans to TV ads to blogs. They’re short and sweet, easy on the eyes, and deliver good amounts of information with little reading effort. Perfect for those on the go, bullets let you do a quick skim and you’ve got the gist. In a world dominated by the convenience factor, bullets just make sense. They’re nothing if not economical.
But what if sacrificing the element of story is doing you, the reader, a disservice? I, for one, would like to officially pledge my allegiance to the anti-bullet point army. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m from the camp that honors the architecture of a well-formed sentence. The team that feels a sense of satisfaction after reading a paragraph that the writer has taken his or her time for get just right. We die-hard grammar lovers understand the power that humor, character and emotional appeal has in eliciting a response from the reader, and acknowledge the fact that bullet points are a poor substitute for story.
In his piece “How PowerPoint is Killing Critical Thought” posted on The Guardian.com, author Andrew Smith claimed that, “Bullet point-ization of information is making us stupid and irresponsible”, and that the tool is actually “destructive of, deep thought.”
Smith’s assault on bullet points used in Power Point presentations is particularly astute:
“Bullet points enforce a rigidly hierarchical authority, which has not necessarily been earned. One either accepts them in toto, or not at all. And by the time any faulty logic is identified, the screen has been replaced by a new one as the speaker breezes on, safe in the knowledge that yet another waits in the wings. With everyone focused on screens, no one — least of all the speaker — is internalizing the argument in a way that tests its strength.”
In Communication Genius, 40 Insights from the Science of Communicating, author Tony Buon says, “Bullet points encourage sloppy and lazy writing. They are too generic, particularly when dealing with complex issues.”
My disdain for bullet points arises, too, from the fact that they don’t really do the job they’re supposed to be doing. Since the perceived convenience of bullet points may actually be working against the writer, if his aim is to get the reader to remember, we may be better off without them. As was observed in the book The Strategy Pathfinder: Core Concepts and Live Cases, “Psychologists have established that lists are much harder to remember than stories… People mainly remember the first and last items on a list but not the rest of it. Also, lists enable ‘selective memory’ as people tend to select the individual points they like and focus on those, forgetting about the whole and the many integrated parts that make this up.”
Then there’s the famous 3M case study written by the company’s founders, telling the tale of how Gordon Shaw had the “aha” moment upon realizing that the company’s business plans “failed to reflect deep thought or inspire commitment.” He pinned their bullet point-riddled pages as glorified to-do lists that “failed to explain the logic or rationale of winning in the marketplace” and identified them as a big part of 3M’s lack of progress. As Mr. Shaw put it in his essay “Strategic Stories: How 3M is Rewriting Business Planning,” “Bullet points leave critical relationships unspecified and subsequently, do not inspire thinking or commitment.” Today, 3M team members instead craft business plans based off strategic narratives to “clarify the thinking behind their plans but also to capture the imagination and the excitement of the people in their organization.” Right on.
3M’s current story-intensive culture is often blamed for their ongoing success, and, as Mr. Shaw discovered, “When people locate themselves in these strategic stories, their sense of commitment and involvement is enhanced.” Ultimately, that’s what I’m aiming for as a writer — to hook an uninvolved passer-by, to get them to imagine themselves in my story, whether it be a website or 30-second commercial. The bullet point cheapens the message, so I’ll use them in a pinch, or if a client requests them, but they won’t be my tool of choice, or my shortcut.
Shaw and partners also drew the line between the truncated format of bullets and their failure to contribute thought to a content-driven piece like a business plan: “Writing is thinking. Bullets allow us to skip the thinking step, genially tricking ourselves into supposing that we have planned when, in fact, we’ve only listed some good things to do. Bullet lists encourage us to be intellectually lazy.” In my opinion, there’s just no room for laziness in writing, not when every word counts.
As a final thought, I’ll share the words of the decorated military personality Brigadier General McMaster, who in his assault of the Power Point presentation as an “internal threat,” was quoted as saying this in regards to those little black points of contention: “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems are not bullet-izable.” | https://medium.com/bulletproof-writers/how-bullet-points-are-killing-the-art-of-communication-84742027b231 | ['Lindsey Christine'] | 2020-03-30 18:30:15.123000+00:00 | ['Bullet Points', 'Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Business Writing Skills', 'Creative Writing'] |
This AI figured out that the only winning move is not to play | Our greatest challenge in machine learning is to clearly explain to an AI what we want to achieve.
For this, we use a reward function.
A reward function is a mathematical expression that tells an AI if it’s doing a good a job. The function measures the difference between an AI’s predictions and the expected results.
So if I want an AI to predict today’s temperature, I would give it a reward function that is simply the difference between its predictions and the actual temperatures. The better the predictions are, the greater the reward.
During training, I would reward great predictions and penalize bad ones. Over time, the AI will learn how to consistently make great predictions.
So far so good. But what if we have a more complex scenario?
Consider the game CoastRunners.
The objective in the game is to race around a track in a speedboat, stay ahead of the competition, and collect as many powerups as possible.
You would probably think that a good reward function is to get the highest possible game score, right?
Researchers at OpenAI put this to the test. They trained a machine learning system to play the game and aim for the highest possible score.
What happened next blew their mind:
The AI ignored the race, took its boat into the clearing in the middle of the lake, and turned in a circle over and over again.
Check it out, the boat is completely outside the race track, it’s going the wrong way, and it is repeatedly catching fire because it’s crashing into the pier and into other boats over and over.
But the boat is also picking up 3 powerups during each cycle!
And this strategy is so successful that the AI consistently beats human players by 20% or more.
So here’s what went wrong.
The game designers placed powerups all along the racetrack to entice players to follow the route, but didn’t realize that the powerups in the middle of the lake are all it takes to win the game.
And they only reward players for picking up powerups. They didn’t add any incentive for players to follow the track, stay ahead of the competition, or complete the race in a minimum of time.
The AI researchers trained the AI to only look at the score and ignore everything else in the game.
So of course the AI discovered this loophole and ran with it.
This is a very cute example, but you wouldn’t want a self-driving car crash into a lamppost over and over in real life, because its internal reward function compels it to do so.
Think of all the behaviors we want to see in a self-driving car: stay on the road, drive safely, navigate door-to-door, don’t crash, brake in time for children playing on the street, and so on.
Our great challenge in AI and machine learning right now is to codify all of these good behaviors into a simple reward function that an AI can use and train on.
What are your thoughts on how to reward AI agents?
Add a comment and let me know! | https://medium.com/machinelearningadvantage/this-ai-figured-out-that-the-only-winning-move-is-not-to-play-a59acc763da8 | ['Mark Farragher'] | 2019-04-02 16:41:02.937000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Computer Games', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Building New Planetary Hope | by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ February 3, 2020
Saving ourselves from the escalating climate disaster and concomitant political collapse requires us to overcome our problems with truth, knowledge, belief, and faith. We need to come to an agreed understanding on how to deal with these things to preserve ourselves, our planet, and its biosphere.
That planetary public life, itself, needs to be defined, understood, and agreed to as a foundation of 21st-century civilization. This change is not going to be easy, but that makes little difference because it is what we must do.
What we are facing is a planetary problem, but it is currently at its most extreme in the lead, post-modern societies. The US is now facing the expected failure of the long-overdue impeachment of Trump as a primary symptom of a failing political and economic system. Great Britain and other countries are also struggling with growing instances of this illness.
These symptoms include racism, xenophobia, and archaic tribalism, loudly offered as a means to escape international, or non-native, standards and controls. The reasons for this are vague because they are of primary benefit only to the late-stage capitalist oligarchy. Mass support, as a distraction, is generated purely by fear and bigotry.
An important fact is that faith and belief are now in formal opposition to truth and knowledge. We must restore a publicly shared understanding of reality, and that can only be possible in a secular public world. This new reality must come from science and also precludes the use of political positions as objects of unquestioning faith. Political propagandists declaring heresies left and right must be ignored.
Our species has always had a problem in confusing our myths and stories with reality, but it has not been a potential cause of species extinction until the late 20th century. Understanding this problem and what is required to prevent it from killing us is not simple or easy. Many people see this problem but are unable to stop fighting old battles that are no longer relevant.
Part of the rise of fatal belief systems that have corrupted representative government in America and elsewhere over the last forty years was an effort to return to older absolutist systems that are assumed to have once provided unity to Western Civilization. The need to restore common standards is very much a valid concern. Still, the rise of vicious and destructive religious groups in collaboration with authoritarian political movements has hijacked this concern to capture political power. We are watching this growing disaster daily.
As an example, the US Republican Party, acting as a tool supporting racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and willful ignorance has linked these destructive religionist groups with criminal opportunists for political control. Allowing this to happen is culturally suicidal and could lead to species extinction.
The planetary conversion to a completely secular society is not an attack on human spirituality or spiritual health. Spiritual health has been long ignored in Western cultures resulting in the growth of unhealthy belief systems. These distorted belief systems resulted in the logical and steady decline of religion as mythologically based ritual systems lost meaning and relevance in modern societies incidentally producing unbalanced and, often, alienated populations.
At the same time, there has been a steady growth in new, personal spiritual systems evolving from select philosophers and diverse religious traditions that were not inherently crippled with old institutional and mythological baggage. In post-modern urban societies and among the younger generations, this is most recognizable as mindfulness, compassion, and the resurgence of adapted animistic traditions relinking our species with our planet, its biosphere, and the universe around us.
The convergence of the climate crisis, personal diversity, and penetration of accelerating scientific knowledge into expanding educated populations have opened significant rifts between these groups and older, less urban, and less well-educated communities. The rise of reactionary political movements under various banners results from the declining religious systems efforts to profit from the disruption caused by massive cultural changes.
The result is a mess in many societies that is blocking critical social and intellectual change. We need a planetary, cultural house cleaning. That will necessitate, in this era of paradigmatic shift, removal of old and dangerous furniture, objects, and tools. What to throw away and how to reorganize a shared living place is a classic cause of family conflict, but the threats to health and welfare require this.
It is understandable if we see what is happening now as a kind of family dispute resulting from the need to simplify our household in preparation for an emergency move resulting from a pending environmental disaster. The initial critical debate is defining the failure and agreeing that the step is essential. There are always those in the family who will insist that nothing needs to change and refuse to see reality until they are physically moved or abandoned. There are always those who choose to stay in severe storms and die or put many other people at risk to rescue them.
We are at that precise stage now. There is time to act and to move, but that time is short at the scale of planetary climate. Yet another indication of this is the discovery of warm water under the Thwaite glacier in Antarctica. This is the doomsday glacier that could raise sea levels ten feet if it detaches from Antarctica. Just as in other human time-sensitive decisions, there is always plenty of time until there isn’t.
We know that psychopathic behavior can be socially transmitted; the trail of ruined lives in the wake of Trump’s three years in office shows the endemic nature of this. The least of these are the political leaders who have the responsibility to stop any descent into insanity and national criminality. Allowing a psychopathic criminal to act as president and holding unquestionably to that decision is itself a sign of insanity.
The portion of the population exhibiting more severe symptoms of sociopathy need to handled quickly. The historical acceptance of this at a national level excused by national sovereignty is no longer viable. The nation-state is now a part of our species pathology. That needs to become a significant part of the planetary conversation.
With luck, the people affected may be able to recover, but until then, they cannot be part of public life for reasons of urgent public safety. How do we do that?
Not by pursuing the same political process that created this disaster. We must dismantle the system that produced this condition must. That is a massive task that will take years, but it needs to start now before time runs out.
I am using the US as an example as it is now an extremely dangerous victim of group insanity. With the final collapse of the party system, the only remaining hope is the current national election. Those are now so quickly and effectively manipulated that this is a dangerous delay in beginning the removal of the Trump regime and dismantling of the diseased capitalist based political system.
Moving beyond the capitalist economy and the nation-state is no longer an arbitrary political position but one of species survival. Over the last year, the core of climate change models had become frighteningly hotter, suggesting that the original Paris goal of holding to 1.5°C is already gone, and we may have a deadly 5°C of warming by 2100. This quick increase may be a modeling error, but that may take another year to determine. We are already in a full climate emergency with an option for it to be much worse than projected.
We know we must eliminate fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. Implementing this at the planetary level will require us to begin removing the stubborn power of the old nation-states while reducing the death grip of the old capitalist oligarchy, still heavily funded by fossil fuels, on the planet’s economy.
Again these changes are no longer optional. They must happen now. If we wait until later, it may be too late. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/building-new-planetary-hope-fb7a064cb626 | ['Mike Meyer'] | 2020-02-07 20:03:54.953000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Climate Change', 'Culture', 'Future', 'Politics'] |
Fun Learning Android Basic Animator Properties | As an Android Developer, it is important for us to know all the basic animator properties in place, as it is handy when we need them.
As a test, I made a simple Activity that contains and uses all the basic animator properties for a view. (note: I state basic, it’s because, with Animator API, we could animate almost anything, not just the basic items like in the old Animation API)
Check you identify all the properties animated below? There are nine of them.
If you can’t get all nine of them, let’s go through them below.
You can get the code here.
The animation settings
All the below animations are based on the same animation setting as below.
ofFloat(0f, 3600f).apply {
repeatMode = REVERSE
repeatCount = INFINITE
interpolator = AccelerateDecelerateInterpolator()
duration = 10000
addUpdateListener { animation ->
// The animation settings are all listed below
}
}.start()
Rotation animation
There are 3 types of rotations
1. Rotation
view_fan.rotation = progress
This is actually Axis-Z rotation. But it looks natural rotation from the top view, hence it is just named rotation.
2. RotationX
text_happy.rotationX = progress
This is rotating on the Axis X, which makes it more like a 3D feel of the text.
3. RotationY
text_arrow.rotationY = progress
This is rotating on the Axis Y, which makes it more like a 3D feel of the text. The Text is just >-> , with some semi-transparent background color.
Translation Animation
There are 3 types of basic translations shown below.
Note: translation API might be confusing especially for animate, as it has x , xBy , translationX , (for Y and Z as well). They are well explained in https://stackoverflow.com/a/50190859/3286489
4. TranslationX
view_yatch.translationX = progress/10
This is basically moving along the X-Axis. The /10 is to slow down the movement.
5. TranslationY
view_hotair.translationY = - progress/10
This is basically moving along the Y-Axis. It is negative, as moving upward is negative. The coordinate of Y starts from Top to Bottom.
6. TranslationZ
btn_press_me.translationZ = progress/50
This is moving towards the Z-Axis. It is only applied to the shadow around it, while the view size is retained. Making it feel that the button moving upward. For View without shadow, this effect isn’t visible.
Other Basic Animation
7. Alpha
view_cloud.alpha = (3600 - progress)/3600
This is changing the transparency of the view. The value is from 0 (totally transparent) to 1 (totally opaque). This is useful to fade in and fade out an object.
8 & 9. ScaleX and ScaleY
view_sun.scaleX = progress/3600 + 1
view_sun.scaleY = progress/3600 + 1
This change both the X and Y scale size. It is changed at the same rate to ensure the image is not distorted.
A value below 1 will make it smaller than the original stated size in the layout, and a value above 1 will make it bigger than the original stated size in the scale of the given number. | https://medium.com/mobile-app-development-publication/fun-learning-android-basic-animator-properties-3f96856a6a3 | [] | 2020-08-12 11:21:54.637000+00:00 | ['Mobile App Development', 'Cartoon', 'Animation', 'Android App Development', 'Apps'] |
Urban Tech Trends in 2017 | A few weeks ago we unveiled the latest eight companies that are part of our URBAN-X smart cities accelerator in Brooklyn. This is the second time we’ve run this program, which differs a little from SOSV’s other ecosystem accelerators, in that the space isn’t constrained by the deep intricacies of a vertical (manufacturing, biotechnology, etc) as much as by environment and mission. The kind of companies we’re interested in working with through this program are changing the way that humans live in cities: they’re working on topics as various as mobility, urban health and safety, energy, waste, water, city planning, construction, and beyond.
We see hundreds of applicants to our program, and interface with hundreds more through our network, mentors, and co-investors. Here are some of the trends we’ve seen ticking up over the last 12 months or so:
Logistics and the Last Mile
Aerial drone delivery companies like Flirtey (flying pizza delivery anyone?) and Matternet are taking to the skies, while Starship and Dispatch are developing ground-based delivery solutions that promise to bring unattended delivery to our homes and offices. We’re fascinated by this space but we also believe there are several extremely practical opportunities that can baby-step us towards autonomy by augmenting existing human workers, rather than replacing them outright.
One example of a company in this space is our portfolio company Upcycles. They’re developing human-electric hybrid delivery cargo bicycles. While we’re making great progress as an industry towards solving the last mile problem, the last-100-meters problem remains a daunting one: that set of stairs, that locked door, those special delivery instructions. Upcycles combines unique bikes and containers with human delivery worker expertise to navigate these obstacles, but imagines a world where our vehicles evolve to reduce the human effort and elevate the service worker to the role of an overseer.
Upgrading the Built World
We’re already seeing massive shifts in the way that buildings are constructed and utilized. There’s more to come. While WeLive, Common, and their peers are rethinking the way we use shared spaces, startups like Kasita are reimagining what it means to design and buy a home. Construction robotics is particularly interesting right now. Soon we’ll see buildings constructed entirely by robots. Perhaps they’ll be 3d printed on location, or maybe they’ll be built by intelligent robots through semi-conventional means. We expect to see more and more startups that treat the built world as a canvas.
While we wait for the next generation of homes and offices to be built, there are a host of retrofit improvements that we can make to existing buildings to make them more efficient and energy-friendly. Recent advances in Solar and battery tech are a big piece of the equation here, as are HVAC system improvements like BuildSense, which works with existing building management systems to determine accurate room occupancy numbers for energy and airflow adjustments. Another example is our portfolio company nello, which has developed an upgrade solution that transforms legacy building intercom systems into smart locks to help friends and workers access apartments and deliver packages securely with flexible customer rules.
The Autonomous City
We’re in the middle of a massive IoT growth spurt: analysts predict that more than 100 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2025, thanks largely to the falling cost of sensors and ubiquitously cheap and widely available computing power. Those same cheap compute cycles, combined with big structured data sets and quality opensource frameworks (leveraging some recent algorithmic advances) are what’s led to the recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Every piece of technology requires a posterchild application, and autonomous vehicles have driven an incredibly large number of eyeballs to AI and ML (including some very high profile acquisitions).
As excited as we are about moving people from place to place, we believe that Transportation-as-a-Service is just one of dozens of areas of city life that will be affected by AI-borne automation. What does a completely automated city look like? Can we use data collected by smart sensors (such as Numina) to turn the city itself into an actuator network, triggering next generation city service on demand? Think waste collection, code enforcement, traffic congestion mitigation, in addition to (of course) adaptive advertising… Consider Amazon’s experiments with cashier-free Go stores and the other changes that are coming to retail, or Eatsa’s automated fast food restaurants (it’s good). Or the sewer robots that will patrol our future sewers, monitoring urban health problems so we can live healthier lives… There are precious few facets of life that AI won’t have an effect on over the next decade. And likewise, few jobs that won’t be affected.
Thinking Further Afield
Some of the most interesting opportunities we see will take advantage of second order effects. Take, for example, the inevitable changes that autonomous vehicles will bring about. How will roads and public spaces transform when personal cars are all but eliminated from our cities? How will parking spaces be repurposed? What does cheap, plentiful, and efficient vehicular automation mean for public transportation en masse? What happens to fuel stations? How will our cities and roads be maintained without the same level of taxes and fines? How will alternative mobility (bikes, boards, etc) evolve? And what does this mean for the service economy? Some of the most interesting startups we’ve seen are already working on answers to these questions, and the best among them are finding ways to be immediately relevant.
Finally, I think it’s important to mention that we’re seeing an increasing number of fascinating startups operating outside of North America and Western Europe. I firmly believe that some of the biggest and most important advances in smart cities technology will come from the developing world, in places that aren’t traditional startup hubs, where the regulatory environment is friendlier to city-scale innovation and some of the problems that are annoyances to us here in New York are far, far more problematic. Whether the problem is traffic and congestion, ocean farming, or long-range medicine delivery, we look forward to seeing more founders in Jakarta, Lagos, Karachi, Riyadh, and beyond stepping up to shape the future of our cities. After all, these are the megacities of tomorrow. | https://medium.com/sosv-accelerator-vc/urban-tech-trends-in-2017-2231b03b6e68 | ['Nick Plante'] | 2017-04-17 22:10:12.176000+00:00 | ['Self Driving Cars', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Startup', 'Smart Cities'] |
About Me — Tom Fenske | About Me — Tom Fenske
An engineer discovering the world of online writing
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash
Hi fellow writers,
I’m happy to be able to introduce myself to this community. My name is Tom, I’m 31 years old, and I am a full-time power plant engineer. I live together with my son and my fiancee in a small city south of Berlin, Germany.
My Medium story
I have to admit that I stumbled upon this platform of Medium almost by accident. In spring and early summer, I was doing an online course to learn more about Data Science and work with some tools by myself. I started the course because I am generally interested in the field, and I thought it would be advantageous in my job. When I was searching online for some Data Science-related topics, I landed on this page called Medium. I eventually signed up to read more than the three free articles and can say that I fell in love with this platform ever since. I still am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of quality content on such a variety of topics. As said, I used it to find some additional insights on Data Science, but I shortly started to read about other topics like online businesses, personal stories, and life advice.
Since then, what rattled my cage was Medium's methodology, where anybody can publish an article on a topic he chooses and even can make money from it. This was earth-shaking for me because I didn’t know that such platforms existed. It got me curious, so I started to write some pieces by myself.
I figured that it would be easiest to start with a topic I am comfortable with, so my first pieces covered Personal Finance. I was able to get them published in a publication, and they eventually earned me my first dollar from writing ever (it was the 6th of October 2020, by the way). This feeling thrilled me, and I am so curious to find out where this leads.
Though I have to admit that the money-earning part initially caught me, it is not the only reason for writing. In my studies, I had to write several pieces besides my thesis, but they were in a dry scientific style, obviously. In writing down what came to my mind and what might be useful for others, I found a new hobby. I discovered that writing calms me and makes me feel better, and I think I am more balanced overall. So, even if I wouldn’t be paid on Medium, I would write nevertheless only for my well-being. | https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-tom-fenske-afa9902fdba1 | ['Tom Fenske'] | 2020-12-22 19:09:01.506000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'About Me', 'Bio', 'Life', 'Side Hustle'] |
SIMDAQ Project Development Report | August 2018
This month is the final stage of preparation for the first release of SIMDAQ platform. Recent Q and A session with SIMDAQ founder Eugene Dubovoi announced all the current aspects and we appreciate how impatiently you are waiting for the launch.
We would like to share with active community of crypto-enthusiasts our latest upgrades and satisfy you interests of such a tool because in a very near future SIMDAQ platform is going to be available for users.
A considerable amount of effort is required to launch a new program. In August we finished developing of all platform modules and made sure everything works perfectly. We summarized many steps, details and individual cases in the process of developing.
At the moment we are streaming to work with content of our trading lessons, feed and quests. Our programmers are making final tests of the platform via users’ interface and correct possible mistakes. They are uploading real historical data for trading simulator.
In August we launched our new landing page and it is already possible to see login system there, so we are testing it from the side of potential users. Currently, according the authorization, now you can’t log into the system, but the registration will be opened right at release date. This is the only step we need to do. And of course, except of mandatory approvals, it is needed to effectively plan and implement a program’s marketing and communications strategy.
What turns out to really matter is having in place a specific set of core capabilities, the most important of which are team collaboration, incorporation of market insights, rigorous planning of upcoming launches, and our customers’ support. These factors are a source of success in our hands and we want to share it with you after the launch! | https://medium.com/simdaq-blog/simdaq-project-development-report-a5a09c8419cd | [] | 2018-08-30 13:38:32.527000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Startup', 'Trading', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
Identifying and Eliminating Design Clutter From Data Visualizations | Data Visualization — Part 3
Identifying and Eliminating Design Clutter From Data Visualizations
Clutter, whether you’re walking into your grandma’s basement or looking at a computer screen with colors, numbers, and shapes, results in mental overload.
If you’ve never heard of Edward Tufte, a pioneer in the field of data visualization, I highly suggest researching and reading his work. He’s known for such quotes as “Simple design, intense content,” and “If the information is in chaos, don’t start throwing out information; instead, fix the design.”
In his book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Tufte writes, “the larger share of a graphic’s ink devoted to data, the better.” Tufte is referencing balancing the appropriate number of elements to communicate while reducing non-essential, distracting elements.
The more difficult it is to understand the point of a visualization, the less credibility it will carry and making visuals complicated will not make you look smarter.
Even if you’re explaining it in person, if it’s too cluttered, you’ll most likely be speaking for too long and find that you’re explaining things related but not connected to your point or goal. In other words, chaotic data visuals can lead you to talk in circles.
Common Mistakes
People make common mistakes when creating data visualizations that can mean the difference between being dismissed and attracting interest. These mistakes are in part because people are mixing and crossing over into different disciplines.
A designer and artist is rarely a mathematician and analyst. These are two sides of the brain working together to create a product that appeals to both logic and reason in your audience’s minds.
Data Design is Where Small Things Matter
Colors can be underestimated elements in a design. Poor color schemes and dark background colors are the most common fails. Utilizing colors strategically to direct an audience’s eyes and highlight a point will ensure that every detail you add to a design will have a clear purpose and meaning.
Fonts are another subtle detail that should go unnoticed. Fonts that don’t align with the design’s tone and using different fonts in the same project are eye-catching in a negative way.
Other mistakes are vertical or angled labels, overly thick borders and gridlines, and ‘extra’ clip art that’s not adding value.
Clearing up Space on Screen and in Your Head
Visual principles to consider
Proximity refers to how close things are to one another. People typically assume that things close together are in a group or related somehow. Patterns of objects placed in rows, lines, or in a hierarchy indicate distinction.
refers to how close things are to one another. People typically assume that things close together are in a group or related somehow. Patterns of objects placed in rows, lines, or in a hierarchy indicate distinction. Similarity in shape, color, and proximity are indicators of association. Using these mental visual pattern-associations to your advantage will draw attention to the right places and result in the intended meaning.
in shape, color, and proximity are indicators of association. Using these mental visual pattern-associations to your advantage will draw attention to the right places and result in the intended meaning. Visual order is one of the easiest things to fix without destroying your overall product. Elements that are well placed and ‘easy’ on the eyes and head will utilize alignment and white space to outline a path for someone’s eyes to follow. If you look at your design and find that you’re randomly looking all over the page without direction you might find that your visual order needs to be adjusted.
is one of the easiest things to fix without destroying your overall product. Elements that are well placed and ‘easy’ on the eyes and head will utilize alignment and white space to outline a path for someone’s eyes to follow. If you look at your design and find that you’re randomly looking all over the page without direction you might find that your visual order needs to be adjusted. White space is good. Plan on having space between elements and around elements to give mental pauses and meaning to the thoughtful and specific elements you’ve selected.
Design Actions
Soften gridlines and chart borders to allow more significant contrast in the data which supports your point or goal.
and chart borders to allow more significant contrast in the data which supports your point or goal. Remove extra clip art, markers, and dots that sit on a gridline if they do not have a clear purpose.
extra clip art, markers, and dots that sit on a gridline if they do not have a clear purpose. Abbreviate dates, months, dollars, and counties/states where possible to keep charts clean and ample white space on the page.
dates, months, dollars, and counties/states where possible to keep charts clean and ample white space on the page. Label values directly on, over, or next to a visual to speed up mental calculations and comparisons.
There are theories of visual perception in which data visualization best practices are grounded. One of those is the Gestalt principles, the law of continuity and closure, and the figure-ground relationship. The theory centers around the idea that people’s perception is based on their sensory information interpretation. What understanding these principals can do for you as a data storyteller is to help you leverage what we know people are most commonly drawn to and perceive when they see visuals.
Don Norman’s ‘levels of design’ is another group of theories set into practice by a pioneer in design thinking. Visceral design, for example, looks at how the qualities of an object makes people feel. Is there an icon, a color, or a shape that you can add to a data story that stirs some ‘connectedness’ or emotion in the audience? | https://medium.com/the-innovation/identifying-and-eliminating-design-clutter-from-data-visualizations-15c2d6fdf47 | ['Kristi Pelzel'] | 2020-12-10 20:26:33.879000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Business', 'Data Visualization', 'Marketing', 'Communication'] |
Why do we need spirituality | We all know the world we live in and its impact on our lives. By using our intellectual minds and reasoning prowess, we have solved many mysteries engulfing us. We have profound knowledge of almost everything ranging from the vast space to the tiniest microorganisms.
Yet, there are still many questions that need to be addressed like “who am I, what is my true nature, what is my role on earth, knowledge about the creator, etc”.
We have tried different concepts to quench the inner thirst, but have failed.
Here I present to you, two reasons why we need spirituality than anything else. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/need-for-spirituality-d61f3cfda42f | ['Darshak Rana'] | 2020-10-01 03:41:58.103000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Self Improvement', 'Healing', 'Spirituality', 'Life'] |
Feature Selection Techniques in Machine Learning with Python | With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts — Eleanor Roosevelt
We all may have faced this problem of identifying the related features from a set of data and removing the irrelevant or less important features with do not contribute much to our target variable in order to achieve better accuracy for our model.
Feature Selection is one of the core concepts in machine learning which hugely impacts the performance of your model. The data features that you use to train your machine learning models have a huge influence on the performance you can achieve.
Irrelevant or partially relevant features can negatively impact model performance.
Feature selection and Data cleaning should be the first and most important step of your model designing.
In this post, you will discover feature selection techniques that you can use in Machine Learning.
Feature Selection is the process where you automatically or manually select those features which contribute most to your prediction variable or output in which you are interested in.
Having irrelevant features in your data can decrease the accuracy of the models and make your model learn based on irrelevant features.
How to select features and what are Benefits of performing feature selection before modeling your data?
· Reduces Overfitting: Less redundant data means less opportunity to make decisions based on noise.
· Improves Accuracy: Less misleading data means modeling accuracy improves.
· Reduces Training Time: fewer data points reduce algorithm complexity and algorithms train faster.
I want to share my personal experience with this.
I prepared a model by selecting all the features and I got an accuracy of around 65% which is not pretty good for a predictive model and after doing some feature selection and feature engineering without doing any logical changes in my model code my accuracy jumped to 81% which is quite impressive
Now you know why I say feature selection should be the first and most important step of your model design.
Feature Selection Methods:
I will share 3 Feature selection techniques that are easy to use and also gives good results.
1. Univariate Selection
2. Feature Importance
3.Correlation Matrix with Heatmap
Let’s have a look at these techniques one by one with an example
You can download the dataset from here https://www.kaggle.com/iabhishekofficial/mobile-price-classification#train.csv
Description of variables in the above file
battery_power: Total energy a battery can store in one time measured in mAh
blue: Has Bluetooth or not
clock_speed: the speed at which microprocessor executes instructions
dual_sim: Has dual sim support or not
fc: Front Camera megapixels
four_g: Has 4G or not
int_memory: Internal Memory in Gigabytes
m_dep: Mobile Depth in cm
mobile_wt: Weight of mobile phone
n_cores: Number of cores of the processor
pc: Primary Camera megapixels
px_height
Pixel Resolution Height
px_width: Pixel Resolution Width
ram: Random Access Memory in MegaBytes
sc_h: Screen Height of mobile in cm
sc_w: Screen Width of mobile in cm
talk_time: the longest time that a single battery charge will last when you are
three_g: Has 3G or not
touch_screen: Has touch screen or not
wifi: Has wifi or not
price_range: This is the target variable with a value of 0(low cost), 1(medium cost), 2(high cost) and 3(very high cost).
1. Univariate Selection
Statistical tests can be used to select those features that have the strongest relationship with the output variable.
The scikit-learn library provides the SelectKBest class that can be used with a suite of different statistical tests to select a specific number of features.
The example below uses the chi-squared (chi²) statistical test for non-negative features to select 10 of the best features from the Mobile Price Range Prediction Dataset.
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from sklearn.feature_selection import SelectKBest
from sklearn.feature_selection import chi2 data = pd.read_csv("D://Blogs//train.csv")
X = data.iloc[:,0:20] #independent columns
y = data.iloc[:,-1] #target column i.e price range #apply SelectKBest class to extract top 10 best features
bestfeatures = SelectKBest(score_func=chi2, k=10)
fit = bestfeatures.fit(X,y)
dfscores = pd.DataFrame(fit.scores_)
dfcolumns = pd.DataFrame(X.columns)
#concat two dataframes for better visualization
featureScores = pd.concat([dfcolumns,dfscores],axis=1)
featureScores.columns = ['Specs','Score'] #naming the dataframe columns
print(featureScores.nlargest(10,'Score')) #print 10 best features
Top 10 Best Features using SelectKBest class
2. Feature Importance
You can get the feature importance of each feature of your dataset by using the feature importance property of the model.
Feature importance gives you a score for each feature of your data, the higher the score more important or relevant is the feature towards your output variable.
Feature importance is an inbuilt class that comes with Tree Based Classifiers, we will be using Extra Tree Classifier for extracting the top 10 features for the dataset.
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
data = pd.read_csv("D://Blogs//train.csv")
X = data.iloc[:,0:20] #independent columns
y = data.iloc[:,-1] #target column i.e price range
from sklearn.ensemble import ExtraTreesClassifier
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
model = ExtraTreesClassifier()
model.fit(X,y)
print(model.feature_importances_) #use inbuilt class feature_importances of tree based classifiers
#plot graph of feature importances for better visualization
feat_importances = pd.Series(model.feature_importances_, index=X.columns)
feat_importances.nlargest(10).plot(kind='barh')
plt.show()
top 10 most important features in data
3.Correlation Matrix with Heatmap
Correlation states how the features are related to each other or the target variable.
Correlation can be positive (increase in one value of feature increases the value of the target variable) or negative (increase in one value of feature decreases the value of the target variable)
Heatmap makes it easy to identify which features are most related to the target variable, we will plot heatmap of correlated features using the seaborn library. | https://towardsdatascience.com/feature-selection-techniques-in-machine-learning-with-python-f24e7da3f36e | ['Raheel Shaikh'] | 2018-10-28 12:23:39.641000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Python', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization'] |
Darkness | Dark to light, it has universal appeal
In the first rays of the sun the joy we feel
Makes us forget darkness, it’s can’t reveal
From it, our awareness we must peel | https://dr-niranjanseshadri.medium.com/darkness-7c050425133 | ['Dr. Niranjan Seshadri'] | 2019-08-18 18:35:08.540000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Self-awareness', 'Mind', 'Darkness', 'Thoughts'] |
Introduction to Apache Airflow. Things you need to know to get started… | An Airflow workflow is designed as a directed acyclic graph (DAG). when authoring a workflow, it is divided into tasks which can be executed independently. You can then merge these tasks into a logical whole by combining them into a graph. Each task in a workflow is idempotent
In your wandering thoughts you might be thinking what are the benefits of Using airflow
Benefits of airflow
It can handle upstream/downstream data gracefully Easy access to historical data (backfill and rerun for historical data) Easy error handling (retry if failure happen) It has a Fantastic community (You can join the airflow community on slack) Extendable thought the use of operators It has Fantastic logging capabilities Scalability and dependency management Powerful monitoring you can run and view workflow execution in real-time Programmatically author, schedule and monitor workflows or data pipelines Great Alerting System Access through REST API’s It can be used locally and in the cloud (which is someone else’s computer 😆 😜)
Major Cloud service providers for airflow are ASTRONOMER.IO and google cloud composer
Use cases of airflow
Apache airflow can be used for various purposes
ETL (extract, transform, load) jobs Extracting data from multiple sources Machine Learning pipelines Data warehousing Orchestrating automated testing
Here are some notable mentions
Concepts in airflow
OPERATORS DAG TASKS CONNECTORS HOOKS VARIABLES XCOM EXECUTORS
1) OPERATORS
An operator describes a single task in a workflow. Operators are usually (but not always) atomic, meaning they can stand on their own and don’t need to share resources with any other operators. An operator is simply a Python class with an “execute()” method, which gets called when it is being run.
Types of Operators in Airflow
i. Action
ii. Transfer
iii. Sensor
2. DAG
DAGs describe how to run a workflow. DAG is simply a Python script that contains a set of tasks and their dependencies. What each task does is determined by the task’s operator Simply put a DAG is a collection of tasks with defined dependencies and relationships
A DagRun is an instance of a DAG, it is created by scheduler or ut can be triggered manually
3.TASKS
Tasks are defined in DAGs, and both are written in Python code to define what you want to do. What each task does is determined by the task’s operator
4.CONNECTORS
The information needed to connect to external systems is stored in the Airflow stores all connectors in its metastore database, ⭐️ The variable section can also hold these “so-called connection data and parameters” but according to best practices they should be stored as connectors. But guess what? if you are one of those developers that dont love to read documentations you can store them wherever you like
5.HOOKS
Hooks are used to interact with external systems, like S3, HIVE, SFTP, databases etc. All communication with external services are done using hooks
operator <->hooks <-> externalAPI
6. VARIABLES
Variables are a generic way to store and retrieve arbitrary content or settings as a simple key-value pair This can be likened to environment Variables
7. XCOM
Even though operators are idempotent, they still need to share information or a small amount of data (operator cross-communication ) and this is where XCOM comes into the picture XComs let tasks exchange messages, The name is an abbreviation of “cross-communication”.
8. EXECUTORS
Executors are the mechanism by which task instances get to run. Airflow has support for various executors. TYPES OF EXECUTORS
1. DebugExecutors (runs tasks in a single process, Simple but not good for production)
2. LocalExecutors (runs tasks in a separate process)
3. CeleryExecutor (Sends tasks to celery worker hard to set up but best for production)
4. KubernetesExecutor (Spawns new pod with airflow and runs task BEST SUITED FOR HEAVY TASKS) Executors are very important and at first, the concept might appear complex but there’s a thorough explanation provided by Astronomer.io
CONCLUSION
One of the biggest benefits of airflow is that it allows you to programmatically define workflows. It gives users the freedom to write what code to execute at every step of the pipeline.
Airflow also has a very powerful and well-equipped UI. That makes tracking jobs, backfilling jobs, and configuring the platform an easy task | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/apache-airflow-what-it-is-and-why-you-should-start-using-it-c6334090265d | ['Jeremiah Ogunyemi'] | 2020-07-24 13:54:44.388000+00:00 | ['Apache Airflow', 'Python', 'Data Pipeline', 'Workflow', 'Workflow Automation'] |
What is Central Limit Theorem | The Central Limit Theorem is one of the important theories in Statistics and Probability. In this article, you will understand what is Central Limit Theorem, why it is important, what it tells us, and how it used, etc.
Central Limit Theorem (CLT)
The Central Limit Theorem states that “given a dataset with unknown distribution, the sample means will approximate the normal distribution”.
What does this mean?
Let’s consider a population of size m. You don’t know the distribution of the population. It can be normal, binomial, exponential, uniform, or some random distribution. But if we were to draw n samples with sample size, say 50, the distribution of means of these samples (or simply, sampling distribution) will approximate a normal distribution.
Let’s look at an example. In the below example, population follows a uniform distribution . When you plot the sample means, the central limit theorem kick-in and follows the normal distribution.
Assumptions of Central Limit Theorem
Random Sampling: Samples must be chosen randomly.
Samples must be chosen randomly. Independence Assumption: Samples should be independent of each other. If the samples are chosen randomly we can assume that the independence assumption is met.
Samples should be independent of each other. If the samples are chosen randomly we can assume that the independence assumption is met. 10% Condition: The sample size should be no more than 10% of the population when sampling is done without replacement.
The sample size should be no more than 10% of the population when sampling is done without replacement. Sample Size Assumption: The sample size should be sufficiently large enough. If the population data is skewed, then the sample size should be large. If the symmetric then the sample size can be small.
Why Central Limit Theorem is important?
Why should you study Central Limit Theorem? How it will be useful to you. Let’s try to understand this with the help of these two important properties of CLT.
Normality Assumption: This is the very definition of CLT that ‘given a dataset with unknown distribution, the sample means will approximate the normal distribution’. As the sample size increases, the sampling distribution converges more and more closely to a normal distribution. This assumption holds good even when the unknown data is not normally distributed. As we already discussed, the normal distribution has very interesting properties that help you solve many statistical hypotheses.
Precision of Estimates: If you were to draw sampling distribution with varying the sample sizes you will notice that, as sample size increases, the sample mean will come closer to the real population mean. In other words, as the sample size increases the estimate* of the population mean will be more precise. This also means that the smaller the sample size, the less accurate or precise your estimation of the population mean.
*Note: We almost always don’t know about the population parameters. So, we always estimate the population parameters i.e. sample mean, sample standard deviation.
Conclusion
Hope you have understood what is Central Limit Theorem and why it is important. | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/the-central-limit-theorem-clt-1e0aa9f5ebda | ['Chetan Ambi'] | 2020-09-23 01:35:53.949000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Statistics', 'Central Limit Theorem', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science'] |
Cost to Hire Python Developer 2021 | We all know that there are many well-known popular projects are created in Python, such as desktop Dropbox, Quora, Reddit, Instagram, Paypal, Mozilla, NASA, Pinterest, Youtube (the whole codebase is written in Python almost). By Google, Mozilla, Facebook, Dropbox, Yandex, Red Hat, Intel, Microsoft, the Python language is supported in web development 2020 made some resources predict Python’s full domination.
So, Nowadays, business and startups are highly demanding the python developers for large project development. But, many companies have questions about how much does it cost to hire Python developer. Right! Here you can get your answer regarding the cost, and hiring process of python developer.
Before evaluating the cost to hire Python developers, let’s have a quick overview of Python’s popularity and usage area.
Popularity:
Python is declared the 2nd most famous programming language as per the PYPL Popularity of programming language.
Have a look at the python popularity graph according to Google Trends.
Python used in many areas such as,
Web development (from little micro to macro web applications)
Scientific and numeric (Predicting matches score, weather, etc.)
Software development (making testing and control software)
Desktop GUIs (Graphical User Interface)
Let’s Evaluate the Cost to Hire Python Developer.
For your business, Python is the best choice to build a web application. You can hire python developers at affordable prices and get your work done smoothly.
Many options are available in the market to hire Python developers like in-house developers, freelancers, and outsource developers. As per expert opinions, most companies choose outsourcing because that is the most beneficial project option.
Bacancy Technology is one of the leading Python development companies from that you can hire Python developer.
$22 — Hourly rate $2800 — Monthly rate — 5+ years of exp. Python developer
Engagement Model:
Full-Time Hiring — Duration — 8/hours per day, five days/week
Communication: Email, Skype, Phone
Billing: Monthly
Part-Time Hiring — Duration — 4/hours per day, five days/week
Communication: Email, Skype, Phone
Billing: Monthly
Hourly Hiring -
Communication: Email, Skype, Phone
Billing: Monthly
Monthly Hiring — Duration — 160 hours per month
5+ Years of Exp. Python Developer
Communication: Email, Skype, Phone
Billing: Monthly
They provided expert and specialized, knowledgeable Python developers to you. They are good at handling large projects smoothly with high customer satisfaction. Let have a quick view of their Technical stack.
Python Development Stack:
From Bacancy Technology, You can hire Python developers in 5 simple steps, | https://medium.com/the-innovation/cost-to-hire-a-python-developer-2020-21-17b164be6851 | ['Binal Prajapati'] | 2020-11-13 07:16:48.075000+00:00 | ['Cost', 'Hire Python Developers', 'Python Development India', 'Python', 'Python Development'] |
Blockchain Mass Adoption: Expert Takes on What is Needed | Growth hacking to mass adoption
The blockchain industry has reached new heights in 2019 with increased awareness and legitimacy. Industry titans such as Facebook, Wal-Mart, and Salesforce have all publicized their intentions of utilizing blockchain technology in their day to day operations.
While critics could make the argument that blockchain was designed to prevent monopolistic behavior or dominance from the usual suspects, it is hard to argue that the perception of blockchain has changed drastically in the public eye since 2017.
Predicted to be a $23 billion industry by 2023, the blockchain industry is now grabbing the attention of legacy corporations, entrepreneurs, and governments as a real and applicable solution to many problems.
With this being said, the industry is still nascent and has many challenges to overcome. These include scalability, security, education, interoperability, costs, speed, and more.
To learn more about these challenges and what is needed to reach mass adoption, we asked entrepreneurs who are working endlessly to build blockchain solutions for the world:
1. Colin Pape, Founder of Presearch
In my opinion, there are multiple significant challenges facing blockchain projects. These include the massive network effects from incumbent competitors such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, banking cartels and payment processors. Second, ongoing security concerns that are omnipresent due to the use of blockchain technology as a currency. Lastly, it is very difficult to convert accumulated blockchain value to tangible real-world value.
We are in the early days of the next paradigm of value exchange and participation on the internet, and there will be major growing pains.
That said, those projects that figure out how to combine seamless user experiences, gamified rewards that incentivize usage and anti-abuse mechanisms to protect the value of their currency, with actual consumer utility will be well-positioned to lead the masses toward a future where users control their data and are rewarded constantly as they take an active role in crafting the services the trust and rely on.
Find more about Colin’s project: https://presearch.io/
2. Ken DiCross, Founder of Airwire
I see 3 key components that will open up the floodgates for the general public to enter the space is mass. First, financial gain propositions for individuals. Second, applications with ease of use on par or better than the traditional economies they are looking to disrupt. Lastly, established companies using the first two components to convert their main backend systems to blockchain
Blockchain will grow the fastest by converting large allies and their established networks currently on the sidelines. This is arguably the slowest process of the 3 mentioned above. Companies, even when faced with clear advantages to new systems and processes, are often hesitant to pull the trigger. Education, security assurances, and large cost saving advantages will expedite the conversion time. The last few months with Whole Foods, Facebook, and others, has been a monumental shift in our favor
All of us in this space should have a primary focus on the individual user. We have to ask ourselves, “What makes someone download and use an app every day?” It’s quite simple. It adds perceived value to their lives and it functions so well that the user doesn’t need or care where the technology behind the app has been produced. It just works! We need use cases and platforms that are indistinguishable from traditional competitors that force users to evaluate on something other than how easy it is to use a product. The evaluation needs to be based on compelling financial incentives for the user rather than traditional businesses where the large corporations are collecting the lion’s share of profits.
The future discussed above is an economy where users are financially incentivized in ways the world has never seen. Distributed economies will be a hard pill to swallow as company profits will be diminished on a large scale. Companies, just like fiat, will have to play by these rules or they will go extinct. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain development are moving at such a pace that this paradigm shift is within sight.
Find more about Ken’s project: https://airwire.io/
3. Jag Singh, Co-founder & CEO of Vid
For blockchain to have mass adoption, the industry needs buy-in from both average consumers and major industries. We’re seeing the likes of IBM, Amazon, JP Morgan and other major companies are not only using blockchain technology but starting to offer blockchain-enabled services to their clients and partners. However, the average consumer isn’t using any applications or services that are built on the blockchain because of usability and trust hurdles.
For mass adoption, the market needs ‘blockchain-hidden’ applications that are either built into existing consumer products or built as alternatives to today’s products/services. One industry that is primed for disruption by blockchain is the social media industry. Social media, with nearly 3 billion monthly active users worldwide, has faced major data privacy and censorship issues in recent history and consumers are looking for alternatives to use instead of giants such as Facebook and YouTube.
Legitimate blockchain-based social networks are starting to see major influencers, and their following, move away from traditional social media and to blockchain alternatives thanks to the security, transparency and trust that comes with using blockchain tech.
Current challenges facing the blockchain industry include regulatory uncertainty, adoption issues, and cryptocurrency volatility. Regulation is being decided on a country-by-country basis in perhaps the fastest growing and most global industry we’ve ever seen. To make matters worse, regulation varies drastically from one country to another and the future is uncertain, making it difficult for startups to fully understand the implications of domiciling their company in one country versus another. Governments are inherently slow at making decisions given the bureaucracy at hand.
Find more about Jag’s project: https://vid.camera/
4. Robert Küfner, Founder of Advanced Blockchain
Since mining Bitcoin in 2010, I have seen the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain advance from offering an alternative monetary solution to becoming incorporated into the roadmaps of large companies. A company I co-founded, Advanced Blockchain AG, a German publicly listed consultancy and software-as-a-service company, was founded with a mission statement to lead enterprise clients into the world of decentralization.
ABAG is working with multiple enterprise clients including one of Germany’s largest automotive companies. In order to further the vision of decentralization, we believe there needs to be significant diligence with how these companies implement distributed ledger technology. For this reason, we are expanding to the United States through the German Accelerator, a government-funded program, to bring German tech companies to America.
This lack of standardization prompted our company to develop peaq.io, which is our response to the inefficiencies plaguing today’s existing protocols in the broader blockchain ecosystem. Thus far, there have not been many decentralized applications underpinned by blockchain that have made their way to the public markets, and hence when designing peaq.io’s DaGChain system, we made it a priority to ensure the protocol was as usable as possible.
As we have seen with Facebook, several enterprise companies are trying to find ways to make blockchain usable, and a source of convenience for its users, while offering significant revenue potential. Such moves have enabled new innovation possibilities, something ABAG has mastered by working in the largest industries in Germany and will continue to support to help make blockchain mainstream.
Find more about Robert’s project: https://www.advancedblockchain.com/
5. Ken Misuma, CMO of Quras
We see blockchain as the next technology revolution following the internet era. For blockchain to gain global adoption, our industry needs to make it easy for people to use everyday applications that are built on the blockchain. Taking lessons in mass adoption from successful, tech-driven industries such as digital finance, global payments, and online gaming, we need to allow blockchain technology to blend into the background of people’s daily activities. Blockchain technology needs to add new value to the average consumer beyond current technology constraints.
A use case that is often highlighted is how blockchain can provide financial inclusion to over 2 billion unbanked people in the world through fast, verified, and secure payment networks. Just like with any new service, product, or technology, if consumers find that it adds value to their lives, it will be adopted by the masses.
Since the blockchain marketplace is only a decade old and still quite nascent, there are many challenges that the industry has to face. Even as the digital currency markets saw a major bear market for much of the last year, more people, companies, and governments are believing in blockchain technology.
One of the biggest challenges the industry faces is regulatory. Regulation balance is important to support the growth of the industry and facilitate adoption, however regulation as a whole is moving slowly relative to the speed of this marketplace. If regulation is too strict, it will destroy promising startups. If regulation is too loose, it will allow frauds to participate in the market without consequences. Regulation can be seen as both a challenge and an opportunity as regulatory balance and flexibility are key to industry growth while building trust and support from the global populace.
Find more about Ken’s project: https://quras.io/en/
6. Alesandro Toumi, CEO & Founder of Neutro.io
Blockchain sometimes feels as though it’s the first technology that expects to be adopted at scale without being as rich and usable as the technology or system it’s replacing. While there’s a lot wrong with fiat systems in terms of accessibility, blockchain isn’t there yet in terms of being truly decentralized, diverse, efficient and easy to use for anyone.
Blockchains themselves are inefficient, with trade-offs being made within the protocol that means scalability, security and decentralization are seen as mutually exclusive — the so-called ‘trilemma’ highlighted by Vitalk Buterin. Blockchains typically are introspective, unable to assimilate values from the real world without deferring to oracles, and effectively centralizing the whole system.
I created the Neutro protocol to make mass adoption and mass availability possible for decentralized systems. The first step has been to create a protocol that is efficient and solves the trilemma. This means a faster, secure, and efficient blockchain that is scalable and still completely decentralized. It can reach its own consensus on external values using a novel voting structure. This has huge implications as almost any real-world market can exist on the blockchain from financial markets to insurance to simple transactions in a completely decentralized way.
The final step must be how usable the technology is. At Neutro, we believe that mass adoption comes with scalability and a diverse range of use cases with a blockchain that is almost as diverse as current financial systems.
Find more about Alesandro’s project: https://neutro.io/ | https://medium.com/hackernoon/blockchain-mass-adoption-expert-takes-on-what-is-needed-5ae43dc9edb9 | ['Jared Polites'] | 2019-07-10 13:56:06.627000+00:00 | ['Decentralization', 'Distributed Ledgers', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
The Dinosaurs and the Young Woman | By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 21, 2020
The chasm grows wider by the day. On one side, we have dinosaurs still unaware that they are dead and on the other, Greta Thunberg. The dinosaurs, in angry denial of reality, are being goaded into a lumbering run by the wit and intelligence of a young woman who will not leave them alone.
The dinosaurs, of course, are the rulers and so powerful no one can stop them. But they are picking up speed toward the cliff edge just as Greta intends.
It’s the story of the generations but amplified by a planetary disaster. Even some of the dinosaurs know things are not going where they thought. Because of that, they allow the most befuddled and ignorant to take the lead, trumpeting, and bellowing.
But even the ones that know are caught and unable to turn around. There is only a narrow ridge that reaches the future, and it is not for dinosaurs. It is for the observant and scientifically aware.
This is the time for the punctuated equilibrium of fast evolution. The dominant dinosaurs have destroyed their world and will not survive. If any of us are to survive, we need to re-evaluate everything we know and everything we do.
Meanwhile, in Washington DC, the desperate maneuvering of criminals determined to avoid paying for their stupidity performs in a theater of the absurd before an amazed audience. Is there no lie so blatant, no crime so evident that it can’t be denied? The absence of shame is their flag of odious pride.
But it has always been this way, they all agree. There has always been only greed and willful ignorance. There has never been knowledge, but only lies and the best liar wins. Their churches have always taught this. We are all liars, so you must believe us.
While the dinosaurs thunder across the plain to the cliff edge, the criminals destroy and then bury all words that once held honor. They take pride in widespread disgust and sneer at anything not stolen. Is this a road to survival?
No. This is not even a mistake. It is so wrong that it is an absolute absence. These people are erasing themselves and are trying to delete all of us around them.
Then what? Greta manages to smile. | https://mike-meyer.medium.com/the-dinosaurs-and-the-young-woman-ee86030103a7 | ['Mike Meyer'] | 2020-01-22 01:54:22.619000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Culture', 'Future', 'Climate Change', 'Change'] |
Is the Concept of Brand Loyalty Dying? | Photo by davisco on Unsplash
Brand loyalty: the tendency for customers to favor one brand, consistently, above its competitors for goods and services, even when new purchasing opportunities expose themselves. Brand loyalty and customer retention go hand-in-hand, and are profitable goals for businesses to target. After all, attracting new customers with higher brand visibility is nice, but unless they stick around, you’re only going to see a short-term boost in revenue.
Brand loyalty was common several decades ago, as consumers put their faith in specific businesses to handle their needs in multiple categories — they consistently bought vehicles from the same manufacturers, and got groceries from the same stores. But is the concept of brand loyalty dying? Have consumers lost the desire to remain loyal to individual brands?
The Idea
There is some evidence to suggest that brand loyalty is dying — for example, 90 percent of common household goods brands are losing market share in certain low-growth categories. And logically, it makes sense that brand loyalty would be dying, for the following reasons:
· The information age. Thanks to the internet, consumers have access to businesses all over the world. They have more choices than ever before, and more information to make those choices, so it’s only natural to assume they’d start choosing less expensive, more convenient products over products produced by their favorite companies.
· The changing nature of work. The American landscape of work is also shifting; instead of working for one company your entire life, you’re more likely to make multiple career switches. Self-employment has also been rising consistently as more people try to avoid working for major corporations. This lowers the importance of loyalty to a population, at least hypothetically.
· Corporate distrust. Finally, Americans trust corporations less than ever before, and that missing trust may be preventing them from investing too heavily in any one big business.
Recent Research: Two Types of Brand Loyalty
However, recent research done by Facebook suggests that brand loyalty is alive and well. The company surveyed 14,700 adults in the United States, examining patterns of behavior across multiple different verticals. Across the board, 77 percent of consumers have the tendency to return to their favorite brands over and over again. However, those 77 percent seem to be split into two main categories:
· Brand loyalists make up 37 percent of the population. They make repeat purchases and are truly “loyal” to their favorite brands, meaning they would not switch given an opportunity like lower prices or more convenient access.
· Repeat purchases make up the remaining 40 percent, and represent people who make purchases at the same brands, frequently, but only because they give them an optimal experience. Given lower prices or more convenience, they would have no problem switching brands.
Brand loyalty isn’t dead, but it has diversified. Brand loyalists are driven by emotions, at least to some degree, when going back to their favorite companies, while the repeat purchasers are driven solely by function. Obviously, the emotional ties are stronger and harder to break, but as long as you can appeal to both categories, you’ll be able to retain a hypothetical 77 percent of your customers.
Do you think that this 77 percent belongs to mostly older generations, with the majority of impulse-driven, information-age-born millennials bouncing from brand to brand? Actually, the opposite is true; millennials seem to be more loyal to brands than any other generation. This is thanks, in part, to their interactions with brands on social media, and their high regard for company values like corporate social responsibility.
Driving More Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is neither a dead nor a dying concept, so how can you increase it for your brand, specifically?
· Personality. First, understand that people don’t forge relationships with companies as easily as they do with other people. Millennials are frequent brand loyalists because they have personal, meaningful engagements with brands online. If you want to inspire that kind of loyalty from your customers, you need to be prepared to give a similarly personal experience. Have real conversations with your customers, and try to address their unique individual needs whenever you can.
· Loyalty programs. Loyalty programs can also be an effective way to encourage repeat purchasers (and start fostering the emotions necessary to recruit brand loyalists). Essentially, you’ll offer your customers rewards — including discounts and freebies — for buying more things from your brand. Just be choosy about what you provide in your loyalty program — a surprising 78 percent of Americans end up abandoning loyalty programs after they sign up. You need to make it worth their time if you want them to stick around.
· Reliability. Next, remember that people choose brands consistently when they want to have a consistent experience. You need to give them that reliably consistent experience if you want them to keep coming back. That means the quality of your products, the quality of your service, and even your brand voice needs to be carefully controlled for all your customers.
· Brand communities. Finally, foster better brand associations and memories by developing interpersonal communities around your brand. These can include things like online forums, meetups, or even social groups connected to your brand. Social connections are easier to foster than brand connections, but your brand will earn the benefits here.
Brand loyalty is not a lost concept, nor is it likely to disappear anytime soon. Brand loyalty is necessarily different today than it was even a decade ago, but with the proper understanding and the right approach, any business can secure more loyalty from its customers.
For more content like this, be sure to check out my podcast, The Entrepreneur Cast! | https://medium.com/swlh/is-the-concept-of-brand-loyalty-dying-c172aee287a6 | ['Jayson Demers'] | 2020-05-19 20:51:01.668000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Branding', 'Branding Strategy', 'Content Strategy', 'Online Marketing'] |
Perspective Is Everything | Here’s the Life Lesson
Everyone faces difficult things, but a shift in perspective is the most effective way to get through challenges. It’s not that I like losing a tooth. And I certainly don’t like spending more money on my teeth this year.
However, I’ve been in a great deal of pain for more than a month. I am willing to do what it takes to live pain-free again.
Sure, I won’t be completely pain-free for the next few days as I recover from surgery. But I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.
Shifting your perspective isn’t always easy, but it’s always worthwhile.
Right now, I’m going through an especially difficult point in my life. There have been several financial and work-life hurdles that I either wasn’t expecting or have found more challenging than usual to overcome.
I feel a great deal of pressure as a single working mom, and it’s even harder to talk to other people about my circumstances because I “made more money than ever” in 2019.
So far, after taxes, all of my dental work over the past year, putting my daughter into a private school, and finally becoming a driver, my savings account is honestly not where I thought it was going to be when I first began making better money a year ago.
And I’ve been deeply ashamed of that over these past couple of months. Getting through that frustration and overwhelm has definitely required a change in my perspective, and it hasn’t been so easy as people make innocent and even well-intended comments about how I’m doing so great. | https://medium.com/mind-cafe/perspective-is-everything-4929fb04eb7b | ['Shannon Ashley'] | 2019-12-15 15:47:29.574000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'Life Lessons', 'Self', 'Shannon Ashley', 'Mental Health'] |
Why Video Is King For Digital Marketers | Video may have killed the radio star, however it has given rise to a veritable universe of other stars, from Charlie Chaplin to PewDiePie. It’s showing no sign of slowing, as it has seamlessly transferred into the digital world.
Currently if you tried to watch all the video content that is uploaded in just one second, it would take you two years of doing only that. Not sleeping, not working, just watching video. That is an insane amount of content. How much of that is cat videos?
Marketing
Given the mind-blowing amount of video that is being produced and consumed by people online, it’s no surprise that brands and agencies have got involved. Marketers have invested bigly (to quote a certain Wotsit-hued world ‘leader’) in video production and promotion. According to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau and PwC report, the amount spent on online video content has usurped banner ad spend for the first time in the UK.
The first six months of the year saw a splurge of £699m on online ads. This equates to an impressive increase of 46% compared to the previous year. In comparison banner ad spend fell by 2% to £685m.
Video is the fastest growing advertising method. From its humble beginnings, it now represents 35% of all display advertising spend. This isn’t particularly surprising if you think how long you spend watching videos per day. Over the last three years, this has grown from 51 minutes a week, to over two hours. Being tagged in videos on Facebook really adds up.
Video… Marketing? What?
If you don’t have video marketing it your box of tricks. You could be missing out on a massive amount of exposure and potential business. Did you know 78% of people watch videos online at least once a week, while 55% watch videos on a daily basis?
The glass half-full way of looking at this is that there are a huge amount of eager recipients for your video content. They are also accustomed to being marketed to in this format.
The pessimistic view point: there is already a vast amount of content bombarding your target audience. This means that you need to work extra hard, or spend extra money to stand out and earn decent response rates.
We’re not saying that video marketing is an easy area to excel in. However, it appears destined to grow. Imagine your brand not being on social media now. Exactly. It’s almost unthinkable. The same will soon be said about video marketing in the next few years.
There isn’t just one method of video marketing. Whatever your marketing aims, or industry, or target audience, video marketing can benefit you.
Platforms
Many people’s first thought when they hear the words ‘video marketing’ are immediately Youtube. However this shouldn’t be where the thoughts stop. Whilst Youtube is an important platform to show off your content, there are also a wide variety of platforms for you to show off.
Half of the UK’s internet browsing now takes place via smartphones, with the majority of this taking place on social media apps. It’s therefore logical that you should ensure your videos are on a social media platform relevant to your target audience.
Facebook
Twitter
Linkedin
Instagram
Snapchat
Youtube
Email
Your Website
Types of video
Video marketing is just like any other avenue in marketing. Content is key. You could produce a beautifully edited video, but if the concept and content is absolute drivel, it will obviously fail.
I’m not going to patronise you to tell you what your business should be marketing about, or what videos to produce. However, if you’re new to video marketing, there may be a couple of types of video you’re not aware of:
Live posts
Recording a live video can seem like a terrifying prospect for brands. Their very existence is often to portray the fact that they are perfect, polished and in many cases aspirational. Pulling back the curtain and revealing that a brand is comprised of mere mortals who are just like the rest of us can be daunting.
There is nothing more authentic than a live video though. No matter how scripted it is, there’s always the opportunity for something to go wrong. This allows the brand to really show a bit of personality and authenticity. Thanks to smartphones, it’s a piece of cake to record a quick video. This works well to give behind-the- scenes views at events, or to make brand announcements.
Millennials tend to distrust traditional adverts and are sceptical of brand messages by default. Producing sincere live videos screams authenticity and can be an effective marketing tool for the younger demographic. This is definitely a growing trend, with 13% of videos being produced across social media being live, over the past year.
Stories
Stories are like old school Facebook statuses, except they are comprised of videos and images. This can be great for a brand to share their experience of an event (or a non-event: a typical day at the office etc.). Stories typically last 24 hours, so are also viewed as authentic by millennial audiences.
Most social media networks now have a stories section with varying degrees of engagement, Instagram -> Snapchat -> Facebook. Be mindful of who your audience is and their preferred platform to decide which networks to adopt.
360/3d video
This is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It’s now relatively straightforward to produce eye-catching 360 and 3d video. Whilst this can be truly spectacular, it’s vital that you don’t let the shiny visuals and effects paper over the gaping holes in your content. When producing one of these videos, it’s important to ask yourself whether this video is worth making in 2d. If the answer is negative, you could be on the slippery slope to making the marketing video version of Piranha 3d.
Just… one more thing
Once you’ve got a solid idea for a video, you know how you’re going to make it and how it’s going to fit into your overall marketing strategy. It’s time to think about where you’re going to display it. It’s worth thinking about the intricacies of each location.
It’s also always better to upload your video directly to the platform, rather than simply linking a Youtube or Vimeo video. This is because ‘native’ video autoplays in a user’s timeline or newsfeed. This means that engagement rates will be higher as users won’t need to go through the exhausting step of clicking on your link.
Approximately 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound as they autoplay on newsfeeds. Is it therefore worth adding subtitles so that all the people covertly skiving in the office can follow the plot of your work?
The length of your video is also a key element of its success. There is a trend at the minute for longer videos on Facebook and particularly Youtube (by long, we mean maximum 2–3 minutes). We’re also seeing this on Instagram. There used to be a theory that shorter was better as brands wanted to get their message across before the audience lost interest and carried on scrolling down their newsfeed. However now there has been a shift in thinking. If you’re content is engaging enough, length is less of an issue.
Having said that, Snapchat tends to be shorter and punchier, Instagram can be either really, but we’d still advise to not go for a Scorsese epic on the platform.
We know it’s possible to start to view your video as a piece of art rather than marketing. You may not want to ruin its exquisite plot with something as uncouth as a call to action. But remember, video marketing creates stronger customer engagement and can be great to drive purchase behaviour. But only if you provide direction to the viewer.
Hopefully this has demonstrated the increasing importance of video marketing in the modern marketing mix, and that whatever the size of your business, video can help you achieve your marketing ambitions. Still not sure, get in touch. | https://medium.com/h2o-creative-communications/why-video-is-king-for-digital-marketers-17ea0af86bdb | ['Adam Brummitt'] | 2018-06-25 13:06:16.341000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Video Marketing', 'Marketing Strategies', 'Digital Marketing', 'Social Media Marketing'] |
Transgender Day of Remembrance: 3 things you can to help | November 20th is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR). Gwendolyn Ann Smith, a transgender woman, founded the day in 1999 to honor the death of another transgender woman, Rita Hester. Every year in the USA and abroad this day represents an opportunity for all individuals to come together and pay their respects to transgender and gender non-conforming people who have lost their lives in the past year.
On this TDoR, please let us not forget about the transgender people who have lost their lives. However, as we remember, reflect, and revere the lost lives, let us also, as a humanitarian society and culture, make a proclamation to become change agents to help preserve the lives of transgender people. In this call to action, let us do the following:
First, let us celebrate life.
Take the time on November 20th to celebrate the lives of the transgender people who are no longer with us. This is important because despite the mourning around the day, these vigils give transgender people faith, hope, and courage to keep working to eradicate the barriers of resistance and highlight the scope of transgender issues and concerns to build levels of solidarity.
Second, let us work to combat the transphobic discrimination, violence, and murders.
This can be done by joining the fight for the equal rights and protections of the LGBTQIA community, joining the fight to transform the patriarchy that festers within minority communities and cultures leading some minority men to have primacy over transgender women, which facilitates toxic masculinity, and joining the fight against interpersonal circumstances that lead to transphobic violence and murders.
And last, let us resist, resist, and resist even more.
President Donald J. Trump poses a huge threat to the human survival and well-being of transgender people. Despite former President Barack H. Obama’s accomplishments for the larger LGBTQIA community, the election and presence of President Trump and Vice-President Pence has created a moral panic within the LGBTQIA community. Both have worked to overturn some of the most substantial LGBTQIA progress from the Obama Administration. Trump’s plan to introduce sweeping anti-trans legislation at the national level will compromise the gender identity of transgender people and lead those who are anti-trans to violate their rights, protections, and ultimately, their existence as human beings.
William T. Hoston, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Political Science
University of Houston — Clear Lake
Author of Toxic Silence: Race, Black Gender Identity, and Addressing the Violence against Black Transgender Women in Houston | https://medium.com/peter-lang/transgender-day-of-remembrance-3-things-you-can-to-help-bcb378f686d6 | ['Peter Lang'] | 2018-11-20 10:45:00.929000+00:00 | ['Authors', 'LGBT Rights', 'New York', 'Transgender', 'LGBT'] |
Holed Up In Tribeca. Living and working from home amidst the… | Holed Up In Tribeca
Living and working from home amidst the NYC Coronavirus outbreak.
Empty Tribeca streets.
This was my first week working from home amidst the Coronavirus outbreak. I am holed up here with my wife in Tribeca, a New York City neighborhood some might typically consider desirable. Yet there is little to be desired in a city and state that currently leads the nation in Coronavirus cases (by a wide margin). And it feels like we are only getting started.
Work informed both me and my wife respectively that we are to work from home indefinitely. Governor Cuomo has since ordered a shutdown of non-essential businesses. My wife and I live in typical New York City fashion. Our apartment is about 700 square feet of “spacious” real estate. It is hard enough for two people to live in this space, let alone configure two home offices that were never here before. When my wife had to purchase a printer for work to accompany the printer we already have at home, that officially triggered the transformation. Home had become work, and work had become home. Where the hell would we store a second printer?
At least we have jobs that permit us to work from home. With so many people in this city and country struggling, particularly in hospitality and service industry jobs, I count my blessings. If we as a society do not take care of those who are suffering during this time — whether that suffering is health-related, economical, or emotional — we will all fail. Apart from the larger issues created by this virus, however, the holed up life working from home presents its own relative challenges.
The Kitchen Bar Is My Office.
My wife occupies the dining room table. We do not have an office, let alone a separate desk. A high-top bar chair has converted itself into my desk chair. My laptop now spends an inordinate amount of time on the bar, which can no longer be used for happy hour or snacks. It feels too much like “work space.”
As last week progressed though, I adapted to this ever encroaching work zone. Before I even approach it in the morning, I change into clothes that are more work appropriate. To each their own, but I cannot work in sweats, and I want to appear somewhat presentable on any video calls. My attire helps to set my mindset for the day. When the work day concludes, I throw on the “home clothes.” At that time I also try to clean my work space to remove anything work-related. This creates some work-life separation and balance. It may be a pain in the ass to set it up my “office” again the next morning, but at least the space is clean for the evening.
Confidentiality and Privacy, Anyone?
Did I mention that my wife and I are both working from home in 700 square feet? On top of that, we also work for competitors. Obviously we are careful to segregate and sequester ourselves in our one bedroom if we need to discuss anything sensitive, but I would be lying if I said it was easy. And if you have a smart speaker, Amazon, Google, or some random dude could be listening too.
Whether your industry is financial services, technology, or something else, many couples (or roommates) work at competing firms. With the mass shift to working from home, the risk factor of inadvertently sharing confidential information increases tenfold.
Your own personal privacy is at stake too. Anytime you video chat colleagues on platforms like Jabber or Zoom, you invite them to see some of your most private spaces. Make sure you know how to use the video and audio features on these platforms (especially the hide video and mute audio functions!). You do not want to be like #PoorJennifer here.
New Communication Norms.
In my first full week working from home, I found that certain communication expectations shifted. No longer can people stop by my desk to chat. They always have to call. The problem is that when everyone knows you are working from home, they think they can call all the time, anytime. They expect you to be present and always available. I am still working on ignoring calls or chat requests, even when I appear to be “green” and available on our Firm’s internal chat systems. You should not have to drop everything and pick up any call simply because you are generally always present in the same spot now working from home.
A more entertaining and evolving norm is the virtual happy hour. My colleagues tried this late last week to cap off our first full week working from home. It is difficult when only one person can really talk at a time, but the effort was amusing. Everyone flashed their drink of choice on camera and then collectively imbibed. Although a little ridiculous, I felt like it boosted morale seeing everyone in one place. Working from home can feel incredibly isolating, even if you live with others, but especially if you are single.
All the Single People.
Quarantined at home with your spouse can be difficult enough. The two of you may be the only people you see for days on end. It is no surprise that in parts of China the divorce rates spiked after quarantines were lifted. Any underlying relationship issues can leap to the forefront when the scenery stays the same and activities grind to a halt. My advice — carve out your own space and communicate often.
I can only imagine how difficult it is when you cannot communicate with anyone in person. Enduring a long period of isolation can take a serious mental toll. We need to be mindful of the single people among us and make sure they do not feel left on a deserted island.
The need for isolation also raises the question of socially-focused programs. For example, what happens if addicts miss too many 12-step meetings? It is imperative for these segments of society to stay connected, even if they can only meet virtually. Extreme times may illicit extreme responses. Without social connection, it may be tempting to address a panic-stricken state with pills or bottles of tequila.
The Streets Are Still . . . Alive?
New Yorkers can still connect — in six feet increments — in the city’s streets and parks. They have not closed yet (nor should they). While you should refrain from activities where everyone touches the same ball, walking through a place like Central Park is probably safe (and refreshing).
The streets in Tribeca have been eerily empty though. Given the neighborhood’s location, it does not see nearly the amount of foot traffic (on normal days) as Midtown, for example, but during the outbreak the streets have been almost deserted. I try to go for at least one walk per day around the neighborhood. Of the people I do encounter, most are respectful and maintain a reasonable distance.
Restaurant windows advertise take-out as a safe (not to mention the only) option. Some locations have wrapped their seating areas in caution tape to make the point more apparent. I was happy to see local coffeeshops like Interlude open, but every retailer I walked past was shuttered. I am not sure many of these places can survive an extended quarantine or lockdown without government assistance.
One group who I would argue needs government assistance are the construction workers. How can we require all non-essential services to shutdown, yet continue to have teams of construction workers milling around the same job sites? Mayor De Blasio thinks they maintain reasonable separation, but I do not buy it. The construction industry has been understandably resistant, but if non-essential retailers have to shut their doors, job sites need to close as well. Unless there is an emergency, stay home.
That assumes everyone has a home, of course. On my daily walks around Tribeca, I almost always encounter homeless. Whether they are digging into trash cans, picking up cigarette butts, or taking shelter under the rows of scaffolding along Church St., I cannot help but ask: how are we helping these people when they are destined to contract Coronavirus? I doubt many have signed up for Obamacare. I would be surprised if any of them have health insurance. Some cities have organized temporary housing, and more should follow suit. When we look back at this time, we do not want to live with the regret that we could and should have done more.
Holed Up In A Bubble.
Admittedly, it is difficult to empathize completely with the challenges faced by New York City hospitals, not to mention the tragedies that played out slowly, and then rapidly, in Italy. I live in a bubble of relative safety. I know a few people who have contracted Coronavirus, but I have not seen its effects firsthand.
Wealthier New Yorkers have escaped to their Hampton abodes and upstate retreats in an attempt to weather this storm. Not everyone is so fortunate. I feel lucky FreshDirect still delivers groceries to my front door.
It is hard to take something like a virus seriously when you cannot see it physically or directly witness its debilitating and deadly impacts. Yet I know it is serious. I have watched Contagion and Outbreak after all. But in all seriousness, it is the duty of millennials like me and my wife to try our best not to contract it. The risk of us spreading the virus to someone who is older or in a high risk category is too great.
So I will continue to work from home. I will keep walking outside for brief periods, always six feet apart and never touching anything. My wife makes me strip down and wash everything the minute I reenter the apartment.
We will continue to ride this out holed up in Tribeca. Hopefully we can all reemerge from this for the better. Say hi to your friends and family. Pick up the phone (but not always for work!). Facetime each other. Host a virtual happy hour, no matter how ridiculous you think it might get. We will get through this, but we can only do it together. Six feet apart and virtually, of course.
Stay safe out there. | https://medium.com/swlh/holed-up-in-tribeca-polispandit-c3b14cbc0c89 | ['Sebastian Stone'] | 2020-03-23 14:47:14.661000+00:00 | ['Work Life Balance', 'Relationships', 'Work', 'New York City', 'Coronavirus'] |
Space Invasion | Space Invasion
What’s one to do?
Image by Alexas-fotos on Pixabay
Tiny opened his eyes and blinked as he adjusted to the sunlight. The power nap had done him good. He looked around at his partners who were busy at work. Life was hard nowadays. Living space was short too as the population around them grew.
Stepping outside Tiny noticed newly assembled building equipment. New flats would soon grace the landscape.
Tiny sighed. What had happened to the good old days when one could choose where one lived? He pushed the thoughts aside. There was work to do but where does an ant go when humans invade his space? | https://medium.com/vital-world-online/space-invasion-13984ad9d109 | ['Rejoice Denhere'] | 2020-12-23 09:50:54.461000+00:00 | ['Flash Fiction', 'Writing', 'Fiction', 'Fiction Writing', 'Short Story'] |
UX or UI, where to focus? | UX or UI, where to focus?
Few see them separately and few see them as one. Let’s clear the air!
There are humans around the world who call themselves as UI/UX Designers and not sure who has the major stake, UX, or UI. Let’s take a look at it.
In the industry, there are UX Designers and UI Designers, and both of them have their responsibilities. Instead of comparing each other, let’s take a look at who is capable of what.
User Experience Design (UX)
A skeleton.
Yes. If we consider the human body as a product, the skeleton is what gives you stability and shape. This is what a UXD in a product does. There are other parts in the human body like heart, kidney, liver, lungs, etc. which can relate to user personas, user scenarios, competitor analysis, information architecture, task flows, wireframes, user interface, prototypes, etc.
If a body part is malfunctioning, it surely affects the function of other parts too. Similarly, one wrong step in different stages of UX Design can leave a critical impact on other stages of design. For Example, Your actual user is a 50yr old with poor eyesight, and you considered a user persona of 21yr old Rock band artist in your research. The needs of both are entirely different, and if not corrected before going to the next stage, your final product may not serve the needs of your 50yr old target.
User Interface Design (UI)
The beauty not admired is a Sin.
At some point in your life, you must’ve told yourself that “She is beautiful or He is hot”. It’s a human instinct. It happens when something tickles your eyes. Similarly, UI is what makes someone say “This is cool, awesome, smooth, or even disgusting” about a product. In the example of the human body, UI components like layouts, colors, inputs, buttons, lists, typography, etc., can relate to makeover elements like a shirt, pants, top, jackets, watches, shades, etc.
No matter how good the groundwork (UX) is, people always judge just by looks. So, UI is important. But that doesn’t mean beauty without brains will work. UX is needed too.
“You can attract users by showcasing extra-ordinary visuals in UI, but you can’t make them stay unless your product is usable.”
This makes me think of “why dribbble has so many shots that are most liked but never implemented in any apps”.
The balance of both is the key to awesomeness.
If you notice clearly, UI is a segment of the UX Design Process. And it is the medium through which you showcase your entire hard work.
As a designer, each stage of the UX Design process helps you make decisions that make a difference. | https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/ui-or-ux-where-to-focus-2be638b2266c | ['Avinash Bussa'] | 2020-10-04 15:25:46.083000+00:00 | ['UI', 'User Experience', 'Design', 'UX', 'Product Design'] |
Cattle Rows: The Farmer’s Son by John Connell | My father and I would wake up in the middle of the cold western Nebraska winter night. Swaddle ourselves in sweatshirts and coveralls and work boots. Drive out to the snow-covered corn stalks, spotlighting the black Angus shapes, looking for a circling cow pawing at the ground to make a bed, a raised tail before the calf comes, or, if we were lucky, a baby wobbling on shaky legs that wasn’t there during the day.
When we weren’t lucky the mother couldn’t calve on her own. We’d herd her back to the corral and reach in to hook up straps or the calf puller and help her best we could. Failing our own efforts, we’d take her into the vet for more serious procedures. By the time we reached that point we usually were in a rage of frustration and stress and desperation over the time running out to save the life.
My relationship with my own father was never more strained than when we ran a cow-calf operation on his farm, specifically during calving season. Perhaps the sleep deprivation from checking the cows to see if they were in labor in the middle of the night during the thick of winter didn’t help. That I was a willful, reluctant farmhand surely did not.
When I read The Farmer’s Son I learned this wasn’t a unique experience. We read to learn about the world, but sometimes we have the rare fortune to read something that shows us we’re not alone. The fights between John Connell, the author of this memoir, and his father taught me that my father wasn’t angrier than any other father in a similar situation. The author references how the major Irish writer John McGahern also got in a fistfight with his farmer father and never spoke with him again. “I knew that Da and I too could have come to blows, and that everything then would have been ruined beyond repair,” Connell writes.
Connell moved back to his family farm to write a novel, and ended up writing a bestseller about calving and lambing on the home place in rural Ireland. Toward the end of the season, a few of the baby calves and lambs are sick and some haven’t made it. This is normal, Connell learns. He rightly conveys that to create life on a farm is also to endure the occasional death. There’s no way around it, but it’s what a farmer spends the days fighting against. The stress of an unexpected death can weigh heavy. Farming is often done by instinct. There is no manual or playbook. No two catastrophes are the same. The solutions can be arrived at in different ways depending on the man. Which is all to say that the potential for conflict is high.
Connell’s at his best when writes about this dynamic. There are untold scores of us who educated ourselves out of our rural birthrights. We wonder what it would be like to return to the farm or ranch. Connell clearly shows us it can be done, but that it won’t be simple, or easy.
The other threads he weaves into the story — the researched origins of cattle, his bouts with depression and lost loves, the legends of local characters — are less realized and read more as filler, as what an editor might suggest a memoir ought to contain, rather than what the story really needs. A few short passages on the cattle drives of the American West don’t really inform the narrative of raising livestock in Ireland and feel unnecessary, as though they belong in another book.
The real strength of this work lies in the poignancy of living as a farmer in today’s rural country, and the challenges of our younger generations to make a life in that world when it seems more removed from modern pursuits than ever. And how going home is never as peaceful as we might imagine. | https://medium.com/the-american-west/cattle-rows-on-the-farmers-son-by-john-connell-7f1702652a16 | ['Bart Schaneman'] | 2019-09-13 13:44:05.530000+00:00 | ['Agriculture', 'Books', 'Review', 'Ireland', 'Farming'] |
Campanhas inovadoras: qual a real importância de se diferenciar | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/agencia-bang/campanhas-inovadoras-qual-a-real-import%C3%A2ncia-de-se-diferenciar-7a4ee16304ea | ['Agência Bang'] | 2017-10-25 12:34:58.738000+00:00 | ['Empresas', 'Campanhas', 'Marketing Digital', 'Marketing'] |
A.I., Coyotes, and Liberals | DDIntel | DDIntel newsletter for the week of September 21
DDI Writer Highlights
To potentially be featured in DDI Intel and on Datadriveninvestor.com, please submit with this form.
By Amit Garg
Since covid hit the US six months ago VCs and entrepreneurs worldwide have had to adapt to the new reality of doing deals without meeting in person. Building trust is the challenge…
By Vuk Janosevic
TikTok usage has skyrocketed during the pandemic, with roughly 800 million users around the world using the platform to share content. Unfortunately, that entertainment comes at a significant cost, as TikTok is being investigated by numerous governments around the world for unauthorized data usage and violation of privacy laws.
By Tal Perry
The last five years have been revolutionary for the field of natural language processing. We went from glorified ctrl-f to a machine that can write programs for us based on natural language descriptions. While the web is full of amazing technical demos, applications of NLP to the world of finance have been less vocalized.
By Maddalena Bearzi
In our attempt to put nature in order, a versatile animal teaches us an essential lesson.
By Nagaraj S Murthy
In any machine learning problem, the goal of our neural network is to do well on the new unseen data, training a deep learning model helps to achieve this goal. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/a-i-coyotes-and-liberals-ddintel-2bd2ff2640a0 | ['Justin Chan'] | 2020-09-21 14:00:34.016000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Fintech', 'Technology', 'Startup', 'Blockchain'] |
Fluent Makeover: Photo Editor | Senior Design Lead Lynnette Reed and her team of designers, Ani Akopyan and Vladimir Nogan, focus on incorporating Fluent Design in third-party partner app experiences. They recently redesigned PhotoLab, a UWP sample app created by the Windows 10 documentation team, to demonstrate how to apply Fluent Design principles and elements.
“When looking for common examples of design patterns for Fluent, we often look at our internal first-party apps as a base (Microsoft Photos, Microsoft Edge, OneNote, etc.),” Lynnette explains. “We then consider the structure, patterns, and needs of our partners and look for how we can adapt and align the first-party app experiences to our third-party app partner experiences.”
With common design patterns for all app experiences, we’re able to create a cohesive ecosystem that feels natural, intuitive, and engaging — Microsoft’s Fluent Design System.
Here’s a look at the app’s complete makeover, and the team’s main takeaways about working with Fluent Design:
On controls
Vladimir: When we first saw the app, the biggest thing we needed to address were the controls, the building blocks of the Fluent Design System. A lot of the controls in the app aren’t in our library. We saw places where we could use existing controls to replace the custom code they were using. It’s easier for developers and users, who can understand what the controls do because they’re already in the Windows UX.
Lynnette: In some instances, creating custom controls can be great, but in others, it may not be the best for your end user or for development. Before creating new custom controls, see if there are already common controls within the Fluent toolkit that you can use throughout your experience. It might be best to align to the common controls that already exist.
For example, take the sliders: | https://medium.com/microsoft-design/fluent-makeover-photolab-a583d25f362b | ['Serena Zheng'] | 2019-08-27 17:59:00.533000+00:00 | ['User Experience', 'Design', 'Fluent Design System', 'Apps', 'Microsoft'] |
How to write a MacGuffin | There are few writing tropes as controversial as the MacGuffin. Some think it’s a second-rate prop for bad writing. Others see it as a solid literary device that efficiently builds plot momentum. The truth is, both opinions are right. The difference lies in whether the MacGuffin used in the story is weak or strong.
It’s easy to create a weak MacGuffin, but it’s even easier to write a strong MacGuffin that’ll add excitement and movement to your next novel, screenplay, short story, or video game script. Let’s find out how to do it.
What is a MacGuffin?
Have you ever been watching a movie or TV show, reading a book, or playing a video game and suddenly the characters absolutely, positively must get their hands on a “thing,” like a magic ring, rare jewel, mysterious letter or lost book? But, when you stop to think about it, the “thing” could just as easily have been a magic goblet, rare painting, mysterious treasure map or lost dog, and the plot wouldn’t change at all?
That “thing” is a plot device known as a MacGuffin.
Within the world of a story, a MacGuffin represents a tangible goal that steers the plot in a certain direction. It takes the form of a specific object that the protagonist or another major character wants to get his or her hands on. All MacGuffins are important to the characters for some reason, but the reason for this importance isn’t always made clear. When this happens, it’s a weak MacGuffin and can be a sign that the storytelling, too, is weak.
Strong MacGuffins, on the other hand, have clear, significant worth — magical powers, a high dollar-value, the ability to solve an insoluble problem, or the potential to cause great destruction — which is plainly explained within the narrative and distinctly demonstrated by the plot.
Even so, neither the object nor its worth are vital to the plot in and of themselves. Whether the hero gets the specific “thing” or not doesn’t matter; it’s the act of trying to obtain it — the quest, chase, journey, rescue mission or hunt — that drives the story. The characters could just as well stop seeking the current MacGuffin to go after a new one with a similar worth, and there’d be no change in the dramatic arc.
The term “MacGuffin” was popularized by filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock in the early 20th century. Regarding the origin of this rather peculiar word, he’s quoted as having stated:
“It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, ‘What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?’
And the other answers, ‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin.’
The first one asks, ‘What’s a MacGuffin?’
‘Well,’ the other man says, ‘it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’
The first man says, ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ and the other one answers, ‘Well then, that’s no MacGuffin!’
So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.”
As a storytelling device, MacGuffins are very, very popular; there are too many MacGuffins in the literary, cinematic, theatrical, and gaming canon to count, in fact. Here are a few of the most famous:
The Maltese Falcon from the film and book of the same name
The briefcase from Pulp Fiction
The sled (“Rosebud”) from Citizen Kane
Princess Peach from the original Super Mario Bros. video game
The Holy Grail from Le Morte d’Arthur, the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Golden Fleece from Greek mythology
The Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark
The rug from The Big Lebowski
As we can see, MacGuffins are concrete, physical objects that spur characters to pursue an external goal. They aren’t abstract concepts, like revenge or love, that represent the character’s true motivation or the theme of the story.
In the end, a MacGuffin is just a “thing” and nothing more.
How to write a MacGuffin
A MacGuffin doesn’t have to be a cheap gimmick to get the plot moving. These four tips will help you create an effective, compelling MacGuffin.
1. Make it memorable and desirable
We’re not talking about yet another generic ancient scroll, run-of-the-mill chest of gold coins, or invisible computer file. To create a strong MacGuffin, you need to come up with an object that’s specific, visually interesting, and remarkable in some way, like the cryptic, stern-visaged Maltese Falcon or the gorgeous sapphire and diamond Heart of the Ocean necklace from the movie Titanic.
Making the object desirable to the audience as well is helpful. The allure of an expensive, exquisite necklace like the Heart of the Ocean is nearly universal. The seemingly plain Maltese Falcon is, in reality, made of gold and jewels hidden under a thick coating of black enamel. And the Holy Grail and Ark of the Covenant from the Indiana Jones movies are simultaneously archeological and religious treasures, making their preservation essential.
2. Urgency and motivation
So, the hero doesn’t find the secret key, discover the hidden city, or locate the missing necklace?
So what?
If this is your reader’s or viewer’s reaction, you’ve got a weak MacGuffin on your hands.
The Holy Grail in the King Arthur legends falls into this category. It’s memorable and desirable (a visually interesting, holy, and supremely powerful object), but if the Knights of the Round Table don’t find it, so what? Nothing changes in terms of the plot whether they have it or not — King Arthur has no precise plans for it, there’s no danger of it falling into the wrong hands, and it’s not having any impact (good or bad) on the characters while it’s residing in its undisclosed location.
This issue is subverted in the 1989 movie about a modern quest for the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In this case, the MacGuffin is exactly the same, but it’s strong rather than weak. If the hero, Indiana Jones, can’t get the all-powerful Holy Grail, the Nazis will. And if that happens, the world as we know it will end. Indiana is highly motivated to get the MacGuffin, and there will be significant consequences if he fails.
High stakes for obtaining — or not obtaining — the object of desire are key to a strong MacGuffin.
Bonus points: Give the protagonist a secondary, personal reason why he or she must acquire the MacGuffin. If they don’t succeed, not only will there be an undesirable external consequence, but an equally dire internal (emotional) outcome will occur, such as a loss of faith, self-esteem, or worth in their community. If your characters don’t have something personal at stake, what’s keeping them going as they search for the MacGuffin?
3. When they’ve got it, you’ll know
What significant, unmistakable change will occur in the story when the protagonist finally gets the MacGuffin in their hot little hands? If you can’t answer that question, you’ve got yourself a weak MacGuffin.
The acquisition (or loss) of the MacGuffin should represent a major turning point, or even the climax, of the plot.
4. Conflict is key
Don’t just send your protagonist on a quest to find the MacGuffin … send the antagonist, too.
“It allows you do one of the greatest tricks for creating conflict — what I call, two dogs, one bone. Two or more characters want this thing, but only one can have it. With a MacGuffin,” writes Lori Devoti, someone MUST lose.”
Though the protagonist and antagonist share an identical MacGuffin-gettin’ goal, the outcomes will be polar opposites depending on who succeeds. This, in turn, will greatly increase the stakes of your plot.
I included a MacGuffin in my novel, The Cure for Summer Boredom. It’s memorable (a copy of a 1990s Playboy magazine) and desirable (well, for the character who wants it, at least!) The character is highly motivated to get it back from the strange library in which it’s been locked away for years, and there’s a strong conflict between his desire to retrieve it and the librarians’ desire to keep him away from it.
But what will happen when he gets (or fails to get) the magazine?
Check it out and let me know on Twitter (@katherineluck) if you think it’s a weak or strong MacGuffin.
Katherine Luck is the author of the novels The Cure for Summer Boredom and In Retrospect. Her latest book, False Memoir, combines the high stakes of a gritty psychological thriller with the guilty pleasure of a sensational true crime tell-all. You can read more of her work, including the “Dead Writers and Candy” series, at the-delve.com. | https://katherineluck.medium.com/how-to-write-a-macguffin-66a18b9ace72 | [] | 2019-11-28 18:16:01.718000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Screenwriting', 'Alfred Hitchcock', 'Writer', 'Writing Tips'] |
Python Basics: Files and Operations | Learn The Interaction Between Different Files
Welcome Guys to the series of learning Python names as Python Basics. In this Blog of Tutorial, you will learn about Files and Different Operations Related to them.
Before Getting Started if haven’t read the previous blog about functions then go and read that first.
Files
A Fille is a collection of data stored in one location or unit. These files contain some information and stored in the computer system. In General, We Divide files into two types of text files and binary files. Text files are those which contain only text data and binary files are those which contain the binary data.
We can perform different types of operations to manipulate files like opening a file, closing a file, renaming a file, and more.
File Opening
Python has a built-in open() function for opening files. There many ways we can open a file in python.
Mode Description
r Opens a file for reading
w Opens a file in writing mode
x Opens a file for exclusive creation if it is not present
a Opens a file in append
t Opens a file in text mode
b Opens a file in binary mode
💠 If You Use w as a mode and if the file already exists then it removes all the content of the file and opens as a clean file so it is better to use a or a+ when previous content in the file is important.
The syntax for opening a file is open("FILEPAHT\FILENAME.EXTENSION") for example.
f = open("data.txt") ## Opens a file in read mode by default
f = open("data.txt",'w') ## Opens a file in write mode
Closing File in python
When we are done working with our file it is important to close the file properly.
Like Open python also has a predefined function for closing a file close() Let’s see it with an example | https://medium.com/pythoneers/python-basics-files-and-operations-dcadb9563e89 | ['Abhay Parashar'] | 2020-12-21 10:40:13.136000+00:00 | ['Tutorial', 'Learning', 'Python', 'Education', 'Programming'] |
Top 5 Analytics and Business Intelligence Buzzwords | Each year, the business industry seems to come up with new and innovative ways to incorporate analytics and business intelligence into their success plans. The result is a collection of buzzwords describing different BI software techniques that anyone who uses analytics to grow their company should know. Here are the top analytics and business intelligence buzzwords of 2019.
CONTINUOUSNEXT
Gartner introduced ContinuousNEXT back in October, calling it “the future evolution of concepts” intended to “build momentum through digital transformation and beyond.” By implementing the five elements of the plan, businesses, no matter how big or small, should be able to make transitions more easily. For example, many large businesses have altered their business plans so that they’re no longer just a product-driven company but offer their customers services and software as well.
The Executive Vice President and Global Head of Research at Gartner, Mike Harris, went into further detail saying, “The transition to digital is undeniable and accelerating, disrupting both government and business models. These new models redefine the way organizations create, deliver, and capture value.
Nearly two-thirds of CEOs and CFOs anticipate business model change, frequently due to digital transformation, and investors are encouraging that change. They reward organizations that wrap every product and service with digital capabilities. They are not just interested in data — which is now old news — they are interested in what you do with data through advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.
Leaders apply technology and information in unique and creative ways to outperform their peers. It’s what distinguishes them from the rest, and that’s where ContinuousNEXT comes in.”
In order for the ContinuousNEXT approach to be successful, businesses need to implement the following:
● Privacy
● Augmented Intelligence
● Culture
● Product Management
● Digital Twin
In a world where change is perpetual, the ContinuousNEXT approach will help to increase efficiency and ensure your business doesn’t fall behind.
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS
While it has been around for a while, the use of predictive analytics has grown significantly in recent months making it a trending topic in the business industry. The phrase refers to pulling information from specific data sets using BI software to learn more about your customers, products, employees, and more. If done correctly, predictive analytics can help businesses foretell certain events prior to them happening.
As one of the top analytics keywords of 2019, it should come as no surprise that businesses are using this BI technique to avoid potential disasters, keep employees happy, and improve their products.
DATA SCIENCE
Having BI software implemented into your business plan is one thing, however, understanding how to interpret the information and make data-based decisions requires a higher level of knowledge. This is where data science comes in. Currently, businesses must hire data scientists in order to analyze and interpret their data, however, it’s expected that in just a few years BI software will advance so that this is mostly automated.
According to Joao Tapadinhas, research director at Gartner, citizen data scientists will become the new norm. “Most organizations don’t have enough data scientists consistently available throughout the business, but they do have plenty of skilled information analysts that could become citizen data scientists,” Tapadinhas said. “Equipped with the proper tools, they can perform intricate diagnostic analysis and create models that leverage predictive or prescriptive analytics. This enables them to go beyond the analytics reach of regular business users into analytics processes with greater depth and breadth.”
Gartner predicts that by 2020, 40% of data science will be automated, making it far more accessible and easier to interpret.
DIGITAL CITIZENS
While it has been a slow process, the act of transitioning into a more tech-friendly education and government system has finally picked up some speed. In schools, adaptive courseware like Knewton is being implemented to digitally monitor each students performance in order to determine an individual’s knowledge gaps. Not only does this improve a student’s chances of successfully completing their courses, but it makes them more accessible by offering text-based and video instruction options, interactive learning exercises, and more.
Government systems have jumped on the bandwagon as well, offering apps and other digital services to help citizens better understand and communicate with local officials. Those who take advantage of these types of technology-driven tools are referred to as digital citizens.
DATA SECURITY
Data breaches are a top concern for people these days, making them a top concern for businesses as well. With the latest privacy regulations implemented in Europe and across the United States, an increase in the use of data security products and services is expected to occur. In 2018, spending on data security increased 12.4% from the previous year and is predicted to go up another 8.7% by the end of 2019. In addition to new privacy regulations, this is expected to become another business intelligence buzzword of 2019 as there is a need to protect digital businesses and for the creation of products with detection and response powers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Renee Briggs is a senior BI systems administrator for LaunchWorks.com, a Stone Door Group Project. Stone Door Group specializes in DevOps based digital transformation of the enterprise. To learn more about how we can help cloud enable your analytics, drop us a line — [email protected] | https://medium.com/opstalk/top-5-analytics-and-business-intelligence-buzzwords-602cad8c63df | [] | 2019-08-26 12:55:08.771000+00:00 | ['Business Strategy', 'Business Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Predictive Analytics', 'Digital Transformation'] |
We Are Lobsters, and We’re Ending Our Contract with Dr. Jordan Peterson | We’ve decided to come forward because this lobster-mascot situation has spun out of control.
Dr. Peterson’s fans, most of whom identify as “men’s rights advocates” but whom we’ll refer to as Incels for the sake of brevity and also for the sake of accuracy, are snatching up “lobster merch” as though their delusional, white-privileged lives depend upon it. There are entire pages on Amazon filled with lobster t-shirts — lobsters telling you to clean your room, lobsters telling you to stand up straight, lobsters stacked in a pyramid to visually symbolize “the dominance hierarchy.” It’s creepy. We do like the fame, but this particular fan base is getting too weird.
As you may know, Dr. Peterson uses our species to represent male-female dynamics in human relationships, and specifically how it pays off to be an alpha male because that’s what the ladies go for. He also reveals that big, strong, desirable male lobsters are total dicks. An in-demand male lobster, according to Dr. Peterson, “parades his dominance around his territory, rousting subordinate lobsters from their shelters at night, just to remind them who’s their daddy.” This is ridiculous, of course. Nobody’s “rousting subordinates” or trash talking about “daddies,” for god’s sakes. We’re lobsters. We live in the bottom of the ocean.
This all comes out of Dr. Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (women cause chaos). In the first chapter of the book, he sets up this weird analogy in which lobster sex (or how he imagines lobster sex, which is not even close to reality) reflects human sex and also all of human existence. This is clearly a faulty application of inductive logic, but we’ll return to that later.
In his analogy, there are “winner lobsters” and “loser lobsters” (reductive). The girl lobsters all go after the winner lobsters and “start hanging around the dominant lobster’s pad” and “try to seduce him.” We don’t know what “pad” means, and we find the seduction language a bit anthropomorphizing, but let’s continue.
In the analogy, the desperately insecure girl lobster is still into this egomaniacal douchebag, so she will “disrobe” (WTF? we’re lobsters) in order to turn him on, which transforms him into a “careful lover.”
Jesus Christ. Couple things here. This is how lobster sex works: our bladders are on our heads, and we’re into mutual golden showers. After the golden showers, the male deposits his sperm, and then it’s over. So lobster sex is kinky, yeah, and scientists describe it as “stupid” and “hyper aggressive.” Actually now that we think about it we can totally understand how Incels probably equate this entire scene with “careful lovemaking.”
Dr. Peterson, who eats an all beef diet , also claims that a male lobster who can’t get any tail will get “depressed” and turn into a “drooping, skulking sort of lobster” who is “very likely to hang around street corners, and to vanish at the first hint of trouble.”
That’s just . . . that’s just not how it works. We’re not that complicated. We’re lobsters with very primitive brains. How would you even know if a lobster were “skulking”? And we don’t have street corners because again we are lobsters who live in the bottom of the ocean.
It’s freaking us out how obsessed Dr. Peterson is with us. His website offers a full capsule wardrobe of lobster-printed apparel. It’s next-level twisted, like “Buffalo Bill sewing a suit of women’s skin” kind of twisted. Being a mascot was cool at the beginning, but these people are obsessive and it’s beginning to feel offensive. And again, we pee on each others’ heads.
So we’re asking him to please stop with the lobster worship. Surely there are ways to spew misogynistic pseudo-psychology without dragging us into it. We get that Incels love having us as a mascot because we have scary claws and because angry minds are drawn to mascots over the nuances of, say, unpacking the messier and nonbinary reality of how a full spectrum of humanity exists.
We know it’s easier to grunt and chomp your fingers together in imitation of lobster claws while hollering like cavemen about how women should be subject to “sexual redistribution” so that all you Incels can get laid.
The one good thing to come out of this, though, is that it’s caused us (Lobsters) to take a good, hard look at how gendered, lopsided, and fucked up our lobster-relationships really are. We’re making a concerted effort to address this reality, and we’re now in the process of drafting a proposal to become the mascots for the “Five Love Languages” guy. It’s true that our love language involves acting like macho assholes and then pissing on our women’s heads, but we’re hoping he might consider adding that as the sixth love language. | https://jennieyoung.medium.com/we-are-lobsters-and-were-ending-our-contract-with-dr-jordan-peterson-31879f4133fb | ['Jennie Young'] | 2020-09-22 01:59:08.182000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Relationships', 'Humor', 'Mens Rights', 'Psychology'] |
Repeat the Lie Often Enough and it Becomes the Truth | Repeat the Lie Often Enough and it Becomes the Truth
Has social media led us down a path of sloppy thinking?
Marketers have led themselves down a repetitious path of untruths, creating the belief that hyper-targeted ads, brand purpose and influencers are key to brand growth.[1] Sloppy thinking, repeated-ad nauseam by digital thought leaders and marketers selling their latest suite of services bound tightly to the digital de jure have, to quote Les Binet and Sarah Carter, allowed us to “mask false assumptions about how marketing works.” [2]
The tall tale we have told ourselves in higher ed is that social media — the channel reserved for our most “authentic storytelling” — is free from most marketing rigor. We post photos of dogs, the same slow motion pan of the most historic part of our campus, turn our Presidents on to social media and report any increase in vanity metrics as improving brand equity. And while these aren’t inherently bad, they are most often practiced because it is what makes our content optimized to fit a framework developed to serve only the platforms themselves or an imagined audience waiting patiently for our next post.
A recent Inside Higher Ed article, titled Rethinking How We Measure Social ROI, challenged the presumption that social media should be completely bound by business objectives. The author wrote, “ROI has taken over the social media world. Consequently, it’s too late to dislodge ROI from social media. But dislodging fiscal dogma from social media ROI, that’s a battle we can still win.”
The battle isn’t dislodging fiscal dogma from social media, it’s dislodging the belief that because it’s on social media, we don’t apply the same level of scrutiny we apply to other channels. We follow the dominate narrative that most of our social media activity should be filed under “social PR” or “non-transactional” marketing goals, often measured in short-term intermediate metrics, and then connect it to some obfuscated content strategy or an incorrectly applied measure like share of voice. It always sounds nice on paper but rarely attached to long-term goals.
Engagement: Metrics for Whose Vanity
Engagement metrics have been a farce from the beginning.[3][4][5] We have assumed they provide a real-time test of our content strategy as well as markers for business objectives. In many cases, these beliefs are reinforced by content marketing service providers as well as social media management platforms. This has led us to optimize all creativity out of videos, oversell reach and create an over reliance on tactics. Remember, Facebook once claimed to reach 41 million Millennials in the U.S. when there are only 31 million and claimed they didn’t consider whether or not organic posts actually appeared on a screen to count as an impression.[6][7] Without getting into fraudulent traffic, quality of impressions and the loyalty fallacy, vanity metrics only get so far — even removed from ROI measures. You cannot discount the need to make vanity metrics relevant and, at the same time, make the claim they strengthen brand equity. In that case, the numbers just don’t add up.[8] [9][10]
To Have and Have Not: Non Transactional and Social PR
Similarly, we find ourselves mired in the belief that these metrics are excused from rigor and simply considered relational goals that are valid metrics for brand equity and customer relations — a sentiment, once again, that continues to be reinforced by marketing service providers.
For example, the article extended a quote made by a writer at the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), “These non-transactional goals (as opposed to business goals) mirror the relational goals of a social PR campaign. Hochuli [CMI writer] notes that social efforts strengthen brand equity and customer relationships over time.”
If we are going to marry public relations and social media, then we need to marry our collection of data and hold it to the same accountability. By definition, the function of public relations is to influence perception and behavior, manage stakeholder relations and build brand reputation. However, we cannot continue to develop the perception that shares, likes and share of voice (the correct term: social share of voice) have the direct effect we believe them to have. We often forget that social media engagement is a non-representative sample of people exhibiting non-representative behavior.[11]
The Return: An Integrated Approached
Somewhere along the way we lost the value of truly integrating our marketing and communications efforts. Yes, we can wax poetic about storytelling across channels, repurposing content and extending messages but in most cases, it’s through the lens of continual short-term assessment.
As noted in the Long and the Short of It, “Sadly there appears to be little progress in the world of digital metrics, narrowly concerned as they often are with very short-term responses and questionable metrics such as social media ‘likes’, often bought with short-term incentives….much work remains to be done to reliably link these to business performance and the focus of attention appears to lie elsewhere.”[12]
What we do know is that there is power in closely aligning social and digital with traditional marketing efforts. As the IPA Databank continues to show, “campaigns which include owned online media are 13 percent more likely to report very large business effects than those that don’t. Within that, there is some indication that branded content (e.g. social media feeds or videos hosted online) is more effective than other owned assets (e.g. microsites or apps).” The same databank shows us that non-video display ads in social media increase integrated campaign effectiveness by 7 percent.[13]
At the end of the day, our job as marketers is not just exposure but also shaping preference and influencing behavior. The dogma that social media should be free of rigor and driven to influence non transactional goals and social PR has led us chasing the wrong intermediate metrics. We are optimizing for efficiency and not effectiveness. To bring credibility and to operate under evidence-based based approaches is to be realistic with social media and to apply the same level of scrutiny as we do with other marketing channels.
As Peter Drucker wrote, “Long-term results cannot be achieved by piling short-term results on short-term results.”[14]
[1] Sharp, B. How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know. Oxford University Press. 2010
[2] Binet, L and Carter, S. How not to plan: 66 ways to screw it up. APG, 2018.
[3] Ries, E. Why vanity metrics are dangerous. 2009.
[4] https://marketingland.com/heres-itemized-list-facebooks-measurement-errors-date-200663
[5] https://www.marketingweek.com/2011/04/06/when-it-comes-to-social-media-coke-is-it/
[6] Binet, L and Carter, S. How not to plan: 66 ways to screw it up. APG. 2018.
[7] https://marketingland.com/facebook-discloses-new-measurement-errors-continues-hone-math-200416
[8] John, L. K, Mochon, D., Emrich, O and Schwartz, J. What’s the Value of a Like? Harvard Business Review. 108–115. 2017
[9] Ritson. M. Marketers are clueless about media effectiveness — here’s the proof. Marketing Week. 2018. https://www.marketingweek.com/2018/03/07/mark-ritson-marketers-perceptions-media-effectiveness/
[10] Sharp, B. How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know. Oxford University Press. 2010.
[11] Poynter, R., Cassidy, F. and Duckworth, S. Measuring Not Counting: Evaluating Social Marketing Communications. IPA. 2014.
[12] Binet, L. and Field, P. The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies. IPA. 2016
[13] Binet, L. and Field, P. Media in Focus: Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era. IPA. 2017.
[14] Drucker, P. Post Capitalist Society. Butterworth-Heinemann. 1993. | https://medium.com/chris-huebner/repeat-the-lie-often-enough-and-it-becomes-the-truth-db5b93af99de | ['Chris Huebner'] | 2018-12-04 19:24:59.483000+00:00 | ['Advertising', 'Higher Education', 'Social Media', 'Marketing'] |
How to Set Up VS Code Like a Pro in Just 5 Minutes | How to Set Up VS Code Like a Pro in Just 5 Minutes
A beginner’s guide
When you’re a #CodeNewbie starting out on #100DaysOfCode, your Visual Studio Code setup probably leaves a lot to be desired. Here’s how to go from zero to professional web developer by installing and configuring some crucial extensions, themes, and add-ons.
What separates a professional web developer’s VS Code from a brand-new installation is the use of extensions, especially code formatters and linters that automatically detect and fix problems in your code.
Using code formatters (typically Prettier) and linters (usually ESLint) tend to be mandatory when contributing to open-source projects online. But they’re generally awesome to have even if you never plan to work on open-source.
Additionally, a nice theme makes VS Code easier to use, and it makes it feel like your own personal version. Along with a theme, you can add file icons that’ll let you see what type of files you’re working with at just a glance.
But you won’t really seem like a pro until you start using font ligatures that turn common code symbols (like => and !== ) into human-readable versions. Plus, a nice programming font is just so easy on the eyes!
In this short tutorial, you’ll take a brand-new VS Code installation and turn it into a super-powered professional setup in about five minutes.
1. Install Extensions in VS Code
I’m going to recommend six must-have extensions, with another seven optional ones. Of course, no extension is really mandatory — it’s your VS Code after all — but everyone should use a code formatter, linter, and theme.
The optional extensions are more for your quality of life. I’d suggest you install all 13 extensions at once since they’re free and quick. You can always disable or uninstall them afterward with just a few clicks inside of VS Code.
First, I’ll list the extensions in both categories, and then I’ll explain the purpose of each one — optional info for the curious folk.
How to install a VS Code extension
There are two ways to install extensions for VS Code, either using the online Visual Studio Marketplace or its equivalent inside VS Code.
From the web: Click on the link to the extension in the text below to open it up in the Visual Studio Marketplace; then click the “Install” button. Assuming you already have VS Code installed, click “Continue.” Your browser will then try to open a vscode link. Choose “Visual Studio Code” from the list, and then check “Remember my choice for vscode links” and click “Open link.”
From VSCode: Alternatively, look up the extension by name inside of VS Code on your computer by clicking the extensions icon on the left-hand activity bar — it looks like blocks getting stacked on top of each other. Search for each extension by name, clicking “Install” for each one.
The recommended extensions below appear in alphabetical order.
Mandatory extensions
ESLint, HTMLHint, Prettier — code formatter, stylelint, vscode-icons, and your choice of theme. You only need to install one VS Code theme; I suggest Monokai Vibrant, One Monokai Theme, or Shades of Purple.
Optional extensions
Document This, indent-rainbow, Live Server, Rainbow Brackets, Rainbow Highlighter, Rainbow Tags, and vscode-pigments.
Description of each recommended VS Code extension
If you just want to get set up, and you don’t particularly care about what you just installed, then scroll on past this section as fast as you can! 😂🧨💥
🔽 Mandatory extensions 🔽
ESLint
ESLint is a code linter for JavaScript and TypeScript that’ll catch many bugs as you write code, instead of when you run code. It’s necessary to contribute to many open-source projects and real-life workplaces.
ESLint is a code linter for JavaScript and TypeScript that’ll catch many bugs as you write code, instead of when you run code. It’s necessary to contribute to many open-source projects and real-life workplaces. HTMLHint
HTMLHint is a code linter for HTML that catches a lot of errors, especially the kinds that brand-new web developers tend to make.
HTMLHint is a code linter for HTML that catches a lot of errors, especially the kinds that brand-new web developers tend to make. Prettier — code formatter
Prettier automatically formats your code, including indentation, every time you save. By using the same Prettier configuration file with your teammates, you’re sure to have the exact same formatting. That means your Git repositories won’t have meaningless formatting changes.
Prettier automatically formats your code, including indentation, every time you save. By using the same Prettier configuration file with your teammates, you’re sure to have the exact same formatting. That means your Git repositories won’t have meaningless formatting changes. stylelint
stylelint is a popular linter for CSS. Linting, also called static-code analysis, is a type of automated software testing as you write code.
stylelint is a popular linter for CSS. Linting, also called static-code analysis, is a type of automated software testing as you write code. vscode-icons
vscode-icons is a package of file icons that show up inside of VS Code and make it much easier to differentiate the file types you’re working with.
🔽 VSCode themes 🔽
Monokai Vibrant
Monokai Vibrant reminds me of 8-bit graphics and brightly colored cartoons. It’s my preferred theme for VS Code.
Monokai Vibrant reminds me of 8-bit graphics and brightly colored cartoons. It’s my preferred theme for VS Code. One Monokai Theme
One Monokai Theme is easy on the eyes. There are many offshoots of the Monokai theme, including a paid version called Monokai Pro.
One Monokai Theme is easy on the eyes. There are many offshoots of the Monokai theme, including a paid version called Monokai Pro. Shades of Purple
Shades of Purple by Ahmad Awais ⚡️ is a great change of pace from other themes, as it showcases the color purple in a beautiful way.
🔽 Optional extensions 🔽 | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-set-up-vs-code-like-a-pro-in-just-5-minutes-65aaa5788c0d | ['Dr. Derek Austin'] | 2020-11-18 23:53:30.720000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Software Engineering', 'JavaScript', 'Programming'] |
Exponentially Weighted Average for Deep Neural Networks | This algorithm is one of the most important algorithms currently in usage. From financial time series, signal processing to neural networks, it is being used quite extensively. Basically, any data that is in a sequence.
This algorithm has been mostly used to reduce the noisy time-series data. It’s also called “smoothing” the data.
The way we achieve this is by essentially weighing the number of observations and using their average. This is called as Moving Average.
Example: Temperature θt over days, calculate the moving averages
Math Notation “sub: subscript”, “sup: superscript”
Vt: Moving average value at day ‘t’
Vsub00 = 0
Vsub1=0.9Vsub0+0.1θsub1
Vsub1=0.9Vsub1+0.1θsub2
..
Vt=0.9Vt−1+0.1θt
if β = 0.9
Vt=βVt−1+(1−β)θt
What does and means
Vt: averaging over 1/1−β days (approx)
For ex. , For β =0.9, 1/1−β~=10 ;
β = 0.9 averages over 10 days (smooth curve: Red Line)
For β =0.98, ~=50 ;
β = 0.98 averages over 50 days (smoother curve: Green Line) — Not very accurate representation
For β =0.5, ~=2 ;
β = 0.5 averages over 2 days (alterations: Yellow Line) — Much more noisy
The right value of is β calculated using HyperParameter Tuning
Going backwards from V100,
Vsub100 = 0.1θsub100 + 0.9Vsub99
Vsub99 = 0.1θsub99 + 0.9Vsub98
Substituting Vsub99,
Vsub100 = 0.1θsub100 + 0.9(0.1θsub99 + 0.9Vsub98)
or, Vsub100 = 0.1θsub100 + 0.9(0.1θsub99 + 0.9(0.1θsub98 + 0.9Vsub97))
Generalizing,
Vsub100 = 0.1θsub100 + 0.1∗0.9∗θsub99 + 0.1∗(0.9)²θsub98 + 0.1∗(0.9)³θsub97 + 0.1∗(0.9)⁴θsub96+…..
Vsub100 is basically an element-wise computation of two metrics/functions — one an exponential decay function containing diminishing values (0.9, 0.9²², 0.⁹³, ……and another with all the elements of θt.
Implementing Exponentially Weighted Average
Vsubθ: v is computing exponentially weighted average of parameter θ.
day 0: Vsubθ = 0 day 1: Vsubθ=βv+(1−β)θsub1
day 2: Vsubθ = βv+(1−β)θsub2
…
Algorithms: Vsubθ =0 Repeat: {
Get next θt
Vθ := βVsubθ+(1−β)θt
}
Single line implementation for fast and efficient calculation of exponentially weighted moving average.
Bias Correction in Exponentially Weighted Moving Average
Making EWMA more accurate — Since the curve starts from 0, there are not many values to average on in the initial days. Thus, the curve is lower than the correct value initially and then moves in line with expected values.
Figure: The ideal curve should be the GREEN one, but it starts as the PURPLE curve since the values initially are zero
Example: Starting from t=0 and moving forward,
Vsub0 = 0Vsub1 = 0.98Vsub 0+0.02θsub1 = 0.020θsub1
Vsub2 = 0.98Vsub1 + 0.02θsub2 = 0.0196θsub1+0.02θsub2
The initial values of Vt will be very low which need to be compensated.
Make Vt = Vt/1−βsupt
for t=2, 1−βsupt= 1−0.9⁸² = 0.0396 (Bias Correction Factor)
Vsub2 = V2/0.0396 = 0.0196θsub1 + 0.02θsub2 / 0.0396
When t is large, 1/1−βsupt =1, hence bias correction factor has no effect when t is sufficiently large.
Credits:
Andrew Ng | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/exponentially-weighted-average-for-deep-neural-networks-39873b8230e9 | [] | 2020-01-10 13:17:20.580000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
How To Choose the Best Point of View For Your Story | How To Choose the Best Point of View For Your Story
A guide to understanding POV and what each one will do for your story and character
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash
One of the key questions a writer has to answer when beginning their story is which point of view to use. Even if you know whose story it is, you still have to choose, usually between first person and third person intimate, especially if you want the reader to feel close to the character. I have found many writers are not sure how to choose, why one is better suited than another, or why a point of view such as omniscient might be better avoided. Here is a practical guide that will help.
First Person
In simple terms, first person POV uses I, and the story is seen entirely through one character’s eyes, ears and emotions. So let’s say I have a story about Jane, George and Phillip, but I tell the story through George’s POV only, using I, and cannot go into Jane or Phillip’s heads.
I tipped my wine onto the white tablecloth. I was right. The red stain looked nothing like blood. Jane had already run to the kitchen for a cloth, but Phillip leaned back in his chair, a sneer on his face. “That wasn’t very clever of you, George,” he said.
I think you’re the idiot, actually. But I kept a polite smile on my face and helped Jane mop up the wine, wishing she would stop looking at me as if I were some kind of troublemaker.
First person has become more and more popular over the past 20 years, especially in young adult fiction. It’s been creeping into a lot of middle grade fiction, and literary writers seem to love first person/present tense.
Advantages — first person can create a sense of immediacy, of being very close to the action of the story and the central narrator. It can create a sense of intimacy with the narrator so the reader more easily identifies with him/her.
Disadvantages — this POV can limit the story. The only action that can be described is that experienced by the narrator. The writer can’t go into other characters’ heads and can only show their emotions and reactions as witnessed by the narrator. You can’t include scenes where the narrator is not present.
One way of getting around this is to have two first-person narrators, as long as they sound different, or else have sections of the story where things are told in third person (which can feel like cheating to the reader unless done well).
Challenges — voice! You have to create an engaging voice that the reader connects with. In YA fiction, a lot of readers hate a whiny narrator (Why me? My life sucks. I hate my mother.) A smartypants narrator can also be off-putting, as can someone whose life is full of angst and comes off sounding melodramatic.
You also have to tread the line between a narrator that will offend no one and sound bland, and creating a character with such a strong voice that they will be unlikeable or feel distancing.
One step up in first person is the unreliable narrator. This is where the character might have mental issues and have a flawed view of events, or be a liar (deliberately misleading the reader) or perhaps be a child who doesn’t fully understand the meaning of what they see and hear.
Why would you choose to use a first person POV?
You might have a really strong sense of the narrator’s voice right from the beginning, which feels and sounds right for the story. YA writer John Marsden says he can’t start a novel until he hears the narrator’s voice clearly in his head.
You might want to tell a story in which the confinement of one person’s POV suits the way it has to be told. Room by Emma Donoghue is a good example of this. Or you might feel that the particular kind of story you want to convey needs a close, intimate POV to fully engage the reader.
Hint: you can always change to third person intimate if you change your mind.
Writing pointer: if you are having trouble with making a character come alive, do some free writing in first person from that character’s POV. Get them to tell you their life story and how they feel about where they are in your story. You might be surprised what they say!
3rd Person Intimate
There are several different terms for this POV (limited, close) but this is the one I use. It means that the story is told in third person (he or she) but is confined to one person’s POV. So I might have a story about Jane, George and Phillip but I tell the story through George’s POV only, using he, and cannot go into Jane’s or Phillip’s heads.
George tipped his wine onto the white tablecloth. The red stain looked nothing like blood. Jane had already run to the kitchen for a cloth, but Phillip leaned back in his chair, a sneer on his face. “That wasn’t very clever of you, George,” he said.
I think you’re the idiot, actually. But George kept a polite smile on his face and helped Jane mop up the wine, ignoring her quick glances at them both.
Advantages — you can still maintain a sense of intimacy and closeness to the POV character, but it allows you to expand the world of the story more. This POV, when well done, never has to use he thought or she thought because we are always inside the character’s head and we understand this. In first person, your narrator is unlikely to describe setting and details, or even their own actions, a lot as it would sound strange, or more likely be an info dump. But you can do this a little more easily in third person without the reader noticing.
Disadvantages — you do lose that extra level of closeness to the main character, and have to work harder at showing their thoughts and emotions. It’s easy to slip into telling (Joe felt angry), although I see people do this in first person, too. You still can’t go into other characters’ heads — you can only say what the POV character observes, and what they think or intuit about it.
Challenges — as with first person, you need an observant, reasonably intelligent POV character. Even a child needs to be observant, although they may not be able to accurately interpret what they see. You also need to stay close to your POV character while giving a sense of the wider world of the story.
Writing pointer: if you’re not sure which would work better, write a chapter in first person, then put it aside and write it again in third person intimate. (Don’t just use the same chapter and change the pronouns — write it twice.) Which one feels like it has more depth and resonance? Which one has the stronger characterization in it?
Omnisicient POV
Omniscient used to be the standard. It’s also known as eye of God, because the reader gets to see inside everyone’s heads and emotions. It also allows for a lot of description and detail. Back in the 1800s, it meant pages and pages of setting and description, but these days they’d be considered info dumps. It is tempting to load ominiscient POV with every single thing, but you need to choose carefully what will best serve your story.
You also have to avoid head-hopping. Once you establish you are in a character’s head, leaping around can be disorienting. If you find you are sticking mostly to one character, you may need to reconsider third person intimate.
Here are our characters in omniscient:
George tipped his wine onto the white tablecloth. As he’d thought, the red stain looked nothing like blood. Jane had already run to the kitchen for a cloth, but Phillip leaned back in his chair, a sneer on his face. He was getting sick of George’s games. “That wasn’t very clever of you, George,” he said.
I think you’re the idiot, actually, George thought, but he kept a polite smile on his face and helped Jane mop up the wine.
Jane glanced at the two men nervously. Were they going to come to blows over this?
Advantages — the story widens out and can encompass everything and everyone. You can provide a world view, and play with things like discrepancies between characters’ thoughts and actions.
Disadvantages — the reader can end up feeling as though there is no focus, or that you have no control over your own story. It’s easy to fall into head-hopping, jumping around between character so much that you cause confusion, or a lack of engagement with the story and characters overall. You can also lapse into info dumps, and the temptation to tell rather than show can be a trap.
Challenges — our preference these days for “involvement” (e.g. reality TV, gossip magazines, investigative personal journalism, etc) means that many readers will automatically prefer a closer POV and you will have to work hard to make the story engaging. You can do this through an exciting plot or fascinating characters, or just excellent writing.
Writing hint: continually ask yourself “What is interesting/intriguing/exciting about this scene? How can I write this so that the reader feels the same way I do?” You can also imagine your story as a movie, and turn your omniscient eye into a magic camera that goes everywhere and reads thoughts as well!
Second person POV
When writing in second person, the pronoun used is you. Over and over. Whereas I in first person blends into the voice, you sticks out. Second person is tricky. It seems clever but is very difficult to pull off effectively. It works best in short stories, but there have been a couple of novels that have done well. I’d recommend a YA novel, Damage by A.M Jenkins, as a good example.
Here is our sample in second person, where the you is George. Second person almost demands present tense, by the way, which can make it even trickier to manage well.
You tip your wine onto the white tablecloth. The red stain looks nothing like blood. Jane has already run to the kitchen for a cloth, but Phillip leans back in his chair, a sneer on his face. “That wasn’t very clever of you, George,” he says.
You think, You’re the idiot, actually. But you keep a polite smile on your face and help Jane mop up the wine, ignoring her quick glances at you both.
Advantages — second person can create a special effect that enhances your story, but it has to be the right kind of story. An action adventure, for example, will be too slow in second person. Something more introspective might work. It does bring the reader close to the story because there is the feeling that the you might be the reader.
Disadvantages — you can become more and more conscious of it as you go on. If this happens, you probably need to change to another POV. A lot of readers don’t like this POV, so you risk alienating them.
Challenges — it’s difficult to maintain a rhythm and flow in the writing. As the writer, you have to feel confident in using this POV, which means a strong confidence in your grammar skills. Otherwise you will make mistakes that you aren’t even aware of.
Writing pointer: Try this POV just for the heck of it! It might transform a story that isn’t working, or just give you a new insight into it.
Camera Eye POV
Pretend you are the camera. You can only write what a camera would see (although you can use the five senses). No going into any character’s thoughts and emotions. Everything must be shown externally in some way. There is an Ernest Hemingway story, Hills Like White Elephants, that is a good example of this POV. This is our example:
George tipped his wine onto the white tablecloth. The red stain spread quickly, unlike blood. Jane had already run to the kitchen for a cloth, but Phillip leaned back in his chair, a sneer on his face. “That wasn’t very clever of you, George,” he said.
George clenched his hands but kept a polite smile on his face and helped Jane mop up the wine.
Jane glanced at the two men, her mouth trembling a little.
Advantages — are there any? This POV is useful for screenwriters, and also for you to practice if you struggle with how to show emotions and reactions. It can create a coldness in the story that can be fun to play with.
Disadvantages — that distance I mentioned. This is not the POV you want for a story where you are trying to connect the reader to the characters.
Challenges — showing everything! No convenient character thought to explain behavior.
Writing pointer: a great POV to try out as a test of your skills, or to deliberately create a Hemingway-type story.
As with any writing tool, it’s worth examining in other people’s writing. Check out your favorite novels — do they all use first person or third? Sometimes our automatic choice comes from what we read. Look at how the writer uses POV, how they make you feel close to the character. Use a highlighter pen and mark words and phrases that contribute. This is how we learn, by observing the work of those we admire.
POV is a crucial choice — it will end up dictating how you tell your story, the blessings and the limits it places on you and your characters. Experiment a little before locking in your choice. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-choose-the-best-point-of-view-for-your-story-efda92d957c0 | ['Sherryl Clark'] | 2020-05-28 10:11:08.160000+00:00 | ['Point Of View', 'Writing', 'Writing Tools', 'Fiction Writing', 'Character'] |
Sharing Web Site Designs | Recently I wanted to get feedback on one of several ideas for the design of the new BlogBridge web site. I had selected 6 product web sites that had a nice look and wanted to somehow visually compare them. Here are two free tools I used:
Papparazzi! is a free Mac utility that does one thing and does it well. It makes a screen shot from a URL of a web site, importantly, including the whole page not just the part that is visible without scrolling.
Pintrest is a free web site that facilitates sharing of images of things. Kind of like a delicious for images … or something. It’s kind of hard to describe which is why I had not used it before. But this was a perfect use of it.
With those two free tools, I was able to create this web page allowing the quick and easy comparison of the possible designs of the new BlogBridge web site.
Oh and if you care to, please weigh in on the design you like the best :) | https://medium.com/pito-s-blog/sharing-web-site-designs-600746a3f9dd | ['Pito Salas'] | 2017-06-08 19:18:52.933000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Website', 'Blogbridge'] |
Make Your Bot Understand the Context of a Discourse | Photo by Igor Shabalin
One of the most challenging tasks in chatbot development is to ‘teach’ the bot to recognize the context of a sentence being processed. Many good designed bots are supposed to understand what stands for pronoun in the current sentence, based on what was said in a discourse previously. Say, a smart bot should understand that in the phrase: ‘What do you know about it?’ ‘it’ is a substitute for a word or a phrase mentioned in one of the previous sentences.
Understanding Substitutes
It’s quite common in natural language to use pronouns in place of nouns, proper nouns, or even entire phrases, which were mentioned earlier in a discourse. For those who develop bots, this makes things a bit more complicated. Not so much though, as you’ll see in the article example.
To understand what the problem is, let’s look at a simple example. The following screenshot shows a fragment of a discourse with a bot that can understand the meaning of a certain question and respond accordingly, but absolutely does not remember a preceding question:
As you might guess, this bot doesn’t remember a previous question.
In other words, it doesn’t maintain the context of the discourse. In this particular example, a smart bot should have replaced the question:
What did he draw?
With the following one:
What did Raphael Santi draw?
The latter should be then sent to the underlying layers of the bot application for further processing and generating a meaningful answer:
Using Linguistic Features to Catch Necessary Pronouns
This is where tools like spaCy may come in handy. spaCy automatically assigns so called linguistic features (aka linguistic annotations) to each token in a text being processed. Thus, using part of speech tags allows you to easily recognize necessary pronouns in a sentence. The following script provides an illustration of how both coarse-grained and fine-grained part-of-speech tags can be obtained with spaCy:
import spacy
nlp = spacy.load('en')
doc = nlp(u'What did he draw?')
for token in doc:
print(token.text, token.pos_, token.tag_)
This should give you the following output:
What PRON WP
did AUX VBD
he PRON PRP
draw VERB VB
? PUNCT .
As you can see, the sample sentence includes two pronounces, but only one of them is a personal pronoun — tag PRP indicates this.
Let’s now look at how this can be used in practice. Here is a simplified example that illustrates how two consecutive questions might be processed using the linguistic features available in spaCy, assuming the second question contains a pronoun whose antecedent can be found in the first one. The code is supposed to replace this pronoun in the second question with its antecedent mentioned in the first question (be warned that the following code is a simplification — just to illustrate the point).
… doc = nlp(u’Who was Raphael Santi? What did he draw?’)
doc_sents = list(doc.sents)
sent_prev = doc_sents[0]
sent_cur = doc_sents[1]
sent_upd = sent_cur.text
prons = ['he', 'she', 'him', 'his', 'her', 'they', 'them', 'their']
for token in sent_cur:
if (token.tag_ == ‘PRP’ or token.tag_ == ‘PRP$’) and token.text.lower() in prons:
ent = find_antecedent(sent_prev)
if ent:
pron_i = token.i — sent_cur[0].i
sent_upd = sent_cur[:pron_i].text + ' ' + ent + ' ' + sent_cur[pron_i + 1:].text
print(sent_upd)
In this particular example, the updated second question is simply printed out. In a real-world implementation, it would be submitted for further processing instead of its original version.
Looking through the above code, you may notice that it relies on the find_ antecedent() function, which, as you might guess, looks into the preceding sentence and finds a word or phrase that likely is the antecedent for the pronoun in the current sentence. The implementation of this function is based on using the spaCy’s named entity recognizer, as explained in the next section.
Using Named Entity Recognition for Finding Antecedents
The find_ antecedent() function invoked in the snippet shown in the previous section might be implemented as follows:
def find_antecedent(sent_prev):
for ent in sent_prev.ents:
if ent.label_ == 'PERSON':
return ent.text
return False
For simplicity, the above implementation is specific only to finding the name of a person. Note that a named entity recognized by spaCy may consist of more than one token. In this particular example, the name ‘Raphael Santi’ will be recognized as a single entity labeled as the PERSON entity type.
So, the sample discussed here should produce the following output:
What did Raphael Santi draw?
thus, replacing pronoun ‘he’ with the name that stands for it:’Raphael Santi’ , according to the context of this particular discourse.
After incorporating this technique into your bot implementation, it should correctly recognize what stands for some of pronounces in a discourse, thus getting an opportunity to generate more relevant answers to user questions. Turning back to the screenshot of a bot you saw in the beginning of this article, this now might look as follows: | https://medium.com/swlh/make-your-bot-understand-the-context-of-a-discourse-4b740d46166c | ['Yuli Vasiliev'] | 2020-04-29 12:40:57.351000+00:00 | ['Chatbots', 'Chatbot Development', 'Python', 'NLP'] |
Sentiment Analysis on Customer Review: Understanding NLP models | Women using smartphones, @youxventures
Sentiment analysis has many industry use cases, especially for digital economy. It can be used to monitor trends, analyze products and market research etc. The technique used to analyze text is called natural language processing (NLP), which has many fascinating aspects.
This project aims to:
classify customers’ sentiment as accurate as possible;
explore multiple ways of text mining and processing, including TF-IDF and text embedding with Word2Vec;
understand the pros and cons of each process.
Data + EDA
Our data set consists of 23,486 customer reviews from e-commerce clothing website. There are other features other than text, e.g. age of the reviewer, category of the item etc. We chose to ignore all the features as this article focuses on NLP only. Hence review is the only feature that we look at.
Example of the data
The sentiment is determined by “Rating” which is rated from 1 to 5, 5 being most favorable. We have transformed the target variable into binary class, i.e. “positive” for reviews rating 4 and 5 and “not positive” for reviews from 1 to 3.
Rating distribution after binary transformation
Observing the graph, there are more positive reviews than non-positive ones, with 82% positive and 18% not positive. In other words, a do-nothing model can achieve 82% accuracy by giving constant prediction of positive class, which is much better than a random guess model (randomly guess whether it is positive or not positive). Having this in mind helps us to identify the baseline performance of the model.
I will refer to not positive class as negative in the article below though it is actually neutral and negative class combined.
We also want to understand what are the frequently used words by customers.
15 most used words for positive reviews
15 most used words for negative reviews
The top graph shows the most frequently used words in positive reviews and the bottom graph shows the most frequently used words in negative reviews. Both graphs are plotted by removing words that are too frequent and acts like noises to the text, e.g. “that”, “the”, pronouns etc.
The vocabulary extracted by both positive reviews and negative reviews are (surprisingly) similar. Most reviews talk about the size, fit, material, fabric, color etc, which are associated with the inherited property of the clothing items. There are also words representing customers’ emotions like love and like and (surprisingly) found in both categories. Note that words like “no” and “not” are removed as we extracted those words. This may explain why love and like appears in negative reviews. We will understand the phenomenon better in the next sessions.
Methodology Overview
Steps for NLP processing
Like all data science projects, there are feature selection process for text data. The only difference is that we also need to “extract” the feature as text is not suitable for machine learning process without extraction.
We will focus on the difference of different text extraction model including bag of words, term frequency — inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) and text embedding.
For feature selection, we will examine three approaches: lemmatization, stop words removal and latent semantic analysis (LSA).
Logistic regression, multinomial naive bayes (MNB), linear support vector machine (Linear SVC) and random forest models are used in this project.
Bag of Words
The bag of words model is built on counting: it returns a matrix of word counts, each column maps to a unique word appears in the corpus and each row maps to each data point, a review in our case.
It is a simple and easy to understand model for NLP beginners. We have built our baseline model with bag of words model using logistic regression.
Predicted labels v.s. True labels: BOW model
Five short reviews are transformed and predicted with our baseline model. The model got 3 out of 5 correct, which gives an accuracy of 60% base on our input. It is not very ideal as it performs worse than a do-nothing model.
However, the bag of words model has some intrinsic shortcomings. The number of features are numerous and difficult to reduce. In our example, we have over 11,000 features resulting from bag of words transformation. In English particularly, there are multiple forms of the same word. For example “is” “am” “are” are the same word essentially. That is why we need to look into lemmatization and stop words.
Lemmatization is a technique to reduce the words to its original form. In the previous example, “is” “am” “are” can be reduced to “be”. Stop words removal aims to remove words that appears too frequently in the text. You can think of them as “noise” to the text data.
Do note that both ways of treating the text could affect the model performance. Hence instead of treating lemmatization and stop words as part of the pre-processing pipeline, one would want to treat them as hyper parameters in the tuning step.
After applying lemmatization and stop words removal in our model, it does not improve the performance significantly.
TF-IDF
Term frequency inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) model is the next model that we explore. It is built base on bag of words model but with improvement.
Term frequency refers to the frequency that a word appears in one document, while document frequency refers to how many documents that word appears in out of the total number of documents. The transformed matrix contains statistics of term frequency times inverse log document frequency for every word.
In other words, if a word appears too frequent in different documents, the TF-IDF statistic tend to be low in value. While the model gives more weight to moderately “rare” words which appears in not too many documents but still an important word for some documents.
Our best model with TF-IDF is a bigram model. I am not going to elaborate on n-grams here but you can google it for interest. For those that are not familiar with n-grams, you can understand bigram as word fragments of two.
Predicted labels v.s. True labels: TF-IDF bigram model
The new model’s accuracy improves by 20% compare to our first model. It can detect the negative comments more effectively compare to our bag of words model. However, we realized for a bi-gram TF-IDF model, the number of features is numerous. There are 50,000 features used in our example.
This is when latent semantic analysis (LSA) comes to rescue. The idea behind the LSA technique is simple: it compresses the useful information of the TF-IDF matrix into lower dimension at the expense of some information loss (“noise”).
We then apply LSA on the TF-IDF bigram model and wait for magic to happen:
Predicted labels v.s. True labels: TF-IDF bigram + LSA model
Voila! The accuracy is 100% now with simple logistic regression and the features reduce from over 50,000 to only 300, less than 1% of the original number of features.
TF-IDF combined with LSA gives quite a decent prediction but we are feeling greedy to explore another feature extraction model.
Text Embedding
As mentioned, LSA technique keep important information while removing “noise” from the model. Text embedding on the other hand does it differently. This technique transforms each word to a vector. Using SpaCy’s text embedding, it returns document vectors which are average of all the words in a document.
Let’s see if text embedding can improve our model:
Predicted labels v.s. True labels: Text embedding model
The new model is more sensitive to negative comments and the prediction accuracy is not as ideal as TF-IDF model. The finding is a bit surprising as the text embedding model does not work as well as the TF-IDF model. After reading some reference, we understand that text embedding could be too complicated for a simple data set like ours. It would work better for big data applications.
Conclusion
Model results using our test example
TF-IDF with LSA applied appears to be our winner model and our test validation score also confirmed the same. It is effective for our task but the result is difficult to interpret. Text embedding has the same problem which make the model difficult to interpret intuitively. Bag of words model is the easiest to understand among all models but not an effective model to use in our case.
Model performance using customer review data test set
Our best F1 score achieved in this project is 0.931 using TF-IDF. F1 score is a measure to reflect model performance. An ideal model gives an F1 score of 1 and the worst model 0.
I have also made an app demonstrating what the model is capable of with Flask and JavaScript.
Flask app demonstration
The final model chosen is quite accurate detecting consumer sentiment but still with some noise. It can be improved by further feature processing or improved with better machine learning models like deep learning models.
# Discussion
Now we have taught the computer to read human reviews, what’s next?
Hope you enjoyed reading the article. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/sentiment-analysis-on-cusomter-review-understanding-nlp-models-4d7e1f0524a | ['Rachel Zhiqing Zheng'] | 2020-03-14 15:45:26.028000+00:00 | ['Sentiment Analysis', 'Visualization', 'Review', 'Ecommerce', 'NLP'] |
How To Deal With Life-Changing Moments | It was the summer of 2016.
I was living in England at the time because I was pursuing my passion for soccer professionally.
One morning, I received a phone call from my mother that would forever change the direction of my life.
She went on to explain that my father had his second heart attack and was in a coma.
I was thousands of miles away.
I was pursuing a deeply meaningful dream.
And now, I had just received the most emotionally difficult news that I have ever been given.
I was lost, confused, angry, sad, and went through a number of emotional storms during that short period of time.
To cut the story short, I couldn’t afford to continue on with my dream and rightly so had to go back home to meet the rest of my family.
Thinking back on that time now, I realized some important insights:
My dream of playing soccer professionally died along with my father.
I genuinely had it within me to play soccer professionally as a desire, but much of this was influenced by my father.
Now, I view that time in my life as karma that I needed to experience.
I learned so many valuable lessons from travelling to both England and Ireland for soccer and have gained priceless experiences in the process.
I am in complete acceptance of the experience because it is what I needed for my own personal evolution.
This is how you must start to view your own experiences, from a perspective of karma and lessons that need to be learned.
Your attachment to a period of time within your life is preventing you from beginning your new journey.
If I identified as a depressed person after my father died and dream seemed impossible, then I wouldn’t have cultivated my current journey.
I would have been a miserable fuck who lives for Netflix binges, weekend partying, and drug abuse.
I was forced to be detached from that situation and how it turned out because I understood that I was capable of achieving great things.
I became obsessed with my other interests — learning, health, and reading.
Your inability to accept your current situation is holding you back from all the great rewards that your potential new venture could offer you.
Although my professional dream had died, my love for the sport of soccer and playing is resolute.
Now, I took about a 7-month break from soccer shortly after coming back from England.
I was focused on other things and had to step away from the thing that I deeply loved for some time. Looking back on it, this was necessary.
Once I began to experience that urge to play consistently again, I slowly but surely started listening to that intuitive call within me.
Fast forward to now, I am playing better than ever and have created an even healthier and stronger relationship with soccer.
It’s funny how life works, the moment I created this better relationship with soccer was the moment that I began to cultivate a healthier relationship with my father and his passing.
Childhood dreams are deeply intertwined with our parents and childhood lifestyle.
Life changing moments are a natural part of life and we will always have two options when it comes to how we respond to those events:
We can either choose to be a victim of life.
OR
We can choose to rise up and take responsibility for our lives.
I chose to rise up after the passing of my father and am reaping the rewards from that decision. | https://zaiderrr.medium.com/how-to-deal-with-life-changing-moments-d178844d7788 | ['Zaid K. Dahhaj'] | 2019-02-28 16:01:01.044000+00:00 | ['Decision Making', 'Life', 'Self Improvement', 'Psychology', 'Life Lessons'] |
The Float Trip | Life is a river
Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash
July 2018:
I’ve imagined My Life on several occasions as a float trip down a river. I’m sprawled out on my inner tube — fingers in the water — just making my way downstream.
Life — The River — is never the same in any two places. The water is constantly flowing, changing. Quiet, still pools to raging, angry rapids assail you on this journey. Blue skies above with wispy clouds to cast shadows across the currents. Shade — light and dark mingle and tangle the view playing tricks on your perceptions.
What’s a body to do?
Hold on. Enjoy the ride. Soak up the scenery. Breathe deep the scents. Understand that while you might not be on your own — you certainly will have your own experience of The River. No two souls share the exact same journey over the exact same water — even if they travel side by side. And know — the scenery, the water, the weather, the company, EVERYTHING about The Float Trip changes. You are always moving on — past what was — toward what will be.
Because The Float Trip is a constantly morphing adventure.
Soak it up. Drink it in. And don’t forget your sunscreen.
Namaste. | https://medium.com/recycled/the-float-trip-979f990b5f52 | ['Ann Litts'] | 2020-11-19 16:23:49.156000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Retirement', 'Philosophy', 'Spirituality', 'Life Lessons'] |
A Complete Guide to Submitting to Medium Publications | Trying to work out how to get your story into a big publication? They don’t make it easy, do they? I’ve got you covered — I hunted around Medium for hours to find these so that you don’t have to. Best of luck!
Finding the right Medium Publication
Medium Publications are like magazines, and just like magazines they each have their own flavour and overall voice. Before you pitch, it’s worth taking your time to read through their topics, browse stories, and get a feel for what they like to publish. If you skip this step, you’ll waste a lot of energy pitching to the wrong places.
Explore some of these articles to find a publication that suits you and your story idea.
This is written by Medium staff and covers some great tips for submitting to publications, including finding publications that align with your writing goals:
“Your goals will help inform your strategy on submitting to publications. Here are a few of those possible motivations and what to bear in mind.”
Medium has its own publications and if you get a story accepted here there is potential for it to get good exposure. Some get instantly curated. If your goal is to increase your readership, then applying to one of these may be the way to go.
Ten places to pitch
1. Forge
Forge say they are about how to get more done, invest in creativity and focus, and be happy doing it.
2. GEN
GEN want stories about politics, culture, and power.
There is a detailed list of exactly what they are looking for. There is also a list of what they don’t want to see, including:
— One line pitches, or ten ideas at once. Really take the time to tell me your one good idea. Maybe two good ideas if you have them.
— Anything that you think deserves to be long for the sake of being long. There should be shifts and beats, twists and turns in your idea that will propel the reader (me) all the way through the end. Longer is not always better (in fact, it rarely is)
I would say these apply to any Publications!
3. Modus
If you are a designer — Modus is your place.
We want to create a place where designers can read high-quality, practical, thought-provoking pieces that will help them be better at their craft.
4. Zora
Zora centers on and celebrates the hopes, dreams, aspirations, and experiences of women of colour according to their welcome page.
Is there a way to pitch to Zora? It’s not easy to find, but yes!
5. OneZero
OneZero says it is a forward-looking tech and science publication. For pitching, email [email protected]
6. Elemental
Elemental is a health and wellness publication.
Every story will be aggressively researched and will include perspectives from several — not just one — leading experts in the field.
Pitch to [email protected]
7. Human Parts
Human Parts publishes first person personal essays and perspectives. They are not currently taking submissions.
We’ll continue to scour Medium for great self-published stories and reach out to writers whose work fits the description below. The best way to contribute, then? Self-publish your story on Medium, and if it’s a fit for us, trust that we’ll find it.
8. Marker
Marker is focused on the world of business and the way business impacts our world.
Pitch to [email protected].
9. PS I Love You
This popular publication is all about love, but in surprising ways. They also run Fiction Friday for short stories and Poetry Sunday. It’s a very supportive community with a Facebook page and I’ve found it a great publication to write for.
10. The Writing Cooperative
This publication has a large following and is also great to write for (I do). It has a Facebook page and slack group. To get a story accepted you need to check and double check that you have met their requirements. They are really tough and even an incorrectly formatted heading will have your story rejected for violating the rules.
11. The StartUp
The StartUp has a huge following and takes a wide range of stories. They say in their guidelines that if you don’t hear back in 36 hours, assume your story has not been accepted.
New Writers
If you’re a new writer and want to hone your skills before submitting to the big ones, contact us here at Inspired Writer. We aim to give new writers a boost by helping them create better stories and get them out into the world.
It’s free to work with us for a couple of weeks — no catch except that we only work with one writer at a time, so there may be a wait. Why would we do mentoring for free? Just writers helping writers, which is what Medium should be all about, right?
Understand your rights
Before you pitch to a Medium owned publication, like Forge, read through the article Everything a Medium Contributing Writer Should Know (linked in below).
Some publications buy the rights to your articles with a one off payment. It was interesting to read that the rights they are buying include exclusive digital rights (forever) and a non-exclusive license to further distribute your work.
Medium has a 1 year general exclusivity to the work starting from the day it’s published. After the 1 year period, Medium retains exclusive digital rights to the work, and a non-exclusive license to distribute the work in physical print, e-book, and audio narration. Audio versions are created by Medium or a third party we work with and distributed in context of the story on desktop and Medium’s mobile app.
Before you sign any contracts make sure you want to give exclusive rights to your article. You can never use or sell this article online again if a Medium Publication has exclusive rights to it.
If they make it into an e-book, audio, etc you will not get any additional profits from this. You receive one payment for the article and then they can use it without paying you any further royalties from sales.
Some seem to pay very well and your story will still be behind the paywall, so the added exposure of being in a Medium publication may pay off, but it’s good to understand what you are signing.
Get familiar with the editor’s tastes
If you read what stories they love, you’ll get a feel for where you might fit.
Time to get exploring those publications, be brave, and submit your best!
Subscribe to my newsletter Because You Write for inspiration, support, and writing tips. | https://medium.com/inspired-writer/a-complete-guide-to-submitting-to-medium-publications-4fa2cf63b2ce | ['Kelly Eden'] | 2020-12-18 20:55:26.564000+00:00 | ['Medium', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing', 'Self', 'Submission Guidelines'] |
How icons improved our secondary navigation experience by 40% | Final Goal
To achieve our third goal, we had to make these new navigation patterns discoverable. This all depended on a single icon to show users that they could truncate that side menu.
Original Icon
This is the icon we had originally. The problem with this icon was that users thought it was going to bring them back to the previous page.
Controlled Research: To start testing new icons for discoverability, it was important that the research was controlled so that the results were based on the icon only. To do this the same set of questions and participant characteristics were used in the tests.
First Question: This question was created to be as general as possible while still being directive enough to accomplish the task. This also gave us a quantitative metric to help us track progress and compare the icons.
Where would you click to hide the menu that is currently available on the left-hand side of the page?
Second Question: The second question was used to help us understand the “why” behind the first question. This gave us a qualitative answer to help us understand how participants felt about the task given to them.
What made you click there?
Baseline
As a baseline metric, we first ran the test against the icon currently in use. In the image below the red square on the left side of the screen indicates where a successful click was. As you can see, the focus was spread across the page and only 2 of the 5 participants tested clicked in the right spot.
Baseline: 2 of the 5 participants were successful
New Icon Research
Now that we had set up the controlled test and gotten a baseline we were ready to test other icons. After developing a range of icons 3 icons were chosen to test.
The 3 icons tested: Hamburger, Arrow, and Chevron (left to right)
Hamburger icon
It was chosen because it’s easily recognized and is a common pattern for expanding and collapsing menus.
Initially, when we ran this test the hamburger icon was selected by 3 of 5 participants. One of the participants responses was removed because it was not legit (they didn’t try and clicked/answered randomly).
Usabilityhub allowed us to replace that answer with a new participant and with the new data 4 of 5 participants found the hamburger icon. Below you can see the responses to the follow-up questions, “What made you click there?”
Hamburger Qualitative Results
Arrow icon
This icon was chosen because it was more directive of what would happen when clicked. We believed it was a clear way to express that the menu would truncate to the left.
The research results showed that 4 of 5 participants found the arrow icon and were successful in completing the task.
Arrow Qualitative Results
Chevron icon
This icon was chosen because it’s a regularly used icon to show that something can collapse or expand.
To test a second pattern we placed this icon in the middle of the list rather than the top left. The idea was that this icon would show when a user hovered over the secondary navigation.
Placement for the “Arrow 2” icon
The results for this icon were that 3 out of 5 participants were able to successfully find it.
Chevron Qualitative Results
Final Test
As a final test, both the Hamburger and Arrow icons were run 5 more times since they had scored the same in the initial tests. We did this to see if one would out-perform the other which would make the final decision easier.
Hamburger Icon Results
7 out of 10 participants were successful
Qualitative Results
Arrow Icon Results
8 of 10 participants were successful
Qualitative Results
Arrow Vs. Hamburger Results
Quantitative: The Arrow icon was the winner here. While it was close, the Arrow icon was 10% more discoverable than the Hamburger icon.
Qualitative: The participants who were tested using the Arrow icon answered with more confidence and clarity when asked why they clicked where they did. The Hamburger icon results had users confused and second-guessing themselves.
Conclusion
The Arrow icon is 40% more discoverable than the original icon used. Through user testing, we were able to track the results and compare the qualitative and quantitative results to make an informed decision. Without doing this research we would have released the updates with a new icon with no research to back it up.
Before you start to think we are done, I want to say that this is not where the research ends. Now that we have solved and tested the 3 problems individually it’s time for us to get customers in an experience where they can test them all together. Once we have data to back up that this solution is the right one, we will be ready to release it.
Thanks for reading!
Follow this story for future performance results. | https://uxdesign.cc/how-icons-improved-our-secondary-navigation-experience-by-40-12519e7b47d | ['Alex Barker'] | 2019-07-26 21:14:42.806000+00:00 | ['Usability', 'Design', 'UX Research', 'UI', 'UX'] |
Inspiration And Ideas How To Create Logos For Sites | Inspiration And Ideas How To Create Logos For Sites Visualmodo Follow Dec 4 · 3 min read
It is absolutely crucial for a website to have a logo that helps customers relate to their business. In this article, you’ll see inspiration and ideas to create logo for sites. However, you can’t simply put up a few letters and colors and hope for the best. You must consider several elements of your logo design to make a cohesive, well-branded message for your company. Here are some things you need to know.
Why is it important to be original in creating logos for dating sites and related difficult-to-promote niches?
Logos are the most important part of branding in the minds of many marketing professionals. Why is that the case? Well, if you consider that a brand only has about ten seconds of your attention span to get you interested in buying their goods, then you realize the importance of a highly recognizable logo.
While this is especially important for dating sites, the fact of the matter is that it can work for other niches, too. If you were asked to imagine a lowercase f and blue, you’d know instantly that it was for the social media site, Facebook. The instant brand recognition is more than enough to make people recognize your site and product, making your ads more effective.
Useful tips for creating a unique logo for dating sites
How do you go about making a logo for these dating sites? Well, you have to follow some of the tips that we’ve come up with here.
Brevity is the soul of with : Match.com has the word Match with a heart at the end. It tells you what the product is in less than a second. That allows you a simple introduction to the topic and then you can already determine their aim. so, a good way to create logos.
: Match.com has the word Match with a heart at the end. It tells you what the product is in less than a second. That allows you a simple introduction to the topic and then you can already determine their aim. so, a good way to create logos. Associative series : Another thing to consider is associations between your logo and your site. In the case of Tinder, they use a small flame. That is a play on the word and tells you about the kind of dates to expect on the site- hot ones!
: Another thing to consider is associations between your logo and your site. In the case of Tinder, they use a small flame. That is a play on the word and tells you about the kind of dates to expect on the site- hot ones! The importance of colors : For example, this website uses three main colors for the logo: green, purple, and pink. Green is associated with calm, pink adds a women’s energy and purple represents meanings of royalty. Extravagance and wisdom are typical for elderly women.
: For example, this website uses three main colors for the logo: green, purple, and pink. Green is associated with calm, pink adds a women’s energy and purple represents meanings of royalty. Extravagance and wisdom are typical for elderly women. Selection of the font: The font is also very important to logos because it establishes the brand identity. For example, Elite Singles is a website that uses a very open, serif font that suggests that it’s a site for people that enjoy the finer things. As a result, good tips to create logos.
Mistakes to avoid when creating it
Of course, there are some things that can make your logo do poorly for attracting customers. For one thing, you don’t want a logo that is too complex. It’s fine to be clever with it, but if it is not readily by at least half of the people that see it, then it’s a failure as a logo. Another mistake is to use the wrong colors in your logo. A lot of people want to use black and blue. While attractive, they’ll also ensure that your logo is hard to see. Don’t make these mistakes when designing your site logo.
There are many different ways that you can create logos for sites that will bring customers to your website. Whether you are on dating sites or you are looking for a food delivery site. Logos give brand recognition, a quick message, and inspiration to customers. You must always make sure you follow the right methods to ensure you have the best logo for your business needs. | https://medium.com/visualmodo/inspiration-and-ideas-how-to-create-logos-for-sites-75d406f7bffa | [] | 2020-12-04 01:39:13.181000+00:00 | ['Logo', 'Size', 'Design', 'Idea', 'Inspiration'] |
HomeBinder — An Operating System For Your Home | HomeBinder — An Operating System For Your Home
The centralized operating system for all aspects of owning a home
The Problem
There are massive inefficiencies for businesses and homeowners in the residential real estate market. Among these are the fact that businesses spend $30B on customer acquisition and in many cases have retention rates of 20%; that half of today’s homeowners do not have an inventory report on their largest asset, and that home information is decentralized making home valuation difficult to track.
What The Company Does
The HomeBinder platform is used by homeowners to centralize all aspects of homeownership, including maintenance, projects, appliance information, capital improvements, home valuation, and more. HomeBinder is delivered by the businesses that service the residential market, and their revenue is generated from these businesses through a subscription model. The strategic value of HomeBinder to these businesses includes retaining client relationships by delivering property specific information and maintenance reminders that generate 80% open rates. This enables recurring or new sources of revenue for businesses through the insight HomeBinder provides relative to customers footprint and data about the properties in their area, and generating ecosystem referrals from a growing network of 200K complementary businesses on HomeBinder.
Business Model
HomeBinder is a B2B2C SaaS business where businesses subscribe to HomeBinder and create/update binders on behalf of the homeowner. The company has over 450K homeowners and 465 business subscribers in the home inspector and lender markets. Over 60% of the subscribers have been with HomeBinder for over two years, and their annual contract values’s (ACV’s) range from less than $5,000 for small businesses to over $100,000 for large enterprises.
Market
According to the team, the addressable market is over $20B within the 120M homes served across the U.S. As a centralized platform for homeownership, the HomeBinder opportunity includes all vertical markets that service residential property in the U.S. These vertical markets include home builders, home inspectors, lenders, insurers, and service professionals/contractors. Each binder can generate revenue from multiple sources, including revenue from these vertical markets, marketplace revenue, and advertising revenue. The team believes a realistic revenue stream per binder is $200 annually.
Traction
HomeBinder has over 450K homeowners, 170K agents, and 20K pros affiliated with HomeBinder. There are 465 business subscribers paying for the service, with 15 software integrations across the ecosystem that automate the binder process. The team is forecasted to close 2020 revenue at $800K and poised to grow to $3.7M in 2021.
Founding Team Background
Founder and CEO Jack Huntress has 20+ years in the real estate industry and previously co-founded PARCEL. Pete Paglia, CSO/CRO, has 20+ years in venture startups in the mobile, security, IoT markets. Gerlin Guilaum, head of product development, a member of founding team, manages internal engineering team with 5+ years experience in full stack Dev/AWS/Docker/ROR/ Mobile. CPO and co-founder, Guy Tassinari, has 20+ years in the real estate tech space and previously co-founded PARCEL. Ben Carcio, fractional CMO and co-founder, was the former founder and CEO of Promoboxx and is a Techstars Advisor.
What They Need Help With
HomeBinder is looking for potential investors in the proptech/fintech/insuretech markets as the team prepares for a post-seed fundraise. Connect with the HomeBinder team.
Subscribe To The Buzz To Get More Startups In Your Inbox | https://medium.com/the-startup-buzz/homebinder-an-operating-system-for-your-home-accc4f24b34e | ['Jeff Piltch'] | 2020-11-10 20:02:23.410000+00:00 | ['Real Estate', 'Proptech', 'Venture Capital', 'Startup'] |
Why you must consider donating when cutting your hair next time? | Why you must consider donating when cutting your hair next time?
The feeling is amazing!
image of the author
It is weird how much a simple haircut can change your confidence!
Especially after a long year, full of ups and downs.
It’s like all the doubt and scary thoughts left with my long curly hair!
My beloved folks prefer my long hair, maybe because it’s my significant touch, and they get used to it! As the nature of the human, we hate the change. We are scared to face the new environment, the new partner, the new job.
We feel stable, and we don't want to experience the change.
My birthday is almost here, and if not after all I went through I make a huge change, then when!
So I pick a random day. I took an appointment with my favorite hairdresser and made my decision. I am donating my hair to an association that makes wigs for kids who have cancer! It’s awesome! I can't describe how this small action made me feel.
And that's why you should too:
First: it’s free:
You don't need the fortune to donate your hair! you can go to your local hairdresser and cut it.
Second: It’s significant :
Donating money is great! but donating something special like your hair is different on many levels!
Third: you will help to draw a smile on the face of kids :
You can't imagine the beauty and impact of this on kids who lost their hair during their battle to fight cancer!
Eventually, donating your hair for them is so noble. and it’s never a way to brag! you are not the hero, they are!
Peace! | https://medium.com/afwp/why-you-must-consider-donating-when-cutting-your-hair-next-time-562c7b93adf3 | ['Ons Bouneb'] | 2020-12-26 15:32:32.413000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Self Improvement', 'Cancer', 'Life Lessons', 'Life'] |
It’s Going To Hurt No Matter What | A Tiny Moment of “Jumping Rope.”
Photo by Chichi Onyekanne on Unsplash
The Moment
We all struggle to stay fit. It is considerably difficult even more so in pandemic times where movement can be restricted. I feel safer training in my garage and near the house away from people. I have a heavy bag and jump rope routine which is to the point and gives maximum training with the minimum, intense time.
After each workout, I feel energized and pumped. The next day, however, my wrists and ankles are not on the same page. They have been consistently hurting the next few days after each session. I use wraps, gloves, and proper footwear. I have been modifying my diet, losing a few pounds over the past few months.
Sometimes it’s going to hurt no matter what…
The Reflection
Those of you out there dealing with loss and failing at things, I applaud you. If you struggle with weight, body type, relationships, finances, etc., then I understand your struggle. I’m sure you have experienced terrible things in your life. No one is isolated from suffering or being presented with challenges. I hope these thoughts are crossing your path at the very moment that you need something, anything, that provides you with some relief.
You are tremendous. You are unique. We are fragile and impermanent. You can be destroyed doing nothing, so sometimes you have to work around doing what appears to be challenging and be your own scientist.
Why not be everything you ever dreamed of? Layout a huge, crazy, unreachable plan. Can you imagine if you even got a tiny whiff of it? How good that would feel to train, work, and achieve even a speck of something you sought out to accomplish? I think you will find adapting and pursuing this will build into your self-worth machine.
During these seven months, things have gone pear-shaped. No one ever thought that they would be in these types of situations. No matter what you do or think, it still feels really bad. It is going to hurt, so come up with the tiniest things that might push you forward and keep on them. I’m no Yogi or Super Heavy Weight contender, but I’ve been practicing yoga and hitting the heavy bag for seven months and I can feel the difference. I have progressed at something.
You can fail at sitting still. You can fail by trying. They both can hurt, but the trying bit feels more fulfilling.
The Takeaway
Be your own scientist.
Study your results. Your choices. See how they affect you.
Tweak your evidence. Be the change.
All spiritual advancement requires risk and being uncomfortable at times.
Seek adventure. Stay the course. Don’t go for the comfortable room, the comfy couch.
Josh Kiev is an actor, chef, and thinks he can jump rope like Rocky Balboa! :) | https://medium.com/tiny-life-moments/its-going-to-hurt-no-matter-what-6e6aa53f2a9f | ['Josh Kiev'] | 2020-10-28 21:54:53.463000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Emotional Health', 'Tiny Life Moments', 'Goals', 'Hope'] |
If You Want to Win in Life, Stop Fighting for the Middle | Imagine 100 people who all want exactly what you want out of life.
They’re all just standing in line.
Now imagine that the person at the front of the line is a rockstar. He’s a stellar success. A household name. Like — the kind of success that everyone else in line aspires to. He’s the top 1 percent.
And imagine that the person at the back of the line completely crashes and burns. He is an absolute, soul-crushing failure. He’s the bottom 1 percent.
That’s the winner and the loser. The one percent, on both ends.
Now imagine that there are nine others on each end of the line that come close to winning or losing. They don’t succeed or fail quite so spectacularly, but they do manage it.
Now we have the top ten percent and bottom ten percent.
Everyone else — the other eighty people— are all fighting for their position in the middle.
Take this in for a minute: There is far more competition for the middle than there is for the top (or the bottom for that matter.)
Most people spend their whole life learning how to be somewhere in the middle and just . . . stay there. Forever.
Let me give you an example.
I once had an awkward conversation in my gym’s hot tub with a mentor from my university’s undergraduate program. She told me that there was no way, under any circumstances, that I’d be able to get a job teaching creative writing at the university level with the degree I was just finishing up.
She has a degree from Yale and it took her three years to get her position. And even if I could get a job, the pay is pitiful.
My best friend has been an adjunct creative writing professor for more than five years and he earns something like $10,000 a year. Let’s just say — not a living wage.
Meanwhile? I started my own creative writing school in 2016 and this year I’ll earn more than $100,000. I project that I’ll earn close to double next year.
Imagine that you are one of those 100 people.
You all are starting from square one, with the same goal: to become online entrepreneurs.
You’re all trying to get your email lists up and running, validating your minimum viable products, starting your websites, all reading the same gurus, all taking the same courses and listening to the same podcasts.
Eventually someone is going to crash and burn. It’ll be ugly. And nine others just aren’t going to get their businesses up and running. They’re going to quit.
Sadly, we can’t help them.
That leaves us with 90 potential online entrepreneurs. Somewhere in that 90 are the ten people who are the top 10 percent.
I have a secret for you.
If you want to do something extraordinary, you aren’t competing against the whole world. But that’s not the secret.
You aren’t competing against the middle, either. That’s 80 of those 90.
You’re only competing against the other people who have done the work to get to the level of competition that rises above the middle.
If we go back to that line of 100 people who all want to be online entrepreneurs — one of them is going to be the Seth Godin of the bunch. And nine others are going to be similar superstars. They are the top 10 percent.
While the other 80 people are fighting each other for position, these folks figure out how to rise up. And actually? It’s not complicated.
It’s not easy either. Just not complicated.
The people who rise to the top:
Do the work. (This is huge.)
Don’t give up.
Keep learning.
Roll with the punches — they change when things aren’t working.
Are willing to be uncomfortable.
That’s about it. Really. If you don’t believe me, go crack open a book written by someone who is in the top 10 percent of pretty much any industry. It’s not about gimmicks or strategies or luck.
Sure, they’re in the right place at the right time — but that often happens because they’re busy working when the rest of the middle isn’t. So much of success is just being the guy who sticks around long enough to be there for it.
This is real life, so obviously there are extenuating circumstances.
Not everyone is born on an even playing field. Some are born into the 1 percent (or ten percent) and only need to hold on to it. (Only a couple of guys get to be born Stephen King’s son, for instance.)
Others are are born in the gutter and have to fight their way out of it if they can. There’s illness — physical, mental — and genetic blessing. There are lucky breaks and bad breaks.
But the truth remains that most people get to a place of relative comfort and stick there. Or they have an idea in their head of what success means and it’s hard to shift gears. (That Yale-trained professor might struggle to believe that I’m the one in the to 10 percent, for instance.)
They are either unwilling to do the work to rise out of the middle or they are blind to what that work entails.
As a result, they compete for the middle and stop when they get there. And that’s okay. There isn’t anything wrong with that. Truly, the 80 percent makes the world work. Someone has to do that work.
If you want to reach the top ten percent, though, (and Stephen King isn’t your dad) you have to make your way past the middle. It’s the only way. | https://shauntagrimes.medium.com/if-you-want-to-win-in-life-stop-fighting-for-the-middle-81f49a6ebbb9 | ['Shaunta Grimes'] | 2019-10-25 18:58:25.892000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Productivity', 'Success', 'Life', 'Busines'] |
South Carolina’s Murder Capital | I remember driving into Greenville, a city in South Carolina’s upstate, in the summer of 1987. Fresh out of grad school, I had accepted a tenure-track assistant professorship at Presbyterian College, a liberal arts school almost halfway between Greenville and Columbia. PC is in the former mill town of Clinton, population then about 10,000. But the mill had closed and the quaint little town was bleeding.
My wife was finishing her MS in counseling psychology and would want a job soon. Neither the college nor the town seemed an inviting prospect for her. Besides, we had just been living in Knoxville, a city of over 300,000. I grew up near Birmingham, AL, and she grew up in Tehran, Iran. Big cities, the antithesis of Clinton. We wanted a place with opportunity, with something of a nightlife, or at least movie theaters. Clinton had a “downtown theater,” but it had closed the spring before we arrived.
I had visited Columbia once, and even then I understood that it was considered the hottest town in the state. Temperature hot, that is. Sure, I had grown up in sultry Alabama, but given a choice, why select the hottest city in the state if you didn’t have to?
So, almost out of our hats, we picked Greenville (for whatever reason, or no reason at all, we didn’t even try Spartanburg, just twenty-five miles to the northwest of Greenville).
We drove straight into downtown Greenville from US 25. We ate at Gene’s, a-formerly-cool meat and three diner. We looked up some realtors in the yellow pages and called one, another choice I can’t explain. The agent listened to what we wanted — a nice, affordable apartment in town.
“Well, we have an old building downtown that I could show you.” He hesitated then. “That is, if you’re interested, though I don’t know why you would be.”
My wife and I looked at each other, then responded,
“An old building downtown? That would be perfect. When can we see it?”
The realtor agreed to meet us in an hour. He gave us the address on Washington Street for the Davenport Building, a three-story, red brick structure with a courtyard, that is now over 100 years old. We viewed one and two-bedroom apartments, but I was leery. I figured on my salary — $22,000 a year — we couldn’t afford such a historic and lovely place.
“So how much are these?” I asked.
“Well, the one-bedroom goes for $350 a month; the two-bedroom, $400. But there are four townhouses, too, if you want to look.”
We did, and grabbed one almost immediately. It rented for $375 a month. Two floors, three bedrooms, though just one bath, and an upper floor balcony. Sure, this was 1987, but it all seemed too good to be true. Surely we were missing something.
We lived in the Davenport for five years until our first-born daughter began trying to crawl down the staircase. Time to move into a safer space, safer, that is, for a toddler. We lived just two blocks from Greenville’s Main Street, which at that point was semi-busy during the day, and strangely quiet at night. Except, that is, on Friday and Saturday nights when cars and trucks cruised through downtown and kept circling back, repeating the cruise leading to who knows what or where?
There were a few restaurants open from Thursday through Saturday nights: Charlie’s Steakhouse, and institution since the 1920’s; newly-opened Ristorante Bergamo; Annie’s Natural Cafe. There were a couple of comedy clubs too, primarily Cafe and Then Some. We’d walk downtown on these pleasant late summer and fall evenings, but the cruisers made us nervous.
Still, despite our nervousness, nothing much happened that would have caused worry or fear. Or at least not much.
One night we saw a guy standing on the corner of Washington and Church, just steps from our townhouse door. He was wearing a bright yellow suit and a black hat.
“How much do these places cost?” he asked us.
I told him because I’m an honest guy.
And a bit naive.
My wife, in her gentle fashion, scolded me later:
“You shouldn’t give out such information to strangers. Now he knows where we live!”
I paused a moment and then considered these just fears to be dismissed.
A week later, I saw the guy sitting on our front steps. I locked the door, and we didn’t go out that night.
That was the last time I saw him, though.
Later that fall, on a beautiful Saturday morning, I was walking downtown to pick up my car from the Goodyear service center on College Street. As I turned the corner from Main onto East North Street, a Vega wagon pulled alongside me. There were three or four people riding, people in their early twenties, or maybe even younger. What they were doing riding around at ten in the morning, I’m not sure of. What I know, though, is that when they pulled up by me, the guy sitting in the front passenger’s seat yelled out,
“Shoot you man.”
He had a gun.
He fired.
It was a cap pistol.
The car laughed and then squealed off.
I figured then that I had a strong heart, but I stepped back to the nearest building and leaned there a while.
After we moved to a quieter neighborhood, we were the victims of mail fraud. Almost every day, we’d receive something from some Heirloom Collection house. On the other days, we might receive a copy of Penthouse or Hustler magazines. Then the phone calls started. The police finally figured out that the perpetrator was a paroled sex offender — someone who liked to expose himself publicly. He had become pissed off at me because I had been a participant in The Greenville News’ reader movie reviews. I had given Spike Lee’s Malcolm X a five-star review. Even in the early ’90s, Malcolm made some people nervous. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/south-carolinas-murder-capital-db6231b91893 | ['Terry Barr'] | 2019-09-09 12:15:26.688000+00:00 | ['Murder Etc', 'Nonfiction', 'The South', 'Home', 'A Cornered Gurl'] |
Why you should learn automation, even if you never code | Regardless of where you work, there is one thing in common. Monotonous and menial work will always be a part of the job. This job can range from reporting to authority, editing photos for your e-commerce products, searching longitude/latitude in google maps, data collection, and formatting. The annoying part of this job is not the difficulty of the task. Still, an obnoxious amount of time is wasted on this job. It could take hours or even days to finish the job, only to do the same next week/month. It makes work more tiring, and questions the value of your effort in your work.
This article is to elaborate on why automation is an essential skill for you to learn and its benefit for the rest of us who do not divulge into coding. It is not to train you in the field of automation, understanding there are already tons of articles and stories to explore the topic. If you are looking for such stories, you can reference “Towards Data Science” publication for more detailed reports or visit Automate The Boring Stuff. For the sake of this story, automation would be defined as any process that could decrease manual labor. The automation article talks specifically about automation that can be performed on a computer without any other equipment.
1. Automation saves time.
Let’s start with the most obvious one, creating automation saves a lot of time. It is one of those times that you invest a lot at the beginning and can bear a lot of fruit later on. Most of these works are a burden that we need to fulfill periodically, and literally waste hours or days working on. In the absence of automation, workers need to edit pictures to put on frames for each product in an e-commerce site or fill out hundreds of forms for transactions. Though it might seem easy, doing this repetitive work is exhausting and time-consuming.
Why is this important?
Creating automation allows you to do repetitive tasks in a significantly less amount of time. Things like editing for hours can be done in seconds. This substantially increases your productivity and gives you a lot more time to chill or work on another project. This is important because living in a capitalistic society (corporate or start-ups) to move up or get promoted is always about proving yourself. It is still good to have ammunition when you are asking for promotions. To increase your chances, we frequently need to do the task of higher-ups before getting the benefits. This is why companies often glorify hard work because they want to see proof. Promotion means more risk for the company. It means giving new responsibility to new workers. Obtaining a new time allows you more chances to prove merit outside your job descriptions. Getting more time means seizing more opportunities for you to develop.
2. It is terrible for your mental health.
Working in multiple industries has taught me that I never hated my job, I hated doing the monotonous work. Bojack puts it the best by saying,
“Every day, it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part.” -Bojack
Though it might be in a different context, it speaks to the rest of us who continuously cannot escape the monotonous workflow. Our minds are left unchallenged, and we felt unproductive yet tired of doing jobs that we know will never be over. A Harvard Business Review post an article on “If You’re Burning Out, Carve a New Path,” which portrays that monotonous work can negatively impact mental health, cause us significant stress, and lead to burnout. It is essential to find meaning in our work, but it’s hard while we always felt like a cog in a machine only to work until we are tired.
What automation can do is to decrease the burden of monotonous work. However, you might be required to supervise the code to run, but it gives you power and agency to yourself by giving you more time to do stuff that you like. You do not feel suffocated by the monotonous work, but feel proud that you can contribute in that saves up a substantial amount of time to your company. Though it might seem menial, it is crucial to explore meaning in your work that is not just tokenistic.
We all want to have the power to say we are more than just a cog
3. Automation decrease human errors
The most annoying part of working is to clean up your/other people’s mess. Unfortunately, these mistakes will exist due to human error. Either we are exhausted, a slip of the hand, or maybe pure ignorance often results in crisis management that is continuously and mentally draining. Intentional or not, human error is a danger all companies need to prevent.
Automation allows you to use tools that you are familiar with, like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. It integrates that with Python Code to simulate human behaviours. This means no more typos, unintentional clicks, miscalculations, or missing one form. Understanding that works in corporate and start-ups would always be integrated and heavily influenced by human errors would frequently stop other teams. Reparation to this would need to go back and forth and often impossible when it is already delivered later on. The continuous damage of human error will persist when we continuously depend on humans.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
4. It helps your company develop.
The truth about monotonous jobs is it is only going to get worse over time. The tedious workload usually gets more prominent when the business grows. Take an example from a reporting scheme for a financial start-up to the government. The more transactions it carries on its system would mean more forms an employee needs to fill and send to the government. Without the use of automation, companies end up hiring people for monotonous jobs without any career plan or outsourcing to other companies. Companies need to prevent this harm before it starts getting too big until it disrupts businesses.
How can automation help? Automation can be used to minimize these workloads and cut down prices that you might use to employ or outsource. With current progress in automation, it can handle large volumes of data without trouble. That means you do not have to invest more even if your businesses grow.
In addition to that, becoming the person who can automate and improve productivity would be a significant boost to your career. You actively provide a more substantial contribution to your company, and that puts you ahead miles in the competition.
Photo by LYCS Architecture on Unsplash
5. Automation framework is a transferable skill
Understanding monotonous work exists everywhere, which means job opportunities for automation will be there. Unless the job is saturated at one point, which is a bit unlikely happening shortly. Transferable skills are essential to have in life. Most of us graduated in the economic or healthcare crisis, and can never depend on one industry to strive. Our decision in the past to choose our major might change. We might not like our sector or environment. In a world where we always glorify passion, we forget that it is a product of externalities. We picked specific majors because it was cool or others think its profitable. We are forced to choose the 60 years of our lives when we were 20. There are times where we want our lives to change. Having skills like automation serves as a safety net when the worst comes knocking on our door. | https://towardsdatascience.com/why-you-should-learn-automation-even-if-you-never-code-8afc9c3677ac | ['Sandy Sanjaya'] | 2020-06-09 18:25:26.986000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Personal Development', 'Innovation', 'Data Science', 'Programming'] |
Digital immortality: why AI decentralisation is vital for the future of humanity, and it’s not about open markets only | The open market will commoditize AI and make progress decentralized. Instead of “super-power”, literally “all knowing”, AI that is being developed by big tech players having access to all of our data, which will be regulated by the government to create more or less Orwellian-style society (like already happens in China), we will have much less powerful multiple independent AIs, joined in trading economy between themselves , and which is more important — with humans. That’s why the decentralization and digital economy go in hand with each other.
But it is not the whole story, it goes much further than just reducing strategic risks from the AI for humanity. From the very beginning we were a transhumanist project and we see decentralized computing environment for AI models as a network to run digital identities — a way for the digital immortality for humans and post-humanity.
Credits: Westworld movie
Digital immortality is a technology that allows us, figuratively, to store and transmit the memory and consciousness of a person on digital media, thus creating virtual copies. Something similar is presented in the TV series “Black Mirror” and “Westworld”, and things that look fantastic, even on TV, will be realized in the nearest future.
While the current level of machine learning technologies does not yet allow 100% implementation of a digital persona, neural networks can already be trained on text materials, and it is possible to create a chatbot that simulates real communication. Such a thing, for example, was done by a girl who has digitized the history of correspondence with a deceased friend.
In 5–10 years, the progress in this area will lead to the existence of more advanced virtual replicas, but what will happen next? Who would like their future digital identities to depend on the decisions made by Amazon, Google or Microsoft? Instead of relying on the servers of technology giants, where, in case of regulation, their activity can be stopped (i.e., literally, killed), Pandora Network will allow digital copies of people to be unkillable, uncensored, and unstoppable.
The freedom of artificial intelligence is not something that will lead to a war of AI vs. humans for survival. Instead, this is the future of humanity itself, as people want certain guarantees of security and freedom of their digital persona.
Digital Pandora
Initially, we had chosen not to make our long-term transhumanistic goals public, avoiding much hype. However, with our AI testnet launched and mainnet coming in the foreseeable future, we are ready to spill the beans and show why all of this is important. This is not only a declaration: The Pandora project internal team is already working on launching digital identities in the network.
A journey of a thousand years begins with a single step. Understanding the importance of the digital immortality, we will create such first personas in our network and demonstrate how this works. We invite everyone to join our initiative. We are waiting for visionaries and developers in our community. To get started, please join us in our Telegram group — or follow us on Twitter and Facebook to express your opinion there. | https://medium.com/pandoraboxchain/digital-immortality-why-ai-decentralisation-is-vital-for-the-future-of-humanity-852be0cd9d33 | ['Orlovsky Maxim'] | 2018-12-05 07:44:35.404000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Transhumanism', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Decentralization', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
Alfred Lin’s Fireside Chat at South Park Commons | So what is SPC? We’re a self-organizing community of technologists, tinkerers, and domain experts based in San Francisco. We are building new (and sometimes unorthodox) ventures — ranging from enterprise startups and consumer apps, to open source ML and civic-tech projects. We come together, virtually and in the physical world, to learn from each other, challenge ourselves, and validate new ideas.
Our members also host a recurring events series. Our goal is to bring new and exciting ideas and technologies into the community as well as valuable learnings from those who have first-hand experience building their life’s work. In the past we’ve hosted Silicon Valley VCs and CEOs like Reid Hoffman and Mike Kreiger, leaders like CEO of U.S. Digital Response Raylene Yung and SF Mayor London Breed, and domain experts like Nobel laureate Dr. Saul Perlmutter, experimental physicist Dr. Rana Adhikari, and Howard Hughes Investigator Wendell Lim, amongst many others.
Our on-the-record talks are posted to the SPC Youtube channel. You can also sign up for our events mailing list or newsletter to stay in the loop. | https://medium.com/south-park-commons/alfred-lins-fireside-chat-at-south-park-commons-60a2879ea19c | ['South Park Commons'] | 2020-10-30 21:19:21.085000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Startup', 'Community', 'Venture Capital'] |
6 Self-Care Practices You Can Do in 5 Minutes | “Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.” — Brené Brown
While looking around, we observe that most people are moving fast in their lives, trying to achieve genuine happiness and peace of mind but fail to get.
Why?
It might be because of a lack of self-love and self-care. Let’s discuss some essential self-care lessons that you should never forget in life to maintain your sanity and wellbeing.
In this article, I would like to share six key lessons you might have forgotten about your self-care. | https://medium.com/illumination/6-self-care-practices-you-can-do-in-5-minutes-72dea3fe2073 | ['Rajesh Vairapandian'] | 2020-11-01 14:01:14.683000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Lifestyle', 'Self', 'Mental Health', 'Philosophy'] |
Introducing Bitfolio 2 | Version 2 of Bitfolio is here, it’s amazing and it’s already available for download on the App Store. 🙌
It’s not long ago that version 1 was officially released (September) but the quick adoption and the awesome amount of feedback received, gave us only one option: increase the development rate.
So here we are, we packed a lot of new features, most of them requested by you guys (and we love it!), changed almost everything in the app and I’m so happy and proud to be able to announce this new version.
Here is a quick overview of what’s changed, what’s new, and what’s coming next.
More coins 🎉
We heard you! Bitfolio now supports the top 100 coins on CoinMarketCap, and we will be able to add many more in the near future without having to submit a new release.
Redesigned Portfolio 🤩
Adding more coins resulted in having to remove the historic graph in the Portfolio tab 😔 , we couldn’t find a reliable data source for it.
We are hoping to bring it back soon hopefully.
On the other side, we now have a gorgeous pie chart displaying all of your assets, tapping on a slice it’s possible to view more informations about the coin.
New Assets screen 😍
You will love this: all your assets displayed on a beautiful single screen packed with insights and informations.
But there is more, tapping on the asset, will show the asset’ transactions.
And since we were at it, we even added gains for every single transaction and the price of a single coin paid at the time.
New Ticker pairs ✌️
When adding a new ticker, you can now select any pair supported by the exchange.
What’s next 🧐
Many new features are in our backlog including:
Exchange transactions sync
Ticker widget
TouchID / FaceID
Assets location & filtering
More coins, exchanges and language support
And much more.
Contribute 😊
Check out the Bitfolio roadmap and vote / comment on features, your input will be important to decide what next feature should be developed first.
You can also send any feedback and request directly to us via email or twitter.
Thank you ❤️
So much!
Most of this it’s been possible because of your support, please don’t stop sending feedback and feature requests.👏
Please consider sharing Bitfolio with your friends and coworkers, it would help us tremendously.
Stay up to date with crypto currencies news & Bitfolio updates: | https://medium.com/bitfolioapp/introducing-bitfolio-2-eb456718eb41 | ['Francesco Pretelli'] | 2018-01-10 18:51:51.833000+00:00 | ['Apple', 'iOS', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Apps'] |
Media Campaign to Discredit Johnny Depp Supporters Continues | Again, at no point during this conversation (to the extent that is publicly available) does Abrams address the audio McPherson published on his YouTube channel, which gained more than two million views and resulted in #JusticeForJohnnyDepp trending worldwide. Instead the only thing that seemed to interest her was McPherson’s potential connection to Waldman.
The conversation apparently ended there, but soon after nearly everyone with a relationship to McPherson found themselves with a New York Times reporter on their proverbial doorstep.
“She called a state police post to contact my brother, who has no idea this case even exists,” McPherson said in a tweet. “Then me…then my wife, who doesn’t even have her identity on social media.” McPherson said that these repeated attempts to contact his family were “harassment.”
Another prominent Depp supporter known as ‘Laura B’ (@LauraBockov) added her own message to McPherson’s, claiming that, after she did not respond to Abrams’ direct message, Abrams somehow found her husband’s cellphone number. Abrams reportedly called Laura’s husband while he was at work, left him a voicemail, and texted him almost immediately after.
Laura B on Twitter.
“My husband is not on Twitter,” Laura said in a tweet, “so what could he tell her? He knows my position here, but if not how would that [conversation] go?”
Even better, almost immediately after Laura and McPherson posted the above tweets, Abrams apparently went on a following spree. I felt a jolt at the sight of a verified account (so-called “blue tick”) following me, then learned that dozens of others had experienced the same thing. She remains following me and many other users to this day, though she has never interacted with or responded to any of our posts. I can only infer that her intention is to watch.
And Abrams did not stop there. She also reportedly called McPherson’s employer asking for comment on his social media activity, and sent the below email to the employer of his brother:
Screenshot of an email reportedly from Abrams. Twitter. Via @thatbrianfella.
Given the details of these known interactions, the pattern of Abrams’ questions and general behavior is clear. She had direct access to McPherson, but when asked for the angle of her story, discontinued that contact and instead attempted to contact multiple members of his personal circle, some of whom have no knowledge whatsoever of the case on which she claims to be reporting. In other words, Abrams appears to have chosen to slide under the back gate when the front door is wide open.
Additionally, this email seems to abandon all pretense that Abrams’ reporting is focused on the developments in the Depp/Heard libel suit. Indeed, the only thing she appears interested in is the activity of Depp’s most prominent supporters and their sources of information. | https://medium.com/lighterside/media-campaign-to-discredit-johnny-depp-supporters-continues-66c7c0f19a10 | ['Deborah Handover'] | 2020-06-25 16:46:39.834000+00:00 | ['Hollywood', 'Entertainment', 'Actors', 'Movies', 'Journalism'] |
Increase GlusterFS volume size in Kubernetes | One of the common issues when using a persistent volume solution in Kubernetes, like GlusterFS, is to start running out of storage capacity in your cluster, and you have to find a smooth way to increase volume size without losing your data. In this short article I will show you two ways of doing it.
Before going deeper, let me introduce you the context and some terminologies that will be used throughout this article.
From official websites:
“Gluster is a scalable, distributed file system that aggregates disk storage resources from multiple servers into a single global namespace”.
“Heketi provides a RESTful management interface which can be used to manage the lifecycle of GlusterFS volumes”.
Topology.json, “heketi uses this configuration file to define cluster nodes topology for GlusterFS. It contains the nodes’ IP addresses and the storage devices to use in each node”.
It looks like:
{
“clusters”: [
{
“nodes”: [
{
“node”: {
“hostnames”: {
“manage”:
[“node4”],
“storage”: [“10.0.XX.XX”]
},
“zone”: 1
},
“devices”: [
{
“name”: “/dev/xvdb”,
“destroydata”: false
}
]
}
…
I use GlusterFS and Heketi inside a Kubernetes cluster, running on six EC2 machines; three masters/etcd and three nodes (workers).
I use the Kubespray project to setup the cluster on an AWS environment. It has the advantage of using Ansible playbooks to setup the necessary bricks for Kubernetes, whether on AWS or elsewhere.
In the same project, there are also additional Ansible playbooks that I have used to setup GlusterFS and Heketi storage topology. The latter is running on k8s nodes and uses EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances. You need to customize this topology to fit your needs.
The picture below shows roughly how the setup is made.
I started with a volume of 30GiB mounted on /dev/xvdb device. The k8s cluster was almost empty, only some monitoring Daemonsets were running and other light applications with 8GiB of PersistentVolumes for each; everything was good until I had touched the limits. At this point I figured out that PersistentVolumeClaims were stuck in pending state forever. Here is an example of stucking pvc for Minio S3 storage.
minio persistentvolumeclaim/minio-pvc Pending 1d
Looking in logs, I found a clear message saying that there was not enough storage capacity to run the pvc.
Warning ProvisioningFailed … Failed to provision volume with StorageClass “gluster”: failed to create volume: heketi block volume creation failed: [heketi] failed to create volume: Failed to allocate new block volume: No space
Let’s get our hands dirty
There are two ways I have used to increase volume capacity:
Extend the volume attached to VM.
Add another storage device (for example: /dev/xvdc) to heketi topology.
1. Extend the volume:
This method assumes that you have already a volume mounted in heketi cluster. It can be used on cloud providers which allow you to expand volumes on-the-fly, like AWS, GCP etc.
The first step is to expand your volume size (from web GUI, command line, terraform …) SSH into the said instance. Expand the physical volume, in my case I added another 30GiB
pvresize /dev/xvdb
Physical volume “/dev/xvdb” changed
1 physical volume(s) resized / 0 physical volume(s) not resized
Before:
vgdisplay
— — Volume group — -
VG Name vg_a1751200878b2bb0a64d89a15e3bc801
VG Size 29.87 GiB
After:
vgdisplay
— — Volume group — -
VG Name vg_a1751200878b2bb0a64d89a15e3bc801
VG Size 59.87 GiB
4. Now tell Heketi to take into account the new volume size with Resync device. The heketi command lines are available on this website.
5. Connect to a master node or any other machine that have a remote and configured kubectl and do the following steps:
# Get heketi pod name kubectl get pods -n kube-system | grep heketi
# Get heketi secret for Admin access in order to use API as Admin kubectl get secret heketi-config-secret -n kube-system -o jsonpath — template ‘{.data.heketi\.json}’ | base64 -d
# List heketi cluster Name kubectl -n kube-system exec heketi-d55cbd78c-7tj8c -n kube-system — heketi-cli — user admin — secret XXXXXX cluster list ClusterId: Id:65ddc905b8a32dc49db721a004a08ead
# Get detailed informations about the cluster kubectl -n kube-system exec heketi-d55cbd78c-7tj8c -n kube-system — heketi-cli — user admin — secret XXXXX cluster info 65ddc905b8a32dc49db721a004a08ead Cluster id: 65ddc905b8a32dc49db721a004a08ead Nodes: 310744c2908338d7d229268a4445951b 9ac5b33d03759ba7d9b161b879a4ea39 e0fd9cbad89eac2989cff2b426a59288 Volumes: 29e2a3fd578bb98a7d44e9a538cc9e74 7c955fe8dff62136046fc5c794abb6a5 b22ad96e06a4bff70c16e9fe61a4ed50 Block: true File: true
# Get informations about one node, you can apply the command again with another node id kubectl -n kube-system exec heketi-d55cbd78c-7tj8c -n kube-system — heketi-cli — user admin — secret XXXXX node info 9ac5b33d03759ba7d9b161b879a4ea39 Node Id: 310744c2908338d7d229268a4445951b State: online Cluster Id: 65ddc905b8a32dc49db721a004a08ead Zone: 1 Management Hostname: node5 Storage Hostname: 10.0.XX.XX Devices: Id:a1751200878b2bb0a64d89a15e3bc801 Name:/dev/xvdb State:online Size (GiB):34 Used (GiB):22 Free (GiB):12 Bricks:3
# Resync device kubectl -n kube-system exec heketi-d55cbd78c-7tj8c -n kube-system — heketi-cli — user admin — secret XXXXX device resync a1751200878b2bb0a64d89a15e3bc801 Device updated
6. Once the resync is done, you can check again the node to see what has changed.
# Get updated informations about node5 kubectl -n kube-system exec heketi-d55cbd78c-7tj8c -n kube-system — heketi-cli — user admin — secret XXXXX node info 9ac5b33d03759ba7d9b161b879a4ea39 Node Id: 310744c2908338d7d229268a4445951b State: online Cluster Id: 65ddc905b8a32dc49db721a004a08ead Zone: 1 Management Hostname: node5 Storage Hostname: 10.0.XX.XX Devices: Id:Id:a1751200878b2bb0a64d89a15e3bc801 Name:/dev/xvdb State:online Size (GiB):64 Used (GiB):22 Free (GiB):42 Bricks:3
7. At last, do not forget to run the same resync command for all glusterFS nodes (node4, node6 in my case).
And now you have just increased volume capacity in your cluster.
2. Add another storage device to heketi topology
In this case, I’m going to add a new storage device to heketi topology. This method is most likely used when you cannot increase volume sizes on-the-fly, and you have to add another volume in order to expand storage capacity in your cluster. These steps are inspired from IBM’s website.
Please note that the volume must be unmounted and empty, no partition or filesystem must be created on it, so it can be used by heketi.
Create and attach the volume to instance, for example: /dev/xvdc You can make sure to clear up your volume by using:
wipefs — all — force /dev/xvdc
3. Connect to a master node or any machine that have a remote and configured kubectl.
4. This step from the previous procedure is optional, I am using it just to get more visibility about what is happening, and also a small reminder for whomever that uses the second procedure.
Get heketi pod name
Get heketi secret for admin access
List cluster Name
Get more informations about the cluster
Get informations about one node, you can apply the command again with another node id
5. Add this volume to heketi topology:
# To add a new device to heketi, you must use volume ID got by cluster info command or heketi-cli volume list kubectl -n kube-system exec heketi-d55cbd78c-7tj8c — heketi-cli — user admin — secret XXXXX device add — name=/dev/xvdc — node=e0fd9cbad89eac2989cff2b426a59288 Device added successfully
Before:
kubectl -n kube-system exec heketi-d55cbd78c-7tj8c — heketi-cli — user admin — secret XXXXX node info 9ac5b33d03759ba7d9b161b879a4ea39 Node Id: 310744c2908338d7d229268a4445951b State: online Cluster Id: 65ddc905b8a32dc49db721a004a08ead Zone: 1 Management Hostname: node5 Storage Hostname: 10.0.25.109 Devices: Id:a1751200878b2bb0a64d89a15e3bc801 Name:/dev/xvdb State:online Size (GiB):34 Used (GiB):22 Free (GiB):12 Bricks:3
After:
kubectl -n kube-system exec heketi-d55cbd78c-7tj8c — heketi-cli — user admin — secret XXXXX node info 9ac5b33d03759ba7d9b161b879a4ea39 Node Id: 310744c2908338d7d229268a4445951b State: online Cluster Id: 65ddc905b8a32dc49db721a004a08ead Zone: 1 Management Hostname: node5 Storage Hostname: 10.0.25.109 Devices: Id:a1751200878b2bb0a64d89a15e3bc801 Name:/dev/xvdb State:online Size (GiB):34 Used (GiB):22 Free (GiB):12 Bricks:3 Id:fcb295c112eb0a1bbfa9e6fca8a3f30a Name:/dev/xvdc State:online Size (GiB):59 Used (GiB):0 Free (GiB):59 Bricks:5
6. Do not forget to apply the previous step on all glusterFS nodes (node4 and node6 in my case).
Conclusion
GlusterFs is a serious project supported by RedHat, IBM and others. It is a good start to play with dynamic volumes in k8s. For now the project is still young and I didn’t test it in a production context.
I have used both methods shown in this article and they work fine. Now enjoy your storage :)
Special thanks to my friends from The WeTribu who have patiently reviewed this article. | https://medium.com/wescale/increase-glusterfs-volume-size-in-kubernetes-752e087bf065 | ['Aymen Lamara'] | 2019-05-02 15:28:39.570000+00:00 | ['Heketi', 'Glusterfs', 'Kubernetes', 'Storage'] |
How Business Intelligence is different from Data Science | Working Journey: Business Intelligence
After working as a business intelligence for 10 months, here are some experiences I would like to share. If you are still an undergraduate, or just graduated, or still considering to switch your job career to business intelligence, I hope you will make use of this “past data” before making your final decision.
Before I started, just to provide some background of mine, I was working at Shopee as local business intelligence. Thus, I was responsible for providing reports only on the local market. Besides, my main responsible not only included crawling a large scale of websites to perform competitor analysis but also build machine learning models to help the company in saving operating costs.
From what you notice above, this position is all about business. Every day, I will receive multiple requests from other internal teams to perform certain analyses. I will need to communicate with them, giving them advice on how this kind of analysis should be performed so that it will not be simply wasted. To retrieve the data I need, I would need to write a lot of SQL queries.
Here are three points I would like to point out so far.
Do anticipate that your daily working life will be flooded with requests, whether it is a do-able or a not do-able request. Don’t be shocked that your working life will be filling with lots of ad-hoc requests.
Besides, there will be lots of communication required for this position. If you are a person who wants to focus only on the technical part of business intelligence, do ask the interviewer more detail about what you will be doing in day to day basis and also bombard them with technical questions. This will at least make sure you will be able to know the environment before accepting the job.
Other than that, proficient in SQL is a plus. No matter what requests are coming in, the only way to extract data internally is through SQL queries.
Back in my working life, reports occupied most of my time as business intelligence. They could come in different forms, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or even ad-hoc basis. Therefore having skills like VBA or Python would be very beneficial, so that you will be able to automate them.
Sharing on more technical parts of this position composes of web crawling and build some machine learning models. These two components are also essential in an e-commerce business, one reason is to gain a competitive edge and the other one is to reduce the cost for the company.
For web crawling, from what I have experienced, the most difficult part is to maintain it. Building a web crawler is simple, but to make sure your web crawler will not be blocked by websites is a whole new different story. Besides, building machine learning models, it is just less than a small piece of the pie in my business intelligence working life.
This is the last point I want to make. Tech Skill required in this position is minimal, business is the most important aspect. Even though you are not good at tech, if you are interested in business, then this position is very suitable for you. | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-business-intelligence-is-different-from-data-science-f1673456b80c | ['Low Wei Hong'] | 2019-10-27 11:39:17.620000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'Data Science', 'Programming'] |
I’m a Mother and Other People’s Kids Irritate Me | Rationally I fully understand all of them. Emotionally I am irritated and my frustration is getting out of hand.
I am fuming and it doesn’t help me or them. So what does?
It’s not just about dealing with a toddler in a closed space, it’s about a lot of things in life.
Accepting what is
It’s an impossible situation. I can’t change it. I need to deal with it, whether I like it or not. Almost every time we feel stuck in a situation, there is the possibility of removing ourselves from it — it’s more the question of a decision than anything else.
I am deciding to stay, instead of looking for another compartment — because I am lazy; because it will be over soon; because I don’t want to be rude. But I am fully aware that I could walk out — and when me staying becomes a conscious decision, it becomes more tolerable. I suddenly don’t feel as trapped as I did — knowing that I could change it. Putting myself back in charge feels empowering and my breathing starts to calm down.
Changing my attitude
The world is 10% of what is happening and 90% of how we react to it. If I am focusing on how impossible it is to work, how much it is irritating me and how helpless I feel from my increasing anxiety — my anxiety will increase further, no work will be done anyway, and I am just left with my irritation.
It is entirely up to me how I decide to react. My immediate reaction might not be the best, so I need to change my attitude — even if it takes energy and effort, because no matter how much I want the situation to magically change, it might or might not. I can’t count on changing the things that are out of my circle of control.
Noticing the positive
Then came the extremely difficult part. Deciding not to remove myself from the situation and accepting that it’s my job to change my attitude, I needed to put it into action. So, very consciously I tried to notice the positive things. It took all my energy to notice how cute the boy was, how loving the mother was and how patient she stayed during the whole train ride. I was trying to see the good in them, appreciating how great it is to have grandparents who help out and accompany them wherever they are travelling.
Accepting the learning
No matter how terrible any situation is (this train ride is not the worst thing that can happen to me) there is always something to learn from it. It takes a lot of practice to shift your negative attitude from fuming into something progressive when you are consciously looking for clues about how to get something positive out of it.
There are always learnings, wherever you go. You can learn an awful lot about yourself, about your own attitudes, and of others too. | https://zitafontaine.medium.com/im-a-mother-and-other-people-s-kids-irritate-me-93665400bcaa | ['Zita Fontaine'] | 2019-12-05 07:33:45.071000+00:00 | ['Anxiety', 'Self', 'Mental Health', 'Family', 'Parenting'] |
Growing your business with Progressive Web Apps(PWA) | Progressive Web Apps can grow your business and help you win
(PWA)Progressive web apps have come to stay in our world. Everybody uses social media and all our day to day applications from our gadgets. But do we know how all these come to be? Is there a benefit for business owners willing to take advantage of what developers offer?
First of all, what is a Progressive Web App?
Think of a Progressive web app (PWA) as a result of integrating a webpage with any native mobile application. This is because it is facilitated by the internet and is accessed via a web browser of a mobile device or computer.
Medium and large scale enterprises are dashing into progressive web apps. There is a big room for cooperation and business to engage both customers and users with a variety of services and options via advertisement and to crown it all, an excellent user experience.
What your business stands to gain if you use a Progressive Web App
Advantages of Progressive web apps PWA
Forget the App Store
Progressive web apps don’t call the need for a mobile app store. Users can easily download and access progressive web applications. This is enabled by straight access to a browser. However, it all leans on the type of mobile operating system you possess. For Android, you need to run an installation of the PWA. iOS, on the other hand, you can simply add it manually to your home screen.
No internet no problem
With progressive web apps, cached data are saved each time you use the internet. The key here is that you can access a PWA with or without the internet. You can save content, fill forms, and use some other functions but you need an internet connection if you want to send data.
Compatibility
You can build a progressive web app on time than a native app for a mobile platform. You can develop a PWA once and for all, it cuts and works across any platform. This is an advantage of uniqueness and as well as cross-platform compatibility.
After google developed a new technology called the WebAPK it became an icing on the cake. PWAs in the form of an executable file can be installed on any Android device the same way as a native mobile app.
PWAs are also replacing the urgency for Chrome apps platform, developing a PWA that runs with installation by Google Chrome browser, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or any of the leading browsers out there.
Easy Updates
progressive web apps need no any kind of manual updates from the user end. Everything is automated for the user and directly from the developers’ side. This gives the convenience of an easy update without going through the app store.
Accessibility
The progressive web app runs on less technical infrastructures if compared to native apps plus the use of lesser data. It loads and runs with more speed, betting delays even with the oldest mobile network. You can imagine the advantage an enterprise can gain now that we have 5G networks and greater processing speed.
Progressive Web App and your business business
UI/UX Factor
Every organization and enterprise should have it in mind that access to clients begets profit. The advancement of software programming and recommendations from leading developers greatly shows that it is advisable, cheaper, and faster to code a PWA.
Irrespective of the volume of audience, content management, and release for PWA is at once and for all users. The update is easy and fast, happening each time a user connects to the internet and refreshes the webpage.
The user experience of a progressive web app is a catalyst for user engagement and in return more income. It runs seamlessly on any device optimizing the web browsers and making the pages display easily and nicely.
Action time
After all said and done, it is evident that the Progressive Web App(PWA) is the best for businesses and enterprises. It encompasses the optimization of advertising and the drive of traffic through excellent user experience. This makes your brand stand a better chance. You will enjoy productive and efficient business solutions for your businesses and at the same time win the confidence of the users.
iTwis provides custom software development services that cover a vast range of business needs including outsourcing. Our partners and clients are business owners from different private sectors.
We have shown a strong capacity in IT consulting and delivered as a trusted software development team Our consultant would be glad to discuss your software development challenges and come up with the most suitable solution designed for your business needs. | https://medium.com/itwis/growing-your-business-with-progressive-web-apps-pwa-75da049befa1 | ['Ayo Oladele'] | 2020-07-02 05:31:10.937000+00:00 | ['Cross Platform', 'Mobile App Development', 'iOS', 'Android', 'Progressive Web App'] |
Enterprise How to tap the true value of 80% unstructured data? | Modern enterprise applications in the digital economy will generate a variety of data, including operating system logs, network and security device logs, business access and transaction data, etc. These data are very large in volume and in different formats.
Big data analysis concept
Big data analysis refers to the analysis of large-scale data. Big data can be summarized as 5 Vs, with large data volume (Volume), fast speed (Velocity), multiple types (Variety), value (Value), and authenticity (Veracity).
Big data is the most popular IT industry vocabulary nowadays. The subsequent use of data warehouse, data security, data analysis, data mining and so on around the commercial value of big data has gradually become the focus of profit sought after by industry professionals. With the advent of the era of big data, big data analysis has also emerged.
Challenges facing big data analysis
IDC data shows that at present, structured data in enterprises accounts for 20% of the total data volume, and 80% is unstructured data. How to mine the true value of 80% of the data, including the hidden risks and commercial value, has become a big The main goal of data analysis.
1. Data island
There is a lot of information in logs, network traffic and business process data, but they are isolated from each other, and these logs need to be effectively correlated.
2. A wide variety of log formats
Different systems and devices have different log formats. Especially when dealing with unstructured and semi-structured data, how to quickly normalize various types of logs is the primary problem for big data analysis.
3. Department independence
Security, business, and operation and maintenance are independent of each other, and their respective concerns and perspectives are different. It is difficult to meet the needs of multiple operation and maintenance responsibilities of business operation and maintenance departments in many enterprises on the same data analysis system.
4. Retrospective analysis and evidence collection
Security incidents occur frequently, and I want to learn from the incidents, how to effectively conduct retrospective analysis and obtain evidence.
5. Fast iteration
Once the analysis system is developed, it is difficult to make adjustments to data sources, analysis dimensions, report presentation, etc., to adapt to new requirements.
6. Regulatory compliance
The cyber security law and the security system all put forward relevant requirements for log retention and security situation awareness.
“Faced with massive amounts of data, whoever can better process and analyze the data can truly seize the opportunity in the era of big data.” This is almost the consensus of everyone in the industry. The analysis of massive data has become a very important and urgent need of enterprises and governments.
Holographic data perspective solution
The holographic data perspective system launched by Pangeo Technology is an analysis platform for multi-source heterogeneous massive data. It can collect, organize, archive and store machine data in any format, and provide data analysis, search, and Reporting and visualization capabilities.
For logs from various security devices, network traffic, personnel behavior data, host application logs, and business system data, through intelligent analysis methods such as correlation analysis, user behavior analysis, and machine learning, it can provide business security threat monitoring, applications, and network Security attack monitoring, operation and maintenance security monitoring and analysis functions.
Main functions of holographic data perspective
1. Security threat analysis
Analyze and present the current attack situation of the system. Including: malicious accounts, IP addresses, attacked systems, etc. controlled by hacked products;
2. Business threat perception
Perceives, analyzes and presents behaviors that cause account and data leakage risks such as database collisions and crawlers, as well as business fraudulent behaviors such as swiping orders and spikes;
3. Application security audit
Audit abnormal account operations and access behaviors;
4. Operation and maintenance monitoring support
Provide support for operation and maintenance work such as application operation resource monitoring, application access analysis, and operation analysis;
5. Customizable security visualization
Large screen display can be provided for real-time monitoring of the monitoring center.
Core advantages of holographic data perspective
1. Full-view monitoring
2. Unstructured index
3. Search engine query
4. Drag and drop dashboard
5. Excellent support platform
6. Built-in a variety of mathematical statistics and machine learning models
7. Enterprise-level architecture
Conclusion
Big data is everywhere, and data analysis has become crucial in this era of big data. This is also the key to realizing the commercial value of big data. Only good data analysis can control the lifeblood of industry development in advance. The initiative of the market thus creates greater value. | https://medium.com/dataprophet/enterprise-how-to-tap-the-true-value-of-80-unstructured-data-3f029497677 | ['Sajjad Hussain'] | 2020-10-19 07:45:42.988000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization', 'Big Data', 'Data'] |
In The Pursuit of Happiness | In The Pursuit of Happiness
An essay on the phenomenon of happiness & unhappiness and the dichotomous nature of the human condition.
The Sunday Letters subtitle reads; “…articles on life, work, & the pursuit of happiness”. I didn’t plan that subtitle, it kind of grew organically. But it’s no less accurate. It captures broadly the essence of my curiosity in a single line and that curiosity finds satisfaction in many fields of interest. I find it is an always wanting and only temporarily satisfied curiosity. However, it is a curiosity nonetheless, rather than an angst ridden striving to fill a deep seated vacancy.
You see, I learned some time ago that the answer to whatever it is I’m asking is not “out there”, and someone else doesn’t have it. It’s not in a book or a conference or the words of some guru or other. It’s not on a stage dressed in smart clothes touting words I want to hear. It’s not in the utterances of clever marketers and would-be evangelists. And it’s most certainly not in material gain, reward or applause. But in those things there are clues.
That being said, do I really know myself, and do I really know what I want?
Arguably not.
The question often goes unsaid, expressed through human behaviour, in relationships, in work, play, sport, addiction, abuse, war and every interaction we have with each other and the environment. Some of us take gratification in our personal discomfort and lack, perpetuating our unhappy conditions and wallowing in our own unpleasantness for lifetimes. It’s an indulgence in the obscene.
Others of us don’t realise there exists something better.
A running friend once told me that he didn’t realise he was depressed until he wasn’t. Such was the dull greyness of his life prior to finding the thrill of athletic training and competition. That’s often the trouble — the normality of life conceals the opportunity that exists to lead a better one, and that better one is only better by comparison to the former. Therefore, is there not merit in the unhappiness?
What Happiness Looks Like
In all human affairs we continually ask, “how can I find happiness?” or some variation of that. We like to think that we know what happiness looks like, that we can design and premeditate it. And if we can’t, someone out there in the world who already lives the perfect life has the answer we’re looking for. And so we trade our despair for their organised system of thought and behaviour. “Just read my book, buy my course, follow my system and you’ll be happy. OK, so that might not be the explicit claim, but it’s certainly implicit in their cleverly marketed promise.
We look upwards in comparison to celebrity, friends, neighbours, or some socially ideal character and wonder how these advantaged others became happy. They must be happy, look at their life, it’s perfect. If only we had their system then we could be happy too.
Well, that’s just naive, is it not?
The truth of the matter is that those moments where we find ourselves in the middle of a joyous experience are spontaneous. They come upon us when we least expect it, and for the most magical of them, we are changed forever. They are not things we can design, coerce, manipulate or pray for. Instead, they are consequences, the results of momentum.
Its diametrical opposite, unhappiness, seems to have the same attributes. But is it so clean cut? Are we certain about what qualifies as happiness or unhappiness? Is there indeed a universal experience?
I don’t believe so.
If there were, and we could design our lives towards those ends, what would be the purpose of life? We would merely be automatons, cogs in a machine churning out actions and measurable results to someone else’s rule of thumb.
Hold on a minute… does this not resemble how most of us exist in the world currently?
What Psychology Has Discovered
Psychological studies from all over the world have found that happiness is considered the most important and most valued aspect of a life well lived (Warr, 2019). It is not untrue to suggest, in fact, that psychological research in broad terms, is the study of happiness and unhappiness. Motivation, satisfaction, personality, personal values, social interaction, health and wellness and so on, are at their base, examinations of human thought, feeling and behaviour. Within psychological research, there are considered three levels of happiness experience.
FEATURE-SPECIFIC HAPPINESS
Psychology regards subjective happiness as ‘psychological wellbeing’ as distinct from physical wellbeing or spiritual wellbeing. We can consider happiness a composite of these individual applications of the term. When we speak about happiness or unhappiness, we generally attach the feeling behind it to an experience, a person or a thing with which we engage in ordinary everyday life. From the idiosyncratic like and dislikes we generate feelings that come and go throughout the day. These narrow aspects of happiness researchers refer to as ‘feature-specific happiness’. We could perhaps consider them trivial likes and dislikes, but they contribute to happiness nonetheless.
DOMAIN-SPECIFIC HAPPINESS
Beyond the feature-specific likes and dislikes of everyday life–I like coffee with sugar, but not with milk–lies ‘domain-specific’ happiness. This second level of happiness and unhappiness reflects our feelings about work, home life, social group, religion, politics and those aspects of life that are of a broader nature. They generally involve other people and can reflect biases and prejudices towards other groups.
CONTEXT-FREE HAPPINESS
Context-free happiness can be considered a global feeling about life. It is a standing back from the specifics and an appraisal of how we feel about our life all things considered. Taking this into account, we must be careful when interpreting those global happiness reports that so frequently make the headlines. From the perspective of this self-investigator, there is little merit in generalised measures of happiness derived from populations in the measure of my own particular feelings.
Context free happiness is a sum of all the parts. It is a consequence of momentum in different areas of our lives, both feature-specific, and domain-specific. We are merely touching the surface here, and over the next few weeks we will dig deeper into the material.
A Broader Theory of Happiness
For the purpose of this exploration, I will bring for your consideration over the coming weeks, a broad view of happiness. We will examine the perspectives of art, psychoanalysis, traditional psychology, and philosophy. We will take accounts from Erich Fromm, Alan Watts, Emanuel Kant, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Annie Dillard, Charles Bukowski and many others. And we will consider their views on the benefit of challenge and adversity and their role in bringing about happiness.
Maybe happiness is not the storybook version we’ve been told through fairy tales and popular media. Maybe all that is just a myth. Do you think we know? Maybe we’ve forgotten. Maybe we’ve been so utterly convinced, or allowed ourselves to be convinced, by the advertising and public relations industry that we just don’t know anymore. Or maybe we’ll just just keep buying shit we don’t need in the hope that one day we’ll find what we’re looking for amongst the fake plastic versions of reality in which the world seems to be drowning.
As it stands, and at the risk of giving the game away, I consider the pursuit of happiness to be a fruitless one. Because for me, happiness, at least in its romantic form, is a non-entity. It is fleeting and uncaring for the wants and needs of human beings, so to chase after it is a thankless undertaking. It is foolish. Pursuing happiness is to spend our lives either lamenting the past or anticipating the future, and neither past or future exist except in the minds of us.
Perhaps it is our fantasies and imagination that propels us forward as a species. Maybe without our idle imaginings, wants, desires and anticipation of a better life we cease to exist.
If so, I think we can do a better job. | https://medium.com/the-reflectionist/in-the-pursuit-of-happiness-ddc201e87b1 | ['Larry G. Maguire'] | 2020-11-15 21:41:48.570000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Happiness', 'Life', 'Psychology', 'Philosophy'] |
Donut Subscription Local Delivery Service - (Idea 24 of 365) | Work in Advertising @ R/GA (formerly). Challenging myself to come up with 365 new business ideas. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcclave
Follow | https://medium.com/365-ideas/donut-subscription-local-delivery-service-idea-24-of-365-aa501f072c51 | ['Chris Mcclave'] | 2016-04-10 01:39:12.084000+00:00 | ['Donuts', 'Startup', 'Subscription'] |
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