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DropBit 2.0 is here: Send Bitcoin with Twitter! | DropBit now lets you send and receive Bitcoin using Twitter.
We are thrilled to introduce DropBit 2.0 with Twitter sending — a revolutionary way to send Bitcoin to anyone on Twitter without the need for them to send an address or even have a previous Bitcoin wallet set up!
At DropBit our mission has always been to accelerate the global adoption of Bitcoin. A big part of this mission is to make it easier to get new people or ‘Newcoiners’ their first BTC without first sending them through a multi-step process of creating a wallet and explaining the technicalities of seed words, confirmations, and blockchain to them. DropBit guides them through this steps they need to securely receive and store bitcoin on their phone.
Earlier this year, we released the capability to send Bitcoin to anyone in your contact list by allowing users to send Bitcoin via Phone Number world wide. This was met with a very positive response from the community as there is a nearly universal recognition that the Bitcoin wallet experiences need to be as simple as PayPal or Venmo and this is the standard that DropBit aspires to be. DropBit is and will always be the easiest way to send and receive Bitcoin.
Sending Bitcoin via Twitter
While our users love the texting Bitcoin feature to their friends and family, we also know that you may want to send to people whom you don’t have their phone number and needed another way to get them Bitcoin. Accordingly, we saw an opportunity to build an experience that those users can enjoy by allowing users to Send and Receive Bitcoin using Twitter. | https://medium.com/coinninja/dropbit-2-0-is-here-send-bitcoin-with-twitter-fb9e98467127 | ['Coin Ninja'] | 2019-06-18 14:18:38.729000+00:00 | ['Dropbit', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Bitcoin Wallet'] |
Fury. Fire and fury. My teeth beg to not be ground. | Sometimes I have to remind myself to not grind my teeth in anger. I have to remind myself to lower my voice and calm my tone. I have to remind myself to just chill out sometimes. Because if I don’t, somebody else will anyway.
My fury as a woman has no place in this world. My fury as a brown person has no place in this world. My fury as barely a 21-year old has no place in this world. I’m reminded time and again by the world around me as to how I should behave. My life’s handbook was written way before me and it’s taking me all my strength to tear it apart.
I don’t know when I became a feminist, I think I was always one but I’m getting better at being a feminist these days.
It started with this stupid story in my stupid textbook about a girl with a parrot who was given less food than her brother. I don’t remember anything else, I don’t remember the ending or the gender roles it subconsciously imbibed, but I do remember taking it upon myself to fight anybody who told me I was not good enough because I was a girl.
Maybe I owe it all to my brother, because it was sibling rivalry that sparked the feminist rebellion inside me.
All my life I believed I was not a rebel, that I gave in too easy because I didn’t need the trouble. I was wrong. You are born a rebel if you’re born a girl.
My school was not a great place for a feminist. It was easier to not stand up to your teachers, it was easier to follow the rules, no matter how incredulous. And that’s what I did. But rebellion came to me in lunch breaks filled with passionate talks for women’s rights. I sat with my friends in a circle, our tiffin boxes were passed around, and we discussed everything under the sky. I remember a friend of mine complaining we didn’t discuss guys enough. It felt like an accusation then, and I remember getting very defensive, but in hindsight, I’m happy. In a life that was going to be filled with talks of the men and how their being and non-being affected us, I’m happy I let my school girl self talk about sex without it being tied to a particular man.
We sat in a circle, as hypocrites, because we were also the studious ones, we were the rule-following, we were the prefects and the teacher’s pets. We realise, yet again in hindsight, that we could, and should have spoken up more, then maybe the students that came after us would have had a more feminist school. But we didn’t, and we haven’t, even after leaving and the school continues to be what it was, churning out women who as girls learnt feminism through rebellion.
When I started college, I almost believed that it was the feminist haven of my dreams. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We didn’t have a dress code, but we had a curfew. We didn’t have rules about not talking to boys, but we also didn’t have rules about how they spoke about us. Outwardly, all was equal but my girl friends and I still had to work twice as hard to get half the recognition. It chills my spine to think how my workplace is going to be. Or how in this world which is constantly out to get me, am I ever going to find a man for companionship!
I am not like my father. My anger doesn’t hold. It usually melts into sadness and disappointment. My anger is a fistful of sand, the harder I hold, the faster it eludes me.
And that is why my moments of anger are important to me. They are so fleeting, and yet so common that every time somebody tells me to chill, to not take things so seriously, I believe they are robbing me of my right to be annoyed. I do not want to let my microaggressions turn into resentment for the world. I, of all people, know that the world isn’t fair! But every time I’m angry at the injustice, it is only because I still have hope. So I cannot believe I have to ask for this, but don’t tell me to chill, let me hope that we as humanity can do better. | https://medium.com/@harininarayanan1012/fury-fire-and-fury-my-teeth-beg-to-not-be-ground-b5c91cc75b43 | ['Harini Narayanan'] | 2020-05-05 17:41:03.988000+00:00 | ['Fury', 'Anger', 'Feminism'] |
Reaching the depths of (power/geometric) ensembling when targeting the AUC metric | Laurae: This post is about optimizing AUC when ensembling different (correlated/clustered) models using power/geometric (weighted) means. It has five parts and deals with different questions answered with either theoretical or pragmatic (= from practice) knowledge, along with practical results. This was originally posted at Kaggle but is scattered along different posts.
Part Summaries
Part 1: practical results of ensembling by power
Part 2: the formula for ensembling by power
Part 3: how to deal with clustered models
Part 4: this applies to similar ranking performance metrics (Gini…)
Part 5: (my pragmatic) theoretical framework
Part 1: practical results of ensembling by power
I’ll give here the the major properties of the ensembling techniques to optimize AUC that are not done using machine learning models, but done via manual intervention.
Ranking of the my different ensembles of 10 models using different ensembling techniques:
Simple Average: 0.827353 (123th)
Stretched Average: 0.827358 (122th)
Rank Average: 0.827280 (146th)
Power 2 Average: 0.827413 (99th)
Power 4 Average: 0.827473 (82th)
Power 8 Average: 0.827554 (62th)
Power 16 Average: 0.827497 (72th)
Power 32 Average: 0.827403 (104th)
Using simple averaging in this data set
Typical ensembling method when no weights are to be found
Confident models (in both sides) have a larger impact than non-confident models, if the difference between the extreme probabilities per row is high while maintaining a minima/maxima (i.e being confident with models not confident around gives less confidence to unallow to make big probability mistakes)
For AUC, weight is the probability (unless weighted average).
Public/Private: 0.840995/0.827353
Using stretching in this data set
Positively confident models are given lower weights than non-positively confident models when it comes to negative labels
Non-positively confident models are given higher weights to increase the diversity of the ensemble
Positively confident models have a higher skewed distribution allowing to decrease the variance of the diversity of the ensemble
For AUC, weight is the probability stretched from [0, 1], thus the weight for each model is [ (Xn — min(Xn) ) / (max(Xn — min(Xn)) ] for each model Xn approximately
Public/Private: 0.841001/0.827358
Using rank averaging in this data set
Confident models are not existing anymore due to mandatory scaling to [1, nrow]
Underconfident models may jinx everything if used inappropriately
For AUC, weight is 1 for every row/model unless weights are specified explicitly (weighted average)
Public/Private: 0.840928/0.827280
Using power averaging in this data set
The high positive probabilities of the positively confident models remain positively confident
The non-high probabilities of any models are knocked down
Only the high probabilities subsist, hence if many models agrees on a positive: it will remain positive (against the others) — and this scale required to remain positive is tighter (due to the power scaling)
For AUC, weight is 1 for every row/model unless weights are specified explicitly (weighted average)
Public/Private: 0.841082/0.827473
N.B: Choosing the power depends on the risk you want to take, on what you are trying to optimize, and on what you are using as inputs (a bad model input can screw up everything). It’s wise to choose only your best performing models. It’s all about risk optimization due to the decorrelation issues. Power optimization tends to give the highest performance for AUC, but this is not always the case.
Example of my selection for choosing power 4: (p.s: picture was sent during a chat with a teammate, so it’s not clean at all…!)
Power 2: 0.840976/0.827413
Power 4: 0.841082/0.827473
Power 8: 0.840810/0.827554
Power 16: 0.840525/0.827497
Power 32: 0.840362/ 0.827403
Part 2: the formula for ensembling by power
Michael Maguire wrote: Thanks Laurae! Could you describe power averaging a bit more (i.e. formula)? I’m not familiar with it. Thanks!
Same as averaging, except you use power on each model.
Example, for 4 submissions, you average them in a general case like:
Final Submission = (Submission1 + Submission2 + Submission3 + Submission4) / 4
For a power averaging, you do the following:
Final Submission = (Submission1^Power + Submission2^Power + Submission3^Power + Submission4^Power) / 4
You use the properties of the power function (the further away you are from 1, the faster you are closer to 0). It means a model must be very confident on a positive label (here, target=1) to have its probability remaining the furthest away from the negative label (here, target=0).
Visualization:
When dealing with power averaging, you must keep in mind you are looking at how close your models are from 0, and not how close they are from 1 (due to the power function properties). It also means that a bad model used for ensembling can jinx your whole ensemble very harshly, even if you have 10 strong models that are supposed to “average out the error”. Visualizing the correlation between your models that will be used to ensemble is essential you understand the risk you are taking when ensembling using power average. The higher the decorrelation, the higher the risk of messing up things because of a bad input model => you are looking for high correlation straight from the beginning for the ensemble, not highly decorrelated/diverse models.
The probabilities that remain the highest at the end are the probabilities whose relative agreement (weighted down by the probability and the power) coming from each ensembled model is the highest. The reverse is also true for those who are the lowest probabilities. This is the reason power averaging usually fares better, specifically for AUC (does NOT work RMSE, Log loss, etc.), and sometimes even better than a Rank SVM if you using stacking.
Part 3: how to deal with clustered models
aldente wrote: (1) Do you have experience with under what conditions is it best applicable to each kind of average? E.g. (a) which one is best for unbalanced/balanced dataset, (b) for other conditions…?
Power averaging only for AUC, nothing else (I might have missed some exotic performance metrics that may be optimized through power averaging though). In AUC you need optimize to get the most positives at the top of the rank (i.e you need the lowest amount of false positives at the highest possible probabilities).
Typical averaging or weighted averaging works well with most performance metrics when probabilities are taken into account.
aldente wrote: (2) What’s best way to apply weighted average on each average? Example for power average, this, (v1**2)*0.36 + (v2**2)*0.16 + (v3**2)*0.48 Or this, ? (v1*0.36)**2 + (v2*0.16)**2 + (v3*0.48)**2
The first version is correct: (v1**2)*0.36 + (v2**2)*0.16 + (v3**2)*0.48
The second version leads to different scalings and this may cause issues as you are assessing probabilities with different scales.
aldente wrote: (3) I tried power-averages on our best (rank-average) submission, but none gives better score. Even they’re much worse. So I think maybe it’s as said in your statement “Visualizing the correlation between your models that will be used to ensemble is essential you understand the risk you are taking when ensembling using power average. The higher the decorrelation, the higher the risk of messing up things”. But I’m still not sure. The weighted rank-average is, v0_rank*0.16 + v1_rank*0.16 + v2_rank*0.16 + v3_rank*0.16 + v4_rank*0.36 The correlations has 2 groups of less-correlated submissions,
So in our case that none of our power averages has better public & private score, am I correctly interpreting your statement that power average works only for highly correlated submissions?
You have two sets of models that are not highly correlated. You need to make the power average separately per cluster of highly correlated models, then average out what is left.
i.e:
Cluster 1 = v1, v3, v4
Cluster 2 = v0, v2
Power averaging on Cluster 1 => X1
Power averaging on Cluster 2 => X2
Averaging on X1 and X2 => final submission
At power 2 you are already at potential_min(r²) = 0.5184, which should be way too low. And make sure you are using the same scales (from 0 to 1, no stretch, no conversion, i.e raw probability outputs).
potential_min(r^n) > 0.90 is recommended, although going under can yield significant performance boost (in my case, I could turn n=8 to have r⁸ = 0.80367 which is not that bad).
And yes, it does work better if you use highly correlated inputs.
Part 4: this applies to similar ranking performance metrics (Gini…)
eagle4 wrote: If I may and now that I learnt about power average, I believe the power average may have worked for normalized Gini as well as AUC, such as the Lib Mut competition metric:https://www.kaggle.com/c/liberty-mutual-group-property-inspection-prediction/details/evaluation.
It should work well on normalized Gini :) the formula should be the following using basic mathematics, supposing actual the labels:
Gini = (2*AUC — 1) * (0.5 * sum(actual == 0)) (using the Gini index property)
AUC = (Gini / sum(actual == 0)) + 0.5
Perfect Gini = 0.5 * sum(actual == 0)
Normalized_Gini = Gini / Perfect_Gini = [(2*AUC — 1) * 0.5 * sum(actual == 0)] / [0.5 * sum(actual == 0)]
Normalized_Gini = (2*AUC — 1) = 2*(Gini / sum(actual == 0))
= 2*(Gini / sum(actual == 0)) Metric to optimize ==> AUC, the normalized Gini punishes twice faster than AUC
Perhaps aldente might found a solution to get #1 on it ^^
By the way, the evaluation metric provided at Kaggle is giving the wrong normalized Gini coefficient when opposite ties are present, right? (ex: pred = 0.2 and 0.2, label = 0 and 1)
Use the following for ties handling assuming the AUC/Gini relation is true:
FastNormGini <- function(y, x) { # y = actual
# x = predicted
# using fast AUC computation to compute normalized Gini coefficient
x1 = x[y==1]
n1 = length(x1)
x2 = x[y==0]
n2 = length(x2)
r = rank(c(x1,x2))
return(2 * (sum(r[1:n1]) - n1*(n1+1)/2) / (n1*n2) - 1) }
Part 5: (my pragmatic) theoretical framework
eagle4 wrote: @Laurae, Could you please explain what you mean by “potential_min(r²) “ in your earlier post and how you got .51. Thanks again for your posts !
The potential minimal R-squared is the (optimistic) minimal R squared you would get if you put to the power the minimal (calcluated) R-squared in your ensemble. The “potential” of a variable comes from Physics. It is “optimistic” because we assume the output of the ensemble is corrected by the other inputs in the ensemble.
Step 0
First of all, you need to split your ensemble into two virtual separate ensembles:
The first half are the strongest models
The second half are the “weakest” models (but are still strong due to their high correlation with the strongest models)
To determine the base R-squared you must use to calculate the potential minimum R-squared, you must have a “weight initializer”. The weight initializer is the only strongest model you have (the model giving you the lowest loss).
Once you found the “weight initializer”, you must compute the full correlation matrix of the inputs you will use for your ensemble. Let’s suppose the “weight initializer” is the model X_1.
Step 1
You must find the closest correlated model to the model X_1 (the one whose correlation is the highest with X_1). We call this model X_2. We exclude X_1 from the correlation matrix.
Then, find the closest correlated model to the model X_2 (the one whose correlation is the highest with X_2). We call this model X_3. We exclude X_2 from the correlation matrix (X_1 is already excluded also).
And loop until you exhausted all the input models. At the end, you “should” end on the weakest model, and you “should” have went through the strongest models to the weakest models (this is not always the case).
When the loop has ended (you exhausted all inputs), the minimal R-squared is the correlation between X_1 and X_n (n being the amount of model inputs you have). If you have 10 models, this would be between X_1 and X_10.
Fictive example (took a picture from Internet), with X_1 (the strongest model) being 1:
X_1 = model 1 — we delete model 1 from the correlation matrix
X_2 = model 2 (because the highest correlated model with the model 1 is the model 2) — we delete model 2 from the correlation matrix (1 and 2 are deleted)
X_3 = model 3 (because the highest correlated model with the model 2 is the model 3) — we delete model 3 from the correlation matrix (1, 2, and 3 are deleted)
X_4 = model 4 (because the highest correlated model with the model 3 is the model 4) — we delete model 4 from the correlation matrix (1, 2, 3, and 4 are deleted)
X_5 = model 5 (because the highest correlated model with the model 4 is the model 5) — we exhausted all inputs
And as expected, the lowest correlation with X_1 (model 1) is X_5 (model 5). Hence, the minimum R-squared is 0.579.
Step 2
Now you have the minimal R-squared, as you are limited by the amount of submissions you can make at Kaggle, you must find an optimal power to use. It breakdowns like this:
The higher the power you use, the higher the variance you add (the lower the potential minimal R-squared).
The lower the power you use, the higher the bias you add (the higher the potential minimal R-squared).
Large note: the variance and the bias FROM the inputs you have, not from the ensemble (it means the starting point of the variance/bias is supposedly your ensemble). The minimal R-squared serves as weight.
To balance the trade cost between variance and bias, a typical threshold I use (from my experience, but there is no known theories to analyze it yet though) for the potential minimal R-squared is 0.90: it means that
If you put the minimal R-squared to a power (potential minimal R-squared) that puts it below 0.90, you take the risk of adding too much variance to your ensemble (when you supposedly have a good bias/variance!!!).
If you put the minimal R-squared to a power (potential minimal R-squared) that puts it higher than 0.90, you take the risk of adding too much bias to your ensemble (when you supposedly have a good bias/variance!!!).
The threshold is defined as the power which puts the potential minimal R-squared below 0.90.
Note: the impact is close to negligible, due to the fact you start from the ensemble bias/variance.
Imagine you have a minimum R-squared of 0.988.
R^1 = 0.988
R^2 = 0.976
R^3 = 0.964
R^4 = 0.953
R^5 = 0.941
R^6 = 0.930
R^7 = 0.199
R^8 = 0.908
-----------
R^9 = 0.897
Here, the threshold is the power 9:
If you go over the power 9, you take the risk of increasing the variance too highly (and risk hurting slightly your model).
If you go under the power 9, you take the risk of increasing the bias too highly (and risk hurting slightly your model).
If you need to tinker for Kaggle (or for anything you cannot test a lot), I would recommend to drop 3 submissions:
One with a conservative biased power (very under 9)
One with the threshold power (9)
One with a conservative variance power (very over 9)
I tend to recommend the following:
First: 9^-0.5 = 3
Second: 9
Third: 9*(9^-0.5) = 27
But you are free to try more typical gut testings, like:
First: 4
Second: 8
Third: 16
There are cases where a biased power leads to a higher performance, while there are also cases where a heavily variance power leads to a higher performance.
Minimal decorrelation?
Potential minimal for the following reason: the power function is not linear, and hence increases decorrelation faster than the R-squared to power itself. Thus, defined as “optimistic”.
Quick example of why it can decorrelate faster (Base=best model aka X_1, Pred=worst model aka X_n): | https://medium.com/data-design/reaching-the-depths-of-power-geometric-ensembling-when-targeting-the-auc-metric-2f356ea3250e | [] | 2017-01-03 19:42:03.327000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Statistics'] |
Drag and Drop Image Upload with Vue.js, Dropzone, and Firebase | Uploading images is a necessary but tedious task found in many web applications. It’s also something that many junior developers struggle with. Luckily, there are some great packages that take a lot of the legwork out of this process. In this article, we’ll cover how to upload images using Vue, Dropzone, and Firebase Storage.
Video Tutorial
Video Tutorial
Project Setup
To get started you’ll need NodeJs installed. For this tutorial, we’ll also be using VS Code as our code editor but you can use whatever you’d like.
Creating the Vue Project
To create our Vue project, open your terminal, cd into your desired directory and run the following command:
npx vue create firebase-image-upload
Then, choose the default preset (default (babel, eslint)). This will create a standard Vue project that we will be working out of. After this has finished, open the project in VS Code.
Installing Packages
Now we’re going to install some npm packages that will make the uploading our images super easy. Open a new terminal in VS Code (Terminal -> New Terminal) and run the following command:
npm install --save firebase vue2-dropzone uuid
Creating the Firebase Project
Before we go any further, we’ll need to create our Firebase project and include it in our Vue app. Head over to Firebase and create an account if you don’t already have one. Don’t worry about the cost as Firebase as a very generous free tier.
Once you’ve created your account and signed in, click on “Go to Console” in the upper right corner of the screen. Then click the “Create New” Project button and choose all of the default settings.
In the left-hand menu, click on Develop then Storage.
You will then see a “Get Started” button. Click on that and select all the defaults from the pop-up. Firebase automatically sets up storage rules. The default rules require a user to be logged in to upload files.
Since I’m not covering authentication in this tutorial we’re going to edit the default rules. At the top of the main storage screen, you should see a tab for Rules. Navigate to that section, paste the code below your rules and publish them:
rules_version = '2';
service firebase.storage {
match /b/{bucket}/o {
match /{allPaths=**} {
allow read, write;
}
}
}
** IMPORTANT: These rules will allow anyone to upload to this bucket. For production apps, you should lock this down. To learn more about how to do that visit the Firebase storage rules documentation. **
After the project and storage have been set up, click on Project Overview in the left-hand menu then click on the web icon.
Firebase Web Start
Give your app a Nickname and click next. You will then be presented with some code. Inside of the <script> tags copy everything.
Firebase Config
Now head back to your Vue project, open src/main.js. At the top of the file, underneath the existing imports, add the following:
import firebase from 'firebase'
Then paste in the firebase config. Your main.js file should look like this:
Image Upload
Now that we have Firebase added to our Vue project, we can start on the image upload. Inside of our src/App.vue file, we’ll remove all the boilerplate code inside of the template, script, and style tags. In the script tag, we’ll import Dropzone and Firebase at the top.
import firebase from 'firebase';
import dropzone from 'vue2-dropzone';
import "vue2-dropzone/dist/vue2Dropzone.min.css";
Underneath our imports, we’ll add dropzone as a component and some Dropzone options. Dropzone has a built-in function called @vdropzone-complete that fires every time an upload completes. We’ll hook into that and create a method called afterComplete with our own method to save our images to firebase.
Next, we’ll add the Dropzone component with our config to the template. And, just for some finishing touches, we’ll add an images property to our data object and display the images below dropzone with a v-for.
In the end, your App.vue file should look like this:
There you have it. An easy drag and drop image uploader with Vue, Firebase, and Dropzone. If you have any questions or concerns about this article, please feel free to leave a comment below! | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/drag-and-drop-image-upload-with-vue-js-dropzone-and-firebase-dd6fb7e2e54b | ['Diligent Dev'] | 2020-11-18 18:58:42.864000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Vuejs', 'Firebase', 'Programming'] |
Machine Learning is NOT rocket science | “Wow! machine learning? Rocket science, damn complicated..Wanna know more about it but I am not a data scientist, definitely not my cup of tea :(“
Sounds familiar? I definitely can’t blame you as most of the blogs and videos about Machine Learning portrays and illustrates it something like this:
Courtesy : aier.org
These days, Machine Learning is like sex in the school days. Every student was talking about it, only a very few know exactly what it is but only your class teacher was really doing it. Here is my humble attempt to illustrate the fundamentals of sex…sorry, I mean, machine learning in simple way that anyone can understand. So, let’s roll our sleeves up and get started. “Hello, are you still there? :)”
Conditioned Response to a Conditioned Stimulus
Let’s assume, you have a puppy. Let’s call her Mimi. As a lovely pet owner, you bought some delicious food for her (an unconditioned stimulus) and introduced it for the first time in her plate. Mimi loved it and started salivating whenever she see that food, even on TV commercials (an unconditioned response). Stage 1 is completed.
Now on stage 2, instead of feeding her food in the plate, you just created a sound with a bell(a neutral stimulus). Mimi doesn’t care a sh*t about that sound as she doesn’t really understand what the heck the bell’s sound means to her, hence no salivation(no conditioned response). Stage 2 completed. Let’s call stage 1 and stage 2 as “Before conditioning” stage of Mimi’s learning phase.
During stage 3 (during conditioning stage), you fed that delicious food in her plate and started the bell sound simultaneously. Once you train Mimi like this for a few days, the moment seeing the food and hearing bell’s sound, Mimi will get salivated(an unconditioned response). Stage 3 completed, congratulations!
During stage 4 (after conditioning), the moment you play the bell, poor Mimi will get salivated, which is a conditioned response. You win!
Courtesy: edureka!
Now let’s replace Mimi with a computer algorithm. Delicious food is Apple Inc’s past and present stock price along with various market data. The bell sound is a new product launch announcement. Based on the price and specification of the new product, current stock price, various market parameters and along with checking how stock price has reacted in the past for similar announcements, the algorithm can predict whether this is a an opportunity to buy or sell Apple Inc’s stock. This is exactly what some of the machine learning algorithms does. A conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus.
Machine learning algorithms are classified into two:
Classical Learning algorithms Reinforcement Learning algorithms
Let’s try to understand each of them by following our simple approach.
Classical Machine Learning Algorithms
Have you noticed Netflix’s recommendation on the “next videos to watch”? Have you noticed that your bank has temporarily blocked your credit card right after you swipe it at some random shop in a foreign country? Whether you love these outcomes or not, some classical learning machine learning algorithms are behind those decisions. Little bitches!
These algorithms do exist since decades. They search for a pattern and proximity in data points (numbers) and calculate vector’s direction. For that, it needs large amount of data. These algorithms our ancestors have developed were not popular during their time as there was not enough datasets available. Great ideas, wrong timing. Poor ancestors!
(That brings to another interesting topic. Regardless of the precision of machine learning algorithms you develop, you need BIG data to test and fine tune it to increase its accuracy.)
Classical Machine Learning algorithms are really simple, in fact. But interestingly, most of the machine learning algorithms you use on daily basis through your mobile apps, YouTube, Amazon, Netflix etc. etc. are based on these algorithms. Yeah, it is a classic 80–20 situation! Regardless of extremely sophisticated Machine Learning algorithms the programmers develop, this 20% segment of classical algorithms addresses 80% of day to day machine learning scenarios! Surprised?
There are a few types of Classical Machine Learning algorithms.
Supervised Machine Learning Unsupervised Machine Learning
Courtesy: vas3k.com
Supervised Machine Learning
Courtesy : US Department of Education
This algorithm is all about labeling. Let’s compare it with a kindergarten classroom:
Sam : “Teacher, is this a dog in this picture?” Teacher: “Good job Sam, Yes! It is a dog” Sam : “Teacher, how about this one? Dog?” Teacher: “Spot on again! That’s also a dog!”
Now Sam has two pictures of dog (a.k.a data samples). Next time before he ask the teacher, he will compare the new picture with those pictures labeled as dog. While Sam was keep exploring more pictures he came across a picture that doesn’t really look exactly like a dog but there are some commonalities. Little Sam is confused now.
Sam : “Teacher, is this also …a…dog?” Teacher: “Oh sweetie, I know you are confused. That one is a fox, but good try!”
Now Sam has two labelled data sets. Dogs & Fox. The more Sam explores the data, his datasets grow. The more datasets Sam has, his prediction becomes more accurate. This is exactly what a supervised machine learning algorithm do. Classifies the data, label them, use them for comparing patterns and predict the result. If the input value is X, output should be f(X). Y = f(x). That’s all the supervised algorithms do.
Let’s discuss various types of supervised machine learning algorithms in next episode.
Unsupervised Machine Learning
Assuming you have a family dog. Your young toddler knows and identifies the family dog even if no one teach the toddler that the animal is a dog. Toddler loves the dog and recognized it by observation.
One day, your friends visited you and brought their little puppy! Our toddler is seeing this dog for the first time. Seeing its 2 ears, 2 eyes and 4 legs, toddler has predicted that it is a dog! No one supervised toddler to recognize that the cute animal is a puppy!
This is exactly what unsupervised machine learning algorithms does. Had this been supervised learning, someone would have told the toddler that it’s a dog.
These algorithms are not as common as supervised learning. But still it can be used in scenarios where clustering is required. Market segmentation based on the customers and introduce suitable loyalty program is based on unsupervised algorithms.
Let’s discuss various types of unsupervised machine learning algorithms in next episode.
So that’s it guys and girls for the first episode. I really hope that now you got some idea about machine learning, classical algorithms, supervised and unsupervised algorithms. I promise you that I am not going to make you as data scientists by reading this series :) But we will dig deeper in coming episodes by our simplified approach. Stay Tuned!
Thank you for reading, cheers! | https://medium.com/swlh/machine-learning-basics-anyone-can-understand-episode-1-1f73401e52e0 | ['Dhanesh Valappil'] | 2020-06-29 13:41:56.778000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Neural Networks', 'Data Science', 'AI'] |
Full~HQ! Motherland (Series 3)) Episode 2020: ‘Special Episodes’ Full “eps” | Film, also called Episode, motion picture or moving picture, is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound, and more rarely, other sensory stimulations.[1] The word “cinema”, short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film The Flight Attendant, and to the art form that is the result of it.
❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream identifies the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, instead of the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies particularly to telecommunications networks, as almost all of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, music CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks satisfactory bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real-time much as live television broadcasts content over the airwaves with a television signal. Live internet streaming takes a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio tracks interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is.
Streaming is an option to file downloading, a process where the end-user obtains the entire file for this content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The word “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONTENT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[1][2][3][4][5] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][7][8] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][9][10][11][12] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[13]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[14]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 100 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[5] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[15]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[1] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[2] Credit is extended by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
FIND US:
✓ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
✓ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
✓ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ | https://medium.com/motherland-s3-special-episode-2020/full-hq-motherland-series-3-episode-2020-special-episodes-full-eps-44c71621e624 | [] | 2020-12-23 11:46:34.726000+00:00 | ['Millennials', 'Gender'] |
Stop Churn Being an Obstacle to Scaling for Your SaaS Business | Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Building a SaaS business is a constantly iterative process. And one of the keys to building a successful SaaS business is minimising customer churn. But how do you manage churn most effectively, particularly when you’re scaling rapidly?
In this insightful broadcast, we’ll hear from David Skok, a world-renowned expert who has navigated the growth of many multimillion dollar businesses, who explains how to mitigate churn by using customer success data right from the outset of your onboarding journey.
David Skok is an expert in what makes SaaS businesses successful. He is a five-time serial entrepreneur turned VC with 12 successful exits under his belt, including HubSpot, JBoss and AppIQ. He is best known for his blog, For Entrepreneurs, rated #1 website for entrepreneurs by Inc. Magazine.
In this Masters Series live broadcast, David shares 9 steps to repeatable, scalable and profitable growth + the key SaaS metrics to track.
One of the key metrics David discusses as a core indicator of successful growth is customer churn.
Customer Churn
Churn is the number one SaaS business killer.
Did you know that on average SaaS businesses have a monthly churn rate of 2.5%? That’s almost a third of your customers walking out the door every single year.
The key metric to understanding churn is Net Dollar Retention (or Net Revenue Retention if you prefer a more currency agnostic term). NDR measures how revenue changes for a specific cohort of customers over a given timeframe. It takes into account upgrades, downgrades, and churn to tell you how much monthly or annual recurring revenue from current customers you retained. NDR and NRR are often used interchangeably.
What you’re aiming for is NDR > 100%, which means that additional revenue from existing customers is greater than any revenue lost by customers churning. The best SaaS businesses have NDR of 120% or greater.
Scaling your SaaS business with annual contracts
Getting your customers to pay upfront instead of monthly will have a profound effect on your cash flow. One way to reduce the risk of churn is to ask customers to sign up for a longer commitment up front, perhaps 12 months initially, with the goal of moving to a 2 or 3 year licence.
This often has the effect of lowering churn as customers are more committed to the product, and more will get through the phase of fully implementing the product and seeing benefits.
Whatever the length of your contracts, however, it’s critical to bear in mind that you can’t wait an entire year or more to see whether that customer will be lost.
Right from the outset, you need to be doing everything you can to ensure retention.
Start scoring happiness as a churn predictor
To avoid churn, you want to start immediately scoring your customers happiness. At Hubspot, they created something called CHI, Customer Happiness Index, and it was made up of several factors, including an onboarding score that their customers completed.
Ideally, you want to interview your customers after you’ve finished the onboarding phase.
This is to find out whether the onboarding was successful, whether they’re using the products and getting the value out of the software. If that score is low, then you know that is going to impact on your churn, and it’s a problem you can fix right away.
It’s also important to understand how to rate early adoption and use of your solution, and what leading indicators you can track which will give you insight into how ‘sticky’ your solution is.
You could, for example, track metrics such as ‘within a 60 day period, are customers using at least 5 of the 20 features?’ By creating a model through data and metrics, you’ll build indicators of customer happiness and success.
As well as measuring happiness, you can also score on items that might contribute to churn. These would be factors such as:
Does the product frustrate them with bugs, slow performance, poor user design?
Are there any missing integrations with other products they use?
Does the customer service meet or exceed expectations?
With these questions, you’ll also get a churn prediction score — a great indicator for revenue growth and how much you can scale over time.
As well as customer churn and NDR, there are several other key SaaS metrics to track to avoid startup mistakes, and David uses these in every board meeting to make sure he’s on track. These help him build repeatable, scaleable, and profitable growth over time — a perfect formula for any growing SaaS company. | https://medium.com/@we-are-sia/stop-churn-being-an-obstacle-to-scaling-for-your-saas-business-82f8f71defa3 | ['Sales Impact Academy'] | 2020-12-17 11:16:42.159000+00:00 | ['Scaling', 'Customer Churn', 'Customer Success', 'Revenue', 'SaaS'] |
Our Investment in ResQ: Supporting Back of House Restaurant Operations | Photo by Rohan G on Unsplash
Over the last decade, our fund has invested in all parts of the value-chain for restaurants, an industry that generates $1T+ in top-line revenue in North America alone. Most of the innovation in this space has been around front-of-house solutions such as delivery, POS, and reservations. Back-of-house operations have largely been ignored, with over one million North American restaurants choosing to manage this manually.
ResQ aims to bring automation and efficiencies to this underserved part of the market by building an end-to-end repair and maintenance platform and marketplace for restaurants. Their software lets restaurants manage all of their services in one place while providing data and insights to empower better decision making. As a result, they increase fix rates and reduce downtime for restaurants. For vendors, the platform offers job and revenue predictability with virtually no customer acquisition cost. As a result, ResQ has gained significant traction in the market and is trusted by over 3,000 restaurants, including KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Arby’s, The Keg, and Tim Hortons. In addition, by leading with repair and maintenance, ResQ is well-positioned to offer additional products for restaurants, including embedded fintech offerings.
We’re excited to announce our investment as a part of their $7.5M seed round alongside our friends at Homebrew, iNovia, Maple, Polar, and many notable angels. Read about it on TechCrunch and BetaKit.
Our team has known Kuljeev (KJ) Singh, CEO, for many years through his past life as a VC. He has unique insights into the problem as a part-owner of a restaurant franchise and has spent a lot of time uncovering pain points with vendors.
We believe the dynamics between supply and demand lend themselves very well to the types of vertical SaaS-enabled marketplaces we like to invest in. There are tremendous operational inefficiencies and undifferentiated heavy lifting that both sides engage in to facilitate transactions.
Demand Side: Restaurant Corporations and Operators
There is no centralized mechanism to manage facility maintenance and repair at a corporate, franchise and operator level.
Restaurants are often reactionary, routinely underinvesting in maintenance and instead opting to fix things once they break. Due to the high opportunity cost of equipment downtime, a lack of pricing power/transparency, and the higher cost of repairs (vs. maintenance), restaurants' already thin margins are unnecessarily eroded.
Staff routinely spend >5 hours coordinating and supervising a single repair and are often forced to manage multiple individual vendors. Key staff must leave their core duties (i.e. customer service, revenue generation) to address these issues.
A disconnect between corporate best practices, compliance, insights and purchasing power and how restaurant operators could leverage this
Supply Side: Vendors and Service Providers
Vendors typically engage in very little to no job planning. As a result, they are not well equipped to manage expectations with the various stakeholders, especially when it comes to ongoing communication surrounding jobs.
Regional vendors lack brand, marketing competence, and the scale to acquire customers efficiently.
The industry lacks integrated tools to deal with invoicing, collections, bad debt, other administrative functions.
Job scheduling/revenue is unpredictable—the lack of information for the equipment to be repaired leads to lower first-time completion rates.
ResQ aims to create value for both sides through its SaaS-enabled marketplace. Their supply-side application allows vendors to provide a superior, more reliable experience through real-time communication, data analytics and asset tagging. The demand-side application provides restaurant operators with streamlined workflow, better compliance and reporting, and greater purchasing power than negotiating independently.
Since starting the company, KJ has recruited an experienced and high-potential team well suited to tackle this problem. This team is incredibly agile and resilient, having overcome many macro events that directly impacted their business. Despite the global pandemic spurring industry-wide industry-wide lockdowns, ResQ managed to 7.5x their business over the last 12 months. They continue to show strong dollar/logo retention across all geographies. Additionally, they reinvented their go-to-market strategy now have a flywheel that gets buy-in at the operator and corporate level, allowing them to expand across multiple geographies simultaneously.
We believe there’s lots of whitespace and opportunity to bring software solutions to overlooked industries like this. We couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with the ResQ team as they continue to build and make the lives of those who interact with the platform better.
If you’re interested in contributing to this mission, they’re hiring for many roles. | https://medium.com/golden-ventures/our-investment-in-resq-supporting-back-of-house-restaurant-operations-d77d24d08cf4 | ['Ameet Shah'] | 2021-06-22 14:45:59.178000+00:00 | ['Venture Capital', 'Investment', 'Restaurant'] |
The guy behind the keyboard | It all started when my parents met at a grocery store when shopping for toilet paper (just kidding!). Okay but really though, I am here to share my thoughts and experiences on EVERYTHING fitness and health related (read that again). My passion for fitness started since Myspace became a thing (shoutout to Tom!). If you don’t get that reference that’s okay because most of my jokes are like dad jokes anyways.
As a teenager, I grew up playing lacrosse (the thing with the stick and a net) throughout my middle and high school days. Just like any other team sports, I’ve learned about improving strength, both mental and physical, through discipline and ways to keep active outside of practices. My best friend at the time had a garage gym and it was literally everything that we needed to look like Arnold (get to the chopper!). At this point, I would say my biggest influence that started this all was his dad (shoutout to Rodney). He introduced us to the core principles of training to include weightlifting, supplementation, nutrition, and most importantly — discipline. I remember waking up early before sunrise to run on the treadmill and finishing the day off with lifting weights. I loved every part of training, mainly the fact that I can feel myself become better each day. Those early mornings and late night sessions gave me a purpose in life and the drive to do better.
After high school, I enlisted in the military as a US Navy Corpsman where I endured the most brutal challenges in my life, both mental and physical. I served alongside the nation’s greatest fight force — and no I’m not talking about the Army nor the Air Force (hah!) but the Marines. Everyone and their mama knows that these guys and gals are one of the most baddest of them all, especially those who served on the battle front. I was fortunate enough to spend most of my 8-year career serving alongside the men who sprinted to the sound of gunfire, but ran away from their annual flu shots. Throughout those years, I experienced training in extremely stressful environments with harsh weather conditions. The mentality that every individual needed was to have a combat mindset (whatever that is, right?). The thought of it may seem similar to something out of a video game like Call of Duty, but having a combat mindset puts you on edge ALL THE TIME. I guess the switch turns on quick after being told in this field of work that danger is around the corner and without this mindset, you’re left dead. No matter where I went, the mentality was to always “train like we fight and fight like we train”. And so, that has been instilled in me ever since.
I’m glad those days are behind me and I’ll never forget those experiences. The military showed me the true value of the simple things in life. I’ve told myself to never take these for granted and so here I am expressing my thoughts and individualism through this platform.
As of today, I’m currently a student of public health pursuing a B.S in Applied Health and Fitness (essentially exercise physiology). As I said before, I am here to blog about everything fitness and health related with a goal to just have fun with it regardless of what the outcome may be (improving lives is the overall goal). In a sense, this will be my outlet to let my thoughts run (like a Marine during flu season) through the keyboard and have a place where I can discuss specific topics at a deeper level — for the love of science and all things worth learning about.
So sit back and keep your eyes peeled for what’s to come! In the meantime, if you have any questions feel free to shoot me an email ([email protected]) as I may have an answer for you (but you won’t know if you don’t ask!).
Cheers,
Dev | https://medium.com/@dvnfitness/the-guy-behind-the-keyboard-da149dd06f60 | [] | 2020-12-25 00:57:07.948000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Exercise', 'About Me', 'Nutrition', 'Fitness'] |
how to autoregulate your training like a boss | Hey omorfe,
When life gets in the way, I often decide to not write anything to my email list. In other words, I listen to my mind and act accordingly.
Interestingly enough, today’s topic is about listening to your body. Aka autoregulation. It’s not something that should worry newbies, but if you have some experience lifting, you can use the concept to your advantage.
By autoregulation I mean listening to your body and adjusting your training to the signals you receive.
The most obvious way to use autoregulation is when an exercises hurts a joint. If there’s pain, you could immediately switch to another exercise that doesn’t hurt. As long as it’s similar to the first exercise, you’re good.
But you can use autoregulation to adjust your training on the spot. In fact, it’s something I’ll be using moving forward. There’s a lil bit of chaos in my day to day life and I need to be flexible with my training.
So I’m gonna explain how I’ll do things.
For starters, my days have a template. They don’t have exercises that are set in stone. Here is the template from my last workout:
A1) Chest exercise
A2) Biceps exercise
B1) Back exercises
B2) Triceps exercise
C) Shoulders exercise
And here’s what I ended up doing:
A1) High incline db press
A2) Dumbell curls
B1) Seated cable row
B2) Cable tricep pulldown
C) Dumbbell shrugs
But since I had the structure in mind, I could do a completely different workout like this:
A1) Weighted push ups
A2) Hammer curls
B1) Wide grip lat pulldown
B2) Overhead tricep dumbbell extension
C) Dumbbell lateral throws
The exercise selection doesn’t matter that much, as long as you follow the structure. This lets me adjust my workout on the fly and still hit most of my body parts.
If you wonder why I didn’t do any leg exercises that day, it’s simple: I was out hitting on girls (hey, we’re all men here) and after a few hours walking, my legs and feet felt fried. I could have done some light squats or back extensions along with shoulders, but chose to not do so.
But exercise selection is one way to autoregulate your training.
For example, I was feeling a bit “off” that day. Not exactly tired, but I had some trouble getting in the zone.
So instead of going high intensity, I decided to go for volume. I did 4 sets per exercise but I stayed 3–5 reps away from failure. This might contradict a few things you’ve read from me (doing 1–3 sets per exercise and staying only 1–2 reps from failure) but you have to remember, omorfe, context tramples all.
Yes, 1–3 sets/exercise and staying 1–2 reps away from failure are solid suggestions.
But for your Greek buddy, at that given moment, given his energy, doing 4 sets and leaving 3–5 reps in the tank, felt much better. I finished the workout, was pumped, and invigorated, not dead.
All because I listened to my body.
Again, autoregulation is not something you need to do if you’re a noob. But it has lots of value if you’re experienced.
I’ve been training for years and know how my body responds.
Plus, I don’t have competitive goals. I’m perfectly happy having a top 1%-10% physique and impressing most of the girls I sleep with (not because I’m amazing, but because 90%-99% of men don’t take care of their bodies)
For those goals, my system works beautifully.
Anyway, that’s all for today.
For more tips and strategies on looking great naked without turning fitness into a full-time job, grab my one sentence muscle building plan at:
http://grecianman.com/
Your Greek buddy,
Fotis Chatzinicolaou | https://medium.com/@chatzifot/how-to-autoregulate-your-training-like-a-boss-c0f07e410c58 | ['Fotis Chatzinicolaou'] | 2021-12-31 15:55:25.746000+00:00 | ['Bodybuilding', 'Training', 'Mens Health', 'Fitness Tips', 'Smart'] |
Computer: Expanse | Hey! so here we are in present day. Last time we learnt how our computers evolved with time and got smarter. Computers got brains and are more friendly to humans. Computers are so well mixed in our routines that most of the time we don’t even think about the complex process running under it. And we don’t need to understand most of the time. Here’s what we have in today’s world:
Want to wake up early but don’t want to buy a clock specifically for alarms? Or you are one of those people who need multiple attempts to get up? No worries a mobile phone can do that(and much more.. read on..😉)
Now you say its a mobile phone, its not a computer 🤷🏻♂️ why are we talking about mobile phone in an article about computers?
Well my friend mobile phones are also computers, even those small wrist watch are now “smart” watches.
But how these came to be so small because when we last met, things were still the size to be placed on a table.
The answer is quiet simple, “Transistors”.
You ask, transistors.. what..??
In short transistors are small semiconductor devices that manipulates flow of current to make the computers do what they do. OK?
Uhh… okaayyy… so how small are these transistors and how exactly they help make a computer fit in our pockets?
The size of transistor depands on the manufacturer and the requirements of the companies, for example there are transistors ranging from 22 nanometers to 1 nanometers. Apple uses 7 nanometers chipset for their latest iPhones.
Nanometers! yes, nanometers. and if you have difficulty imagining how small is a nanometer here is a video that might help.
Now you see there are transistors even the size of 1 nanometer!
With that in mind you can imagine how small can we go. Definitely not the ant-man style small but considerable small.
But how come these transistors make our computers?
Umm.. in order to understand it in a simple way think of it by this example, you are in a dark room now in order to get light you add a bulb in the room and there is light, but what if you add two bulbs? The intensity of light doubles and it continues to grow as more of the bulbs you add. In similar fashion the more transistors you add the more powerful a computer gets.
But thats not it, in present day you can use a supercomputer without even accessing the hardware of that system.
Wait waa..
Yes! The internet has given us this power to summon even a supercomputer right from your mobile phone without even knowing about it at all. All the queries you make all the web pages you visit and all the likes and comments you make actually happen on a very powerful computer far away from your phones. And those computers are grouped in what is called a data center.
Wait a minute… we are now going off track. We are learning about computers in modern world but how come there are points about internet and data whatever centers?🧐
Yes, we are still learning about computers in modern world. You see, computers have developed so vast that just calling them computers seems generalized. Computers are robots, mobile phones, TVs, even washing machines these days.
And that’s not just it, cars are driving them selves, AI is a thing now, humans are controlling a robot on another planet, hack we have even captured an image of a black hole!! All of these because we have developed so powerful computers.
But all these advancement must have a limit, right? I mean there is only so much we can make. And as stated by Mr. Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel),
“The number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years.”
This is also known as Moore’s law.
So if we go back to the size of a transistor and do some maths we can easily come to a conclusion that there will be a limit to smallest transistors to be fit on the most dense chip. And what then?
What happens when we hit that wall when we can no longer push our chips to hold more transistors? Because as we have known more transistors equal more powerful computers.
Huh?! Well I am happy with the speed and power my computer or phones have right now. Who cares if there are no more space to fit more transistors on our devices? Right?
Wrong! If you look back and see what speed or power our old computers used to have and compare them to current devices they’ll look like toys. For a quick realization Apollo 11 mission that took humans to moon surface had only 4KB of RAM and operated on 1Mhz, compare that to your lowest configuration of any device today and you get the picture.
🤯Oh!
Yes, so you see we must go in a forward direction like we always have.
But what is next, what big can we do that makes today’s technology dwarf?
That’s my friend is future! And its coming faster than you think.
What is it? What are the new advances we are going to make?
We’ll know that for sure in our next part 🙃
P.S. This post is just a small attempt to explain the current technology. The explanations are not be taken literally but just to get an idea. | https://medium.com/@ayushawasthi25/computer-expanse-e05b3832a9c | ['Ayush Awasthi'] | 2019-10-09 15:38:48.047000+00:00 | ['Explained', 'Computer', 'Transistors', 'History'] |
High and Low in the Sierra Nevada | When is too much just right ?
Darla and I had decided after many months of back + forth, to make the 2500 mile journey to the concert/camping experience known as the Electric Frontier. We packed two huge Rubbermaid lockboxes with all our camping gear and then flew in to Laramie, WY and got a rental car for the 85 mile drive to Beacon Hill, site of the four-day festival, now in its 20th year.
A music festival is a completely different experience for several reasons, the two prime considerations being good neighbors and powerful psychotropics. Being the clever consumer that I am, we had bought an entire 50 grams of psilocybin mushrooms from a trusted source, freeze-dried them, and then ground it into a fine powder with which I then filled two 35 mm film containers. These two small but critical items were placed in the cardboard tube of a roll of paper towels and placed in the bottom of the Rubbermaid; easy-peasy & super breezy.
The line-up was all of our funk and jam band favorites, including Deep Banana Blackout, Beck, Turkuaz, Flaming Lips, Galactic, moe., & Sound Tribe Sector 9, among many other great names. We had purchased our wrist bands early, which not only allowed us to buy items at the festival but gave us preferred camping access. After quickly setting up camp and saying Hello to a few neighbors, we got ready for Night #1 with a few puffs, several cold beers, and a huge brownie. It would be a four-day marathon, and so I needed to start off easy. First night’s headliners were Wilco and Galactic (from New Orleans!) and we were ready to roll.
Of course, Galactic killed it and we retired early (about 3 am) after our long day of travel, to prepare for the first real day. The music went on all thru the night, either campfire jams or obnoxious random techno beats, but somehow we were able to rest well, and got up refreshed and recharged. The day promised to be heavy, with two of my favorites headlining, STS 9 and Turkuaz, so I put a little extra mushroom powder in my delicious strawberry smoothie, purchased with our handy wristbands from the FruitCup truck. A full ounce of dried fungus is probably enough for six or eight really good trips, so I did not skimp on the dosages. After adding two heaping teaspoons, I put in a third for good measure, like we do back home with coffee, hoping for a good long night of some funky wavy-gravy !
Two foggy, trippy hours later, I realized through my mental haze that I had probably taken way more than necessary. “Hey, D Baby, if I start to lose it, will you just kinda hold me till I come back, ok, Lover ?” The light of my life looked over at me and said, “You know I got you, Beanie Boy! Every time you reach out, you know I’ll be right there beside you. Now chill out and go enjoy yourself”.
Her eyes were not only sparkling and spinning, but were also brimming with the incredible happiness we’re able to make together. She was my woman and I was her guy and we were very happy together after 15 great months. Truly I adored this woman. We were both divorced and had been introduced by a mutual friend, and got on like peas and carrots, fitting like two fingers of the same glove.
I was really buzzing, I mean everything was either vibrating, glowing, or communicating with me on several different levels. High af and dancing around like a spastic meth-head on a grand mal seizure, I was just enjoying the shit out of that moment in time, feeling like I was exactly where I was supposed to be doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I was literally scurrying around high-fiving strangers, jumping over their blankets, and just having a heckuva lot of big fun. Since all good things must inevitably come to an end, on one of my passes through the approving crowd, a young “security guard” stood and blocked my revelry. “Hey there Big Guy, waddya say we settle down a bit & quit all this showing off, ok ? Just chill out for a minute & stop embaras- sing yourself, comprende ?” I was having not one tiny bit of that nonsense, none. So I cleverly responded with, “How’s about you jump up my butt, Junior. See, this here wrist-band I got grants me admission to this gathering and so I therefore have every right to be here. Buh bye!” and I was off again on my psychedelic perambulations which I felt were not only exhilarating & life-enhancing, but perfectly appropriate and reasonable.
Apparently, Junior didn’t quite see it that way because on my next pass, he was reinforced by a state trooper who looked not pleased at all. He put out his left hand to stop me, while his right gently slid down to unlock his handcuffs. “Hey Son,” he began, “what exactly seems to be your particular problem because my associate here tells me you failed to comply with his directive,and I don’t cotton to such insubordination. If you feel compelled to persist inthis behavior, let me reassure you that I have both the remedy & the will to bring you into compliance. Are you understanding me there, boy ?”
Since I was in fact tripping out of my own head, I heard the words but they conveyed no meaning and I began to laugh uncontrollably, like a freshman frat boy on three extra strength hash brownies.
“Son, do you need to spend the night in my custody to understand that I am not one to be toyed with, especially by the likes of a puke like you ?”
Of course, it was now impossible for me to control my hysteria, because his face had become unbearably amusing and hideous, and all I could think about was Mahatma Gandhi finding peace in jail after he was arrested. So as he menacingly tore at his cuffs, I gladly offered my wrists to be shackled, all the while nearly crying with maniacal guffawing at his futile attempts at intimidation. He seemed quite comfortable with his aggressive demeanor and expected the subservience which I was not prepared to offer. He seemed to playing one game and I another. His was “Big Boss Man”, but mine was called, “Tweaked out hippie messes with Officer Un-Friendly”. There I was in the back of the squad car, handcuffed, shirtless, sweaty and dirty, and relishing every moment of my imagined super- iority over this over-zealous civil servant. My frontal lobe was trying unsuccess- fully to navigate the hallucinogenic haze of my “consciousness”, as I mentally grappled with enough drugs for a trio of fat guys. I was in bliss, singing and asking him all kinds of silly and annoying questions, just completely out of my mind, but not minding it one bit. I laughed and harassed him the entire twenty minuteride back to the county jail, not caring about a thing other than savoring each moment as something special and not to be ignored. I heard him conveying to Dispatch that he needed the Drunk Tank ready for an overnight guest. He finally could not handle it any longer, and told me, “Let’s see if your stupid ass feels any different in the morning, Boy, when you wake up in my house !” He parked and slammed his door, pulling me out by my cuffed hands with much more force than was necessary, and double-timed me directly to the Tank. For the next four or five hours, I unleashed more than just mere verbal blasts; these were laser- guided Cruise missiles, intended to rile, annoy, provoke, and demoralize the enemy. The tirade consisted of insults, nonsense, accusatory insinuations, and just plain indecipherable banter stronger and sharper than ever before heard in that fine establishment. Every once in a while, I would hear a comment and a chuckle so I knew they were listening. But when I heard someone tell me toshut up and go to sleep, I just continued to ramble on perfectly at peace, until that first terrifying moment when the powerful molecules began to relinquish their air-tight grip on my brain. I could feel myself slipping back down to Earth,as slowly and uncomprehendingly, I became of where I was and the conditions under which I awoke. It was very cold and I was very thirsty, and more than a little bit afraid of what I had said or done the day and night before, now that I was almost myself once more.
I lightly tapped on the glass around 5:30 am, and when the matronly desk clerk came to the window, she said, “What’s wrong, Buttercup ? If you think that after last night, you are getting anything other than this finger, you got another think coming. After all your speechifying last night, I’d be surprised if you’re outta here by Wednesday, Cupcake!” she offered gleefully.
I meekly and politely asked for a blanket and a glass of water, and so when she just laughed and turned away, I went to the only other source of water in my cell, and drank deeply from the stainless steel toilet with relish until I was sated.
Around 10:20 am, Darla came and paid my $1,100 bail, and we drove to Jackson Hole to say, “I do”. And twenty-two years later, we are still side by side and all-in for the long haul. | https://medium.com/@wedge11199/high-and-low-in-the-sierra-nevada-28f59b9b0937 | ['B Owen Guthrie', 'Wedge'] | 2020-08-14 07:13:50.437000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Travel', 'Relationships', 'Psychedelics', 'Personal Growth'] |
Felons & the Right to Vote | This topic is highly contested outside and even inside the Democratic Party. Before I get into what arguments cause this contention, let me explain what felons and voting rights look like today.
I’ll be honest — on the surface, it looks messy. This is for one primary reason: the right to vote for felons and ex-felons is a state-level issue. So, every state has its own set of laws or policies regarding the matter. They vary on when felons can recover their right to vote (for example, after incarceration versus after parole) and which felons can recover their right to vote (all, some, or none at all). Today, states are divided into six categories:
1) Some felons can recover their right to vote after conviction.
2) All felons can recover their right to vote after serving their sentence (including probation, prison, and parole).
3) All felons can recover their right to vote after parole.
4) All felons can recover their right to vote after incarceration.
5) All felons always retain their right to vote (even during incarceration).
The slim majority of states adhere to number 5. Check out this handy document for a more detailed list of the policies in each state.
So, now the question is, why does this matter?
Increasingly over the past few years, criminal justice reform advocates have been calling for the restoration of voting rights for all felons. Now, they’ve varied in how exactly they want to do that. In this year’s Democratic primary, for example, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VA) supported the right to vote for all felons at all times, even during incarceration, while more moderate candidates supported the restoration of voting rights after served sentences.
Let’s take a look at some common arguments behind restoring voting rights for felons in general, without any specificity as to when these rights will be restored.
First, keeping felons from their right to vote further enforces the racist disparities in the justice system and promotes racial injustice and disenfranchisement.
The felon disenfranchisement laws in this country are notorious for stripping ex-felons of their most fundamental rights and abilities (side note: I highly recommend the Netflix mini-series When They See Us by Ava Duvernay, which goes in fantastic depth about felon disenfranchisement). This disenfranchisement was actually born in post-Reconstruction attempts to keep African-Americans under bondage. In 2014, 2.2 million African-American citizens lost their right to vote due to conviction — 1 out of 13 African-Americans in the US.
In states like Florida, felony disenfranchisement laws are literally rewritten Black Codes — the racist Jim Crow-era laws that discriminated against African-Americans and reinforced their subordinate status to the white man. Fortunately, Florida changed many of its laws in 2018 after the Midterms, but the effects still run deep.
Second, voting rights are basic civil rights that all people, regardless of what they’ve done, should retain.
This argument finds home in the Social Contract theory and hopes for the promotion of better ideals for reforming felons. In the Social Contract theory (which the United States adheres to), felons are still privy to upholding their end of the “bargain” with the government — that is, following the law or serving time for breaking it. In exchange for that release of freedom, each and every person retains the right to determine who runs that government and delegates that freedom. Taking this right away from felons unjustly makes them hold up on the end of a bargain inherently slanted against them.
Furthermore, enabling felons to vote (even while in prison) would perhaps strengthen their ties to civilian government and the ideals that they are reforming to embody.
Third, the restriction of voting rights for felons is motivated only by political affiliation.
The primary supporters of voting rights restrictions for felons are Republicans. This is for one reason and one reason only: felons and ex-felons typically vote blue. Republicans have even openly admitted that their sole reason for pushing voting rights restrictions is not founded in “voter fraud” as the GOP claims, but simply political gain. Estimates show that, for example, if ex-felons in Florida had been able to vote, Democrats would have gained a net of 48,000 votes over their Republican counterparts.
So, with the understanding that felons should have the right to vote, two questions remain: When should felons retain the right to vote? and Does Congress have the federal authority to impose a solution?
We’ll find out soon enough. | https://medium.com/joes-journal/felons-the-right-to-vote-3bd2f6446c27 | ['Kaelyn Dunnell'] | 2020-10-15 05:08:00.494000+00:00 | ['Voting', 'Criminal Justice', 'Informative'] |
Nisshoku Natsuko (02/14/2020) | Nisshoku means solar eclipse so I wonder whether that is her name or it’s a stage name. But if it isn’t her real name then it’s a good decision because it does sort of match her musical style. But I will get to this point in time; but I need to start at the beginning.
Her band is herself and a drummer (who also plays several other instruments depending on the song) and she is a pianist. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the new live house looked like a piano recital hall. It was nothing like the normal live house and that had some strengths and weaknesses. The strength was that the lights were all over the place which made the lighting effects more spectacular. The weakness was it was really intimate and pretty bright which made me being the tallest and the only white guy in the room all the more obvious (and since there were seats I couldn’t stand in the back like normal.)
Her audience was a little under 200 people and there were a good mix of men and women with a good balance of ages, some middle school looking people and some older with every age in between. I was in the middle toward the back and ironically there were other taller people in the audience and all of them were a few rows in front of me. I could still see but it was funny that all of the taller than 6ft people were all in the same area. Even though we had chairs about half the performance Natsuko asked us to stand up which must have sucked for the people behind us…
Their music was really quite good; although not really my taste. She is really skilled with the piano and seemed to be playing all of her songs by memory, which became apparent with something that happened later, and most of them were from many different music genres and styles. That being said most of the songs were pretty upbeat yet there were portions that got serious or morose for a minute or two then jumping to the previous peppiness. While parts of the songs felt a little cookie cutter the transitions between parts of the songs and the potential for changes in mood and rhythm made the songs not get boring. This music would be great for relaxing after a hard day at work or for a long train ride… but not really for the things I normally listen to music for… It does sometimes seem like a solar eclipse in that it feels like the base of the song is hidden but if you look directly at it you get blinded so you no longer can see it… at least to me… Anyway…
Natsuko had a pretty earthy, husky, voice. Almost like someone who had the weight of the world on their shoulders. But; she had a pretty good range and could sing fairly high pitches which gave the songs good variety. The drummer had a higher pitched singing voice but he didn’t sing much. She on the other hand played piano while singing while wearing a white dress shirt and black pants. I also noticed that she was barefoot which might have led to a problem later in the show.
The drummer on the other hand wore all black and had long hair like a reggee player. He also had that feeling whenever he was playing the drums; he would lean back and have his mouth open while swaying with the music. While I say he was a drummer but he also played other instruments: triangle, bells, cowbell?, nuts?, and for one song he had a box which he sat on and played like a drum (which also had a tambourine inside with some other instruments that I couldn’t see). He did some back up singing, hence the high pitched voice, and was easily the most laid back of the pair. He participated during a few of the later intermissions.
The intermissions were all fairly unique from other concerts I have been to (minus the second intermission). The first had an extremely formal style of speaking. I hadn’t heard it much in concerts (or even in normal conversation) so I could sort of follow what was happening but I couldn’t understand the specifics… The second was pretty normal: she talked about the things she did in Hiroshima and explained why the next song was about winter (and then she made a joke that it didn’t snow at all over here…). The third she had a raffle where the drummer had a box with all of the ticket stubs and she chose one who would tell her the next song to play. She mentioned that there were over 80 songs to choose from and she had to practice a lot to get ready to play from memory all of the songs from her line up. Lastly she explained why she doesn’t do encores anymore, something about not wanting to get the audience riled up after having a satisfying conclusion, then proceeded to ask the audience to come to the stage to sing the final song…
So… for the first time I got to go to the stage and squatted next to the piano while clapping with a song that I didn’t know the lyrics with the singer looking directly at me (being directly across from her). It was a memorable ending but like normal being the odd man out feels like being the odd man out; it didn’t help that when I turned around to leave I noticed that the security were directly behind me, and not just 1 or 2 but most of them, almost as if to make sure I wouldn’t do anything. (I did get out without any problems)
That being said it was a memorable ending to a surprisingly good concert (since I didn’t know the band before I showed up). If you like piano music with an energetic flair you will really like this band.
4.2/ 5.0 | https://medium.com/@philipbrown_50705/nisshoku-natsuko-02-14-2020-bd5614adc772 | ['Philip Brown'] | 2020-02-14 23:08:11.173000+00:00 | ['Japanese Music', 'Japanese Culture', 'Music', 'Japanese'] |
Unwind at these 3 luxury bush lodges in the Pilanesberg | Destination Legacy: Unwind at these 3 luxury bush lodges in the Pilanesberg Cheryl K Follow Apr 26 · 4 min read
Bakubung Bush Lodge: Twin Room (Facing Outside). Photo: Cheryl Kahla
This year has been particularly stressful for the inhabitants of planet Earth. The pandemic has largely restricted our movement, and the lockdown has put many lives on hold.
With the easing of travel restriction and many international destinations closed to us, this is the perfect opportunity to explore the beauty South Africa has to offer.
If you’re planning a trip, you simply cannot go wrong with the Pilanesberg; the area is truly the jewel of the North West province, giving visitors access to the best the province has to offer.
I had the pleasure of spending a few nights in Pilanesberg: Overnight stays at the Bakubung Bush Lodge and Kwa Martine Bush Lodge, with a day-visit to the Tshukudu Bush Lodge as well.
Bakubung Spa. Photo: Cheryl Kahla
It was breathtakingly beautiful and just the thing I needed ten months into the year that shall not be named. Game Drives were included and we saw four of the Big Five before breakfast.
Bakubung Bush Lodge
Legacy Hotels promises that Bakubung Bush Lodge “will bring you closer to the splendour and beauty of the African bush” in a Malaria-free area. They’re not lying and you won’t be disappointed.
Bakubung, or “People of the Hippo”, has everything you might need: from cosy nooks to a number of bars, accessible pools and a restaurant. The rooms are spacious and Wi-Fi is available throughout the property.
The lodge has state-of-the-art conference facilities with everything you could possibly require for a business trip, including a mobile charging station. There are different conference packages to suit all needs.
Bakubung Bush Lodge Bar. Photo: Cheryl Kahla
The Legacy Balance Spa offers visitors the chance to unwind and enjoy its many treatments. I was treated to a BABOR Skin Balancing facial and quite frankly, my life prior to the treatment just doesn’t make sense anymore.
We departed just after 5:00 for a game drive and were treated with amazing wildlife sights: Rhino, hippos, elephants, giraffes, buffalo, a variety of buck. We even caught a glimpse of lions lazing under the trees.
Unfortunately, we didn’t see the leopard, but the sly cat, as expected, made an appearance one day after we left and was spotted by rangers. They sent photos, so I’ll forgive the leopard.
Tshukudu Bush Lodge
Privacy, luxurious spoils and dassies right on your doorstop are just some of the reasons you should consider booking in at the Tsukudu Bush Lodge in the Pilanesberg.
Tshukudu Bush Lodge is one of Pilanesberg’s most renowned — and romantic — hideouts. Each chalet offers a sunken bath, outdoor shower and private plunge pool.
Tshukudu Bush Lodge, lounge and deck. Photo: Cheryl Kahla
You will be treated to incredible views of a waterhole and expansive plain; we saw Amarula, South Africa’s most famous elephant. Amarula is known for pushing over vehicles back in the eighties.
Now almost fifty years old, Amarula spends his days grazing in the plains below. It’s to spot him; Amarula has no tail. He is a magnificent beast with beautiful tusks, currently the oldest elephant in the park.
Tshukudu Lodge, view from the deck. Photo: Cheryl Kahla
Kwa Maritane Bush Lodge
Just a two-hour drive from Johannesburg, Kwa Maritane Bush Lodge is an excellent choice for a quick weekend getaway or even a longer family holiday.
Tshukudu Suite, private deck. Photo: Cheryl Kahla
Nestled on the slopes of an ancient volcano, Kwa Maritane Bush Lodge is a four-star, 90-room resort ideal for holidaymakers looking for an easy, comfortable stay with a host of on-site amenities. It’s suitable for everyone, from honeymooners to families.
The Kwa Maritane Bush Lodge showcases the natural beauty and rich wildlife that South Africa is known for worldwide. The Lodge offers all the amenities you expect from Legacy experience while still offering an opportunity to enjoy a break from the high paced city life.
Rooms at Kwa Maritane. Photo: Cheryl Kahla
The Kwa Maritane Bush Lodge offers visitors game drives and bush walks. It is child-friendly and visitors will have access to free Wi-Fi during their stay if they suffer social media withdrawal symptoms.
Kwa Maritane Bush Lodge, one of the many pool areas. Photo: Cheryl Kahla
Visitors can dine at the Kwa Lefikeng Restaurant, which offers a Fisherman’s Catch seafood evening on Friday’s and a spit for Sunday lunch.
On Wednesdays, the Kwa Maritane Bomas offer the opportunity to “Dine to the sound of traditional entertainment, and feast on a wide selection of local flame-grilled cuisine.” | https://medium.com/cheryl-kahla/legacy-resorts-luxury-bush-lodges-pilanesberg-c7fc4204008c | ['Cheryl K'] | 2021-04-26 23:33:35.442000+00:00 | ['Travel Writing', 'Vacation', 'Travel', 'South Africa', 'Getaway'] |
20 Essential ML Questions Answered | 20 Essential ML Questions Answered
Must Know Questions for Data Science and ML Interviews
Computer scientist and ML expert Santiago Valdarrama (@svpino on Twitter) recently tweeted a list of 20 fundamental questions that you need to ace before getting a Machine Learning job. Claiming:
“Almost every company will ask these to weed out non-prepared candidates. You don’t want to show up unless you are comfortable having a discussion about all of these.”
Santiago Valdarrama — @svpino
1. Explain the difference between Supervised and Unsupervised methods.
When we train machine learning models we use data that is either labeled or unlabeled. In Supervised learning, the data we use to train the model is labeled.
Example: If we’re building a classifier to tell if an animal is a cat or a dog, we would train the model on a dataset of dog and cat images correctly tagged as such. Then we can get predictions on new unlabeled images! Supervised learning allows us to collect data or produce a data output from the previous experience.
But when we train a machine learning model on unlabeled data, this is called Unsupervised learning. This allows the model to work on its own to discover new information about the dataset and can help us find unknown patterns in data.
Example: To refer to the previous example of a dog and cat image classifier; If all of our dog/cat image data was unlabeled we could use unsupervised learning to find similarities in the different classes of images. We could use an unsupervised learning technique called clustering to find out which images are likely to be of dogs or cats!
Use of a ground truth (prior knowledge of what the output values for our samples should be. i.e. ‘labels’) is the largest difference between the two types of learning.
Unsupervised vs Supervised methods applied to data
Supervised:
Used on labeled data
Allows us to produce a data output from previous experience or examples
Most practical machine learning applications use supervised learning
Unsupervised:
Used mainly on unlabeled data
Allows us to learn the inherent structure of data without providing labels
Finds unknown discoveries and patterns about data
2. What’s your favorite algorithm? Can you explain how it works?
My favorite machine learning algorithm is Naïve Bayes!
In probability theory and statistics, Bayes’ theorem (alternatively Bayes’s theorem, Bayes’s law or Bayes’s rule) describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event.
For example, if the risk of developing health problems is known to increase with age, Bayes’s theorem allows the risk to an individual of a known age to be assessed more accurately than simply assuming that the individual is typical of the population as a whole.
A Naïve Bayes Classifier is a probabilistic classifier that uses Bayes theorem with strong independence (naïve) assumptions between features.
Probabilistic classifier: a classifier that is able to predict, given an observation of an input, a probability distribution over a set of classes, rather than only outputting the most likely class that the observation should belong to.
Independence: Two events are independent if the occurrence of one does not affect the probability of occurrence of the other (equivalently, does not affect the odds). That assumption of independence of features is what makes Naive Bayes naive! In real world, the independence assumption is often violated, but naive Bayes classifiers still tend to perform very well.
For a deeper dive into Naïve Bayes check out my blog post on how to build an email spam filter from scratch with multinomial Naïve Bayes!
3. Given a specific dataset, how do you decide which is the best algorithm to use?
In ML and data science there is no one-size-fits-all algorithm. The answer depends on a myriad of factors like the number of features in the data, the kind of output you want, size of the dataset, available computation time/resources, and many others.
The type of problem:
Input: Is the input data labeled? If so, it’s a supervised learning problem. If it’s unlabeled data with the purpose of finding structure, it’s an unsupervised learning problem. If the solution implies to optimize an objective function by interacting with an environment, it’s a reinforcement learning problem.
Output: What should the model output be? If it’s a number, that would be a regression problem. (Linear, lasso, logistic, SVM, etc.) If the output is a class, the it would be a classification problem. (Unless the output is a set of input groups. Then it would be a clustering problem.)
After categorizing the problem and understand the data, the next milestone is identifying the algorithms that are applicable and practical to implement in a reasonable time. Some of the elements affecting the choice of a model are:
Input: Is the input data labeled? If so, it’s a supervised learning problem. If it’s unlabeled data with the purpose of finding structure, it’s an unsupervised learning problem. If the solution implies to optimize an objective function by interacting with an environment, it’s a reinforcement learning problem. Output: What should the model output be? If it’s a number, that would be a regression problem. (Linear, lasso, logistic, SVM, etc.) If the output is a class, the it would be a classification problem. (Unless the output is a set of input groups. Then it would be a clustering problem.) After categorizing the problem and understand the data, the next milestone is identifying the algorithms that are applicable and practical to implement in a reasonable time. Some of the elements affecting the choice of a model are: The size of the training dataset. Is the training dataset small? (has a fewer number of observations and a higher number of features) If so algorithms with high bias and low variance like linear regression, Naïve Bayes, or linear SVM would be preferable.
The accuracy of the model v.s. the interpretability of the model.
The complexity/implementability of the model. Do we have the time and computational resources to train the model? Are the improvements gains in accuracy high enough to justify the costs and engineering effort needed to bring them into a production environment?
needed to bring them into a production environment? The scalability of the model. Micro or horizontal data scaling?
Does the model meet the business goal?
4. When should you use classification over regression?
Like the question above about algorithm selection, the choice between classification and regression depends on the available data, problem statement, and expected output.
Classification: Hotdog or not hotdog?
Regression:
If your expected output is a real or continuous value.
Example: Predicting the increase or decrease in value of apartment buildings over time.
Classification:
If your expected outcome is a discrete or categorical value.
Used to predict class membership. (i.e. hotdog or not hotdog, dog or cat)
Example: Predict whether or not a user is expected to purchase something when they visit your website or online store. (Classes: likely conversion, possible conversion, unlikely conversion)
5. Can you explain how Logistic Regression works?
Logistic Regression is a machine learning algorithm used for the classification problems, it is a predictive analysis algorithm and based on the concept of probability. Logistic regression is used to assign observations to a discrete set of classes.
Example: Do workers’ education levels and time on the job affect promotions. The independent variables would be education levels and time on the job, and the levels of the dependent variable might be promotion to team-leader roles, sales positions, or management positions.
Logistic regression transforms its output using the logistic sigmoid function to return a probability value. The sigmoid function (as depicted below) is a cost function. The hypothesis of logistic regression tends to limit the cost function between 0 and 1. The sigmoid function will map the predicted values of the model to a probability between 0 and 1. We can use a decision boundary to classify data points based on the probability they are likely to belong to a certain class. (Example: If Cats = 0 and Dogs = 1 then any predicted value greater than 0.5 would be classified as a dog)
Sigmoid function with decision boundary of 0.5
Bonus: What is Gradient Descent and why is it important in logistic regression?
6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of decision trees?
Advantages:
Easily understandable and explainable to stakeholders
Doesn’t require the data to be normalized or scaled
No need to impute missing data because null values don’t affect process
Requires less data preprocessing than other algorithms (Good baseline)
Disadvantages:
Leads to overfitting of the data causing incorrect predictions
Noise — Does not work well if you have too many un-correlated variables
High variance — small changes early in the tree can have a large impact on the outcome
Decision Tree about taking a new job
Bonus: What is a random forest? When should you use it over a decision tree?
Hint: Does size (of the dataset) matter?
7. Can you compare K-means with KNN?
“The ‘K’ in K-Means Clustering has nothing to do with the ‘K’ in KNN algorithm”
K-Means Clustering:
Used for clustering (K = number of clusters)
Unsupervised learning algorithm
Takes unlabeled data points and groups them into “k” number of clusters
Uses elbow method to calculate “k” and recalculates cluster centroids until it reaches a global optima
K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN):
Used for classification (K = number of neighbors)
Supervised learning algorithm’
Takes labeled data points and uses them to learn how to label other points
To label a new point, it looks at the “nearest neighbor” (labeled points closest to new point)
Neighbors vote on how to label a new point
8. How much data would you allocate for your training, validation, and test sets?
Train / Test / Validation Split
There is no exact percentage of how you should allocate your data but a convention in machine learning is to use a 80/20 or 70/30 train/test split. After the initial split, the training set can be further split into validation sets. Again this is a general rule and great starting point, but the best way to determine how to allocate your data is to experiment with different split sizes.
9. Can you explain the “Curse of Dimensionality”?
This scary term refers to the difficulty of using brute force — grid search — to optimize a function with too many input variables. In English, this means that when our data has too many features (columns) compared to the number of observations (rows) we risk overfitting our model resulting in false and unreliable predictions. If there are a large amount of features (compared to the observations) it becomes harder to make meaningful clusters with the observations because too many dimensions cause every observation to look equidistant from other data points. Luckily there are some techniques to reduce this and we’ll cover those in the next question.
Dimensionality Reduction Visualized
10. What are some methods to reduce dimensionality?
There are many ways to reduce dimensionality ranging from intuitive, linear, non-linear, and auto-encoder methods. Here are some of the most popular.
Feature Engineering / Selection:
If the necessity for dimensionality reduction comes from too many features; let’s get rid of some! We can use heatmaps, visualizations, or even domain knowledge to find which features are contributing to the accuracy of the model and which features are not.
We can also combine different features or create entirely new features based on some insight about the data to reduce the number of features but preserve their impact on model accuracy.
Principal Component Analysis (PCA):
Another way to find the most important features in your crowded dataset is PCA. Used on continuous data, this method projects data along the axis of increasing variance. The features with the highest variance are the ‘principal’ components. We can use PCA to determine which features have the largest impact on the outcome/prediction of the model.
Auto-encoders:
An unsupervised neural network that compresses data down to a lower dimension and then reconstructing the data based on the most important features. This gets rid of noise and redundancy in the data. Auto-encoders can also be linear or non-linear based on the activation function.
11. How would you handle an imbalanced dataset?
Evaluation Metric:
In many cases as a machine learning engineer you’ll have to deal with imbalanced data. In anomaly detection (used for credit card fraud, geological events, etc) it is not likely that more than 1% of the data will be classified as an anomaly. You could classify every instance as non-anomalous and you would get an accuracy of 99% but that wouldn’t be good enough in this case so we could use a confusion matrix to calculate precision, recall, and F1 scores to get a better idea of how our model performs on imbalanced data.
Algorithm:
We can experiment with the type of algorithm that we are using for out model as different algorithms perform better on different types of problems. (i.e. Random Forest instead of Decision Tree)
Resampling — Oversampling and Undersampling:
Undersampling: When there is a sufficient amount of data, this is used to balance the dataset by reducing the size of the abundant class. By keeping all samples in the rare class and randomly selecting an equal number of samples in the abundant class, a balanced new dataset can be retrieved for further modelling.
amount of data, this is used to balance the dataset by reducing the size of the abundant class. By keeping all samples in the rare class and randomly selecting an equal number of samples in the abundant class, a balanced new dataset can be retrieved for further modelling. Oversampling: When there is an insufficient amount of data, this method is used to balance dataset by increasing the size of rare samples. Rather than getting rid of abundant samples, new rare samples are generated.
We could also use K-fold Cross Validation, resample the data with different split ratios, cluster the abundant class, and many other methods!
12. Can you explain the trade-off between bias and variance?
The goal is to get the algorithm to generalize, but not oversimplify
Bias:
Can cause a model to miss relevant or important relationships between features and its target output. Algorithms with high bias error tend to be underfit.
Variance:
How sensitive a machine learning model is to small changes in the training data. Models with high variance tend to focus on the random noise in training data rather than important relationships between features resulting in overfitting.
Tradeoff:
One of the biggest problems in supervised learning , the bias-variance tradeoff aims to choose a model optimized for accurately capturing regularities in its training data, but also generalizing well on unseen data. Sadly, it is typically impossible to do both at the same time.
, the bias-variance tradeoff aims to choose a model optimized for accurately capturing regularities in its training data, but also generalizing well on unseen data. Sadly, it is typically impossible to do both at the same time. High bias, low variance — Consistent but inaccurate.
High variance, low bias — Accurate but inconsistent.
13. Can you define and explain the differences between precision and recall?
Precision:
Classification evaluation method with the goal of answering:
“What proportion of positive predictions are actually correct ?”
“What proportion of are ?” Example: Imagine a case where you are asked to build an email spam filter. It’s not a big deal if we accidentally classify an advertisement (spam) as a genuine email. It IS a big deal if a new job offer from your dream company is classified as spam. In this case we want to focus on precision and maximize the ratio between true positives and total positives.
Recall:
Classification evaluation method with the goal of answering:
“What proportion of actual positives are correctly predicted ?”
“What proportion of are ?” Example: Imagine a case where you are asked to develop a predictive model to classify people as positive or negative for cancer. We REALLY don’t want people with cancer being given a false negative because it’s possible they will go even longer without treatment. But there’s not nearly as much downside when telling a healthy person that they have cancer.
14. How do you define the F1 score and why is it useful?
F1 is the harmonic mean (Pythagorean mean, appropriate for situations when the average of rates is desired) of both precision and recall. It is typically used as a best practice when there is not a specific reason to highly value either precision or recall (like in the examples in the previous question. Typically calculated in a confusion matrix, its formula is below:
Where:
TP = True positive
FP = False positive
FN = False negative
15. How do you ensure you’re not overfitting? Can you explain some techniques to reduce overfitting?
After splitting our dataset into train and testing sets, if our model does a better job on the training set than the testing set, it is likely overfit. We can take steps to reduce this:
Cross-validation : This could be as simple as using a train, test, validation split on your data or even something more complex like K-folds (where the data is split into K number of sections or folds where each fold is used as a testing set).
: This could be as simple as using a train, test, validation split on your data or even something more complex like K-folds (where the data is split into K number of sections or folds where each fold is used as a testing set). Early Stopping : During each training epoch the model is given more opportunities to fit the data but after a while this begins to overfit the training set. We can monitor the training performance (for an increase in loss) and stop training as the performance on the validation dataset decreases (compared to the performance on the validation dataset at the prior training epoch).
: During each training epoch the model is given more opportunities to fit the data but after a while this begins to overfit the training set. We can monitor the training performance (for an increase in loss) and stop training as the performance on the validation dataset decreases (compared to the performance on the validation dataset at the prior training epoch). Regularization : Refers to regularizing the parameters that shrink the coefficient closer to zero. This method stops the model from getting over complicated allowing it to generalize better.
: Refers to regularizing the parameters that shrink the coefficient closer to zero. This method stops the model from getting over complicated allowing it to generalize better. Weight Constraints : Checks the weights of a network and if their size exceeds a certain limit, the weights are rescaled to be back below the limit (or in the range) and prevents single features from dominating the model.
: Checks the weights of a network and if their size exceeds a certain limit, the weights are rescaled to be back below the limit (or in the range) and prevents single features from dominating the model. Dropout: Essentially “drops out” individual neurons in a neural network during the training process. Leading to significantly lower generalization error rates.
Neural Network with Dropout Layer
16. Can you explain what is cross-validation and how is it useful?
Cross-validation is a resampling method used to evaluate the level of fit of a machine learning models to a limited sample of data that is independent of the data we used to train the model. (i.e. holding data from the training set to test on the model later) This is especially useful when we are training a model with a limited data set. There are many forms of cross-validation including exhaustive, non-exhaustive, and nested methods.
17. Can you explain the difference between L1 and L2 regularization?
A regression model that uses L1 regularization is called Lasso Regression.
A model that uses L2 is called Ridge Regression.
The main difference is that Lasso Regression (L1) is used to shrink the coefficient of less important features and removing some features entirely (helping with feature selection). While Ridge Regression (L2) adds “squared magnitude” of coefficient as penalty term to the loss function.
Lasso v.s. Ridge Regression
18. What is the ROC Curve?
ROC (receiver operating characteristic) curve is a graph that shows the performance of a multi-class classification model at every classification threshold. AUC-ROC (area under ROC curve) also written AUROC represents degree or measure of separability. It tells how much model is capable of distinguishing between classes. A higher AUC means the model will be better at is at predicting an observation as its own class. (i.e. 0 as 0 and 1 as 1)
19. What is a Confusion Matrix and how is it useful?
A confusion matrix is a table used to represent the performance of a classification model where the output can be two or more classes. It contains the true positives, false positives, true negatives, and false negatives. Using a confusion matrix can help with calculating precision, recall, F1, and AUC-ROC, as discussed in earlier questions.
20. Which is more important: model accuracy or model performance?
Model accuracy is the most important. Once a model is deployed in production, the quality of the output is very important and retraining happens less than scoring the outputs.
As for performance, this depends on what we’re talking about when we say “performance”. If it is model training performance we can upgrade our computer, use distributed computing power, and parallelization to speed up training time. If we’re referring to model scoring performance then it would depend on the type of data we are using.
Thanks for reading!
Please hit the clap button (up to 50 times) if you enjoyed this post or simply managed to scroll this far. I hope this helps you on your machine learning journey and if I made any mistakes or you want to make suggestions, please connect with me through the links below and I’ll be happy to update the material. Have a fantastic day and don’t stop learning.
Jack Ross (Data Scientist)
About the Author
I’m Jack and I like to learn things. I’m a Lambda Endorsed data scientist, lover of coffee, and like to occasionally injure myself doing action sports. I’m looking for data science opportunities so let’s connect!
Where to find me: | https://medium.com/swlh/20-essential-ml-questions-answered-6bf61f8b1aa6 | ['Jack Ross'] | 2020-11-28 10:08:24.894000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Interview Questions', 'Interview', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Crypto market snapshot | May’18 | Overall market shares
The crypto market capitalization is ever-changing, with typical cycles of rising and fall. The last year’s hype magnetized the attention of lots of people not only from finance and investment capital but also unprepared mass markets. Though being relatively small, the market continues its formation showing big volumes of daily transactions.
We can definitely see the high and too risky levels of volatility in this market. And we also know that the more you risk, the more you can earn.The typical approach to trading market analysis presumes collection and analysis of market data and dynamics. Especially when we apply machine learning and artificial intelligence, we need to collect relevant data and appropriately analyze them.
We would like to collect such information on regular basis and provide for your use.
Top crypto exchanges, by daily volume
People typically buy or sell tokens through crypto exchanges. From time to time, new exchanges appear and try to attract more customers to their portfolio. The most active crypto exchanges generate the majority of daily trading turnover. The list of Top-20 crypto exchanges with daily volumes of trading (in $) changes only slightly.
As of mid-May, the first 15 crypto exchanges show more than 80% of daily trading volumes.
Please see the list in the table below:
Table 1: Top-20 crypto exchanges by daily trading volume, as of mid-May, 2018
The market is showing first signs of consolidation, we expect this trend to continue in the foreseeable future.
For people considering trading opportunities, it is recommended to select the exchanges with larger daily volumes. It is good to trade active assets (similar to the crypto world as in regular trading markets), as you can always decide when to buy or sell.
If we take into account only the Top20 crypto exchanges, their market shares look as follows.
Diagram 2: Top20 crypto exchanges, with market shares recalculated among the Top20
Market dynamics to trading crypto assets
Diagram 3: Top‐20 crypto assets daily trading volumes and their weekly dynamics
The diagram above clearly illustrates the hype that we had at the beginning of this year. One of the most significant reductions was in Bitcoin. Its daily trading volume just fell following its decreasing price.
However, we see that starting in mid-April, the daily trading volumes began to grow. And other players appear on the market. Bitcoin is still among the trading leaders but other crypto assets re-arrange the crypto trading environment, e.g. EOS, Bitcoin Gold, etc.
Since mid-April trading volumes are growing again, but this growth is not directly linked to growing market capitalization and might be a sign of investors accepting new pricing levels.
Diagram 4: Daily trading volume for Top20 crypto assets (weekly snapshots)
Trading crypto assets: gainers and losers
Crypto assets are very volatile in trading, and they require strict risk management from a trader. However, some of the projects have more value and future prospects. Then the corresponding token show continuous growth.
Often crypto assets show short-term growth with later decline. And vice versa, some crypto assets fall at the beginning and thus become attractive for buying by risky investors who believe in a project and expect its growth in future.
Below you can see a market snapshot displaying market gainers and losers in terms of 24 hours growth or loss. It is clear the more established cryptocurrencies generally show much lower volatility, therefore, having the lower risk that is linked to lower expected returns.
Diagram 5: Crypto market gainers, as of May 20, 2018 (24 hours change)
Diagram 6: Crypto market losers, as of May 20, 2018 (24 hours change)
Conclusion
This short analysis does not aim to tell you when to buy or sell. The only purpose is to outline the current crypto market snapshot. | https://medium.com/aitrading/crypto-market-snapshot-may18-eef14f317abf | [] | 2018-06-14 13:13:10.380000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Trading', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto'] |
Soaring Through the Sky: the Coronavirus Pandemic Limited Our Sympathy Towards the Aviation Industry | Emotions perished. The lady at the nearby breakfast stand that smiles at you every morning is gone; the dog that barks every time you pass your neighborhood is gone; the group of friends that chats with you every day on your way back home is gone. Everything that has emotions is gone. In addition, the sense of security that had awaited me and my family is gone, just because we are related to the aviation industry that was deemed to be the causation of this severe pandemic. What is deteriorating is not locking ourselves in our rooms, but being criticized for something we should not be accounted for.
I started traveling at a very young age. The aviation industry connects me to the world, providing me the ability to see it from a different perspective. I have been grateful to my experience and everyone who works in the industry. Behind the curtains, behind the countless eyes that envied their opportunities to travel around the world, flight attendants are just like us. They have families to feed. They have chores to do. They have people and friends to love. Contributing their lives in order to enhance our traveling quality, many suffered from jet lags, long-haul flights that kept them and their families apart, and many other emergencies at work.
At normal times, we thanked them for providing us wonderful traveling experiences; At normal times, we envied their ability to travel. But the COVID-19 pandemic took all of that away. People resent them. People hate them for bringing coronavirus back to our community. People think they should simply stop working for the sake of our country and our increasing confirmed cases.
People believe they are the ones who should take up the responsibilities of so many lives.
Photo by Jerry Zhang on Unsplash
When the news first talked about the unknown pneumonia that was found in China back in 2019, I thought the pandemic is just another seasonal flu that would be gone by the end of winter.
It simply didn’t.
Slowly, people talked about depression: isolation, stuck with their family, and racist sentiments that steadily kill our mental health. I wonder if all of that is true. In Taiwan, thanks to our quarantine policies that are implemented right at the beginning of the pandemic, we haven’t faced those hardships until now.
“Why is it so hard for them to be like everybody else?”
“Why do they have to earn this money–sacrificing all the lives here back in Taiwan? Why do we get to clean up the mess?”
“Why does the government never learn?”
Those were the questions people have commented on.
But I think the question should be,
“Why can’t we all sympathize?”
People working in the aviation industry are just like us. They try their best to earn a living, striving, to survive through this critical time. Many of us have experienced the pain the pandemic and the following lockdown brought to us. So what is stopping us from sympathizing? Coronavirus is not a reason for us to stop caring for our community. The government policies are not important — but the emotions missing from my people are what we should work on.
We need the support. We shouldn’t fear: The virus may be inevitable, but we should unite and stay strong, working against it together. | https://medium.com/@justinhuang0325/soaring-through-the-sky-the-coronavirus-pandemic-limited-our-sympathy-towards-the-aviation-97a6d4c4637e | ['Justin Huang'] | 2021-06-01 17:10:06.448000+00:00 | ['Sympathy', 'Pandemic', 'Aviation Industry', 'Taiwan', 'Coronavirus'] |
Love In Three Words | An Irish-Nigerian soul living in Ireland after 40 years in Germany. A social anthropologist, English teacher, and more. With stories to share; and an opinion…
Follow | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/love-in-three-words-24ac9c36b897 | ['Sylvia Wohlfarth'] | 2019-12-10 01:03:35.383000+00:00 | ['A Cornered Gurl', 'Reflections', 'Relationships', 'Challenge', 'Love'] |
Happy Independence Day | This 4th of July, as you bbq and watch fireworks with the “Star Spangled Banner” anthem in the background, ask yourself: are we really free?
Two hundred forty two years ago, on July 4, 1776, with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies were no longer part of the British Empire and regarded themselves as a new nation. With this liberation, the United States of America was born.
America is all about freedom. Personal, individual freedom. The struggle then was for liberation from the oppression and exploitation of their then-rulers — much like the struggle in our day and age for freedom online, in the Attention and Content Economy.
In our day and age, our rulers are not kings and queens, but rather media corporations.
In our day and age, we are not enslaved in our bodies, but rather enslaved in our minds. We’ve been hacked, we’ve been robbed of our time, attention and identity. We’ve been commoditized.
When it comes to the Attention Economy, users in the content community — Creators, Curators, and all who add value — should be able to control their profiles, privacy, and content, as well as have the freedom to earn a profit from their creations and reward others for their efforts.
To paraphrase over the effective words of the Trump campaign: Let’s Make the Internet Great Again! The Internet was intended for individuals with equality and opportunity for all, not for the existing, centralized content-hub paradigm, where the conglomerates merely provide platforms, and earn billions of dollars in profits on the backs of the individuals that create and share their passions with the world.
What we need is a decentralized social environment, one that levels the playing field, lowers the barriers of entry, remedies monopolies, and compensates all individuals based on their contributions.
WildSpark is the first step on our path to liberating the Attention and Content Economy, and the Synereo roadmap still has a long and interesting way to go. So, this 4th of July, let’s celebrate the progress we’ve made, but also not lose sight of what’s important — together, we can to make the Internet great again.
DON’T MISS OUT ON SYNEREO’S LATEST UPDATES!
Join us on Discord
Join us on Telegram | https://medium.com/synereo/happy-independence-day-41f959080a49 | [] | 2019-09-10 13:06:24.732000+00:00 | ['Decentralization', 'Synereo', 'Attention Economy', 'Independence Day', 'Content Economy'] |
Saturday | “Reality has a habit of intruding and revealing one’s fantasies for what they are: fantasies.” Derrick Jensen~What We Leave Behind
“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system needs some blood to suck. (…) Now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and can only suck the blood of the helpless. (…) , and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.” ~ ~ Malcolm X
A Short Glimpse of Reality
As Washington, along with the President’s antics implode with absurdities and spectacle that do nothing but amuse the well informed, the ‘woke’; the planet is experiencing an unfolding crisis, environmentally speaking, that is, that the the leaders of the world fail to realize as to how bad things are to become in a very short time frame. The US leadership won’t even consider the facts as they stare them in the face on a daily basis. There is a considerable anti-science bias as the oligarchs amass more wealth at the expense of the small in ways that will inevitably doom humankind. I want to symbolically strangle these imbeciles, shake them until they wake up and do something. As it stands now ol’ Malcolm X buddy is correct, industrial capitalism will collapse. Soon, too, as I’ve come to conclude.
Fantasies
Yes, fantasies. Disneyland ethos has infected Americans, from the wealthiest oligarch to the struggling worker at two part-time jobs, a seemingly Disneyland type fantasy has replaced concrete reality. I can’t blame them. Why would anybody want to face the fact that things will drastically change? The media, almost all media ,— from the corporate, the individual, the film, the political, the indy publishers in many cases, etc —again, almost all media has been used to subvert the minds of the peoples of the world, just so all the things that need changing, don’t. Ads on TV show movie stars driving big luxury cars with status being the selling point. Drive car X or Y and impress your friends or neighbors. You are the Brand you wear, drive or display. Branding is so important these days. Nothing worth having can’t be without that all important brand name or designer’s label. I too have some clothing with names displayed, like Dickies or Wrangler, but I feel as if I should be paid for wearing those labels. Besides they were the cheapest items I could purchase at the time.
I like to fantasize, as do most folks; I just don’t fantasize about the deteriorating shape of Earth and what industrialized, globalized, marketed, foreign produced junk, does to the environment. Reality slaps me in the face on a daily basis. If, say, a TV or printer goes on the fritz, no worry, just get a new one, after all they’re really cheap. Just toss them out and pay to have them moved to the nearest landfill. Nothing is ever ‘thrown away’, it’s just moved to some other location, less obvious to the more affluent. Trash still exists here on Earth, somewhere. Until rockets can be flown carrying barges of garbage into the Sun it will be stored here on our home, Earth.
I also fantasize about a world without wars. A certain way of living where petty annoyances don’t lead to wars. Perhaps an epiphany on a world-wide scale where humans are raised into a higher realm of consciousness. Where property isn’t fought over any longer. A sharing, resource based, economy, without the need for competition to get things accomplished; a way to benefit all, not just the ones that have ownership or rights to extract profit. A horrible way to do things. This is very juvenile; think junior high or middle school, ya know, kids. Time to grow up and worry about survival. My fantasy in a succinct nutshell.
A Species on the Precipice
I sometimes see things in broad, impressionistic strokes. So my impression is that humans are behaving in ways almost indistinguishable from other higher animal forms. Territory, sex, reproduction, property, power, control; some of the many ways humans order their lives. Capable of rational thinking, even greater ways of distinguishing mankind from the other animals is possible. But it’s not happening. There are still breakouts of extreme violence where any of the above areas are broached by a perceived rival. And this very problem is the crux to survival. Solve what I call, male pride syndrome(MPS) — and women too, are equally able to fall into this syndrome — and save humankind. MPS is the cause of almost all the wars, violence, ownership in an extremely dysfunctional way, deaths and downright murder. Upset pride, disrespect if you will, and suffer the wrath or the upset pride of the other. So help my fantasy and come to terms with this juvenile, lizard-brain, way of living and thinking.
I’ve just touched on a few items that need addressing and eventual solving to continue as a species. I’ve found a few links alluding to how bad environmental systems are becoming. There will be a point where nothing can be done to avert a total disaster. No fixers from the movies to swoop in a save the day. No skyhooks from the heavens to save Earth as we know it. Technology can’t be used to solve the problems that technological innovation has caused. Flying to Disneyland or the Ark Encounters won’t save a darn thing. All you’ll do is forget about how bad things will become in short order. Here’s a few links that get to some specifics of the matters as they stand these days. \/
And especially concerning: https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/10/methane-sos/
Or even, from Pakistan : https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/528588-capitalism-and-climate-change
So here’s the rub. Earth and her systems that keep us all healthy and alive are collapsing in ways not fully understood. Understood enough however to know we all have to change if humankind is to survive more than a few generations or so. And other that write I don’t know what else to do as I’m disabled and don’t own a car even, to get out, and do more than write. My generation failed to act in time for complete or even partial mitigation on the unfolding disaster- in- slow-motion we find ourselves in. The 6th Mass Extinction Event is gathering steam and where it halts depends upon actions today, not next year or decade, now. So get busy and start something, an action, to get folks on board to save Earth and her children, even people-children, that need a push to let go of childish ways, to survive. Peace, The Ol’ Hippy | https://medium.com/@jrallen1200/saturday-4589059aa47b | ['John Allen'] | 2019-10-12 19:04:27.669000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Recommendations', 'Ecology', 'Activism', 'Climate Change'] |
8 Christmas greetings to include in your cards 🎄 | It’s that time of the year again — to write Christmas cards! 💌 ✨ Of course now with e-cards you don’t have to physically write them but here are some Christmas greetings we’ve compiled for you to use regardless.
General greetings
These are for those who prefer more generic greetings that can be reused for the multiple Christmas cards you’ll be writing :p
⁃ Warmest greetings of this festive season and best wishes for happiness this New Year.
⁃ May everything on your wishlist come true. Happy Holidays!
Family
If you’re writing cards for your family this year you might want to use these greetings to remind them of how important they are to you!
⁃ There is no greater gift this festive season than spending time with family all around the Christmas tree.
⁃ You’re all so important to us. Stay safe and stay happy this holiday season!
Friends
Apart from our family, the next group of people you’re likely to send cards to are probably your friends! Here are some simple greetings you can consider starting off with when writing to them.
⁃ So grateful to have a friend like you at Christmas and all year long.
⁃ Your friendship and your love is the best Christmas gift that I’ve gotten. Merry Christmas.
Colleagues
Depending on how close you are to your colleagues or clients, you may want to incorporate these greetings in your card. Of course you can tweak them to make it more personal :)
⁃ Wishing you a holiday season full of fun, and a new year filled with prosperity.
⁃ It’s a pleasure to work with you and a joy to wish you a merry Christmas!
Bonus! If you want to be extra creative with how you’re sending your Christmas greetings we’d suggest sending a message in a candle. Yes, you read that right! A message in a candle 🕯✨ Click here or on the image to buy now.
This is a fun way to send a Christmas greeting to your family, friends or colleagues as they’ll be sure to remember you each time they light up this candle ❤️
If you’re looking for gifts to go along with your Christmas cards be sure to visit our website at anahanaflower.com and browse our gift category.
If you have any questions or need any help, feel free to contact us via our website, email, Instagram (@anahanaflower) or via Whatsapp at +65 98569650. We’re based in Singapore but can also deliver non-living items overseas. We also do same-day deliveries locally.
Love,
Ana Hana | https://medium.com/@anahanaflower/8-christmas-greetings-to-include-in-your-cards-604a2f8eb076 | ['Ana Hana Flower'] | 2020-11-23 09:59:44.840000+00:00 | ['Cards', 'Florist', 'Christmas', 'Gifting', 'Flowers'] |
AWeber automation. Building an email list from scratch. | Introduction
AWeber is one of the leading tools for email marketing to help to build an email list from scratch. This tool is recommended for small to medium level business email automation. We can make amazing professional emails by its drag and drop facility, ability to build a responsive landing page and sales funnel, a series of emails can be sent on the different trigger and time period by its email automation, super 24×7 US grounded customer support, managing your email list easy, also it analyzes send email data, and many more advance facility.
AWeber created in the year 1998. It has a massive market experience of more than two decay, also it serves more than one million businesses around the world. Simply this software is an obvious choice for any small to medium level business email marketing.
If you want Excellent lead promotion and conversion strategies, AWeber can benefit you positively. It’s fine and easy to use.
Now we will enter into deep facts and features, why we must pick this tool.
Pricing
AWeber offers a free plan, where it has a restricted list up-to 500 subscribers and it allows sending 3000 emails in a month. But it allows one profile list. So beginners can easily use its free plan and start building an email list from scratch. When they build a good number (more than 500) of email lists and requirements come for more number of profile lists, this is the time to switch over to the paid plan.
In comparison to other email marketing tools, the price of AWeber is less or you can say it’s quite reasonable.
For Pro plan up-to 500 email subscriber list, price is $19, up-to 2500 subscriber list price is $29, up-to 5000 subscriber price $49, up-to 10000 customer cost $69, up to 25000 email list price comes $149.
The price is given above when it is billed monthly. The price comes a little less when it is billed quarterly and annually. So the price is affordable and reasonable for small and medium level business.
Drag and drop campaign creator through automation.
The email campaign creator is precise and simple so that building an email list from scratch is easier for you. You just have to use drag and drop features to build a professional email. For making series email automation just needs drag actions such as “send a message” “wait” and “apply the tag”. Inside the “send message” we have to design the email.
Aweber offers various professional templates to design emails. “Apply the tag” and “wait” are the conditions. Campaigns can be triggered by adding a tag to an email subscriber. Also, it can insert waiting time in-between two emails. Before you choose an email marketing tool, an important question is, how quickly you can make and send out a professional email?
AWeber’s campaign manager is running with a drag & drop editor. Coding knowledge is not at all required.
Automation
The sending of automatic follow-up emails based on customer behavior on the website is one of the great features to start building an email list from scratch. If you want to give your thank you message to the customer who comes to your website and buys a product, this is the best tool. If they don’t return after two or three months, AWeber has the option of giveaway coupons to get buyers back to the online shop again.
There is an option to create automated promotions that go out at certain intervals. So, if you want to pitch your product online to any new e-commerce customer an automated email is the best option, it just takes a moment to deliver the email.
High-Quality support.
When you think about support, AWeber stands out from other email marketing tools. When you face any technical problem, there is high-end support and help exists.
If you want to learn more about efficient email marketing, there is also support through live talk, raising a ticket, etc. I definitely want to mention here that AWeber support is proactive.
Customer Segmenting
Customer segmentation is nothing but recognizing and list out people who drive to your online store or the landing page. Sending huge emails to everyone would return fewer conversions. So, AWeber has wide resources for segmenting individuals. Possibly you have to consider some people to be rich. You can give separate offers to those visitors. However, the AWeber role is to segment your customer properly.
Reporting
Reporting and analytics is another perfect way to take email marketing to the next level. The degree of email analytics in AWeber is very high. A number of excellent metrics, counting open rate, click-through rate, and email bounce, can be monitored by this email marketing platform.
Pros and cons
Pros
Segmentation of list.
Compact solutions for Marketing Automation.
Outstanding reporting system.
Robust set of features for automating the list.
Drag & drop editor for the Landing Page.
Excellent for autoresponders.
Cons
The learning curve is a little like.
Migrating data is not very easy.
Some features are a bit obsolete.
Bottom line
So, in my opinion, AWeber is the obvious choice for email marketing now, if you are a blogger, an affiliate marketer, or operating an online store. The models are fantastic.
All online entrepreneurs must consider AWeber, and you must know in detail what are the facilities the platform provides. So, start with a free trial and grow your email list.
DISCLAIMER: The above article as a whole is for review and information purposes only. Individual results may vary. It is very important for you to know that everything you do and get from this is at your own risk and depends on how much work you are willing to put in. Some of the links in the article on this are affiliate links, meaning that some of the purchasing made through the links will give me a commission, without any additional cost occurring to you. | https://medium.com/@digitalniladri/aweber-automation-building-an-email-list-from-scratch-85eb306298c4 | ['Niladri Majumder'] | 2020-11-24 07:00:31.947000+00:00 | ['Aweber', 'Email Marketing', 'Aweberreview', 'Email Marketing Tips', 'Aweber Pricing'] |
What’s New in Tableau 2020.4 Desktop | Recently tableau has released the Tableau 2020.4 beta with some cool features.
Please find them below tableau desktop cool features:-
1:- Multi Marks layer
Now it’s quite easy to add layers on maps so that we can compare different marks on a single tableau worksheet.
2:- Redshift spatial data support
Store your spatial data in redshift tables and tableau will automatically identify the spatial columns from redshift tables.
3:- Offline maps
You can now create maps using the offline map style in web authoring, ensuring that maps remain accessible to all users — especially in organizations with strict internet access requirements.
4:- Date axis extension
Date axis extension allows you to do customized time-based predictions in Tableau. Select from a pre-populated set of extension options or use a custom menu to select your own range. Date extension works with predictive modeling functions, table calculations like Running Average, and external services like R or Python. | https://medium.com/@ayushbi/whats-new-in-tableau-2020-4-desktop-1ebc090c40f0 | ['Ayush Pareek'] | 2020-12-09 13:53:07.094000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Tableau', 'Business Intelligence'] |
What is the aesthetic key that most people don’t know? | unsplash
The designer community should talk about aesthetics the most, There are many design practitioners around me, so I have also heard a lot about aesthetics.
People often think that they have good aesthetics because they have been praised by friends more than once, or when many people around them involve aesthetic problems when buying things, they will consult themselves.
But this is not a sufficient condition for one’s good aesthetics.
If you think about it, others praise you for good aesthetics. First, it means that his aesthetics is not as good as yours. Second, it means that people in his environment have worse aesthetics than you, so he will praise you for good aesthetics. Will compliments from someone worse than you make you happy? Make you think what he said is right?
When talking about aesthetics, what is most easily overlooked is “independence.” Only with independent aesthetic standards can we talk about good and bad, high and low.
If this person praises “your aesthetics is unique”, then this is a good compliment. This is because it shows that the people in his environment have no insights like yours on the matter of “beauty”. They are unique and have different dimensions from others, not just “better than anyone.”
In the matter of aesthetics, “comparison” has no value. Who is better than who is talking about different scales on the same scale? This is completely reproducible; The wonderful aesthetics should be reflected in independence. This independence is similar to personality independence.
To give another example, we all know art critics, When an art critic publishes a good or bad art review, and other critics want to publish opinions on this artwork, they need to avoid the former way of understanding and publish their opinions from other angles. If he just repeats the former argument and adds the sentence “I agree”, even if it is better, then this comment is worthless.
It does not mean that a good aesthetic is “different” for “different”, but the independence of the way of understanding, not just a preference, it is the independence of a system of judging beauty.
There may be many elements in the system that are the same as others. After all, the composition of the world is objectively the same, but the entire subjective system constructed can represent “who you are” and is unique.
Speaking of this, you may have to say again, “Isn’t this metaphysics?” | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/what-is-aesthetics-4b878e970fcd | ['Yofee Chua'] | 2020-12-24 15:15:37.080000+00:00 | ['Artist', 'Designer', 'Design', 'Art', 'Philosophy'] |
Processing Big Data with a Micro-Service-Inspired Data Pipeline | You aren’t truly ready for a career in Big Data until you have everyone in the room cringing from the endless jargon you are throwing at them. Everyone in tech is always trying to out-impress one another with their impressive grasp of technical jargon.
However, tech jargon does exist for a reason: it summarizes complex concepts into a simple narrative, and allow developers to abstract implementation details into design patterns which can be “mix-and-matched” to solve any technical task. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the technical tasks the Data Lab team was facing this year, and how we addressed them with an absurd quantity of geek speak.
The Data Lab team at Hootsuite is designed to help the business make data-driven decisions. From an engineering standpoint, this means designing a data pipeline to manage and aggregate all our data from various sources (Product, Salesforce, Localytics, etc.) and make them available in Redshift for analysis by our Analysts. Analyses typically take the form of either a specific query used to answer a specific ad-hoc request, or a more permanent Dashboard designed to monitor key metrics.
However, as Hootsuite grew, the Datalab team became a bottleneck for data requests from stakeholders across the business. This led us to search for a way that would allow various decision makers to dig into our data on their own, without needing SQL knowledge.
[caption id=”attachment_4271" align=”aligncenter” width=”317"]
Comic courtesy of Geek and Poke[/caption]
Enter Interana. Interana is a real-time time-indexed interactive data analytics tool which would allow for all of our employees to visualize and explore data themselves. Awesome, right?! Unfortunately, there was one little problem: we didn’t have the infrastructure for real-time data processing. Our pipeline only had support for a series of nightly ETLs, which were run by a cron job.
Creating something from scratch is incredibly exciting. Finally, an opportunity to implement a solution using all of the jargon you’d like, without any of the technical debt! We laid out our goals, and chose the solution that best fit our needs.
While analyzing the problem, I realized that the qualities we wanted our pipeline to have were the same qualities computer scientists have been striving to achieve for decades: abstraction, modularity, and robustness. What changed were the problems software engineers were facing, and the technologies which have been developed to provide modularity, robustness, and increased abstractness. It makes sense. We wouldn’t be able to create a real-time data pipeline by running our ETLs every second — we needed a different solution, which addressed these issues:
[caption id=”attachment_4272" align=”aligncenter” width=”300"]
Some of our requirements[/caption]
Enter micro-services.
Micro-services are small applications that perform a single, specific service. They are often used in applications where each request can be delegated to a separate and complete application. What makes them fantastic to work with is that they abstract away the implementation details, and present only an interface comprising of their data inputs and outputs. This means that as long as interface remains the same, any modifications made in a service are guaranteed to be compatible with the system. In fact, one could safely replace one micro-service with another!
With all of Hootsuite migrating towards breaking apart our monolith into a set of micro-services, the Data Lab team also wanted a slice of the fun. Wanting to move away from our monolith-like ETL codebase, we saw an opportunity to implement our real-time data pipeline using the best practices established by our Product brethren. A data pipeline has of course some inherently different requirements than a SaaS product does — so we needed to make a few changes to what a typical micro-service product looks like. Our micro-services:
Behave more like workstations at an assembly line than independent services — that is, after processing its data it does not “respond” to its caller
Have a dependency structure of an acyclic graph — we don’t want data circulating our pipeline forever!
With those distinctions out of the way, let’s take a look at how we implemented our new data pipeline, and how it helped us achieve abstraction, modularity, and robustness.
Above is an overview of our real-time data pipeline. We have a diverse set of sources for our data — some of them produce data in real time, while others do not. We built a micro-service to support batch-updated data. Each data source then gets put onto a data queue where our cleaner micro-services clean the data. This cleaned data then gets put into a common data format, and passed on to a “unified, cleaned” message queue, for our enricher to consume off of. This micro-service enriches our data by cross-referencing various fields with our data sets (and other micro-services!), and then uploads it into our data store. It sends a message into another message queue asking to have that data uploaded to our analytical data warehouse. Voila! A complete data pipeline.
We were able to create a complete data pipeline which meets the three qualities we sought out at the beginning: abstraction, modularity, and robustness:
It is abstract . Each service hides its implementation details, and reveals only what it consumes and what it outputs.
. Each service hides its implementation details, and reveals only what it consumes and what it outputs. It is modular . Each micro-service can be reused and re-arranged without needing to refactor the entire system it resides in.
. Each micro-service can be reused and re-arranged without needing to refactor the entire system it resides in. It is robust. New data sources can be easily added (just clone and update a cleaner/producer micro-service), and if one service fails, the rest of the pipeline can still operate correctly.
Beyond those goals, we have also been able to achieve other desirable traits data-people look for:
It is distributed . Each micro-service is run on a separate box, and may be consuming data from entirely different places.
. Each micro-service is run on a separate box, and may be consuming data from entirely different places. It is scalable. We can always create more instances of each application to consume and process data in parallel to each other. Adding new data sources is easy.
After all was said and done, we were able to cut processing times in half, had access to data sources we didn’t before, and have this all done in a system that is easy to understand and change. These tangible benefits were achieved using solutions found within the plethora of jargon being thrown around the data community. I hope that by this part of the post you’ve been numbed to the cringe-inducing effects which non-stop jargon invokes, and begun to see how they are used to describe (perhaps in an all too-colorful way) the tools and techniques we use to build a better way. Also, they’re great for SEO! ;)
About the Author
Kamil Khan is a Co-op on the Data Lab team at Hootsuite, working as a Software Developer and Data Analyst. He is an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, where he is completing a Bachelors of Commerce at the Sauder School of Business, majoring in Business and Computer Science. Want to learn more? Connect with Kamil on LinkedIn. | https://medium.com/hootsuite-engineering/processing-big-data-with-a-micro-service-inspired-data-pipeline-1bb0159bc3d9 | ['Hootsuite Engineering'] | 2018-02-07 18:35:47.251000+00:00 | ['Microservices', 'Co Op', 'Data', 'Big Data'] |
This Computer Scientist Built an App That Randomized His Life | It was already getting dark by the time the car pulled up outside Max Hawkins’ apartment. His phone buzzed as a notification told him the details of its make, model, and registration number. The car had been ordered from his own Uber account, which wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy if he’d been the one who requested it. Or if he had any idea where it was supposed to be taking him. But he didn’t.
He got in anyway.
The perfect life
A few weeks earlier, Max had been living the perfect life. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, he’d landed his perfect job as a software engineer at Google. He was based in the perfect city, San Francisco, famous for its perfect weather and perfect looking people.
Every morning, Max woke up full of energy at precisely 7 a.m., dropped in at his favorite coffee shop to pick up his favorite coffee, and cycled to work via a carefully optimized route that took him precisely 15 minutes and 37 seconds. Everything in Max’s life was exactly as he wanted. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t in control.
He didn’t figure out why this was until he read a research paper about a location-based machine-learning algorithm. According to the paper, if you fed the algorithm the coordinates of all the places you’d been for the past week, it would predict with surprising accuracy where you were going to be on the following day.
If a computer knew what he was going to do before he did, why was he even necessary?
As Max considered what would happen if he were to input his own details, he realized how easy it would be to anticipate where he would be on any given day. A fancy algorithm probably wasn’t even necessary. Anybody who observed his routine for a week would be able to predict his future movements down to the meter.
The idea that his pursuit of the perfect lifestyle made him predictable bothered him, but what bothered him even more was the question of what his role in the decision-making process was. Was he really living? Or was he just stuck in a meticulously ordered rut? After all, if a computer knew what he was going to do before he did, why was he even necessary?
Build a machine to beat a machine
Instead of spiraling deeper into an existential crisis, Max did what most computer scientists would do when faced with a difficult problem; he built a solution. He decided the best way to break out of the loop he was stuck in was to make his life so unpredictable that even he wouldn’t know what was coming next.
Which brings us back to the Uber.
The first step in Max’s plan was an app that randomized his social life. If he told it he wanted to go out to eat, for example, it would pick a Google listing at random, order an Uber on his behalf, and send it to his apartment.
Crucially, it would do all of this without giving him any idea where he was going until he got there, so there was no way for his preferences to interfere. When a friend asked him to choose somewhere to go that evening, Max took the opportunity to test it out. He fired up the app, the Uber arrived at his apartment, and they let it whisk them off into the night.
Instead of spiraling deeper into an existential crisis, Max did what most computer scientists would do when faced with a difficult problem; he built a solution.
After a few minutes, Max and his friend found themselves driving through a part of San Francisco that they’d never been in before, and as they looked at the unfamiliar surroundings, doubts began to set in. What kind of person lets a machine send them to some random spot in a big city? What’s so terrible about sticking to what you know? What if the place they were going to didn’t have locally sourced, organic, grass-fed beef?
But before they had a chance to answer any of these questions, the driver announced they’d arrived. In his 2017 TEDx Talk, Max describes what happened next:
When the driver told us we’d reached our destination we thought it must have been a joke. We showed up in front of this austere brick building with a wrought iron fence in front of it and a sign that said the words: San Francisco General Hospital Psychiatric Emergency Center. In what may be a sign from the universe, the computer sent me to the local mental hospital.
Adventures in randomized living
Despite this minor setback, Max was hooked on his new adventures in randomization. He expanded his app to randomize things like where he got his hair cut and where he bought his groceries and what music he listened to on Spotify.
When he transitioned to freelance work, he let an algorithm choose random cities around the world for him to live in. He socialized by attending random Facebook events. He signed up for a website that eliminated random foods from his diet. He even got a random image from the internet tattooed on his chest. For over two years, Max left every aspect of his daily life to the capricious whims of machines.
And it was during this time, while attempting a downward dog in a randomly selected acrobatic-yoga class in Mumbai, the city that had been randomly chosen as his home for the next few months, that Max had an epiphany: His preferences had been a prison, and abandoning them had set him free.
The nagging feeling that he wasn’t in control of his life was born of how narrow it had become. His life was made up of a small selection of things he’d decided were for him and excluded everything else. By opening himself to new experiences, he’d discovered places and met people he would never have found by staying in his comfort zone. And by doing so, he enjoyed countless experiences that he’d previously been missing out on not because he couldn’t appreciate what they had to offer but because it would never have occurred to him to try.
Invisible options
As search and social media algorithms control more and more of what we’re exposed to, we find ourselves in a similar situation. Amazon knows what books we like, YouTube and other hubs know what videos we enjoy, Facebook knows who our friends are and how we vote and pretty much everything else. And all of these services are laser-focused on showing us more of those things to keep us engaged.
What does this emphasis on the things we already like leave in our blind spot? What are we missing because we don’t know it’s there? And as these systems become more ubiquitous, how long before we stop noticing that anything is missing? As Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, says, the end goal of these systems is to work so well that we don’t even need to think: “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”
What does it mean for us if this vision of the future comes true? If a machine can predict our desires so accurately that we can simply push a button and an Uber will take us somewhere we’ll love, do we still have free will? And more importantly, what happens when the machine suggests something that it shouldn’t?
What kind of person lets a machine send them to some random spot in a big city?
Kill a deer
The dangers of ceding too much control to our robot overlords are vividly illustrated by another of Max’s creations: a printer that suggests random activities.
He wrote a program that scanned thousands of books, blog posts, and Wikipedia articles for verb phrases such as “she went to the park and…” to set it up. With a little time and some grammar processing, it could then produce an almost limitless pool of ideas.
Most of them weren’t very useful. The list was full of suggestions that were too vague or abstract, such as “go to the park and think you are a tree” or “meet a certain goal.” But one day, Max fired up the printer, and it came up with this: “Kill a deer.”
Deer hunting hadn’t been part of Max’s perfectly optimized life so far, so his first instinct was to throw the piece of paper away and move on with his life. But then he asked himself the same question he’d been asking since the whole experiment began: “Why is that not something that I could do?”
When he thought about it, he realized there wasn’t a particularly good reason. He ate meat without any moral discomfort, even though he knew that doing so required the death of countless animals. He might even have eaten deer at some point. He didn’t have any particular problem with guns. Wasn’t his feeling that he couldn’t kill a deer just another self-limiting preference?
So he tried. Despite his misgivings, Max went on a hunting trip with a friend. The plan was to get to the point where he had the deer in his sights, then he’d decide whether to pull the trigger or not. (Luckily for the deer, Max and his friend didn’t spot any on their hunt.)
A randomly generated suggestion from a source he knew to be completely arbitrary led him to entertain the idea of doing something he felt uncomfortable with.
If you know your pop psychology, this probably doesn’t shock you. The ease with which our morality can be influenced is well documented in experiments like Stanley Milgram’s electric shock experiment or Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment. Once we get used to following orders, it’s alarming how far we’ll allow ourselves to be pushed. Only now, those orders are controlled by algorithms so complex that no human is quite sure what they’ll suggest next.
Question your preferences
Most of us never think to question our preferences, and as a result, our actions are almost entirely guided by them. Just over 90% of iPhone users plan to stick with their iPhones when they upgrade. The same goes for 86% of Samsung phone users. Over 99% of U.S. voters in battleground states voted the same way in 2020 as they did in 2016.
Why is this? Did these people genuinely decide that their previous choice remains the best option for them? Do any of us? Research shows that often, we simply latch onto the first option we’re exposed to. Our subconscious then fills in the gaps retroactively, convincing us that we chose them deliberately. Liberal or conservative, iPhone or Android, that thing we like to do in bed — we tell ourselves that we’ve chosen these preferences even though we don’t truly understand where they came from. And in the process, we miss out on everything that falls outside those boundaries. Here’s how Max puts it in his TEDx Talk:
My preference had blinded me from the complexity and the richness of the world. And following the [computer’s suggestions] gave me the courage to live outside of my comfort zone. To discover parts of the human experience that I ignored because they were too different or “not for me.”
Following our preferences makes sense. They keep us comfortable and safe and even happy. But following them to the exclusion of everything else keeps us stagnant. Surprise, novelty, adventure — these are the things that give life meaning, and we can only find them outside the ordinary.
As computers and our habits work to keep us in our bubbles, there’s the danger that our lives become smaller. From music to politics to hobbies to culture, we spend most of our time seeing a fraction of the whole picture. This isn’t to say that it’s bad to have preferences, of course, but that it’s worth reminding ourselves to challenge them from time to time. It’s the algorithm’s job to keep life comfortable. But it’s up to us to keep things interesting. | https://debugger.medium.com/this-computer-scientist-built-an-app-that-randomized-his-life-16c17cd44c2f | ['Steve Qj'] | 2020-12-16 20:39:57.977000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Social Media', 'Future', 'Psychology', 'Computer Science'] |
Red Nose Uncle | Photo by Richard Burlton on Unsplash
I closed my eyes and made a wish,
As I blew on the candles lit on my birthday cake,
I saw a happy me sitting on the lap of the person
Who made me laugh so much that evening.
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
I opened my eyes to see
that person smiling and winking at me,
And I reached out to offer the mouth
Beneath the ‘Red Nose’, the first piece of cake.
Photo by Edit 404 on Unsplash
My parents are clicking away photos happily,
Pretending not to be hurt by my gesture.
And everyone else is busy too
Trying to get a piece of the delicious cake.
Photo by Morgan Lane on Unsplash
The ‘Red Nose’ brushes my cheeks,
A hand holds mine tightly,
And a pair of lips close to my ears say,
“Let us have some more fun”
Photo by Rangarajan Ragunathan on Unsplash
Excited about more games and laughter,
I let the ‘Red nose’ take me away,
Away from everyone at the party,
away into the dark.
Photo by Hailey Kean on Unsplash
We came to a room with many masks,
All of them had a ‘Red nose’,
Like the one that had brushed my cheeks.
And the one whose hands, now brushed against my thighs.
Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash
There was laughter,
Though I did not find this funny anymore.
I tried to get away and even cried out,
There was more laughter, and then just darkness.
Photo by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash
The ‘Red Nose’ is here today too,
As I close my eyes to blow the candles on my 21st birthday,
Because it refuses to leave
the place behind my closed eyes.
. | https://medium.com/illumination/red-nose-uncle-1f84c9ef37d0 | ['A Rustic Mind', 'Manali Desai'] | 2020-12-21 18:17:00.076000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Abuse', 'Poetry', 'Pedophilia'] |
Predicting Customer Churn with Spark | For many companies, churn is a major concern. It is natural that some people stop using the service, but if this proportion becomes too large it can hinder growth, regardless of revenue sources (ad sales, subscriptions or a mix of both). With that in mind, the ability for firms to predict churn by identifying customers at risk is crucial for it enables them to take certain actions, such as personalized offers or discounts, to try and mitigate the loss of customers. Machine learning models built on historical data can give us insight into signals of churn and help us predict it before it happens.
For this example, we use log data from a fictitious music app company, called Sparkify. This is a toy dataset, relatively small in size so it could be processed by a single computer. Nonetheless, in order to mimic the real world, we use Spark (in local mode) to process the data and build the model. Spark is one of the leading solutions for Big Data processing and modeling, getting its speed from its in-memory processing and lazy evaluation of computations through DAG’s. You can click here to learn more. By using Spark for this project, although it is not strictly necessary, we build an extensible framework to analyze churn for data of any size, since the code and the analysis could easily scale up provided they were deployed on a cluster (such as AWS, IBM Cloud or GCP) which can handle the computations required.
In this blog post I will summarize the analysis contained in this GitHub repository. After a brief overview of the data at hand, we will present the model, its results and what it means for Sparkify.
The Data
After starting our Spark session in local mode, we can load our dataset. It contains information on 226 distinct users between 10/1/2018 and 12/03/2018. It is in JSON format (more information on the JSON format here), and can easily be loaded with the following commands:
path = “mini_sparkify_event_data.json” df = spark.read.json(path)
This data captures actions as varied as listening to a song, giving a “thumbs up”, hitting the homepage, changing the settings of the account or adding a song to a playlist. As a result, although it is a small subset of users the dataset still includes 278,251 rows.
Of the 226 users present in the dataset, 52 ended up churning. In order to properly train and assess our model, we address this disproportion to make sure our predictions can accurately predict both categories, and do not overly lean towards predicting absence of churn. We do so by a technique called upsampling, i.e. sampling with replacement from the population of users who churned until we get two groups of comparable size.
The Model
In order to build features for this model, I let data exploration dictate my approach, along with domain knowledge I acquired while working for a very similar (real) music app company. In particular, I was looking for features whose values seem to vary significantly between users who churned and those who did not. Looking for such features highlighted the importance of the type of the account (free vs. paid) as well as other account-related information, such as the state and the registration date, to give us some insight into who the users are.
Users who churned are more likely to have a free account
Another group of features is centered around behaviors people take on platform. These elements, such as length of sessions, number of songs per session but also thumbs up/thumbs down, adding to playlist or adding a friend provide us with additional insight. The intuitive interpretation prior to modeling is that these features capture a latent variable related to user engagement, with a lower engagement being linked to a higher likelihood of churning. For instance, users who ended churning came 9 times per month on platform, while users who remained came 14 times. We will see later on whether this pre-conception was confirmed by the data.
The distribution in terms of session length and number of items in session differs between both groups
Those of you who are interested in the technical details of creating these features can refer back to the code linked in the introduction, but thanks to Spark’s pipelines we can efficiently process and transform all these features into a form suitable for analysis. You can see below the first few rows of the dataset with all its features.
First few rows of features dataset
Examining the distribution of these features, we can see that itemInSession, thumbsUp, addFriend and addToPlaylist are very spread out around the mean. This is important as models rely on variability to learn and make predictions. On the other hand, features such as daily sessions or length have less variation, so I expect those to carry a lesser weight in predictions.
Once this is done, we test out three different classification models (Random Forest, Logistic Regression and Gradient Boosting) and assess their accuracy and F1 score on a test set. It is important to consider both (not only the accuracy), because the latter metric allows us to adjust for the class imbalance present in the test set and, by extension, in the real world. Due to the lack of striking differences in results between the three models, we choose to further tune a logistic regression model given its greater interpretability. We do this through cross validation, leveraging a GridSearch algorithm to find the best combination of parameters. In particular, we test out the following values:
minInfoGain (the minimum information gain for a split to be considered at a tree node): 0, 1
maxDepth (maximum depth of the tree): 5, 10
numTrees (the number of trees): 20, 50
I chose these parameters specifically because they are related to preventing overfitting.
The Results
After optimization, the optimal hyperparameters are 50 trees, 0 minimum information gain and a maximum depth of 10. We have a model which reaches 73% accuracy on the test set, with an F1 score of 0.72. These two metrics together are very encouraging: with only data about 191 users (in our training set) we are able to efficiently categorize users in these two categories, without drastic difference in performance in predicting one or the other. Interestingly, the performance of our model did not improve after grid search, most likely due to the small size of our dataset. We even assessed the robustness of the model by training and predicting with varying random states, and found that the accuracy of the model was very consistent across them.
Looking at feature importance, our earlier intuition was confirmed: both static variables (registration month, geographical location) and behaviors (adding a friend) bear a heavy weight in our predictions. This should encourage Sparkify in logging as much information as possible, as all signals are important when trying to predict churn.
Conclusion
Spark provides us with a generalizable framework to predict churn. It can handle big data for any company provided it is deployed on a cluster that can handle the computations required. Should this analysis be applied to a larger dataset with more computing power available, I contend even better accuracy/F1 will be reached, for we will be able to conduct a search over a larger hyperparameter space for more users. We could even combine random search over a very large hyperparameter space to yield a subset over which grid search would look for the best combination in order to further speed up computations and improve performance. Finally, to gain more insights into the model we could leverage SHAP values or permutation importance to understand how individual features influence model predictions.
With historical data on a small subset of customers, we built a model that can identify users at risk of churning with 73% accuracy. It can be applied somewhat regularly (every day/week depending on the computing infrastructure in place) to the user base, and flag users who may leave the service soon. With this information in mind, Sparkify can take mitigating action, such as sending a personalized message or offering a monthly discount. All of this could be automated and would have a great impact on revenue and growth. Which specific action to take should be determined through A/B testing.
Finally, it is important that this model be re-trained regularly as mitigating actions are implemented and the user base grows and evolves, in order to make this model adapt to changing conditions. | https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-customer-churn-with-spark-4d093907b2dc | ['Célestin Hermez'] | 2019-01-24 18:32:23.464000+00:00 | ['Spark', 'Big Data', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Marketing'] |
Peace Leaf | Materials:
F hook
worsted weight yarn
yarn needle
scissors
chill vibes
You will need to know how to:
make a ‘magic ring’
chain (ch)
single crochet (sc)
half double crochet (hdc)
double crochet (dc)
treble crochet (tr)
double treble crochet (dtr)
Notes: You are working into the chain created for each stem or leaflet unless otherwise noted. I will add more photos and possibly, a video tutorial later. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
Now, grab a lighter, your favorite piece, and let’s go.
C: Sc 9 into a ‘magic ring’.
Ss into the first sc to close.
1: Ch 6. Hdc into the third ch from hook.
Hdc, sc, & sc into the following ch sts.
Ss into next sc of the magic ring.
(Stem complete.)
2: Ch 7. Ss into the first ch from hook.
Sc, hdc, hdc, sc, & sc…
Ss into the next sc of the magic ring.
(First leaflet complete.)
3: Ch 9. Ss into the first ch from hook.
Sc, hdc, hdc, dc, hdc, sc, & sc…
Ss into the next sc of the magic ring.
(Second leaflet complete.)
4: Ch 16. Ss into the first ch from hook.
Sc, hdc, dc, 8 tr, dc, hdc, & sc…
Ss into the next sc of the magic ring.
(Third leaflet complete.)
5: Ch 20. Ss into the first ch from hook.
Sc, hdc, dc, dc, tr, tr, 7 dtr, tr, tr, dr, hdc, & sc…
Skip one sc of the magic ring, ss into the next.
(Center/fourth leaflet complete.)
6: Ch 16. Ss into the first ch from hook.
Sc, hdc, dc, 8 tr, dc, hdc, & sc…
Ss into the next sc of the magic ring.
(Fifth leaflet complete.)
7: Ch 9. Ss into the first ch from hook.
Sc, hdc, hdc, dc, hdc, sc, & sc…
Ss into the next sc of the magic ring.
(Sixth leaflet complete.)
8: Ch 7. Ss into thefirst ch from hook.
Sc, hdc, hdc, sc, & sc…
Ss into the next sc of the magic ring.
(Last leaflet complete.)
Fasten off & hide the ends.
I’m still experimenting with how to stiffen them to use as a garland (they are very floppy and like to curl, you’ll see). Spray starch didn’t do what I wanted it to but, I found a couple products and a recipe using white glue to stiffen lace online.
I’m also curious how these motifs would look in different yarn weights and materials so, please feel free to experiment and share your finished projects with me.
Not a crocheter but, still want a groovy garland or a cool motif to sew onto your totebag? Share a link to this post with a friend or owner of a small crochet business. | https://medium.com/crochet-by-danelle-rae/peace-leaf-48730621776b | ['Hey Danelle Rae'] | 2019-10-05 13:37:19.413000+00:00 | ['DIY', 'Marijuana', 'How To', 'Crochet', 'Crafting'] |
Significance of Emotional Health | These days many people are discussing mental health; that is an outstanding advancement and incredibly important. However; insufficient people are discussing the significance of emotional wellness. It is very important remember that your feelings are linked to your mental wellness plus your physical health. Apart from those two connections, additionally it is a person concern all its. How you sense at any given instant is comparable to who you are usually for the reason that moment. The individual you are in confirmed moment directly effects the method that you deal with those around you; along with the way you decide to treat yourself.
Choosing to look at Your Emotional Health
Unlike bodily health or often sometimes mental health, your psychological health is a thing that you have to be sure you check in on. You must make the option to stop and measure the way you feel. This includes how you are feeling in relation to your position and how you are feeling around yourself. If either of the two things come in threat of becoming negative, after that it’s time to focus on your emotional wellness. This sounds not difficult, but often occasions it can be among the hardest points for an individual to do. Not merely will you probably forget to check on in on your own emotional health, you might remember and elect to neglect it to be able to press on together with your day time. Like all issues; ignoring it doesn’t ensure it is going away.
This doesn’t have to become a long process or some grueling task. Take 5 minutes, or actually three, throughout your day and simply ask yourself the method that you are feeling. Know what you need to become happier also to feel more relaxed with yourself and the proceedings around you. As soon as you decide what must happen; do something and make it work. This indicates that even though you have to leave a celebration or leave a predicament in order to focus on your emotional wellness; do it. It is possible to leave for a time or you can keep for a long period; upward to you to choose what you require and take the actions. Yes, even though you are at function and discover yourself needing to increase your emotional health; you can find ways to start that too. Visit the bathroom and simply sit some time as you see something that enables you to happy. Work your routine if you can therefore that your lunch time break suits your emotional wellness. This practice may also help your psychological health as well; that may after that feed into your psychological wellness. Remember; they’re all linked.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
Now You Do Something Don’t Put It Off
Here and today, I’m challenging you to cherish your emotional health all through each day. I problem you to do this in order to enhance your emotional wellness. It’s not really a question of when you can perform it; we both understand you can. The task originates from you choosing to accomplish it and taking action onto it. Your emotional wellness is frequently less obvious and much less often considered. As was stated before; you possess to choose to focus on it also to improve it. A few of what’s blamed on mental wellness is actually your emotional health. They’re directly connected nevertheless; you can’t repair the problem if you are focusing on the incorrect one. In the times you understand something is off, consider, “am I sensation this or am I reacting to my thoughts?” This can enable you to narrow down if it’s part of your psychological wellness or your emotional wellness. Needless to say; you should function to improve both, nonetheless it is good to learn which is the foundation of the existing problem for the reason that exact instant. Solve them by concern when it comes to which one has effects on you most that really moment.
You have all the energy and control you will need; I promise. Elect to focus on your emotional health insurance and make sure to work to boost it. This switch will greatly enhance your overall health as well as your life as your home is it. You have this! | https://medium.com/@timarowland/significance-of-emotional-health-e7de6cccdf5f | ['Timothy A Rowland'] | 2020-12-23 17:02:35.556000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Emotions', 'Emotional Health', 'Self Care', 'Mental Health'] |
Opportunity, a rover on Mars, was declared lost on February 12th | Opportunity, a rover on Mars, was declared lost on February 12th
It travelled more than half a billion kilometres simply as a passenger, sleeping dreamless, vacuum-packed. The five-and-a-half-month voyage was devoid of all interest until the very end, when the spacecraft lost 20,000kph of its velocity in just over six minutes as it plunged through an alien sky to the desert below. Parachutes spread and airbags deployed. The package bounced, rolled and came to rest.
Opportunity still had 45km to go.
Four hours after landing on January 25th 2004, it opened its eyes. Its makers, back on Earth, looked through them at a landing site as perfect as they could have wished for. Opportunity’s landing on Meridiani Planum, a little south of the Martian equator, had not been a particularly precise affair — it could have come down anywhere in an ellipse some 100km long and 18km wide. But by chance the spot where it had ended up, about 25km from the centre of the target, was inside a small crater dug out by a meteorite impact. On the side of that crater the scientists saw straight away the distinctive strata of sedimentary rock laid down in water. Nothing of the sort had ever before been seen beyond the Earth. It was exactly the sort of thing the robot had been sent to find.
Opportunity was officially MER-B, the second of the two rovers of the Mars Exploration Rover programme; MER-A, Spirit, had landed a few weeks earlier in the great basin of Gusev Crater, almost half the planet away. Unofficially, it was Oppy, and often a she. The two rovers’ missions were due to last 90 sols — a sol being the 24 hours and 40 minutes it takes Mars to turn on its axis. Faced with that time limit, Opportunity’s minders were overjoyed at not having to spend any of those precious sols just trundling round looking for interesting rocks.
For the first 56 sols, Opportunity never strayed more than ten metres from that propitious landing site. It took pictures with its various cameras, ground holes with its little rasping drill, dug a trench by spinning one wheel while it kept the others locked, measured the spectra of various minerals. The scientists concluded that the sediments they saw had been laid down in a salty dying sea. If that had been all Opportunity had ever told them, the mission would have been counted a great success.
But on Sol 57, it headed out into the wider world.
Guided by pictures from satellites above, Opportunity headed for a deeper crater, Endurance, a kilometre or so away. It drove down into it and looked around further, poking and prodding for the rest of the year. A human geologist might have accomplished as much or more by way of assessment in a leisurely afternoon. But the nearest human geologists were on another planet, and likely to remain there for some decades to come.
After climbing back out of Endurance — no one had known whether it would be able to — Opportunity was sent off to inspect the jettisoned heat-shield that had protected it as it burned down through the Martian atmosphere, now a glinting monument on the pockmarked plain. It was not the only thing that had fallen from the sky. As it rolled on, Opportunity came across a meteorite, its lithology distinctively un-Martian. Later it took a little video of Phobos, the larger of Mars’s little moons, crossing the face of the Sun.
On Sol 946, in September 2006, Opportunity reached Victoria Crater, seven kilometres from its landing site, 800 metres across. Its makers knew that the 90-sol lifetime they had promised for Opportunity and Spirit was conservative, a low bar to ensure some kudos for “mission accomplished”. But none had expected it to be surpassed by a factor of ten.
That said, it had not all been plain rolling. Opportunity had spent a few harrowing sols stuck in sand at Purgatory Ripple; later, one of the motors it steered with failed. While it was exploring Victoria it was caught in a global dust-storm that cut it off from Earth and covered its solar panels with dirt. Happily, though, the same winds that drove the storms also blew the panels clean, or cleaner, after their passing. A joint in the shoulder of its robot arm, dicky since the mission started, finally seized up.
On March 30th 2011, Sol 2,155 of its mission to Gusev, Spirit failed to check in with Earth by radio as scheduled; it was never heard from again. Opportunity continued its long trek to Endeavour crater, 22km in diameter, 1,000 times larger than the crater in which it had started off. The point where it reached its rim was named Spirit Point, in memoriam. On August 6th 2012 a newer, bigger rover, Curiosity, landed at the foot of Aeolis Mons, thousands of kilometres away. Opportunity looked after itself for nine days to allow the scientists and engineers to make a fuss of the newcomer, then set out to study the intriguing smectite clays that a European orbiter had detected on Cape York, a peak further along Endeavour’s rim.
As the unexpected years went by, Opportunity continued along the hilly rim of Endeavour until it came to Perseverance Valley, which cuts through towards the crater floor. It was descending the valley when, on June 10th 2018 — Sol 5,111 — another dust storm cut it off from Sun and Earth. When, after months, the global storm subsided, the rover’s minders, now family, waited for its solar panels to be blown clean. It appears they were not. After over 1,000 messages attempting to restore contact, Opportunity was declared lost on February 12th.
One day a human may well follow its tracks down Perseverance, looking for the mast on which its cameras are mounted, separated for stereoscopy, easily anthropomorphised, seeking to honour a pioneer who travelled far and provided insight after insight into the history of Mars. Until then, imagine her as she was photographed by the orbiting HiRise camera after first reaching the scalloped rim of Victoria, looking down on to its rolling dunes: a tiny speck perched on a promontory peak, a new planet swimming before her eagle eyes, watched in silence from the skies.
This article first appeared in the Obituary section of The Economist on February 15th 2019 | https://medium.economist.com/opportunity-a-rover-on-mars-was-declared-lost-on-february-12th-84788eb174e6 | ['The Economist'] | 2019-04-25 09:31:45.315000+00:00 | ['Mars', 'Space Exploration', 'Lives'] |
A digital toolkit for consultants | A digital toolkit for consultants
As a solo consultant, I’m drawn to anything that promises to save me time, make my life easier, or help me do a better job. This is a snapshot of my current toolkit and how I’m using the things in it. Lauren Pope Dec 8, 2020·6 min read
This is an updated version of a post I wrote back in 2018. A lot of the tools are the same, but there are some new ones.
Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash
Research tools
Evolve
What does it do?: It’s a tool for gathering and analysing insights from research.
It’s a tool for gathering and analysing insights from research. How do I use it?: I use Evolve for user and stakeholder research. It’s my go-to for capturing notes, creating affinity maps, spotting themes, and creating insight-backed findings reports. I love the structured, organised approach it provides.
I use Evolve for user and stakeholder research. It’s my go-to for capturing notes, creating affinity maps, spotting themes, and creating insight-backed findings reports. I love the structured, organised approach it provides. Cost: Free (for now)
Free (for now) Link: https://evolveresearch.app/
Answer The Public
What does it do?: Enter a keyword and Answer The Public will give you the most common who, what, where, when, why and vs questions people search for including that keyword.
Enter a keyword and Answer The Public will give you the most common who, what, where, when, why and vs questions people search for including that keyword. How do I use it?: I find this helpful for basic user research, as these searches give you an insight into what people are thinking, feeling and asking.
I find this helpful for basic user research, as these searches give you an insight into what people are thinking, feeling and asking. Cost: Free/$79/$99/$399 a month
Free/$79/$99/$399 a month Link: https://answerthepublic.com/
URL Profiler
What does it do?: a tool to gather and audit website, search and social data.
a tool to gather and audit website, search and social data. How do I use it?: I use URL Profiler for content audits. I enter a list of URLs and it returns loads of useful data, including metadata, page speed, word count, readability data and more.
I use URL Profiler for content audits. I enter a list of URLs and it returns loads of useful data, including metadata, page speed, word count, readability data and more. Cost: Free trial then around $30/$40/$100 a month
Free trial then around $30/$40/$100 a month Link: https://urlprofiler.com/
Collaboration and workshop tools
Mural
What does it do?: Mural is a collaborative digital whiteboard and workspace.
Mural is a collaborative digital whiteboard and workspace. How do I use it?: I use Mural as the focal point for online workshops, meetings and training. I use it the same way I would use whiteboards, flip-charts, and worksheets in a real-life session. It’s been a lifesaver during lockdown.
I use Mural as the focal point for online workshops, meetings and training. I use it the same way I would use whiteboards, flip-charts, and worksheets in a real-life session. It’s been a lifesaver during lockdown. Cost: Free trial then $12/$20 per month
Free trial then $12/$20 per month Link: https://www.mural.co/
SessionLab
What does it do?: Helps you plan agendas for workshops, meetings, conferences and more.
Helps you plan agendas for workshops, meetings, conferences and more. How do I use it?: To cut the faff of planning agendas and keeping track of timings. You can add or remove items from your agenda, increase or decrease the duration, and it’ll recalculate your running times. It also keeps track of the things you need, like pens, print-outs, Post-its, sticky dots, etc and gives you a checklist to help make sure nothing is forgotten. I also use it while I’m running sessions, so I have all my notes to hand.
To cut the faff of planning agendas and keeping track of timings. You can add or remove items from your agenda, increase or decrease the duration, and it’ll recalculate your running times. It also keeps track of the things you need, like pens, print-outs, Post-its, sticky dots, etc and gives you a checklist to help make sure nothing is forgotten. I also use it while I’m running sessions, so I have all my notes to hand. Cost: Free/$13/$60 per month
Free/$13/$60 per month Link: https://www.sessionlab.com/
Admin
Calend.ly
What does it do?: Calendly helps you schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails.
Calendly helps you schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails. How do I use it?: When I’m arranging a call or meeting, I just send people a Calendly link and let them choose a time. (This works for me because my diary is always up-to-date and I block out time for things like thinky work, travel, lunch breaks etc). It’s great for user and stakeholder interviews too.
When I’m arranging a call or meeting, I just send people a Calendly link and let them choose a time. (This works for me because my diary is always up-to-date and I block out time for things like thinky work, travel, lunch breaks etc). It’s great for user and stakeholder interviews too. Cost: Free/$8/$12 per month
Free/$8/$12 per month Link: https://calendly.com/
Notion
What does it do?: What doesn’t it do?! In brief, it’s for writing, planning and organising. Like a cross between Evernote, Google Docs, Trello, a wiki and a CRM.
What doesn’t it do?! In brief, it’s for writing, planning and organising. Like a cross between Evernote, Google Docs, Trello, a wiki and a CRM. How do I use it?: I’m still finding my way with Notion, but so far I use it for project management, content creation, notes, bookmarking and as a wiki. I’m going to integrate it into my workflow more next year.
I’m still finding my way with Notion, but so far I use it for project management, content creation, notes, bookmarking and as a wiki. I’m going to integrate it into my workflow more next year. Cost: free/$4/$8 per month
free/$4/$8 per month Link: https://www.notion.so/
Shift
What does it do?: Shift gives you one place to access all of your accounts, apps, and workflows.
Shift gives you one place to access all of your accounts, apps, and workflows. How do I use it?: As my primary workspace and browser. I check my email here, access Google Drive, Notion, Airtable and more here. I create different workspaces for different clients and projects — this helps me stay focused and saves time logging in and out of different accounts for things like Google Analytics, Trello etc.
As my primary workspace and browser. I check my email here, access Google Drive, Notion, Airtable and more here. I create different workspaces for different clients and projects — this helps me stay focused and saves time logging in and out of different accounts for things like Google Analytics, Trello etc. Cost: Free/$100 per year
Free/$100 per year Link: https://tryshift.com/referral/9124/lauren.pope/ (If five people sign up via this link, I get some credit. If you’d prefer not to use that link, try this one https://tryshift.com/)
Otter.ai
What does it do?: Otter is an app that uses AI to take notes during meetings and interviews. You just start the app and it transcribes while you and the people you’re with talk.
Otter is an app that uses AI to take notes during meetings and interviews. You just start the app and it transcribes while you and the people you’re with talk. How do I use it?: To transcribe notes from meetings, calls and interviews. I also use it to draft emails and blog posts by making ‘notes to self’. The transcription isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s pretty good.
To transcribe notes from meetings, calls and interviews. I also use it to draft emails and blog posts by making ‘notes to self’. The transcription isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s pretty good. Cost: Free/$8/£20 per month
Free/$8/£20 per month Link: https://otter.ai/referrals/J814U31Y (Again, I get some credit if you use this link. If you’re not into that, use https://otter.ai/)
FreeAgent
What does it do?: FreeAgent is online accounting software that helps you with invoices, expenses, time tracking, tax returns and more.
FreeAgent is online accounting software that helps you with invoices, expenses, time tracking, tax returns and more. How do I use it?: I use this for anything and everything money-related and it’s made me feel a lot more organised and under control. I also have to give them a lot of credit for their ‘Support’ section — I’ve found the answers to any question I’ve had in there.
I use this for anything and everything money-related and it’s made me feel a lot more organised and under control. I also have to give them a lot of credit for their ‘Support’ section — I’ve found the answers to any question I’ve had in there. Cost: £10–30 a month
£10–30 a month Link: https://www.freeagent.com/
AirTable
What does it do?: It’s a powerful spreadsheet-database hybrid.
It’s a powerful spreadsheet-database hybrid. How do I use it?: I’m in the early stages of using AirTable. So far I’ve found it’s a game-changer for content audits and content models. I’m planning on writing more about this when I have a clearer idea of how best to use it.
I’m in the early stages of using AirTable. So far I’ve found it’s a game-changer for content audits and content models. I’m planning on writing more about this when I have a clearer idea of how best to use it. Cost: Free/$12/$24 a month
Free/$12/$24 a month Link: https://airtable.com/invite/r/w6Ac3KnS (alternative link https://airtable.com/)
Writing
ProWritingAid
What does it do?: A grammar, spelling and style checker.
A grammar, spelling and style checker. How do I use it?: Working solo, I rely on this for proofing. And as anyone who follows me on Twitter will know, I make a *lot* of mistakes. I disagree on some stylistic points, but it improves my writing and I crave a 100% score. The Google Docs add-on could be great, but it’s very slow.
Working solo, I rely on this for proofing. And as anyone who follows me on Twitter will know, I make a *lot* of mistakes. I disagree on some stylistic points, but it improves my writing and I crave a 100% score. The Google Docs add-on could be great, but it’s very slow. Cost: Free trial then $20 a month/$80 a year.
Free trial then $20 a month/$80 a year. Link: https://prowritingaid.com/?afid=6528 (alternative link https://prowritingaid.com/)
Hemingway
What does it do?: Hemingway is a text editor that helps you improve your writing by highlighting long or complex sentences, words you don’t need and uses of the passive voice.
Hemingway is a text editor that helps you improve your writing by highlighting long or complex sentences, words you don’t need and uses of the passive voice. How do I use it?: Before I bought ProWritingAid I used this daily for checking my writing for passive voice and long sentences.
Before I bought ProWritingAid I used this daily for checking my writing for passive voice and long sentences. Cost: Free
Free Link: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
Natural Readers
What does it do? : Copy text into Natural Readers and it reads it back to you, in a natural voice with a choice of accents.
: Copy text into Natural Readers and it reads it back to you, in a natural voice with a choice of accents. How do I use it?: Natural is a bit of a stretch, but this is great for copyediting. It gives you a fresh perspective on how your writing sounds, and helps spot punctuation mistakes, repetition, and places where you need to work on the rhythm of your copy.
Natural is a bit of a stretch, but this is great for copyediting. It gives you a fresh perspective on how your writing sounds, and helps spot punctuation mistakes, repetition, and places where you need to work on the rhythm of your copy. Cost: Free
Free Link: https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/
Gather Content
What does it do?: Gather Content is a tool that helps you produce content in a more consistent, structured, timely way.
Gather Content is a tool that helps you produce content in a more consistent, structured, timely way. How do I use it?: I recommend Gather to all my clients, and I’m doubling down on this after a recent experience of using Word for a content production project. Feedback got lost, the number of documents floating around was dizzying, and keeping track of the workflow was tough. None of this happens with Gather — templates keep your content consistent, all the feedback is in one place, the workflow and sign-off process is clear for all to see.
I recommend Gather to all my clients, and I’m doubling down on this after a recent experience of using Word for a content production project. Feedback got lost, the number of documents floating around was dizzying, and keeping track of the workflow was tough. None of this happens with Gather — templates keep your content consistent, all the feedback is in one place, the workflow and sign-off process is clear for all to see. Cost: Free trial then $99/$299/$799 a month.
Free trial then $99/$299/$799 a month. Link: https://gathercontent.com/
Visual tools
The Noun Project | https://medium.com/@la-pope/a-digital-toolkit-for-consultants-751611b16b61 | ['Lauren Pope'] | 2020-12-17 13:49:15.503000+00:00 | ['Consulting', 'Productivity', 'Freelancing', 'Tools', 'Startup'] |
ICO Review — 5 reasons why Edenchain should be the new Icon | 1. The current Blockchain are limited
The blockchain is a technology that allows to store and transmit information transparently, securely and without a central control body. It could be compared to a huge database that contains the history of all the exchanges made between its users since its creation. The great particularity of the blockchain is that it relies on a decentralized architecture, that is to say that it is not hosted by a single server but by some users. There is no intermediary so that everyone can check for themselves the validity of the chain. The information contained in each block (transactions, property titles, contracts, etc.) is protected by cryptographic methods that prevent users from modifying them afterwards.
Many Blockchains have emerged and their use has grown steadily through crypto-currencies and other uses. However, its use in the industrial sector, and particularly for the establishment of a programmable economy, is hampered by two major problems:
The impossibility of scaler for large-scale needs; current blockchains allow only a small number of transactions per second
Lack of security and vulnerability to hacker attacks
Bitcoin (BTC) is a so-called first-generation blockchain which, although very secure, lacks efficiency, scalability and allows for very few transactions per second (TPS).
Ethereum (ETH) is considered the second generation blockchain. Ethereum has made many improvements over Bitcoin (mainly smart contracts) but is only able to reach about 20 GST, which is still too low for large scale adoption. For example, the popular CryptoKitties game has been able to clutter the Ethereum blockchain, slowing the transaction speed considerably.
Third generation blockchains such as EOS, Cosmos, Quarkchain or Dfinity are trying to improve this low GST number. However, this improvement in the number of TPS may affect the security and efficiency of these blockchains.
Below is a graph showing the number of transactions per second possible on Bitcoin and Ethereum Blockchains compared to major players in the financial and social media market.
Therefore, a proper balance between scalability, security and efficiency does not exist yet despite all existing attempts.
In addition to these scalability and security issues intrinsic to the current Blockchain, the programmable economy is confronted with three other problems:
Most transactions involving tangible assets are sold and managed by intermediaries, which increases transaction costs.
There are no intermediary platforms for companies and individuals to capitalize on their intangible assets.
There is a lack of developers with blockchain knowledge to help companies adopt blockchain technology, which slows the adoption of technology.
On the basis of this, Edenchain decided to build a highly secure, interoperable blockchain with reduced processing costs that can be used in a wide range of applications and industries. | https://medium.com/biomanforcerose/ico-review-5-reasons-why-edenchain-should-be-the-new-icon-ca8dbe5e338d | [] | 2018-07-31 14:47:36.646000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Economy', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ico Review'] |
Procrastination or Magic? The Paradox of Doing Without Doing. | The Back-Burner Effect
I love bringing groups together because ideas coalesce in new and different ways. This week’s call on procrastination was no exception, and, this in particular seems worth sharing: the seeming paradox of ‘who’ is doing the doing and how come things happen when we don’t do anything.
One of the callers brought this up in relation to a discussion we were having about ‘important’ things, legal matters and so on, and where things appear to be ‘high stakes’.
It isn’t that I don’t do anything, or that I put it off. I’m not scared to look at something, but then I put it down and ideas come to me over the next hours and days.
It’s what we coined ‘the back burner effect’, I see it too and it’s what I do-it’s what we all do but you may not be doing it consciously so you may not be taking full effect of the power of your ‘magic’ helpers.
It’s Not About the ‘Time’…
When it comes to events like the one where this conversation was held, for example, I’m usually inspired to create something around a topic, but the details are pretty vague, or at least unformed. I’ll write a blurb but I know it’s just my first cut.
And then, I do nothing.
Or, rather not that I do nothing exactly, but I leave the ideas to develop, like I might leave bread to rise, or put a pot on the back burner.
I turn my attention to other things, or to nothing, and, a couple of days before, I look back in the direction of the event, or the meeting.
… It’s About Resources
And, like ‘magic’, without me ‘doing’ anything, without pens or paper, without post-it notes, without any kind of ‘active’ preparation, my amazing sub-conscious imagination has made connections for me, it’s wandered and wondered in the direction of who might come, and what I think will be useful and interesting to talk about. I have allowed ‘it’ to be taken care of without any more involvement on ‘my’ part.
And, voilà, ideas come for exercises, questions, discussion points I want to raise, and only at that point might I make a few notes.
Be Inspired but Not Prescribed to…
Now, I’m not saying follow my process, because even I might not follow that exact process every time, what I’m suggesting is that you have many more resources at your disposal than your active intellectual brain. So why not use them??
What’s very cool about this, is the efficiency with which we can operate. While things get taken care of ‘on the back-burner’, we can go about our other business knowing that ‘someone’ or ‘something’ is taking care of it in the background-like the most perfect sous chef, doing all the prep, so that you just have to turn up and create a final flourish. It makes life sooooo much easier, and it makes us more effective, than when we’re rushing around thinking it’s all ‘on us’ to do.
Your own personal productivity concierge? Does it sound like something worth experimenting with?
With love,
Cathy
Cathy Presland
Here to help with leadership and impact. I have lots of free resources over here, if you’d like to explore more deeply. | https://medium.com/@cathypresland/procrastination-or-magic-the-paradox-of-doing-without-doing-652d970b787e | ['Cathy Presland'] | 2020-12-12 17:00:02.481000+00:00 | ['Goal Setting', 'Time Management', 'Procrastination', 'Leadership', 'Productivity'] |
Crazy Man | Crazy Man
Written on May 29th, 2014
As part of A Story Each Day
I try very hard not to be one of those crazy people on the subway — one of the ones that holds an entire conversation with them self, and misses their stop doing so.
Waiting to get off the subway, I turned to face the closing door. I locked my gaze forward, looking out the subway car into the station at all of the people funneling up stairs like a reverse waterfall. The train moved past the station, and darted into the dark tunnels that snake through the underbelly of New York City. My reflection appeared: Dark, shadowed, a dimly lit mirror that hadn’t been cleaned in far too long. I stared at my reflection, trying to recognize myself. I was so focused and so intent that I didn’t notice the young kid who was standing almost right next to me, studying my reflection almost as closely as I was. It wasn’t until he spoke up that he shattered my focus.
“What are you doing here?” He asked, as if I had no right to be riding the subway at all. I looked over — not quite sure if he was even talking to me.
“I’m… going home…”
Who is this kid?
“You live here?” his voice took on a friendlier tone. More curious, and less accusing, but still sharp and precise.
“Yeah. In Brooklyn.”
He looked at me with some skepticism, but I could tell he wanted to question further.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Virginia.” He claimed, proudly.
“Really?” I turned to him, or at least my reflection did. “I grew up there. What part are you from?”
“I thought so.” He said, almost letting a smile through his expression. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who was comfortable talking to a stranger — he seemed like he would be more comfortable talking to himself, and yet, his curiosity fueled our discussion and kept it going.
“What are you doing in New York City?” I asked.
“What are you doing in New York?” He countered.
“I…” I had to think about that, but I had a damn good answer: “I live here.”
“Why do you live here?”
“Because…I do. You still didn’t answered my question.”
“Which one?” He quizzed.
“Which one what?”
“Which question: The part of Virginia that I’m from, or what I’m doing in New York?”
Just then, I realized that the train had stopped, passengers had gotten off, funneled up the stairs like a reverse waterfall once again, and the doors were closing. They clamped shut in front of me before I could realize what I’d missed, and the train kept on moving.
“Damn. I- You made me miss my stop! And no, beside distracting me from my station, what are you doing in New York?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“Well. I thought I would recognize him. I’m not sure if I do, though. I definitely didn’t recognize him when I first saw him.”
The train slowed to a halt, as I cycled through his words again-
Wait –
“This is your stop, isn’t it?” He said.
“Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”
I stepped off the train, onto the platform, my mind racing.
Wait–
The doors slid shut.
Ding. | https://medium.com/a-story-each-day/crazy-man-c54e65d279a8 | ['A Story Each Day'] | 2015-05-29 22:36:44.563000+00:00 | ['A Story Each Day', 'Short Story', 'Fiction'] |
Keeping the COVID Grinch Away This Christmas | “Once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.” -C.S. Lewis
This is undoubtedly going to be a Holiday Season to remember! Sadly, the stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is casting its gloomy clouds over the Christmas Season. The combination of pandemic fatigue combined with the holiday season is a highly stressful time for people. Added to that colder weather, and other factors all create a perfect storm, if you will, for things to go from bad to worse.
As I reflect on the meaning of Christmas, I am reminded that the Gospel stories of the birth of Christ took place in a time of great crisis in the nation of Israel. Joseph and Mary, who were expecting any day, were forced by the Roman government to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be counted in a census. Upon arriving, they had to settle for less than usual housing arrangements.
Pretty tough times.
With that story in mind, let’s look at some things we can do rot make the best of the situation we find ourselves in.
Here are some tips for a happier holiday season.
Practice Self-Care, Self-compassion.
Self-Care Explained
Do you remember the safety briefing from your last flight? When the flight attendants get to the part about the unlikely event of sudden cabin depressurization, they explain that the oxygen mask will drop from the ceiling. At that point, they instruct you to put on your mask first, then and only then, help someone else with theirs.
Self-care is sort of like this, in a way. It is an intentional, active choice to take care of our mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health. It’s putting us first…because we can’t care for or be the best help to help others unless we first take care of ourselves.
The benefits of self-care
Self-care can have the following positive effects:
– Improved self-esteem and self-compassion
– Increased insight in decision making and motivation
– Boosted immune system
– Enhanced stress management by reducing anxiety
– Improved productivity fostered by a greater ability to focus
– Deepened spirituality and sense of meaning
– Heightened connection to yourself and others
– Increased resilience
– Greater ability to set boundaries (internal and external)
– Boosted immune system
– Enhanced stress management by reducing anxiety
– Improved productivity fostered by a greater ability to focus
– Deepened spirituality and sense of meaning
– Heightened connection to yourself and others
– Greater ability to set boundaries (internal and external)
Here are seven ways to practice self-care
1. Get your horizontal and vertical relationships in order. The quote from Jesus pretty much sums it up. Love God, and out of that love of God will come to the love of self, then love of others.
2. Remember, we have to all constantly fight the inner poser. We all feel like fakes and frauds from time to time. When you find yourself beating yourself up, calling yourself names, rehearsing old hurts, telling yourself you are a loser, or suffering from the paralysis of analysis, STOP. Everybody struggles with this from time to time, and it is all part of being human. They are just thoughts. You always have a choice to give them a place in your brain and heart or to dismiss them.
3. Be a buddy to yourself. Would you offer yourself support and encouragement on a bad day? Would you cheer for yourself on a good one?
4. Use your meals as an act of self-care. When you eat, pause to notice that you are taking time to nourish yourself. Rather than seeing how fast you can consume your meal, a nasty habit that I picked up in the military, chew your food slowly, savor the flavor as you add fuel for your body.
5. Get the rest your body needs. 7–8 hours is a great goal and has been proven repeatedly to renew and refresh.
6. Have a time of stillness and quietness in the morning. It could be a time of prayer and meditation. You could read from a daily devotional or have some type of daily reading plan. I have used to read one chapter of the Old Testament book of Proverbs a day.
7. Ask for some help. No, I do not mean therapy, although a good therapist could help. Here is a thought, experiment with giving someone else a chance to help you. It might be a friend, colleague, or mentor who can come alongside you to help out, be an accountability partner, or just an encourager.
Respect the Safety Concerns of Others
The CDC’s guidelines of maintaining your space, washing your hands and wearing a mask, and limiting gatherings to only family members are things we must do to ensure both our personal safety and the safety of others.
Tips for Couples
Why on earth would I tell you this? Because the holidays can be a very stressful time for any relationship. With that in mind, I wanted to give you four things you can do to have a less stressful holiday.
First, turn towards each other.
It is so easy to be swept up in the frenzy of the season. One of the easy things to do to have less stress over the next few weeks is to be sure to spend some time together as a couple. No smart devices, if possible, no kids, no distractions. It might only be a few moments in the morning or the evening; just make sure you get some uninterrupted time together. NOTE: don’t think big about this. A few private moments can go a long way.
Second, share the load.
For many, the holidays can become a whirl of activities. It is essential that as a husband and wife, we make sure we work together to share the burden and get through the season with minimal stress.
Third, encourage each other.
Encourage. The word means to give courage, hope, and confidence. Here is a secret that I have learned as both a therapist and a man married to the same woman for 47 years.
Men need three things: To feel needed, to feel competent, and to feel respected.
Women need three things: To feel valued, to feel cherished, and to feel secure.
If you think about these three needs, you will find it easier to be an encourager.
Remember, these three things, turning towards each other, sharing the load, and intentionally encouraging each other, can go a long way in mitigating the season’s stress.
I sincerely hope your holidays are filled with joy, contentment, and great memories.
Be a blessing this week!
“B Begin your day with
L Love on your heart.
E Expect great things.
S Smile because you are alive.
S Shine like the sun.
I Inspire someone today.
N Never forget that,
G God is with you all time.”
— Ben Malki, Blessing | https://medium.com/@johnhthurman/keeping-the-covid-grinch-away-this-christmas-690da86452c | ['John H. Thurman'] | 2020-12-19 00:14:33.174000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Christianity', 'Resilience', 'Faith', 'Covid 19 Crisis'] |
Popover menu over cards containing WebKit views on iOS 13 | One new feature that came with the new iOS 13 is the introduction of the stack of card views when we push View Controllers on top of each other. It is quite a neat feature, in my opinion (depending on what kind of app you’re doing, of course), because you can visualise, at the top of the screen, the stack of views that you’ve been through and easily swipe them down to go back to the previous one when needed, removing the need of implementing a back button somewhere on your view, stealing a bit of your app’s precious screen space.
But then, there is one small problem that came with that.
If your app has embedded web views inside it (like many banking or payment apps usually have), you can end up having a crash in a situation that you didn’t have to account for before. This happens when you try to open a web link that’s a file input. When you do that in a regular full screen view (not a card), iOS will present you with a popover menu that looks like the one below:
The traditional iOS popover menu for file input fields coming from the bottom of the screen.
Although, if you try the same on a web view inside a card, you’ll get the following a crash with the message:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSGenericException', reason: 'Your application has presented a UIDocumentMenuViewController (<UIDocumentMenuViewController: 0x105223de0>). In its current trait environment, the modalPresentationStyle of a UIDocumentMenuViewController with this style is UIModalPresentationPopover. You must provide location information for this popover through the view controller's popoverPresentationController. You must provide either a sourceView and sourceRect or a barButtonItem. If this information is not known when you present the view controller, you may provide it in the UIPopoverPresentationControllerDelegate method -prepareForPopoverPresentation.'
According to this message, the iOS doesn’t know where to position your popover menu over the app. I don’t know why they don’t just present it the way it was before but, since that’s not an option, let’s fix it!
First, let’s bring that web view to a View Controller inside a card and start our work.
Our WebKit view resting inside a card, patiently waiting for something to happen.
OK! Now, according to the message, what we are lacking here is basically the location of our popover message, and we can achieve this by making our View Controller conform to the UIPopoverPresentationControllerDelegate protocol. With that, we need to implement the method prepareForPopoverPresentation( _ popoverPresentationController: UIPopoverPresentationController) to handle the properties that are lacking for our popover menu to appear.
One problem here is that we are not the ones declaring a variable for our UIPopoverPresentationController but it is coming from the web view itself, so we need to find a way to tell the controller that our View Controller will be its delegate for this situation. We can achieve that by overriding the present method from our View Controller to be able to set it as the delegate of the popover.
This will set the popover from the new UIDocumentMenuViewController to be presented to have our View Controller as a delegate.
NOTE: when adding this code on your project, you’ll probably get a warning from Xcode informing that UIDocumentMenuViewController was deprecated in iOS 11 and that you should use UIDocumentPickerViewController directly, but, if you do that, it won’t work because the WebKit tries to present a UIDocumentMenuViewController (as you can read on the crash error message from the beginning of the article). It is weird and it is probably a bug on iOS or on WebKit. So, we can either stick to this warning or, if you are sure that this View Controller of yours will handle only web view stuff, you can remove that type check from it to kill the warning.
Moving on, after setting our View Controller as the delegate for the popoverPresentationController , we can then implement the required delegate method like this:
Try to run the app again and you’ll see this as result now:
The popover menu is now at the top of the screen. Not exactly an expected behaviour.
Nice! The crash doesn’t happen anymore, but having the popover menu hanging over there on the top of our screen is not quite optimal. The ideal way would be for it to be presented close to where we the user performed the action to open it. In other words, close to where the user tapped the screen.
For this to happen, we will have to intercept the user tap gesture and store its location so we can use it to position our menu on screen later. We can add a tap gesture recognizer to our web view as the code below shows:
One problem we will have with that is that, no matter how much we tap the web view, our webViewTapped method will never be called. That’s because our web view is already intercepting our taps to perform the necessary web view actions and, if we want to have our View Controller to recognize them simultaneously, we have to make our View Controller conform to the UIGestureRecognizerDelegate protocol and add the following method:
Now, we can just pass the position information to our popover menu through the prepareForPopoverPresentation method:
Then, we finally have a more pleasant result:
The popover menu pointing to the place on screen where we tapped. That feels way nicer!
Well, that was a bit of work but at least now we got rid of that annoying crash that appeared out of nowhere with the introduction of iOS 13’s cards. You can use that same effect if you want that behaviour present on your web views shown inside full screen views as well. Anyway, if you want to check how the whole View Controller looks like after all these alterations, the source code of the implementation of it can be find in this gist link.
Did it work for you? Do you have any other ideas or suggestions to make it different? Let me know in the comments below. | https://medium.com/swlh/popover-menu-over-cards-containing-webkit-views-on-ios-13-a16705aff8af | ['João R.G. Sampaio'] | 2020-11-24 15:04:03.248000+00:00 | ['Webview', 'Webkit', 'Swift', 'iOS', 'Swift Programming'] |
Typical College Day During a Pandemic | A day in the life of a college student during COVID
As I near the end of an exceptionally unusual semester, I have been reflecting on the highs and lows. I’ve come to the conclusion that there aren’t many highs and lows considering every day has been a repetition of the day before. I live on campus in a dorm and the experience has been incredibly unremarkable. I estimate that at least 20 hours of the day is spent in my tiny dorm, either hunched over a desk or lying in bed with my laptop.
I wake up at 9:00am for my 9:10am class. Since it is online and I am allowed to keep my camera off, I simply roll to the side of my bed to grab my laptop from my desk and login to class without getting up once. I sit through class until it ends at 10am and then get up to get ready.
By ready, I mean brushing my teeth, washing my face, and changing from pajamas to sweatpants. I have worn makeup and real clothes only a handful of times this semester.
I then sit at my desk, or on my bed, and login to my second class at 11:00am. After class, around 12:30pm, I leave my room for 15 minutes to grab a prepackaged meal from a dining hall. I then return to my room, eat my mundane meal at my desk, and then work on homework until my next class at 1:50pm. That class ends at 2:40pm and I am then done with classes for the day.
During a normal semester, I would then have a club meeting, a sports practice, an internship, or somewhere to be with friends. During the pandemic, I remain in my seat and watch Netflix or continue working on assignments.
I leave my room again around 6:30pm to grab dinner, which I also bring back to my dorm to eat at my desk. I then spend the night watching Netflix, reading, or working on assignments.
Some days my friend and I will take a walk or have a picnic at a park, but not often as we aren’t technically supposed to be out and about. On the weekends we will venture off campus and go hiking somewhere remote and people free. This is the most enjoyable event of the week.
In reflection, this semester will be remembered as one without many highs and lows. Instead, a routine of dull repetition. | https://medium.com/@miahoss/typical-college-day-during-a-pandemic-9404097f8473 | ['Mia Hossain'] | 2020-12-20 23:40:12.698000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'College', 'Storytelling', 'Pandemic', 'Experience'] |
‘A California Soul’ Described Jesus’ Voice as Always Beautiful and Gentle | Do not despise the words of prophets,
but test everything;
hold fast to what is good…
(1 Thessalonians 5:20–21)
Can anything God say be unimportant? We don’t think so either, which is why we created this website: a place for the Body of Christ to discern credible voices of prophecy. We believe the Church needs this gift of the Holy Spirit more than ever — a light in the darkness — as we countdown to the coming of Christ’s Kingdom.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries” (n. 66).
With the death of the last Apostle, Public Revelation ended. All that is necessary for salvation has been revealed. However, God has not ceased to speak to His creation!
Around 1997, a man and a woman in California, who were living together in a life of sin, had a profound conversion through Divine Mercy. The wife had been prompted interiorly to start a rosary group after experiencing her first Divine Mercy novena.
Seven months later, a statue of Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart in their home began to weep oil profusely (later, other sacred statues and images began oozing fragrant oil while a crucifix and a statue of St. Pio bled. One of those images is now hanging in the Marian Center located at the Divine Mercy Shrine in Massachusetts.
Because these images began to attract many people to their home in the beginning, their spiritual director agreed that they remain anonymous). This miracle led them to repent of their living situation and enter a sacramental marriage.
About six years later, the man began audibly hearing the voice of Jesus (what are called “locutions”). He had next to no catechesis or understanding of the Catholic Faith, so the voice of Jesus both alarmed and entranced him. Even though some of the Lord’s words were of warning, he described Jesus’ voice as always beautiful and gentle.
He also received a visitation from St. Pio and locutions from St. Thérèse de Lisieux, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Michael the Archangel and dozens of locutions from Our Lady while in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
After conveying two years of messages and secrets (known only to this man and to be announced at a future time known only to the Lord) the locutions stopped. Jesus told the man, “I will cease speaking to you now, but My Mother will continue to lead you.”
The couple felt called to start a cenacle of the Marian Movement of Priests where they would meditate on the messages of Our Lady to Fr. Stefano Gobbi . It was two years into these cenacles that the words of Jesus came true: Our Lady began to lead him, but in the most remarkable way. During the cenacles, and on other occasions, this man would see “in the air” in front of him the numbers of messages from the so-called “Blue Book,” the collection of the revelations Our Lady gave to Fr. Stefano Gobbi , “To the Priests Our Lady’s Beloved Sons.”
Both the husband and wife suffer greatly for their ministry, but continually offer it to the Lord for the salvation of souls. It is noteworthy that this man does not read the Blue Book to this day (as his education is very limited and he has a reading disability).
Over the years, these numbers that materialized would confirm on countless occasions the spontaneous conversations in their cenacles, and now today, the events taking place around the world. Fr. Gobbi’s messages did not fail but are now finding their fulfilment in real-time.
Whenever those messages become available to Countdown to the Kingdom, we will make them available here.
On May 18th, 2020, this Californian soul “saw” the number 269 from the Blue Book, a message originally given to Fr. Stefano Gobbi on August 15th, 1983, Feast of the Assumption: | https://medium.com/ave-maria/a-california-soul-described-jesus-voice-as-always-beautiful-and-gentle-fadfa5f6fcc9 | ['Vic Alcuaz'] | 2020-12-24 03:27:37.787000+00:00 | ['Prophet', 'Life', 'My Catholic Life', 'Visionary', 'Catholic'] |
Questions for BRCA1+ Trans-Feminine Youth | Questions for BRCA1+ Trans-Feminine Youth
A new case study this week in the journal LGBT Health explores the story of a trans-feminine youth identified as BRCA1+ at the onset of hormone therapy. Little is known about best practices for BRCA1+ trans youth, even though many physical and hormonal considerations exist.
Image Source: Coursera
In the latest issue of LGBT Health, a medical team in New England presents a case study and ethical opinion pieceabout a trans-feminine youth identified as BRCA1+, meaning they possess a genetic mutation known to increase cancer risk, especially in breast and ovarian tissue. Although BRCA1 testing is not generally recommended in youth, there is theoretical concern for BRCA1+trans-masculine and -feminine youth seeking gender affirming procedures, however little evidence is presently available. It is possible that full breast-tissue removal and hysterectomies are effective cancer risk-reduction strategies in BRCA1+ trans-masculine youth. Likewise, it is possible that feminizing hormones increase the risk and/or rate of onset of some cancers in BRCA1+ trans-feminine youth.
The individual and their family in this particular case study originally presented to the medical team physician when the youth was 14 years old. The youth, born male, was interested in starting puberty-suppressing hormones as part of treatment for gender dysphoria. In the initial visit, the youth’s mother self-reported that she was BRCA1+ and a two-time survivor of breast cancer. It was the physician’s suggestion, with this information, that the youth be tested for BRCA1 before starting feminizing hormones, which could theoretically increase breast cancer risk by promoting breast tissue development. After a year on pubertal blockers, the youth requested to begin estrogen therapy.
‘‘I know I can’t stay on pubertal blockers forever. I have to pick one side or the other and I want to pick the girl side.’’
The medical team genetic counselor met with the family and disclosed the BRCA1+ finding, as well as future cancer screening recommendations. They suggested the family follow those put forth for cisgender women with early BRCA1+ detection (i.e., more frequent and earlier screening), which are known to increase stress and anxiety. The counselor also recommended an oncology consult before starting feminizing hormones. Two referrals were denied on bases of lack of expertise.
“The risk in an XY woman has to be less than the risk in an XX woman. And anyway, I’d rather live a shorter life as a woman than a longer life as a man.”
Through additional outside consultation, the medical team decided that the autonomy of the youth and their family in the decision-making process to start feminizing hormones was to be respected fully. It is well known that hormone replacement therapy can profoundly impact the quality of life of trans youth experiencing gender dysphoria. Therefore, the case was presented to the family as such:
Stop pubertal blockers and allow the youth to experience puberty in their assigned gender (unacceptable risks of gender dysphoria)
Continue pubertal blockers indefinitely, with surgical gender transition (unacceptable risks of osteoporosis)
Continue pubertal blockers until the youth reaches age of consent (risk of delay in puberty and uncertain utility)
Proceed with feminizing hormones with recommendations for appropriate cancer screening (question increased risk of cancers)
The decision had been made more complicated by the mother’s deteriorating health condition. However, the family consented to starting feminizing hormones and the physician agreed to prescribe hormones when the family and therapist were ready. Sadly, the youth’s mom passed away shortly after the consent process. To date, the youth has not begun feminizing hormones and remains solely on pubertal blockers.
This case presents an emotional and personal justification for the visibility of trans lives in research and care recommendations. With profound implications for BRCA1+ trans youth, much more information is needed to understand the physical and hormonal considerations for youth and their families facing difficult decisions like the ones in this case. For medical professionals and families interested in learning more about the ethical considerations during this decision-making process, the authors put out an excellent concurrent piece, available here. | https://medium.com/qspaces/questions-for-brca1-trans-feminine-youth-a9e926b2fb70 | ['Cameron Mcconkey'] | 2018-06-11 02:58:50.343000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Cancer', 'LGBT', 'Transgender'] |
A bird’s eye Vue: how to get started with Vue.js | Here’s a list of my best web development tutorials.
Complete CSS flex tutorial on Hashnode.
Ultimate CSS grid tutorial on Hashnode.
Higher-order functions .map, .filter & .reduce on Hashnode.
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Photo by Sam Bark on Unsplash
You’ve always wanted to start learning to code in the Vue framework, but somehow you just haven’t have the time in your busy schedule.
Maybe you feel overwhelmed by all the libraries and frameworks? This bird’s eye Vue (getting started) tutorial might help.
A lot like React, Vue breaks down your JavaScript application into several parts:
the application object
member methods and properties
and the actual view (this is where your HTML elements are).
Vue’s v-based HTML attributes
Vue adds a lot of custom attributes to the elements you don’t usually see in standard HTML, by prefixing them with v- .
For example, there’s v-html , v-if , v-else and many others. They all have their specific purpose: rendering elements. Let’s take a quick look.
Boolean switches
Another attribute v-show is for toggling elements based on their visibility state.
This is specified in a Vue application’s property data as {boolean: true;} .
Then, in your HTML, you can use it to determine which elements to show.
<p v-show = “boolean”>Hello!</p>
Whenever App.data.boolean is true , the <p> element will be visible.
Your application logic can now ‘switch’ the <p> element ‘on’ or ‘off’ in your code. The change is automatically rendered.
Looping
The v-for directive is for creating loops to list HTML elements.
This means you can embed iterators directly into HTML elements to render lists of data stored in an array in the state of your Vue application. You don’t have to type the same HTML element over and over again.
Here is a classic example of a for-loop iterator.
First, prepare the data in your application object:
let E = new Vue({
el : ‘#L’, // link to the id = "L" element
data : {
items : [
{ message : ‘One’ },
{ message : ‘Two’ },
{ message : ‘Three’ } ]}
});
Now in your main HTML application container:
<ul id = ”L">
<li v-for = ”item in items”>{{ item.message }}</li>
</ul>
The v-for directive is in a ‘for item in items’ format.
This means you create a new variable called item in your {{ … here … }} loop. The property items comes from the application data object itself.
This will render your items array of JSON objects as HTML elements!
It would be the same as hand-writing the following HTML:
<ul id = ”L">
<li>One</li>
<li>Two</li>
<li>Three</li>
</ul>
I won’t go into the details behind every single v-based attribute and what it does in this tutorial. But as you can see they can be quite useful.
So how do you actually build Vue applications with this?
Building Applications
By combining your application state data with these native v-based attributes, you create associations between your logic and the application view’s rendering.
This shortens your JavaScript application, saving bandwidth (especially on large apps). It also helps you get things done a lot faster.
In the screenshot below, the application scaffold is where all of your tags and templates will be rendered to. | https://jstutorial.medium.com/a-birds-eye-vue-how-to-get-started-with-vue-js-dd1b82795908 | ['Javascript Teacher'] | 2020-10-24 02:37:01.468000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Web Development', 'Vuejs', 'Coding'] |
[Python] 用 Pytest 來做 Unit Test | WisChang005/pytest-demo
You can't perform that action at this time. You signed in with another tab or window. You signed out in another tab or… | https://medium.com/drunk-wis/python-%E7%94%A8-pytest-%E4%BE%86%E5%81%9A-unit-test-7e1a7ac599f6 | [] | 2020-08-27 16:43:43.441000+00:00 | ['Unittest', 'Unit Test Tools', 'Python3', 'Python', 'Pytest'] |
2003 NBA Re-Draft: LeBron James, Melo, Wade, & Bosh | Another NBA Re-Draft. The Series continues here on The Sports Scientist. Today we look back at the 2003 NBA Draft.
LeBron, Wade, Bosh & Melo were top players at their respective positions for over a Decade.
The 2003 NBA Draft is one of the best, if not the best, and deepest Drafts in NBA History. It featured 4 Franchise changing players and future Hall of Famers, as well as a litter of future All-Stars and solid Starters. This Class ranks right up there with the historic 1984 and 1996 NBA Draft Classes. Today we’ll take a look back at the 2003 NBA Draft and re-pick every Lottery selection. Team needs and best player’s available will be taken into account for this Re-Draft.
Be sure to check out my other NBA Re-Drafts:
2000
2001
2002
Please be sure to Follow The Sport Scientist Publication for more Articles where we breakdown Previous NBA Drafts. The Series will continue here:
Now, Let get into this 2003 NBA Re-Draft! | https://medium.com/the-sports-scientist/2003-nba-re-draft-re-picking-the-lottery-d756d1233770 | ['Jeffrey Genao'] | 2020-09-13 19:16:00.811000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'History', 'NBA', 'Data', 'Data Science'] |
No One Cares About Venezuela | Now, with that out of the way, let’s get to the actual topic. The crisis in Venezuela is a story I’ve been following for over a year. I understand that doesn’t exactly make me a historian on the matter, but still, I’ve read some stuff. Enough to know that what’s happening there isn’t quite what the media is making it out to be.
A humanitarian crisis of epic proportions is unfolding in Venezuela right now. That part you probably know already, and that should be your first tip-off that there’s much more to this story than just a dictator being mean to his people.
After all, the list of places where folks are in dire need of humanitarian aid can literally occupy an entire article unto itself, and in a lot of cases, those other crises outpace Venezuela in terms of both death toll and the likelihood that they’ll get much worse before they get better.
Or wait for them all to happen first then binge watch!
Nevertheless, the human rights crisis getting the most attention here in the US is Venezuela. Even Trump who, while campaigning, famously laughed off the same kind of abuses Venezuela is accused of, somehow finds it in his heart to worry about human rights when it comes to this one Latin American nation.
If you find that odd, that’s because it is odd. However, starting any discussion about America’s involvement in Venezuela with Trump is both unfair to Trump and too fair to the administrations that came before him.
In fact, read enough “explainer” articles about the crisis in Venezuela and you’ll find that they almost always start at a point that only tells part of the story. Generally, it’s sometime around when Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, when he started imposing currency controls in the early 2000s, or when Nicolas Maduro took over after Chavez died. That’s kind of like starting The Matrix right after Tre Styles’ dad explains everything to John Wick, if that makes sense.
From there you hear about the failure and foolishness of the currency controls Chavez put in place back in the day and how corruption is out of control and that people are eating garbage and slaughtering zoo horses for meat and, on top of all that, the government is jailing and maybe even executing political opponents and things will just get worse if Maduro stays in power.
Again, while all of these things are true or at the very least mostly true, starting there adds a seriously unfair slant to the Venezuela story. Specifically, it gives the impression that Venezuela was a once-rich nation brought to the brink of disaster solely through the irresponsible actions of the Chavez/Maduro regime. That’s disingenuous on two counts.
One, it ignores the part where Venezuela became one of the richest nations in the world under Chavez…
Trust Wikipedia for all your “charts about Venezuela’s GDP under Chavez” needs!
…and in a way that, at least at first, was highly beneficial to the poorest citizens in the country.
Two, it discounts the legitimate role that outside influences, including (and especially) the United States, have played in perpetuating and worsening the crisis. Media outlets tend to treat that suggestion, repeated frequently by the Venezuelan government, as if it’s just the conspiracy theory rantings of a disgraced tyrant. It’s not, and you don’t have to track down the Venezuelan wing of Infowars to find proof.
I sometimes think it’s fake anyway.
To understand that part, you should first know a little bit about the government of Venezuela before Chavez. With all the talk of dictatorships and repressive regimes that have ruled there since the tail end of the 20th century, you’d think the populace was flush with viable political candidates before Chavez rode his socialist horse into town and shot all his opponents in the face.
You’d be wrong. For the forty years prior to Chavez, the country was ruled by two parties, both consisting mostly of whites from the “elite” business class of Venezuelan society. Furthermore, these two parties ruled under something called the Puntofijo Pact, an agreement that eventually centralized power in the hands of those parties, Acción Democrática (AD) and COPEI (Social Christian Party), to the exclusion of most others.
“Sure, but at least the people had food to eat under that regime, right?” So glad you asked! No, at various points throughout history, lots of citizens did not. In fact, every mistake, hardship, and atrocity credited to the Chavez/Maduro tandem was present under that previous regime as well.
Just like Chavez, the political machine that ruled the previous four decades relied too heavily on oil revenue and, when prices dropped in the ’80s, the wheels fell off. At the behest of the International Monetary Fund, a series of austerity measures were put in place, and the people of Venezuela suffered mightily as a result. This must have been especially humiliating for voters who responded to then president Carlos Andrés Pérez’s populist campaign dismissals of the IMF being “a neutron bomb that killed people, but left buildings standing.”
There was plenty of oppression and violence as well, with the most notable incident being 1989’s Caracazo.
By that point, inflation in Venezuela was skyrocketing, the value of the currency had bottomed out, and people in the poorest areas of the country were having trouble finding food. It was from that under-represented segment of society that a protest over rising transportation costs started. Lots of others joined in shortly thereafter. When the people started attacking shops and stores looking for food, the military started shooting. Estimates put the number of protesters killed anywhere from 300 to 1,000.
Things definitely did not get better from there, so if you’re wondering how a “tyrant” like Hugo Chavez gains power, don’t wonder too hard. He was elected by the people in a legitimate, democratic election, mostly on the strength of running a populist campaign that appealed to citizens in the poorest parts of the country who felt they weren’t being represented by the candidates from the two ruling parties who’d been taking turns running/ruining things for decades.
Pretty crazy, huh? Can you even imagine voters in the United States making such a radical choice for president on those grounds? Of course you can. It should sound real damn familiar, because potential Russian meddling excluded, that’s pretty much how Trump got elected.
Let’s pause to say “hello” to all the mixed emotions that just joined us!
The ascent of Chavez to the Presidency ushered in the Bolivarian Revolution. It would take a few thousand more words to explain that in detail, so just know that it mainly boils down to one thing — privatization. The previous ruling class was very much in favor of privatization, which is basically code for “keeps American business interests in mind,” at least as it pertains to Latin America.
Chavez did the opposite. He focused on nationalization and a state-run economy and lessening American influence over Venezuelan affairs … exactly the kind of stuff the United States has felt justified in getting war-like over since at least back in 1904 when Teddy Roosevelt amended the Monroe Doctrine to say we have the right to police Latin America and put down any unpleasantness. The series of interventions we launched in the decades after that aren’t called “The Banana Wars” for nothing.
We lulled our enemies into thinking we weren’t a threat by carrying around that super cute flag!
Unsurprisingly, the opposition party and the business interests they represented, especially in the oil and gas industry, did not take kindly to this development. So much so that, in 2002, they attempted a coup. Chavez was removed by military force and a new president was sworn in. At that point, thousands of Chavez supporters (and people who were just angry at how he was removed from power) took over the state run television network to demand his return. Just 48 hours later, Chavez was back in office.
Here’s an important detail from the article I linked to in the previous paragraph. It notes that, prior to the coup attempt, snipers loyal to Chavez shot at the crowd and killed 16 people. You know what? That’s bad. Really bad. But keep reading and you’ll note that, when protests broke out over his ouster, the military shot dozens of protesters then as well. This is not a minor point, but I’ll put off talking about it more for just a bit.
In addition to surviving a coup, the early years of the Chavez reign was marked by obscene amounts of capital flight. That’s just what it sounds like: The capital you have as a country starts leaving your country en masse, to the detriment of your economy. This, at least in part, was a deliberate move by the opposition that often took the form of literally buying US dollars and moving them to offshore banks. The intent was to undermine the sweeping social reforms Chavez put in place, including a series of markets around the country where goods could be purchased at government-subsidized prices, making food readily available to countless citizens who had very little access to it previously.
Swish that around in your head a bit. One side loses an election, and their plan to regain power is to make sure people who are eating regularly for the first time in years go back to not eating regularly.
When that failed, they attempted a coup. When the coup failed, as mentioned previously, they shot at protesters before giving up.
This is the same opposition party we hope to bring back to power, with our state-sanctioned reasoning being that they’ll take better care of the Venezuelan people. Why? Because they’ve never wrecked the economy? Because they’ve never slaughtered protesters? They’ve done all of those things, and it wasn’t all that long ago.
Obviously, the “we” in the first sentence of that previous paragraph refers to the United States. We were never happy about Venezuela’s turn toward socialism, but things got significantly worse in 2007 when Chavez nationalized foreign oil company assets. Most companies operating in the country at the time accepted book value in return for their assets being taken. ExxonMobil did not. They wanted $6 billion in compensation. It went to trial. They lost and received significantly less. For the record, Rex Tillerson was the CEO of ExxonMobil at the time, and according to some sources, he’s held a grudge against Venezuela ever since. I suppose that part about Rex is just an unimportant side note. Moving on!
By that point, we’d already been funneling money and aid to Venezuelan opposition groups through a Washington-based NGO called Freedom House for a few years.
And we kept the receipts!
Even after the Chavez regime passed a law barring the US from sending aid to opposition groups, the money kept coming. Some sources put the amount we’ve spent to “promote democracy” in Venezuela at as much as $49 million since 2009.
Those are just a few of the extraordinary steps we’ve taken to intervene in that country’s economic and governmental affairs. Another was Obama’s 2015 Executive Order that labeled Venezuela a “serious threat to national security.” If that seems like a stretch, that’s because it definitely is, and a spokesman for the Obama administration admitted as much a few short weeks later.
Despite that admission, the order was extended in 2016 and definitely wasn’t among the Obama measures Trump overturned upon taking office. Quite the opposite, the current administration imposed five different waves of sanctions on Venezuela in 2017 alone and have since leveled up to threatening a full-on oil embargo if Maduro doesn’t step down.
Not to imply that this is anything more than coincidence, but it’s at least worth mentioning that everything in the above paragraph happened hot on the heels of the revelation that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. Maybe.
Are we trying to topple their government? Yes, we’re trying to topple their government. The head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, said exactly that back in July. More recently, Rex Tillerson floated the idea that a coup in Venezuela could happen soon.
None of this is meant to imply that Chavez and Maduro represent the “good” side here. The social programs they put in place definitely helped people, but eventually they also became more of a tool to wield influence and maintain power than anything. The currency controls they put in place to stop capital flight also created a wave of corruption that probably seemed a lot more sustainable in the early-to-mid 2000s when oil prices were through the roof, but much less so when those prices plummeted. That short-sightedness has been a disaster for the people of Venezuela. There’s no arguing that, as far as leadership goes, they could do a lot better.
However, to imply that our increased interest in that country’s affairs has anything to do with the suffering of the people is an obvious lie. We’ve been actively participating in that suffering through a combination of economic support for the opposition and sanctions, and mostly because we don’t like the regime the people elected in 1998.
It’s not about human rights. It’s never about human rights. The United States wants to return to the days when the people running Venezuela cared about our business interests, and restoring the old guard is the shortest route we can take to get there. If they were just as incompetent and corrupt as the government we want removed, that’s fine. We just need them to respect our business interests.
So what then? Should the United States just do nothing about what’s happening in Venezuela right now? Well, yeah, kinda. If nothing else, we could just stop doing what we’re doing now, which is imposing sanctions and funding the opposition. Doing nothing seems a lot more humane than continuing to do that.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for us to just throw in the towel, though. In fact, keep a close eye on the news for mentions of Venezuela over the next month, specifically. Chances are you’ll see quite a few.
Why? Because Venezuela just launched a bold scheme to fix their money woes by introducing their own cyrptocurrency called petro.
Invest now (if you want the Trump administration to sanction your rent money someday)!
Each coin is (in theory) backed by an actual barrel of oil and, according to the Venezuelan government, a slew of other nations have already agreed to accept petros in returns for their goods. Depending on who you believe, either the pre-sale (which launched on February 20th) has been a rousing success or the entire idea is a total sham. Either way, the ICO (initial coin offering) happens on March 20th.
If the plan is successful, it will allow Venezuela to trade oil for essential goods without ever involving the US dollar, thereby circumventing the same sanctions the United States has been using to choke them out. If it works for them, there’s no reason it couldn’t work for any number of other countries currently in the throes of the United States sanctions process.
What are the chances the US government just decides to sit idly by over the next few weeks and let Venezuela potentially become the model for how to beat oil sanctions? Not likely. If it starts looking like the petrocoin is going to provide a legitimate financial windfall to the nation of Venezuela, don’t be too surprised if that oil embargo follows shortly thereafter to make sure that windfall doesn’t last long enough to reach the people.
Again, none of this is to imply that the leadership of Venezuela is blameless in their current crisis. It’s just a heads up that we aren’t really the good guys either, and that if you’re buying the “human rights” excuse just because it’s coming from your side this time, you should be ashamed.
Demand better lies from your leaders, America. | https://medium.com/vandal-press/no-one-cares-about-venezuela-4626d8401631 | ['Adam Tod Brown'] | 2018-03-01 18:06:19.797000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Oil', 'Venezuela', 'Human Rights', 'Politics'] |
Top 3 vegan restaurants in Canada | Top 3 vegan restaurants in Canada
Vegans nationwide have proved their lifestyle is not just a fad, but travelling as one can be tricky with limited options to dine that support or cater to a plant-based diet.
Here are the top 3 vegan restaurants in Canada for innovative and tasty dishes.
Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash
For the best meatless comfort food on the West Coast, look no further than MeeT in Gastown. Their creative dishes and hip atmosphere will delight regardless of your dietary preferences or restrictions. From salads to burgers, mac and cheese bowls to dessert, MeeT offers a wide variety of plates guaranteed to satisfy every craving.
Photo by K8 on Unsplash
2. Positioned as a healthy solution for customers concerned about their well-being and the environment around them, Lov does just that by being local, organic and vegetarian. From sourcing fresh ingredients from local suppliers to recipes made 100% from scratch, you can feel great about dining at Lov. Stop by for lunch, dinner or brunch (on weekends), to enjoy salads, sandwiches and delectable mains that are all plant-based.
Photo by Juliana Kozoski on Unsplash
3. In the mood for Asian food? Padmanadi is the place to go. It offers traditional Chinese, Indian, Thai and Indonesian cuisine that is all plant-based and all delicious. Start with the Padmanadi platter to taste an assortment of vegan meats and choose from a wide variety of vegetable, vegetarian meat or tofu dishes for your main. Looking to truly indulge and sample the entire menu? Padmanadi offers monthly all-you-can-eat buffets for only $20. Check the buffet schedule on their website for the next date. | https://medium.com/@mistimaan9/top-3-vegan-restaurants-in-canada-371d911909c5 | ['Priyabrataa Ganguly'] | 2019-11-18 10:05:23.383000+00:00 | ['Vegan', 'Veg', 'Foodies', 'Canada', 'Restaurant'] |
How to Conduct an Effective Exit Interview? | How to Conduct an Effective Exit Interview?
Exit interviews are actually one of the last conversations employees have with the company. Try to make the best out of it Aviahire Follow Dec 17, 2020 · 4 min read
Exit interviews are actually one of the last conversations employees have with the company or HR professionals. Exit interviews are a way to make sure that the company ends the professional relationship with its employees on a good and lighter note. Listen to your employees carefully and fix the issues with your existing employees to have a happy workplace environment.
8 essential questions you must ask during an Exit Interview
It all comes to the questions you ask if you want honest feedback and valuable information from your exit interview.
1)Why did you start looking for another job?
Most of the employees will have a unique answer to this question. That’s because everyone starts looking to switch their jobs for different reasons. All you have to do is detect any common reason if there are any, and work on those insights
2)What’s the position of your new job that influenced you to leave?
This will help you to understand where your company is lacking. Is it because of lack of flexibility, lack of opportunities given to them, is it pay or benefits? This information can be used to pick up the slack where your company has fallen short.
3)What could we have done better for you?
The employees are mostly honest in their exit interviews. Make sure you utilize this to the fullest. This question will help to get the perfect advice from your employees. They may advise you with something which could reveal finer points for your work culture
4)Did you feel equipped with the job here?
With this question, you could get actionable information that you can immediately put into force. Also, this insight can help you to train your new hires and at the same time retain your employees.
5)Would you ever consider returning to this company?
Be ready for the follow-up question. If you get a yes, well good for you, that employee won’t give a bad review of your company. But if you get a no or maybe, your follow up question should be “ What circumstances can change your mind?”. Take those answers as a way to improve retention and keep your positions filled.
Questions you must NOT ask during an Exit Interview
Avoid asking questions about specific people, gossips, rumors, or any other personal questions.
1)Are you leaving the job because of your manager?
Do not ask them direct questions and don’t name anyone in particular. This makes the company look bad. Even if that manager is not the reason the employee might get doubts about that particular manager. So be careful and try to maintain the decorum of your office.
2)Is there anyone from the team who influenced you to make this decision?
Don’t try to weigh in any gossip or rumors during the interview. So be careful as it might affect the relationship of the existing employees.
3)Are you leaving the job because of your marriage? (or any other personal reason)
Avoid invading into someone’s private life. A question like this can irritate your employee and he might not answer further questions properly. You should get a true sense of exactly why your employees are leaving. In order to get great insight, it's better if you avoid asking these questions.
Best Practices of Exit Interview you need to keep in mind
Who should conduct the exit interview?
Mostly it’s the Hr professional conducting the exit interviews to maintain neutrality and privacy. This approach can lead to meaningful feedback which can help HR to implement appropriate strategies and policies for its employees and company.
When the exit interview should be conducted?
This is usually conducted a day before the official last day of work. That allows the HR to make interview notes, farewell, and follow up with the required documents and information can be done on the last day.
What to do with the information gathered from the exit interview?
After conducting the exit interview a few times, there are chances that there might be a recurring pattern of why employees are leaving the company. For example, if there are many employees leaving the same department it's an opportunity to find the root cause and stop that leak.
Benefits of conducting Exit Interviews
Increase retention
Once you identify and correct any negative trends you find, you should be able to increase employee engagement and satisfaction. Happier employees will lead to less turnover, saving valuable time and money for your company.
Uncovers real work environment
Unintentionally, management might not be creating the environment you want for your employees to work in. Asking more questions on the company’s work culture and employee satisfaction can give you a true sense of how employees feel about the work environment and help in improving the employee experience.
More accurate point of view
Many companies conduct surveys throughout the year on company morale and engagement. This is a great tool; however, the data could be inaccurate. Some employees may fear to be completely honest due to the possibility of backlash. Exit interviews allow departing employees an opportunity to share their honest opinion and thoughts without fear of retaliation.
Exit interviews are vital for an accurate assessment of employee views. Really effective exit interviews can give you insights and how you can increase good experiences; avoid and improve the bad experiences. It can be an effective way to understand employee experience and improve it. | https://medium.com/aviahire/how-to-conduct-an-effective-exit-interview-28b22e74e3e8 | [] | 2020-12-17 08:27:55.923000+00:00 | ['Employee Engagement', 'Exit Interview', 'Applicant Tracking System', 'HR', 'Employees'] |
Caste System in India: from the eyes of a Retired IPS Officer turned Social Activist | The caste system in India is the oldest surviving social hierarchy. India is as much a caste-based country as it is an agriculture-based country. The whole societal structure is based on castes and class — dating back to the four varnas system, i.e. the Brahmins (priests), the Kshatriyas (soldiers), the Vaisyas (traders) and the Shudras (labourers). A fifth category that falls outside the varna system is that of the untouchables or the Dalits. The varna system in the present has further been divided into thousands of castes of which the Dalits are the most oppressed and marginalized. The caste system has not developed because of the division of labour but the division of labourer. The occupations have been divided based on castes, and today they have been monopolized. Let’s say, if a lower caste person wants to start a tea stall, she/he will face much larger difficulties in comparison to a high caste person. In various places at tea stalls, we see, there are two different sets of glasses for the lower and higher caste people. In villages around Jhansi, even today lower caste people have to take off their shoes when they pass off the houses of higher caste people.
We discussed the caste system in India with Sarwan Ram Darapuri (78 years) who comes from Jalandhar district of Punjab and is a 1972 batch IPS officer of Uttar Pradesh Cadre. Post his retirement in 2003; he worked actively on the issues related to human rights, Dalit rights, RTI, Forest Rights Act etc. He is currently the state president of Mazdoor Kisan Manch, founder member of Dr Ambedkar Mahasabha and the national spokesperson of All India Peoples Front.
Mr Darapuri cited various instances that highlight the oppression and discrimination faced by the Dalits and lower caste people. During his posting as an IPS officer in Gorakhpur, he experienced this problem for the first time as he mentions that during his visit some people were sitting on the ground and some were sitting on the benches. He was told that those sitting on the ground are from lower castes. This is an irony; as the institutions that are supposed to bring an end to the problem are themselves practising it.
Post his retirement; he came across a case from Hardoi district in Uttar Pradesh related to land ownership. During the 1970s a Dalit family was given land, but they were not allowed to occupy or cultivate on this land because of the exploitations from local people. He intervened and sat on dharnas with the victim family, and after 34 years of oppression, they got their rightful land. Another issue was of a village where the newly elected Gram Pradhan was from the Dalit community, but he could not take his office. He could not work as per his duties as the previous Pradhan who was a non-Dalit didn’t hand over the registers and overall charge to him. Mr Darapuri and other activists intervened and fought for the rights of the Dalit Pradhan.
In 2018, he came across a typical case of casteism in Lucknow. Based on an order issued by the Supreme Court, the state governments had to ensure that people from socially backward castes are hired to cook mid-day meals in schools for children to eradicate caste-based discrimination. In a school, 70 out of the 76 enrolled students refused to eat the meal as a Dalit woman prepared it. The parents of the children also protested against the lower caste woman for cooking food for their children. Mr Darapuri demanded a probe in this incident and fought against the exploitation faced by the Dalit woman.
Based on his experience, he mentions that a very small effort is required to bring a change and the society should come forward to resolve the issues related to caste-based discrimination or any other form of discrimination based on gender, colour, creed, sexual orientation etc. For long, we have seen that education is being vouched as the way to eradicate this issue. But it needs to be augmented with experiences related to social transformation as the society cannot be changed without bringing up social equality.
In India, Dalit politics and the Dalit movements have long been limited to saving reservations in government jobs and the victory of Dalit leaders has been considered the success of Dalit politics. It is no misnomer to say that even if a Dalit becomes a Prime Minister, the Dalits cannot be uplifted easily. The benefits will be passed on only to the Dalit leaders who will get political power and the Dalit labourers, and landless farmers will continue to face the oppression and never-ending poverty. Therefore, Dalit politics and activists must be transformed so that they work in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the lower caste people.
(About Author: Siddharth Modi is a Management Student at IIM Ahmedabad)
(Interviewed by: Siddharth Modi, Bibhu Agarwal, Samhitha Syamala) | https://medium.com/@siddharthmodi/caste-system-in-india-from-the-eyes-of-a-retired-ips-officer-turned-social-activist-2b5c54e0c17 | ['Siddharth Modi'] | 2020-12-24 10:51:01.276000+00:00 | ['Social Activism', 'Dalits', 'Caste Discrimination', 'Social Change', 'India'] |
Flutter Fair: A new package used to update widget tree dynamically | Flutter Fair
Why create Flutter Fair?
Dynamic feature is almost mentioned in every cross-platform framework. From traditional Web/H5 to React Native, many mobile products depend on dynamic ability to dispatch new features or bug fix. And some team use RN rather than Native, just because RN pages can be updated through remote bundle files.
However this case is not possible for Flutter as it can violate the AppStore’s review guidelines. And the Flutter team has removed code push from its roadmap for 2019: Code Push / Hot Update / out of band updates #14330
Flutter Fair is aimed to update widget tree without code push. This bring us the ability to dispatch new UI widgets/pages. We take control of how to generate widget tree with bundle files. After widgets are constructed, they will be rendered by Flutter engine. These dynamic widgets/pages can also work with predefined BLOC component inside Flutter App.
Prototype exploration
In order to design the Fair package, we did some prototype exploration to make sure we can handle this. Including community research to find valuable resources.
If you have already read the Flutter documents, you may known that Flutter pipeline has several stages. There are three trees related to UI:
Widget tree
Element tree
RenderObject tree
All we need to do is generate the widget tree in a proper way, then leave it to Flutter itself.
To make a dynamic widget, we use json structure to describe the widget configuration. In Flutter, we declare UI with nested widgets layer, this make json reasonable and quite simple.
Here is a ListView constructed by json description.
ListView demo preview
JSON description:
{
"className": "ListView.builder",
"na": {
"itemBuilder": "#(bizColorLabelBuilder)",
"itemCount": 50
}
}
Dart source code:
ListView.builder(
itemBuilder: bizColorLabelBuilder,
itemCount: 50,
);
In this demo, we’ve finally figure out three things:
JSON based definition of DSL bundle Variable reference in Widget parameters Widget convertor used to construct a Widget from JSON
Fair — Flutter over the air
Our demo is still far away from stable package. So we need to think more about what feature is required if we wish to make a useable flutter package.
I/O definition
Our main purpose is to deliver widgets description as bundle file, so it can be update through local assets or URI resource.
Input to Output
From the developer’s point of view, we hope that the developer will be aware of the development changes as little as possible. The use of Fair should be transparent in details as much as possible. This requires that we provide a middleware (compiler) to implement this “transparent action”.
In the perspective of Flutter, we need to correctly identify the products of the convention format. This requires that we provide a DartVM capable parser (runtime) that does “run” the artifacts.
From the App perspective, we need to manage artifacts, such as loading, persistence, version control, etc. This requires us to provide a set of back-end product management system and mobile loading system.
According to the I/O relationship from different perspectives, we can plan several modules coarse-grained：
The Fair Plugin: responsible for loading, parsing, and finally displaying the bundle in the form of flutter.
Fair Binding Tool: assists with build tools that provide automated transformation capabilities.
Fair Manager Server: simple Resource management service.
Fair Manager API: Android/iOS side and services used with it
modules of Fair
Hands on Fair SDK
Before moving on to the technical details of Fair, let’s take a look at how to use the SDK. The recommended access posture is as follows: wrap the App in a FairApp component, and you can have fun with all the other widgets:
FairApp Widget
In FairApp, each dynamic page is a FairWidget that can provide a “bundle” with input:
FairWidget(
path: 'assets/bundle/lib_page_dynamic_widget.fair.bin',
data: {'content': 'Red Box'},
)
Where did this bin come from? The bin resource is a product that Fair can identify, which can be understood as a bundle. It can be written by hand or generated automatically through Fair. To turn a ready-made Flutter page into a bundle, you need to add an annotation:
Add the @FairPatch annotation to the target page Add the @FairWell annotation to the data object
Red box sample
Currently, not all Flutter widgets can be converted painlessly with one click. Fair supports transformation of layout classes by default, which requires no logical operations in the build. If there is logic, you need to manually encapsulate or provide the proxy binding object.
Fair architecture
Flutter Fair is evolved from prototype, many external APIs has changed many times in the early stage of development, until they gradually converged and stabilized in the later stage. In the coding process, we need to consider the final effect. The package cannot be arbitrary as in the prototype, we have been convergent parameters to improve readability.
The Fair package can be rendered in a plain structure diagram, with the front and back servers removed, there are three pieces:
Fair Architecture
In the “runtime” section, it includes the bundle resource loader, the parser, and the component agent layer. The “compiler” section is not like a language compiler. Fair Compiler is a compilation tool based on the build runner mechanism of the Flutter. It is mainly used to generate binding and bundle for dart code.
Version compatibility
Everyone who developed Flutter knows that the Flutter version iterates very fast, so it’s worth thinking about how to do a good job of version compatibility.
Some tech teams may have been developed early and used an “older version” such as 1.17.x. As of this writing (2020.11.03), the stable version of flutter is 1.22.x now. Although Fair’s API rarely uses a version-specific API, but in order to implement dynamic components, we had to generate a component map in advance, which is a product of full coupling with the flutter version.
The flutter was 1.20.x when we developed it, so we generated the flutter component of this version by default. To accommodate the multiple versions, we extract the version sensitive logic into a fair_version library.So once flutter releases a new stable version, we can quickly generate a new corresponding fair_version.
# Switch to another stable flutter version
dependency_overrides:
fair_version:
git:
url: https://github.com/wuba/fair.git
ref: master
path: fair_version/flutter_1_12_13
Widget mapping
By writing the component mapping table, Fair can support more widgets, either from the Flutter framework or from three-party components.
For example we customized a CustomTag component that needed to generate the binding mapping component and we also wanted to generate additional mapping components for the package component of the convex_bottom_bar community. You can do this:
Custom Widget
The generated code snippet is as follows:
Generated mapping code
Bundle generation
In order to achieve seamless integration, our goal is to support the generation of business bundles directly from the Flutter layout. Using the build_runner mechanism, we can nicely combine the bundle build with project Flutter. So ideally, all the developer has to do is add the annotations, and then the flutter compiler will generate the artifacts for you.
DSL & AST
I guess those of you reading so far are really interested in Flutter. These two nouns are very common, and both are general concepts that have nothing to do with language:
DSL : Domain Specific Language
AST: Abstract Syntax Tree
In Flutter Fair, DSL is the expression of our intermediates, and AST is the expression of our primary products for analysis.
In Fair Complier, we have designed a layer of Fairc, which is an important part of an auxiliary compilation tool that provides DSL generation capabilities based on the AST to help developers quickly generate DSL bundles and Proxy files from source code. Here is a brief introduction to the practical use of Fair.
The idea of DSL generation is shown in the figure above, which is to generate CustomAST from the source code through fair_ast_get, and then CustomAST through fair_dsl_gen to generate the target Fair DSL. Let’s look at the overall workflow of the converter.
First of all, we abstract the syntax nodes of 100+ into identifiers, literals, expressions and syntax blocks, and the other five classes, including 30+ kinds of commonly used nodes. At the same time, we strip away the information irrelevant to business parsing, and only retain the key information in the original Node. Makes node resolution clearer.
The original syntax tree has a large amount of data, and the Visitor schema is not convenient for us to deal with the business in context, so we need to simplify and construct our own syntax tree to facilitate our subsequent processing
Next
The Flutter Fair package is a little exploration on Flutter dynamic update. The project is currently under review, it will be open source soon.
You may follow the Github repository bellow to keep updated✌️:
The package document about Flutter Fair has already been published for preview.
The original document is mandarin, and translation is on the way. Sorry for not providing whole English version, any i18n translation will be appreciated!!😁 | https://hacktons.medium.com/flutter-fair-a-new-package-used-to-update-widget-tree-dynamically-98f6f94cb2bf | ['The Flutter Fair Author'] | 2020-12-18 08:57:31.213000+00:00 | ['Dynamics', 'Flutter', 'Code Push', 'Widget', 'Flutter Fair'] |
Battling Resentment in 3 Steps | Our stories are different yet we all walk through times of inevitable hurt and resentment. You feel alone, crushed and even consumed. You consume yourself in anger and negativity until those feelings become the way you carry yourself. They guide you through your day, your coffee tastes a bit more bitter and the sky is a bit less blue. Feelings of resentment lead you to deeper waters, you are no longer scared of the dark because feeling alone becomes the norm. The unfairness you felt when someone hurt you, captivates you into a world of grief and hate. Your days turn into question marks and you live your days searching for the answers. Resentment lives on both of your shoulders, you feel heavy and tired almost everyday. At night, as you dream of dancing under red skies, betrayal takes your hand and all you feel is hurt. Resentment is powerful and when she arrives, she brings friends. Her friends bring, “Anger” and “Hate” to the party and with all these guests, you feel more alone than ever. Until you’re ready, you allow yourself to drown in these emotions because you’re allowed to feel hurt but the amount of time you let it control you, is up to you.
Apologize
I know what you’re thinking, “I am the one who deserves an apology! Who am I apologizing to?”. Apologize to yourself. Apologize for the sleepless nights and confusing thoughts that clouded your mind. Apologize to yourself for, as a result of someone treating you poorly, you walk with a little less conviction and confidence with each step. Apologize for the hate you carry like a 55LB backpack on your back. While staring back at your reflection, apologize to yourself for all the hurt someone else caused you. Apologize for the unknown, the closure you may never receive, and the reasoning you many never know. Do this as many times as it takes for you to start remembering to believe in yourself.
2. Permission
Allow yourself to ditch the backpack. Today is the day you realize, you are carrying 55LBS too many. Grant yourself the freedom of accepting an apology that came from you. Acknowledge your opportunity for growth and, if you have to, convince yourself that you are worthy of that growth. Forgiveness within yourself is the most expensive form. Take the time to realize that with forgiveness you are granting yourself permission to learn. If forgiveness feels unobtainable, try again. It is difficult and you are not going to heal on anyones schedule but your own. Sometimes an explanation of why something happened may not excuse the hurt and bitterness you feel. There isn’t a way to reverse time, we can only continue to analyze and gain understanding from it. Oftentimes, your pain is silent to others. Only you can hear it and its deafening. You may feel it is difficult to concentrate and no one can hear you. There are no magic words that will take away any hurt someone has caused you but as long as you never turn a deaf ear to yourself, you are progressing. You may feel like you are screaming out into an empty void but just know, if you close your eyes and listen to your own screams, hear them echo in a distance, it means you’re alive. You are allowed to feel hurt and you are allowed to scream, but within these screams, you must listen to yourself. Dissect every word your are screaming and understand why you are screaming. This is how you form your apologies to yourself.
REPEAT IF NECESSARY .
3. Give thanks
This is your time to thank yourself for growing through the rain and blossoming. Thank yourself for your own patience and devotion. You are alive and you are stronger than any other point in your life. You are a warrior and you have learned healing may not come easy but you set yourself to accomplish it. Say, “thank you” for each apology you gave yourself and for the weeks, months, or years it took you to forgive. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. You are a sponge, you consume every moment of each day. Whether it be good or bad, you are walking into each day ready to consume it. Be mindful of the energy you are using and the feelings you are feeling. Thank yourself for the emotions, the opportunity for growth, the sadness, the anger, the hatred, but most importantly, the love. Thank yourself for the moment you decided to love and heal yourself. There is no validation for this, no round of applause or standing ovation but within, you know you saved yourself from the hate and hurt that clouded your mind. You are the one who turned on the light switch and you decide how to move forward in your life. No more dark clouds and bitter coffee. You have picked up the wounded parts of yourself and created art. You are art. Continue to walk with conviction because you deserve it.
This is a conversation you may not be ready to have with yourself. There is no race, start slow and go at your own pace. Remember not to forget who is in charge. You grant yourself the permission to move forward. You may have to dance alone but the guests you once danced with, are no longer welcome. Your heart has a door, you must remember those who wish to enter must knock first. This will not be easy, you may have to repeat, “Step 1” a few times before you can move forward and that is okay. Nothing is set in stone, repeat any step until you feel comfortable enough to move forward. | https://medium.com/@daisywrites/battling-resentment-in-3-steps-7cd93ff46226 | ['Daisy G'] | 2020-12-22 21:10:59.371000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Relationships', 'Self Improvement', 'Personal Growth', 'Personal Development'] |
Where’s my Budget Pizza -A case study | A easier/better classification for this article is to have:
Urban: 1, 2 and 3 levels
Suburban: 4 and 5 levels
Rural: 6, 7 and 8 levels ( level 9 rarely has any fast food available, so excluded)
For the test purposes, I’ll be scraping the various pizza and bread prices from Little Caesars (referred as LC hereafter) in various counties in California.
There are some underlying assumptions in this study:
1. Little Caesars prices are representative of all fast-food prices
2. All counties have same number of accessible LC stores near them and some stores, which may be repeated, do not distort the mean
3. There are no external contributions for the price differences except the business model requiring it to change the price. For example, if some counties have unique taxes, they won’t be accounted for in this study. (may or may not be true, as it’s only added to the final price)
Getting the Data:
So, getting the data has been a little tricky for this case study. We wanted to compare the prices in each county and for that, we need the classification of counties into the RUCC levels described above. The available Census data gives us data as described below.
We have 58 counties classified into several RUCC levels. The data has the classification but how do we link it to the counties and get the zip codes associated. We only have FIPS codes here. The zip codes are needed to extract the nearest LC stores for each county and each county has multiple zip codes.
So, after looking for data from simple google search for conversion excel sheet, we can associate zip codes to FIPS codes [ Data available in github]. And it looks something like this:
So, once we combine these two tables and filtering for California counties, we get the following data:
The next step is to extract the pizza prices, and for that, we need store IDs for each store. Upon investigating the LC website, and finding the right URL we get the store IDs using the following code for each zip code. [ Code in Github link]
Note: A single store can be accessible to multiple zip codes, for those along the border of the counties or within 5 to 10 miles, the stores from other county will still show up. But, the cases are negligible to distort the price differences.
Using these store ids, we can now extract the prices suing the following code.
[ Code in Github link]
Now, by grouping using the RUCC codes and calculating the mean, we get the following data. Note that there are no stores in Type 9 RUCC, since the population is less than 2500, which is not really going to bring any kinds of profits.
It’s hard to interpret using the table above. So, here’s a simple plot:
If you assumed that rural prices will be cheaper, that’s partly right, but the key takeaway is that prices are costly in counties of classification type 5 and 6, which are:
5 = Urban population of 20,000 or more, not adjacent to a metro area
6 = Urban population of 2,500 to 19,999, adjacent to a metro area
So, Is this the inflection point for prices to change? Or the bigger question is,
Is the difference significant enough between these county types?
In order to answer that question, we may need to step into Statistics for a bit.
So, to reiterate, we have the Mean prices as follows:
Here, we can choose to do various kinds of test, but the two important ones are:
1. Compare prices between RUCC type 1 to type 5
2. Compare prices between RUCC type 1 to type 8
Following the above Statistical test design, We formulated the hypothesis in the beginning. Designed the test and gathered data by collecting the pizza prices. Now, choosing a statistical test, since the data we have is an item (pizza menu items) that we are comparing across two sample groups (pizza prices for different locations), we can use Paired t-Test and not unpaired because we are measuring the same item prices. Like all hypothesis tests, the Paired t-Test starts with two hypotheses, the null and the alternate. In the case of the paired t-Test, they are based on the difference in each pair.
H0 (Null Hypothesis): Mean difference (Type 1 — Type 5) = 0
H1 (Alternate Hypothesis): Mean difference (Type 1 — Type 5) != 0
Let’s compute the price differences:
After doing the paired t-Test, we get the following results:
P-value and statistical significance:
The two-tailed P value equals 0.0037 By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be very statistically significant. Confidence interval: The mean of RUCC 1 minus RUCC 5 equals -1.7420 95% confidence interval of this difference: From -2.5369 to -0.9471 Intermediate values used in calculations: t = 6.0843 df = 4 standard error of difference = 0.286
Now, there’s one more way to do the paired t-Test, combine the metro areas (RUCC 1, 2 and 3) and non-metro areas (RUCC 4 to 8). Here are the results for such a test:
P-value and statistical significance:
The two-tailed P value equals 0.0044 By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be very statistically significant. Confidence interval: The mean of Metro minus Non-Metro equals -1.0060 95% confidence interval of this difference: From -1.4865 to -0.5255 Intermediate values used in calculations: t = 5.8124 df = 4 standard error of difference = 0.173
Conclusion
The answer to the question, whether price difference across counties differ based on population size is Yes, they vary and it’s cheaper in densely populated and costlier in sub urban areas and that difference is significant enough.
It gets costlier in the sub-urban areas to live if it’s any indication of purchase parity for these growing areas. There might be n number of reasons for why this happens, cost of having lesser population on profits, sub urban areas having similar rents to urban areas and many others. The reason needs its own study someday.
Furthermore, in this case study, I did not include the price after taxes and taxes vary based on county. I presume the tax difference is about 10 cents and not big enough to change the results.
Relevant links:
Code is available here: https://github.com/ashabhi101/pizza-price-comparison
Data from: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural.html | https://medium.com/@bokkaabhilash/wheres-my-budget-pizza-cb6b40fe95cf | ['Abhilash Bokka'] | 2020-12-24 16:29:13.804000+00:00 | ['Statistics', 'Python', 'Web Scraping', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Visualization'] |
A Guide to Coping With Uncertainty | At the best of times, life is crazy. It’s like a rollercoaster — up, down, and it also has the occasional corkscrew to throw you completely out of whack.
We all crave stability and security, but in reality, life never operates quite as steadily as we’d like it do. We’re always being hit by curveballs, and no matter how many plans we try and make, things always seem to get muddled up.
This time two years ago, I was finally ready to enter the world of adulthood and leave home to study in a city I loved alongside my wonderful girlfriend.
Now, I’m working freelance in my hometown. That wonderful girlfriend, still just as wonderful, has terminal cancer. And, despite all of my reservations about going to university, I’m in the process of applying to enrol next year.
Everything has changed, and it’s still changing. Mulling over this year’s events with my good friend over a coffee shop yesterday morning, he came out with the following:
‘Man, things are going to be so different in a year from now. Think about how much can change in a year — how much has changed in a year. Isn’t it exciting?’
I hummed in silence, sipped my coffee and thought about it. Everything will be different, I thought. But I’m not sure if exciting is the right word.
Life Turbulence
For me, life has been pretty turbulent recently. All of our lives get turbulent from time-to-time — even for those amongst us with stable jobs, nuclear families and expensive pension schemes.
See, when we sit and imagine our futures, we tend to think of the progression of our lives as linear. First, we’ll study here. Then we’ll apply to work there. Then we’ll get married. And then we’ll work our way up until we have enough money to move our family to Sardinia and drink sangria until we’re old and grey.
In reality, though, life never quite pans out the way we imagine it to. This past year has certainly proven that to me.
I’ve been with my fiancé for more than six years. I’d always pictured us getting married at some point in our future, moving away to study, getting jobs and finally starting a family together in our own house. Now, that dream has been shattered into a million pieces.
And yet, despite all expectations, I’m okay. I’m coping well. I’ve accepted the situation, and I’ve accepted that this is all just part of the turbulence of life. Instead of jumping ship and drowning, I’ve learned to ride the waves.
As Leo Babauta put it,
‘If we can learn to ride the rolling uncertainty of our lives like a wave, staying open each moment to what unfolds, we can live without as much stress and anxiety, and just be present to what is happening.’
Riding the Waves of Life
When I received the news about Charlotte’s cancer, I was devastated. Crippled. Everything I’d ever cared about — my work, health and career prospects, dwindled into utter insignificance.
For the first two weeks of hospital visits, I was living on bacon sandwiches and espresso. Days before, I was a vegetarian that hated coffee.
Everything important to me paled into obscurity. Nothing else mattered. All I wanted was to return to the happy times when Charlotte was in full health and happily studying at university.
I lived in that dream for a long time. I’d stay up until 3am most nights researching cancer, nutrition and just about anything that might reverse the changes that life was imposing upon me.
While I believed wholeheartedly in what I was doing, and still do stand by the fact that there’s far more to cancer treatment than what our doctors have to offer, I couldn’t hide from the fact that I was living in denial. I was trying to save her.
It took me a long time to accept that change. Still now I cling to the hope that Charlotte will make it through all of this and that we can return to pursuing our happy future together. But I’ve also accepted that that might not happen. And instead of dwelling on it, or on our past, I’m focusing on now.
This Moment is All We Have
People often ask me how I’ve coped so well with the situation I’m in. My answer is that I don’t really think about coping. I don’t wake up each morning and decide to cope.
I wake up each morning and I get out of bed. I get dressed. I eat, shower and brush my teeth. I work. And I spend time with Charlotte doing the things we love.
The past and the future aren’t on my list of things to worry about. I no longer dwell on the prospect of losing my fiancé, but I accept that whatever will be will be, and wherever I am in a year from now, I’ll be ready to cope with that particular situation when the time comes.
See, in reality, this moment is the only moment that we have. The past and the future don’t really exist. The past is just a memory of previous versions of this moment, and the future is a projection of what future versions of this moment will look like.
Whatever is happening to us, we’re still the same pair of eyes. The same awareness. The same human being looking out at the world around us.
What most of us don’t realise is that life isn’t about our achievements. It isn’t about our future. It isn’t about our past. Our life, if we were to remove our thoughts, would only ever be this moment in its entirety. And becoming fully part of it is the key to staying sane amidst a world of constant change.
Alan Watts put it best,
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
How to Cope With Change
My friend’s father lost his dad to bowel cancer when he was around my age. After the event, he took to reading hundreds of books and studying the nature of cancer as much as possible so as to prevent it from consuming his life or that of his future family — much like myself.
The night of Charlotte’s diagnosis, I went straight to that friend’s house. His father and I sat talking until the early hours in the morning about everything I might be able to do to help my fiancé recover.
After some time, he stopped. He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Adrian, as much as I encourage you to do all you can to help Charlotte, please try your best to accept the severity of the situation you’re in. It’s not looking good, and accepting that will allow you to cope. Denying it will only hurt more.’
Hearing that really put things in perspective. Rather than asking him how to cure cancer, I decided to ask him how he managed to cope with the situation he was in all those years ago.
He considered my question some time. Then, looking out of the rain-smattered window beside us, he said,
‘I’m not sure if I ever really did cope. I just kept living. I kept breathing. And eventually, like a piece of driftwood lost at sea, I washed up back on the shore.’
We’re all like pieces of driftwood, and life is like the sea. It has waves. Sometimes those waves are small, and sometimes they’re large enough to wipe us out entirely.
We can’t prevent those waves from breaking. No matter how much we think about them or plan for them, their impact will never soften. The waves of life will never stop flowing.
Knowing this — accepting that struggle is a fundamental part of life on earth, is a huge step that all of us need to take if ever we wish to handle change.
For as long as I continued denying Charlotte’s situation, I was miserable. I couldn’t cope. As soon as I accepted that rough seas may indeed be on the horizon, I wasn’t resisting anymore.
I wasn’t fighting the situation. I could just be present, allowing whatever would come to be to be and sailing through the turbulence of life.
The Takeaway
Many of us wish to become better at dealing with change, but the cause to our inability to do so lies in the question. We can’t ‘become better’ at dealing with change, we can only become better at focusing on this moment.
I know it sounds cliché, but often clichés are awarded their title because they deserve it.
When trying to focus on this moment, we’re forced to accept reality. We have no choice but to agree that things are the way they are, and that we might not be able to change that.
Sure, there are elements of our lives that we can change and should work to adjust — like our productivity levels, health and wellbeing. But we can’t change what happens to us. All we can do is change our response.
And, after a year of living what’s felt more like a nightmare than it has a life, I’ve realised that the best response we can have to the turbulence of life is to accept it. To accept the way things are and to root our awareness in this moment.
Unless we do that, the waves will continue to knock us off our feet. Mindfulness is like a surfboard, and the best way we can all begin to navigate change is by learning to surf.
Before You Leave
I run a daily newsletter The Daily Grind where I send out tips to creatives and entrepreneurs about success, wellbeing, goal-setting and honing their craft.
If that sounds like you, follow this link to sign up. | https://adriandrew.medium.com/a-guide-to-coping-with-uncertainty-d3c6ea4df1c | ['Adrian Drew'] | 2019-07-10 18:01:01.175000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons'] |
The Bollywood Nepotism Debate is Unnecessary: It’s time we moved on | Let me put it out there, ladies and gentlemen. This whole public outcry about nepotism in Bollywood is outright misplaced. I know that’s a controversial statement to make. After all, we have listened to the myriad stories about this sinister Bollywood Mafia and its nexus with a Drug Cartel which is apparently more clandestine in operations than those in Mexico and Columbia. An evil nexus of such order thrives in Bollywood and is abetted by rich patrons, we are told. Apparently, the raison d’etre of this secret nexus is to shun ‘outsiders’ from moving up the hierarchy of fame and success, thus maintaining a status quo that perpetuates the prowess of powerful Bollywood ‘insider’ families — the Khans, the Kapoors, the Bhatts, and so on. Irrespective of its truthfulness (or lack thereof), thanks to our Media Moguls and a few prominent Bollywood faces, this narrative did become compelling enough to add some flavor to our household dinner conversations and some color to our lives in the otherwise abysmal year that 2020 has been. That this episode of (non)fiction had to unfold on the pyre of a promising young actor deceased in his prime, is nothing short of a travesty.
However, ladies and gentlemen, today I won’t talk about Sushant Singh Rajput or the circumstances of his death. Neither do I intend to investigate the verity of the claims around the existence of this drug cartel. I am not the CBI, the NCB, or the media. I would, instead, like to ponder about this debate around ‘nepotism’ in the context of the movie business — why does it exist? Who is responsible for it? Is it at all worthy of the hype that it has been conferred over the last several months? If these questions interest you, grab your coffee, and read on. But while you do, let us first understand the business of Cinema in India - particularly in the context of Bollywood. | https://medium.com/@shubhamgoswami-87814/on-the-cartels-the-mafia-and-the-nepotism-kids-of-bollywood-a1db7a56abf3 | ['Shubham Goswami'] | 2020-12-26 17:31:56.055000+00:00 | ['Bollywood', 'Netflix', 'Nepotism', 'Cinema', 'Sushant Singh Rajput'] |
Top 3 Things to Survive as an Accidental Homeschooler in a Pandemic | Heading into my Week 2 of officially homeschooling two kids, I was starting to feel confident about how things were going. My kids were slowly accepting the new routine and more importantly, to me, I was managing somehow to maintain some semblance of sanity and grounding about the whole process.
When exchanging updates with fellow parents on how it was going, I quipped:
Thing #1) Keep your expectations and standards LOW.
Some of you may have a laugh at this but I couldn’t be more adamant about how this has maintained my sanity over the last couple of weeks and admittedly something I came to learn the hard way when my son started to refuse to go to school almost 6 months ago now. When I started to delve into the idea of homeschooling I became completely overwhelmed at the idea of what it was, the hours and skills I needed to employ and the sheer determination and persistence to make it work. This was fed by my “hope” to somehow compensate for the fact that my child was no longer getting a formal education and the responsibility of him getting that solely rested on me. (Ugh, sounds heavy just saying that out loud). But here’s the kicker — which I learned by trial and error: When I prioritized the relationship with him over the outcome and productivity, learning was always a natural by-product. On the days I didn’t do this (namely became task-orientated, or in my anxiety over how much he was “behind”), no learning was to be had.
You, the reader, may also be cringing when I say “standards low”. As a former 4.0 GPA Honour Roll and Valedictorian student I couldn’t be doing more of an about face on my value for education. However let me emphasize that this doesn’t mean that I’m subscribing to accept sub-standard learning, lack of initiative or self — agency. I’ve noticed how I need not worry about any of the latter from coming to fruition when I focus on the PROCESS rather than the PRODUCT. Yes, my perfectionist tendencies are having a near panic-attack (that’s been a whole other process internally for me to let go of!) Yet time and again, I see how much more resilient my own kids are when I manage to let go of getting things right, doing it perfectly or how everyone else might be doing it. Staying curious to their own process, making space for their own path and accepting their emotional process that goes along with mistakes or frustrations has been a better investment developmentally for my kids. And grown myself up in a way I never thought possible.
However, staying curious to the process and allowing room for their own path, has NOT been possible without my own lessons in in being completely PRESENT to where I am at any given moment when I’m with them.
Thing #2) Stay in the NOW, meeting your kids exactly wherever they’re at and don’t make the now into a bigger story than what it just IS.
If that sounds a bit Eckhart Tolle it’s because it is. I laughed with him in his recent post on Youtube in which he talks about how we suffer from becoming attached to the thoughts which follow what something is. In the case with homeschooling that has looked a bit like this: one kid is screaming at me to help them with the conferencing app they’re still trying to figure out; the other kid is literally jumping off the furniture and wreaking mayhem when he’s supposed to be filling in a volcanoes worksheet and the the dog is losing his mind outside barking and trying to attack a delivery guy. The following thought ensues: “This is beyond ridiculous — this is impossible! I should just give this dog away and let the kids watch movies for the rest of the day…who am I kidding thinking I could do this???…. blah blah blah …(more self-pity tempered with self-attack)…. blah blah blah.” The scenario described is by no means pleasant. It sucks.
The suffering comes when I FOLLOW my negative thought process.
On my good days: I can zoom back and maybe even laugh a little at the sitcom nature of it. This buys me enough emotional space to think on my feet and simultaneously download another version of my daughter’s app while creatively distracting my son by pretending his dinosaurs want to learn about volcanoes and he needs to teach them (whilst giving up on the dog and letting him bark his head off — to keep social distancing from others of course).
On my bad days….well, that leads me to my last thing (and just because it’s last doesn’t mean it’s the least important — in fact it probably is the MOST important of all three of these things) here:
Thing #3) ALWAYS put the oxygen mask on YOU first.
We’re not talking just about in emergency situations — it applies too in the midst of homeschooling your kids at home (AND while you’re still trying to work from home AND somehow also look after yourself.) When my son was refusing school and exhibiting extreme aggression from anxiety, I learned the hard way that without taking care of my own needs I was NOT able to be the mother that he needed me to be nor did I have the ongoing patience and stamina that was required to hold space for him day in and day out. I put myself on the road to burnout. Until I began to make time for my own emotional needs (eg. with my own therapy sessions) or even basic needs (eg. showering or exercise) it wasn’t possible to sustain being the steady patient presence that my son desperately needed.
Fast forward to today and I recognize that same impending doom of overwhelm whilst homeschooling TWO kids now. Today it actually hit me by surprise — after the crazy morning as described above (with kudos for finding my way through that, sanity intact, kids and dog still alive) — I meant to take a “break’ from the kids when my husband returned home from work late afternoon. But my daughter insisted to make marshmallows for our weekly bonfire tomorrow and I thought I could do this while simultaneously starting dinner. I should have taken the break.
Burners going, sugar spluttering on the stove, mixer screaming and food processor whirring, I wave at the pot of water on the stove (meant to be a double boiler) and signal my daughter to put the bowl of dissolved gelatin on it. I don’t see her dump the entire contents of the bowl into the simmering pot of undetermined amount of water — now diluting the gelatin and essentially ruining the marshmallow mix. I gasp; I see the look of alarm in her eyes and blurt out ,”I should’ve been watching you — this is my bad”, run to the bathroom and collapse on the floor in howling sobs.
Mini-breakdown* ensues -very similar to the one I had on my really bad days with my son several months back. This is what happens when I forget to put the oxygen mask on first. Taking that break would’ve been doing just that. But a curious thing happens in the middle of it.
*Taking a break instead of staying with the kids would have been one way of putting on the oxygen mask but since I was past that point, the kindest thing to do in that moment is to accept where I am (see Thing #2)
Suddenly, I realize how grateful I am to be CRYING and to finally be letting out tears — not for the ruined marshmallows (well, okay, partly for them, as I realized I wouldn’t be able to find gelatin on the cleaned-out grocery store shelves any time soon to make more) but really started to cry (blessed tears of futility) for EVERYTHING happening: for the insanity of the situation we find ourselves in as parents, for the losses and changes we’ve endured in one short month; for my worry and fear for my family that are here and abroad — some frontline workers as nurses and in the epicentre of the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the US; even tears for the reports of mass-graves in New York , and even for the people who are grieving deaths, not just from Covid-19 but natural or other causes too, but the families left behind can’t actually gather to mourn together.
Lastly I wailed and sobbed for the parents and children out there who would find themselves in the same place as me and feel totally lost, discouraged and even traumatized in their own way struggling to survive each day, lacking the resources to get support or help.
Hence my resolve to offer a parenting support group has been thus strengthened. I happened to be well-resourced emotionally for my crisis with my son and I would not have survived, nor learned the many important lessons I’ve learned without support for my own emotional process. As promised from a previous post — I am offering a FREE 2 hour online introductory session to Parenting in a Pandemic on Wednesday, April 29th, 6:30–8:30pm. This will be a “taster” for the upcoming six week therapeutic support group commencing May 6, 2020. The goal of the intro and the actual support group is to gain both psycho-educational information on parenting during this unprecedented time AND emotional therapeutic support for you as parents. Co-facilitated by my dear colleague, Mia Logie, RTC, we aim to provide parenting insight and a safe space for your emotional needs so that you will not only SURVIVE these next coming months as a family — but actually THRIVE. Please click HERE to register for the FREE Intro Session.
Lastly I am also offering free 30 min chats* for parents needing to vent or take emotional space for themselves and of course offer I also offer one-on-one parent consulting and/or therapeutic counselling sessions ONLINE**.
We may be apart — but we need not feel alone in all this. It’s together, we’ll make it through.
*one time only offer. Phone or Online chat available
**financial assistance considered upon request | https://shayasyrantfors.medium.com/top-3-things-to-survive-as-an-accidental-homeschooler-in-a-pandemic-14d46566fd29 | ['Shaya Sy-Rantfors'] | 2020-04-23 14:01:01.527000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Parenting In A Pandemic', 'Accidental Homeschooler', 'Attachment Parenting'] |
日本確診病例新高變種病毒流入社區 | A columnist in political development in Greater China region, technology and gadgets, media industry, parenting and other interesting topics. | https://medium.com/@frederickyeung-59743/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E7%A2%BA%E8%A8%BA%E7%97%85%E4%BE%8B%E6%96%B0%E9%AB%98%E8%AE%8A%E7%A8%AE%E7%97%85%E6%AF%92%E6%B5%81%E5%85%A5%E7%A4%BE%E5%8D%80-9345e40f870e | ['C Y S'] | 2020-12-27 04:58:53.964000+00:00 | ['Government', 'Politics', 'Hong Kong', 'China'] |
How Can You Improve your Python skills? | Here are the few tips which can help you to improve your Python coding skills.
Tip #1: Code every day
Consistency is mandatory when you are learning any new programming language. I will recommend making a commitment to code every day without fail. Though it may seem a daunting task during the initial stage, so start from 25 minutes every day and then increase your timing slowly.
Tip #2: Write It Out
As a new programmer when you progress in your journey, you may think that whether you should continue making notes. I will say, yes! You should! In fact, research suggests that if you make notes by hand you will be benefitted for long-term retention. This will be especially useful for those programmers who are interested to become the full-time developer, as many interviews will involve writing code on a whiteboard.
Tip #3: Go Interactive!
Whether you learn about basic Python or debugging an application, the interactive Python shell will be one of your best learning tools. I use it a lot on my site too!
Tip #4: Take Breaks
When you are learning, it is important to step away and absorb the concepts. For example work for 30 minutes, take a short break, and then repeat the process. Taking breaks is important to have an effective study session, particularly when you are debugging or taking in a lot of new information. Step away from your computer, go for a walk, listen to music or chat with a friend.
Tip #5: Become a Bug Bounty Hunter
Talking of hitting a bug, it is very obvious and common when you start writing complex programs. It happens to all of us! Don’t frustrate. Instead, think of yourself as a bug bounty hunter and embrace these moments with pride. When debugging, it is mandatory to have a methodological approach to help you find where things are breaking down.
Tip #6: Surround Yourself With Others Programmers
Since coding is a solitary activity, but it does wonder when you work together. It is very important when you learn Python that you surround yourself with other Programmers or the beginners. This will allow you to share the tips and tricks you learn along the way.
Tip #7: Teach
It is said that teaching is one of the best ways to learn. This is absolutely true when you learn Python. There are many ways to do this: write blog posts where you can explain your newly learned concepts, record videos in which you can explain what you learned. These small-small things will solidify your understanding.
Tip #8: Pair Program
Pair programming is a technique where two developers( driver and navigators) work at one workstation to complete a task. The “driver” is the one who writes the code, while the “navigator” helps to reviews the code as it is written and guide the problem-solving.
Pair programming has a lot of benefits: it not only gives you the chance to review your code, but you understand other perception on the same program and how they solve it. These things will enhance your skills and make you a self-learner.
Tip #9: Ask “GOOD” Questions
When you are asking for help, its best to ask GOOD questions by following this acronym:
• G: Give context on what you are trying to do, describe the problems clearly.
• O: Outline the things which you have already tried to fix.
• O: Offer your best guess as to what the issues might be.
• D: Demo what’s happening. Include a traceback error message, the code, and error that you got.
A lot of time can be saved by using these GOOD questions. Skipping any one step can result in back-and-forth conversations that can cause conflict. As a new programmer, you want to make sure you ask good questions so that you practice communicating your thought process, and so that people who help you will be happy to continue helping you.
Tip #11: Contribute to Open Source
Contributing to an open-source Python project is a great way to learn and experience. There are many Python libraries that are open-source projects and take contributions, plus many companies publish their open-source projects, you can work with code written and add values to your learning experience.
Tips #12 Join online tutorials
Join any good online tutorial. It will help you a lot. Here I will recommend you to go with one of the best online tutorials and that is EDUONIX LEARNING SOLUTIONS, from where I have learned a lot of programming languages. They offer many courses in free and most of them are designed for beginners. this tutorial has worked really well for me. Hope it will do wonder to you as well.
Happy programming! | https://medium.com/@anupamasingh-12727/how-can-you-improve-your-python-skills-8fa1e0ecea3a | ['Anupama Singh'] | 2020-02-20 13:33:19.950000+00:00 | ['Python Programming', 'Skills Development', 'Skills', 'Programming'] |
Everything eSellers Need to Know About Lazada | How to sell on Lazada, a leading eCommerce marketplace in Southeast Asia
This post was originally published on Payoneer Blog. Payoneer is a leading global payments solution for eCommerce sellers.
Southeast Asia is a high-growth region for e-commerce. Many cross-border sellers want to break into this market, and Lazada is the best way in.
According to Google and Temasek, Southeast Asia’s online economy hit $100 billion in 2019, and it is estimated to triple that by 2025. The population in this region is relatively young and has a very high internet and smartphone penetration rate, making it a tempting target for cross-border sellers.
As the world’s premier eCommerce gateway to Southeast Asia, Lazada has created a vibrant and unique online shopping mall that connects consumers across Southeast Asia with merchants around the world. It’s one of the easiest ways for eCommerce retailers to push sales in the region.
In this article we’ll cover the essentials of using Lazada for expanding your business.
What is Lazada?
Lazada is a leading eCommerce platform in Southeast Asia, basically the Amazon of South-East Asia. This platform is open to international sellers who want to tap into the markets of Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia.
It has a separate dedicated site for each of these countries:
Vietnam (Lazada.vn)
Singapore (Lazada.sg)
Malaysia (Lazada.com.my)
Thailand (Lazada.co.th)
Philippines (Lazada.com.ph)
Indonesia (Lazada.co.id)
You can set up a Lazada shop for each site, and customize your products, product descriptions, shipping times, and prices for customers in each country.
You can start with selling on Lazada in the Philippines or Singapore, for example, before you gain more experience and move on to open a Lazada store in Thailand or Vietnam.
How Lazada Works for Cross-border Sellers
Lazada is built to make it easy for eCommerce businesses in China, Hong Kong, the US, and Europe to start selling in Southeast Asia. One of the most attractive features is the Lazada international fulfillment center, located in Hong Kong.
You can send all your products to the Lazada center in a bulk shipment, and then leave it to Lazada to handle all the logistics. No need to deal with shipping, returns, or lost items — the Lazada center manages it all for you!
You can manage multiple Lazada stores in several countries from a single account. All you need to do is log in to the Lazada seller center and choose which store to view.
Lazada Center Fees
Currently, Lazada doesn’t charge sellers any monthly or fixed charges — unlike Amazon does. That means you can create and run a Lazada account and start selling products with no setup fees or regular monthly charges.
You’ll need to pay a 2% payment fee, and a cross-border sales commission fee of between 1% and 4%, every time you make a sale. The rates do vary depending on whether you’re based inside or outside of Southeast Asia.
Lazada’s Convenient Payment Options
One of Lazada’s outstanding features is the convenient payment methods: customers can pay not only by credit card, but also by COD (cash on delivery), helloPay, BDO installments and Lazada wallet which can also be topped up at 7-Eleven stores!
The thing is, online payments are not as common in Southeast Asia as in the West, so Lazada made a smart move of offering the solution that worked for the local customers.
When it comes to withdrawing money from the platform, Lazada makes it easy. They’ve partnered with Payoneer so that you can manage cross-border payments without a fuss and at a low cost. In fact, you have to sign up for a Payoneer card in order to use Lazada.
How to Get Started Selling on Lazada
Before you start selling on Lazada, you need to have the following:
A business license — your business doesn’t have to be in Southeast Asia, but if you don’t already have a registered business, you might want to open a company in Hong Kong. It only costs around $1,000, takes less than 2 weeks, and you can manage it entirely online.
A Payoneer card
Email and phone number so that you can register on the Lazada seller center
To sell on Lazada, go to the seller center and click on “Become a seller now.”
Source: Lazada.com
Now you can complete the application form and wait for Lazada seller center to send you your seller contract.
Sign the contract and return it and then simply follow the step by step instructions you’ll get in your email to verify your account.
If you don’t already have a Payoneer card, Lazada will guide you to apply for one and register it. Lazada also sends you a series of training videos to help you make the most of your Lazada stores. Now all that’s left is to customize your shop and start uploading and selling products.
How to Succeed in Selling on Lazada
When you sell on Lazada, you’re in total control of your online store. It’s up to you to choose how it looks, write the product descriptions, and set your prices. Make sure you localize your product descriptions with help of native speakers like those at Nitro, professional translation service. Machine translations are not reliable enough, and a faulty translation might affect customers’ trust in a negative way.
The Lazada seller center provides you with plenty of customer analytics and sales and marketing metrics, so that you can track your success. See which products are in high demand; discover which marketing campaigns need to be tweaked; and decide where and when to present a discount or special offer.
Does Lazada Have Good Customer Support?
Both buyers and sellers enjoy access to Lazada customer support. If you’re concerned about a feature or if you have questions, you can visit the website, call the 24-hour support number, or send them an email. Alternatively, view the self-service resources in the Lazada Seller Center to gain a better understanding of how the platform works and how to succeed using it.
The pioneer of the eCommerce ecosystem in Southeast Asia, Lazada currently serves 560 million consumers and it’s the perfect place to start expansion to the SEA region.
Register to Payoneer to accept cross-border payments from Lazada and other international marketplaces in a fast and simple way, as well as save on conversion costs!
You might also find useful:
Going Global with your eCommerce Business: 5 Important Tips
Content Localization Strategy for eCommerce
Website Localization vs Translation: Fundamentals You Can’t Skip | https://medium.com/@alconost/everything-esellers-need-to-know-about-lazada-bf7f1acc28c1 | ['Blog Of Alconost Inc.'] | 2020-11-30 11:25:35.586000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Ecommerce', 'Amazon', 'Marketplaces', 'Sales'] |
Foursquare Predicts Chipotle’s Q1 Sales Down Nearly 30%; Foot Traffic Reveals the Start of a Mixed Recovery | When Chipotle came on the scene, the chain earned lots of fans for its approach to “food with integrity,” including antibiotic-free meats, GMO-free ingredients, and fresh local produce. However, the last six months have been a tumultuous ride. Since the first E. coli reports emerged in October 2015, reports popped up across the country raising skepticism about its products and processes, and Chipotle has been racing to squash the issues, institute better training and manage its reputation. The fast casual Mexican-themed chain is still dealing with the repercussions, and an even more recent norovirus outbreak in March at two stores.
In February, the CDC gave the chain a clean bill of health. To take a deeper look at how the downturn and recovery has gone, we analyzed the foot traffic patterns at the more than 1,900 Chipotle US locations and compared them to the previous year. At Foursquare, we have a trove of anonymous and aggregate data on where people go, based on the 50 million people who use our apps (Foursquare and Swarm) and websites monthly. Many users passively share their background location with us, which our technology can match up with our location database of over 85 million places, giving us clear insight into natural foot traffic patterns. (Here’s a video that shows how Foursquare maps a large Chipotle location in downtown Portland, Oregon.)
A Look Back
Foot traffic to Chipotle started to follow the same directionally downward seasonal winter traffic trend in 2015 as in 2014. But as time went on, it became clear that 2015 was no ordinary winter for Chipotle; traffic was down in a more significant way.
The chart below shows the share of visits to Chipotle restaurants in comparison to visits to ALL restaurants in the United States. In the 2015–2016 winter, visits to Chipotle restaurants declined more significantly than in 2014–2015.
Visit share began to recover in February 2016, marked by the CDC’s conclusion of its E. Coli investigation and Chipotle’s ‘raincheck’ promotion launch, ostensibly for customers who were unable to satisfy their burrito cravings during the company’s system-wide closure on February 8. Foot traffic took another dip, albeit much smaller, following the more minor norovirus outbreak in Boston in two locations in early March.
Sales Projections
Chipotle has publicly reported its weekly sales for the first 10 weeks of Q1, giving us ample data to build statistical models to project sales for the rest of the quarter. Taking into account reported sales, redeemed coupons and other factors, along with Foursquare foot traffic data, we estimate that Chipotle ended Q1 2016 with same store sales down roughly 30% year-over-year (which we expect to be confirmed by Chipotle when it reports earnings on April 26). Foot traffic estimates, however, tell a brighter story. Foursquare data shows that year-over-year, Q1 same store traffic declined only about 23%. The gap between sales and foot traffic is likely a result of all the free burrito coupons that were redeemed, which lured in people, though not revenue.
We believe the 23% decline in same store foot traffic is the more meaningful number that shareholders should focus on, rather than the 30% decline in sales. It shows that Chipotle is building trust back with customers, which is more important to its success long-term. Although it sacrifices revenue this quarter by giving product away, it is proving to be a winning strategy for getting people comfortable with coming back. The trick is in making sure that these customers come back again and spend money in the future.
“The problem is that Chipotle’s customers are already so darn loyal.”
— Chipotle CFO, Jack Hartung (during a July 21, 2015 earnings call to analysts)
Chipotle Needs to Focus on Loyalty
We looked at how frequently customers went to Chipotle over the past year and found some interesting insights. Last summer, just 20% of Chipotle customers made up about 50% of foot traffic visits. Because this cohort of loyal customers reliably returned to Chipotle month after month, they contributed to an outsized percentage of foot traffic, and likely sales. Interestingly, it’s this group of faithful customers that have changed their Chipotle eating habits most dramatically: these once-reliable visitors were actually 50% more likely to STAY AWAY in the fall during the outbreak, and they have been even harder to lure back in. While those who infrequently visited Chipotle last summer have returned to Chipotle at similar rates as before, the formerly loyal customers have been 25% less likely to return. The loss of these important customers is what has really hurt Chipotle, since losing 2–3 loyal customers is the equivalent of losing about 10 other customers.
To demonstrate that this is an unusual loss of loyalty, versus natural attrition, we compared this pattern with a cohort of frequent Panera goers. The chart below illustrates that while both chains experienced a similar seasonal dip, Chipotle has lost much more traffic from its loyalists than Panera has.
Chipotle has famously dismissed the idea of having a loyalty program, stating that it didn’t believe that loyalty programs help turn infrequent goers into loyal visitors. According to Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung, “The problem is that Chipotle’s customers are already so darn loyal.” Looks like it’s time to reconsider those famous last words.
So, where are they headed instead? Foursquare foot traffic data reveals that they have replaced their usual Chipotle visits with visits to other popular chains such as McDonald’s and Starbucks. They have also been slightly more likely than the average person to visit Whole Foods, for which there are some naturally overlapping qualities in offerings that have more integrity and healthfulness.
Looking to the Future
Two weeks from today, Chipotle will share its official Q1 earnings. We, alongside most analysts, anticipate the bitter pill the restaurant chain will have to swallow as they report on losses. But we also see a more unique, nuanced and slightly rosier picture, and urge Chipotle to continue building brand loyalty — one burrito at a time.
###
Foursquare’s Location Intelligence Paves the Path To Recovery
The data looks promising for recovery, but there will be trouble for Chipotle if they don’t lure back the formerly loyal visitors or nurture a new group of faithful fans.
Some ideas for how to do this effectively:
Analyze foot traffic patterns by using Place Insights powered by Foursquare.
Target advertising at the formerly frequent Chipotle visitors who have the power to bring back larger percentages of sales by using Pinpoint powered by Foursquare.
Measure all of its digital marketing initiatives so they can double down on the programs that are most effective at turning visitors into loyalists; they can do this through Attribution powered by Foursquare.
When you’re operating a brick-and-mortar business, location intelligence is critical. Chipotle’s burrito-based bottom line proves it.
Interested in any of the analysis or tools mentioned above? Do you need the power of location intelligence? Read more about our enterprise solutions or contact us.
###
Notes on Methodology | https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-predicts-chipotle-s-q1-sales-down-nearly-30-foot-traffic-reveals-the-start-of-a-mixed-78515b2389af | ['Jeff Glueck'] | 2018-08-01 12:06:28.012000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Foursquare', 'Finance', 'Data Science', 'Chipotle'] |
I Live in a Windmill | I Live in a Windmill
When COVID hit, I was living in a city in the north of England. It was a great city, with lively bars and clubs and restaurants, along with wonderful music venues, museums and galleries. But, during lockdown, everything closed. And a city with everything closed becomes a concrete prison.
During that prolonged COVID lockdown, my yearning for open spaces was almost unbearable, and I started looking for alternatives.
After an internet search, I found this windmill for sale in rural Wales, took a virtual video tour, and knew I wanted it. Travel was banned, and the purchase had to wait until the lockdown was lifted enough for estate agents to reopen. One quick (and slightly illegal visit) confirmed my decision. Then the interminable buying process began and, many months later, during which my city in the north of England went back in a second lockdown, I finally completed the legal proceedings - and the mill became mine.
I moved in on a prophetic date. The 11th of September. 9/11
This place is my escape, my refuge, and my special place. I feel lucky to have found it. But some things are difficult when your residence is a windmill.
You are certainly closer to the weather.
For example, now, while sitting here and typing this, I can hear the wind thrashing at my windows and the rain slicing sideways across the glass. Water tumbles down the panes and looks for entry. It seeps through any nick and gap it can find, sending liquid fingers under the glass and forming pools on my windowsills, before sliding off and downwards onto carpets, furniture, and electrical fittings.
The water flowing across the sills took me by surprise at first. Now, I have learnt to keep a supply of towels handy and lay them out along the wood as a precaution when the rainstorm first hits.
Windmills are, of course, deliberately placed in windy situations. My mill stopped working in the 1930s, when it’s sails blew off in a storm. But the wind doesn’t care that it is no longer needed. It hurls itself around the mill, howling and growling, like an enraged monster frantically searching for those missing sails.
My first night here, I couldn’t sleep. Such a noise!
But, I should be used to noise. I’d moved from a house where there were two pubs at the end of the road, and a social club a couple of doors away. I was regularly kept awake well past midnight by the sound of car doors slamming and long, loud, goodbye conversations held by late-night drinkers right outside my window. The traffic noise continued all night, and revved up around 6am. There was also the occasional excitement of a police helicopter hovering overhead, and the constant symphony of car and house alarms.
The mill, in comparison to my former house, is an oasis of peace. It’s just that here the wind seemed to have a personal interest in me and my home. A malicious interest.
Last night, the gusts of wind reached 60 or 70 miles an hour. (This is a guess, of course.) The sound of water crashing against the windows, and the sight of waves of moisture flooding down the glass, gave me the illusion I was in a ship, out at sea. A sinking ship. Maybe all those bath towels across the sills would not be enough to stem the flow, and I would have to start bailing out?
Luckily the storm abated at around midnight. I could stop obsessively checking the saturation status of the towels, and finally go to bed and to sleep.
When I woke this morning, it was to blissful calm. Yes, the wind was still blowing around the mill (it never stops), but there was no moisture in it. Even better, the sun was shining. Light and joy flooded the place.
I put the damp towels in the dryer, and remembered how wonderful it is to live in a windmill on the top of a hill.
Tonight the wind and rain are back. The towels are in place, just in case, and I must get up and check them in a moment. But the storm is less vicious than yesterday and, as the dusk turns to darkness outside, the wind seems to be subsiding. Settling down. Running out of puff.
I must remember the wind doesn’t care that I live here in the mill now, and its frantic battering is not a personal attack. It is only behaving like wind should behave. The wind has no feelings, no conscience, and no reason to be friendly. (A bit like COVID, really.) It simply exists. It is just out there. Where else could it go?
The wind is not exactly my friend, but it is not my enemy either. It is up to me to find a way to cope with it, to accept it exists, and to adapt my life to its loud demands.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go check on those towels… | https://medium.com/@ruth-livingstone/i-live-in-a-windmill-5cb70d14b46c | ['Ruth Livingstone'] | 2020-11-03 08:18:44.572000+00:00 | ['Covid Diaries', 'Weather', 'Windmill'] |
On Exploring Promise 2: possible overlooked points about promise | This is part 2 of my exploring on promise. In part 1, I shared my thoughts about “async” and “event loop” as the basis to better understand promise. The main purpose of this part is share some key points or say “blind spots” about promise that may impede your understanding of promise.
After a brief introduction about basic aspects of promise, I’ll share a few links for learning how to use promise. Because have a basic sense about what is promise and how to use it is important for the main discussion in this article. You don’t have to master promise after the studies, otherwise there wouldn’t have been this article. I believe many beginners will leave mental gaps after being introduced with promise. Some key points are somehow omitted by most learning materials. Maybe they are too obvious to pros, but
not so obvious to newbies. It’s more of a communication problem. I hope this article can help you recognize a few of these points and help you connect the dots from “async” to “promise”.
Terms in this article
Based on different contexts, the word “promise” has different meanings, most of the difference can be distinguished with different writing forms but there’re a few subtle ones may not be easily distinguished. In this post “promise” may in the forms of:
plain lowercase “promise”: the general concept of promise
code quoted lowercase promise : an instance of a promise
: an instance of a promise code quoted uppercase Promise : the Promise constructor
And resolve(d) and fulfill(ed) are used interchangeably.
1 Basic aspects about promise
1.1 Sense of promise
I want to start with different definitions of promise. For now we don’t have to understand all the terms before we can continue. Here comes the definitions:
Promise/A+: A promise represents the eventual result of an asynchronous operation. The primary way of interacting with a promise is through its then method, which registers callbacks to receive either a promise’s eventual value or the reason why the promise cannot be fulfilled.
MDN: A Promise is a proxy for a value not necessarily known when the promise is created. It allows you to associate handlers with an asynchronous action’s eventual success value or failure reason.
wikipedia: In computer science, future, promise, delay, and deferred refer to constructs used for synchronizing program execution in some concurrent programming languages. They describe an object that acts as a proxy for a result that is initially unknown, usually because the computation of its value is not yet complete.
So promise must have something to do with “async” tasks, and it’s a representation/proxy for a future result. Bringing this high level sense of promise into the exploring promise is necessary.
1.2 use of promise
As I said, this part of work(use of promise) is excellently done by some pros, thank them a lot!
This article does a thorough explanation about the use of promise with code examples, along with some performance concerns. Inevitably you would come across some unacquainted terms. You can glimpse their definitions on wiki if you want to, but don’t go too deep, focus on “how to use promise” and just get a feel about it. And you may want to read it multiple times as I did.
1.3 states of promise
Promise is like a wrapper for asynchronous operations(tasks), and it holds the result of the task and based on how things are going, it stipulates a promise can be in one of three states:
pending: the initial state , means the task is still processing and we don’t know how things are going so far
, means the task is still processing and we don’t know how things are going so far resolved/fulfilled: means the task is successfully fulfilled, and it may give us something we want such as data or just a message that indicates the task has succeeded.
rejected: means the task failed, and reasonably a reason(often an error object) should be given to tell what was wrong
pending is when the async operation is still processing, resolved(fulfilled) and rejected are when the async operation is completed whether succeeded or failed, when a promise ’s state is resolved(fulfilled) or rejected , we also say it’s settled.
2 A few key points that may be overlooked
This part mainly shares with you some key points about promise. They are not overlooked by purpose, and you may feel so strange that you haven’t noticed them. Because they are just some basic facts sit there for a long time.
2.1 Promise constructor is used for creating promise, then() method is used for accessing promise
There’s a concise description about the purpose of Promise constructor.
After reading a lot about how to use promise, we know that Promise() can create a promise and then is the way to chain subsequent operations. But being aware of the original designing purpose is also important, especially when you ask question like “Since Promise() and then() both return a promise, so what’s the difference?” . Maybe we should ask a more basic question: what a constructor is used for in JavaScript?
The answer is when we want to create a promise , the Promise() constructor is the first choice, not then() .We can say Promise() is primarily used to wrap functions that do not already support promises. Or we can say it’s used for “Promisifying” something. And then() is the way to chain promises, as well as the way to access the value of a promise . Though then() always returns a promise , we should not treat this behavior as its designing purpose. Seeing then() as the interface to access promises is a more appropriate view.
2.2 code in Promise executes as soon as the promise is created
I think this is an important fact but most intro level materials don’t mention. And this trapped me for a long time when I was trying to figure out how to use promise.
the beginning of creation is the beginning of executing
If we have a function that returns a promise :
function makePromise() {
new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
// do sync thing one
// do sync thing two
// resolve or reject at a certain point
})
};
When you execute makePromise() , thing one and thing two in the callback are beginning execution and are done synchronously immediately. I don’t know why I had a tendency(don’t know if others have too) to think all the code within the Promise() constructor only begins executing as a whole at the settling point, the point when resolve or reject are called. Realizing this is important for us to maintain the execution sequence of tasks and thinking about possible performance considerations.
order of creation is not the guarantee of order of completion
If we have a list of urls [u1, u2, u3] that don’t depend on each other, means they can be loaded in parallel. But we want to get things from the 3 urls one after another, in the order of 1,2,3. We may write something like this:
function requestURL(url) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
let xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('GET', url);
xhr.addEventListener('load', () => {
let result = xhr.response;
resolve(result);
})
});
}; [u1, u2, u3].forEach(url => {
requestURL(url)
})
Although all the requests may succeed but the order of completion is not guaranteed. Why? Because forEach is sync and what we actually did can be seen as:
requestURL(u1);
requestURL(u2);
requestURL(u3);
All promise s begin creating almost at the same time because the 3 function calls are executed synchronously, meanwhile all code within Promise() constructor begins executing. So the 3 requests begins at almost the same time but we don’t know how much time each request would take, therefore we don’t know the order completion.
there’s no waiting among multiple promises created independently
Since a promise chain will be paused for pending promises, it’s easy to transfer this fact(feeling) to the situation when we create multiple promise s at one time, thinking that lately created promise s would wait for the earlier ones to be settled. But:
waiting happens when there’s pending promise in a chain . You can’t just make a promise independently then “pause” it there, neither from inside nor outside.
promise in a . You can’t just make a independently then “pause” it there, neither from inside nor outside. a pending promise never pauses itself. When a promise is created, its original state is pending , but from an internal view, pending doesn’t mean pausing/waiting. As long as there is call for resolve or reject inside the callback passed to Promise() constructor, a pending promise will be approaching the state of fulfilled or rejected .
So creating a bunch of promise s doesn’t mean the latter ones will wait for the earlier ones, doesn’t mean they be completed in the order of creation. Unless you wrap the process of creating promise inside a function(a function returns a promise ), then arrange them in a chain. There is a big difference between “creating a promise” and “a function that creates a promise”. Because when we pass “a function that creates a promise” to then() , the creation of promise won’t start before the chain advances to that then() .
how to maintain sequence of operations
How to chain the requests in a wanted sequence or say initiate them one after another? Also with forEach , but this time a bit different.
let chain = Promise.resovle(''); [u1, u2, u3].forEach(url => {
chain = chain.then(() => requestURL(url));
})
Notice chain.then(() => requestURL(url)) is different from chain.then(requestURL(url)) , requestURL(url) is a function invocation that will create a promise immediately, you should always pass function to then() .
2.3 resolve() happens immediately
The same example:
function fetchURL(url) { // returns promise
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
let xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('GET', url);
xhr.addEventListener('load', () => {
let suburl = xhr.response[0];
resolve(suburl);
})
});
};
This is a tricky point. The resolve method don’t know how much time a request would take. We call resolve in Promise constructor, and that happens inside the ‘load’ event listener. Here resolve(suburl) has no notion about sync/async it’s called immediately when the request is ’load’ ed, and calling resolve(suburl) grants the state fulfilled to the promise with suburl as its value to prepare for possible future operations. And resolving of a promise is synchronous or say happens instantly.
This may seem obvious after you’ve noticed it. But realizing this fact can fill some mental gaps while trying to understand the using of promise. Since promise is heavily about “async”, it’s easy to forget that there’re also “sync” things there. It’s easy to grumble questions like “how does the promise know when to resolve itself?”, the answer is it doesn’t know. Because the “resolving” moment depends on something else such as explicit writing sync code to resolve the promise, like Promise.resolve() or call resolve in a Promise constructor.
To me “ resolve() happens immediately” is a very useful nonsense.
2.4 function is the only currency within a promise chain
I think initially we all know that then takes functions as arguments after we learned about the definition and use of promise. But as days roll on, we may want to stuff anything inside that pair of parentheses () followed by then . Especially things that are not function.
Promise/A+ spec mentions that then must return a promise and if onFulfilled is not a function, a then called on a resolved promise must return a new promise resolved with the value of the previous promise. It’s better to be expressed by code:
let resolvedPromise = Promise.resolve("One"); // 1 resolvedPromise.then("two"); // 2
Line 1 returns a promise resolved with “One” , but line 2 returns a new promise : Promise {<fulfilled>: “One”} resolved with “One” NOT “Two” . The string "Two" we pass the then() is ignored.
If we make a promise chain with several non-functions inserted for example:
resolvedPromise.then(func).then(non-func).then(func).then(non-func);
We can imagine that we strikethrough the .then(non-func) parts like:
Some call this “promise fall through”. What if one of the non-func is a promise ? You may think the promise chain won’t ignore a promise . Let’s try by code:
let resolvedPromise = Promise.resolve("I was resolved"); let starterPromise = Promise.resolve("I am the starter promise."); starterPromise.then(resolvedPromise);
The last line returns Promise {<fulfilled>: “I am the starter promise.”} , the resolved value of the resolvedPromise we passed to then() was not taken. So there’s no exception for this rule. Function is the only currency within a promise chain. If you want to insert a promise into a promise chain, use a function that returns a promise , don’t do things like “first create a promise then insert it into the chain”.
2.5 two kinds of waiting on promises
Personally I prefer to understand that there’re actually two kinds of waiting for a pending promise. One is wait from “outside”, the other is wait from “inside”.
“Wait from inside” means inside a Promise constructor, after a promise is created, it’s initially set to pending , and then it’s waiting to be either fulfilled or rejected. This kind of waiting is often neglected. On the contrary, the waiting made by then() is stressed a lot, and this is “wait from outside”. Both kinds of waitings wait on a promise to transit from pending to fulfilled/rejected , but they are different. Having a notion of this helped me better understand the states of promise as well as the behavior of a promise chain.
2.5.1 how to make a pending promise
This is fun and easy. Remember I said in section 2.1 when trying to create a promise always consider Promise() constructor? So the answer of this is “just make it but don’t resolve it”. That is:
let pendingPromise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {});
By doing this we get a pending promise Promise {<pending>} since we don’t call resolve() or reject() at all inside the callback. Another theoretically possible scenario is we called resolve() or reject() but the time before that happens was “forever”. For example, resolve() or reject() is waiting to be called after a data retrieving task that never ends.
2.5.2 pauses on then s are visible
Now if we have a pending promise, let’s see how the chain will pause:
let pendingPromise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {}); pendingPromise.then(() => console.log("Hello World."));
// ^
//paused
The console.log operation inside the callback we passed to then() didn’t get executed and the string “Hello World.” was not printed out. This is because pendingPromise is at the state of pending , the next then will wait on it. I often see words like “waiting on a promise”, though this is not wrong, but this gives us a sense that where there is a promise there is a waiting. But waiting only happens on pending promise.
2.5.3 then() only waits on pending promises doesn’t mean settled ones are skipped
First look at a code example：
Promise.resolve("one").then(() => Promise.resolve("two"));
// Promise {<fulfilled>: "two"} Promise.resolve("one").then(() => Promise.resolve("two")).then(() => Promise.resolve("three"));
// Promise {<fulfilled>: "three"}
Here both lines start with a promise resolved with “one” . When we chain one then we get a new promise resolved with "two" . When chain two then s we get a new promise resolved with "three" . Based on line 1 we know there is a “middle promise” with "two" as its value existed transitorily. But no promise is skipped, even though they are resolved ones.
If we configure a promise chain appropriately, of course the chain will wait on pending promises, but the chain also won’t forget to go through every fulfilled or rejected ones.
3 Try to nurture intimacy with standard
This is more of a suggestion than another key point, but I think it’s important for learning promise too.
If you’ve ever explored some articles about promise, you may have been introduced with the Promise/A+ standard, I mentioned it several times in this article. As it states, it’s:
An open standard for sound, interoperable JavaScript promises — by implementers, for implementers.
In that page, there are just several sections of structured rules. So promise is more of a model, not some hard-coded packages. The rules describe how to implement promise, but there doesn’t exist a single right way to implement it. This is very similar to what we talk about the mental model of event loop. Actually if you have known the basic aspects of promise and are using the correct terms, reading the standard is more helpful and effective when you are confused by “promise puzzles”. The standard is really boring, but it’s also very reliable.
4 Summary
In this 2-part article, I think the important points are:
the separation of async and sync is for better coordinating different tasks, and event loop model is one way to do the coordinating work.
differentiate sync and async part when using promise; there are two kinds of wait for a pending promise; function is the only currency in a promise chain.
promise; function is the only currency in a promise chain. try to nurture intimacy with standards and docs. | https://xullnn.medium.com/on-exploring-promise-2-possible-overlooked-points-about-promise-9e232d632eb3 | [] | 2020-09-08 08:03:08.886000+00:00 | ['Async', 'Promise', 'JavaScript', 'Programming'] |
Getting ready for the vaccine: what are the UK Armed Forces doing? | Getting ready for the vaccine: what are the UK Armed Forces doing?
Right across government, organisations have been preparing to support the NHS, quickly roll out the COVID-19 vaccine and keep pace with supplies. So what are the UK Armed Forces doing? Ministry of Defence Follow Jan 7 · 3 min read
Planning and logistics
Since the beginning of the pandemic, military planners have been working in the background with colleagues from the NHS and other areas of Government to help coordinate the response to Coronavirus. Military logistical expertise has helped to arrange transport, PPE distribution, and construction.
In March 2020, a member of the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards discusses transporting Medical equipment with NHS staff
This winter, military planners have been supporting the government in planning and preparation to be able to quickly roll out the vaccine.
Right now:
10 military planners are assisting the Vaccine Task Force.
Two military planners are supporting the Vaccine Task Force Director.
Another 20 Military planners are helping regional planning, logistics and delivery.
In the 30 days since the Vaccine Task Force started, more than 1.4 million doses of vaccine have been delivered and 769 sites have been established. This is the equivalent to setting up a major supermarket chain in less than a month.
Vaccine delivery
The NHS is well prepared to deliver the vaccine and keep pace with supplies as they increase over the coming weeks.
If needed, a Vaccine Quick Reaction Force of around 130 personnel are ready to support the NHS, when and where they may need it. In England, 21 teams of 6 people are standing by across the 7 NHS regions.
This is part of a wider 1,500-strong reserve of personnel who could be made available should the NHS need them.
Royal Air Force planners are establishing vaccination centres in Wales. (Jan 2021)
In Wales, 90 service personnel are currently establishing and operating vaccination centres to support the Health Board. 14 of these are trained defence medics, who will now also support the administering of the vaccine.
In May 2020, members of the Royal Navy and British Army helped Portsmouth County Council distribute PPE to local schools.
The UK Armed Forces stand ready to support responses to COVID-19 however required, with up to 12,000 personnel ready to support if needed. Whether distributing vaccines, driving ambulances or testing the public, the Armed Forces stand beside the thousands of NHS staff, council workers and others keeping the country ticking every day.
Read more about the UK Armed Forces response to the Coronavirus crisis:
Find out where the UK Armed Forces are deployed around the globe: | https://medium.com/voices-of-the-armed-forces/getting-ready-for-the-vaccine-what-are-the-uk-armed-forces-doing-b37a53230687 | ['Ministry Of Defence'] | 2021-01-07 18:39:13.405000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Covid 19', 'Logistics', 'Covid 19 Vaccine'] |
10 Life Changing books which must be read in 2021 | The best investment a person can do in 2021 in on a good read.In this world of social media ,rapidly upgrading technologies people does not realize the power which books have in them.Below are the 10 books which you must have in your bucket for sure :)
1.) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
by Mark Manson
There are so many things in this world which we care about and that feeling stops us from doing what we actually want. Manson has beautifully put the idea of not caring because world judges us no matter what we do. This books tells us we should accept ourselves for what we are.
2.) Atomic Habits
by James Clear
Improving everyday is the goal of each and every person. ”Atomic Habits” helps us in a way to change bad habits ,there are many proven ideas in this book which will help you to change ones habits and grow yourself each and everyday. Big changes are the result of small but consistent efforts.
3.) The Psychology of Money.
by Morgan Housel
This is one of the best books I have read so far, its not a book which tells us how to start with a company or how to gain money but how the attitude of a person affects its wealth , a very well written book which shows a
person attitude has an effect on its wealth.
4.) How to Win friends & Influence People
by Dale Carnegie
This books shows us the practical way of going out and making relationships and friendships. How can you influence people from your communication and your personalities. Its a toolkit for life a must read.
5.) Thinking Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman
This is the great book by Daniel Kahneman,
In this book Kahneman explains how we can get trapped into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers various insights into how choices are made by us both our business and our personal lives.
6.) A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
by Donald Miller
Donald Miller ,explains in this book,how his life would have been if its fictionalized, he started editing his actual life into a better story.A must read to understand how to live life as a second chance a better one
7.) Quiet: The Power of Introverts
by Susan Cain
All of us feel that only extroverts rule the world like the people who are confident, speaks fluently on stage but if you are an introvert then you should not feels that you are not capable enough. This book is solely focused on that. If you are an introvert and you want to explore your identity then this is the must read for you.
8.) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R Covey
Stephen in this book describes what all are the simple habits which we can adopt to increase our chances to become success. This book contains life changing information it touches every aspect of your life.
9.) Sapiens :A Brief History of Human Kind
by Yuval Noah Harari
This is one of the great books of its kind. It tells us how the humans we as an “Homosapiens” evolved from what we called as stone age to this revolutionary era of technology. Its gives us an insights on biology, paleontology , anthropology and economics.
10.) Rework
by Jason Fried
Most people keep doing same mistakes again and again, this books shows you a better and more efficient way to gain success. The book is so straight forward and easy to read that even a normal person which no knowledge of business and its awareness.
These books will really help you in this pandemic ,make you more wise and may change your perception towards life forever for Good :) Happy Reading | https://medium.com/@arjitshrivastava/10-life-changing-books-which-must-be-read-in-2021-d39adbc20b02 | ['Arjit Shrivastava'] | 2021-05-20 08:29:55.944000+00:00 | ['Book Recommendations', 'Knowledge', 'Helping Others', 'Books', 'Life Lessons'] |
Image optimization in REACT during upload. | The sole purpose of optimize the image is to find the balance between file size and acceptable quality. We all want our website to render fast as a possible. In an average website, if there is no video or less use of video, image makes up more average page weight.
To eliminate the slow rendering because of images we can either put the needed image size during deployment or if user can upload image, resize to the idle size and then upload to the cloud. It also helps less usage of disk in cloud storage.
Okay, lets get started….
Some tools we are gonna use are as follows:
- For handling image upload (ANTD Upload)
- For image resize. (react-image-file-resizer)
- For image file width checker. (Custom utils functions)
How we are doing image upload?
import { Upload } from "antd"; <Upload
customRequest={() => null}
accept="image/jpeg,image/png,image/jpg"
onChange={(file) => {
handleUpload(file);
}}
showUploadList={false}
>
<Button>Upload</Button>
</Upload>
Since, we are using ANTD image upload we are just accepting image type file and handling our image function on handleUpload function and sending the received file as params.
How we are handling image upload?
const handleUpload = async (img) => {
const width = await checkImageWidth(img.file.originFileObj); if (width <= 1440) {
uploadImage(img);
} else {
const resizedImage = await resizeImage(img.file.originFileObj);
const resizedFile = {
file: {
originFileObj: resizedImage,
},
}; uploadImage(resizedFile);
}
};
We are checking image width before resizing the image. If, its simply below 1440px we just upload it if not it will be be resized and upload. You can change these conditions as per your preference or simply resize it.
Utils function for image width check.
const checkImageWidth = async (file) => {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
const reader = new FileReader();
reader.readAsDataURL(file);
reader.onload = (event: any) => {
const image = new Image();
image.src = event.target.result;
image.onload = () => {
resolve(image.width);
return image.width;
};
reader.onerror = (err) => reject(err);
};
});
}; export { checkImageWidth };
This function will simply return the image width size by sending image file as a parameters.
How we are resizing image?
import Resizer from "react-image-file-resizer"; const resizeImage = (file) => {
let quality = 100; //4MB image file
if (file.size > 4000000) {
quality = 90;
} //8MB image file
if (file.size > 8000000) {
quality = 85;
}
return new Promise((resolve) => {
Resizer.imageFileResizer(
file,
1400,
1000,
"JPEG",
quality,
0,
(uri) => {
resolve(uri);
},
"blob"
);
});
}; export { resizeImage };
We just installed the “react-image-file-resizer”. And check different image file size and resize it accordingly. Its a personal preference so you can resize it as per your choice. For this .. we just used for greater than 4mb to reduce quality to 90% and greater than 8mb to reduce quality by 85%. You can reduce it accordingly.
And, we are done, after that we gonna upload image in the cloud.
Note:
For thumbnails like menu list, avatar icon or small image size you can resize it in back-end before you upload it and send it as response separately.
Follow be: @beevekmgrz
Thank you for reading…Keep coding!!! | https://medium.com/wesionary-team/image-optimization-in-react-during-upload-5ca351d943d1 | ['Bibek Magar'] | 2020-12-04 12:26:43.429000+00:00 | ['React', 'Reactjs', 'Image Upload', 'Optimization'] |
Star-Lord — The Return of Peter Quill | Star-Lord — The Return of Peter Quill
Star-Lord Joins the Marvel Universe — Only to Face ANNIHILATION
Interior Detail, Annihilation #1, Art by Andrea DiVito, Color by Laura Villari. Credit: Marvel Comics.
A Continuing Look at the Comic Book History of Marvel’s Star-Lord, adapted from Star-Lord and the Guardians of the Galaxy: An Unofficial Comic Book History (Glow-in-the-Dark Radio, 2018), now available in paperback and as an eBook. This excerpt features insights from former Marvel editor Andy Schmidt.
Part One of this series gave us creator Steve Englehart’s insights on Star-Lord’s beginnings. In Part Two we saw how Chris Claremont helped turn Star-Lord into a more traditional hero. Part Three covered the adventurous Doug Moench years. In Part Four, Timothy Zahn and Rafael Marin explained why, for a time in the nineties, Star-Lord was no longer Peter Quill.
But then — in the second issue of Keith Giffen’s run on the 2004 Thanos series, issue number eight of twelve, Giffen re-introduced Star-Lord to the Marvel Universe, bringing in Peter Quill and landing him face to face with Thanos! The modern Marvel Cosmic Era had begun. And in Marvel’s Cosmic Comic Book event Annihilation that followed, Peter Quill emerged as a new fan favorite — in a storyline that could serve as a basis for Marvel Studios Phase Five.
It had been twenty-two years since Peter Quill had appeared in a new story. Eight years since the Star-Lord series with Sinjin Quarrel as Star-Lord, written by Timothy Zahn. Four years since the use of Jason as Star-Lord in Inhumans by Rafael Marin, Carlos Pacheco, Ladronn and Jorge Lucas.
Now, Quill was back.
However.
The character insisted he was no longer Star-Lord!
Curiously enough, Keith Giffen’s placement of Star-Lord in the Marvel Universe fits within the “Star-Lord Timeline” (detailed in Part Four) which makes Quill about 42 years old in 2004. He does appears to be about that age in the Thanos series.
Marin and Pacheco respected past Star-Lord stories by setting theirs earlier. Giffen, perhaps, showed respect by situating Star-Lord later in his life, after those past adventures.
Why bring Quill back? “That was all Keith,” series Assistant Editor Andy Schmidt said. “If you’ve ever met Keith, you’ll understand this, the guy is an idea factory. He just churns out a new idea — often big ones — on every page. One of his ideas was to use Star-Lord but not in costume and to get fans talking about where he’d been and what had happened to him. I just didn’t say no,” Schmidt said.
Peter Quill’s appearance in the Thanos series marked the beginning of a new era in Marvel Cosmic storytelling. Series Editor Tom Brevoort, Schmidt, and Giffen laid the foundations here for storylines that would soon lead to a major resurgence in interest in the sci-fi side of Marvel.
How did Giffen come to write Marvel Cosmic?
“We needed someone to come on board quickly on the Thanos book and I had wanted to work with Keith ever since reading his “Five Years Later…” series on Legion Of Super-Heroes,” Schmidt said.
“I brought that up with Tom Brevoort and he let me reach out to Keith. Luckily, he agreed to take over the series and even more luckily, the two of us got along really well.”
Cover, Thanos #12 (2004) Pencils by Ron Lim, Inks by Al Milgrom, Colors by Studio F. Credit: Marvel Comics.
Thanos finds Quill as a prisoner in the life-sentence cosmic prison known as the Kyln, built on the “Crunch”, the edge of the expanding universe. Giffen’s Quill is initially met as a man who says The Star-Lord is dead by his hand. Quill now has implants, cybernetic enhancements which have altered his appearance as their Borg-like extensions cover part of his head, right eye and face, and arms. These were all evidently added in the Kyln while he was a prisoner.
Thanos finds Quill conspiring with Shi’ar Imperial Guardsman Gladiator and others who want to try to kill or contain The Maker. The Beyonder, now The Maker, had been kept in the Kyln but broke free, and eliminated the controlling nannites in the bloodstream of all the prisoners of the Kyln with her will. The prison is now in chaos.
Gladiator tells Quill the Shi’ar didn’t know what she was when they turned her over to the Kyln, and admits to Quill that he’s not guilty of any crime. He’s been purposely sent into the Kyln to see if he can permanently contain or kill the Beyonder while she’s in mortal form.
Gladiator asks Quill, “So when do I get to hear your story?” to which Quill replies, “When pigs grow wings!” Ultimately, Thanos does Gladiator’s work for him, killing the Maker’s mind but leaving her body living, a living prison, for if Gladiator had killed her, her essence would have been set free — the opposite of his intention.
We get a little more background on Quill’s character in Thanos #11 when the first Herald of Galactus, The Fallen One, escapes from its cocoon containment in the Kyln. Turns out Star-Lord brought the Fallen One in. Quill plays more dissociative semantic games when pressed about it, continuing to talk about Star-Lord as if he were someone else — “Star-Lord brought it down.” Gladiator won’t have it. He needs Quill’s help to catch the Fallen One again. He informs Quill he’s been remanded to his custody and has been conscripted into the Shi’ar Imperial Guard! Gladiator lifts off from the Kyln with Quill in hand to go after the Fallen One, as the Fallen One goes after its former master — Galactus!
Peter Quill and Gladiator, Interior Detail, Thanos #12, Pencils by Ron Lim, Inks by Al Milgrom, Colors by Christie Scheele and Krista Ward, Letters by Dave Sharpe. Credit: Marvel Comics.
Peter Quill makes his first cover appearance in a long time on Thanos #12, along with Gladiator and the titular Titan (adding confusion, a misprint on the cover of the comic book labels this as “Samaritan: Part 4 of 6”, when it is actually part six). As Thanos and Galactus deal with the Fallen One, Gladiator reveals to Quill that he didn’t really spring him from the Kyln to go after the Fallen One — but rather Thanos. Maybe. Quill protests and reveals that he killed 350,000, “collateral damage” when he, as Star-Lord, was bringing the Fallen One down. That’s why he’s in the Kyln.
Gladiator brushes that off, telling Quill, “Your tenure as the Star-Lord legitimizes you.” When Quill asks, “To who?” he gets no answer. That’s the last we see of Quill in this series. The issue and the series wrap up with a battle between Thanos and the Fallen One. Thanos is victorious and mentally enslaves the Fallen One, turning him into his herald.
Peter Quill’s next appearance comes at Richard Rider’s side as NOVA fights the Annihilation Wave in the Annihilation maxi-series, a series that for many serves as the marker for the rebirth of Star-Lord — and the starting point of a resurgence in popularity for Marvel’s Cosmic characters.
Reading Giffen’s six issues in the Thanos series it’s clear that this is where editor Andy Schmidt and writer Giffen brought him back and began developing some of the ideas that would later play a part in Annihilation.
Schmidt and Giffen continued working together on that most significant Marvel Cosmic event in ages — Marvel’s Annihilation. The 2006 series was heralded by a Prologue issue, followed by four concurrently released four-issue miniseries, each focusing on a different character — released week-after-week — and then the event series itself in six monthly issues. The series brought some of Marvel’s “Cosmic” characters back on the scene in a big way, front and center, and Star-Lord played a significant role. It wasn’t necessarily planned that way.
Alternate Cover, Annihilation #1, Art by Bryan Hitch. Credit; Marvel Comics.
Star-Lord isn’t in Annihilation: Prologue or any of the four introductory mini-series. He shows up as the Annihilation miniseries itself begins. Annihilus and his invasion — the Annihilation Wave — have penetrated our universe from the Negative Zone at the Crunch — the location of the Kyln. They’ve destroyed the Kyln and are waging war across the cosmos.
NOVA — Richard Rider — is actually the star of Annihilation. “I was really focused on telling NOVA’S story and raising his profile,” Schmidt, the series editor for Annihilation, said. Star-Lord serves as a foil and “sidekick” to NOVA — Giffen writes the characters well, gives them great repartee as they fight the Annihilation Wave. The tone is set from Star-Lord’s first line, “You about ready to start paying attention now, Richie?”
“Again, mostly Keith,” Schmidt said, when asked why Peter Quill was best suited to be NOVA’s aide-de-camp. “Keith was really interested in Peter as a character. I had read and liked Star-Lord when I was younger, but Keith really turned him into something.”
NOVA, as narrator, tells us, “Mr. Sunshine’s my number two, goes by the name Peter Quill. Used to be called Star-Lord….he could be crazy…” and “Did I mention he used to be the Star-Lord? Guy was a living legend. Something… happened. He won’t talk about it, but it had to be brutal. Ask him about it and he’ll tell you, ‘The Star-Lord is dead.’ Period. No more, no less.” All Quill says is, “Last time I pushed my luck it went badly.”
“Peter wasn’t Star-Lord and was actively avoiding becoming Star-Lord again,” Schmidt recalled. “He had a dark sense of humor, the experience as a hero, but clearly he had seen some bad times, so that put him in a position to act as a sounding board, but even more than that, be someone who could talk to NOVA who hadn’t experienced war — not real war — and sort of help him understand that war is not the same thing as adventuring or super-heroing. So, basically, Peter just nicely fell into place there.”
He’s also helpful to NOVA in that he knows the cosmic players — tells him who Terrax, Paibok and the Mad Thinker’s giant robot are when they attack under Annihilus’ control. He knows Phyla-Vell when they meet up. “Phyla? Captain Marvel’s daughter?” he asks. “Guilty,” she tells him, “Didn’t you used to be The Star-Lord?” “Long time ago, darling,” he answers.
Despite his help, their United Front starts to lose the war. Annihilus uses his ally Thanos’ teleportation technology to move huge parts of the Annihilation Wave to strike the United Front without warning. And Thanos captures and enslaves Galactus — along with the Silver Surfer — harnessing the Power Cosmic for Annihilus’ use.
Even at the war’s bleakest, Peter Quill provides a sturdy second to Richard Rider. As NOVA figures out his next move, Quill lets him know he’s coming along, “Did you really think I’d let you run off and get yourself killed without my being there to tell you ‘I told you so’?”
Peter Quill (Star-Lord), Phyla-Vell and NOVA — Interior Detail, Annihilation, Art by Andrea DiVito, Color by LauraVillari. Credit: Marvel Comics.
Using their own, limited teleportation tech, NOVA brings Peter and Phyla along for one all-or-nothing, last-ditch effort. Despite Peter warning, “Sure… Kill the head looks good on paper…” NOVA decides to try to kill Annihilus one-on-one. This begins to look almost possible after Thanos is finally Destroyed by Drax, and Galactus is freed and begins to rampage against Annihilus. Phyla is then able to reclaim Quasar’s quantum bands from Annihilus, weakening him further still.
NOVA and Annihilus battle to a stand-still… until NOVA realizes there is a hole in Annihilus’ armored exoskeleton — his mouth. NOVA reaches in through the mouth and down Annihilus’ thorax — and then he pulls his insides out, killing him! The end. Well, for the moment, because it is comics, after all. We do see Annihilus reborn, at the very end.
The character of NOVA came out of Annihilation with increased popularity — and a new solo series. The buddy-cop bond between Quill and Rider, the way Giffen wrote Quill as a likable second or aide-de-camp to NOVA, with a biting, sarcastic sense of humor, made Star-Lord a talked-about fan favorite, too.
“What was clear to me and others, and I was pretty confidant Keith would be on board, was that (Star-Lord) would be in the hot-seat for whatever it was that we did after the first series ran its course,” Schmidt said. “We had a number of different ideas floating and we were circling in on what would eventually become Annihilation: Conquest — we didn’t know 100% what that was, but we knew Star-Lord would be a part of it.”
Marvel was originally tempted to start a new Guardians of the Galaxy series, according to Schmidt: “It was actually planned, or at least largely talked about, as a follow up to the first Annihilation series,” Schmidt said. “The original plan that Marvel had wanted, once they saw that it was a hit, was to roll out Guardians from the first series.” Schmidt discouraged them. A Guardians of the Galaxy series, “didn’t feel natural to me,” Schmidt said, “and I wasn’t sure we’d developed the characters enough — we’d made progress, but I wasn’t sure we had built the characters enough to stand on their own without an event to hold them together and boost sales… I felt pretty strongly that the characters weren’t really built and positioned to be a team book at that point. Drax had killed Thanos, NOVA had been away from Earth for over a year, and so on. There were loose ends that were drawing them all, literally, to different corners of the galaxy.”
The idea for a regular series shifted to Richard Rider. “We focused on NOVA, and Tom and I convinced the good folks at Marvel to launch NOVA as solo title with eyes towards a group book after we’d properly set them up — and if Annihilation continued to have legs after the second series. It did.”
Star-Lord did get his own miniseries as part of the sequel event Annihilation: Conquest. We’ll cover that — and the creation of the modern Guardians of the Galaxy — in our next installment.
Want the whole story now? Grab a copy of Star-Lord and the Guardians of the Galaxy: An Unofficial Comic Book History (Glow-in-the-Dark Radio Books, 2018) for more. These articles are lightly-edited and rewritten excerpts from the book. | https://medium.com/fan-fare/star-lord-the-return-of-peter-quill-b329f70dac1b | ['Mike Luoma'] | 2019-08-05 17:00:51.434000+00:00 | ['Comics', 'Marvel Cinematic Universe', 'Marvel', 'Star Lord', 'Books'] |
Apache Beam . Deep Dive series Episode 1 | Apache beam the latest open source project of Apache is a unified programming model for expressing efficient and portable Big Data pipelines.How ?
i)Unified : 1 unified API to process both Batch and Streaming data
Batch + Stream → Beam
ii)Beam pipeline once created in any language can be able to to run on any of the execution frameworks like Spark, Flink , Apex , CloudDataFlow etc.
It was started in 2016 and has become top level project for Apache.
Apache Beam Co-existence with other Big Data Components
It was has been developed by Google . Usually Google releases Whitepaper on lot of distributed data engineering systems . That’s how Hadoop came into existence . But this time they went ahead with developing full fledged component ,some thing which is engine agnostic and that’s how Apache Beam came into existence.
Apache Beam Architecture
Forgive me for bad power point skills . But the intention here is to showcase how does this processing agnostic component works. So you have a Runner API which helps Beam code to run into respective execution engine like Spark or Flink etc etc. Also there is a Function API which provides you the flexibility to code in the languages which are supported by Beam .
Now the introduction is complete . Let’s start getting into the skin of Beam .
Apache Beam’s Basic terminologies
Pipeline : A pipeline encapsulates entire data processing task,from start to finish.Includes reading input data,transforming that data and writing output data.
PCollection :A PCollection is equivalent to RDD of Spark. It represents a distributed data set that our Beam pipeline operates on.
Pcollection = Bounded + Unbounded
PTransform : PTransform represents a data processing operation or a step in our pipeline. Ex .ParDo ,filter,flatten,combine etc.
Now let’s see how Pcollection works
Pcollection characterisitcs
i)Immutability: Pcollections are immutable in nature .Applying a transformation on a Pcollection results in creation of another Pcollection.
ii)Element Type: The elements in a Pcollection may be of any type , but all must be of the same type
iii)Operation Type: Pcollection does not support grained operations.We can not apply transformations on some specific elements in a Pcollection
iv)TimeStamps: Each element in a Pcollection has an associated timestamp with it.
Unbounded Pcollections -Source assign the timestamps
Bounded Pcollections -Every element is set to same timestamp.
From here on let’s go in with the approach of hands-on and concepts
All the demos are being prepared using google Colab platform . Beauty of this platform is that you just need a web browser . No need to have any infrastructure and you should be good to go.
All the unix commands should be typed starting with ! in the beginning and you are good to go . Below command helps you to upload a file from local system to Google Colab .
Important Steps in Apache Bean workflow
i)Create a pipeline and give it a name
ii)Initiate a Pcollection by reading data from a source
iii)Apply Ptransforms on the data
iv)Write the processed Pcollection to a sink
v)Run the pipeline
Steps in Apache Beam workflow
Now Pcollection has lot of read transforms to read data from source . Since it support multiple source systems to read data from , for each source there is a separate Read transform. Let’s get into details of these .
ReadFromText : Parses a text file as newline delimited elements i.e it reads the file line by line and every line is a single element in Pcollection
Parameters :-
i)Mandatory parameters :file_pattern(str)
ii)Other parameters:
min_bundle_size(int) — bundles are nothing but partitions
compression_type(str)-helps in data compression and space optimization
strip_trailing_newlines (boolean)
validate(boolean)
skip_header_lines(int): Useful to remove headers from flat files .
ReadFromAvro() : Used to read Avro files
i)Mandatory parameters :file_pattern(str)
ii)Other parameters:
min_bundle_size(int) — bundles are nothing but partitions
validate(boolean)
use_fastavro(boolean)
ReadFromPubSub() :Used to read messages from Google PubSub service.
i)topic(str)
ii)subscription(str)
iii)id_label(str)
iv)with_attributes (boolean)
v)timestamp_attributes()
Source Systems for Read transformations :
i)Apache Kafka
ii)AWS Kinesis
iii)JMS
iv)MQTT
v)GCP PubSub
Ok So enough of theory . Let’s start with the hands-on part
Before that let’s look at our data set . We will be using department data and location data as sample data for our demo.
Demo 1
We will print a sample list of numbers .
Pipeline run should be at the start of the line . Any change in indentation will result in error .
Demo 2
Now let’s handle a dictionary data in Apache Beam
Now how about writing data back into sink post transformation . Let’s get some of the that .
Different Types of write transformations :-
1)WriteToText :- Writes each element of the Pcollection as a single line in the output file .
Parameters :- file_path_prefix(str),file_name_suffix(str),num_shards(int),append_trailing_newlines(boolean),coder(str),compression_type(str),header(str)
2)WriteToAvro:- Writes each element of the Pcollection to Avro file .
Parameters :-
file_path_prefix(str),file_name_suffix(str),num_shards(int),schema, codec,compression_type(str),use_fastavro(str),mime_type
3)WriteToParquet :- Writes each element of the Pcollection to Parquet file .
Parameters:-
file_path_prefix(str),file_name_suffix(str),num_shards(int),codec,mime_type,schema,row_group_buffer_size,record_batch_size
4)WriteToPubSub :- Writes each element of the Pcollection to Google cloud PubSub service.
Parameters:-
topic(str),with_attributes(boolean),id_lable(str),timestamp_attribute(int)
Hands-on Resumed ….
Demo 3
Now here what I am doing is that I am reading data from a sample file dept_data.txt and then writing the same data to my data folder in a new file .
Post that I am using unix shell command to print the result . Since I have not mentioned the no of bundles(i.e partitions), by default it will divide the data into a specific no of bundled. And then I am fetching values from the 1st bundle.
Demo 4
Now using user defined function and calling the same in Map API I get the following result where we split each element by ‘,’ . So here we are getting one element for each element in response .
Demo 5
Now let’s see how this will behave with a Flat Map . For one element we will get multiple elements .
Demo 6
Now let try to apply a filter transformation here where in we will try to get the results of employees from accounts department only . So here I have created a custom UDF to filter data and passing that into beam p collection to apply on the data set so that we get records for only accounts department.
Demo 7
Now the use case is that I need to find the attendance of employees from accounts department . So here I have applied a lambda function so that I can implant 1 no against each element to perform a reduce by operation . Some people who have worked with spark RDD might find this a familiar aggregation pre step.
I hope you will get the feel of Spark RDD aggregation operations.
Demo 8
Now I will aggregate the above scenario data using CombinePerKey .
Demo 9
Now we can see that the above code has become too large with lot of UDF. So now let’s remove these UDF and see the equivalent implementation using lambda functions. Life becomes easy and your code more readable.Ideally try to use as much lambda functions as possible.
Demo 10
What if I want to eliminate run() method to execute my pipeline and want to run a unified one with declaration assistance from top . Let’ see that . In that case we need to change the declaration of pipeline using with syntax . One strange thing is that if we want this type of pipeline implementation then the p collection declaration indentation you need to push back by 2 places .
Demo 11
Now let’s add more classifier comments to our code . This will help to troubleshoot the code in case of any issues and make your code more user friendly and easily readable .Classifiers are nothing but a syntactical way of mentioning your comments in the Beam code.It makes your code more readable and easy to troubleshoot.
So finally we achieved this type of pipeline as of now .
Now what if we want to calculate attendance of employee from multiple departments at the same time . To serve such a scenario we need to go with branched pipelines .
Demo 12
So here what we have done is that we branched the pipeline and created parallel workflows in the same pipeline . In real world scenarios this is how codes are written in a Beam pipeline with multiple parallel work flows with each workflow revolving around a specific PCollection.
Demo 13
Now let’s add their consolidated output into one single file in place of writing it into different files . This will avoid small file issue from Beam perspective. To achieve this, we need to use Flatten API . This API accepts a tuple of P collections and returns merged output of these P collections.
ParDo Transform
Par Do transform :- This is a super class of Map and filter Map transformation API. It can be used to perform any transformation on P collection data elements . By default it returns multiple output for a single input . But if you want 1 element in correspondence to one input element convert the parsed data into a list . How this all works let’s see .
Demo 14
As we can see that by default ParDo uses DoFn class object internally .
Demo 15
We can pass lambda into ParDo function . How let’s see . Now here if you can see that I have not used any custom class for generating DoFn class object for Pardo . If you don’t do that then Pardo uses internal DoFn object just like here in lambda implementation .
Demo 16
Now let’s try the implementation of Pardo in our previous case of Branched P collections where we are finding attendance of employees for accounts department .
Demo 17
Composite Transformation :- Now what issue you see in the below code ?
If you notice then for both accounts and hr p collections we are repeating the same code for Combining , filtering and then publishing the results . This can be avoided if we have a common functionality which can be called in both of these p collections to help us out with this issue . That is where composite transformations come into play . Now how they make your life easier . Let's find out .
Here if you see what we done is that we created a class MyTransform and in that we have inherited class PTrasnform of Beam class . Now this Ptransform class is the parent class of all transformations in Apache Beam . Now in this we have to overwrite the expand method . This expand method takes the input collection from respective branched p collections as input and then you need to mention all the transformations which you need to implement on the input P collection . All the repetitive transformations can be mentioned here . Once done here , you can call this MyTranform class object in any P collection transformations just like it is happening in accounts and HR p collections.
CoGroupByKey
Relational join of two or more key/value Pcollections . It accepts a disctionary of key/value Pcollections and output a single Pcollection containing 1 key/value Tuple for each key in the input Pcollections.
Demo 18
From the output you can see that the output is coming in the format of Dictionary. Well Beam is still evolving and more optimizations are coming via open source community . So stay tuned for better data handling in joins . As of now from this step onward if we need any meaningful data we need to further parse this dictionary data.
With this we have come to an end of episode 1. This is going to be a 5–6 episode series . So stay tuned for next episode…
Post Credit :- Now in Episode 2 we will work out on a case study on detecting bank fraud using Apache Beam in real time . | https://medium.com/towardsdataanalytics/apache-beam-deep-dive-series-episode-1-4e78b6fac7a0 | ['Prag Tyagi'] | 2021-04-25 11:42:47.120000+00:00 | ['Big Data Analytics', 'Data Engineering', 'Big Data', 'Data Analytics', 'Apache Beam'] |
2020 International Women’s Day Sees Taiwan’s Accomplishments in Gender Equality | The theme of International Women’s Day is “Taiwan: Asia’s leader in gender equality”.
The 2020 marks as the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and in the last 25 years, Taiwan has accomplished significantly regarding gender equality. Heralding “I am Generation Equality”, Taiwan responds to the Generation Equality advocacy of the UN WOMEN, to show the world that everyone can take actions on generation equality.
When it comes to gender equality issues, Taiwan assumes leadership in Asia. From women’s political participation, workplace equality to respect for gender diversity and inclusion. Taiwan is ahead of its neighbors and setting examples for other parts of the world.
According to the Women, Business and the Law 2020report published by the World Bank in February, Taiwan ranks top in Asia. Of 190 economies, Taiwan ranks the 35th. After the congressional election in January, 41.59% of the congresspeople in Taiwan are female, which is higher than the global average of 24.5%. The first female President in Taiwan won an overwhelming success for her second term. Last year, Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage.
Under the shadow of a global pandemic, celebrations for International Women’s Day have been canceled, including the events in New York. Activities may have been called off but Taiwan’s determination to defend women’s rights will not. NGOs are taking online social channels to share with the world their success in building gender equality.
In addition to setting bars in gender equality, Taiwan is also a role model for epidemic prevention as it has built for its people a reliable and safe land in the high-risk Asia. It is firmly believed that Taiwan can connect with the international community as a world citizen in the fields of women’s right, public health and global sustainable development by sharing its experience. | https://medium.com/@leap-voices-of-youth/2020-international-womens-day-sees-taiwan-s-accomplishments-in-gender-equality-585bd35f9503 | ['Leap', 'Voices Of Youth'] | 2020-03-07 14:58:12.957000+00:00 | ['International Womens Day', 'Women', 'Gender Equality', 'Sustainable Development', 'Taiwan'] |
How Does the Sun Burn Without Oxygen? | When asked to describe the Sun, many of us may say some variation of the words: “a big ball of fire in the sky.”
Of course, if pressed, most of us would explain that the Sun isn’t really in the sky. No birds are going to accidentally fly into it and get turned into crispy chicken sandwiches. Instead, it is out in space, about 91 million miles away from us. The Earth orbits around the Sun, as do the other planets in our Solar System.
But there’s a conundrum here. When most of us learn about fire, we’re taught that it needs three components: heat, a fuel source, and oxygen. Take away any of these three factors, and the fire goes out. (This is why you can smother a fire — you’re taking away its oxygen source.)
However, there’s no air in space. Once you leave the Earth’s atmosphere, you’ve got no more oxygen, unless you bring it with you.
So how does the Sun burn? If it’s a big ball of hydrogen fuel, where’s the oxygen so that it can remain on fire?
It turns out that the Sun doesn’t burn the same way that our campfires do. Here’s how it works.
Combustion, Fission, or Fusion?
When we talk about something burning, we’re usually talking about a process called combustion.
Combustion is a chemical reaction where a fuel interacts with an oxidant, forming new bonds and releasing energy. Once you add enough heat into a situation with a fuel and an oxidant both present, the weak bonds of the oxidant break and stronger bonds form with the fuel, leading to a release of energy.
This reaction can become self-sustaining — that is, the fire can grow, as long as all the ingredients are present. But take away one of the three legs of the stool, and it collapses. Run out of oxidant, fuel, or heat? The fire goes away.
But there are other types of energy-releasing reactions.
The next reaction is called fission, and it occurs when a large atom breaks apart. The most well-known example is the fission of uranium atoms in the early atomic bombs.
Large atoms, such as uranium and plutonium atoms, are unstable. When they’re hit by a small particle, such as a piece of an atom, they break apart. This little mini-explosion releases energy, but also sends out more fragments. These fragments can strike other uranium atoms, breaking them into more pieces in turn, leading to a chain reaction of energy release.
Finally, we have fusion. Fusion is the opposite of fission; it’s the process of combining smaller atoms to create a larger atom. This also leads to a release of energy — as well as the creation of a heavier element!
We can smash together two hydrogen atoms, for example, to form one helium atom. Smash helium atoms together, and in turn, we get heavier elements. This process keeps going, although as each atom gets larger, it’s tougher to force it together to keep the fusion reaction going.
So, our three different methods of fire: | https://medium.com/@westwise/how-does-the-sun-burn-without-oxygen-f5600dfeaeb2 | ['Sam Westreich'] | 2020-12-16 12:02:58.173000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Energy', 'Space', 'Sun', 'Solar Energy'] |
The Jackpot of the Availability Cascade | You’re a soldier in the information war, but do you know what the endgame feels like?
Photo by Chansereypich Seng on Unsplash
Imagine two combatants of relatively equal strength. They’re both very good, very well practiced. They know all the moves.
The only way one of them can win is when the other one slips up and lets their guard down. Maybe it’s exhaustion that causes the slip. Maybe it’s the surprise of a secret move they’ve never trained against, a move their opponent was holding onto for just the right moment.
Whatever the reason, the match ends and a champion is declared.
Some in the crowd erupt in joy while others fall into a shocked silence.
It was a long fight. A tense fight.
But in the end, the winner was decided.
Those who cheered for the victor go home energized and self-satisfied; those who were rooting for the loser go home disappointed and turn their attention to other battles.
Some people were neutral the whole time, just spectators to the fight, but not many.
It’s almost impossible to watch a contest like this — a brawl between two powerful duelists at the top of their game — and not give in to the very human urge to pick a side.
I’m Not Writing about a Real Fight, of Course
I’m describing the intellectual clash between millions of Americans on issues in the public sphere — abortion, universal healthcare, illegal immigration, welfare, climate change.
Like the two combatants I described above, the opposing sides in these battles have become entrenched.
They can’t convince their opponents to give up. Nor have they been able to persuade enough neutral fighters to rally to their cause and overwhelm their adversary.
Many of these battles span years, decades, and even generations.
In some cases — like the conflict over what power states should have versus what power the federal government should have — the battle has been raging since the founding of our nation.
And the battlefield is massive.
It’s more of a battle-space, actually, because it spans both the real and conceptual realms.
For the largest and longest-running battles, those who lead the charge against the opposing side have managed to accumulate a large supply of rhetorical munitions, a “pro” for every “con.”
For the newest battles, the attackers wonder whether they can use the element of surprise to achieve victory quickly.
Can the defenders be defeated swiftly before they have a chance to muster?
Or will the attackers charge forward valiantly, winning a few quick victories only to become bogged down in a massive war of attrition they’re not yet prepared to fight?
The Path to Victory
If you’re still new to the information wars — or maybe you’ve been around awhile and just can’t quite grasp the metaphor I’m using — it might seem that I’m describing more of an ongoing process, something like history rather than a battle that actually can be won.
But there’s a reason lobbyists and dark-money groups and nonprofits throw billions of dollars every year into the prolonged battles they’re fighting.
It’s because their ideological crusaders are holding the line and hoping for a Big Event — bad luck, an error by their opponent, or something totally unexpected — that will break the deadlock and pave the way to victory.
But before I provide you with a technical definition for what’s known as an “availability cascade,” consider the following:
On September 10, 2001, many Americans were aware that global terrorism was a threat but were disinterested in committing U.S. forces overseas. Four days later — on September 14, 2001 — the American attitude had changed so rapidly and decisively that the U.S. Congress authorized the President to wage a global war on terrorism: only one member of the U.S. House of Representatives opposed the resolution, and the U.S. Senate agreed unanimously with only two Senators abstaining.
You know what happened between September 10th and September 14th, 2001, don’t you?
Suffice to say, even though skepticism about deploying American forces overseas was quite high throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the 9/11 attack was such a spectacular event that a long, long time had to pass before anyone could publicly criticize American aggression overseas without being accused of treachery.
Vice President Dick Cheney, along with his buddies in the military-industrial complex, had warned for years about the threat of global terrorism only to be rebuffed by bureaucrats and politicians who said things like “the American public doesn’t like military adventurism” and “the American public can’t stand to see Americans dying on foreign soil.”
Then, all of a sudden — voila! In the span of just a few days, the Vice President won his battle over U.S. intervention abroad as the arguments of his opposition collapsed just as quickly and suddenly as the buildings of the World Trade Center on that September morning.
Technical Definition
If you’re itching for a technical definition for this phenomenon as opposed to just a single illustrative case study, here it is.
The term “availability cascade” was first used by economist Timur Kuran and legal scholar Cass Sunstein in a 1999 paper published in the Stanford Law Review.
The term was not used in the context of convincing Americans to go to war, however, but in the context of risk regulation.
Kuran and Sunstein noticed the way environmental and public-health activists — who they gave the fancy title of “availability entrepreneurs”—used the mass media to persuade the public on issues related to health and the environment.
The two academics were concerned about how activists could whip up public sentiment over a particular issue and force the government to take unwarranted or even destructive actions based on populist fear and anger rather than sound economics or science.
Kuran and Sunstein defined the availability cascade as follows:
A self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception of increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse.
Said another way, the availability cascade is basically a meme that becomes legitimized and popularized — whether rightly or wrongly, accurately or not — by “going viral.”
And I don’t mean the sort of one-off visual/textual meme we’re exposed to on Facebook or Twitter, although these are certainly innovative weapons in the information wars.
Rather, the availability cascade is a process of repetition that frequently follows from a Big Event and leads to widespread belief adoption, suddenly and decisively shifting public perception and creating an overwhelming call to action.
Other Examples
Whether you want to think about the availability cascade as a meme, “going viral,” or a come-to-Jesus moment, it’s absolutely a real phenomenon.
Like a river that suddenly bursts free of its banks and etches a new course into the landscape, the availability cascade can lead to a decisive victory in the information wars when little resistance is encountered.
While we’re speaking of rivers, one of the most famous availability cascades in American history occurred in the summer of 1969 when the Cuyahoga River caught fire in downtown Cleveland.
The river, which was one of the most chemically polluted in the United States, had actually caught fire something like 13 times before, including a massive 1952 fire that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to boats, a bridge, and a riverfront office building.
Although the 1969 fire wasn’t that bad and no photographs of it were available, this didn’t stop Time magazine from publishing a dramatic photo from the far more destructive 1952 fire, shocking enough people that the public outcry eventually led to various environmental improvements such as the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
You could convincingly argue that the entire cascade surrounding the Cuyahoga River fire was manufactured given that the photographic evidence had been manipulated.
And indeed, that’s exactly what happens when smart and savvy availability entrepreneurs craft a compelling narrative out of small events and/or less-than-complete information.
But lest we worry that all of history has been manipulated, it’s helpful to also consider examples of purely organic availability cascades.
While approaching its mooring in Lakehurst, New Jersey, from Germany in 1937, the hydrogen-filled airship Hindenburg burst into flames and crashed. The disaster was recorded on film and quickly rushed out to the theaters via newsreel.
Although the airship industry had been sputtering for years, the Hindenburg crash touched off an availability cascade that airships were not safe and permanently ended their use for commercial passengers practically overnight.
If you haven’t seen (or don’t recall) the Hindenburg newsreel footage, it’s worth discovering (or rediscovering).
I can only imagine what it would have been like in 1937, as an average person who had up until that point seen only primitive special effects out of Hollywood, to sit down in the darkness of a theater and watch real footage of tiny human beings scattering like ants beneath the hulk of a flaming dirigible as it fell to Earth.
Hitting the Jackpot
But while the Hindenburg newsreel is dramatic, it plays only a soft prelude to some of the more intense and opinion-swaying imagery we’ve seen in the years since.
Although availability cascades are not always touched off by fires, explosions, and violence, it certainly seems to help — among the first things that come to mind are atomic bombs detonating, U.S. television coverage of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the World Trade Center falling down, and the chilling gun-sight camera video from 2007 that shows jovial U.S. soldiers gunning down two Reuters journalists and other civilians in the streets of Iraq.
More recently, the widely watched video that showed the brutal and unnecessary killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, touched off a public conversation that had all the hallmarks of an availability cascade in the making.
Although it remains to be seen whether more significant changes are ahead for police departments across the country, it’s possible that in retrospect the video of the killing will be viewed as the “tipping point” that forced America to finally confront the disproportionate violence police officers commit against people of color.
A strong visual component of the availability cascade is clearly important, and herein lies the challenge for today’s information warriors who hope to hit the jackpot and win a decisive victory.
For one thing, many issues do not yield well to dramatic visual imagery. This is, thankfully, one of the many challenges faced by tin-foilers in the anti-vaxx space, who lack a compelling image that “proves” vaccines cause autism. (They don’t.)
Meanwhile, even if a strong visual component exists, information warriors still face an uphill battle given how thoroughly Americans have already been exposed to dramatic imagery — including fictional explosions of spaceships, planets, Death Stars, and the like. Though obviously much of the violence we have seen isn’t real, our subconscious minds don’t necessarily know this. Imagery is imagery.
As people’s sensitivity thresholds rise, so too does the threshold needed to ignite the availability cascade and give it a life of its own.
This means that information warriors will search out ever-more-stupefying ways to get people’s attention and win a decisive battle on issues in the public sphere.
So consider yourself warned.
Or — if you happen to be a foot-soldier in the information wars — consider yourself informed. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-jackpot-of-the-availability-cascade-72adbec8da7e | ['Jack Luna'] | 2020-10-13 22:00:04.310000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Society', 'Psychology', 'Media', 'Social Media Marketing'] |
It is time to start treating road deaths like a global pandemic | Provizio Accident Prevention Technology™ platform road test
At the time of writing most of the world is in lockdown. Our more vulnerable citizens are cocooning in their homes and our communities and politics are divided. It’s a global pandemic, caused by an uncompromising killer.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have been 1.2 million Covid-19 deaths worldwide, 44 million cases and the cost to the global economy is estimated to hit $1 trillion.
The world has rallied. United in the belief that this level of carnage is not acceptable we are taking draconian measures to stop the spread and investing billions in the science that will ultimately save millions of lives.
The automotive pandemic
According to the WHO, each year there are over 1.35 million road deaths worldwide, over 50 million people maimed and the cost to the global economy is estimated to be over $2 trillion (Link to the study here: WHO)
The numbers quoted above have not changed for more than 20 years. Unless action is taken, they will continue their current trajectory. Preventable human error is responsible for more than 90% of road accidents.
International regulatory policy for the last 20 years has focused on trying to make us better, more responsible drivers. This approach has failed consistently.
The focus by automakers on driver comfort and reactive safety measures has also, predictably failed.
Autonomous driving will ultimately solve the problem but has failed to move beyond level 2 autonomy despite $80 billion invested and will continue to do so while the roads are shared.
The vaccine
We started Provizio to solve the global road death pandemic. We believe that with the right focus, robotics and drivers can work together to reduce both road deaths and accidents to zero. 1.35 million to zero drives everything we do.
We are building augmented, guardian angel technology that will make us all better and safer drivers. We are using unparalleled ‘beyond line-of-sight’ sensor technology coupled with artificial intelligence ‘on-the-edge’ to perceive, predict and prevent accidents.
We are partnering with the top automotive OEMs and Tier 1’s to bring this capability to the masses.
Join our mission to wipe out the global road death pandemic. | https://medium.com/@nouvation/it-is-time-to-start-treating-road-deaths-like-a-global-pandemic-d76177294e97 | ['Barry Lunn'] | 2020-11-04 21:01:46.626000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Road Safety', 'Automotive Adas Industry', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Automotive'] |
The Future of the Internet of Vehicles: Challenges and Use Cases | Eastern Peak | The Internet of Things is rapidly growing-both in scope and size. From smartphones and watches to home management systems, vehicles, and whole infrastructures; manufacturers have expanded and enhanced the communication and interconnectivity of various pieces of technology. Experts estimate the overall number of connected devices to reach 41 billion by 2027 .
Smart cars represent a large portion of the IoT market. Together with smart lights, sensors, and other pieces of intelligent transportation systems, they form the Internet of Vehicles (IoV).
Read on to learn how connected vehicles work, what challenges the industry faces, and what impacts the advances in this area can have on the world and your business.
What is the Internet of Vehicles (IoV)?
The Internet of Vehicles combines hardware pieces and various networks that allow cars, pedestrians, and various units on the road to exchange information in real time. As most emerging technologies for connected and smart vehicles do, IoV originates from the older Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). In general, a conventional VANET aims to enable cars to form spontaneous wireless connections with other vehicles and devices.
All smart cars in IoV must have a reliable connection to the local infrastructure, other vehicles, and humans nearby. The following pieces of the Internet of Vehicles are necessary to ensure the smooth and safe functioning of the system:
hardware bits , such as sensors, smart parking lots, and road lanes equipped with devices for connectivity, smart traffic lights, wearables for humans, and the hardware inside each vehicle;
, such as sensors, smart parking lots, and road lanes equipped with devices for connectivity, smart traffic lights, wearables for humans, and the hardware inside each vehicle; software — object recognition systems, mobile applications for pedestrians, and other services required to connect the hardware pieces;
— object recognition systems, mobile applications for pedestrians, and other services required to connect the hardware pieces; networking technologies — 5G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and others to create vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) , vehicle-to-human (V2H) , and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) channels of connection;
— 5G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and others to create vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) , vehicle-to-human (V2H) , and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) channels of connection; third-party and additional services — GPS, analytics, apps to monitor the weather, road condition, and other services based on the person’s location.
The main goal of the IoV is to make both transportation and the vehicle maintenance process more efficient, safe, and inclusive.
How does IoV technology work?
The main working principle of IoV technology is creating the Social Internet of Vehicles (SIoV) with smart cars and infrastructure units as participants. To achieve that, manufacturers install the hardware and software necessary for the internet and other kinds of local connections in each vehicle. Most of the crucial systems are in-built, while many others (primarily, user-oriented and additional rather than central in functionality) can be plugged into the on-board diagnostics (OBD) port and used as necessary.
Constant communication is vital for a proper functioning of the whole smart city infrastructure.
There are five main types of connection required within the IoV infrastructure: vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-human (V2H), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), vehicle-to-roadside unit (V2R), and vehicle-to-sensors (V2S).
For V2V and V2R communication, connected vehicles use IEEE Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE). V2I pairs rely mainly on Wi-Fi and 4G/5G, V2S on MOST/Wi-Fi, and V2H on CarPlay, Near Field Communications (NFC), and Bluetooth.
Now let’s take a more in-depth look at what layers compose the IoV architecture.
The IoV architecture
The architecture of advanced connected vehicles normally has the following five layers:
1. Perception
This layer consists of various sensors and actuators included in vehicles, wearables and smartphones, roadside units (RSUs), and other elements of the intelligent infrastructure.
One of the critical elements of this layer is the global ID (GID) terminal that provides the vehicle with a recognizable ID and handles radio-frequency identification (RFID) operations.
In all of Eastern Peak’s IoV projects, the big data aggregated by this layer plays a crucial role in making the system functional. Overall, the vehicle IoT sensors are responsible for determining cars’ positions, driving patterns, the surrounding infrastructure units, and events. They also conduct the digitization of information for further processing.
2. Network
The Internet of cars relies heavily on its network layer. It consists of a module to coordinate the heterogeneous networks that connect different parts of the intelligent infrastructure and ensure the possibility of autonomous data exchanges.
The networks that smart cars use for communication include WAVE, 4G and 5G, Wi-Fi, WLAN, Bluetooth, and satellite networks.
These networks distribute the data obtained by the perception layer to the artificial intelligence layer.
3. Artificial intelligence
This layer of the IoV architecture uses machine learning models to analyze the gathered data and decide what action is required at any given moment. It includes software for big data analysis, specialized systems (i.e. computer vision applications in driverless cars to recognize objects on the road), and cloud computing modules.
The A.I. layer has an internal cloud infrastructure and requires smooth connection both with the processing services and the previously discussed low-level parts of the system.
4. Application
The application layer provides the commercialization of the IoV technology. It utilizes the results provided by the A.I. layer to supply end-users with smart services, such as driving assistance and traffic safety apps, multimedia viewing services, remote car control, and others.
The fourth layer also gathers user data and sends it to the business layer for processing.
Read also: Connected Cars. Top 5 Automotive Apps and How to Develop One
5. Business
The final layer of the architecture is responsible for sending insights into the customer experience back to the development company. It contains a set of tools to generate business predictions, suggest future strategies, and help the company make decisions regarding resource use and investment.
The benefits of the Internet of Vehicles
Understanding the working principles of intelligent transportation can help see how this field is an advancing technology in general. Now let’s take a look at what connected vehicles mean for cities and commuters.
Increased safety of transportation
One of the largest improvements IoV can offer is providing a much more accurate and rapid assessment of any situation on the road. A report from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states that almost 94% of road accidents occur due to human error. Some of them are virtually impossible to eliminate.
Autonomous vehicles that operate within a suitable infrastructure significantly increase the safety of transportation. This is mainly ensured by the sensors and software that process car speeds, the temperature of the road, and the number of cars at any intersection.
In addition to removing human error, these systems can also monitor the condition of the various mechanical parts of the smart car and alert drivers of any potential malfunctions before accidents can occur.
Faster travel and convenience
The internet of connected vehicles makes transit faster and improves user experience dramatically. A smart transportation infrastructure mainly helps achieve the following:
Decreased congestion on the roads. Real-time traffic monitoring and autonomous technology coupled together help optimize the routes and speeds of moving vehicles to prevent traffic jams.
Real-time traffic monitoring and autonomous technology coupled together help optimize the routes and speeds of moving vehicles to prevent traffic jams. Optimized routes. Mobile apps that receive real-time data from each user’s location can suggest what public transport to take to cut the travel time down.
Mobile apps that receive real-time data from each user’s location can suggest what public transport to take to cut the travel time down. Better parking. Eastern Peak experts believe that for IoV clients, smart parking is one of the most desired features of the infrastructure. Beacons installed at parking spaces can lead drivers to vacant spots, while completely autonomous vehicles can park efficiently without any human intervention.
Eastern Peak experts believe that for IoV clients, smart parking is one of the most desired features of the infrastructure. Beacons installed at parking spaces can lead drivers to vacant spots, while completely autonomous vehicles can park efficiently without any human intervention. Remote car management. Smart cars that are visible on the network allow drivers to find their vehicles faster in a crowded parking lot, lock doors remotely, get any information about the condition of the car quickly, and track the car if someone steals it.
An example from our experience: Cobra Connect is an IoV project that we did to bring ease of use and vehicle safety both to businesses and end-users. Companies that operate a large number of vehicles (i.e. car renting businesses) struggle with knowing where each car is at any given moment. On their end, drivers can forget where they parked, lose the keys, and have few reliable channels to call for help in case of an accident. To help solve these problems, we have developed a comprehensive system that enables vehicle tracking, remote access, and autonomous emergency reports. Cobra comes in just three main pieces: a box with an alarm system and internet connectivity to install in a car, a mobile application for users, and a control console for companies. Drivers can use the application to open and close car doors, engage the alarm, disarm the alarm using a code or their fingerprint, get reports for each trip that includes the duration, distance, and speed, locate the car on the map, turn the emergency lights on or off, and get notifications about the status of the car and its components. Companies can view real-time car location and speed, control the car remotely if necessary, and get immediate notifications in cases of alarms, accidents, or other emergencies.
Decreased energy consumption and operating costs
Smart transportation can also optimize the use of fuel, electricity, and human resources. For instance, conventional traffic lights work on timers, using more electricity and providing less efficiency than smart lights that adjust to the situation on the road.
Better performance and resource allocation that connected vehicle technology ensures will also reduce the operating costs.
Environmental benefits
By optimizing the functioning of the transportation system, IoV technology can also have several incredibly beneficial impacts on the environment. Cities will see the largest influence on the reduction of CO2 emissions and the promotion of a more sustainable energy future.
Connected vehicles will cut down greenhouse gas emissions by operating more efficiently. Also, carsharing and the use of public transport are likely to increase once they become as comfortable and fast as using a private car. This will reduce the number of vehicles on the roads, further toning down the harmful environmental impacts.
Autonomous vehicles will also mainly be electric. By installing solar panels at recharging stations, cities will be able to significantly reduce their fuel and electricity consumption.
IoV integration challenges
The rapid evolution of the Internet of Vehicles is breaking down many barriers on the path to building smart cities, but several significant challenges still remain.
Security
In our experience, ensuring security for an IoT system is the most vital and difficult part of the development process. When it comes to security for connected vehicles , issues that arise remain the primary challenges the industry faces .
IoV is a network that’s meant to be accessed by numerous devices, and hence it integrates different technologies, standards, and services. This makes such systems vulnerable to DDoS attacks and other types of malicious interference.
Since in IoV, such parts of the vehicle as GPS, cameras, proximity sensors, brakes, alarms, beacons, the steering wheel, and the accelerator can be accessed remotely, successful attacks can lead to fatalities.
Long product lifecycle
Among all the connected vehicles challenges , the time it takes to build and release a connected car is an incredibly inhibiting factor to manufacturers. Although this time will decrease as IoV technology advances, it will still take months to introduce each new smart car to the market.
This long production cycle of connected vehicles might prevent manufacturers from following development trends closely and delivering relevant updates in time.
Reliability
For the Internet of Things with autonomous vehicles, having a stable connection is essential, and network bottlenecks, DoS attacks, and malfunctions in communications can all significantly damage the workings of the infrastructure. Manufacturers must battle mobility issues and make sure all nodes will be able to transmit and receive information regardless of all cars’ speeds and locations.
Reliability can also suffer if any piece of hardware is compromised or unresponsive.
Huge amounts of information to process
Big data is a perk when it comes to IoV technology, but providers face significant challenges in managing the constant data flow. Connected vehicles process approximately 1 GB of data each second, and this number is likely to increase as more pieces of infrastructure go online and require connectivity. Insufficient storage or network delays can hinder cloud computing and damage the system.
The Most Common Applications of the IoV
Our experience working with clients from a wide variety of industries has demonstrated that there are virtually no limits to the applications of IoT in different fields . Smart cities and connected vehicles , in particular, can significantly improve the quality of transportation services in the following ways.
Autonomous vehicles
Driverless connected cars enable much safer and faster travel. They reduce the operating costs for the city, make transportation more sustainable, and exert a positive impact on the environment by promoting carsharing and reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases.
Tracking systems
The connected car technology allows drivers and authorities to track vehicles that are present on the network. This can be particularly helpful to quickly find your car in the parking lot or track a stolen vehicle.
Traffic and parking management
The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) for traffic management can manifest in the following several ways:
smart traffic lights that analyze the current situation on the road to optimize traffic flow;
that analyze the current situation on the road to optimize traffic flow; adaptable lighting systems that take weather conditions into account;
that take weather conditions into account; parking spaces equipped with sensors and beacons to guide drivers to vacant spots;
to guide drivers to vacant spots; real-time information from CCTV cameras to help drivers that got into an accident by automatically alerting rescue services.
Infotainment
Finally, IoV technology will redefine the expectations that drivers and commuters currently have when it comes to entertainment in the car. As cities become more prepared to integrate fully autonomous cars, the available entertainment options for commuters will expand since people won’t have to pay attention to the road anymore.
Here’s why you should consider tapping into the IoV
Leveraging smart cars technology is a sound and future-oriented decision in the upcoming 2021. The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) development is only projected to grow as the urban infrastructure becomes more intelligent, autonomous, and connected. With safe and fast transit, lower transportation costs for commuters, decreased operating expenses for cities, and significant environmental benefits, the IoV field offers numerous possibilities to businesses.
If you are interested in learning more about IoT solutions for vehicles, don’t hesitate to contact us and book a free consultation today.
Read also:
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See the original article here: The Future of the Internet of Vehicles: Challenges and Use Cases | https://medium.com/@eastern-peak/the-future-of-the-internet-of-vehicles-challenges-and-use-cases-eastern-peak-54a412c43009 | ['Eastern Peak'] | 2020-12-21 11:52:01.501000+00:00 | ['Internet Of Vehicles', 'IoT', 'Connected Cars', 'Internet of Things', 'Smart Cars'] |
Data Science Careers In 2020 | Data Science Careers In 2020
Announcing Apteo’s report on the state of data science careers in 2020
In the past few years, we’ve seen the dramatic rise of data science as a career that spans all industries and geographies. In approximately 12 years (give or take), businesses have realized they need employees who are skilled in advanced analytics that can help leverage and monetize all of the data that they have access to. As this rise has occurred, media outlets have had a field day reporting on how data science and A.I. will change the world, consequently increasing interest in the field even further. However, while much has been made of this new career path, only a few sources have attempted to quantify this growth and the shortage in data scientists.
That’s why today we’re happy to publish our report on Data Science Career Trends In 2020. This report, which is provided as a public workspace hosted on our own data science platform, provides a high-level overview of the state of the world in data science careers today. The report attempts to quantitatively measure the current size of the advanced analytics labor market, growth and compensation in this market, and the shortage of data scientists today and in the past.
While the report contains a brief explanation of our data sources and our methodology, we wanted to expand a bit more on how we approached this task, as it required a mix of art and science and we believe it’s important for everyone to understand any shortcomings in our methodology so they can account for them when using this data for themselves.
Job Market Data
Discovering and aggregating data on the state of the job market today and in the past proved to be the most challenging and time-consuming part of the process. As previously mentioned, despite the popularity of data science in the media and in business, there are few primary sources that have published data on the number of advanced analytics workers in industry today or in the past. In order to gather the data we needed to measure the size of the labor market, we researched a variety of historical reports and analyses to understand estimates of the labor market in the past. This allowed us to contextualize present-day sources that could provide additional context into the state of the labor market today.
This historical data, while sparse, allowed us to determine a range for the size of the labor market in previous years. After determining this range, we attempted to quantify the size of the market today. While we did find an estimate for the total number of data scientists from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it appeared to be quite low given the context that we had gathered from previous articles. Ultimately, we opted to gather primary data by using one of the best sources of career data today, LinkedIn.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not provide an exact count of the total number of employees with a specific job title, nor does it provide an exact count for the number of available jobs on its platform with a given job title. However, it does allow users to see an approximation of how many of its members within any given user’s extended network match a particular search criteria, and it also allows individual members to see the number of relevant jobs within a particular geographical area that match a given search term.
Given these constraints, we used my LinkedIn account to run a variety of search terms to estimate the number of data scientists, machine learning engineers, and A.I. researchers within my extended network. While I’ll be the first to decry the many shortfalls of this method, it does provide a starting point for quantifying labor market data in the advanced analytics industry. Using this strategy, we conducted a variety of searches on LinkedIn that provided an approximation for the total number of advanced analytics employees within a variety of regions, and we combined results from these searches with statistics we discovered from research on historic metrics. This allowed us to fit an exponential growth curve to the time series data we collected, which we then used to interpolate the data for any missing years in our dataset. This curve also served to strengthen our belief that the estimate from the BLS may have been too low.
Once we gathered employee counts, we used our same strategy to gather a list of open data science jobs across various geographies. Given these two sets of data, we were able to conduct basic analysis of the state of the shortage in data scientists today and in the past.
Salary Data
After gathering job market data, we aggregated both historical and present-day data on salaries, broken down by geography. We used a variety of published statistics from job boards, consulting reports, surveys, and articles to aggregate multiple statistics on mean and median salaries. Using this data, we then constructed an analysis on the average salary for advanced analytics workers, both nationally and within several large urban centers.
Education Data
Finally, we aggregated data on educational programs that specialize in data science tools and skills. In this instance, it proved too difficult to find historical data, so we limited our analysis to educational programs today. In our analysis, we only included programs that we judged to have a data science-first approach, focusing on the core statistical, algorithmic, computational, and analytical skills relevant to a data science career.
The Analysis
Once we aggregated all of our data, we organized it into a public Google Sheet and then connected that sheet to the workspace using our Google Sheets data connector. We understand that our analyses falls short in precision, however, we believe it may still prove valuable to those who seek to understand the state of data science careers today.
Staying In The Loop
If you’re interested in staying in the loop with what we’re up to at Apteo, you can subscribe to our newsletter or create a free account for yourself on our platform where you can visualize, analyze, and predict your own data. Finally, if you’re interested in helping us build a data science platform that lets anyone analyze their data, especially if you’re a full-stack engineer or a growth marketer, please get in touch!
Finally, don’t forget to check out the report here! | https://towardsdatascience.com/data-science-careers-in-2020-1166ae0f41ca | ['Shanif Dhanani'] | 2020-05-05 20:40:27.370000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Analytics', 'Data Science Careers', 'Data Science', 'Data'] |
How to Get my Baby to Sleep? | While pregnant, you’ll get lots of advice about how to function on no sleep and deal with babyhood’s bummers. So once your little munchkin arrives you may be surprised by how many pleasures tag along for the ride. Consider all these benefits of being a new mommy and you’ll be looking on the bright side, too!
In the first six months of life, it’s normal for your baby to wake regularly at night. Your baby will probably need you during the night for feeding and help with settling during these early months.
Even after the first six months or so, baby sleep habits and behavior vary a lot. This means it can be hard to tell when baby sleep and settling has become a problem.
But you might have a baby sleep problem if, over a period of about three months, your baby aged six months or older:
1. Consistently wakes more than three times a night
2. Consistently takes more than 30 minutes to settle
3. Has difficulties with sleeping and settling that cause you a lot of distress.
Here are some of the most common reasons your baby might not be sleeping at each stage during the first year, and solutions to help your restless little one get her Zzzs.
Your baby can’t sleep because she’s overtired.
It is a huge misconception that babies who are super tired will sleep better.
They will not.
They will sleep worse, baby wakes more, and becomes fussier and whinier overall.
There will be more tossing and turning and they will have more difficulty staying asleep.
Quite simply, it backfires every time.
Baby won’t sleep because he doesn’t eat enough solids.
If your baby is 5 months or older and not on solids they will likely wake frequently at night.
I’m not telling you to feed them solids if your pediatrician suggested you wait until 6 months or you aren’t ready, but the reason they are waking is that they are legitimately hungry.
When you start giving them ample solids you will see improvement in sleep. In the hours before bedtime, it’s important to make sure the baby is eating well and feeling full.
A baby also won’t sleep if he snacks too much and isn’t getting enough milk.
(Note-this article may contain Affiliate Links. If you purchase anything after affiliate link, I may receive compensation)
Whether your baby is experiencing one of the problems above, or they’ve just surpassed the milestones to be able to sleep at night, there are ways you can help your baby (and yourself!) sleep through the night. Scientifically Proven Solution That Gets Your Baby to Sleep like Clockwork (“Affiliate Link”)
Establish a bedtime routine.
It’s never too early to get a bedtime routine started. Your bedtime routine should be simple and sustainable, so it’s easy for you to do every night. Even the smallest change in your baby’s routine can leave them feeling off, and suddenly waking more frequently at night. Include calming, soothing activities that your baby seems to respond to, like swaddling and shushing. The bedtime routine can be where you create positive sleep associations for your baby.
(Note-this article may contain Affiliate Links. If you purchase anything after the affiliate link, I may receive compensation)
Teach your baby to self-soothe, which means trying your best to soothe them less.
When your baby wakes in the middle of the night and cries for you, it’s always okay to go check on them. However, try and limit your time in there with them. Make it clear that it’s still time to sleep, not play or eat. Place your hand on their chest for a few moments to calm them, then leave the room. The Zen Swaddle and Zen Sack are gently weighted on the chest and sides, which make your baby feel like you’re still there. This can help ease separation anxiety, break the sleep association to be held to fall back asleep, and help your baby learn to self-soothe.
Start weaning the night feedings.
Once you get the okay from your doctor to stop night feedings, you should slowly start to reduce them. In many cases, feeding becomes a sleep association because you fed your baby every time they woke up. Just because that’s no longer necessary, doesn’t mean your baby won’t want it anymore. Slowly wean them off the night feedings (maybe try a dream feed?), feeding them less and not as frequently over a few days or a week to get them used to not feeding every time they wake. | https://medium.com/@toha1/how-to-get-my-baby-to-sleep-427b06ebad34 | [] | 2021-01-14 06:48:02.553000+00:00 | ['Baby Care', 'Baby Sleeping'] |
Is Creatine safe? And Other Common Creatine FAQs | Creatine is a popular sports supplement that is commonly used by athletes looking to increase their strength, power and performance.
It is one of the most scientifically studied supplements on the planet and is considered by the International Society of Sports Nutrition to be “the number one most effective supplement” for building muscle mass.
The Benefits Of Creatine
Some of the scientifically proven benefits of creatine include:
Increases our production of ATP, the key energy source for heavy lifting and intense exercise
Enables more total work or volume in a training session
Improves cell signalling and increases cellular hydration
‘Significantly’ enhances ability to build muscle and strength.
From a performance perspective, it is impossible to ignore the evidence that creatine really works. But what does the evidence show when it comes to our health?
In this article I will take a closer look at all of the research on creatine, so you can decide for yourself whether it is the right supplement for you.
What Is Creatine?
Creatine is a compound that is found naturally within our muscle cells.
It assists in the production of ATP, which is the form of energy that we use during heavy lifting or intense exercise. When our creatine stores are elevated our body can produce more ATP, which translates to a greater strength and power output.
A review by Baylor University found that subjects who supplemented with creatine improved high intensity exercise performance by up to 15%. This included improvements in maximal effort muscle contractions, maximal power and strength, and single-effort sprint performance.
The same review also found that creatine supplementation resulted in “significantly greater” gains in both strength and fat free mass.
Our body naturally produces creatine in the liver and kidneys from the amino acids glycine and arginine. Creatine can also be sourced in small quantities through our diet.
However, in order to see the exercise-related adaptations our muscle creatine stores must be elevated. This is why supplementing with creatine is especially effective.
Is Creatine Safe?
There are claims that creatine is unsafe and has side effects, but these claims are not supported by evidence.
In fact, creatine is one of the most tested supplements on the planet and is considered to have “an outstanding safety profile.”
There have been many different studies on the long term effects of creatine consumption with no negative health consequences found in healthy individuals. The most comprehensive study of its kind examined more than 50 different blood markers and observed no adverse effects following 21 months of creatine supplementation.
And in another, subjects consumed a massive 30 grams of creatine for five years and also reported no adverse effects.
There are claims that creatine causes cramps or dehydration, but again the research doesn’t support this. In fact, studies suggest that creatine may actually reduce dehydration during endurance exercise in high heat, thanks to a greater retention of water in the muscle cells.
Furthermore, supplementing with creatine may offer additional health benefits including post-exercise recovery, injury prevention, thermoregulation and/or spinal cord neuroprotection.
Lastly, there is significant evidence that supplementing with creatine may improve memory and brain function, as well as protecting against neurological diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s. So even if you do not take creatine for the performance benefits you may wish to consider taking it for these reasons.
The bottom line is that creatine is an exceptionally safe supplement with a wide range of proven benefits. There is no need to fear supplementing with creatine alongside a healthy and balanced diet.
Do I Need Creatine?
Not everyone needs to take creatine. You can be strong, active and perfectly healthy without ever supplementing with creatine. Just like not everyone needs BCAAs to, not everyone needs to supplement with creatine.
However if you compete in a sport that involves strength and power, or your goal is to build maximum amounts of lean muscle mass, then supplementing with creatine may be beneficial.
In a review by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, adding creatine to a training programme was shown to increase weight lifting performance by 14% and bench press one rep max by up to 43%, when compared to training alone.
In another 12 week study, creatine was shown to increase muscle fibre growth by 2–3 times more than training alone.
And in a study on well-trained cyclists, 28 days of creatine supplementation increased bike-sprinting performance by up to 15%.
For these reasons creatine is widely used by both professional athletes and recreational gym-goers. Creatine is also one of the cheapest supplements you can buy, with a typical serving size costing less than 13 pence per serving.
How Much Creatine Should I Take?
The current research suggests that an intake of 3–5g of creatine daily is optimal for most users.
Athletes have a higher requirement for creatine due to an increased ATP demand. Vegans and vegetarians may also have an increased demand due to an absence of dietary creatine. Those who follow a vegan and vegetarian diet have shown a greater response to supplemental creatine than those who follow an omnivorous diet.
It was previously recommended that when you begin to take creatine, you should consume a ‘loading dose’ of 20g per day for 5–7 days to ensure your muscles are fully saturated. However, more recent research has shown that consuming 3g of creatine per day for 28 days is just as effective at raising tissue levels as the higher dose. Further, skipping the initial loading phase is also instrumental in avoiding the perceived creatine bloatingthat some people blame it for.
Some studies have shown that larger athletes need to supplement with up to 5–10grams daily to maintain creatine stores. Consuming creatine with carbohydrate, or carbohydrate and protein, have been shown to more effectively promote creatine retention.
Which Form Of Creatine Should I Use?
The most commonly studied form of creatine is in the form of creatine monohydrate. This form of creatine is supported by thousands of studies and is widely considered to be the most effective form of creatine.
When buying creatine monohydrate it is important that you look for one that has been independently tested to verify its creatine content, as a lot of creatine on the market is cut with fillers and other chemical compounds to make it cheaper. Creatine may also contain high levels of heavy metals, particularly when it is sourced from China.
For these reasons we third party test our creatine for quality and purity, including tests for heavy metals and over 500 different herbicides and pesticides.
If possible I also recommend looking for creatine that doesn’t come in a plastic pouch in order to minimise your environmental impact.
This is why our creatine comes in a home compostable pouch, so when you are done with it you can simply add it to your garden compost or food waste where it will break down into healthy soil. | https://medium.com/@mitch.snommis/is-creatine-safe-and-other-common-creatine-faqs-9f15831b65cd | [] | 2021-06-24 06:23:02.369000+00:00 | ['Exercise', 'Weightlifting', 'Creatine', 'Workout', 'Supplements'] |
Email Marketing Explained: Start Building Your List | If you haven’t started collecting email addresses from your clients, customers, or prospects, then now is the time. In today’s world, if you’re not talking with prospects, clients, or customers with some form of communication regularly, you’re hanging out with the dinosaurs. And we all know what happened to them.
This year is the perfect example of why communications is a critical part of your marketing plan. Let’s say you’re an interior designer who never emailed clients with promotions, and your usual word-of-mouth referrals have dried up.
You have some projects in the pipeline, but not the number you need to keep everyone working. You’ve done killer work, and all your clients love you, but they don’t hear from you on any regularity because you’ve been too busy — well, working.
Yes, it happens. As a small business owner, you’re wearing so many hats you aren’t on top of your marketing tactics.
When work is coming in hand over fist, piling up with back orders, you don’t worry about what’s going to happen when a pandemic strikes. The last one was 1919?
What’s the chance of that happening? If more work came in, you’d just have to put them on a waitlist—the curse of small business, feast, or famine.
You don’t need to generate more business, because at the moment you have more than you can handle. But, as they say, winter does come. And when it does, you need to be prepared to ride out the storm.
Email Marketing Definition
Email is the most basic method of communicating. It’s a series of messages sent to people letting them know about your promotions and future sales opportunities for them.
Long ago, right after the dinosaurs, when we purchased a product, it came with a registration postcard to authenticate our guarantee. I filled it out, answering all sorts of questions such as how old you are, where you purchased the product, male/female, and demographic information — oh, and your address.
The manufacturer was collecting consumer information to use for the future. I usually filled them out and mailed them in; I used to follow directions. Until I realized that nobody needs to fill that out to validate the warranty, they’re collecting demographic information on us.
Now, every business uses it to capture your contact information to initiate communications with you, i.e., they start emailing you. If you’re a big fan of the company, you’ll love getting their emails, but most of the time, they’re boring; it’s time to opt-out. To withdraw your name from their mailing list.
What to Do If You Don’t Have Any
Like our interior designer, who didn’t collect email addresses, now is the time to start. Winter is here.
If you’re old school, you can call all your clients and ask them. Tell them you have something important to send them — information that they don’t want to miss.
Start a Facebook ad campaign to collect emails. A popular strategy to get people to come to your website where you offer them something in exchange for their contact information. Every business can offer something for free to entice readers to give their contact information.
The oldest tactic in the book, and it still works.
Whatever you do, don’t buy an email list. It’s 99 out of 100 times garbage.
You could partner with another business that has an email list of people who could be your clients. Ask them to send out your offer to their list with a bonus to the list owner for each person who signs up. Win-win. When they respond, you now have their contact information.
Templates for Emails
The format for emails is straightforward.
Welcome them to your world
Give them a reason to contact you
Rinse and repeat
Your emails can be short. If you don’t have much to say, good, let them know what you’re doing and give them a reason to connect.
Email them frequently — more than once a week. Yes, really. Don’t worry about being a pest. They will contact you when you’ve got something they want.
Provide value: tips, shortcuts, a way to save, or a new spin on an old tale. Send them a joke, a story, or something exciting.
Email Marketing Tips
People like to be entertained. You can never be too long or frequent, but you can be boring. Make sure you’re talking about things that interest them… not you. Remember to keep the focus on the word ‘you’ vs. me, or I. Business owners often get confused in their offers when they make it all about them vs. the clients.
Don’t be too fancy, either. You don’t have to have images, pictures, or a GIF for your readers. I’m distracted when people add a GIF [a short video clip] in an email. Naturally, if you’re selling products, you want to have images. Only include what is essential; leave the fluff behind.
The Next Steps
Start collecting emails today. Start your campaign to reach out to your people often. Be organized, create a master plan to get the word out with topics and promotions. Forecast a quarter at a time to map out your goals using holidays and other significant events. Make sure you give the reader a chance to unsubscribe to your email. Nothing is worse than getting an email without an unsubscribe link. Cause when we’re ready to break up, I want out.
If you’re going to start, be consistent. People are paying attention. Email marketing is the easiest method to find out what your readers like and want. When you know what they want… give it to them.
Share valuable information to make their life better. Use this as your opportunity to build connections because when the world turns upside down, you can reach out to your people to let them know how you can help them. With email marketing, you can pivot and bring your people with you. It beat sending out smoke signals.
In summary: Email marketing is fun and profitable if you do it right. It plays a big part in successful companies. Always give more. Consider your messaging. If you’d like to chat about your next project, reach out at [email protected]
Linda James Bennett; day 24 of 365 writing an article every day and making you a shiny object in the world. | https://medium.com/@lindajamesbennett/email-marketing-explained-start-building-your-list-4b4fc0f90c26 | ['Linda James Bennett At Shinyobjectmarketing.Com'] | 2020-12-13 00:32:34.756000+00:00 | ['Life Coaching', 'Business', 'Coaching', 'Copywriting', 'Business Coaching'] |
Miracle Happens Everyday: The Marine Migrations | They come from the cold deep sea and are extremely greedy for Plankton. Moreover, their schedule is very tight, because when the sun shines on the sea again, all these creatures must go back to the darkness again to avoid being swallowed by predators roaming the sea during the day.
This “Dance” between light and darkness, warmth and cold, Predator and Prey is called “diel vertical migration” (DVM). This is considered to be the largest animal movement on the planet. Whether it’s the Wildebeest on the Serengeti grassland, the monarch Butterfly migrating on the North American continent, or the Penguin that traverses the Antarctic Continent of Vietnam, none of them can be compared with the simultaneous global migration of marine life every day.
Of course, most people still know very little about this migration, although DVM plays a huge role in absorbing carbon from the deep sea and fattening the fish we eat.
Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville in the United States, said: “When you think of an animal living in an open ocean, it is likely to experience a certain Vertical migration of form.”
Although the details of the model of the day and night vertical migration of marine organisms may be complicated and will vary depending on the species and location, a Copepod may only move a few meters, while a Gelatinous Sea Squirt may move nearly 1,000 Meter. However, the basis of this migration seems fairly simple-mainly about sunlight and food.
Throughout the day, the sunlight has been providing the energy base for the tiny Algae — Phytoplankton — at the top of the ocean. Although these organisms are small, they are numerous and form the basis of the food chain.
They nourish countless life forms, from Crab Larvae as small as a few millimeters to Car-Sized Whale Sharks. The problem is that to maintain life-sustaining photosynthesis, Phytoplankton must stay on the surface of the ocean within 200 meters of water because that is the longest distance that sunlight can penetrate.
Rebecca Helm said. “You can think about the entire depth of the ocean, and you can find that this layer of photosynthesis is like the skin of an apple — it’s too thin”, “So, to make the most of this In rich areas, the creatures in the ocean must migrate here to collect all the food”.
It is difficult for us to intuitively understand how many animals participate in this daily migration, but we can think about it this way. During the Second World War, when scientists first tried underwater sonar to detect German U-shaped submarines, the navy’s echo sounder consistently showed a “solid layer” between about 120 and 180 meters below the sea surface.
At first, scientists inferred that sonar had detected the seafloor
But here comes the problem. This “sea bed” has been moving, becoming shallower at night and deeper during the day. Over time, the scientists discovered that what they saw was a “fake seabed”. This dense “solid layer” is actually composed of densely packed large groups of Shrimp, Squid, and Pipe Jellyfish.
Echo detection image was taken in Saanich Bay, British Columbia, Canada. Krill is a small shrimp-like crustacean whose population forms a thick layer that looks almost like a solid seabed
More importantly
Scientists have found that the gathering of these lives is so regular and predictable. In the end, Sonar researchers named this “deep-sea scattering layer”, which is a dense horizontal area of organisms that can scatter or reflect sound waves. This scattering layer is so thick that there is still some debate about whether the enemy submarine can hide it.
Rebecca Helm said,
“A lot of scientific research is promoted by the military personnel, and their thinking is, We must figure out what is going on!, “If it weren’t for these underwater During the war, we may not know what this strange mysterious layer is”.
Since the Second World War, scientists have mastered a lot of knowledge about the ocean, and each discovery paints a more complex picture of marine life.
For example, although day-night vertical migration is mainly a biological phenomenon, it is also influenced by physics.
Philip Hosegood, a physical oceanographer at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, said that the maximum depth of photosynthesis that Phytoplankton can carry out is determined by factors such as water clarity.
The clarity of the water is determined by a series of other variables, such as water temperature, wind speed, tides, ocean currents, salinity, and light.
Hosgood said,
“The ocean is a three-dimensional space,” “Of course, in fact, it is four-dimensional because it not only changes horizontally and vertically but also changes over time.”
If you have some understanding of Fluid Dynamics, you can have a deeper understanding of the distance that micro-organisms migrate. Otters, Octopuses, and even humans can slide in the water with relatively low resistance, but the smaller the size of the organism, the more difficult it is to overcome the natural viscosity of water (this is why ants are trapped on the water, and we can be free in the pool, the reason for swimming, all this is due to the difference in Reynolds number).
For the particle-sized Zooplankton, swimming in the water is like a person paddling in molasses-and these creatures have to trek back and forth in the sea more than 100 meters deep every day!
Although there is some form of Diurnal vertical migration where Plankton grows, there are still many mysteries that have not been solved.
For example, many animals move vertically in the reverse direction of day and night, they migrate to places with sunlight during the day and leave the water when they leave at night.
Even within a species, migration behavior changes due to different locations
Sammy Andrzejczak, a shark researcher at Stanford University in the United States, co-published a review of the vertical movement of large fish in 2019. “Coral reef ghost manta rays can carry out normal day and night vertical migration.
For example, in places like the Chagos Islands, they swim deep during the day and shallow at night,” He said. “But in some areas, they behave oppositely. For example in the Red Sea and Seychelles.”
Day-night vertical migration is not only important for filter-feeding animals such as Manta rays, but also animals at all levels of the food web.
Big fish eat small fish, small fish eat dried shrimps, dried shrimps eat zooplankton
The larger the animal, the larger the Predators that will Prey on it. The team of Anjay Zach mainly studies how some shark species use lateral migration to Prey on fish that migrate vertically day and night, especially tuna.
David Curnick, a marine biologist at the Zoological Society of London and a colleague of Anjay Zach, said: “The sickle shark seems to stay near the seamount during the day and go out to feed at night.”
This means that marine animals will not only migrate up and down but also laterally, from relatively safe areas to areas with higher productivity.
Perhaps the most interesting point is that what happens in this thin layer of the ocean surface has an impact on the world above and below.
Rebecca Helm said that when all these tiny Phytoplankton photosynthesizes on the surface, they consume a lot of carbon dioxide, and when they are eaten, the carbon will be taken to the deep ocean.
In fact, scientists created a model in 2019 to determine how much carbon is deposited into the deep ocean by vertical migration day and night
They found that those Squids, Juveniles, and Shrimp Larvae can carry 1 pg (Pg, 1 pg = 10¹⁵ grams, or 1 billion tons) of carbon to the deep seabed every year.
Kevin Archibald, a biological oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States and the lead author of this study said,
“All vehicles on the roads in the United States generate approximately 1.5 Pg of carbon per year.” In other words, the day and night vertical migration of marine life offset two-thirds of the total U.S. car emissions.
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
Archibald said that day and night vertical migration accounts for only 16% of the total carbon captured by the ocean
Other contributing factors include natural water movement, sinking Phytoplankton Cells, and marine animal Feces-indeed a massive phenomenon on the ocean scale.
The sinking of Feces will also be greatly affected by vertical migration day and night. Vertical migration day and night also accelerates the rate of nutrient digestion.
Some studies have shown that day and night vertical migration transports nutrients to the deep sea faster than the sinking speed of these substances themselves. It is precise because of the vertical migration of marine organisms day and night that these substances can reach the deep sea faster instead of endlessly drifting.
The vertical migration of day and night also means that many underwater creatures that have never been exposed to sunlight also rely on the sun upon the final analysis.
In fact, we are not much different from them. Although we are basically unable to witness these activities in our lifetime, the vertical migration of marine life not only provides us with food but also plays an important role in the rapidly changing Earth’s climate.
Changing climate will also affect the vertical migration of day and night, although the exact method of impact is still unknown.
Higher water temperatures may reduce the day and night vertical migration activities in tropical seas, which are less active in these areas, while in cold regions such as the Poles, day and night vertical migration activities will be larger and more active.
There are still many uncertain issues, and scientists still need to further study the mechanism of day-night vertical migration. Although most people just know the existence of this phenomenon, we have to say that we should still be grateful for the marine creatures who trek back and forth every day.
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/miracle-happens-everyday-the-marine-migrations-2c762874a861 | ['Arslan Mirza'] | 2020-12-06 15:35:32.125000+00:00 | ['Migration', 'Miracles', 'Underwater', 'Marine', 'Ocean Life'] |
Announcing OGN Payments. Buy or Sell Using Origin Tokens. | OGN for advertising
Sellers can also promote their listings using OGN with Origin Commissions. Sellers can put up OGN to be paid to the application developers and marketplace operators that surface these listings and ultimately helps close sales. Sellers are prompted to optionally choose an amount of OGN they want to pay to have their listings featured across priority placements on the Origin marketplace. If these listings are sold, Origin is paid a commission in OGN. Third-party developers on the Origin platform will also have the opportunity to earn OGN commissions, and we look forward to the innovative ways they use to drive sales.
Promoting listings with OGN
OGN for growth
Last year, we announced and launched Origin Rewards, an incentive program to jumpstart the growth of the Origin platform. Users earn OGN for referring their friends to the platform and verifying their profiles to build trust in Origin’s community of buyers and sellers. We’ve seen an overwhelming response to Origin Rewards and it has fueled explosive growth. We’ve seen our daily active users grow from a few hundred to over 35,000 since its launch with over 120,000 unique wallets using our application.
What’s next for OGN?
We are constantly thinking of ways to add utility to OGN, not only add useful new features, but to strengthen the incentives that shepherd the growth of a healthy, well-functioning network of marketplace participants and developers.
With the launch of several prominent proof-of-stake networks and the rise of DeFi (decentralized finance), staking has definitely been top of mind. We see how passionate the crypto community is about staking and are impressed with how quickly staking incentives can transform behavior in crypto networks. We are actively exploring how we can add OGN-denominated staking rewards to our platform.
As the Origin network continues to grow, we also recognize the potential of OGN as a governance token. We are committed to decentralized ownership of the network by our community of OGN holders that will have a say in the future of the Origin platform. Stay tuned for even more exciting news about OGN.
Learn more about Origin: | https://blog.originprotocol.com/announcing-ogn-payments-buy-or-sell-using-origin-tokens-8b937daa66e8 | ['Shahul Hameed'] | 2020-01-16 00:35:15.938000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Marketplaces', 'Product', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain'] |
Right Place | Your love is meant to be;
In my heart.
Like the scribbles,
of a genius:
Littering the canvas;
Of a whiteboard. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/right-place-11141627504 | ['Fọlábòmí Àmọ Ó'] | 2020-09-04 10:21:01.283000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Romance', 'Love', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Genius'] |
Why You Need to Write More Than One Headline | Why You Need to Write More Than One Headline
Hone your skill for writing brilliant headlines quickly
Illustration by Cynthia Marinakos.
How many headlines do you write for one article?
I used to write one in a few seconds, impatient to publish after spending hours, days, sometimes weeks, to finish a draft. I treated headlines more like an insignificant crowd extra, rather than the star of the show.
That was a stupid thing to do. I now realize I wrote mediocre headlines most of the time.
I was being selfish and impatient. You see, when you write vague or clever headlines that don’t serve your reader — they’ll ignore you.
The most important person in all our worlds — is ourselves. That is true for us. And for our reader.
They want something. They’ve got to figure out how to earn more money. How to get more sh*t done. How to start a side hustle because they hate their job. They want to be more creative. To figure out how to get fitter, redecorate their homes, get their kids off sugar.
Your reader — your customer — is here because they have a challenge and they want the solution so they can have an easier, happier, less stressful life.
Your headline needs to tell them it’s worth them reading the next line. And the next. And the next.
Headlines are essential in every writer’s toolbox. In every marketer’s toolbox. Like any tool, it can’t be used well unless you’ve learned how to use it. To use it skillfully, you’ve got to put in a consistent and focused effort. You’ve got to write more than one headline. Here are five tips to get you going. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/why-you-need-to-write-more-than-one-headline-812d6c68912c | ['Cynthia Marinakos'] | 2020-05-27 08:15:49.646000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Business', 'Productivity', 'Headline Hacks', 'Creativity'] |
Is there a Journalist in the Wall Street Journal? Not if you need unbiased journalism. | Screenshot by Inigo Bigot
Joseph Epstein writes in his Wall Street Journal article “Is there a Doctor in the White House? Not if you need an M.D.” that, “The Ph.D. may once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally, at any rate outside the sciences.” This appears to be the main point of his opinion piece, along with his disapproval of the proliferation of honorary degrees. It is an opinion shared by many in academia and elsewhere and there are some quite reasonable arguments in support of it.
So, why pick on Dr Jill Biden? Is it just opportunism? Is Epstein merely using the elevation of Biden to First Lady status to draw attention to his argument? If so, it is in my opinion a grave misjudgement. The upshot is that his argument is lost in a morass of gender politics. Epstein may or may not be sexist, he may or may not be out of step with the current gender paradigm, but his words suggest he is. He seems to be calling for a return to days when a woman’s role is merely to support her husband, a time when women were encouraged to stand back and keep out of ‘serious affairs’.
His editor, Paul Gigot, chose attack as the Wall Street Journal’s best means of defence, writing, “Why go to such lengths to highlight a single op-ed on a relatively minor issue? My guess is that the Biden team concluded it was a chance to use the big gun of identity politics to send a message to critics as it prepares to take power. There’s nothing like playing the race or gender card to stifle criticism.”
I would argue that it is, in fact, Epstein who has (perhaps unwittingly, very likely not) played the gender card. First, he dismisses Dr Biden’s PhD on the basis that its subject is education. Well, education is a profession that statistically draws more women than men. Then, he belittles her dissertation, on the basis of its “unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.”” Caring for students (read: young people) is traditionally more the province of women than men.
Putting to one side his specious argument that only a medical doctor should use the tile Dr., his choice of Dr Jill Biden as a prime example of the lowering of academic standards smacks of regressive notions about one, the need for the First Lady to allow her new role to overshadow all her other achievements and activities, and two, the role of women in society more broadly.
If Mr Epstein wishes to be considered a serious journalist, he should not allow gender bias to infiltrate his argument. If The Wall Street Journal wishes to be considered a serious news source, it should not publish poorly constructed op-eds. Gigot writes that, “Mrs. Biden is now America’s most prominent doctorate holder and is taking a leading role in education policy. She can’t be off-limits for commentary.” I agree, but a major news publication should ensure the commentary be worthwhile, useful, and unprejudicial. | https://medium.com/@inigobigot/is-there-a-journalist-in-the-wall-street-journal-not-if-you-need-e8d311680268 | ['Inigo Bigot'] | 2020-12-31 01:09:50.424000+00:00 | ['Dr Jill Biden', 'Joseph Epstein', 'Gender', 'The Wall Street Journal', 'First Lady'] |
Data Science Certification in Singapore | With over 8 years of bespoke Analytics and A.I./Machine Learning implementation experience of data strategies and solutions that deliver complex prediction and decision making capabilities to thousands of clients, JCube Institute is a premium Digital Science Institute in Asia made up of passionate and highly qualified practitioners, consultants and leaders in digital science and transformation. Certifications and courses developed are condensed yet rigorous and endorsed by various institutions and corporations.
JCube Institute
3 Fraser St, #05–21, DUO Tower, 189352 Singapore
+65 9690 0470
[email protected]
https://jcube-institute.com/ | https://medium.com/@jcubeinstitute/data-science-certification-in-singapore-7173bd53da78 | ['Jcube Institute'] | 2020-12-11 05:54:59.561000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Python Programming', 'Data Analytics', 'Machine Learning'] |
Agar Tum Saath Ho FULL AUDIO song lyrics in English|ALKA YAGNIK, ARIJIT SINGH Lyrics | Agar Tum Saath Ho FULL AUDIO song lyrics in English|ALKA YAGNIK, ARIJIT SINGH Lyrics lyricsadvance.com Apr 4·2 min read
pal bhar Theher jaao
dil ye sambhal jaaye
kaise tumhe roka karoon
meri taraf aata
har gham phisal jaaye
aankhon mein tumko bharoon,
bin bole baatein tumse karoon,
gar tum saath ho,
agar tum saath ho..
stop for a moment,
let this heart get stable
how should I stop you..
every sorrow coming towards me
would slip away..
I’ll fill you in my eyes
I’ll talk to you without speaking,
if you are with me
if you are with me..
behti rehti neher nadiyaan si teri duniya mein
meri duniya hai teri chaahaton mein
main Dhal jaati hoon teri aadaton mein
gar tum saath ho..
in your world, canals and rivers seem to be flowing
my world is in your love
I mould according to your habits
if you are with me..
teri nazron mein hai tere sapne,
tere sapnon mein hai naraazi,
mujhe lagta hai ki baatein dil ki
hoti lafzon ki dhokhebaazi
tum saath ho ya na ho
kya fark hai
bedard thi zindagi bedard hai
your dreams are there in your eyes,
and because of your dreams there is anger (in you)..
I feel the talks of heart
are all deception..
whether you are there with me or not,
what is the difference,
the life was merciless, and is merciless.
agar tum saath ho
agar tum saath ho..
if you are with me
if you are with me..
palken jhapakte hi
din ye nikal jaaye
baiThi baiThi bhaagi phiroon
meri taraf aata
har gham phisal jaaye
aankhon mein tumko bharoon,
bin bole baatein tumse karoon,
gar tum saath ho,
agar tum saath ho..
as soon as the I blink,
the day comes out.
I keep running around while sitting only..
every sorrow coming towards me
would slip away..
I’ll fill you in my eyes
I’ll talk to you without speaking,
if you are with me
if you are with me..
teri nazron mein hai tere sapne,
tere sapnon mein hai naaraazi,
mujhe lagta hai ki baatein dil ki
hoti lafzon ki dhokhebaazi
tum saath ho ya na ho
kya fark hai
bedard thi zindagi bedard hai
agar tum saath ho
dil ye sambhal jaaye
agar tum saath ho..
har gham phisal jaaye
agar tum saath ho..
din ye nikal jaaye.
agar tum saath ho..
har gham phisal jaaye, | https://medium.com/@subho99315564/agar-tum-saath-ho-full-audio-song-lyrics-in-english-alka-yagnik-arijit-singh-lyrics-75e9381e55da | [] | 2021-04-04 08:41:27.531000+00:00 | ['Bollywood', 'Songs', 'Music', 'Arijit Singh', 'Lyrics'] |
Cheat Sheets for the Struggling Souls | Let me cut to the chase and just say it. If you stop coding, you will forget!
As I reach my second to last phase of my bootcamp, I am realizing that my blood, sweat, and tears of work in the first two phases is slowly fading away. Even if I am coding in a secondary language(Ruby), I’m quite rusty in my oh-so-called primary language(Javascript). Although the logic being used to solve the problems will be present in all languages, I am forgetting what kind of methods, operators even existed.
Just throw it away if your code
Fear Not! There are plenty of refreshers available to you online, including mine. I will be covering some basic Javascript.
Arrays
Operations
If/Else Statements
String
Regular Expression
Math
a special present!
watch Bob’s Burgers, y’all
Arrays
let group = [“Leslie”, “Apoorva”, “Zach”]
let team = [“Yearim”, “Alec”, “Mari”]
let partners = [“Yi”, “Lex”, “Nathan”]
Array Methods:
pop() / / removes the last element in an array, think of “Pop off”
group.pop() // [“Leslie”,”Apoorva”] *Bye Zach!
/ removes the last element in an array, think of “Pop off” push() // adds a new element to the end of an array, think of “Push on”
group.push(“Zach”)//[“Leslie”,”Apoorva”,”Zach”] *Zach is back
// adds a new element to the end of an array, think of “Push on” shift() // removes the first element in an array
group.shift() // ["Apoorva”, "Zach"] *I'm leaving!
// removes the first element in an array unshift() //adds a new element to the beginning of an array
group.unshift(“Leslie”)//[“Leslie”,”Apoorva”,”Zach”] *I'm back
//adds a new element to the beginning of an array slice(start, end) //returns a copy of an array from start to end of an index
partners.slice(1) // ["Lex", "Nathan"]
partners.slice(-1) // ["Nathan"]
partners.slice(0, 1) // ["Yi"]
partners.slice(1, -1) // ["Lex"]
//returns a copy of an array from start to end of an index splice(where, how many?*, item list*) // add elements (where, how many to remove, element list) * is optional
team.splice(1, 0, “Apoorva”, “Zach”) // ["Yearim", "Apoorva", "Zach", "Alec", "Mari"]
// add elements (where, how many to remove, element list) * is optional sort() //sorts element alphabetically
team.sort() // [“Alec”,”Mari”,”Yearim”]
//sorts element alphabetically sort() //numeric sort
let nums = [1, 3, 6, 2, 5, 4]
sort((a, b) => a - b)// [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Operators
Comparison Operators:
== Equal to
=== Equal Value and Type
!= Not Equal to
!==Not Equal Value and Type
<=, >= less or equal, greater or equal
Logical Operators:
&& logical and
|| logical or
! logical not
If/Else Statements
if (condition1 is true) {
// run this code
} else if (condition2 is true) {
// run this
} else {
//do this
}
Switch Statements
switch (phase) {
case 1: // if (phase == 1)
teacher = "Ix";
break;
case 2: // if (phase == 2)
teacher = "Louis";
break;
case 3: // if (phase == 3)
teacher = "Dakota";
break;
case 4: // if (phase == 4)
teacher = "Ix";
break; default: // else...
teacher = "Adam?";
}
String Methods
let string = “Potatoes”
let sentence = “Potatoes Underground”
charAt() //returns a character at the specified index
string.charAt(0) //”P”
split() //splits a string into an array of string, pattern provided in the parameter.
sentence.split(“ ") //[“Potatoes”,”Underground”]
replace() // find and replace specific text (once only, if a string)
sentence.replace(“Potatoes”, “Bananas”) // “Bananas Underground”
string.replace(“o”, “0”) // “P0tatoes”
string.replace(/o/g, “0”) // “P0tat0es”
startsWith() //checks if string starts with a characters specified string string.startsWith(“Pot”) //true
endsWith() //checks if string ends with a characters specified string string.endsWith(“toes”) //true
match(regex) //retrieves matches of string against the inserted string
string.match(/toe/) //[“toe”]
REGEX
I know this scares a lot of y’all. It scares me too, but we can’t be running away from it all the time!
Brackets
[.?!] // find any characters in the brackets
[^.?!] //find any characters not in the brackets
[0–9] //find any digits from 0–9
[A-Za-z] //find any character from uppercase A -Z to lowercase a-z
Pattern Modifiers
i // case insensitive
gm // global matching, multiple matches
Math Methods
abs(n) // return absolute value of n
Math.abs(-5) // 5
ceil(n) // value of n rounded up to the nearest integer
floor(n) // value of n rounded down to the nearest integer
max(x, y, z, n) // return the number with highest value
Math.max(8, 4, 3, 6) //8
min(x, y, z, n) //returns the number with lowest value
random() //returns a random number between 0 and 1
Hold on, There is one more!!!!
BONUS!!!!!
Don’t worry, we are almost there!
A lot of the times when we drive/navigate, I realize that some of my cohort-mates are missing out on some shortcuts, whether by choice or unawareness! So allow me to share some of my tricks!
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
*these are based on macs on the Browser
cmd + // zoom in
cmd- // zoom out
cmd 0 // original
ctrl tab // switch tabs within the window
cmd tab // switch through all opened apps
On visual studio code
shift + command + p // show command palette
option + d // multi select
option up/down arrow // move line up or down
command + / // toggling comment
command + n // new file
command + s // save file
command + w // close current window
command up/down arrow // beginning or end of file
control + ` // open vs code terminal
Terminal
control + l // clear terminal
control + u // delete everything from cursor position to the beginning of the line
control + a // move cursor to the beginning
Git Command
Have you ever cloned a lab instead of forking it and now you can’t push it up? Well, here are some commands that can save you from that situation!
First, go to the repo and fork → copy the SSH
git remote -v *check that the origin isn't your github
git remote remove origin
git remote add origin *copy and paste the SSH
git remote -v *check your work and celebrate :D
If you want to redo a lab that you forked without physically deleting all the work?
git reset --soft HEAD~1 *remove last commit from the current branch
git restore *as an alternative to --soft you can do this
git reset --hard HEAD~1 you will lose all uncommited changes and all untracked files
Congratulations!
You actually scrolled down to the bottom of the article! Thanks for sticking around to the end. I hope this was helpful to you in some way!!! | https://medium.com/@leslieyi/cheat-sheet-for-the-struggling-souls-ec6801c38644 | ['Leslie Yi'] | 2021-09-03 01:24:59.469000+00:00 | ['Flatiron School', 'Women In Tech', 'JavaScript', 'Fullstack Development', 'Codingbootcamp'] |
The Uncomfortable Truth About Not Being Bisexual After All | By Kendra Syrdal
Six years ago I was out with my best friend at a bar called something I don’t remember and I flirted with a girl, on purpose, for the first time. Six years ago after leaving said bar with a girl and going back home with her, I ended up in her bed, on purpose and without a guy present, for the first time. Six years ago, after quietly wondering for a while if I wasn’t as hetero as I originally thought I confirmed that I am definitely not hetero, for the first time.
Nope. Not hetero. Like, at all.
And so six years ago, after sleeping with a woman on my own terms for the first time, I started to call myself bi. I started navigating what that meant for me. I gave myself the space to identify as something other than straight for the first time in my entire life. I started to figure out what being queer, what being definitely not hetero, meant for me.
But then over four years ago, I had my last sexual or romantic encounter with a man and I, frankly, haven’t looked back. I remember watching him drink bourbon on my balcony and just thinking, “Huh this is way more fun when it’s another woman. I don’t think I’m really into this.” When we mutually ghosted each other literally hours later I wasn’t even slightly bothered. In fact, I don’t think that bourbon memory had occurred to me in several years until I sat down to try to articulate what I’m getting at with this essay.
Four years ago, even though I completely did not recognize it at the time, I stopped feeling the pressure of compulsory heterosexuality. Four years ago, even though I did not recognize it at the time, I started to truly lean into my gay identity.
Four years ago, only a little over a year and some change after declaring I was bisexual, I stopped really being bisexual. And now four years later, I still don’t fully know how to label myself.
But honestly what’s been more confusing than not having a label for myself is understanding why there’s all this pressure to declare one in the first place. If there isn’t a label that seems to fit, why do I feel like I should keep searching for one until there is?
Psychologically speaking, human beings label each other for a couple of different reasons. It’s a way of organizing people, of knowing where they belong in a group. Ie: “You’re big and strong, you should protect the group. You’re really clever and quick, you should hunt for us. You’re really nurturing and trustworthy, you should raise the young.” And so on and so forth. It can also be viewed as a safety measure. When you know what something is and how that something works, it’s much easier to understand whether or not that something then poses a threat to you or your community or both. Taking both of those things into consideration, it’s easy to see that this labeling, this organizational method that we put onto other human beings originally stemmed as a survival method, and even subconsciously still acts as such to a certain extent.
It’s also important to note how humans absolutely love control and consistency which is why societal norms have existed for centuries and continue to be upheld even by people who would claim they don’t care about them. Labels, or having the psychological ability to say “this goes here, this goes there” are what create the foundation for maintaining what feels familiar or, frankly, right. Humans do not thrive in the unknown. We want to know who, what, why, when, where, and how. Not having the answers to those questions at best confuses us and throws us off a bit, and at worst makes us question the entirety of our own reality.
There are multiple problems with all of this.
We’re evolving, sometimes rapidly and seemingly overnight, while the labels are taking multiple years to catch up. But the concept of a labelless society makes sense to very few people. It is the antithesis of those societal norms most of us were taught were intrinsic to maintaining life as we know it. However, the biggest issue, in my oh-so-humble opinion, is when we label someone it completely stifles our curiosity in seeing or understanding them as something more complicated, interesting, multi-faceted, or just more than the label we’ve assigned them. It gives no room for growth, no room for fluidity, no room for change, and no room for further evolution.
And when you do that to yourself? Incorrectly? Twice? Well, woof. You’re probably in for it a little bit. (Or a lot.)
In the same way I literally never considered bisexuality as an option until I was 25, I never saw it as anything but the only option given my entire past after accepting I was not straight. I had been an active (and enthusiastic!) participant in heterosexuality. I had an almost decade-plus history of dating, sleeping with, exploring, and loving men. To question that side of myself, to peel back the layers of my sexuality before I had even realized it, just never even occurred to me as something I could do.
There are layers to compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity. We all experience it or at least the ripple effects of it no matter our sexual or gender identities. But we all experience those layers and those ripples to different degrees and extents. A huge portion of it for me is how it ultimately boiled down to never questioning my attraction and then subsequent desire and love for men. I had crushes on boys, so I had to be into men, right?
Well when the boys are Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Leonardo Dicaprio in Romeo + Juliet who essentially dressed like the soft butch lesbians I date today, maybe not so much!
There are a number of things that people claim as parts of their persona I find incredibly boring. I swear, this has a point to it. Anyway. Some of these are (but not limited to):
People who act like hating kids is a personality trait.
People who hate on Scorpios for no other reason than it’s easy.
People who think dunking on Top 40 makes them cultured and/or a certifiable music critic.
People who always make every talking point or conversation somehow lead back to talking about themselves.
People who like to humblebrag about how little they use social media.
All of this to say, one of the absolute most boring personality traits to me (of which there are clearly many) is when someone who is straight or homosexual cannot admit when they find someone of the gender they are not personally interested in attractive.
I am not straight, but I am not dead. When I see an attractive man, I am well aware that he is attractive. Matthew Gray Gubler exists. Dev Patel exists. Evan Peters, Robert Sheehan, Donald Glover, Jake Gyllenhall. I know when a man is attractive and beautiful and fun to look at. I get it. But do I want to be with him? Do I want to hold his hand? Do I want to create a space that encourages him to open up and trust me in deep, evocative, meaningful ways? Do I want to know about his hopes and dreams and what makes him keep going in this shitstorm of a world? Do I want to stay in bed all day with a man? Do I want to hold him from behind and kiss his shoulders and ask him what his favorite line from a movie is and actually open up to him and sleep underneath him? Do I really want to be with a man?
No, not really. Actually beyond not really. I don’t.
I’m not interested in men in a sexual or romantic way so that must make me a lesbian, right? Unfortunately, I still don’t know that it’s that simple. Actually, I do know. It hasn’t been and it’s not.
The complications that surround the word lesbian have been documented at length. From its over-sexualization to the implication that it would be exclusionary to non-binary people to how TERFs have now taken it as something for them to wield at their leisure to, frankly, the way it is tossed around as the ultimate insult when you’re growing up in a small town — it is a word that is sure to get a reaction that is often far from positive. Culturally, especially with young(er) queer women, there is almost a disconnect to the word lesbian. It feels, oftentimes, like it excludes or omits people we are not looking to exclude. But then to exclude ourselves from a word with all of the history attached to it feels like the ultimate exclusion in and of itself. There is a lot of take back that needs to happen with the word lesbian. And it’s take back that I think is absolutely happening, but at one of those slower paces I mentioned previously.
Which is to say! I don’t know! I don’t know if that’s what I am or would identify as if I had done all of this at 16 when I was supposed to according to statistics. It’s something I’m clearly still working on, okay?!
But here are some things I do know after a slew of things I do not.
I am a woman who loves other women.
I haven’t been romantically or sexually involved or interested in a cis/straight man in nearly half a decade.
I have been romantically and sexually involved with queer people of multiple identities post coming out as bisexual initially.
The last serious, long-term, over a year-long relationship I was in was with another woman.
The last heartbreak I had was over a woman.
The last person I saw myself developing feelings for is a woman.
Being queer is an integral part of who I am.
And that last thing I know is the main component that I hold to be true.
My queer/gay identity is undeniably an important factor in the makeup of my being. It is a fundamental part of who I am. I would never consider the fact that I am not a cat person (see? probably not a lesbian. so sorry had to it was right there.) a part of my personality because that would be what? Boring. But my queerness? It is deeply something that defines who, what, when, where, how, and why I am who I am.
My queerness is so important to me that I cannot see myself being with someone who doesn’t just accept it, they need to understand it. That connection and shared experience is vital for me. It’s a non-negotiable. It transcends necessary. Without it, there is no connection. It’s not possible.
I’m attracted to, desire, and just interested in other queer people, and that’s what I know. Full stop. Predominantly, that has been other queer women. It can extend outside of the typical gender binary, but still within the queer space. The queerness is the point. The gay factor is the point. The “not hetero” is the whole fucking point.
I don’t think (and I say don’t think because listen, was wrong twice before, could be wrong again!!!!!) I could ever be with a man again because to be with a man would be to be with someone who is missing a key component of what makes me me. For some people? That’s not a problem or a necessity. But for me it truly feels like everything. And for me, the elimination of men from the people I’m interested in pursuing as a more than platonic partner does eliminate bisexual from a label that feels truly representative of me.
All of this to say, even though bisexuality was a stepping stone for me, that doesn’t make it invalid or a phase for everyone. Bisexuality is a real experience and important identity for many, many people. And honestly? We, or people like myself, owe them a huge thank you for allowing us space to figure shit out when we, you know, needed to figure shit out.
So now that we’re post-figuring shit out? Or at least further along with it?
I’m not bisexual. It was just a phase. I tried it on until I was ready to just be into chicks. The fear I had came true and it was a layover for me on the way to gay town. Should I keep going, go ahead and include more offensive tropes? No, don’t worry, I won’t.
What I know is this.
The biggest mistake I made with my sexuality was ever labeling it in the first place. Because the label, to me, is not important. If it is important to someone talking about me? Whatever. They can call me whatever they want so long as they represent that I’m not straight. Lesbian, queer, gay? They all feel fine. But the label is not something I feel in any way devoted or married to.
The label is not what’s important, the intent is. And so long as you’re aware I’m a very proud LGBTQ+ woman and honor as such with whatever label you assign me, it’s probably going to be fine.
Maybe at some point I will find a label that feels like it fits and I will symbolically adhere it to my probably cuffed sleeved shirt and claim it as my own. But these days, I’m more than comfortable with my labellessness. I, generally, know who I am and what I’m about. I know that I’m open to evolution of terminology and identity. I love the space that holds for me and how the lack of label makes that room a more comfortable place to sit and learn and absorb and become. I like the challenge of growing. I welcome it. If I felt the necessity of picking one label to rule them all, one label to define them, I don’t know that I’d feel the same.
In 2016, when I decided to write about my at-the-time-bisexualjourney I said:
“The thing about figuring yourself out is that it’s not necessarily going to be a steadily increasing graph and once you reach the top a bell goes off, confetti flies out of the air, and you’re awarded a metaphorical gold star for winning the game of loving yourself. There will be dips and falls, plateaus and spikes.”
I don’t know that this has had so much to do with self-love, but it’s absolutely been more than applicable to self-acceptance. There has been a lot of reconfiguring on the navigational system for me with the whole “figure yourself out” journey. There have, in fact, been dips and falls, plateaus and spikes, zigs and zags, as I have clawed my way to defining who I am. 2016 me may have had very little cognizant idea that I wasn’t bisexual, but she was honestly onto something. She self-predicted something I wasn’t even aware was going to come up again.
Isn’t it kind of comforting to see in digital black and white that even when we don’t know anything we still kind of know ourselves deep down? I think it is. I may have been so confident, at the time, with calling myself bisexual. But there was still a part of me that was aware I should try to hold space for the possibility that the journey was still far from over.
Six years ago, I slept with a woman for the first time and realized I was definitely not straight. Four years ago, I effectively retired from men. This year, I’m grappling with how to self-identify when I don’t see the utter importance of labels in a world that seems utterly obsessed with identifying everything. Maybe next year I’ll have a label, or maybe I won’t.
But similar to what I said in 2016, I’m proud that this journey has been mine. It’s a journey no one told me I was allowed to go on, and I went on it anyway. It’s been one that has completely confused and paralyzed me at times, but it has led me to some of the most beautiful moments of my entire life filled with softness and grace I previously couldn’t have even fathomed. I’m proud that in a world that’s as insistent on concrete labels I’ve given myself space to change and grow even when it feels like a fuck up on my part. I’m proud that I’ve let myself become my most me, even if it’s been kind of messy along the way. This journey might be ending with more of an ellipsis, but I love that opportunity for evolution.
After all, I wouldn’t be much of a labelleless bitch if I insisted on a period to finalize things now would I… | https://aninjusticemag.com/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-not-being-bisexual-after-all-8aa28f58d6a7 | ['Thought Catalog'] | 2021-02-04 16:36:46.279000+00:00 | ['Queer', 'Lesbian', 'Sapphic', 'LGBTQ', 'Sexuality'] |
India’s Plans on Climate Ambition Summit 2020 | Climate Ambition Summit was convened by the United Nations, United Kingdom, and France in partnership with Chile and Italy. So this particular summit marks the five years since the inauguration of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The Paris agreement back then was discussed in the year 2015, and 2020 marks the fifth year since the Paris agreement was initiated. So this Climate Ambition Summit is basically one of the summits, which will bring all the countries on a common platform where it is expected to make sure that these countries who are part of this particular summit submit their own ambitious target with respect to fighting the climate change. They make a new commitment to tackle climate change and also deliver on the goals that they made with reference to the Paris agreement.
So basically, what we have is something called as the nationally determined targets. In these nationally determined targets, a particular country’s implementation will be discussed under this particular summit. So basically, they will also speak about the climate finance commitment, about the vulnerable countries and also ambitious adaption plans and the underlying policies to make sure that they are implementing all that they said with respect to the Paris agreement. So the leaders from the government, business community, and civil society all gathered at this virtual summit to make sure that they have all the plans and preparations for the execution of the Paris agreement.
India’s Contribution
With respect to India, we have the prime minister, Narendra Modi, who went on to address the Climate Ambition Summit. According to India, India has said that it is not only on track to make sure that it is implementing the Paris agreement and its nationally determined goals and commitments, but it will also exceed much beyond the expectations as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi went on to say that India has reduced emissions intensity by 21 percent over the 2005 levels, but the goal is between 33 percent and 35 percent of the GDP by the year 2020, and all these programs and mechanisms will be implemented on the basis of two important pillars. They are,
Increase the renewable energy sector, reduce the thermal power plant, and look at alternative sources of energy like renewable energy, solar energy, and wind energy.
Another important factor is we increase the forest cover. So we would be able to reduce emissions on the basis of two important pillars. One is by using or increasing renewable energy and at the same time by increasing the forest cover.
When it comes to the renewable energy sector, we have to focus on this solar energy sector. Currently, the capacity of the solar energy sector is about 36 gigawatts, and the ambition that is set by the government of India is about 100 gigawatts of solar power capacity. So what we have to make sure that we have to increase from 36 gigawatts to about 100 gigawatts.
Requirements for India to Achieve this Summit
The requirement is to promote rooftop solar installations. But when it comes to this particular agenda, there has been less progress that has been made by the state government. So the state government has no enthusiasm, or even if they have, there is very little encouragement when it comes to the execution of this particular roof solar top installations. That has been the major concern when it comes to this solar sector.
Now when it comes to the forest cover, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that there’ll be an increase in the forest cover when it comes to India. But the problem with respect to forest cover is that all the statistics, the afforestation data gave by the state government are not verified yet. Since whether there is an increase or decrease is based only on the data and statistics. But the forestation data plan given by the state government is still not verifiable. However, when it comes to the forest data, all the benefits that this will provide is in terms of reduction as the carbon sink, it will also make sure that there is the protection of the biodiversity, influencing the climate system, and it also makes sure that there are resources that which is accommodated to the communities living in the forest areas. But the problem with forest cover right now is that its statistics and data given by the state government are not verifiable.
Other Country’s Contribution
At the same time, other countries have also said that during the Climate Ambition Summit, they will also promise to inculcate or come up with targeted plans as well. When it comes to the United Kingdom, it has pledged to double its climate finance contribution to USD 15.5 Billion over the next five years. Then we have China’s commitment to lowering its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by over 65 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2030. We have the European Union, which has also made commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2030. Then we also have the European Investment Bank, which also announced a goal of 50 percent of the investment going forward to climate and environmental sectors by the year 2025.
I hope this is useful for you guys and Thanks For Reading…
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/indias-plans-on-climate-ambition-summit-2020-19cc66ba9665 | ['Vishnu Aravindhan'] | 2020-12-27 17:02:12.434000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Climate Change', 'Environmental Issues', 'USA', 'India'] |
When the lights go out | I’ve always had a strange relationship with the Christmas season. From the outside, I seem to be bursting with joy. In public, you’ll rarely see me without a Santa hat or an ugly sweater. There’s almost certainly a candy cane on my person. I’m probably wearing a pair of those Christmas socks that sacrifice any sense of warmth to focus on a design of dogs in sweaters or repeating Rudolphs. I will happily tell anyone that asks that I’d like to be Clark W. Griswold, the center of a swirling tornado of holiday chaos.
The truth of how I actually feel, however, is messier than the Griswold house at the end of Christmas Vacation. December makes me extremely sad and I can’t stop myself from leaning into it. My speakers play songs like The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York and Old City Bar by TSO on repeat. Songs that tell stories of nostalgia, regret, and loneliness. I smile at the idea of staying up late on Christmas Eve watching Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas with a glass of whiskey but I’ll cry while it’s happening.
I consider myself a strange version of religiously spiritual. I disagree with so many concepts and beliefs of the catholic church I was raised in, but I find comfort in the stories of a manger on a silent night. Of three old men bringing wildly impractical gifts to a baby.
Thoughts of the sound of creaky old pews and church bells and the smells of incense at midnight on Christmas Eve are still so visceral I can feel them. But when the bells ring out on Christmas Day, I know I’ll spend hours fighting back tears. Perhaps it’s the sense of ending. Maybe it’s knowing that in January my birthday will come around, a day I’ve never really cared about anyway, and I’ll just be another year older.
I’ve always tried to be in the moment and embrace joy when I’m experiencing it, but it’s a struggle. At my core, I’m a person who worries about time lost and time gone by. I’m nostalgic to the point of unhealthiness and so, every year, even as John Denver and the Muppets play through my speakers and the Grinch tiptoes across my television, I know that far too soon, the tree will be taken down. The stale cookies will be thrown away. The holiday spirit will dissipate.
What do you do when the lights stop twinkling?
Growing up, the Christmas season was always a joy. We would go sledding and bake cookies. We’d decorate the Christmas tree that never quite fit in its stand. We’d read those scratch and sniff Christmas books where the cheese just kind of smelled like the paper it was printed on.
Christmas Eve was the culmination of the season. Dozens of family and friends would come to our home for a traditional Eastern European meal filled with pierogi, garlic sausage, ham, and pea soup. Drinks would be had and cousins would exchange gifts. Grandpa would hand them out one by one from his chair in the corner of the dining room. It took a long time. I have a lot of cousins.
It was loud.
I loved it.
As an adult with my own home and responsibilities, I know that every year I’ll have to leave that party far earlier than I’d like. I start thinking about how sad that will make me even before the shrimp cocktail comes out.
In a normal year, this party would still be happening at my mom’s. 2020 is not a normal year.
I’ve heard a lot of interviews and read a number of essays by smart people I respect who say being nostalgic is an unhealthy act. I suppose this is true, given the human brain’s penchant to look back with rose-colored glasses. Mine tend to be more red and green.
I don’t know that anything can be gained from longing for a perfect holiday season that probably never truly existed. Reflection is natural as the year comes to an end, but I admit I’m jealous of the people who can enjoy these few weeks for what they are. An annual excuse to bake a little more, raise a glass with friends and family, and embrace the sounds of jingle bells.
I wish I knew how to just stay in the moment and let the holiday spirit envelop me. But when I look up at my Christmas tree, I don’t know how to think about everything it means for today. I think about how I’ll feel when I put it back into storage. I think about how I’m going to have to fight to be okay after the garland is unplugged and the snowmen are put away.
I never figured out how to smile the last time the lights go out. | https://medium.com/@sockela/when-the-lights-go-out-7e0f7827296c | ['Adam Sockel'] | 2020-12-19 13:45:59.799000+00:00 | ['Holidays', 'Depression', 'Christmas', 'Nostalgia', 'Sadness'] |
[Paper] P3D: Pseudo-3D Residual Networks (Video Classification & Action Recognition) | [Paper] P3D: Pseudo-3D Residual Networks (Video Classification & Action Recognition)
In this story, Learning Spatio-Temporal Representation with Pseudo-3D Residual Networks (P3D), by University of Science and Technology of China, and Microsoft Research, is briefly presented.
3D CNN is computational and memory expensive.
In this paper:
3×3×3 convolutions are designed as 1×3×3 convolutional filters on spatial domain (equivalent to 2D CNN) plus 3×1×1 convolutions to construct temporal connections on adjacent feature maps in time.
are designed as on adjacent feature maps in time. Bottleneck building blocks are built, which formed a network, named Pseudo-3D Residual Net (P3D ResNet).
This is a paper in 2017 ICCV with over 500 citations. (Sik-Ho Tsang @ Medium) | https://medium.com/@sh-tsang/paper-p3d-pseudo-3d-residual-networks-video-classification-action-recognition-d1dd13638d7c | ['Sik-Ho Tsang'] | 2020-11-08 05:33:55.752000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Convolutional Network', 'Deep Learning', 'Video Classification', 'Resnet'] |
How do prolific abusers get away with it for so long? | How do prolific abusers get away with it for so long?
Disclaimer: I have been requested not to name or identify any of the individuals or accused predators involved with this case by the various victims and informants I refer to in this article. It is ongoing, but my involvement is long over and I am no longer in association with the alleged perpetrator.
I’ve often been alarmed by the fact that I’ve ignored warning bells when being immediately confronted by someone who made me uncomfortable in some way. There are many things that a young woman, in any society, are told to watch out for as warning signs that someone might not have wholly honorable intentions in helping you.
I had been immediately alerted to the fact I didn’t feel comfortable meeting one high profile guy at his private club, on my own, in my early twenties. I didn’t know him, and I hadn’t met him before. But hey, you can’t go through life in fear, right? I remember thinking, at the time, that he was on some kind of amphetamine in the middle of the day. Not great, so far. He kept staring at my body and that made me feel a bit weird, but hey, not unique by any standard, even in a professional context.
I was warned by a member of his entourage that he only ‘engaged’ very young brunette women into his group who were slim and pale, and that he could be creepy and very inappropriate. The man flicked through the profile of a new contact. “Let’s just say,” he said, “look around you and see what she has in common with you girls.” Again, that should have been another alarm bell. Trust me, all this left me kicking myself months later.
I was chatting to an investigative journalist about six months later when I had another opportunity to wake up to the fact this man was less than kosher. “Fuck, you know him?” he said. “Has he…done anything?” Immediately, I paused.
I’d tried to brush off his endless ‘banter’ about my sexuality, how I might perform in bed, comments about my appearance and how well I ‘scrubbed up’ to other middle-aged men, and comments on my selfies that were a little inappropriate. I mean, it was just a joke, surely? I can’t throw away everything because I’m a bit indignant about being asked how I have sex with my partner by a man I’ve never exhibited any romantic or sexual interest in. I’m not the Joke Stasi, for goodness sake. However, I’d also spoken to other brunette young women around him complaining about his obsession with their appearance, his sharing of images of them in a halloween costume or on holiday, and graphic jokes about their sex lives and being fucked by their partners. I’d felt very awkward when he insisted on hugging me a bit too long and I had a strange sensation of being unsafe when I was alone with him in taxis.
But this man hadn’t assaulted me. He was just creepy. Some men are. Right? “No.” I said eventually. “Why?” The journalist paused. “You hear things. A lot of journalists have told me that girls from-” there was a long pause down the phone. “It doesn’t matter. I know other girls he- did stuff to.” No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get any more information. Not from him, anyway.
This got more alarming when I found out, through another, totally unconnected journalist, from another very high end publication, that this man had, rather mysteriously, ‘been the subject of inquiry.’ I brushed this off as another woman being unhappy with his lewd sense of humour and lack of understanding of boundaries. Until this journalist asked me to meet with him for coffee. Again, probably out of fear that I was an informant or out to get him for defamation, he was very covert. “You hear things,” he said, almost word for word repeating what I’d heard before. “I can’t say too much. But you should be careful. Don’t accept being alone with him, or let him make you see other men on your own. I know a girl who used to know him.” That’s all he would tell me. I think he wanted to protect his source. To this day, I have no idea who that girl was. Disturbingly, we all knew about the demands of NDAs. Promises not to discuss him with the media. Demands and aggressive threats from him for legal suits if discarded women ‘disparaged’ him. I’d seen the emails. I knew about it. But he’d tell us the women were crazy, off their rockers, traitors. Red flag, in retrospect.
I have no excuse, beyond the fact that I hadn’t personally experienced sexual assault or, god forbid, rape from him, for not heeding all these incredibly loud and obvious red flags. The fact that at least three women had told me, separately, that he made them feel ‘creeped out’ and ‘uncomfortable’ and even, alarmingly, ‘pimped out’ really should have got me to do something. Why didn’t I? Why didn’t I see that this man was not just creepy, but a predator? Why did it take me so long?
I think, in retrospect, the fact that everyone knew, and did nothing, was why I didn’t speak out. We all knew he was creepy. It was his personality trait. Creepy jokes about child rape, creepy jokes about pedophiles, creepy jokes about BDSM, creepy jokes about abortion, masturbation, sodomy…he didn’t hide it. He never hid it. Even from the most high end journalists, celebrities and politicians sat there through his jokes about a waitress’s breasts, being a pedophile or gang rape. I saw it. Time and time again. It was bizarre. They just didn’t care. Or maybe, like me, they just didn’t know what to do.
The final alarm bell for me, I think that kicked my exit, was when he crossed paths with someone who had sussed him out. We left a dinner party when the guest stopped me by the door. “He’s crooked,” he told me. “And he creeps me out. There’s something very wrong with that guy. Stay away. I’m amazed you guys put up with it.” I was surprised. This man had, in the course of an hour discussing horses and sports cars, said everything I had been subconsciously ruminating over for nearly a year. Was I just stupid? How could I possibly have put up with this?
So I left. That’s a long story in itself. I left the glittering London clubs, I left the celebrities and his shiny friends, I left the parties, the exclusive events, the jet-setting trips and the frequent trips to the House of Lords and the House of Commons. I left that circle, and I left everything it had once glittered and meant for me.
Months and months later, I heard stories about him again. Horrifying stories. Stories far worse than the sexualisation of very young women and un-PC jokes. Stories of harassment, sexual abuse and assault. I can’t say what is true. I don’t know. I genuinely do not know. I do not know the names of the alleged victims, and I will not reveal the trauma and appalling depravity they shared. To this day, the fear and terror of defamation against a well-connected figure surrounded by top lawyers stops them from speaking out, and it stops me from naming or sharing information on the alleged abuser and getting this looked into sufficiently to stop it possibly happening to someone else. The press knew the rumours, serious top level broadcasting agencies knew, and they knew months and months before I did. Maybe years. They even tried to protect us.
Nothing beyond lewd comments, unwanted sexual attention and uncomfortable hugs happened to me. Nothing to write home about. I’ve had that more times and from more men I can count. But still, I ask myself:
How did I participate so blindly in the world of someone who sounded so many alarm bells? To this day, I don’t have the answers. | https://medium.com/@madelainehanson/how-do-prolific-abusers-get-away-with-it-for-so-long-ede94aca839b | ['Madelaine Lucy Hanson'] | 2020-04-17 21:19:58.547000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Rape Culture', 'Power', 'Consent', 'Defamation'] |
The Problem with Chronic Illness Positive Thinking Blogs by S. Blossoms | I am 28-years-old and I cannot recall the last time I was not in pain. I don’t remember what morning looked like from the eyes of a healthy, functional body. I can see caliginous pictures of my child self running freely, climbing ably. But, the ground has no structure, the trees are absent of detail; in my mind’s eye, even my face is blurred of lineaments. The images resemble the lost, faceless ghosts of Bly Manor. Eroded by time, the point of their existence is lost to the decades that swallowed them.
But, the impalpable description of this able-bodied past makes it’s prominent absence digestible; We do not grieve what we cannot remember.
I can recall being in less pain. I vividly remember requiring only ten to fifteen minutes to coax my limbs from my mattress. I remember working full time — in a professional kitchen, mind you — and sufficiently coping with the pain because I loved my job.
I remember rock concerts, brunch dates, bicycling, Friends’ Night, Saturday morning farmer’s markets…
This Monday morning, rain reminds me of how distant those memories feel: Like the miles of a lifetime. Actually, its been three and a half years. The new skin of my scars inherited through “kitchen life” is still a vibrant, glossy pink. The emotional and psychological wounds from losing ability still burn brightly. Their bite isn’t quite gone, but I’m still healing. My other muscles and bones are still healing, too.
Over the past several years and, specifically, the past several months, I have read hundreds of articles associated with chronic pain. From new research on effective management to anecdotal blogs found in the results of “how do you get out of bed every day?” -type searches. Those search results, a category their very own, have led me down elongated spirals of reading blog after blog, page after page, post after post. After each twisting journey, I always came back to the same, unwavering pit in my gut. And, still, no one has actually answered my question.
Instead, what I found (read: couldn’t miss) were endless collections of encouraging words, positive perspectives, and motivational mantras, much of which are the same concepts in different packaging. It almost seems as though every one of these personal blogs is just a copy-and-pasted clone of the other. Pressed through an Instagram filter, and spit out like real-life solutions.
First, the proverbial triumph-over-tragedy opening: “Twelves years ago I was diagnosed with [disease/illness/disorder] …I decided that I would never let it stop me!”
Next, the personal progress report: “I know when I wake up, my [condition/ailment/disability] will still be here. But, every morning, I just get up.”
Then, another paragraph with the same, basic structure: “[Disease-related limitation] can totally suck. But I just get up! It is that simple!”
Followed by myriad analogies of the “just get started” concept: “If you just put one foot on the floor, you’ve already succeeded!”
Finally, various “purposes” or “passions” that magically fuel physical and mental energy and totally evaporate pain:
“Just pursue your passions and your problems disappear,” “You can accomplish all of your dreams, just within your limitations,” “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle,” “You have to change what you’re manifesting,” “Just remember you do this for your kids/partner/the possibility of a smile,” “Life still exists if you just…”
It’s that word again. Just. Because coping with disability is easy. Just. Because it’s only small steps accumulated. Just. Because illness is only one part of you.
This skin-deep advice is plastered all over the internet. This is the advice given to people who are struggling, suffering. Quite frankly, I cannot fathom what these people are talking about. This formula that says purpose + simply deciding to proceed = being no longer limited by your illness. Where is the reconciliation between crippling pain and the capacity to actually move? In reality, chronic pain affects Every. Single. Part of you. It influences what goals you set, what responsibilities you take on, your activity level, your work life, your social life, your relationships. All of it.
I respect and appreciate the role positivity plays in life. I understand the shine and shimmer of inspirational words. But, when every blog and every page is a conglomeration of motivational quotes, cliche phrases, and supposed success stories, all of it reads wishy-washy. Especially in the glaring absence of the truth of the struggle. Where are the paragraphs detailing the body’s resistance BEFORE you just get out of bed? Where are the people who, like me, need several hours of stretching, medicating, fighting before starting their day? The people who physically can’t just shake off the pain and start moving? I know I’m not alone. Matter of fact, I know probably 99 out of 100 of those bloggers also can’t just get up as soon as their alarm starts ringing. I know, like me, these people experience days where leaving bed is completely off the table. Why is no one talking about it?
Because it’s ugly. Because no one cares about your sob story. No one really cares about your success, either, but readers have to mine “solutions” from somewhere.
We’ve been socially conditioned to look for “the bright side” of things. “Silver linings.” To always end on a “positive” note. For example, after venting to a friend about whatever crappy situation you’re going through, you wrap up the vent-sesh with some variation of “Well, at least its not as bad as [group/ community/other human]’s [unfortunate circumstance/event].” Or, after a detrimental loss, diagnoses, or even just a shitty deal, out comes this compulsory need to illustrate some glimmer of hope by undermining our own experience. A compromise because the weight of reality is much too heavy. A reward for the listener because the truth is too tough to hear.
Who actually benefits from this? Is it the same people who demand you water down your truth because complaining is yucky? Personally, I find it difficult to see honesty in dilution. How do you learn the lesson of a parable if you don’t know the whole story?Additionally, people commune in suffering, not just in its overcoming. I am not suggesting every one giddy up to the bandwagon of self-pity. I am suggesting we, as a society, learn to stomach disability.
Not by consuming more poverty porn or dishing out plastic sympathy, both of which serve the only purpose of making the originator feel better about themselves. Instead, by deconstructing the stigmata of chronic pain and illness as weak, pathetic, and ugly. By obliterating bullshit constructs that equate silent suffering to strength and integrity.
Of course, I know as well as anyone that you can’t win a war by aiming your cannons at society. The battle is with the individual.
I try my damndest, every day I can muster the energy, to remind myself that being less able does not make me less human. And I recognize that none of this “happiness” glitter validates the pain. No blogger or Pinterest board offers actual community in the suffering. Slogans like “you are never alone” don’t actually help anyone feel less alone when void of the grueling, impossible, and uncomely experiences that actually represent commonality.
So, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that I’m with you. I, too, am isolated and exhausted by my invisible pain. Being surrounded by folks who have never dealt with a chronic condition and, therefor, will never understand it, really fucking hurts.
Let’s take that pain, that depression, and build a community where we can talk about it. Where we can lay bare what our days are really like without fear of being judged for “complaining” or accused of hyperbole or feeling sorry for ourselves. Even just a Facebook group of individuals going through the same thing will help immensely. This essay is my cornerstone for building such a community.
I am still figuring out how to create a fulfilling life for myself with my limitations. I have a few ideas but don’t yet know how I going to do so. What I do know, and my advice, is this: You absolutely have to allow yourself to be honest about your situation. You need an accurate scope to begin calculations. Only when you see things for how they now are, can you grieve what they are no longer. After you have allowed yourself the space to grieve what you have lost, be it mobility, functionality, your career, relationship, will you be able to move forward with your life. | https://medium.com/@sblossoms/my-problem-with-chronic-illness-blogs-6aa2165e1807 | ['Stephanie Blossoms'] | 2021-01-25 23:35:07.710000+00:00 | ['Blog', 'Prose', 'Chronic Illness', 'Chronic Pain', 'Disability'] |
A Personal Finance Fix to the Gentrification Problem | I write a fair bit about my neighborhood. It’s part of East Hollywood in the heart of Los Angeles, a 10-to-15-minute drive (without traffic) from Downtown and Skid Row. And it’s gentrifying quickly. Like much of Los Angeles, mostly luxury (some affordable), mixed-use apartment buildings continue to rise nearly everywhere in my stomping grounds. The pandemic doesn’t appear to have slowed construction.
The image with the pretty leaves and grand houses illustrates two things — yeah, we have fall in Los Angeles and my neighborhood appears fancy:
My neighborhood is unique — classic and beautiful Los Angeles Craftsman homes sit in a relative oasis over a couple blocks, surrounded by gritty East Hollywood and its mainly multi-unit apartment buildings. These houses, including the one that’s on the market, have skyrocketed in value over the last decade.
The aforementioned apartment development also surrounds these Craftsman homes. Within just a few blocks of where I live, at least five mixed-use apartment complexes — at varying stages of completion — have replaced everything from strip malls to single-family homes or duplexes. One is low-income veterans housing. The others are market rate or a mix of market rate and affordable housing.
I don’t have a problem with this. In fact, there’s credible research, particularly from Columbia University’s Lance Freeman, that illustrates a more nuanced view of gentrification.
Indigenous residents of gentrifying communities sometimes perceive gentrification as favorable, in part because of the increased amenities neighborhood redevelopment tends to bring. While this is great, we can’t let the positive effects of gentrification simply trickle down and just randomly happen to benefit residents who not only face potential displacement, but witness their neighborhoods undergo profound practical and cultural change.
I’m all about ideas to flip the gentrification dynamic around. To start with the existing community and “the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served” and use it to fuel positive — and inclusive — neighborhood change.
So my first dumb, idealistic, and unrealistic idea.
As it stands, when new development happens one of the few considerations politicians, planners, and policymakers make for the gentrifying community’s existing residents are developer incentives. For example, a city will allow a developer to build at increased densities in exchange for affordable housing on-site or at another location in the same city.
While this is great, it doesn’t address keeping current residents in the community while ensuring they can thrive in what ends up being their new neighborhood.
I propose developer incentives — increased density, building a floor or two higher than typically allowed — that would require significant considerations for existing residents:
Reserve the equivalent of an entire floor of new development for low-income residents who live in the neighborhood.
Allow only residents of the gentrifying neighborhood (not the entire city) to enter a lottery to rent these units at affordable rates.
Maintain the apartments they vacate at affordable rates for the next tenant.
Subsidize landlords to help facilitate this form of rent stabilization.
Provide residents who move into the new, affordable units with a one-time cash stipend of ($10,000, $25,000, $50,000?) under the condition that they meet with a personal finance counselor to help assess their personal financial situation and suggest how to best direct these funds.
As I write this — and, again, this is a rough sketch designed to get ideas flowing — I realize the shortcomings.
First, it appears I make the assumption that existing residents would welcome the idea of leaving their current home in exchange for a brand new luxury apartment. For several reasons (cultural and historical among them), this might not be the case.
This said, some residents would jump at the opportunity. To that end, it’s a better ending than being displaced with no place to go. Or, at least, a significant struggle to figure out where and how you’re going to live next.
Second, it feels top down to give somebody money and assume they need help managing it.
There must be a strong community focus. Organizers need to go in and target residents not only with need, but who willingly and happily opt into this type of program. Place focus on empowering people along several lines by:
Allowing them to actively take part in the change their neighborhood is undergoing.
Acknowledging the financial implications of a gentrifying neighborhood, particularly for existing, low-income residents, and working to mitigate the potential detrimental impacts.
Providing low-income residents with something we tend to completely ignore — financial education usually only accessible to middle and upper middle class people.
Gentrification happens whether we like it or not. As it stands, we act like we care about what happens to low-income neighborhoods in the process. But we don’t. We pay lip service to social concerns. We placate existing residents. Or worse, we do nothing. We bulldoze neighborhoods and force people to fend for themselves.
Under my plan (which is back of the envelope at this point), we target people who need protection from displacement and attendant financial assistance most. We preserve affordable housing not just in the new development, but in the existing housing stock. And, most importantly, we actually put people on the ground in these neighborhoods to figure out who needs and wants what, with a focus on neighborhood preservation — to the greatest, most realistic extent possible — and economic empowerment.
Let’s digest this and continue the conversation with an extension of this idea and others in future articles. My broad approach looks to connect the things I care about most — personal finance, inequality, neighborhood development, and well-being. I aim to use these articles to help flesh out the connections and make them come alive. | https://medium.com/@roccopendola/a-personal-finance-fix-to-the-gentrification-problem-4c6de23ff5df | ['Rocco Pendola'] | 2020-11-27 09:54:54.332000+00:00 | ['Cities', 'Money', 'Los Angeles', 'Housing', 'Personal Finance'] |
I LOST HOME | I LOST HOME
I LOST HOME
I lost home to demons powerful than elected gods.
They store victims in forests like grains in silos.
And they harvest lives as they will year-round.
Markets, schools and even sanctuaries, no rest of mind.
I lost home to demons powerful than military chiefs.
Fearless, and mindless of presence of any Commander-in-chief.
From Chibok girls of 2014 to Kankara boys of 2020.
Here hosts sadness and trauma as esteemed deities.
I lost home to demons powerful than powerless citizens.
Yesterday, farmers were butchered for no reason.
Today, a breadwinner was shot returning from his bakery.
If I live to see tomorrow, it'd be more of a mystery. | https://medium.com/@adeniranridwan/i-lost-home-d17c33b6c25c | ['Baba_Baale', 'Adeniran Ridwan'] | 2020-12-17 21:16:07.526000+00:00 | ['Boko Haram', 'Bababaale', 'Terrorism', 'Ridwan Adeniran', 'Bandits'] |
Sending Bitcoin with Ruby | One of the basic things you’d want to achieve in building on top of the Bitcoin ecosystem is to send Bitcoin. With, that I’ve written down some things that I’ve learned along the way in the most simplified way I can think of.
Here’s a step by step guide in sending Bitcoin with ruby by leveraging bitcoind’s JSON RPC endpoint.
You’ll need to have:
bitcoind running with -rpcallowip , configured with rpcusername and rpcpassword and more importantly -testnet . This will act as your ‘hot wallet’.
, configured with and more importantly . This will act as your ‘hot wallet’. bitcoiner gem, a wrapper for bitcoind’s JSON RPC interface
gem, a wrapper for bitcoind’s JSON RPC interface a testnet wallet with testnet accounts.
an open tab with this: https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/0.17.0/ or whatever version you’re using.
What if someone gets access to my private keys? What if someone brute forces the username/password of my bitcoind’s JSON RPC endpoint? etc.
Security is another topic worth another post (limit the surface of attack, pod/vm-level restrictions, network-level restraints, multiple bitcoind’s, not keeping large amounts of bitcoin in your hot wallet, etc.) but for now, let’s send some bitcoins 😄
Concept (simplified)
A transaction in the Bitcoin network is made of in’s and out’s.
Inputs are where you get your BTC from. These are past transactions with addresses you can control.
Outputs are where they go. Usually there’s 2. 1 for the recipient, and 1 for you. “Why me?” because you’ll need to send the difference back to yourself. More on that later.
Example
You have 5BTC in your wallet, it’s split up in 4 different addresses. yeah, I mean, I’m actually saying addresses, but it’s actually “unspent transaction outputs” ❓🙄❓🙄❓ Stick with me for now and I’ll point this out later.
1addr has 2 BTC
2addr has 1.5BTC
3addr has 0.5BTC
4addr has 1BTC
You want to send 0.01BTC to someone named Person A, you’d need to use some of your BTC in those 4 address. Let’s say we want to use 3addr, and Person A gave you their address: 1some1. Your transaction would look like this:
Inputs 3addr = 0.5BTC
Outputs 1some1 = 0.01BTC
This isn’t complete though, so what happens to the 0.49BTC? Well you’d need to send it back to yourself of course! Otherwise it’ll all go to the miners. Best to generate a new address and put it there. Lets call that new address as 5addr. Now our transaction looks like this:
Inputs 3addr = 0.5BTC
Outputs 1some1 = 0.01BTC | 5addr = 0.49BTC
What about those transaction fees? How do I set them?
The transaction fee is the difference between the sum of your inputs and sum of your output amounts. Let’s say the transaction fees would be 0.000178BTC
So the final transaction would look like:
Inputs 3addr = 0.5BTC
Outputs 1some1 = 0.01BTC | 5addr = (0.49BTC — 0.000178BTC)
If you still didn’t get it, it’s okay! If you understand concepts better when you’re writing the code and tests, then it’ll probably click as you go along 😃
Getting the fees
First we’ll want to set what type of fees are “fast”, so that we can use the right number when creating the transaction. We can stuff this code inside some simple service class.
module Bitcoinzzz
class GetFees
AVE_TX_BYTES = 250.0 def self.call
client = Bitcoiner.new(<your creds here>) # whats the fee for 3 blocks?
response = client.request("estimatesmartfee", 3) if response["errors"].any?
# ... do something
end
# estimatesmartfee is a bitcoind JSON RPC call
# it returns the optimal fee per kB (1000 bytes), given the
# number of blocks you want your transaction to confirm
#
# we only want the fee for 250bytes (average tx size).
# you can also compute for tx size if you want to.
fee = response["feerate"].to_d * (AVE_TX_SIZE / 1000.0)
fee
end end
end
Sending bitcoin with the fees
Can’t we just use sendtoaddress? (sendtoaddress is a bitcoind JSON RPC call)
Yes you can! That’s definitely the easiest way to do this, but if you want more control on fees, outputs being spent; splitting up what sendtoaddress does would be one step to that direction (a.k.a. small refactors using the Ship of Theseus method.), and we get to learn along the way too!
So here’s the steps to mimic sendtoaddress similarly
Getting your unspent money (What can I use for my inputs?)
To build the transaction you’ll need to get “spendable outputs”. To simplify the explanation, this is where the BTC will come from, a list of unspent addresses in the bitcoind wallet.
# listunspent is another bitcoind JSON RPC call, it lists all the
# previous txs/addresses that you contains your
unspent = client.request("listunspent") unspent.inspect
#=> [
{
"address": "1addr",
"amount": 2.0,
"confirmations": 1000,
"desc": "some_text",
"redeemScript": "some_redeem_script",
"safe": true,
"scriptPubKey": "some_script_pubkey",
"solvable": true,
"spendable": true,
"txid": "the_remote_txid",
"vout": 0
},
{
"address": "2addr",
"amount": 1.5,
"confirmations": 1000,
"desc": "some_text",
"redeemScript": "some_redeem_script",
"safe": true,
"scriptPubKey": "some_script_pubkey",
"solvable": true,
"spendable": true,
"txid": "the_remote_txid",
"vout": 0
},
...
]
Remember earlier I said this?
yeah, I mean, I’m actually saying addresses, but it’s actually “unspent transaction outputs” ❓🙄❓🙄❓ Stick with me for now and I’ll point this out later.
Sometimes you will see here 2 items with the same address but different vout values. It means that the address was used multiple times. So what this list really represents are unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) . These are previous transactions where the outputs are addresses that your bitcoind ‘hot wallet’ controls a.k.a. someone sending your hot wallet some BTC, or “change amounts” from previous transactions you made (more on that later)
Filter what you’ll use (What can I use for my inputs?)
Presented with this list, just grab what’s “spendable”. It means that this transaction can be used by bitcoind for sending (underneath, all that means is that the bitcoind has the keys to use that address).
# what you want your recipient to actually receive
receivable_amount = 0.01 # sample fee from Bitcoinzzz::GetFees.()
fee = 0.000178 # filter all spendable
spendable = unspent.map do |output|
output if output["spendable"]
end.compact
If you’re sending 0.01BTC + 0.000178BTC , you won’t need all the “spendable outputs”, so just get the right amount of outputs.
total_usable = 0 # total amount you'll spend: 0.01 + 0.000178
sending_amount = receivable_amount + fee # just get the right amount of outputs
usable = spendable.map do |output|
if total_usable < sending_amount
total_usable += output["amount"]
output
end
end.compact # based on the unspent example, 'usable' array will only contain the 1addr hash by now. You're only sending 0.01BTC + 0.000178BTC anyway. 1addr contains 2BTC
Get a change address (Where will I send it? My outputs?)
Remember what I said earlier about outputs?
You’ll need to send the difference back to yourself. More on that later.
Of course you only want to send 0.01BTC + 0.000178BTC (fees) . Right now, you have 0.5BTC worth of (ins) that funds your transaction! You’ll want to send the rest back to your own wallet. This is called a change address, you can get one using bitcoind’s JSON RPC again.
receiving_address = "SOME_ADDRESS_HERE" # getrawchangeaddress is another bitcoind JSON RPC call that gives
# you a new address where you can send change to change_address = client.request(
"getrawchangeaddress",
"bech32", # bech32 adoption would be very nice, lower tx size.
) # Lets compute what we'll send back to yourself and what we'll send
# to the change_address
#
# total_usable = 2BTC from 1addr
# sending_amount = 0.01BTC + 0.000178 (fees) change_amount = total_usable - sending_amount
Build the transaction hash (Putting my outputs and inputs together)
Once you’ve determined where you’ll get the money from (inputs), and where it’ll go (outputs). Let’s prepare a json object for createrawtransaction
ins = usable.map do |output|
{
"txid" => output["txid"],
"vout" => output["vout"],
}
end outs = [
{ destination_address => receivable_amount },
{ change_address => change_amount },
]
outs.inspect
#=> [
{ "1some1" => 0.01 },
{ "change_address" => 1.98922 },
] tx_to_submit = { ins: ins, outs: outs } # createrawtransaction builds your transaction ready for signing.
# the result will be a hex-encoded string
raw_tx = client.request(
"createrawtransaction",
tx_to_submit[:ins],
tx_to_submit[:outs],
0, # locktime
true, # replaceable
)
Sign the transaction
After getting the hex-encoded transaction via createrawtransaction , sign it.
# signrawtransactionwithwallet is a bitcoind JSON RPC call that will
# sign your transaction with the keys for those addresses
resp = client.request(
"signrawtransactionwithwallet",
raw_tx,
) if resp["errors"].present?
raise StandardError, "Error with signing transaction - #{resp}"
end signed_tx = resp["hex"]
Send the transaction
You can now send the signed transaction to the local bitcoind node and to the network!
# you can check the tx_id returned in a blockchain explorer like
# blockstream.info or blockchain.com
tx_id = client.request("sendrawtransaction", signed_tx)
Testing Sending Bitcoin
Yey! Let’s grab our handy-dandy vcr: { record: :once } Here’s a simple test for all that work we just did.
require "rails_helper" # Put all of the things that we did in some decoupled class so that it's easy to test. Here it assumes we can just write an integration test for a Bitcoinzzz::Send class that does everything we talked about module Bitcoinzzz
RSpec.describe Send do let(:fee) { Bitcoinzzz::GetFees.() }
let(:client) do
Bitcoiner.new(<test_net_credentials>)
end
let(:address) { client.request("getnewaddress") } it(
"sends BTC",
vcr: {
record: :once,
match_requests_on: %i[body uri method],
},
) do
current_balance = client.request("getbalance") result_tx_id = described_class.(
tx_fee_in_btc: fee,
destination_address: address,
receivable_amount: 0.002,
) after_send_balance = client.request("getbalance") # expect the balance differences to be for the tx_fee since we
# sent it back to our self
expected_diff = current_balance - after_send_balance
expect(expected_diff.round(7).to_d).to eq fee expect(result_tx_id).not_to be_nil
expect(result_tx_id).to be_a String
remote_tx = client.request(
"getrawtransaction",
result_tx_id,
true, # verbose, gets you json instead of a hex string
)
# parse that remote_tx and do your expectations
end end
end
Next steps
There you go! You can now send Bitcoin with Ruby. Although, what if this service class gets called a lot? And at the same time?
You can probably use something like sidekiq-unique-jobs and line all the withdrawal requests in a worker queue so that you won’t have race conditions.
and line all the withdrawal requests in a worker queue so that you won’t have race conditions. You can also have balance validations at the start via getbalance if the wallet still has spendable money and you can fail the job accordingly.
There are more ways but you can definitely make this a safe service class to use via defensive programming.
Another next-level implementation for this is to not rely on bitcoind’s wallet for getting the unspent outputs, building and signing the transaction hashes. This allows you to feed multiple inputs coming from a cold wallet, and multi-sig keys from different signers.
You can use lower-level libraries such as bitcoin-ruby to achieve this, but you’ll have to keep track of your addresses, keys, transactions on your own a.k.a. implementing/complementing bitcoind’s wallet capabilities.
Hopefully this guide has eased you into how to work with Bitcoin and bitcoind. | https://medium.com/bloomx/sending-bitcoin-with-ruby-568b1f0de748 | ['Ace Subido'] | 2019-08-09 12:02:38.552000+00:00 | ['Ruby on Rails', 'Bitcoin', 'Ruby'] |
#Learn DeFi — Exploring Synthetix and Spectre.AI Binary Options | Adoption of binary options in cryptocurrencies is slowly happening. Some emerged and disappeared, while a few stayed on. If you are a newcomer to the crypto space and still wondering how blockchain-based binary options are different from the regular ones, here is a quick drop down.
Interfaces of the platforms (Synthetix and Spectre.AI)
Trustless trust joins binary options
Smart contracts control trading of binary options on blockchain, compared to conventional binary options trades which are facilitated by brokers who are focused on serving their own interests rather than the traders. Most often, they go overboard about making the profits, using scrupulous means to make money and ignore traders’ interests. Generally, they will favour the traders who have more money than others to throw in.
To say it differently, in traditional binary options, the most affluent players get the best deals. Decentralized blockchain-based exchanges set up a level-playing field for all the participants, regardless of the capital they have put in.
Now that you are aware how decentralized and traditional binary options differ, let us have a look at the decentralised variety of binary options and determine how they work in a bit detail. The two names which immediately pop out and make their presence felt are Synthetix binary options and Spectre.
I also see Value Network in the league soon, but for now, let us focus on Synthetix and Spectre, understanding how they operate, betting process, returns, oracles, restrictions, and more.
A dive into Synthetix binary options
Providing support for more than 25 different asset types, Synthetix binary options consists of three phases:
Bidding — Participants buy long or short options, which they can sell at any time for a 5% fee.
Trading — The system fixes the options earmarking ERC20 tokens representing the trading position to the traders.
Maturity — A post-option six month window which holders can use for a payout.
Synthetix enables traders to buy/sell tokenized representation of options on DEXs like Uniswap or Balancer, thus bringing in a core aspect of DeFi. The platform demonstrated how binary options can have interesting effects on spot prices, as it was evident in the case of SNX, the native token of the platform.
Being a decentralized exchange, it is the stakers of native token (SNX), who facilitate trading instead of a single business, deciding the policies which govern trading of binary options. This includes stuff like how these options are priced, how long they are traded, and such. Anyone can stake SNX and be a part of binary options governance here.
Creating a market
Synthetix allows anyone to create a market by selecting an asset, a strike price, the long/short price skew, and the relevant dates. The long/short price skew refers to the expected probability of the market creator i.e. initial belief about the odds. This ascertains the initial price of each option, which moves once traders begin buying options in favour of a market or against it. The maximum skew on Synthetix binary options is 95% to 5% on either side. When a marketer creates an opening price skew, they also have options on either side. In case they set a 60% long and 40% short opening price skew, it means their options are 60% long and 40% short.
Challenges
Conventional binary options face issues like exorbitant fees and opaque pricing structures. On a blockchain-based platform like Synthetix, such issues get obliterated.
Volume incentive program
Currently, Synthetix binary options has no apparatus to capture the fees during trading. They have done it intentionally to allow projects developing binary options exchanges to extract value in the markets. Synthetix has been flexible regarding this aspect. Projects are rewarded with the native token SNX for driving trading volume through the platform.
Oracles
Market creators can select the price oracle from the approved set of data sources on the Synthetix ExchangeRates contract which includes several Chainlink aggregators. Initially, Synthetix has opted for a trusted sets else malicious actors could supply manipulated data feeds. In future, however, oracles selection procedure could be democratised.
Trading
When a market moves to the trading period, bidding is disabled while ERC20 token transfer is enabled. The mechanism would compute the quantity of options as the individual token prices get stabilised, enabling the users to claim the options.
Maturity
When a market reaches the maturity date, an update is obtained from the oracle. The mechanism would resolve the outstanding options to pay out 1 sUSD each, or nothing. Users can then exercise the positive balance of options to obtain the payout. Any collected fees is released to the market creator and the fee pool.
Explore Spectre.AI
A prominent blockchain-based platform for binary options, Spectre.AI brings across the sort of transparency which was simply missing in the conventional markets. It removes brokers from the scene, enabling traders to trade against a liquidity pool or other traders. Users may trade right from their wallet or, if they want to save on gas fees, via an escrow account.
Users own the liquidity pool on Spectre.AI and get rewards based on the traded volume. Unlike conventional binary options, there is no role for centralised management. Spectre has trade execution times of a few milliseconds. With trade fees and gas cost missing as well, it has provided plenty of reasons to traders to hop on.
Spectre.AI executes smart option contracts which are automated algorithms and no human can interfere in these. The mechanism makes the binary options contracts completely fraud-free. Unlike the conventional system where you go for the trades through an intermediary i.e. a broker, trades on Spectre.AI are verifiable via a publicly distributed ledger network. This turns out into 24/7 liquidity. The trades are settled immediately as well.
Centralised as well as decentralised accounts
A useful option Spectre provides to traders is an off-site decentralized wallet account along with regular centralized accounts. People who prefer trading in the conventional manner can opt for the latter. Spectre registers its trades on the blockchain where the publicly distributed ledger network would verify them. Thanks to the optional wallet account, there is no need for users to deposit for trading. This ensures safety of funds as well as transparency in the system.
The addition of a DeFi Boost wallet using Chainlink oracles enables traders to trade the DeFi tokens to make profit of 70–400%, depending on the way their digital contract has been constructed. The whole episode will take anywhere between a few seconds to a few hours. Hyper API of Spectre is super quick in matching buyers and sellers. In case there is a liquidity shortfall, the liquidity pool ensures there is no dearth of liquidity.
How the system works
The algorithm first attempts to settle new orders against the order book. However, in absence of an opposing trade, the system executes the order against the liquidity pool. The algorithm fills all the trades in a timely manner and eliminates all doubts about broker reliability.
The Spectre.AI algorithm functions on a fee system. Commissions are done away with and spreads are much tighter than how it is with most other brokers. If you glance at the EUR/USD spread among forex brokers, for instance, you will find it hardly goes to six pips, while it is 12 pips with general forex brokers.
Lower spreads improve win rates for the participants. They can execute strategies in a better way as there is less spread to overcome to make the trade profitable. Though the payouts on the digital binary options is a bit lower, you won’t realise it if you win for more number of times.
What you can trade on Spectre.AI
The platform has smart contracts on forex pairs, binary return derivative and CFDs on various financial products. Forex pairs stand out when it comes to leverage. Payouts to the range of 200% are possible with some binary return derivatives.
Aggregate of past market movements
Spectre added more zing to their platform in late 2019 when they added Epochal Price Index Composite (EPIC). It rolls out an aggregate of past market movements, thus feigning live markets. EPIC prices are based on real time market values. You may trade this asset just like any other. However, the advantage you can trade this asset round the clock.
Withdrawals
Powered by Ethereum, Spectre required ETH when it started. Later, however, the platform allowed traders to use fiat currencies like USD for functions like deposits and withdrawals. If you are using a stand-alone wallet, withdrawals become easy. In some regions, USD withdrawals can also be made. Sometimes, funds may take up to 24 hours to show up on your exchange wallet.
Oracles
Spectre has chosen Chainlink to source its fresh data as it ensures a tamper-resistance data delivery, thanks to a decentralized network of secure, Sybil-resistant node operators. Chainlink serves Spectre accurate prices which stand for the volume-adjusted aggregate across all trading environments.
Closing thoughts
Emergence of blockchain, particularly DeFi and decentralized oracles, has given a new dimension to binary options. The technology has brought in trustless trust, meaning that parties who are totally unknown to each other can trade in binary options without a second thought.
Value Network brings along an opportunity to trade your funds on an advanced DeFi product that provides you easy liquidity and trustless environment. We started in 2008, when binary options were publicly made available as tradable assets on CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange). With the advent of 2021, Value Network will take another big step when its token VNTW is listed on Uniswap on January 5.
Till February 2021 Value Network Binary options prediction markets MVP will shape up.
Uniswap fork ValueSwap v.2 coming on its way
Till March 2021 Value Network will begin working with community owners, webmasters and other participants on a multi-level referral program, enabling them to earn commission on the traffic they refer to the platform.
▶️Medium — https://valuenetworklive.medium.com/
▶️Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/valuenetworklive/
▶️LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/valuenetworklive
▶️Telegram Community — https://t.me/valuenetworkchat
▶️Telegram Announcements — https://t.me/valuenetworklive
Roadmap for Q1 2021 — Value Network — https://valuenetworklive.medium.com/roadmap-for-q1-2021-value-network-9d582795bfe5
VNTW token vesting period explained (07.12.2020) — Artem Levin- https://valuenetworklive.medium.com/vntw-token-vesting-period-explained-07-12-2020-artem-levin-b31fcee9b5d5
Value Network project history — a lookback to 2018- https://valuenetworklive.medium.com/value-network-project-history-a-lookback-to-2018-9cc5c30eb2ad | https://medium.com/@valuenetworklive/learn-defi-exploring-synthetix-and-spectre-ai-binary-options-345f1b54adc0 | ['Value Network Defi Products'] | 2020-12-24 19:43:32.161000+00:00 | ['Defi', 'Blockchain', 'Synthetix', 'Prediction', 'Aave'] |
Managing Menopause Symptoms using Acupuncture | I am a Physiotherapist trained to offer Western Medical Acupuncture and over the years I have had some incredible results, equally for some people this treatment may not yield the benefits hoped for.
Acupuncture: Traditional Wisdom
The first reference to acupuncture is more than two thousand years ago, burial ground excavations have revealed needle-like therapeutic instruments were in use as long ago as 4000 or 6000 years ago. The presentation of the entire field of knowledge about acupuncture reached an initial climax in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the publication of “the great compendium of acupuncture and moxibustion” by Yang jizhou in 1601. In this publication the theory underlying the whole of Chinese medicine, the stimulation of the points and the channels was presented and remains unequalled even to this day.
Source: Pocket Atlas of Acupuncture Carl-Hermann Hempen MD, Velis Wortman Chow MD, 2005, Thieme
Western Medicine
‘Western medicine’ labels the medical theories and practices by its origin. It is commonly used particularly when non-Western medicines such Chinese, Arabic and Ayurvedic medicine are discussed, compared and contrasted.
A key figure in the history of medicine was the physician Hippocrates of Kos (c. 460 — c. 370 BCE), he was considered the “father of modern medicine”. Hippocrates began to categorize illnesses as acute, chronic, endemic and epidemic, and used terms such as, “exacerbation, relapse, resolution, crisis, paroxysm, peak, and convalescence.” Source: Loudon, Irvine (2002). Western Medicine: An Illustrated History.
19th Century: The Rise of Modern Medicine
The practice of medicine changed in the face of rapid advances in science, as well as new approaches by physicians. Hospital doctors began a more systematic analysis of patients’ symptoms in diagnosis and among the new techniques were anaesthesia, and the development of both antiseptic and aseptic operating theatres. Effective cures were developed for certain endemic infectious diseases, however, perhaps the decline in many of the most lethal diseases was due to improvements in public health and nutrition than to advances in medicine.
Source
What Comes Around, Goes Around
Some of the techniques and theories developed by Hippocrates included recognising the importance of taking a complete history which included environmental exposures as well as foods eaten by the patient which might play a role in his or her illness. These principles underpin Integrative Medicine and approaches such Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Chinese medicine is built upon a notion of human beings as a delicate balance of energy forces. The main focus of the Chinese approach is on the observation and recognition of vital functions. The term Qi is always used when one talks of active vital energy that is manifest and It includes emotions, all the common vital functions; such as respiration, digestion, production of physical movement, and all the processes requiring biological energy.
So a TCM acupuncture trained practitioner, will take a detailed history and most likely take a look at the tongue, check the pulses, consider nutritional influences, childhood ailments and our family history. A western medical trained acupuncturist will likely do much the same and there is some evidence that acupuncture can be beneficial for a whole host of menopausal symptoms.
A Holistic Approach to Wellness; Sign me up!
A multisystem problem may well require a multifaceted approach to management, there is no one size fits all solution and remember more often than not you are the expert of your own body.
Recent advances in the gut, oral, vaginal and bladder microbiota illustrate further our uniqueness and may well support treatments which take account of the interconnected complexities of the human condition.
Perhaps monitoring pulses is not so crazy after all. Heart rate variability is increasingly used as a measure for autonomic nervous system imbalances People who have a high HRV may have greater cardiovascular fitness and be more resilient to stress.
Source
Women’s health Research: The Poor Relation?
The drive towards evidence based medicine is laudable, however what if the evidence base is just not there or it is flawed in its design. A BMJ article stated “Over the past 70 years women have become more prominent in BMJ research articles. However, the importance of women-specific health topics has waxed and waned as researchers responded to medical advances, public health programmes, and sociolegal changes. The incidence of articles making any mention of women, gender or sex declined between 1948 and 2005, after 2005 it rose steeply so that by 2018 few papers made no mention of them at all”.
But if we consider the long history of medicine, this is the equivalent to the blink of an eye. So the tide is changing (hallelujah) and not a moment too soon if you ask me!
Source
Listen to my Podcast-Acupuncture for Menopause? Why not!
This week I chatted with Kinesiologist and TCM acupuncturist June Tranmer. June qualified as a Touch for Health instructor (basic Kinesiology) in 1987 and as an acupuncturist from the Northern College of Acupuncture in 1991. We chatted about the many and varied approaches to management of menopause symptoms using methods such as acupuncture,, cupping, acupressure and food energetics (working with balancing your energy with the right foods for your individual needs). There is no one size fits all approach to management of menopause and I hope this conversation reflects that.
LISTEN HERE | https://medium.com/@phillipabutler/managing-menopause-symptoms-using-acupuncture-5152c32049d1 | ['Phillipa Butler'] | 2020-12-10 14:25:57.219000+00:00 | ['Acupuncture', 'Womens Health', 'Wellness', 'Physiotherapist', 'Menopause'] |
From ICO Review to Security Token Listing — Our Crypto-Journey | We spend the last 1,5 years within the crypto world.
Let’s have a look how this turned out and which Learnings we made by showing you 3 projects we have worked on — starting with Utility Tokens to our newest endeavor focussing on Security Tokens.
1. ICO Review
End of 2017 we got hooked by the crypto hype like so many others. This crazy amount of different ICOs out there let us came up with our first product — TrustedDapps. The idea: We need a guide separating the good (ICOs) from the bad.
We called it “The Ultimate Guide to review ICOs”, focussing on the team, product and technology of the projects behind the ICOs.
We got some attention for that, however, it is not easy assessing a project from publicly available information only and after a while it gets boring studying Whitepaper etc.
What is even harder: To foresee if the value proposition of a project and its token economics really make sense and will work out as promised. As you might know 90% of all startups are not successful. Add to this the ICO/Blockchain-hype and your probably end up with 99% of failing ventures.
2. Product Test
That’s why we decided rather testing products already out there than evaluating what’s upcoming. We looked for those Utility Tokens (e.g. Golem) which are already usable, tried them out and wrote about our user-experience.
The result: For people who are not familiar with crypto and just want to use a service or product that works, for example a decentralized storage space or computational power to render a file, it is really hard. Especially the user friendliness is lacking but also the price for the services compared to centralized services was not convincing at all.
3. Security Tokens
If not for utility, what else is blockchain good for?
As we talked to many experts within the industry, this answer became more and more obvious: Store of Value
That’s how we started to deep dive into the concept of Security Tokens and their benefits. Security Tokens as a means to register the ownership to an underlying asset with value (e.g stocks, bonds, real-estate, commodities, a piece of art etc.) sounds until today like a promising use case of blockchain to us.
The more we studied about it, the more we understood the advantages (especially for investors) that Security Tokens can deliver. We wrote our first pieces about the Advantages of Security Tokens and The Differences between Utility and Security Token and while doing so that started our next project — STOcheck .com — which is listing all Security Token Offerings (STOs) and provides Education & News around this topic.
Until today we believe that Security Tokens have the potential to disrupt the traditional financial industry and become very popular with the next years.
Lets see if our assumption will become true.
If you are interested in the topic, join our us on Twitter and visit STOcheck. | https://medium.com/trusteddapps/from-ico-review-to-security-token-listing-our-crypto-journey-4e52a4770dd9 | ['Stefan Perlebach'] | 2019-01-16 16:42:35.578000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Security Token Offering', 'Security Token', 'ICO', 'Blockchain'] |
OTD in History… December 17, 1862, Grant Issues General Order № 11 expelling Jews during the Civil War | By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
(Originally published on the History News Network on Tuesday, December 11, 2007)
On this day in history, December 17, 1862, Union General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order Number 11, expelling Jews from areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky during the Civil War. General Order Number 11 stands out in American history as the first instance of a policy of official anti-Semitism on a large scale. The anti-Semitic order had deeper roots; many Northerners and Union army officials harbored anti-Jewish resentments. Jews in Union-occupied Southern cities and towns faced the brunt of this prejudice. As Bertram Wallace Korn explains in his authoritative work, American Jewry and the Civil War (1951), “Some of the most prominent people in the Union were imbued with prejudice against the Jews.” (Korn, 164) It was this anti-Semitism within the ranks of the Union army that led to General Grant’s General Order №11 that called for all Jews to be expelled in his district, which covered the states of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
Underlying the order was a negative image of the Jewish merchant and the belief that Jews were part of a black market in Southern cotton. Although at war, the North and South still relied on each other economically. The North especially needed the South’s surplus cotton for the production of military tents and uniforms. The Union army would have implemented a ban on trade with the South completely; President Abraham Lincoln preferred a limited trade in cotton. The Battle of Shiloh made this trade possible by opening up the Mississippi River down to Vicksburg. This soon became very profitable for both sides; army officers, treasury agents, and individual speculators became involved, although Jews were distinctly a minority.
Army officers especially took advantage of the moneymaking possibilities to such a great extent that Lincoln complained, “the army itself is diverted from fighting rebels to speculating in cotton.” Although neither side prohibited the trade, President Lincoln ordered that all of the cotton that was traded had to be licensed by the Treasury Department and the army. Army commanders were responsible for the cotton trade in their respective areas. General Ulysses S. Grant was the commander of the Department of the Tennessee, and therefore responsible for the licenses in that area. The limited trade in cotton and the overwhelming need for cotton in the Northern army led to soaring prices. This prompted many traders to bribe officials to be able to sell cotton without a permit. Jesse Grant, Grant’s father, took a prominent role in trading cotton and obtaining permits.
By the fall of 1862, trading was getting out of hand. Grant was annoyed that requests for licenses were distracting him from planning the capture of Vicksburg. Grant was getting an abundance of requests for licenses, and when Grant’s father sought them for a group of Cincinnati merchants, among whom were some Jews, the general issued his order. Although some of the traders were Jewish, most were not. Among the high ranks of the Union Army, the words “Jew,” “profiteer,” “speculator” and “trader” all meant the same thing (Feldberg, 118), while the Union commanding General Henry W. Halleck lumped together “traitors and Jew peddlers.” Grant concurred, describing Jews as “the Israelites,” an “intolerable nuisance.” It was because of old European prejudices and anti-Semitism that Jews were singled out. As in Europe, Jews were made scapegoats. History was repeating itself, but it this time it was in America.
On November 9 and 10, Grant sent his commanders in Jackson, Tennessee, orders that “no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward [into the Department of the Tennessee] from any point.” Grant also noted his disdain for Jews to C.P. Wolcott, Assistant Secretary of the Army. Grant claimed Treasury regulations were being violated “mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders.” (Feingold, 93) However, the illegal trading of cotton continued and Grant continued to believe it was the fault of the Jewish merchants. On December 17, 1862, he issued Order 11:
The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department [the “Department of the Tennessee,” an administrative district of the Union Army of occupation composed of Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order. Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.
The order implied that all Jews in the region were speculators and traders, which they were not. Despite this, Grant’s subordinates carried out the order around his headquarters in Holly Springs and also Oxford, Mississippi, and Paducah, Kentucky where the Jews of these communities had to evacuate from their residences within a 24-hour period. In Holly Springs, the Jewish traders in the area had to walk 40 miles to evacuate the area. Thirty Jewish families who had been longtime residents of the town also had to evacuate even though none of them engaged in the cotton speculation and two of them had been veterans of the Union Army.
The order caused uproar and was criticized by both the Jewish community under Union command, and non-Jews in opposition to the Union’s Republican Party. The anti-Semitic order was a shock for a Jewish community that had been rarely discriminated against. Democrats and others opposed to the administration believed the order represented another example of Lincoln’s willingness to trample on civil liberties. Peace Democrats complained that the Republicans were more concerned with the rights of blacks than of Jews, who were white. Jewish leaders organized protest rallies in St. Louis, Louisville and Cincinnati, while the leaders of the Jewish communities in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia sent telegrams to Lincoln protesting the order.
Residents of the expelled Jewish communities denounced the order. Cesar Kaskel, a merchant and president of the Paducah Union League, sent a telegram to Lincoln condemning Grant’s actions as an “enormous outrage on all laws and humanity, … the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it.” (Feldberg, 119) Kaskel also led a delegation to Washington to meet with Lincoln directly. He arrived in Washington just two days after the Emancipation Proclamation became law. Kaskel met with the influential Jewish Republican, Adolphus Solomons, and was accompanied to the White House by Cincinnati Congressman John A. Gurley. They showed Lincoln documents proving that the Jews who had been expelled from their homes were upstanding citizens not involved in cotton speculation.
Lincoln ordered General Halleck, General in Chief of the Army, to revoke the order immediately. Halleck wrote to Grant on January 4, “A paper purporting to be General Orders, №11, issued by you December 17, has been presented here. By its terms, it expells [sic] all Jews from your department. If such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked.” Grant complied three days later, but the mass evacuation of the Jewish communities in Holly Springs and Oxford, Mississippi, and Paducah, Kentucky had already been carried out.
The Jewish community was grateful to President Lincoln for his swift revocation. On January 7, Rabbis Isaac M. Wise and Max Lilienthal of Cincinnati, Martin Bijur of Louisville, and Moses Strauss of Baltimore led delegations to Washington to express their gratitude to the President. Lincoln tried to make amends to the Jewish community. He said he had been surprised by Grant’s order and said he did not discriminate between Jews or Gentiles and would not allow any American to be discriminated against based on their religion. Lincoln told them he believed that “to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad. I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”
General Order №11 was a rare instance of officially ordered anti-Semitism in American history, but just the fact that an order was signed and implemented punishing a religious community, as historian Henry Feingold states, “without due process of law,” put a spot on America’s reputation of religious tolerance. (Feingold, 94) It was an act more reminiscent of the anti-Semitism Jews endured in Europe for centuries; where without reason Jewish communities were expelled from towns and countries at a moment’s notice. The order revealed a disdain for Jews by high ranking officials in the Union army among them Grant, William T. Sherman, and H. W. Halleck. It demonstrated that Jews in both the North and South were not sheltered from official anti-Semitism even in the safe haven of America.
SOURCES AND READ MORE
Henry L. Feingold, Zion in America: The Jewish Experience from Colonial Times to the Present, (Twayne Publishers, 1974).
Michael Feldberg, Blessings of Freedom: Chapters in American Jewish History, (KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 2002).
Bertram Wallace Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, (Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951).
Meyer Weinberg, Because They Were Jews: A History of Anti-Semitism, (Greenwood Press, 1986).
Bonnie K. Goodman has a BA and MLIS from McGill University and has done graduate work in Judaic Studies at Concordia University, where her thesis was about the unconditional loyalty of Confederate Jewish women during the Civil War. She is a journalist, librarian, historian & editor, and a former Features Editor at the History News Network & reporter at Examiner.com where she covered politics, universities, religion, and news. She has over a dozen years of experience in education & political journalism. | https://bonniekgoodman.medium.com/otd-in-history-december-17-1862-grant-issues-general-order-11-expelling-jews-during-the-civil-d3bac0087f7 | ['Bonnie K. Goodman'] | 2018-12-17 10:42:39.701000+00:00 | ['Jewish', 'History', 'Civil War', 'Anti Semitism', 'American History'] |
The Coder’s Guide to C# Development. | The Coder’s Guide to C# Development.
In this series, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about ASP.NET Core and MVC.
ASP.NET Framework
ASP.NET Competitors
Why I Prefer a JavaScript Framework to ASP.NET MVC — It just doesn’t cut. See why this developer prefers working with “mature JavaScript frameworks” over MVC.
Top 10 Websites Written Using ASP.NET MVC — Take a look at ten popular ASP.NET MVC pages. Some of the entries might come as a surprise to you.
A Direct Comparison of WCF and ASP.NET Core Functionalities — Are you looking to implement ASP.NET Core for your next project? Check out this video to learn more about its features and how it compares with WCF.
Getting Started with ASP.NET | https://medium.com/donpublic/asp-net-core-and-mvc-b59478d1375c | ['Don Pablo Brincat'] | 2021-02-12 12:26:43.678000+00:00 | ['Mvc', 'C Sharp Programming', 'Programing', 'Dotnet Core', 'Developer'] |
Gadfly.jl — The Pure Julia Plotting Library From Your Dreams | Introduction
If you have been working with Julia for even a short amount of time, you might be familiar with a plotting library called Plots.jl. Plots.jl is a simple library that provides ports to Python libraries such as Plot.ly and Matplotlib with simple functional methods like plot() and scatter(). While this is certainly a great way to get around creating an entirely new library for use in the Julia programming language, it also presents a few problems.
Firstly and most importantly, interpreting Python with Julia creates a lot of problems with performance. From just simply importing Plots.jl to actually plotting values, the performance with Plots.jl is absolutely abysmal! On top of not being Julian, a lot of the software is missing in the Julia version, and many features are entirely overlooked. While GR is likely the most promising back-end for Plots.jl, it lacks a lot of the great features that might be available for you with Pythonic libraries. Despite this, I do have an article you could check out to improve your GR visualization skills with Plots.jl:
So with these serious fundamental flaws with Plots.jl, it is easy to see why scientists have looked elsewhere for great statistical visualization in the Julia language. One of the best options I have looked at is a statistical graphing library called
Gadfly.jl.
First and foremost, it should be noted that Gadfly is very similar to another library for which I am the creator, called Hone.jl. The two both use the same back-end, Compose.jl, for drawing vector graphics in Julia. The similarities might not end there, but there are also a lot of key differences between them, such as Hone’s object-oriented and modular methodology which is not at all in line with Gadfly’s. Despite this, Gadfly does take a very interesting methodology in its own right, and works pretty differently than other plotting libraries that you might draw some similarities to. | https://towardsdatascience.com/gadfly-jl-the-pure-julia-plotting-library-from-your-dreams-3ee6ca107a5c | ['Emmett Boudreau'] | 2020-09-24 16:29:07.240000+00:00 | ['Analytics', 'Data Visualization', 'Data', 'Programming', 'Data Science'] |
Tips for Instagram marketing 2022 | Why is my Instagram dead?
This has been no.1 question we all can hear from small business owners and entrepreneurs nowadays. If you notice some decline in engagement or your follower count don't worry, its happening to everyone recently. It is just very competitive on Instagram right now. However there are few specific steps that you can take in order to cut through the competition. If you are looking for promoting your business/creators accounts, lets walk you through each steps and knowledges.
Reasons of having hard time on growing or making sales on Instagram.
Every social media platform goes through a life cycle. It starts with launch then move with growth and monetization at its peak. Definitely Instagram went through the same phases.
Launch: At this time Instagram or any social media platform will be figuring out their value proposition's, doing all the updates and developing peoples interest. If you were a creator/business owners at this point, it would have been very good time to grow. Realistically, very less have been grown that way as many people did not even know Instagram even existed.
Growth: This is where Instagram starts to grow. The point where people could see lot of engagement and you could have gain followers supper quick. At this point if you were joined and got able to be monetized then there would be lots of sales and offers. We can identify few brands that were monetized by the Instagram and they have grown into huge organization nowadays. At current time when people say Instagram is not how it used to be they are actually talking about this phase which was around 4–6 years ago, The growth phase.
Monetization: The current phase of Instagram is monetization phase where their all focus is on profit. They are working with an advertisers to sell users attentions. They are keeping their exposure precious by electing small portion of the population to be the chosen ones, who are getting all the attention, exposure and growth.
How to be the chosen ones???
Yes, you can be the chosen ones by following these Tips:
Innovate a content that no one has ever seen before.
Instagram will be willing to help you if they can make the profit of of you. They are going to reward you with exposure if you keep the users on the platform for longer time. That will mean they can show more advertisement to the audience and collect money from the company that are willing to pay for those ads in Instagram. The unique content will let Instagram reach their goal and they will help you reach yours.
Do not post bland product photos. Products photos should be reserve for your online store. Show your product in a creative, different and a fun ways (videos and activities). Make people want to stop scrolling and watch your creativity. Those people down to line could be your followers and also a future customer. Don't try to be perfect, Perfection is good but to be different and make people feel real try adding human element.
2. Be consistent.
Being consistent tells Instagram that you are a trust worthy account and you are reliable account. If it is hard to stay consistent for you use scheduling tools they will help you be on your track. Set a dedicated time to plan and shoot your content. You can set a recurring event alarm turned on and start creating in a specific time. Be more patient with yourself if you are trying to be consistent.
Growth in Instagram is not happening overnight but if you post once a day that is you are giving yourself an opportunity to blow every time you post. Any piece of content can be that shot for you so trust the process and be patient and dedicated.
Don't be boring, be active and dynamic try to check out other platform and if you find something interesting bring that content with your powerful touch and present. Think like Instagram, try to know their agendas and use it to fly your business. for example; Instagram has created a reels features in a business view they were competition with TIKTOKs take that opportunities to create the reels content because they will definitely reward the early adapters think like them and move your business forward.
3.Stop making selfish content;
Selfish content is anything that you post for your own agenda or your own ego or your own business. It is really easy to fall in a trap of making content to fulfil your needs. Everyone might have done it before but we should be focus in on providing some short of values. You might not want to say “Big product sale”, “New product drop” assume that people don't care about your products but they care about seeing the content that is good. After catching the viewers attention then you should think about that later. Actually this is exactly how Instagram did with their platform. First got the users attention then monetize it.
With all these tips go flourish your business/creators account in Instagram. Remember patience, consistence, believe in what's coming up for you is great and never quit. | https://medium.com/real-readers/tips-for-instagram-marketing-2022-aaedcbfef13c | [] | 2021-12-16 03:19:08.797000+00:00 | ['Instagrambusiness Account', 'Instagram Business Tips', 'Instagram', 'Instagram Marketing'] |
Regulatory Developments in the Cannabiz | With the public’s interest in cannabis getting higher than ever, the industry is changing at a breakneck pace — so much so that sometimes, it can be difficult to stay abreast of its evolving rules and regulations. Thankfully, KGK has got you covered. Here’s our breakdown of recent and projected regulatory developments for this budding industry.
High Times for Edibles, Concentrates, and Topicals
By October, Health Canada is set to release its final regulations for edibles, concentrates, and topicals, following a public consultation period which closed on February 20th. Once released, edible cannabis, cannabis extracts, and topically-applied cannabis products will be legal for sale under the Canadian Cannabis Act.
What’s more, edible cannabis-based goods may soon become available in the United States. While cannabis is currently considered illegal by the federal government, the FDA is has opened a public consultation for cannabidiol (CBD). This action comes as a bid to develop a regulatory framework for this compound, which would allow for its inclusion in dietary supplements and/or foods.
“Yes, We Cannabis:” Developments in the US
Recently, Canopy Growth (the largest global cannabis company) signed a US $3.4 billion deal to acquire Acreage Holdings (an American cannabis firm). This made waves in the US industry, with major players seeing this as an indicator that American federal legalization could be forthcoming.
Should legalization occur, it would certainly change the marijuana game. And, if the aforementioned FDA CBD consultation goes through, it would allow the industry to include this chemical in a variety of products. Subsequently, this would increase demand for commercial hemp imports and domestic production, and could also open the door for increased research into cannabis and its medicinal effects.
If the US were to legalize CBD, it could greatly affect our Canadian cannabis regulations. Certainly, it would put pressure on our government to create a less strict regulatory framework for CBD, labeling it as separate from psychoactive THC (the two are currently marked as the same). However, it could also set us at a disadvantage, especially if our regulations were to remain the same: more lenient CBD guidelines in the US could seriously hinder the growth of cannabis products in the Canadian health sector.
Growing Trademark Laws
In Canada, upcoming changes to cannabis trademark laws could also impact this industry. If passed, these regulations will allow companies to hold trademarks on cannabis products and marketing materials — even when they aren’t using them. Consequently, businesses will be able to purchase trademarked names and branding elements which are currently non-compliant, but may become compliant in the future as regulations evolve. Potentially, this could lead to the advanced domination of valuable market space by singular entities.
Congratulations — you’re all caught up on cannabis news! For frequent updates, stay tuned to our blog, or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Andrew Charrette
Andrew Charrette leads the regulatory affairs division of KGK Science and has an in-depth knowledge of cannabis regulations in North America and Europe. He has experience in submitting Cannabis Research License applications to Health Canada under the new Cannabis Act, organizing over 50 entries to date. Additionally, he has provided consulting for numerous product claims, as well as NDIN and GRAS supplications to the FDA.
Andrew received his undergraduate degree in Pharmacology and Physiology from the University of Western Ontario, and later obtained a Master’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Ottawa. | https://medium.com/@kgkscience/regulatory-developments-in-the-cannabiz-c7ee0fe45e95 | ['Kgk Science'] | 2019-06-25 21:04:27.478000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Edibles', 'Marijuana', 'Weed', 'Cannabis'] |
Survey: The New Normal for Management Consultants | GLG Surveys Team
The COVID-19 pandemic threw the entire world into chaos, forcing some businesses to make deep cuts to staffing and other expenses. Suffice it to say, outside contractors felt the pain as well, including management consultants. These companies and their employees were also impacted by stay-at-home orders and the subsequent shift to remote working, the closing of schools, and the cancellation of work trips and conferences.
To adapt to these changing times, consulting firms and their employees quickly pivoted. Businesses embraced collaboration tools and technologies and evolved processes and procedures to be just as effective remotely as they were in their offices. Some industries proved they could prosper despite these unprecedented times, while others have struggled to survive.
With only a few weeks left in 2020, GLG conducted a study to understand the impact of the global pandemic on the management consulting industry in the U.S. We looked to get a sense of how consultancies adapted and evolved in 2020 and how the industry would evolve long term.
Looking Beyond COVID-19
Although COVID-19 still dominates our lives, it would appear many consulting clients are looking beyond the pandemic itself. Most of our survey respondents had at least a small amount of their current work related to COVID-19 or its impacts. But of the three-quarters of respondents who had some work related to the pandemic, 53% said it accounted for less than a quarter of their current work.
GLG received an array of responses for the type of work our consultant population was expecting to engage with in 2021. The top three projects were strategy work (76% of respondents), transactional due diligence work (60%), and transformation work (54%). (Note: respondents could select multiple responses.)
Staying Grounded Until Further Notice
Corporate travel has suffered deeply due to the pandemic. According to research cited by GLG council member Peter McFadden, former Head of Strategic Partnerships at Expedia Group, tickets issued by corporate travel management companies were down 85.7% year over year from 2019. The majority of consultants, 53%, told GLG they expected to remain grounded until at least late 2021, with 43% not expecting to reach new normal levels until 2022 or later. Only 4% of respondents expected a quick return to “new normal” business travel next year.
The pandemic is likely to permanently change how consultants interact with clients. Our respondents said they expect to move away from always being on-site with a client to more of a hybrid approach. Over a quarter of the surveyed consultants said they felt that post-COVID, there would be little to no on-site client work. Half said it would be more of an even balance between on-site and remote work. Only 2% said their company would get back to pre-COVID levels of in-person client work.
Making Due
The lack of face time with clients was perceived by 44% of our respondents as negative or extremely negative, while another 44% said they felt neutral about it. While neutral is not necessarily a bad thing, especially given all that 2020 has brought, it does show that advancing client relationships is not always easy virtually. Still, these hard times have given agencies cause for trying out new collaboration technologies. Many respondents pointed to the use of virtual whiteboards and virtual breakout rooms, as well as the hosting of topical or educational sessions, as ways they continued to engage clients.
The pandemic has also given consultants a chance to get more personal with clients. One respondent told GLG, “One small thing our team has tried to do is be open about sharing our home life with clients. I’ve seen directors bring their kids in to say hi, or a quick show-and-tell [about their] pets. Things like that are what make these unusual times more relatable and easier to get through.”
Winners and Losers
The consultants we surveyed said they believe some industries are poised to grow following the pandemic. Not surprisingly, given the role it played in 2020, the tech sector and some specific technologies are at the top of most respondents’ lists. When asked to name up to three sectors or technologies poised to grow, their top answers were technology as a sector, remote working and collaboration tools, software as a service, and healthcare, including telemedicine and digital health.
When asked which sector would take the longest to rebound, 61% of respondents named travel/hospitality/transportation. Given their earlier responses about business travel, this is not surprising. Fortunately, no other industries came close to receiving many responses, with the next closest being the retail sector at only 9%.
The New Office
With the need to work remotely for many months, people have gotten creative with their new office setups. GLG uncovered some interesting places that consultants have found themselves working this year, such as sailboats in the Caribbean, remote islands off Maine, South America, Greece, and cabins in the woods. Of course, there are those less glamorous places to work in order to accommodate sometimes-crowded homes, such as “a Walmart parking lot” or “with my 4-year-old daughters at the kitchen table while they concentrated on their lessons in ABCmouse.” One respondent even claimed to have worked from the bathtub.
Adapting to the New Normal
COVID has caused consultants, like many professionals, to have to react and adapt quickly to continue to meet client needs while also surviving these chaotic times. Despite it all, and the expectation that it will be many more months until any type of new normal returns, consultants are not idling at home but continuing to build relationships and delivering on critical projects for clients even if it isn’t in the way management consultants have historically done business. | https://smarter.glg.it/survey-the-new-normal-for-management-consultants-d7cd93ab07c | [] | 2020-12-03 21:24:35.679000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Covid 19 Impact', 'Consulting'] |
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