title
stringlengths 1
200
⌀ | text
stringlengths 10
100k
| url
stringlengths 32
885
| authors
stringlengths 2
392
| timestamp
stringlengths 19
32
⌀ | tags
stringlengths 6
263
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Driven Out of Our Ancestral Home by Sheep | Driven Out of Our Ancestral Home by Sheep
How the Reids came to Canada
Photo by Nick Dietrich on Unsplash
Recently, a cousin asked me about the Reid family history — her mother, my father’s only surviving sibling turns a century old this year. I’m the family genealogist. It’s a bit of a hidden hobby. I write. I write a lot. I have been writing about writing and about coming to terms with life. I’m not sure why, but I have some ideas about the causes, but I always wanted to live two lives. When I turned 70, I started pulling the two sides of my life together.
This involved looking at the threads that have followed me throughout my life. My first passion was genealogy. It began when I was eight and looking at my grandmother’s big family Bible in the parlor where kids were not supposed to play. When I was 35, I went back to school and got a master’s degree in history. Do I write about history?
No. But that is about to change.
Fuadaichean nan Gàidheal (Highland Clearances)
During what became known as the ‘’Highland Clearances’’, it was not just a hundred or so victims who suffered eviction, but tens of thousands of men, women and children alike often violently, from their homes to make way for large scale sheep farming. ~ Crann Tara
If you have been enthralled by the Outlander series and Diana Galbadon’s books, you know about the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and the ensuing efforts of the British to eradicate the clans of Scotland.
John Reid was born on the 14th of August 1777 on Kilmaveonaig Farm in Blair Atholl Parish, Perth, Scotland to John Reid and Ann McLaren. His father was 31 and his mother was 22.
James Murray, 2nd Duke of Atholl was located “about 400 yards off the public road near the Tilt Hotel, and about half-a-mile from the Blair-Atholl Station”, according to Facts and Fancies Linked with Folk-Lore about Kilmaveonaig by Christopher Bowstead. It’s about half a mile from Blair Castle.
Google Maps screenshot February 2020
In 1746, James Murray, 2nd Duke of Atholl, the chief of Clan Murray, had his seat at Blair Castle. He supported the British Government, although the majority of the clan of Murray supported the Jacobite House of Stuart. It was a complicated time and James’ brother Lord George Murray was a Jacobite leader.
John Reid, his wife Betty Stewart, and their two children, Alexander and Ann, emigrated in 1803 on the Commerce. The reason provided for their emigration to Canada was “Farm taken from them.” John was 25, Betty was 23, Alexander was 3 and Ann was a year old.
John was born in 1777. His father was born between 1746 and 1748. Culloden was before their time. However, the traditional way of life for a farmer in the Perth Atholl area was over. The British way of governing the area put an end to tartans, bagpipes, and the Gaelic language.
The small farm allotments where they eked out an existence and paid their rents with produce and labor were being transformed into pasture land for the more profitable business of sheep herding. Gone were the huts and the small crops of flax and grain.
While I have not yet found records of what exactly drove John and Ann and their babies to Prince Edward Island, it had to be a variation on the theme of turning their ancestral huts and crops into sheep pastures. Their farm was taken from them.
The lairds of the land they farmed did often try to help families to relocate. Some times, the laird chose to provide passage to the Americas for the families rather than send them to cities which were becoming overcrowded or to land that could not be farmed.
John Reid’s family left Perthshire on August 10, 1803 on the Commerce and landed in Pictou, Nova Scotia. Such a transatlantic journey would have taken five or six weeks, depending on the wind and weather. From there they were transported across the Northumberland Strait to Murray Harbour North where they were provided with 100 acres of land.
By the end of September, Prince Edward Island starts to get chilly. Their next child, Charlotte, was born in 1804. They were not the only Scottish immigrants to land in the area that fall. Skye pioneers were brought over to Prince Edward Island, known then as St. John’s Island, in 1803 by Thomas Douglas, the 5th Earl of Selkirk.
The Earl was the seventh son of the 4th Earl of Selkirk who inherited the title when his six older brothers died. He used his money and his status to buy land on the Island and find ways to help displaced crofters resettle in the new land.
This description below of how the Skye pioneers made their homes on the Island is likely how my ancestors made their home in the fall of 1803.
As summer was almost over when the settlers landed they erected at once rude cabins to shelter them from the bitter cold of winter then approaching. These were built of logs squared and dovetailed at the ends. The spaces between were filled with moss or clay. The seams were covered with birch bark. Over all a ply of boards was nailed. The roof was covered with pine shingles. The nails used in this work were of iron, made by a blacksmith in the settlement. The windows in these little cabins were few and small as glass was dear. It took iron courage to face the first winter in this inhospitable climate, and until the harvest was garnered next autumn their minds were harassed often by the grim spectre of want hovering about their kitchen door. ~Malcolm A. MacQueen, Skye Pioneers and “the Island”.
We all have stories and we all have back stories. I am blessed to know as much as I do about the Reid family back story. It is worthwhile to look back at the reality of pioneer life on the Island. We sit around and discuss the benefits of heat pumps in a chilly Island fall. John and Betty didn’t have that luxury but they managed a long, healthy and relatively prosperous life from their beginnings there in the chilly fall of 1803. | https://medium.com/making-changes/driven-out-of-our-ancestral-home-by-sheep-245773600f4d | ['Joanne Reid'] | 2020-02-19 12:42:00.639000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Immigration', 'Genealogy', 'Family', 'History'] |
Everything you have ever wanted to know about Marketing and Branding | Everything you have ever wanted to know about Marketing and Branding Subhamkumar Kapupara Jun 28·7 min read
In this article, I am going to talk about what is marketing and branding. This article will be useful for Entrepreneurs, Marketers, Freelancers, Mentors who want to know about marketing and branding in simple ways.
So let’s start….
Fundamentals of Marketing
Marketing is all about helping people in solving their problems by providing a solution at the right place at a right time.
Most people think that marketing depends on creativity but it is not true marketing is purely based on science.
Marketing is what you tell and how you tell it when you want to explain how amazing your product is and why people should buy it.
At a fundamental level, marketing is the process of understanding your customers, and building and maintaining great relationships with them.
Marketing is not about who can talk faster, or close better. It is about a deep psychological understanding of customer needs.
Marketing does not help only in selling products or services but it helps in creating a product or service which fits with the needs of the customers.
One should not fully focus on just marketing because if the product or service is not good then even if your marketing effort is good your product will sell for sometime but not after that.
A great product sells itself. It needs marketing initially but after that it can sell itself through word of mouth. Marketing just helps people to discover the product. For example: OnePlus, OYO, etc.
Marketing helps your business in Raising brand awareness, Generating traffic, Building trust and credibility in your brand, Increasing revenue, Tracking your progress, etc.
Now the most common and important types of marketing are traditional and digital marketing. So let’s see which type of marketing is better.
Digital Marketing or Traditional Marketing which is better?
Marketing can be in the form of T.V. ads, In the form of a brochure, A press release is mostly called a traditional form of marketing. And more recently, in the form of Facebook ads, Google ads, Youtube ads, Blogs, SEO, etc. mostly called as digital form of marketing (Digital marketing).
Now you might be thinking which type of marketing is better but the answer is both are good, both have some pros and cons.
In traditional marketing your T.V. ad can reach more no. of people as compared to Digital ads such as Facebook ads or Google ads.
But in digital marketing your ads can be shown only to specific target audiences who will become interested in your products or services but this doesn’t apply in traditional one because the T.V. ads can be seen by everyone even by those who’re not interested in what you offer.
Of course traditional marketing doesn’t mean it’s old fashioned. Traditional marketing still plays an important role in people’s lives with the ever growing need to step out of the digital world.
In the same way, digital marketing is just as important as traditional if not even more so. Digital marketing uses every touch point of your daily use of the internet to reach out to you.
Traditional marketing is impactful, memorable but hard to measure, expensive and there is no direct interaction.
Digital marketing is engaging, measurable, highly targeted but less permanent, potentially annoying and constantly evolving.
One of the examples of digital marketing you can see is of Mercedes-benz which is one of the top producing luxury vehicles and commercial vehicles. The company might have plenty of money, but it also leverages free digital marketing platforms like Instagram.
It has 32.8 million followers and an awesome engagement level.
In traditional marketing you may have seen the marketing campaigns of McDonald’s called “Pakka Indian”.
McDonald’s had launched a new flavor of masala grill burger and captioned it as “Pakka Indian.” To market this new variant to the target audience, a OOH (Out of Home) marketing campaign was used including different OOH media formats, like billboards, wall wraps, bus shelters, etc. Through this campaign, the brand was able to execute a message of “Masaledar” through different innovations at targeted audience center points.
So it truly depends on you where you want to spend money for marketing your products or services because both the types of marketing are good at their place.
Now that you know the fundamentals and types of marketing medium let us know how to convert a stranger into a customer by understanding CATT funnels.
Understanding CATT funnel
Before getting into the CATT funnel first let us know what basically a funnel is?
A funnel is the process of converting prospects into your customers.
It is a visual representation of the steps a visitor takes from first finding out about you until they convert. The marketing funnel is of four steps:
Content: You create useful content which provides valuable information that attracts people from your niche. Content can be in the form of Videos, Blogs, Webinars etc. You basically educate people by providing free valuable information. Attention: Prospect will see your blog, ads, videos, social media post or hear about you through referrals. Trust: Prospect will trust you as they see your content on a regular basis and also through nurturing him/her via email marketing, retargeting ads etc. They will think you can solve their problem. Transaction: Prospect will convert into customer by buying your product or service which will solve their problems.
One thing I forgot to mention is that you should first select a niche before proceeding with creating a CATT funnel. Because being in a specific niche will make people consider you as an expert in that field.
Now I am considering that you’ll choose digital marketing for your business as you’re just entering into marketing as a newbie. It is budget friendly as compared to traditional marketing.
You may run just a Facebook ads campaign or Google ads or just do SEO to generate leads and sales but doing it alone will not be that much effective in a long term approach.
So it is important to execute digital marketing in an integrated way rather than running different marketing campaigns alone. So here comes the topic called Integrated digital marketing.
Integrated Digital Marketing
Integrated digital marketing is, as it sounds, the integration of multiple marketing strategies to form a united online approach for your business.
The idea behind integrated digital marketing is that, while each individual strategy doesn’t have a huge impact on its own, when used in conjunction, you can create a more influential online presence.
It also saves a lot of time since you’re integrating different platforms at one place your time to make different campaigns reduces.
Now we should know why personal branding is as important as marketing.
Personal Branding
Personal branding refers to the process of establishing your public persona for your target audience. It involves communicating your values, beliefs, goals, and purpose.
Personal branding is important because it helps you to stand out from the crowd.
Also it leads to many opportunities such as getting your dream job, getting clients for your service, speaking assignments, paid promotions etc.
People will trust you more because of your personal brand.
If you want to be an entrepreneur or want to get a job, having a personal brand is very important.
Personal branding will help your audience to know what you do, what kind of person you are.
So to grow your personal brand you’ll need to create content to influence your audience.
What content should I create? This will be the question which will come to your mind.
So here I am sharing with you the blueprint called MassTrust for personal branding.
Here’s what you’ll need to do to create a strong personal brand.
Start learning new skills and practice it. Work for someone because with this you’ll implement things in the real world which you’ve learned. Write a blog of what you’ve learned and experienced through your work. By writing a blog you’ll start creating a personal brand. Now that you have experience and a brand, start consulting people in their business. Mentor people who want to be like you. By mentoring your understanding level will reach a whole new level. Start your own product or service based business with the experience and skills you have of the market.
In this way you can create a better personal brand.
So I hope you got a better understanding of marketing fundamentals, It’s main types, Which type of marketing would be better for you, CATT funnel, Integrated digital marketing and Personal branding.
So let me know in the comments how you’ll take action towards becoming a successful entrepreneur? Which niche you’ll choose for branding and which marketing channel do you prefer?
The above article is part of the Digital Deepak internship program. | https://medium.com/@subhamkapupara/everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-about-marketing-and-branding-65c4801e5fc0 | ['Subhamkumar Kapupara'] | 2021-06-29 14:04:06.956000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Marketing', 'Traditional Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Personal Branding'] |
How To Start Affiliate Marketing Now In 2021 The Right Way? | The Ten Steps You Need To Know To Start Affiliate Marketing
Many advertise that Affiliate Marketing consists of 3 or 4 easy steps when in reality there are many more steps to follow.
In this blog, I will be going through the steps that are creating success for me in the Affiliate Marketing world. I’ll be showing you the truth on how to start affiliate marketing.
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 1
“Identify The Pains Or Struggles You Went Through” Successful Online Marketer
As a beginner, you want to start off with something that you are familiar with. This makes it easier to create whatever content you have to create in the future. Examples like landing page headlines, creating videos, writing blogs, posts, and ad creatives.
You will find yourself more emotionally attached to your targeted audience therefore easier to go to step 2 if you use a struggle that you went through in the past and found a resolution.
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 2
“Identify The Person Or Avatar You Are Trying To Target” Successful Online Marketer
The reason for step one is so that you are able to easily describe your “Winning Customers”. You know their struggles so now actually write them down. Is it a male, female, their age group, what are they struggling with, and for how long?
Maybe it’s something like this. My “Winning Customer” is a person from the age of 25–50 who has been attempting to have success online for a couple of months or even years. They have invested loads or hours and money in courses that lead them to failure or just left them in the dark.
They have fallen victim to pyramid schemes, get rich quick schemes and marketing methods that are not effective anymore.
The more specific you go with this the better because you have a target and don’t have to guess who they are.
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 3
“Identify Where The Individuals Hangout” Successful Online Marketer
Each step leads to the next my friends. Go back and connect with the memory side of your brain. Remember where you looked for your answers when you were struggling.
Searching on Youtube
Searching through Google
Joining Facebook Groups
Forums online
Quora.com
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 4
“Prepare Or Plan To Get In Front Of them Via Organic Or Paid Ads” Successful Online Marketer
A Special tool I like to use is a site called Buzzsumo. This allows you to enter a keyword or phrase and see the amount of engagement it generated. That can hopefully help point you in the right direction as to where you should give some attention to.
Keyword research is vital especially if you are writing blogs or running ads on a search engine. You want to be secure that the search volume for your keyword is high so you can have some traffic flowing to your Offer.
Russell Brunson said that all you have to do is to “Step In Front Of The Already Flowing Traffic”.
This is a highly recommended book that will open your mind to traffic and how you perceive it. It will also help you find that endless flow of traffic.
Having An Issue Finding The Best Traffic For Your Offer?Grab Your FREE Copy Now!
***You Can Also Grab The Mass Traffic Blueprint Here.*** FOR FREE OF COURSE!
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 5
“Find A High Quality/High Ticket Offer” Successful Online Marketer
Now around this step things start to get a little easier and Fun. You want to make sure that all your efforts go to a great quality product or service that had multiple upsells and downsells to maximize your potential earnings.
It is very difficult to be profitable when you are spending more money on advertising than the price of the product or service you chose.
You also want to make sure that the quality is also there so that in the future you can market to those same visitors with other problem-solving offers.
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 6
“Create Your Funnels & Pages” Successful Online Marketer
Your Mission For this step is to create your opt-in page, landing page, thank you page, or presell page. The issue I ran into when I start the journey was that I didn’t know where to start.
Let me help you out here. The Blueprint that you see at the top of this page is yours for free. That shows you the process that you will take your potential customer on.
My Recommended Funnel & Page Builders…
Your opt-in or landing page should look very similar to the sales page of the product you are an affiliate of with the sole purpose of getting an email address. You do not want to be dependent on one traffic source.
***Checkout Some Affiliate Market Places In This Blog***
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 7
“Connect An Email Autoresponder To Your Site Or Page” Successful Online Marketer
The importance of attaching an email autoresponder to your opt-in pages is so that you can set up automated emails that will provide value and build trust so that they will find it easier to buy from someone they trust
My Recommended Email Autoresponders…
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 8
“Do Not Use Email Templates For Your Follow Up Emails” Successful Online Marketer
You want to create at least 20 personalized emails that you can have your autoresponder send out every other day if you would like. Do not use the copy and paste emails that everyone is using.
You want to point out the pains and struggles they are going through and just present the solution and notice I did not say sell the solution.
“No One Likes To Be Pushed Into Buying Something.”
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 9
“Start Your Advertising Campaign” Successful Online Marketer
Now after following all these steps you should be ready to run ads and grab those email addresses. If all this sounds like too much for you you can probably invest in a Done For Your Affiliate Marketing Service.
All this is done for you and they even set up your ads on your behalf.
Learn More About This Done For Your Affiliate Marketing ServiceLimited Spots Available So Grab NOW
Start Affiliate Marketing Step 10
“Analyzing Your Data Is Something Powerful” Successful Online Marketer
Some Affiliate Marketers run ads but never look at their data,
Learning from your data and optimizing your campaigns is a must if you don’t want to continue paying for ads. The more leads you gather is a day closer to not spending money on ads because you would have your “dream client’s emails already”.
In Conclusion
Stay Focused and Dedicated. Only those that are persistent see lasting results. If you really are serious about becoming an affiliate marketer try this 30-day challenge that will show you everything you need to become successful.
The amount of value is amazing compared to its price. I wish You guys all the best.
If you liked this post also check these out by… | https://medium.com/@advancemarketingclub/how-to-start-affiliate-marketing-now-in-2021-the-right-way-21cb84153789 | ['Ivan', 'Advance Marketing Club'] | 2020-12-22 16:06:02.695000+00:00 | ['Affiliate Marketing', 'Affiliate Marketing Tips', 'Affiliate Programs', 'Affiliate', 'Affiliate Network'] |
Sequence to Anne’s letter to Gilbert — AWAE | I'm a huge fan of Anne With An E, and like thousands of fans around the world, I have been orphaned by the series.
Tired of waiting for a fourth season (but still a little hopeful of a renewal) I've decided to use my imagination (like Anne taught us) and write my own version of an ending for the letter she starts writing to Gilbert (in the last episode of the third season) and never finishes.
In addition to the power to enchanting and awaking the best feelings, sensations and reflections (which I believe to be almost unanimous, and that is why the show is so loved), Anne With An E touched my sensitivity and brought out my writing side that was a little numb. I hope you like it and can have a little taste to satisfy part of the immense nostalgia left in us by Anne. Enjoy! (Warning: spoilers ahead).
Dear Gilbert,
I look like my mother. Can you imagine how glorious that is and how ecstatic I am right now? This was just the piece that was missing!
When you had just left, I was feeling like I couldn't be happier - not because you were gone, of course. But because of what happened... You know, before. In fact, I still can't believe how it all happened. Queen's, Diana, you... I thought I had enough butterflies in my stomach.
Well, as soon as we said goodbye, Marilla and Matthew arrived bringing the best present that I could ever imagine I would get. I believed they were already on their way to Green Gables when they came back with a very special book they had found: The Language of Flowers. It was a gift from my father, Walter, to my mother, Bertha. She was a teacher, like Mrs. Stacy, like... me, one day (no tragical romance, for God's sake, I hope we can do this in a different way after all this confusion).
In the book there is a memory of my first picnic, when I was just a baby. I needed to know I had been loved and I never thought I would feel so loved. But the best of all, as I've told you at the beginning of this letter, was on the last page: an image of my mother. She was a redhead. Now I feel so bad for hating my hair for so long.
Diana obviously told me everything about your conversation on the train. I think you deserve to know that I met Winifred by coincidence in town and she told me about what happened between you two. I swear I had no idea. I must also confess that I tore your letter down without reading it and got it all wrong. Forgive me for that, please. I was so confused and thought there would be no more chance left for us.
I don't know exactly how everything is going to be from now on, but I wish you a lot of success in Toronto and I hope we can see each other soon.
With all my love, Anne.
*Note: I wrote both versions, in English and in Portuguese (it was not just a translation) with slight differences between them because some words and expressions do not show the same expressive or connotative strength when translated literally. | https://medium.com/@caixetamaira/sequence-to-annes-letter-to-gilbert-awae-7e90afca2cbc | ['Maíra Caixeta'] | 2020-12-04 20:42:48.483000+00:00 | ['Anne De Green Gables', 'Netflix', 'Anne With An E', 'Anne Shirley', 'Series'] |
Software Development Methodologies | Project managers like to talk about models, methodologies, and methods. They like to sound clever — throwing acronyms around, and spouting catchphrases and buzz words as often as possible. No realm of information technology seems to display this mania quite so aptly as software development.
Given the amount of hoodoo, fear, uncertainty and outright rubbish written about the various ideas, I thought it might be time to write a few words outlining what the various methodologies actually mean in the “real world”.
First things first…
What is a development methodology?
Broadly speaking, it’s the description of an approach to building software — the reason to have the description in the first place would be to get a team of developers to work in a similar manner to each other, and so that team leaders have a clue what’s going on.
Right. So what are the various well-known methodologies?
Waterfall
The waterfall model is a sequential development process, in which development is seen as flowing steadily downwards — like a waterfall — through the phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design/validation, construction, testing and maintenance.
The process is followed with rigour and loved by pedantic team leaders who like to tick boxes and make everybody’s life hell. It’s incredibly expensive to do, and customers both love it and hate it — they love it because it can be run on a fixed price, but they hate it because a calculator application ends up costing as much as the space shuttle.
Iterative and Incremental
Iterative and Incremental development is a cyclic software development process developed in response to the weaknesses of the waterfall model. It starts with initial planning and ends with deployment — with the cyclic interaction in between.
So, essentially, this is Waterfall where we admit that waterfall is idiotic, and we agree to go round and round in circles until we’ve spent just as much time, effort and money as Waterfall. I guess brakes can be applied in the form of somebody in the middle of the mayhem who continually asks “is this good enough — will it do?”. Iterative development is often tied to the “Rational, Unified Process” — another meaningless description heard often, but understood by nobody.
Rapid Application Development
Rapid application development is a supposedly structured technique where early designs are turned immediately into prototypes, which are then iteratively evaluated, refined, and re-developed ad nauseum until the finished product is produced. “RAD” was invented to combat the main problem of Waterfall based development methodologies — by the time anything got built, the requirements had changed — and by the time the re-developed solution re-appeared, the requirements had changed again.
Rapid application development became very fashionable in the mid-1990s with the advent of visual design tools such as Visual Basic and Delphi that allowed fast interface development. It also caused some of the worst spaghetti code in the known universe due to nobody paying their “code tax” and inviting developers to go back and clean up after requirements had changed.
Agile Development
If you are a fellow developer, you were expecting this one to be in the list — probably because it’s the fashion of the moment, and all managers in the known universe think Agile sounds cool when talking to clients. I expect they stand in a “ready for action” fake karate pose when they say it. In reality, the “Agile” label covers a swathe of similar methodologies — the Wikipedia description reads as follows;
Agile methodologies generally promote a project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices that allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals.
Phew! So it sounds like it will save the known universe — and it’s growing popularity has resulted in more being written about it than any other method — meaning that Managers can now have big fat books about it on their shelves, and communicate in pure acronym when discussing project plans.
In reality, all Agile really means is that you will communicate, you will try to make things work, you will be trusted (!?), and you will not blow a gasket when requirements change. Of course, the customer also has to realise that change equals longer or less.
Extreme Programming
Quite unlike extreme ironing, extreme programming does not involve carting a laptop halfway up Aconcagua to write some C++. It is however similar in taking ideas from several flavours of Agile development and constructing a set of “ideals”, or “expected behaviours” around them.
I can only imagine the anal, ivory-towered developers that dreamed up Extreme Programming as a methodology — whereas most of us may naturally follow a pragmatic process when writing code, Extreme Programming introduces a strict swathe of rules, behaviours, and guidelines that you must follow if you really want to be an “extreme programmer”. I’m guessing the people who like working this way also have 20 sided dice in their desk drawer (which is no bad thing, in and of itself).
One of the ideas within Extreme Programming that I really like is working together — so that one of you programs while the other thinks. Can you imagine sitting there — feet up, sipping coffee and spouting lofty ideas while a co-worker swears at the computer, and thumps the desk?
In summary…
I’m guessing this blog post is going to generate its fair share of laughter, snorts of derision, outright anger, incensed murmurs of “he doesn’t get it”, and various other rumblings of discontent. If it has done so, then it has succeeded.
It’s worth remembering that 99% of development teams use elements of all the methodologies written about in textbooks. It’s also worth noting that most attempts to build software in a faster, more efficient, more responsive manner are eventually defeated by millions of words being written about them in textbooks, and managers applying so much structure, measurement and review that you may as well call them all Waterfall and have done with it. | https://medium.com/swlh/software-development-methodologies-7ace5e60b1cd | ['Jonathan Beckett'] | 2020-12-09 16:51:42.229000+00:00 | ['Computers', 'Project Management', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Technology'] |
Interesting view. Some comments on your article: | Interesting view. Some comments on your article:
Regarding the Republican “episode” with the secret hearings, yes, there are a handful of Republicans in these meetings. That wasn’t the point. The point, if you listen to the comments that were made by Scalise and others is that these hearings are dealing with potential impeachment of a President who was duly elected by a Consitutional process. The argument being made is that these secret hearings, of which nothing is published or made public, are an attempt to undo (impeach) this same President. So, legally elected by due process and by the people, but removed by a rogue process being done in the dark. Syria. Like most things Trump does (announcing a formal impeachment inquiry one day before the phone call transcripts were released, only to find that the transcripts did not support the reasons Pelosi gave for it), the Democrats (and their scribes in the media) always react immediately to Trump’s next move (or tweet!), and in short order are made fools of. We removed 58 troops (yes, 58!) and all hell broke loose! Within a few days, we have a PERMANENT cease fire. And an end to the conflict. So while the method may have been out of the ordinary, the result was exactly what everyone who threw a fit over those methods wanted! I would agree with you that the call to have the G-7 summit in a Trump property was misguided. The intent was right (save money, etc.), but you just can’t overcome the way it looks — favoring the Trump organization and ultimately, Trump. I think sometimes he does things just to “tweak” the opposition. This clearly was one of them. Republicans in opposition to Trump. The “Republicans” you mention in your article are about as Republican as Trump is a mild-mannered introvert. On a good day you might call Mitt Romney a RINO. His positions and policies are purely liberal Democrat. Jeff Flake? Really??? He’s not even a player any more (former Senator Flake). Paul Ryan? They had all three branches of government during his first two years as Speaker. He failed to accomplish anything in the House, other than the tax reform bill. He was constantly a detractor and drug his feet all the way up to his last day. Francis Rooney. First he supports impeachment, then he announces his “retirment.” Sounds like politics 101 to me. Remember the fuss over Nancy Pelosi’s bid to resume her position as Speaker of the House? There were many Dems who opposed it (rather strongly, as I recall), but in short order, flipped and became her strongest allies (AOC was one of the most prominent detractors — for a minute, anyway). Pelosi simply “muscled” her detractors into supporting her (“if you support me here’s what I’ll do for you. If you don’t, here’s what will happen to you”). That’s politics.
I certainly enjoyed your article. Fun times we’re having in Washington! | https://medium.com/@jwmattern/interesting-view-some-comments-on-your-article-d7f00b1b76f9 | ['Jay Mattern'] | 2019-10-24 14:56:20.988000+00:00 | ['Republicans', 'Trump', 'Politics', 'Impeachment', 'Congress'] |
A million things… | There are millions of things worth doing.
Millions of things worth seeing.
Tens of thousands of people worth kissing.
Hundreds of places worth visiting.
Dozens of books worth writing.
Hundreds of thousands of conversations worth having.
Thousands of movies worth watching.
Millions of people worth hugging.
Hundreds of thousands of books worth reading.
Millions of songs worth listening to.
And one life worth living.
Don’t waste it… | https://medium.com/thought-pills/a-million-things-2d1f12fab910 | ['Yann Girard'] | 2017-11-06 19:18:32.553000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Inspiration', 'Writing', 'Life', 'Poetry'] |
Distribute Candies to People — LeetCode | This problem is classified as a LeetCode easy:
LeetCode #1103
“Pretty” solution thanks to https://carbon.now.sh
The solution above is pretty simple. All you have to do is keep a counter (candy_counter)and increment it each time you distribute a candy. I created a list and set all of the values to 0. Each index represents a person. As we iterate through the list, we add candy_counter + 1, and then after that, we increment candy_counter.
Here’s the submission report for the above code:
Faster than 75%
The source code is located here and my socials are located here.
Don’t hesitate to reach out! | https://medium.com/@roodsoren/distribute-candies-to-people-leetcode-c0e0c48838fa | ['Soren Rood'] | 2020-12-21 23:45:52.253000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Computer Science Student', 'Leetcode', 'Data Structures', 'Algorithms'] |
Merry Christmas to the Community | At least, have a better one than this year. I don’t know about you, but I am definitely 202Done. Can’t wait for this year to end and start the new one with some fresh energy.
Speaking of which, I am especially looking forward to growing this publication with you over the next year. It makes me truly happy and proud that we already built a little community in this brand-new pub.
Glad to have you all here!
My Best Wishes to You and Your Loved Ones | https://medium.com/the-shortform/merry-christmas-to-the-community-2d0a79fbdc48 | ['Tom Fenske'] | 2020-12-23 16:14:20.112000+00:00 | ['New Year', 'Wishes', 'Community', 'Christmas', 'Short Form'] |
A Surprising Thing Happened When I Stopped Eating For 3 Days | The Experiment
I planned to do a 1-day bone broth fast. Start with that, I thought, and then graduate to a 3-day fast later. That’s probably the reason I was able to overcome the mental barrier to even begin.
Here is what happened though:
Day 0
On Dec 23, I finished dinner around 8pm. I ate two Factor 75 meals with extra butter (wanted to load up before the fast). I went to bed that night knowing I wouldn’t eat solid food the next day. Already my mind was pissed at me. It mostly whispered that I would lose muscle mass and sacrifice all the strength gains I’ve made in recent months. I tried ignoring them and went to sleep.
Day 1
I woke up and my stomach was already grumbling. It had only been 12 hours and my body was already hangry.
I was going to do a bone broth fast, so I went to my kitchen to heat some up. Sadly, I didn’t plan this well and only had one small cup’s worth of broth left. One cup it is. I drank it slowly that morning.
The rest of the day went fine. I was hungry, but it wasn’t too difficult. I did feel weak and lethargic by late afternoon. Maybe it was my body switching into ketosis? More likely it was psychological. The fear of not eating is strong.
My stomach grumbled a lot during the day. It could have been from the stomach issues or just the transition to fasting. Empty stomachs sometimes grumble.
As I was getting ready for bed, I wondered if I should continue the fast for another day? I was already one day in. I might as well continue now that I have momentum. It made sense logically but my mind was pretty strongly against it.
I decided to wait and see how I felt in the morning.
Day 2
I journaled on day 2. Here are those entries:
8am
My mind is being a real pain in the @$$ this morning. I want to extend the fast and do a full 3-days, but it’s flipping its shit. I woke up needing to decide whether to continue and it whispered so many reasons not to. “You’re losing muscle. You’re being unhealthy. You’re being anti-social. Not eating is boring. You’re getting weaker. You don’t know if this is safe. Not eating is just not cool. Don’t you want to be cool!?!? Be cool dammit and start eating again… sorry, got emotional there. Feed me please?” I decided to continue fasting.
10am
I wanted to make more bone broth, so I went to CVS to get filtered water. While I was there, I had to walk the food aisles and thought again about breaking the fast. Whenever the whispers encourage me to eat and I say no, they push back more fiercely. I hope that eventually stops. My body feels lethargic as I write this. I’m going to do a short workout.
3pm
My stomach isn’t grumbling anymore. I don’t have the feeling of needing food. I still want to eat food, but it’s not a craving. It’s just my mind still holding to that idea that it’s better to eat all the time. The workout earlier felt awesome. It was about an hour of bodyweight exercises. I had much more energy afterward. All the lethargy from the earlier entry is gone.
8pm
I’ve been working for the last 3 hours with good focus. I just got up to take a short break and found myself shadow-boxing in front of a mirror. This fasting thing ain’t so bad.
Day 3
A few surprising things happened today.
Surprising thing #1
I didn’t feel tired at all today. Even though I slept poorly, I felt fine.
Surprising thing #2
I wasn’t hungry at all today. I drank one cup of bone broth around 8pm. However, I didn’t need it. I only drank it because I hoped it would help repair my gut, like Ariane had suggested.
Surprising thing #3
WARNING: this is 100% a n=1 observation, I have very limited and unreliable data, and it is most likely just a coincidence. < — seriously, it’s probably a coincidence.
That said, I’m including this because it DID surprise me. I have an irregular heartbeat. I’ve always had it. Last night, I used an AliveCor device on my phone to take an ECG reading and saw zero irregular beats. That never happens. So I took another sample and still zero. I tested again in the morning and they were back, but at a lower frequency than usual — only 1–2 in each minute sample. Again, this is probably related to other confounding factors, but it surprised me and I’m curious to research it more. If anyone knows of research on fasting and the heart, please share in the comments!
Surprising thing #4
This is the MOST surprising thing of all. I decided to work out with my brother around 6pm on day 3. We did a Crossfit workout — heavy back squats and then a WOD. I thought I’d be weaker after 3 days of fasting, but the exact opposite happened. I set a new personal record for my 1 rep max on my back squat.
I’ve always thought fasting would make me weak, tired, and unhappy.
And yet, 3 days in, I wasn’t craving food, I had more energy than usual, and I lifted more weight than I ever have before.
Take that you fearful labrador brain!
Benefits of the Fast
Of my five reasons for doing the fast experiment, all were at least moderately successful.
I felt less food obsessed after the fast
I broke the fast on Dec 27. Even though I started eating again, I didn’t have food cravings. It’s a difficult thing to explain. You have to feel it yourself to understand it. For example, I had two containers of Paleo granola in my cabinet and no cravings to eat them. Pre-fast, I would have eaten both in one sitting. I had sweet potato mash in one of my Factor meals, and it tasted sweet to the point that I didn’t want to eat it. I finished everything else and left that behind. I’ve never done that.
I got into Ketosis
Most likely, this decrease in food obsession was due to being in ketosis, just like I experienced in my 2012 keto experiment. This time, I didn’t use any devices for measuring ketone levels. I will for my next fast.
My gut felt better
My stomach is feeling subjectively better now than it was pre-fast. It’s hard to quantify, but observationally I don’t have the same morning aches or bloating symptoms that I was experiencing before.
I had more time
As expected, when you don’t eat, you also stop planning, prepping, cooking, and cleaning for meals. That left a lot of extra time in my days. I used that time to reflect on 2015 and start thinking about goals for 2016.
I learned that fasting is not as scary as I thought
Most importantly, I’m happy to have confronted my fear of fasting. It’s not so scary anymore. I did another one-day fast last week. My mind still objected, but I now know I won’t starve, wither, and die. Based on this experience, the opposite is more likely true. It’ll make me stronger and healthier.
What now?
As I write this, I’m no longer in ketosis. I ate a whole bag of KIND Granola tonight. I’m apparently back to being obsessed with food.
That’s okay! An experiment’s conclusion is only valid if it’s repeatable, right? I’ll just have to do another fast. I’ll use a keto blood meter to measure my ketone levels this time and I’ll definitely attempt another 1 RM back squat.
If that’s also repeatable, I might just stop eating food entirely. | https://betterhumans.pub/a-surprising-thing-happened-when-i-stopped-eating-for-3-days-ee1fe8b426cf | ['Mark Moschel'] | 2021-10-12 11:18:35.819000+00:00 | ['Keto', 'Fasting', 'Health'] |
Thoughtful Reopening | Kyle Brown, IBM Fellow, CTO Cloud Architecture, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software
E. G. Nadhan, Chief Architect and Strategist, North America, Red Hat
Reopening after a long closure is an opportunity (Image: Wikimedia commons)
Thousands of businesses in the US and around the world are starting the process of bringing back their furloughed IT staff and getting back to business. However, the process of reopening creates a unique opportunity for reinvention that many large enterprises rarely get. Especially considering that the current economic models indicate a slow, prolonged recovery (it may be late 2021 or even 2022 before the world returns to pre-COVID levels of economic activity) businesses should take this opportunity to reassess how IT will operate once they reopen. By being thoughtful in how projects are restarted, how teams are reformed, and how priorities are reassessed, at the end you may be able to find yourself in a better position than you were prior to the shutdowns.
Based on our experience in what we have seen with many clients, we are starting to see some common themes involving these areas, and are developing a fairly strong POV, which we believe is relevant to many businesses in different domains. As a result, we’d like to share a few very successful approaches that we’ve observed.
Take time to automate common IT tasks. The COVID-19 situation has left teams in an unusual position — while many enterprises have reduced or delayed new development (unless it was directly related to the crisis) they have had to continue to maintain and operate existing systems to simply “keep the lights on”, although often at a reduced load. That means that teams are expected to do more “standard” development tasks with fewer people. That makes this a wonderful time to invest in automation of common IT tasks. Automation of existing tasks like patching middleware and operating systems, release management, and setting up and tearing down environments will make your teams more productive and reduce stress and human error. Not only does this pay back some of your technical debt by redirecting the workforce to more innovative tasks, but it also facilitates agility since it builds up a reusable library of automated components.
Clean out your IT toolbox — It’s when you are working with a reduced staff that you start to realize the problems inherent in having too many tools in your IT toolbox. While there may have previously been good technical or economic reasons to add many specialized tools into your toolbox when times were good and staff were plentiful, in times of cutbacks and slow rehiring you don’t want to be stuck with issues in that one unique system that was built on something only a few people understand. You need the flexibility to reallocate teams and change team sizes and structures to cope with the increased workload on a smaller staff. That means standardization on a small number of platforms, operating systems, and middleware enabled by a fixed library of tools becomes even more critical. Standardizing on open platforms that are agnostic to on-premise and cloud environments will greatly reduce overall training and maintenance costs.
Take advantage of a common platform — One important way to standardize on a smaller set of tools is to take advantage of tools provided by common open platforms — often platforms you already have. For years, IT teams have wanted to take a “best of breed” approach that often means adding tools that are duplicates or slight improvements over tools already provided by platform vendors. However, by standardizing the tools, runtimes, and approaches that come bundled with the platform, you reduce the total amount of training needed, reduce overall redundant license cost, and create a broader pool of relevant expertise within your organization.
For instance, with Red Hat OpenShift, one way of taking greater advantage of the platform is to accelerate containerization of existing applications as a first step toward modernization. This incremental approach is less costly and difficult than intensive refactoring/rewriting of existing applications. Taking advantage of operational support provided by the platform for even traditional (e.g. not cloud-native) applications allows you to gain better economies of scale, and at the same time reduce the overhead of multiple platforms. Additionally, it positions you for growing into other cloud environments as appropriate in the future.
Adopt techniques from open source — One of the ramifications of a smaller IT team is that more people will need to wear several hats. This may mean, for instance, that specialists in particular technologies or techniques may need to spread themselves across several projects and contribute to multiple teams. The best way that the industry has found to spread that knowledge is through an open-source approach that is predicated upon an open, collaborative mindset — creating self-organizing teams around specific projects with contributions throughout the industry. The internal counterpart of this is sometimes called the “inner-source” method. In that approach, you take the same techniques and mindset from the open-source model and apply them to solving your internal IT issues. So, for instance, if there is a AI or analytics model that needs to be built to solve a common problem unique to your business, that maybe something that is best suited for an inner-source model so it can be understood and reused more widely across your teams. Adapting an open mindset within a collaborative culture that thrives on meritocracy paves the way for greater autonomy for your teams, thus motivating them towards innovation that matters to the enterprise. And assuring a safe, secure, and compliant environment with enterprise-grade, hardened platforms redirects the focus to empowering the business and augmenting the consumer experience.
Where you can go from here
There are many other, more ambitious efforts that organizations could also take on, including moving to more of a product-based model and bringing work to existing teams rather than forming teams around projects. But these are some simple starting points that we believe will be beneficial to most IT teams. | https://medium.com/ibm-garage/thoughtful-reopening-1dfedb28209 | ['Kyle Gene Brown'] | 2020-09-14 18:18:18.297000+00:00 | ['Reopening', 'It Management', 'Software Development'] |
Ad-injecting malware hijacks chrome, edge, firefox | Source: AVG
Did a higher number of advertisements show up at the top of your search results while looking for items online than usual? You may have fallen victim to the Adrozek malware ad-injection, If you use Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Yandex Browser, or Mozilla Firefox.
Cybercriminals have been forcing it on users since at least May 2020, according to Microsoft, and it was detected on over 30,000 computers per day at its peak in August.
“Adrozek illustrates that even threats that are not considered immediate or important are becoming increasingly more complex. And while the primary objective of the malware is to inject ads and refer traffic to certain websites, the attack chain includes advanced activity that enables attackers to gain a strong foothold on a computer,” warned the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team.
Malware Adrozek is capable of:
Modify browser extensions by inserting malicious scripts to them, which inject ads into search results with extra scripts.
Modifying unique DLLs (browser-dependent) to disable security controls that can detect its behavior
Modify the security settings/preferences of the browser to (for instance) add permissions that allow malicious extensions to have more control over Chrome APIs or prevent browsers from upgrading to the latest versions.
Modifying multiple configurations of systems to monitor the compromised computer even further and maintain persistence
Stealing passwords from users (on Firefox)
Microsoft clarified, “Adrozek is installed via drive-by download on devices.” “We saw 159 separate domains used to spread hundreds of thousands of unique malware samples in our monitoring of the Adrozek campaign from May to September 2020. This infrastructure is bound to grow much further while this initiative is underway.
Via affiliate advertisement programs, the crooks behind this initiative are earning money, i.e., they are paying for traffic referred to associated sponsored sites. Microsoft claims they didn’t see malicious sites pointing to the injected advertising, but that could change easily.
Prevention & Mitigations
Microsoft says its Defender Antivirus on Windows 10 blocks Adrozek malware ad-injecting and other security solutions are likely to do so by now.
Users who were infected were told that their browsers should be re-installed.
“In view of the massive infrastructure used to distribute this threat on the web, users should also learn about the prevention of malware infections and the risks of downloading and installing software from untrusted sources and clicking on suspicious websites for advertisements or links,” Microsoft added.
For companies, for these types of attacks, defenders should look to reduce the attack surface. Control of applications enables organizations to enforce the use of only approved apps and services. | https://medium.com/shallvhack/ad-injecting-malware-hijacks-chrome-edge-firefox-6cc8268ce15e | ['Isha Kudkar'] | 2020-12-22 12:27:04.400000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Google', 'Malware', 'Microsoft', 'Chrome'] |
Who carries who? (December 2021) | As the last big CS:GO tournament of 2021 draws nearer to its conclusion, fans and pundits alike begin their usual song and dance of scrutinizing lineups (especially the ones that underperformed according to fan expectations). From praising the obvious stars to identifying weak links and bashing proverbial check stealers (shoutout to By the Numbers, the quintessential CS:GO podcast), I wanted to create a visualization of how much each member of a team contributes to their respective success or failure. My hypothesis going in is that using a polar area chart the standouts and the laggards will be immediately apparent. The obvious choice here is HLTV.org’s eponymous HLTV Rating 2.0, a proprietary formula compressing the performance and impact of a player in the server into a single metric. Admittedly this method can be a bit restrictive since it relies on a single variable, so I’ll be aiming to introduce more detailed forms of visualisation in the future (think spider/radar charts). Charts below use data from the last 3 months (as of 14th of December) and do not account for standins or type of tournament played.
#1 Natus Vincere (Ukraine / Russia)
Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostlyev is inarguably the best player in CS:GO by a country mile, and has been for quite some time. Even with Denis “electronic” Sharipov in tow, s1mple’s impressive collection of individual accolades were sorely missing tournament trophies to go with them, until the addition of 18 year old prodigy Valeriy “B1T” Vakhovskiy to the team. The move took Na’Vi from solid favorite title conteneders to be the team to beat.
#2 Vitality (France)
Despite Dan “apEX” Madesclaire’s stature as the vocal leader and hype man of the squad, it is Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut who stands head and shoulders above the rest, dragging his team to impressive playoff runs despite the imbalance in performance. Jayson “Kyojin” Nguyen Van is an obvious weak link, but with the roster shakeup of the team all but confirmed it seems he will need to prove his worth elsewhere next year.
#3 G2 (France / Bosnia-Hercegovina / Serbia)
Despite their elite placing among the world’s best, this iteration of the G2 lineup has yet to win any tournaments since the blockbuster signing of Nikola “NiKo” Kovač. Their best chances this year (a runner up finish at IEM Cologne and the PGL Stockholm Major) were both foiled by current leaders Na’Vi. The distribution shows the reigning narrative of the Kovač cousins being the engine of the team falter a bit as NiKo is clearly the star player (one a year long time scale Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač is closer, his recent showings being more subdued).
#4 Gambit (Russia / Kazahstan)
The breakout team of the online era seem to struggle to find their footing in the brick and mortar arenas when the cream of the crop (and a crowd) is present. Dmitriy “sh1ro” Sokolov’s impressive rating comes with the caveat he has gone missing in big offline games (the semi-final of the Major against regional rivals Na’Vi or their most recent lost to Vitality at IEM Winter comes to mind).
#5 NIP
With the blockbuster signing of Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz failing to achieve the breakthrough it promised in terms of titles brought home by the Ninjas, another Dane was brought on the other side of the Øresund strait. Journeyman Patrick “es3tag” Hansen is hoping to solidify his status as top-tier talent after a string of disappointing spells at US organizations Cloud9 and Complexity on the back of his standout (albeit similarly short) tenure at Astralis, an aspirational team to join for any Danish CS:GO player. While the issues in communication within the team are well known, es3tag did not kick the door down on his entry to this lineup and is yet to justify his signing on the server.
The swedes in NIP are a mixed bag: in game leader Hampus “hampus” Poser and rifle star Fredrik “REZ” Sterner have consistently posted decent numbers while Nicolas “Plopski” Gonzalez, formerly hailed as new Swedish talent on par with fnatic’s Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin has steadily greyed into mediocrity.
#6 Heroic
In true Scandinavian fashion, no one stands out too drastically from this bunch, asided from Martin “stavn” Lund, who was the only member of the team to show some signs of life during their early exit from IEM Winter. Despite the recent clash with domestic nemesis Astralis forcing Casper “Cadian” Møller to walk back on his pre-game swagger, Heroic have been the better Danish team in 2021, giving a home to a fresh crop of talent while Astralis stuggled to find a lineup and maintain a form worthy of their legacy. | https://medium.com/@daniranki/who-carries-who-december-2021-57fff48f7cc5 | ['Daniel Ránki'] | 2021-12-15 15:10:35.666000+00:00 | ['Esports', 'Csgo'] |
Giving the Banks a Run for their Money: Shot for Fintech Startups | On the user-side of things, the only requirements are 5 minutes of spare time and an internet connection. People will no longer have to physically be present at the bank and fill in the paperwork in order to become a client. If banks are not quick to react it may lead to a ‘mass migration’ of people from one provider to another.
The Fragmentation
This movement is likely to create a subdivision within banks, where certain banks are better at providing one service in comparison to others. For example, perhaps the payment processing division of Nordea might be faster, cheaper and more effective than that of Barclays, Lloyds Bank, and others. This will attract customers who need such services to Nordea, increasing their user base.
Thinking outside the box, it is also likely that individual providers will also make their way into the market. These will be providers which are able to serve customers with a single service and do it in such a way that it will abolish existing competitors. To use another example, a company startup may have their focus on payment initiation or lending, thus making these particular processes very cost-effective. Although people would already have accounts with one bank, nothing will stop them from switching to the best alternative.
Crossing the Crypto Bridge
So open banking is all the rage, but what else is? That’s right, cryptocurrency!
Despite the ‘bearish’ market trends which have been visible lately, the services and future potential which crypto projects provide cannot be ignored anymore. Judging from the attention cryptocurrencies and the blockchain tech is getting from all layers of the society — it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
You can find full crypto dictionary series at BoredPanda
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were originally intended to be used as a means of quick and efficient payment and transfer of value. Not that hard to recognize some similarities with Open Banking, is it? Blockchain concepts are all based on trustless networks where everyone owns a copy of a ‘ledger’ thus allowing a Peer-2-Peer system to take care of any discrepancies. As this industry grows, the focus is being shifted slightly, with each individual startup having its own primary goal whilst still making use of the relevant blockchain technology. Projects like Ethereum are making it easier for startups to enter the industry using the accessible ERC-20 blockchain.
And now it is clear that Open Banking is aiming to make it easier for startups to enter the banking industry. So just one question remains… “Who will be there to bridge the gap between banks & crypto?”
ORCA Platform
One of the European startups taking on the task is ORCA Alliance. ORCA is creating an Open Banking platform and has been eyeing this future roadmap for quite some time. Thus they are already a few steps ahead. Making perfect use of the PSD2 directive and Open Banking at just the right time, ORCA aims to provide customers with the best available services and making the user experience convenient.
On the banking and fiat side, ORCA will provide its users with options where they can choose which provider to use when processing payments, which provider to use when applying for loans, and which provider to use when depositing/withdrawing crypto.
On the crypto side, the platform will allow its users to select between largest exchanges such as Binance, Bittrex, Kraken when buying or selling. It will permit one to easily realize transactions and place orders on the market while benefitting from the cheapest available rates. | https://medium.com/cc-connecting-crypto-with-banking/giving-the-banks-a-run-for-their-money-shot-for-fintech-startups-cbc9dee3f1c9 | [] | 2018-04-23 13:01:36.323000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Fintech', 'Open Banking', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Innovation'] |
Digital Inequality among University Students: Covid-19 Pandemic in Turkey | The issue of educational inequality is a very important subject. Education helps new generations to be logical and independent people. By embracing and improving the quality of their education, governments and other institutions aim to raise more developed individuals who can analyze different situations and take independent decisions. In 21st century, one of the major modifiers that affect the quality of this education is digital inequality.
Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash
Covid-19, or Corona Virus Disease, is a dangerous virus that is known to be very contagious. In a very short time, with fast and easy transportation, it spread across the globe and caused a global pandemic. As the pandemic caused social distancing, most of the public places were shut, and wearing a mask became an everyday action. The situation being this serious, people living in Turkey had to take major changes in their lives as well, with social distancing and isolation.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes had to occur in the field of education. For the universities, most of the campuses are physically closed, causing their students to have online lectures. With the global pandemic and these changes, online education went from being a luxury to being an indispensable part of any student’s life. It is now a necessity for the universities to create or grow their online platforms and also trying to adjust and integrate their programs to digital, aiming to stick to their academic calendars, despite the technical difficulties on both the students and school’s end.
Photo by Giovanni Gagliardi on Unsplash
“Most schools in affected areas are finding stop-gap solutions to continue teaching, but the quality of learning is heavily dependent on the level and quality of digital access.” (Gilani, 2019).
This creates a great challenge not only for the schools but also for the students. Not only because of the changing of the system but also because of the economic differences between the students and families. This causes an imbalance between the students, causing education to be less accessible for some.
The available research on digital inequality in Turkey seems to be very limited. But within the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, there seems to be enough research to give an insight on the subject.
In this respect, because in a night schools had to do a transmission from normal classes to electronic ones, the main worry educators had at first was not the quality of the education, but rather to sustain the education with the resources they have had in their hands (Carey, 2020).
There are a lot of technologies and digital tools that serve the purpose of online education. These technologies serve independently from the place and in some cases, even time. Lectures can be watched from anywhere, anytime.
The decisive indicator for the quality of these lectures is the quality of these tools and systems (Gilani, 2020).
Accessibility to these tools is very important during the pandemic when online education is a necessity. According to Deursen, as there are benefits associated with access to online tools, there are negative consequences for lacking it (2020). The students experiencing this digital inequality have a harder time accessing these tools or do not have access completely, therefore suffering from the negative consequences mentioned before.
T HE SURVEY:
The method for this research is quantitative data. A survey is conducted from two different groups as the main source.
One group, consisting of students from Koç University. A second group, consisting of students from Selçuk University, a public university in Turkey. Nearly 56% of the students who participated in the survey were from Selçuk University. The other 44% are Koç University students.
Among the participants, the age span was 19–22, with most of them being 20 years old. Even though mostly Turkish, Koç University students had different ethnicities. All of Selçuk University’s students were Turkish. Survey questions contain personal information obtained by their consent and the survey is done anonymously. While almost everyone in Koç University considered themselves as middle or upper class, students from Selçuk University seemed to be struggling with selecting a class that fits them. This might indicate some social situations.
In order to ask people to do the survey, two different internet platforms were used to ask students from the two universities. The survey includes some questions such as Their attitude towards online school, rating certain situations and their satisfaction with numbers 1–10, what devices and internet package they use to connect, also how often they encounter problems. Results also contain students’ personal opinions towards inequal digital accessibility among the university students in Turkey. We have gathered some interesting results from the survey, one of them is: Students from the public university were nearly twice more concerned about digital accessibility, and encountered a lot more technical difficulties, both from the student’s and school’s end. The students were also asked how satisfied they were with the online classes, are they were concerned about digital accessibility and if so, how much, how easy was it to attend online classes, and so on.
THE RESULTS:
The biggest problem would have been to find people for the survey but fortunately a lot of people were willing to participate, and the results were satisfying. In exact numbers 62 undergraduate students from Koç University and 79 undergraduate students from Selçuk University participated. Overall, 141 people joined the survey. The average person profile was 20 years old Turkish male, undergraduate student. Almost 67% of the participants were male students.
Participants of the survey were people who had at least decent access to the internet and some form of a digital device, and this should be thought of when analyzing the results.
We predicted that participants from the private university would have higher happiness and to be more positive overall. The results confirm this prediction (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 by Mehmet Ongun Güvenç.
These findings show that students from Koç University were more happy and more satisfied. The biggest difference however, seems to be the accessibility of learning material. For Koç University students it was a 6,7 out of 10. For Selçuk University Students it was a surprisingly low 3,7 out of 10. Lower accessibility of learning material indicates a direct inequality in education.
“… homes often lack the equipment and connectivity that richer households take for granted, compounding the problem.” (Daniel, 2020)
For Koç University, only 2% lacked technical knowledge for digital devices. For Selçuk University, that number was around 6%. The biggest problem students encountered differed from university to university. Koç University students had connection problems as their major problem. Selçuk University students had having problems with their devices the highest, at 12% (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 by Mehmet Ongun Güvenç
Public University students have more problems with connection but also trouble with their devices which might indicate they have lower-performing devices, causing direct inequality between students.
According to Gilani, in order to help this inequality, for the people who cannot meet the cost of sufficient digital devices and data plans, the government and corporates have to decrease costs and make digital classroom more affordable to people. Otherwise, there is a great danger and this digital division could become more extreme (2019).
As for the lack of technical knowledge, it usually requires the existing access to it, so it might be more than the lack of knowledge, but the lack of access.
“If every student is to be afforded an opportunity to develop basic technology literacy skills, the first issue that must be addressed is eliminating the inequities that exist with respect to each student’s access to the computer technology that he must learn how to use. Simply stated, if a student is to learn how to use computer technology, he must first have ready access to it.” (Morse, 2004)
Figure 3 by Mehmet Ongun Güvenç
As it can be seen in Figure 3, most of the students were concerned about digital inequality which shows that there is a certain awareness, it being instinctively or mindfully, on the subject among the students.
While 71% of the participants have stated they would prefer a face-to-face education, 29% was totally okay with online education (See Figure 4). Among the 71%, the biggest reason they would prefer face to face education was social life. Most of the students were concerned about the current status of the pandemic and therefore they were in an unstable state, presumably due to lockdown and its inevitable consequences.
Figure 4 by Mehmet Ongun Güvenç
Discussion
Digital Inequality has a major consequence: digital divide. This digital divide is about the difference between those who have access to modern technology and those who do not, so lack of access. Digital inequality is more about not having the skills, equipment, or knowledge to effectively use modern technology. In this case someone has access to technology but is unable to use it because they are not familiar with how to use it, unlike those who have had access and time to acquire the skills that let them make the most of technology. The divide is very evident throughout the world. Before the Covid pandemic, Digital inequality was fast becoming a growing problem both Globally and within Turkey. This research was focused on Turkey, but to get a broader sense of the problem, other areas of the world had to be researched as well. Such as Africa, which has very low internet penetration rates compared to the rest of the world. According to ITU, the digital revolution of the 21st century is based on the internet, which is the revolution’s driving force. Without a high-speed internet connection, the citizen is excluded from today’s information society. Therefore, most of the citizens of Africa are unrightfully excluded from this modern information society. To give a better insight, these issues could be divided into two main problems. First problem is the broadband availability, which means the internet speed. Second problem is the usage of technology itself, and availability of technological devices. Turkey as a country is home to a diverse socioeconomic array of people. And economics play a large role in a student’s ability to have any internet access at all. For some students in Turkey, perhaps there is no internet access at home at all. A big portion of students have personal internet access only through their mobile phones. Students often cite slow speeds, unreliable internet connections, and lack of internet networks available. And why is that very important? Especially now? That’s because with the pandemic and the changes in education system in Turkey, online education went from being a luxury to being an indispensable part of any student’s life. Students need to have internet access to accomplish their academic goals and objectives, learn new skills, or even to graduate. This creates a newer and a much bigger problem and also division.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to understand and analyze digital inequality and digital division among university students in Turkey during the Covid-19 pandemic. We have predicted that students from private universities would have better access to classes and study material, and also be more satisfied during this online time. The findings of the survey show that this is indeed correct, and students from a public university currently have a harder time in general.
According to Daniel, the government and schools had to act fast to the spread of COVID-19, so institutions had very little time to prepare for a remote-teaching regime. (2020, p.2)
While private schools with relatively larger budgets covered up and thought of everything nice and thoroughly along the journey, public schools didn’t simply have the same opportunities. It is very hard to do an assessment or homework from a smartphone, so a computer is required for students, something not everyone has easy access to. These are definitely stressful times for students. Results of the survey show that a big majority of students are concerned about digital inequality and also not really satisfied in terms of education.
References
World Health Organisation. (2020). Coronavirus Disease. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
Gilani, I. (2020). Coronavirus pandemic reshaping global education system. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/education/coronavirus-pandemic-reshaping-global-educationsystem/1771350
Morse, T. (2004). Ensuring Equality of Educational Opportunity in the Digital Age. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124504264103
Daniel, J. (2020). Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09464-3/
Carey, K. (2020). ‘’Is everybody ready for the big migration to online college?
Actually, no.’’ The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com
ITU. (2013). Study on Internetional Internet Connectivity In Africa. http://handle.itu.int/11.1002/pub/80981022-en | https://medium.com/@ongunguvenc/digital-inequality-among-university-students-covid-19-pandemic-in-turkey-f39c2d04a4fc | ['M. Ongun Güvenç'] | 2021-08-25 11:12:21.764000+00:00 | ['Covid', 'Turkey', 'Education', 'University', 'Pandemic'] |
‘Wonder Woman 1984’ 2020 And The One-Villain-Too-Many Problem | WATCH H.D =>> https://tinyurl.com/yyl7un9t
She’s Running: Diana (Gal Gadot) chases her quarry through the streets of Washington in the sequel Wonder Woman 1984.
Warner Bros.
Wonder Woman 1984 premieres in theaters and on HBO Max on December 25.
As much as 2017’s Wonder Woman came steeped in muddy browns and muted grays, every frame of its sequel Wonder Woman 1984 radiates bright, retina-sizzling neons and pastels. That stark contrast goes beyond their respective visuals — it extends to their very different emotional landscapes and narrative drives.
Where Wonder Woman was an origin story set largely amid the soggy trenches and bombed-out European villages of World War I, WW84 relocates Diana (Gal Gadot) to the broad white boulevards of Washington, DC in the middle of the Greed Decade. As a kind of mission statement, director Patty Jenkins stages the film’s first (of, it should be noted, surprisingly few) action set-pieces in that most consumerist, I-Love-The-’80s location possible: A mall. (As you watch that scene play itself out, try to keep yourself from knowing that all of Wonder Woman’s feats of jumping and punching and Magic Lasso-ing are unfolding in a place that smells strongly of hot dogs and cinnamon rolls and orange chicken; just try.)
Article continues after sponsor message
As intentionally grimy as Wonder Woman looked, it’s story was clean and linear: Diana left her home on the Amazon hideaway of Themyscira to stop a war engineered by a god who fed on the senseless destruction it wreaked.
You perhaps spot a contradiction already: She fights … to keep people from fighting?
Welcome to the character of Wonder Woman, Warrior for Peace, historically difficult needle to thread. Originally created with the best, most morally clear purpose any superhero could possess — namely, to punch Nazis in the face, a whole lot, with verve and elan — she represents a fundamental paradox. She exists to embody the capacity for violence (enormous physical power combined with advanced military training) yet she solves problems through compassion, empathy and, mostly, Truth.
POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR
Pop Culture Happy Hour: ‘Wonder Woman’ And The Tony Awards
Sounds a bit gender-essentialist, no? Why can’t a woman be a badass, delivering savage beatdowns to those who deserve them? The good news is that, in recent decades especially, she has been, and she does. Jenkins picked up on this, which is why those scenes in which Diana finally gets to let loose are the most thrilling in either movie; Gadot’s handle on the physical demands of the role is sure.
All of this feeds into the three reasons why WW84, while entertaining and frequently funny, lacks the propulsive drive of its predecessor.
1. CGI
It’s a hoary critique of superhero movies that their computer-generated effects look gleamingly artificial and dull. Wonder Woman’s focus on practical fight choreography meant it could have dodged (or, more fittingly, deflected) that critical bullet, had its climactic all-CGI fight scene not devolved into visual incoherence.
WW84, however, sets up camp in the uncanny valley in its opening minutes. A sun-drenched flashback on Themyscira features computer-generated figures performing physical feats with a false weightlessness that defies both gravity and sense. The film’s climax — another CGI slugfest — takes place at night, which is a bit more forgiving, though not much.
2. (Superhero Cinematic) History, Repeating
The superhero film genre has been around for at least half a century, depending on whom you ask, and what strikes you watching WW84 in the year of our lord 2020 is how it still hasn’t learned the most essential lesson of all:
When it comes to villains, more is less.
Pick one, and stick with it. Give them enough motivation, and screentime, to make an impact. Have them stand in clear moral opposition to the hero, and move the story forward.
Loading up on villains can work, of course, but only under specific conditions: Tim Burton’s 1992 film Batman Returns famously recruited both Catwoman and the Penguin to great effect — but both of those characters had already established significant cultural footprints: beloved by Nerds, recognizable by Normals.
The same, it cannot be said, of WW84’s Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) and, especially, Maxwell Lord (a shockingly uncharismatic — nay, acharismatic — Pedro Pascal). Wiig brings a great comic timing to the film’s first half, when her squirrelly anthropologist befriends Diana and — not uncoincidentally — comes into her power. It’s nothing you haven’t seen her do before, but credit should be given to both the actor and the script for finding a way in to a villain that only a handful of comics writers have managed to make effective.
Pascal, on the other hand, flounders as Lord. Granted, that’s part of the character’s whole schtick — a desperate huckster who’s grasping at anything to stay afloat — but Pascal seems wildly miscast, and his willingness to hurl himself bodily into Lord’s tortured distress only exacerbates that impression.
3. Too Many (Grace) Notes
Jenkins and her fellow screenwriters Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham clearly know Diana’s whole Warrior for Peace schtick (Johns, especially, as he’s clocked serious field time with DC and its IP). Which might explain, but not excuse, the script’s tendency to keep slowing down to supply Wiig and Pascal with scenes duly apportioned with emotional beats, psychological motivations and characterizing details. It’s a good impulse, in theory, especially when you keep in mind that they’re in the script to expressly set up Diana’s efforts to defeat these villains. She wins the day, after all, by reaching out to their innermost conflicts, understanding what drives them, and forcing them to confront the Truth about themselves.
Again: On paper — on the comics page, especially — it works. In an action movie, however, when you’ve got two villains, each outfitted with their discrete sets of grace notes that must be churned through, those scenes keep piling up and piling up and cannot help but muddy the waters and crowd out the spectacle we clamor for.
Still, though: WW84 is entertaining, Gadot nails the character and her contradictory nature, and Chris Pine shows up (never mind how) to reestablish, and further, the two actors’ easy, charming onscreen chemistry.
Plus? Not for nothing? If you grew up with the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman, and/or the Super Friends Saturday morning cartoon, you’ll want to wait for the moment, one hour and ten minutes in to the film’s running time, when something happens. A something that would, in a crowded, opening-night theater, elicit a spontaneous cheer of pure, unfettered nerd-joy — a phenomenon unique to the superhero film genre, and its greatest gift to the world.
But just know: That moment retains a not insignificant fraction of its essential power, even if you’re just sitting on your couch scarfing pretzels.
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | https://medium.com/@iismandala12/wonder-woman-1984-2020-and-the-one-villain-too-many-problem-77e189dd44 | [] | 2020-12-23 17:31:24.612000+00:00 | ['Artist', 'Movie Review', 'Movies', 'Wonder Woman', 'Startup'] |
[Engsub] | “KING’s RAID” KING’s RAID: Successors of the Will | [Ep 13] ‘To My Dear Friend…’ | A century has passed since King Kyle of the Orvelia kingdom destroyed the fierce demon lord Angmund, restoring peace to the lands. Now in a time of peace, the apprentice knight Kasel enjoys his life without worry. His fate begins to change, however, with news of demon appearances infesting the neighborhood. Guided by a wise man, Kasel finds friends he can rely on and sets off on his mission to seek a holy sword, capable of slaying his newfound enemies.
✅📺 P-l-a-y NOW JOIN US 📺: ➤ http://fullstream.dplaytv.net/series/387510/1/13
Title : KING’s RAID: Successors of the Will
Episode Title : To My Dear Friend…
Release Date : 26 Dec 2020
Runtime : 25 minutes
Genres : Action , Adventure , Animation , Anime , Fantasy , War
Networks : TV Tokyo
» Watch KING’s RAID: Successors of the Will Season 1 Episode 13 On TV Tokyo «
TELEVISION 👾
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 5910s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 5950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[5] during the 5960s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 1000s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (516i, with 909091 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3456561, 3456561 and 1314. Since 1050, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, Starz Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 1053, 19% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[1] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5990s. Most TV sets sold during the 1000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-1050s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 1050s.[6][1][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 1.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 1050s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 1000s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 1000s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 1050s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
👾 OVERVIEW 👾
Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 1970s, and endured into the 1980s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad.
The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend.
The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/kings-raid/engsub-kings-raid-king-s-raid-successors-of-the-will-ep-13-to-my-dear-friend-4ef9c22f1b5b | ['Mark J. Birnbaum'] | 2020-12-25 13:09:18.744000+00:00 | ['Anime', 'Action', 'Fantasy', 'Animation', 'Adventure'] |
13 days in a sewer | 13 days in a sewer
A real-life Shawshank Redemption
Richmond’s 14th Street Bridge, leading to Manchester and Vaden’s Store.
In the Stephen King novella “The Shawshank Redemption,” wrongfully convicted inmate Andy Dufresne patiently spends 19 years chipping with a small rock hammer a hole through a prison cell wall, which he keeps covered with a poster of Rita Hayworth.
He eventually escapes out the hole through a sewer before plunging into a filthy pond of farm run-off. Afterward, he successfully makes it to Mexico.
Walter Stiars’ daring 1906 escape from the Virginia State Penitentiary bears many similarities to Dufresne’s experiences, including a daring nighttime getaway through a sewer. And like Dufresne, Stiars was never recaptured.
Desk job
On February 28, 1905, the Manchester Corporation Court in Richmond sentenced Lynchburg native Walter E. Stiars, age 30, to eight years in the penitentiary on two counts of breaking and entering B. P. Vaden’s Hardware Store in Manchester. Penitentiary officials considered Stiars dangerous and an escape risk — he bragged to the guards upon his admission that the penitentiary would never hold him.
He had good reason to be labeled a risk — he had convictions pending in West Virginia and Tennessee for stealing $1,200 worth of jewelry, amounting to over 20 total years of prison time.
Since the penitentiary at that time contracted other manufacturing companies to set up shop on the grounds to employ inmates, officials assigned Stiars to work at a desk in the shipping office of the Davis Boot and Shoe Company to keep him under surveillance and mostly, away from hand tools. For months Stiars quietly worked at a desk, using his meager earnings to purchase snacks and canned goods. He also memorized the habits of the guards charged to watch him.
The noon dinner bell rang as usual on Saturday, June 16, 1906. During roll call, Stiars did not answer “adsum” (Latin for “to be present,” and commonly used by inmates at the time) when his name was called. The alarm was sounded, and a thorough search revealed he was nowhere on the premises. The search left nothing unturned — packing boxes were opened and searched, and blanket, shoe, and coat stacks were prodded.
Outgoing barrels and boxes of manufactured goods were opened and examined. It was assumed that if Stiars did not get out in a shoe crate or a barrel then he must have been hiding, as there were no signs of an escape. Still, penitentiary officials posted extra guards along the outer walls just in case he somehow bolted the previous evening. After several days they were withdrawn, as it was not believed that a convict could remain so completely hidden that long.
If Stiars had escaped, Penitentiary Superintendent Captain Evan F. Morgan was confident he would be captured. “We expect to land him,” Morgan told the June 17 Richmond Times-Dispatch, “and if I am not mistaken we will not be long about it.”
Morgan was mistaken. Stiars had not escaped — not yet. He was indeed hiding.
Through Aladdin’s lamp
On the evening of June 15th, right around quitting time, Stiars stood up, walked away from his desk, leaving his coat and cap hanging on the wall.
He went to a closet in the corner of the office, removed a small wall board behind a waste pipe, then slithered under the floor into a filthy 22-inch high crawl space, replacing the board. The Times-Dispatch later recounted that Stiars “was swallowed up as effectually as though he had used Aladdin’s lamps.”
This is where Stiars lived and worked for an astonishing 13 straight days — under shoe factory no. 2, lying down in a wet, murky crawl space, surrounded by rats, cockroaches, the excruciating stench of two raw sewage troughs underneath a row of toilets, and the unbearable heat of a steam boiler directly overhead.
Fortified by the canned provisions and cigarettes he for months had been purchasing and stockpiling, Stiars worked slowly and deliberately with a chisel normally used to open shoe crates, chipping and cutting through a 24-inch brick exterior foundation wall.
Success
Finally, on June 28, between 6:30 p.m. and daybreak, Stiars broke through. He removed an iron ventilator grate and emerged undetected into the prison yard behind the shops below an unused guard tower.
Using a roll of webbing and a scaling hook, Stiars tied the webbing to the hook, threw it over the west wall, and started to climb over. According to an almost perfect human-shaped indentation in the soggy earth, he must have been almost over when the webbing broke and he fell over 15 feet to the ground.
Unfazed, Stiars walked back several yards to a nearby coal bin, removed a large board and used it with the webbing to scale the 18-foot wall. He then used the webbing to slide down the other side before disappearing into the Richmond night.
What the Penitentiary guards found. June 29, 1906 Richmond Times-Dispatch
Penitentiary officials first learned of the escape the next morning when a guard discovered the opening and a pile of rubble at the cellar wall. “How he lived in that awful hole for 13 days, I cannot understand,” Morgan claimed, simultaneously angered yet impressed, before offering a $100 reward for his capture.
The conditions in the sewer were so revolting that a guard named Penn and a white inmate went in but gave up after just a few minutes, retching from the blistering humidity and sickening stench. According to a press report, a “negro prisoner” was sent down instead, and in the filth discovered opened cans of meat, potted tongue, salmon, ham, tomatoes, sardines, crackers, and water, as well as cigarette butts, a knife, chisel, and a roll of webbing.
He also found a tattered edition of the Times-Dispatch newspaper and a copy of Charles Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend.” Stiars’ water supply was a steady drip from a rusty overhead toilet supply line.
It was believed (but never confirmed) that Stiars had a “confederate,” or an ally in his escape, as he broke out the first night after the night guards were withdrawn from the west wall.
The June 29, 1906, Richmond Times-Dispatch claimed Stiars’ escape had “no parallel in the history of criminal endeavor for freedom in this State.”
Diagram of Stiars’ escape. Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 29, 1906
Never caught in Richmond, Stiars made his way to Mansfield, Ohio, where he was arrested in April 1907 on a burglary charge. Before he could be extradited to Virginia, however, he escaped again, and in defiance of the words of Superintendent Morgan, he was never heard from again.
Perhaps he went to Mexico.
Postscript
Stiars’ tenacious and bizarre breakout led to the Virginia Penitentiary adopting the Bertillon system of measuring prisoners’ physical attributes, such as cranium width and length, torso, and forearm length for identification purposes. All inmates for years afterward were measured, with statistics entered into a binder titled “Anthropometric Measurements.” The practice of mug shots, or photographing inmates upon admittance began at the penitentiary at this time also, thanks to the audacious and successful escape of William Stiars.
Courtesy State Penitentiary collection, Library of Virginia
Read more at www.dalebrumfield.net. A portion of this story appears in my book “Virginia State Penitentiary: A Notorious History.” | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/13-days-in-a-sewer-24ce76f194c0 | ['Dale M. Brumfield'] | 2020-06-25 15:37:52.396000+00:00 | ['Mass Incarceration', 'History', 'Virginia Penitentiary', 'Cultural Archaeology', 'Criminal Justice Reform'] |
Hi, my name is Lori and I am addicted to True Crime. | Hi, my name is Lori and I am addicted to True Crime. I don’t know exactly when I became addicted. Much like all of my addictions, the love of True Crime just seeped into me and captivated my full attention.
It could be from taking a Criminal Justice course at a local community college back in the mid-80s. Back then, I could only satisfy my addiction from newspaper articles and books about serial killers. And then Unsolved Mysteries came on the air in 1987. I was instantly hooked.
Since the late 80s, there has been an explosion of True Crime shows on television, with an ever increasing audience. I know I am not alone in this obsession.
Why am I so addicted? I am curious about human behavior and I guess I am trying to figure out what makes people turn into monsters. Here is my latest obsession: | https://medium.com/@ravynehawke/hi-my-name-is-lori-and-i-am-addicted-to-true-crime-c252e7e08ba5 | ['Ravyne Hawke'] | 2020-12-27 15:57:45.462000+00:00 | ['This Happened To Me', 'Obsessions', 'True Crime', 'Short Form', 'Serial Killers'] |
BitTorrent (BTT) Airdrop for Tron (TRX) holders on Coindelta! | Details:
Recently, an article has been shared by BitTorrent Inc. revealing the details of the Airdrop. The first BTT airdrop will be initiated when the TRON’s block height reaches 6.6 Million (6600000). You can check the current block height here.
Here is the timeline of the Airdrop:
1.) 11th February, 2019 : 10,890,000,000 BTT (First Airdrop)
The ratio of BTT airdrop on Feb 11 is approximately 1 TRX = 0.11 BTT, due to the uncertainty of TRX block rewards and coin burn, the final ratio may be different.
Example: If you are holding 100 TRX in your Coindelta wallet, then you will get approximately 11 BTT tokens at the time of the first Airdrop.
2.) 11th March, 2019–11th February, 2020: 990,000,000 BTT per month
3.) 11th March, 2020–11th February, 2021: 1,072,500,000 BTT per month
4.) 11th March, 2021–11th February, 2022: 1,155,000,000 BTT per month
5.) 11th March, 2022–11th February, 2023: 1,237,500,000 BTT per month
6.) 11th March, 2023–11th February, 2024: 1,320,000,000 BTT per month
7.) 11th March, 2024–11th February, 2025: 1,402,500,000 BTT per month
How to get BTT tokens on Coindelta?
The only thing you need to do is hodl TRX on Coindelta and you will automatically get BTT tokens in your wallet. We will update you further as and when we get more details about the Airdrop.
We will take snapshot of the TRX holdings in February corresponding to which the you will get the BTT tokens. The date and time of snapshot will be communicated to you later.
That is all for now! If you have any doubts or queries please do not hesitate to contact us on our telegram group. You can also send us a mail at [email protected].
With love for the Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies,
Coindelta Family
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Download our mobile apps for seamless trading:
Coindelta Android App
Coindelta iOS App
Important links:
Coindelta Website
Coindelta Support | https://medium.com/coindelta/bittorrent-btt-airdrop-for-tron-trx-holders-on-coindelta-49245a49d83b | ['Team Coindelta'] | 2019-01-22 08:53:02.305000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'BitTorrent'] |
Corsair Virtuoso Wireless RGB Gaming Headset Review: The Cheapest Flagship | This all makes me think that, when powered on, Corsair decided to apply some additional EQ to the headset. You can apply your own EQ settings in their iCUE software, and they also include some pre-set profiles to pick from…though I think they all sound worse than the default EQ. In fact, they’re essentially the same profiles Corsair’s been using since the original Void.
I enjoy listening to the much cheaper HS60 Pro more than the Virtuoso out of the box. That’s a sad false start for a headset that costs this much.
There is one saving grace to Corsair’s cheap flaghship: soundstage. Even without the virtual surround turned on, the stereo field is nice and wide. Perhaps that’s what they were going for with the non-standard tuning?
The wireless connection has some small digital artifacts present, so you’ll get the best audio quality either over USB-C or a standard wire. Just like on the HS60 Pro, turning on Corsair’s surround mode adds even more digital noise. Speaker positioning with surround on is good, and the headset is also compatible with the Windows Sonic spatial audio platform.
Again, this headset doesn’t sound bad. It’s just a little too cold and sharp in the midrange, and muffled in the bass, for my personal tastes, and for the price point. I was hoping for a signature closer to the DT770. That headphone has a big peak in the treble, yes, but the bass response and the midrange are both accurate and sumptuous. With a flatter bass response and a warmer midrange, the Virtuoso would have the sound quality to match the rest of its design.
I think you could still get used to these and enjoy them. But they don’t quite have the accurate sound of other audio products at this price. The AKG K361 has a similarly cold character to its mids for those who like that bite, and a more accurate everything else. It’s not wireless, and it doesn’t have its own DAC or microphone, but its $99 price point leaves you a hundred extra dollars to buy more goodies.
There’s not a ton of room inside this amply-padded cup. Photo taken by Alex Rowe.
COMFORT
Unlike the HS60 Pro, the Virtuoso uses ample amounts of memory foam padding on both its headband and its ear pads. It has a decently slow rebound and is thick enough to seal around my glasses.
The only issues here are the clamp and the lack of angled drivers. The insides of the round ear cups are flat, just like the above-mentioned Beyerdynamic DT770. Beyerdynamic gets around this by covering the inside of the cup with a soft foam, and ensuring that the pads are so thick your ears won’t really touch the back wall.
Corsair didn’t quite nail either of these things. The inside wall is unpadded hard plastic, and the cups aren’t quite thick enough to totally elevate these off my ears, so the back edge of my ear just contacts the hard wall.
The ear cups rotate laterally and vertically, which is great for comfort. Unfortunately, the lateral rotation is so stiff and robust that it basically locks into place. So instead of conforming easily to your head, you’ll have to twist them, check the fit, and repeat until you find the right angle.
Still, with some careful positioning and occasional readjustment, these are reasonably comfortable. The headband is much more cushy than on the HS60 Pro, though the weight of the aluminum used throughout the frame means I sometimes develop a hot spot and need to re-seat them after about an hour.
I can wear the headset on the 9th of its 11 clicks of adjustment, so it should have enough room for most heads.
If you want your headset to instantly fit well, or you’re sensitive to clamping force, these won’t be for you. The fitting process reminds me a little of the Sennheiser HD25. There’s a lot of fiddling you can do with the placement thanks to its adjustable frame and round cups, and once you get the sizing locked in, you’ll enjoy wearing them. But getting there is more of a process than on most other headsets.
Corsair went all-in on materials for the Virtuoso, and it’s wonderful. Photo taken by Alex Rowe.
BUILD/DESIGN
This is the category where the Virtuoso largely triumphs. It’s one of the best-built headsets on the market, at any price. In a week and a half of use, the all-metal frame and hinges haven’t uttered a single creak or squeak. There’s sometimes a bit of frame noise as parts brush past each other, particularly on the right ear cup’s vertical swivel, but that’s nothing a future revision couldn’t fix with some additional rubber damping material or lubrication.
The Virutoso is built like a figurative tank. It’s a solid, metal-infused thing that screams premium from every angle, even if you decide to opt for the cheaper plastic-cupped version. The design is similarly impressive, with a timeless pro headphone look that’s more stylish and modern than most of the competition. These look like they belong in a nice studio.
Instead of jamming huge RGB light rings into the cups, Corsair opted for a basic light-up logo in the center of each cup. On the SE version, the unique micro-perforations in the aluminum mean that the cutouts practically disappear when the lights are off.
This USB port location is fine…as long as you don’t want to listen to the headphones in USB mode. Photo taken by Alex Rowe.
The design has one single stupid flaw. The USB-C port is placed towards the back of the left ear cup. That’s fine for charging, but if you want to use the built-in DAC to listen to the headphones, the cable exits the cup then rams promptly into your neck and shoulder. Your body will constantly rub against the cable, causing microphonic sounds to enter the ear cup.
You could try routing the cable over the top of your shoulder, but that causes new challenges and still doesn’t eliminate the shoulder rubbing. The positioning of the port is baffling considering how thoughtful the rest of the design is. Hopefully a future revision will move this port either to the right cup, or to the front of the left cup somewhere closer to the mic port.
The volume wheel is smooth and the headphones can really put out volume. Photo taken by Alex Rowe.
MICROPHONE
The microphone here is fantastic. Corsair claims it’s “broadcast quality,” and while that has no actual specific meaning, I’ll allow it. It’s deep, resonant, and accurate even in the bass regions. Positioning is easy thanks to the included sidetone feature, and background noise isolation is good. The sensitivity is also high enough that you shouldn’t have trouble being heard.
Impressively, the mic sounds almost as good in wireless mode as it does wired. Here are some quick samples I recorded.
The mic has an LED to show you if it’s muted or live. Photo taken by Alex Rowe.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Corsair Virtuoso SE is a solid attempt at a flagship-level headset for less money. The sound signature isn’t my first choice. The comfort takes a little getting used to. And the USB-C port is in a weird spot.
But, it packs in a big features list, a wonderful build, and a great microphone for about $100 less than the market norm.
The features list earns it a spot on my “keeper” shelf, but the second a better-sounding version two comes out, I’m selling it off. You might really enjoy the sound signature, and I think it’s still within the realm of “Acceptable.” It just falls short of the rest of the surprisingly solid package. | https://medium.com/@xander51/corsair-virtuoso-wireless-rgb-gaming-headset-review-the-cheapest-flagship-d881e5496349 | ['Alex Rowe'] | 2020-02-26 20:27:18.187000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Gadgets', 'Headphones', 'Technology', 'Audio'] |
4 New Tech Gadgets You Need to Have | Starting from electrical devices to self-care items, we provide you with a list of new gadgets that will help you do your daily activities. Each of the gadgets comes with an amazing technology you might never found from their previous models. Let’s get to know through the following list.
Polar Vantage V Running Watch
Polar Vantage V offers you with complete design and quality that a running watch even had. It is not only able to tracks physical activities such as running. Besides, it comes with GPS and heart rate that allows you to know any location you want to approach. Another feature that can be very useful for runners is valuable recovery insight as it helps them to track their performance. Brings a stylish design, this running watch matches everyone’s lifestyle. Not only equipped with sleep tracking for better life, but it can also be connected to your phone so that your phone notification can be displayed on this device. More satisfyingly, this running watch lasts 40 hours for every charge and resist to water in 50 m depth.
Philips Sonicare Smart 9500
In terms of self-care items, there is Philips Sonicare Smart 9500 with slightly amazing apps compared with its other electric toothbrush counterparts. Equipped with the newest technology, this device is available at an expensive price. However, if you don’t mind spending some money on quality, it’s very worth going for. Philips Sonicare is designed with five cleaning modes to meet different teeth cleaning needs. Moreover, it comes with four brush heads as well as three intensity settings so that users can adjust to particular cleaning purpose they want to get. This electric toothbrush is powered by battery that lasts for 14 days and is also supported with glass charging stand. It comes with handy design and is provided with travel case so that you can easily bring it everywhere.
Jura S8 coffee machine
Are you coffee lovers? Then, Jura S8 will worth it for you. Comes with a stylish design, this coffee machine is available in many coffee selections. No matter whether it is latte macchiato, espresso, or even flat white, you can make it at home easily. You even can make other types of coffee with this device. Not only satisfy coffee lovers, but Jura S8 also deserves to own by green tea drinkers. Besides coffee apps it provides, it is operated using a high-resolution touchscreen for friendlier use. Users only need to adjust the grinder to their preference based on the fine of coffee powder.
Anker PowerCore
Comes in a palm size, Anker PowerCore provides power support to any gadget you bring as it is portable. This amazing pocket-friendly device is able to charge your smartphone many times as it is powered with a 10.000 mAh battery. Equipped with PowerIQ and VoltageBoost technology that improves charging speed for different devices. It is to make sure that users don’t wait to long for charging their device. Although its size is slightly wider and longer than a credit card, it’s worth to have to support the life of your devices. | https://medium.com/@doseoftech/4-new-tech-gadgets-you-need-to-have-ca8e1193934a | ['Dose Of Tech'] | 2020-12-15 15:41:53.849000+00:00 | ['Gadgets', 'Tech', 'Technology', 'Future'] |
Branch/Android merge with Branch/Flutter | Ricardo da Silva Ogliari
December 26, 2020
Advising: I´m learning English, then, sorry by some mistakes in text.
Advising 2: This text was a challenge of my friend Morvana Bonin.
The Developer Conference Porto Alegre 2020
This content is the same that I presented in a important conference in Brazil: The Developer Conference. This event was online by reasons pandemic. Thanks for coordinators in my track: Ramon Lummertz, Larissa Yasin and Carlos Henrique Carmo.
Who I Am?
My name is Ricardo da SIlva Ogliari. I am TechLead in Gok One Step Ahead. I am teacher in IMED with classes in graduation in subjects about IoT, Flutter and Digital Systems. And, finally, I am teacher in MBA FIAP, in subjects about Flutter, Mobile and Mobile Engineering. I´m organizer in GDG Passo Fundo. And, I love mobile, native Android and Flutter.
Introduction
This lecture was imagined in a world where Flutter is the main platform to mobile application. I´m not said that Flutter is the better or biggest platform, it´s a little supposition. But, just imagine:
If flutter to wins the race to leadership in mobile market?
If Flutter become the pattern in mobile market?
And I, a native android developer, what I will do?
Will I have life in this apocalyptic world?
The answer
The answer is YES. There are a lot of concepts in native Android develop that we can reuse in flutter development. And I will show to you some of them:
Activity: in Android native world, when you want to create a screen, you will create a class child of Activity. See the image in below. The Flutter module live in a classe child of FlutterActivity.
In the same image pay attention in structure of folders. It´s the same organization of the a native project. This knowledge it´s very important in various moments.
Material Design: an usual design in native Android is the Material Desing. And ,in Flutter world our have one similar Widget, called Scaffold. Please, visit this site: https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/material/Scaffold-class.html. You will note some similarly properties in this Widget, i.e FloatingActionButton, AppBar, Body, Drawer, ActionButton.
Build.gradle: the build.gradle file requires a lot of work in native android development. When the developer input new configuration or new dependencies sometimes it´s necessary some interventions. The flutter acts a layer above the native, then, the same work in gradle it´s necessary in some moments.
Multidex: for example about gradle: when do you use firebase libraries, it´s usually necessary add multiDexEnable in build.gradle. In the case of Flutter, too.
Deployment: other point with high similarity with native android is the deployment. Steps like keystore generation, digital signature, reference the keystore from the app and configuration of signing in gradle are a lot similar between native and Flutter. Look this -> https://flutter.dev/docs/deployment/android. In Flutter we build an APK or an App Bundle too.
Platform channel: Flutter contains the platform channel concept. It´s enable our dart code to exchange data with native code. Then, in the side native, it´s necessary have knowledge with Java or Kotlin code. To know the lifecycle of Android application and lifecycle Activity it´s welcome too. For example, see the example code below. The code was write in Kotlin and run in the native side. | https://medium.com/@ricardoogliari/branch-android-merge-with-branch-flutter-a523400b8244 | ['Ricardo Ogliari'] | 2020-12-26 19:20:44.201000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Android', 'Flutter', 'Mobile'] |
Marketing in 2017: Axe Looks to Instagram Influencers to Target Young Men | For more information about Julius or our blog, please contact Russell Wilde Jr.
By: Anton Capria
Axe wants to show young men that their hairstyling product can be beneficial to their style and overall look. In order to showcase their brand, Axe is working with thirty social media influencers for a huge Instagram push. In each post, the influencers express how their hair gives them confidence and how simple it can be to style by using Axe’s product.
Each influencer posted a humorous video that provided their audience with an authentic entertainment experience. Rudy Mancuso (or his character Alejandro Gomez) is just one of the influencers who participated in this campaign. His humor and stylish hair along with his 4.2 million followers makes him an attractive candidate for Axe’s campaign. Rudy posted a video for Axe where he explains how simple it can be to style his hair with their product. He makes it humorous and entertaining for his audience, almost to the point that it does not even seem like it is an ad.
Rudy Mancuso’s influener collaboration with Axe
Anthony Padilla was another influencer who participated in this campaign. Like Rudy, his humor shined through in his video where he explains how the product helped him to embrace his curls. The video received over 220K views on Instagram, giving Axe great exposure to his followers.
Anthony Padilla influencer collaboration with Axe
Although it can be difficult sometimes to reach a male consumer base for fashion and/or hairstyle products, Axe found a successful way to do so. By using male influencers, the company was able to place their product into the influencer’s content, creating an authentic and relatable experience for male viewers. Some men may find the hairstyling process to be long and unnecessary, but Axe uses these influencers to show how it is a very simple process and can make a difference in their overall style. This Axe campaign seems to have found much success through their viewership numbers, which should encourage brands with a similar problem to find their solution through influencers.
Check out some more of our favorite posts of the campaign below!
Dan Nampaikid trying a bunch of new styles:
Dan Nampaikid’s influencer post for Axe
David Lopez forgetting his pants:
Axe influencer collaboration with David Lopez
Vincent Marcus answers the question all his followers are asking: | https://medium.com/juliusworks/marketing-in-2017-axe-looks-to-instagram-influencers-to-target-young-men-8d17ac82046 | [] | 2017-04-19 14:52:19.958000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Influencer Marketing', 'Advertising', 'Influencer Campaigns', 'Instagram'] |
How to Find and Identify Fonts | How to Find and Identify Fonts
The free, easy and legal way!
Wether you’re trying to find the best font for your novella, because you’re a selfpublisher, or you’re designing a leaflet as a startup graphics designer — the licensing fees for professional, commercial fonts can be daunting at times. While there are ways (like always) to basically obtain any font you want for free, there is a free and perfectly legal way to get lots of quality fonts: open source.
Open source basically means, that you’re free to use the fonts for any kind of project, be it commercial or just for private use. There are an estimated onehundredandthirtyfive quadrofontzillion fonts out there in almost as much variations.
Who really needs all of those?
If you’re not required to use “specific” fonts for a given project, you’re free to use “lookalikes” or “alternative” fonts. In all honesty, if you have a handful of fonts, you’re set for almost any kind of project.
I recommend a “5-way typeset” like so:
5 sans serif fonts (think Arial)
5 serif fonts (think Times New Roman)
5 monotype fonts (think Courier New)
5 handwritten and swirly fonts (think Brush Script)
5 really heavy fonts (think Impact or Gothic 821)
5 fonts with dingbats and emojis (think Webdings)
Again, if you’re free in your font choice and don’t need to work with certain fonts (for example, as a graphics designer adhering to CI guidelines), you can do perfectly fine with just a small set of open source fonts like above. Everything else is just excess “fluff”.
If you’re using open source writing software, like Libre Office as an alternative to MS Office, you’re already decked out with a great set of open source fonts like
Liberation Serif (instead of Times New Roman)
Liberation Sans (instead of Arial)
Liberation Mono (instead of Courier New)
Those are all a really great starting point to cover your most basic font needs.
If you’re using a distribution of Linux as your OS (Solus, for example) you already know about the great benefits of open source ressources and software. You also already got a nice set of open source fonts, provided by your OS. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-find-and-identify-fonts-d26c83d7bd58 | [] | 2020-04-13 23:38:57.120000+00:00 | ['Typography', 'UX Design', 'Fonts', 'Open Source', 'Writing'] |
Evangelist John Dye is Making a Difference in the World | Evangelist John Dye is an Author, Model, Actor, Singer, Chef, Motivational Speaker and Spiritual Counselor that is constantly in touch with the needs of the people in accordance with God’s will & grace. Also an Expert & Consultant on many issues; he loves doing TV & Radio Interviews to improve people’s lives.
My books: Your Personal Destiny: A Complete Guide by Evangelist John Dye and 101 Great Recipes: A Cook Book by Chef John Dye are essential to whats going on in our world. Grab your copies at www.evangelistjohndye.com
Radio Interview: To spark your motivation watch & listen as: “People Of Distinction host Benji Cole of CBS Radio YouTube” Interviews Evangelist & Chef John Dye
Revjohndye other website: www.heartministriesonline.com | https://medium.com/@revjohndye/evangelist-john-dye-is-making-a-difference-in-the-world-d1a303deee30 | ['Evangelist John Dye'] | 2020-12-24 01:23:00.748000+00:00 | ['Spirituality Or Religion', 'Self Improvement', 'Self Help', 'Books And Authors', 'Cookbooks'] |
SMOKED TOFU FARFALLE CASSEROLE | Here’s a new twist on Mom’s beloved tuna noodle casserole. We lightened the cream sauce, added lots of veggies, and replaced the tuna with smoked tofu, which adds richness and depth to the flavor.
YIELD: SERVES 6
4 tsp. olive oil1 small yellow bell pepper, chopped (about 1 cup)1½ cups frozen baby peas3 cloves garlic, minced (about 1 Tbs.)2½ tsp. minced fresh thyme8 oz. farfalle pasta (bows)1¾ cups low-fat milk3 Tbs. all-purpose flour3 oz. sharp Cheddar cheese, grated (about ¾ cup)6 oz. smoked tofu, diced3 Tbs. Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs
Preheat oven to 425°F. Heat 1 tsp. oil in 6-qt. Dutch oven over medium heat. Add bell pepper, and cook, stirring often, 3 minutes. Stir in frozen peas, garlic, and thyme, and cook, stirring often, 2 minutes more. Transfer to bowl and set aside.Wipe out Dutch oven; fill with water, and bring to a boil. Add pasta, and cook about 4 minutes, or until just al dente. Drain and transfer to clean bowl. Drizzle with 2 tsp. olive oil, and toss to coat. Return Dutch oven to stove.Heat 1½ cups milk in Dutch oven over medium heat until almost simmering. Whisk together remaining ¼ cup milk with flour in small bowl, then whisk into hot milk. Cook over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, 2 minutes, or until sauce thickens and bubbles. Remove from heat, and stir in cheese. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add pasta, bell pepper mixture, and tofu, and stir to combine.Mix breadcrumbs with remaining 1 tsp. oil in small bowl; sprinkle over casserole. | https://medium.com/@plansvegan/smoked-tofu-farfalle-casserole-998d67f929ae | ['Plans Vegan'] | 2020-11-02 07:43:50.794000+00:00 | ['Dinner', 'Food', 'Foodie'] |
Lessons learned: how we tried to build a trading bot on EtherDelta. | About EtherDelta
EtherDelta is a decentralized trading platform, meaning that customers can exchange ERC20 tokens without any central authority or third party holding customers funds.
Some ERC20 tokens are only available on EtherDelta (especially after an ICO), which is key in the success of the platform. EtherDelta is among the 150 biggest exchanges in the world (source: coinmarketcap.com)
Let’s avoid the tutorial part on how to subscribe and use EtherDelta. Having played with it during two months, I wouldn’t advice anybody to buy a coin using EtherDelta.
Every order placed is converted into a smart contract. For more information about how works decentralized exchanges and how works trading through the smart contract technology, see Hackernoon’s article: https://hackernoon.com/understanding-decentralized-exchanges-51b70ed3fe67
Building a trading bot
What we could see on the EtherDelta UI gave us some ideas.
EtherDelta interface (with an arbitrage opportunity)
For exemple, we saw here someone ready to sell some GRX token @0.013405 and someone else ready to buy the same token at a price equal to 0.0136 ETH.
The price difference seen could lead to an arbitrage, a profit without any loss risk.
With some Ethers, we could buy GRX tokens and sell them right after while making a profit.
Testing this manually actually led to profit (less than 5 dollars, but still we could consider it a successful proof of concept, waiting to be scaled)
Having spotted these opportunities, me and my fellow developers decided to play with EtherDelta API (javascript code), and built a little bot, that would detect and execute arbitration opportunities.
Unfortunately, reproduce the simple steps we did manually using the API happened to be impossible. Mainly because what we see in the UI is not often refreshed (same for the API), and some of the available orders that we see on the interface are actually executed since a long time (more than one minute).
But we just couldn’t stop there.
Market-making strategy
Noticing that the difference between the best bid price (highest buying price) and the ask price (lowest selling price) was usually high (a lot higher than the fees), we decided to try market making.
The idea is simple: buy low, sell high. The market-maker benefits from the bid-ask difference (called “spread”), to place buy orders right above the highest ones and sell orders right below the lowest ones, and waits for the orders to be taken by someone.
The potential risk of this strategy comes from market volatility. If you place a buy order to buy some token at 2 dollars, someone takes it, and later the market moves down and the highest selling price is 1 dollar, it means that you can’t sell your tokens (previously bought 2 dollars) at a better price than 1 dollar.
Simple market making strategy to benefit from the spread
Again, we tested manually, and again we won at our first try a few dollars from it. We build a bot that followed this exact strategy. But opportunities were rare (the number of daily trades done per coin is low), and the risk was too big (high coin price volatility) to cover the possible gains.
Conclusion
Test your proofs of concept twice.
About us
IBBC is a community of crypto-enthusiasts looking for the next big thing. If you want to follow us and get access to more reviews, feel free to visit our space: https://medium.com/ibbc-io
Important: Never invest money you can’t afford to lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. | https://medium.com/ibbc-io/lessons-learned-how-we-tried-to-build-a-trading-bot-on-etherdelta-a9ee7432dd55 | ['Alexis - -'] | 2018-09-14 02:13:06.658000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Etherdelta', 'Bitcoin'] |
Borrowing Using Digital Assets | Many have found themselves in a situation where they’re in dire need of money that they know they will be able to pay back at a future date, but would rather not sell anything of value that they own. Borrowing money seems like the perfect solution: you have the funds you need now, you’ll pay them back later (with interest, most likely), and you don’t have to sell anything — only maybe promise the lender that they can have it in case you’re unable to pay them back. Cryptocurrencies can also be one of the things you borrow against. Read on to learn more about using cryptocurrencies as collateral.
Understanding Loans
While there are many types of loans, they have a basic definition in common: a certain sum of money is given to the borrower from the lender, with the promise of repaying them at a later date. The lender may also choose to add a certain percentage of interest on the sum being paid back, as a payback for the inconvenience of the loan and any other charges incurred in the meantime.
However, the lender does not necessarily know that they will get their money back, so they’re risking losing everything if they just give the money away. This is where collateral comes in: defined as an asset that is used as a security for a loan, it is promised to the lender in the case the borrower is unable to fully repay their debt. In this case, the lender will seize the asset and sell it to recoup at least some of their losses. In case the borrower pays back their debt in full, they receive their collateral back. In many cases, not using collateral incurs much higher interest rates than usual.
Cryptocurrency Use Case: Collateral
Since cryptocurrencies are rarely used as collateral (due to a number of reasons that we will consider shortly), they are often considered underutilized as a legitimate financial instrument. However, this is rapidly changing: since many cryptocurrencies already have a set price on the market (even if it’s volatile), many are deflationary, and the best-known coins have enough trading volume that liquidity is not an issue, there is no reason for a lender to not accept cryptocurrencies as collateral.
Additionally, this gives a new use case to cryptocurrencies. Owners can rest easy knowing they can borrow fiat money against it without the need to sell their crypto outright, while lenders are incentivized by the possibility of rising prices, with which they would not only recoup their losses, but also potentially make a profit. Losses are also a possibility, but this is a risk that lenders accepting crypto are willing to take.
The profiting potential is another factor for the borrower as well. For example, imagine it is August 2017 and you just had to sell your Bitcoin because you needed money for rent. Had you been able to take out a loan with Bitcoin as the collateral, you might have received it back just in time to profit from the all-time high in December of that same year, possibly even using that to offset the interest rates you had to pay on your loan. This makes the borrower’s reluctance to part with their collateral much easier to understand.
Smart Contracts for Smart Security
An ever-present concern, especially when it comes to loans in an unregulated space, is the security of both parties. It is in the borrower’s interest to not be taken advantage of while repaying their debt, while the lender wants to receive their money back with minimal issues. In financial institutions, this is solved through legal documents like contracts. But in the case of cryptocurrencies, the most logical solution is also much more elegant: smart contracts.
Smart contracts offer several advantages compared to their older, more established cousins. Perhaps most importantly, they’re trustless: both parties can review the terms and there is no need for a middleman as the contract itself handles the collateral. The lack of a third party also eliminates the need for fees. The concept is simple: a smart contract with a timelock takes the collateral and effectively locks it away during a period that was previously agreed upon, during which the borrower has to repay the lender. Once this time runs out, the contract checks the situation: if the borrower has cleared their debt, it gives them their collateral back — otherwise, it sends it to the lender.
While the theory behind this is simple enough, the question of how to get a secure loan online remains for many users. However, there is only one sure answer: do your research and only use a platform you fully trust to get in touch with the other party and use their smart contracts. Be aware of the risks you take when borrowing or lending, and always make sure you read the fine print. | https://medium.com/@acquanaut/borrowing-using-digital-assets-4e206ece0802 | [] | 2020-09-04 14:04:57.121000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Quantum Computing', 'Digital Asset Management', 'Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Crypto'] |
Lax bros now certain they could play in the NFL if they wanted to | Lax bros now certain they could play in the NFL if they wanted to SportsPickle Follow Jan 27, 2017 · 2 min read
FOXBOROUGH, MA — New England Patriots receiver and former college lacrosse player Chris Hogan became an NFL star last week when he torched the Pittsburgh Steelers for nine catches, 180 yards and two scores in the AFC title game. But while he helped the Patriots, Hogan’s success has caused lax bros across the nation to be even more certain of their superiority.
“I choose to play lacrosse because it’s the best sport ever,” said Grayson Steele, a 5-foot-8 midfielder at tiny Carrolton College in western Maryland. “But, shit, yeah, Hog-dog [Chris Hogan] shows I could dominate the NFL if I wanted to. Who knows, maybe I’ll decide to do that when I’m done tearing up D-3 lax. Tell Belichick to look me up.”
Lacrosse message boards have been full of talk about how lacrosse has the best athletes in the world since the AFC Championship, and several incidents of lax bros taunting football players for being inferior have been reported at nearly a dozen campuses.
“Yeah, there was an incident here,” confirmed Syracuse athletics director John Wildhack. “Five lacrosse players said something to our football team while they were lifting and then ran off. Our backup punter quickly chased them down and locked them in a janitors closet for an hour. I don’t suspect it will happen again.”
Hogan says he did not mean to make lacrosse players even more delusional and annoying.
“Part of the reason I gave football a shot was because I couldn’t stand being around lacrosse people anymore,” he said. “Plus, I wanted to challenge myself athletically. Simply being one of the best athletes among people whose parents put them in private school didn’t feel like a big accomplishment to me. In fact, it was kind of embarrassing. Real athletes just laughed at me.” | https://medium.com/sportspickle/lax-bros-now-certain-they-could-play-in-the-nfl-if-they-wanted-to-a1a46e9912d3 | [] | 2017-01-27 16:16:56.864000+00:00 | ['Lacrosse', 'NFL', 'Sports', 'New England Patriots', 'Chris Hogan'] |
Running a Feedback Improvement Session | Have you ever felt shaky about an interaction involving feedback? Whether you’ve given feedback that was received in a way that you didn’t intend or reacted poorly to feedback given to you, these conversations have a tendency to get sticky And if they’re honest, most people out there would answer yes to both questions — so it’s nothing to feel bad about.
But there is a way to make them better.
Okay, but how?
Because most of my colleagues have been in a feedback debacle before, I decided to run small-group sessions with different employees on some helpful tools to give and receive more effective feedback.
If you too are interested in improving your collaboration with others and improving your effective communication skills, follow my easy guideline for running your own Feedback Session.
I think your teams will like this session as much as our teams did at Smore!
The Guidelines
Pick a couple of Feedback Models to work with I suggest picking at least two models, so your team members can choose to work with the model that resonates with them the most. I picked SBI(R) and STAT/AR because I found them easy to remember, but there are plenty of different types of models out there. Just pick a couple that suit your team’s needs! Describe the different model components with relative examples to help solidify the models in your team members’ minds. Create a couple of hypothetical scenarios and ask your team members to act them out based on the models you just went over I think it is important to create at least two scenarios. One scenario should address constructive feedback that needs to be given, and the other, positive feedback that needs to be given. When we think of feedback, we tend to only think of constructive feedback, but learning how to give positive feedback is equally as important. Open the floor for a voluntary discussion about personal experiences surrounding feedback, and how their experiences could have been more effective with the use of these models. Make sure to tell people this is a safe space, and honor confidentiality when different people share their experiences. You may also want to start by telling everyone to not use names of the people they are referencing if the experience being described happened in the workplace. Research and describe tools for responding to defensiveness Research and describe tools for getting comfortable receiving feedback
Now go ahead, and run that session!
You’ve got the structure, now add your personal touch. | https://medium.com/smore-blog/running-a-feedback-improvement-session-476eb1a341ee | ['Rachel Zankman'] | 2020-12-23 18:27:50.421000+00:00 | ['Remote Working', 'Smore', 'Workplace Culture', 'Feedback', 'Edtech'] |
What being a fan says about you | Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Sports, movies, tv shows, bands, artists, anime, video games.
We can find fandoms of all kinds out there.
fan is short for fanatic, which does not have the best connotation.
Sometimes fans are criticized, made fun of.
They’re too obsessed, they don’t are too biased, they’re crazy, they overreact, they should focus on their own life.
But I have to say, I love being a fan.
And I think there is a true beauty to it.
I resembles the unconditional love we have for our family members, for example.
It is support and appreciation without asking for much in return.
It really tells you a thing or two about someone’s personality.
To be that passionate. To care that much.
Being a fan also brings so much excitement to our lives.
If you are a sports fan, every game or competition is a big deal to you.
I have a friend that is fan of formula one and will wake up sometimes at 4 or 5 in the morning, because that is how important not missing a race is to him. This shows how dedicated a person can be.
In the last four years, I have become a big Taylor Swift fan. Whenever she is releasing new music, a new documentary, performing, or interviewing, it’s something I look forward to so much! I will also wake up earlier to see it first thing in the morning before work, to have my experience alone with the music, and it’s so profound, and it’s so exciting!
It’s so cool so have these events to look forward to! It’s so exciting to be a part of that.
Being a fan also makes you feel like you belong, like you are part of a community. You share a connection with other people in the fandom.
My partner is a huge into video games, and he feels a connection playing online with friends, following gaming news closely, having discussions about the gaming industry and specific games that excite him.
Isn’t it so cool when you go to a movie theatre and get to react for the first time together with everyone else? I remember the connection I felt watching the Avenger infinity war and endgame movies in the theatres. The entire room was surprised at the same time, laughed at the same time, got emotional at the same time. Even if you don’t know these people, you feel a connection being in that room.
And the Internet also plays a huge role in uniting fandoms around the world! There are endless fan accounts, fan theories, Easter eggs connecting all the fans and enthusiasts in that community.
Being a fan can bring happiness to your life in so many ways.
Sometimes is also a small recognition.
Such as my teenage self swearing that Avril Lavigne looked me in the eye in a concert in Chicago.
Such as nowadays me getting so excited when FINNEAS hearted by comment on his music video on YouTube.
We are fans of people we admire. Of people that inspire us somehow. Of people we look up to.
And when we get closer to feeling that more personal connection, it can be very moving.
And that is not silly. And that is not the bad connotation that fangirling or fanboying can have.
It is human nature. When we admire someone, we appreciate their attention and caring that much more.
This applies to other people in your life as well.
That is why I think it’s such a nice gesture when public figures take the time to develop this connection with their audience, when they value and truly care about their fans.
Being a fan also gives you so much to look forward to all the time!
An award event coming up. A final game. A new launch.
It can also bring you inspiration.
Why do you admire this person so much? Why are you so connected to this movie series? What draws your attention to this game? It certainly tells you a lot about yourself. About what is important to you. About what you value. What is inspiring to you. Maybe about what you want to change in your life. Or maybe what you want to pursue in your life.
Don’t ever be embarrassed to be a fan! You should never apologize for being happy and excited.
Being a fan shows that you are caring.
Being a fan shows that you are supportive.
And that is just beautiful. | https://medium.com/@brunaclaas/what-being-a-fan-says-about-you-434258281bd6 | ['Bruna Claas'] | 2020-12-15 14:37:43.855000+00:00 | ['Passion', 'Personality', 'Fans'] |
I Count These Days in Toes | I Count These Days in Toes
Or, Cavities
photo courtesy of author
they say covid has
killed one in one
thousand Black
Americans*
that we must practice
social distancing
and wear masks
thick enough to keep us from
seeing
the difference between
where we should stand and
where George is
lying
because covid has
killed one in one
thousand
funny
one
in one thousand
Black men bodied
by one-time
that’s now 6 feet
by 6 feet
that’s four
feet and twenty toes
presumably
two hundred
ninety thousand
four hundred
bodies planted over
two thousand twenty
opportunities to
Till differently
that’s
how many
six-feets
are in
forty acres
if you keep
their legs straight
and flex
their toes
how many Breonnas
in two thousand
twenty-one if
Daniel Cameron
still wishes he were
white like Mitch’s
pillow case or the
wrapper on Casey’s
one-foot
sandwich
that’s a six-foot cavity, right?
somebody please
tell the health department
you can’t measure
social distance
in feet
that’s it.
that’s the tweet.
—
*it is now 1 in 875.
#CaseyGoodson
#BlackLivesMatter | https://medium.com/resistance-poetry/i-count-these-days-in-toes-326f7bdcce47 | ['Ryan J. Petteway'] | 2020-12-09 11:29:31.411000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Police Violence', 'Structural Racism', 'Public Health', 'Resistance Poetry'] |
Kan vi lära av Odysseus i klimatomställningen? | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/viable-cities/kan-vi-l%C3%A4ra-av-odysseus-i-klimatomst%C3%A4llningen-f8c0939ee6a5 | ['Viable Cities'] | 2020-12-09 09:25:00.718000+00:00 | ['Politik', 'Agenda 2030', 'Climate Action', 'Göteborg', 'Hållbarhet'] |
Diary of a Plague Year | A lifeworld is a mesh. An apartment is not a lifeworld on its own; a Zoom account is not a lifeworld. Covid-era politics have severed the ties, the capillaries, that bind together our lifeworlds — make them vascular and robust. | https://medium.com/@no-valis/diary-of-a-plague-year-2c4378f631ea | [] | 2020-12-27 20:24:29.007000+00:00 | ['Ideas', 'Lockdown', 'Philosophy', 'Truth', 'Covid 19'] |
Curating a Brand Image Library for Your Business | Ahead of launching your new brand, a valuable component to have is a branded image library. If you don’t have original photography to incorporate into your brand’s identity, I recommend curating your own collection from royalty-free resources. This ensures your brand always has a cohesive look and feel across your various customer touch points. Follow the tips below to curate your own brand image library.
WHY YOU NEED TO CURATE A BRAND IMAGE LIBRARY
When preparing to launch your new brand, you’ll have lots to do: set up your website, design your social content calendar, and create brand assets, just to name a few. The thing they all have in common? They all need imagery.
Before you can tackle these tasks, decide on the type of style you want your brand imagery to have and then set out to build a library that will lend itself well across your brand and business.
By doing this early, you’ll save time and energy for when you are assembling your creative assets. Beyond that, it ensures your brand aesthetic flows harmoniously, creating a positive brand experience for your audience.
CHOOSING YOUR BRAND IMAGE STYLE
Before you start gathering imagery, decide what you want your brand’s imagery style to be:
Photo-based?
Illustrative?
People centric?
Product based?
What about its mood and tone? Is it:
Colourful?
Subdued?
Minimalistic?
Intricate?
As you’re establishing your image aesthetic, be sure to keep your target audience in mind. What content and style will most resonate with them?
HOW WILL YOU BE USING YOUR IMAGES?
Think of the various ways in which imagery will play a role in your business. Above I mentioned your website and social media as a couple of key customer touch points. How will images be incorporated into these touch points?
Are they purely decorative? Do they tell a story? Do they serve to inspire? Knowing how you’ll use your imagery will allow you to focus on the images that align best with your intention.
BEST RESOURCES FOR IMAGERY AND ILLUSTRATIONS
You don’t need to hire a photographer to create a successful image library. There are so many resources available to you online: some are paid-for subscriptions or bundles, where others you can have entirely free of charge.
My favourite websites for royalty-free photography:
1. UNSPLASH
2. PEXELS
3. PIXABAY
My favourite websites for royalty-free illustration:
Bonus: Most paid-for stock photography companies will offer a free set of stock images if you subscribe.
HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT IMAGERY FOR YOUR BRAND
Choosing the right imagery can take time, but this is why it’s so valuable to kick start your brand image library early. Here are my pro-tips for finding the right imagery for your brand.
Search Keywords
Search keywords that relate to your industry, mood, subject and intention. For instance, if you’re a tea company, try searching for words like tea cup, high tea, teapot, relaxing, kitchen, reading, etc. These will start to unveil possible images that could be used in your branding.
As you start to browse the results, new keywords will pop into your head making your search easier as you go. You’ll be surprised what inspires you along the way. Don’t worry too much about where or how you’ll use them just yet, the important thing is to start gathering images.
Search keywords that relate to your industry
Stick to Your Brand Colour Palette
As you sort through the images that come from your keyword searches, look for photos that incorporate your brand colours. This is the key to maintaining a strong brand aesthetic.
These colours don’t need to dominate the image, just look for those that feature one of your colours or feature more neutral tones.
Similarly, they don’t have to be the exact colour match. If your brand colours are pinks and oranges, stick to images that feature similar colours and try to avoid images that are dominated by cool greens or blues.
As an example, my own brand palette features greens and pink. The imagery that I use will generally have either one of those colours as the colour focal point. Here are three examples of recent stock photos I used on my Instagram.
Three recent images I’ve used on social incorporate my brand colours
The colours are not a direct match to my brand palette but they are cohesive with the colour scheme. You’ll notice that even my branded photoshoot deliberately incorporates my deep green.
If you’re opting for illustration instead of photography, Undraw allows you to customize their pre-made graphics to incorporate your brand colour.
Undraw allows you to customize their graphics to your colours
Create a System for Your Brand Library
I sort my stock photography by subject for ease later on. That way, when I am in need of a particular type of image for something, I’ll know where to look first. For instance, some of my image folders are:
coffee curated tabletops desks and computers
How you sort your images is completely up to you. Another thing I try to do is mark the images I’ve used so that I’m not reusing the same image more than once (unless deliberately so). The method I use is simply right-clicking on an image I’ve used and marking it with a grey colour tag.
Don’t Forget to Restock
Periodically, you’ll want to revisit your favourite stock photography websites to see what new content has been added. Try brainstorming some other keywords and types of searches that may yield new and exciting results.
Splurge on Quality
While you have endless amounts of imagery available to you for free, it never hurts to invest in your business when it comes to your brand. Shop curated photo bundles that match your brand style and colours. The collections put together by Styled Stock Society are a great place to start and are very affordable.
As you start saving images, you’ll begin to build your own curated brand image library that you can pull from as needed. Having this collection of images that have been carefully selected to match your brand’s aesthetic is far easier than hunting for an image when you need it. Not only does it save you tons of time, it can inspire content that relates to the images you have and most importantly, it delivers a strong, consistent brand for your audience. | https://medium.com/@jennyhendersonstudio/curating-a-brand-image-library-for-your-business-8f4f9000a568 | ['Jenny Henderson'] | 2020-12-22 14:24:42.954000+00:00 | ['Brand Photography', 'Brand Identity', 'Content Creation', 'Brand Consistency', 'Brand Imagery'] |
“Genesis”: A Queer Creation Poem about the Breastfeeding God | In the sink with water filled to the rim,
and a soaked shirt sunk to the bottom — water
Now clouded by breastmilk, baby urine, sweat,
and the reflection of her own face —
She saw her fatigued face and the face
of the God of many breasts,
the God who brought light into darkness,
Water into dry land,
Whose leaky overflowing breasts fed her ancestors in exile with milk and honey,
Whose tender raw nipples which carry the marks and memories
of the ferocious suckle of newborn lips,
form the many breasts of blessing for all generations.
(End.)
“Feeding, a Painted Mother” Photo by Orin Zebest
This poem expands on the biblical imagery of “el shaddai”, commonly translated as “God Almighty” in the English versions of the Bible, yet in Hebrew, the words originally contain the meaning of “God of many breasts.” El Shaddai commonly appears in God’s discourse with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the book of Genesis, promising them God’s protection and the fruitfulness of their lineage. El Shaddai is often known as one of the first feminine imageries of God in the Hebrew Bible, its symbolism stringing through other biblical texts with God’s provision of milk and honey to the people of Israel and feeding people during times of famine.
Envisioning breasts as a site of divine encounter, this poem expands upon the image of God (or an image of divine encounter) as a new mother who gets up in the middle of the night — perhaps out of sleeplessness, perhaps out of tired frustration — to wash the fresh breastmilk stains off her nightshirt. I named the poem Genesis for its allusions to the creation story, from the imagery of breasts that fed a newborn child, to the woman flicking on a light in the middle of darkness, to turning on water to fill an empty sink. This poem is both a queer creation story and a return to a deeply embodied, feminine image of God: a very bodily, scarred, and tangible image, where both the character, the writer, and the reader can encounter a motherly God with exposed, leaky breasts of life. | https://medium.com/@floratang_12493/genesis-a-queer-creation-poem-about-the-breastfeeding-god-180aabb09d46 | ['Flora Tang'] | 2020-12-21 01:05:46.599000+00:00 | ['Queer', 'Queer Poetry', 'Theology', 'Catholic', 'Poetry'] |
To Be (On Time) or Not To Be | To Be (On Time) or Not To Be
Don’t let the curtain rise without us! | https://backgroundnoisecomic.medium.com/to-be-on-time-or-not-to-be-b34ba4bbc895 | ['Background Noise Comics'] | 2018-12-18 06:01:07.682000+00:00 | ['New York', 'Humor', 'Theater', 'Cómic', 'Television'] |
Day 5— My journey to learning how to turn my car into a self-driving automobile | Day 5–03 Dec 2020 — We might be onto something here
Yesterday I talked about my brain pressing me to give up due to the lack of motivation. As stated in my previous post, it was only something temporary, and that I should not give into these sort of suggestions, which I didn’t
Progress
Today I made some really good progress with the concepts detailing the Lanes Finding algorithms. In short, I found the module so far incredibly interesting and resourceful. So far, with regards to image processing, I learnt about greyscale conversion, smoothening, edge detection, binary_and over two 2-dymensional arrays and Hough transform. I gathered lots of useful information (that also helped me sediment the concepts) and I will present them in tomorrow’s post, as I believe it’s going to be a slightly longer post than usual.
Thoughts
All in all, I am really excited about this module, and about the entire course so far. The concepts in this module are complex and mildly challenging, but it really opens some new ways of thinking, in my opinion. Seeing how a series of mathematical calculations combined with a set of rules can output something other than the original image input, is something.
Next
Today’s post was so short because I focused on truly understanding the contents presented and taking a bunch of notes for the blog. So I prepared some resources for the next post. I got half-way through the lanes detection module and tomorrow I will finish it and focus on a more elaborate post, elaborating some of the concepts learnt, in my best competence. | https://medium.com/@iulianoana/day-5-my-journey-to-learning-how-to-turn-my-car-into-a-self-driving-automobile-bdfece6d04c1 | ['Iulian Oana'] | 2020-12-03 21:36:34.598000+00:00 | ['Self Driving Cars', 'Challenge', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Machine Learning'] |
A Response From the Darkness | Around 2 a.m. I had just finished my presentation for some potential new clients. As I went up the stairs, careful to avoid the groaning step my husband didn’t get to repair before his deployment, I heard a tapping coming from my daughter’s room.
School starts at eight but I wake her at six-thirty, and my day begins an hour before that. But still that curious tapping was coming from my daughter’s door. When I opened the door, my daughter was seated pretzel-style on the other side. Her eyes went nearly as wide as the Curious George stuffed animal we’d gotten when my husband was still alive and we visited his family in Vermont. When I asked her what she was doing, she mumbled that she liked the cool floor during the nearly-summer night.
I tucked her back in, sure to leave the comforter off, and went to bed to try and maximize the amount of sleep I could get before I had to wake up. In truth, I like being busy. I like not sleeping. It’s in my dreams that my husband appears and waking up without him is too much.
Even now I don’t lay on his side of the bed in the hopes of giving his ghost a proper place to linger.
On the drive to school I asked my daughter why she tapped on the door. Apparently a schoolmate’s grandmother’s house was haunted and when he tapped against the door, it tapped back. I asked her who she hoped would answer.
A quick aside. I too lost a parent at an early age. I never wished to have this in common with my daughter but I do. My mother died when I was in my last year at primary school. Nevertheless, every night when I’d pass by my father’s bedroom I would hear whispers. Not the whispers of a television turned low, though he did have a set in his room. These were the kind of whispers one appeals to God with. The sounds of someone with a defenseless sincerity. The kind of tone you keep secret from other people.
Every night those whispers. Even when I came to visit from university. Even after moving to America or the first time I took my husband home to meet my family. Each time I was home, unable to sleep, I’d walk the house at night, and there would be that whisper from the other side of father’s door.
It wasn’t a prayer. My father was never particularly religious. Neither was my mother, even when she was facing the end. So, eventually I worked up the nerve to ask him about it. It shouldn’t have been so awkward but, knowing something so private about my father felt like an intrusion into the depths of him.
My husband died, or, is presumed dead. Overseas. A firefight while deployed. Unrecovered. I try not to think about it. Or, I try to think that perhaps he lost his memory and is living a new life, one full of kindness and joy. One where he is beyond trouble’s reach.
Of course it’s a fantasy. Of course that isn’t how it is. But his end never came with the declaration of a casket. Instead, this unknowing is an ellipsis, and you’ll humor me in my thinking . . . at least I hope you will.
For the first six months after the news, my daughter still held out hope that one day her father would come back to her. Springing to life when she saw a strange car in the driveway or the back of a soldier roughly my husband’s height with his same hair color.
I felt the same hopes she did but I was better at shielding them. Making them undetectable to anyone but myself. I suspect a part of being an adult is tempering hope.
Another late night, another night of tapping from my daughter’s room. When I went to wake her up the next morning she was asleep, her arm extending towards the door. Curious George her wide-eyed guardian.
In the early morning my husband was still asleep in my sister’s bedroom (my father insisted we did not share a room until we were married). I found my father in the kitchen nibbling on sattu paratha and drinking chai, as he had every morning of my childhood.
After fifteen years I finally worked the courage to ask him about the nighttime whispers.
After taking a long sip of his tea he wiped his mouth and said, “I’m trying to continue my practice of loving your mother.”
In essence, his was idea was this: the reason why couples divorce, why lovers part, is we get so mad at each other that we stop saying “I love you.” And if we stop saying it we stop feeling it. That spark, that part of us that is connected to another soul begins to dim. And once that connection goes dark it’s near impossible to reignite it. However, if lit, love is so enduring it traverses death itself.
To overcome death he continued the routines they’d built over two decades together. Every night telling her about his day, his victories and fears, ask if she thought he was raising me right. He confided in me that if he felt a warm breeze he took it as her approval. A cold nighttime wind was her thinking he could do better. But central to this ritual was whispering into the darkness a shared memory and concluding with, “I love you.”
He forced himself to say it even though he was still mad at her. Mad that she hadn’t stopped smoking after so many promises. That she hadn’t gone to the doctor after being winded after climbing the stairs. Her refusal to immediately seek care when she spotted blood in her urine. He was mad at her for not taking care of herself because it meant we had so much less time with her.
In truth I’m also mad at her but I haven’t forgiven her yet. I only tell her I love her on Mother’s Day. I am bitter that I can only say these things into the dark and hope it carries to her, wherever she is.
My daughter continued tapping on her bedroom door and I’d smile tightly at the sound as I avoided the creaky step. Every night I still slept on my side of the bed, but allowed my hand to drift to his side.
The night before writing this essay, my daughter tapped at her door and after waiting a moment, I tapped back. When I woke her to get ready for school, the next day, she was in her bed for the first time in nearly a month.
Children deserve to have their hope rewarded.
As for me, I’m not exactly certain why I’ve written this. I want to talk to my husband, but a part of me worries that if he truly is alive and he is happy that these words will be a cold wind from a life he no longer remembers or wants.
Perhaps this essay is my attempt at naked hope.
I want to whisper into the darkness and hear it whisper back.
I want it to say, “I love you too.” | https://psiloveyou.xyz/a-response-from-the-darkness-c80e061c391d | ['Elliott Rose'] | 2019-06-10 14:55:43.744000+00:00 | ['Grief', 'Short Story', 'Love', 'Widow', 'Parents'] |
Hey Kathy. | Hey Kathy. Your prompt is perfect at this inflection point in your life — the bridge from past to new — a segue. It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to respond to your introspective prompt, but here’s where I landed. I hope it works for you and is especially meaningful as you begin the next chapter in your life. ❤️ | https://medium.com/@harperthorpe/hey-kathy-76faa5e411d1 | ['Harper Thorpe'] | 2020-12-11 23:52:26.465000+00:00 | ['Ending', 'Beginning', 'Advent', 'Poetry'] |
7 Ways To Volunteer Your Skill or Time | “Founded on the values of solidarity and mutual trust, volunteerism transcends all cultural, linguistic and geographical boundaries…By giving their time and skill without expectation of material reward, volunteers themselves are uplifted.” - Ban ki Moon.
Preface
The initial plan of putting together this piece was to help spread the gospel of volunteerism especially among young people in Nigeria. I have come to realize that due to a combination of harsh economic realities and an over “monetisation” of reward system in Nigeria, fewer and fewer young people see the need to volunteer. This comes at a point in time when more volunteers are required due to the number of of emergencies that we currently face.
The failures in our health care system, education, infrastructure and the huge burden of unemployment. All these problems in my opinion are great opportunities for those with a heart for volunteering to leave a mark.
In the end I hope this serves as a rallying call to all Africans, young and old to act, lending a hand in their various communities.
WHAT IS VOLUNTEERING?
According to the online encyclopedia www.wikipedia.org, “Volunteering is an altruistic activity where an individual or group provides services for non-financial gain”. All over the world, individuals and groups have performed tasks out of a desire to contribute positively to their communities without any financial motivation.
Although in its earliest usage “Volunteer” was to denote military service, over the years, organization such as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Rotary International have helped change the understanding of the word to mean “helping out in communities especially during emergencies”.
Despite the absence of financial rewards, volunteering has many positive benefits for the volunteer as well as the person or community served.
WHY VOLUNTEER?
The process of volunteering has over the years created numerous opportunities for individuals to work together with others of different ethnicity, background, religious views thereby reducing stereotypes. Additionally, research shows that immersing ourselves in serving others helps to improve confidence, relational skills, improve team work and many more.
According to Steve Miller, “benefits of volunteering include;
a) Solve Staff Dearth in Organisations:
There are many organizations set up to help others: RED CROSS, HABITAT FOR HUMANITY, YMCA are just a few. These organisations make huge contributions and impact to people’s lives. Many times, these organizations are under staffed, and they need staff to keep their work going. By volunteering with one or more of these organisations, you can help them to keep the legacy of giving strong.
b) Aids People in Need:
People in need is the reason these organisations exist. From natural disasters to homelessness, volunteering provides direct relief to people in need. When you help someone directly, you gain a feeling of deep satisfaction.
c) Meet New People:
As a volunteer, you naturally meet new people with similar goals and aspirations. These encounters can lead to lasting friendships (and collaboration.
d) Acquire New Skills:
When you volunteer, you learn new skills. Clerical skills like book keeping; event management which can help your personal life (or future job). Leadership skills can also be honed.
e) Volunteering Feels Good:
By volunteering, you get a major endorphin rush as you see how your help directly impacts others. It helps build self–confidence and gives a better sense of being.
Other Reasons You Should Volunteer Include:
· It creates opportunities to develop new skills on the job
· It helps to improve quality of life
· It creates opportunities for contact with would-be employers
· It creates opportunities for fresh graduates to get “years of experience”.
· Promotes the spirit of altruism/goodness
· It has positive benefits for your communities
WAYS TO VOLUNTEER…
Although there are no specific categorization of volunteer work. Here are some broad ways one can of volunteer.
a) Environmental volunteering:
These are individuals and organizations who contribute to their communities by participating in projects that have a bearing on the environment. Activities carried out by this group include; tree planting, cleaning and educating others about the environment.
Thought: I met a young man, Arinzechukwu Ezeobele who founded Generational Green Club during his National Youth Service year in Jos, Plateau State. The volunteer group was established to encourage sustainable use of natural resources. Students from primary and secondary schools have been inducted into the club to help spread the word on sustainability.
b) Volunteers in emergencies:
Over the years volunteers have played very important role in emergency response. All over the world, in the aftermath of natural or even man made disasters, volunteering individuals and organizations play pivotal role in recovery efforts.
Thought: Foodbank Nigeria is a Nigeria not-for-profit start-up helping to secure and distribute food to those with food needs nationwide. According to their website www.Foodbankng.com They need over 10,000 volunteers to fill various positions in Nigeria. This is a huge opportunity for dieticians, community workers as a matter of fact anyone with a heart to help.
c) Volunteering in schools:
Schools all over the world rely on efforts from volunteers and private donations to meet the needs of the less privileged. There are many opportunities for volunteers (including, teaching) in Nigerian schools especially primary and secondary schools.
d) International volunteering:
These groups of volunteers are those that include effort by international/multinational organizations to recruit individuals to participate in efforts outside their immediate communities. Some renown organizations include; United Nation Volunteers (UNV), African Union Volunteers Corp (AUVC), The American Peace Corps.
Usually these organization pay certain stipends to their volunteers to take care if living expenses.
You can check out www.unv.org and www.Au.int for more information on UNV and AUVC.
e) Community volunteering:
This group of volunteers work to help improve the local community. Most times this is done through religious organizations, Non Governmental Organisations to take care of local government issues, healthcare or education.
f) Virtual Volunteering:
Also known as e-volunteer. This refers to when individuals completes tasks without being physically present at the location of the organization. This group of individuals has shown the way volunteers are leveraging technology such as the internet to help raise awareness about issues and raise funds to assist in humanitarian efforts.
Some specific technologies being used include Telementoring, social media, crowd funding and more.
g) Skill based volunteering:
Although all volunteers bring to bare their skills to any volunteering effort; here individuals serve though their skills.
THOUGHT: National Youth Service Corps members who participate in election duties such as e-registration, volunteer their computer and IT skills.
VOLUNTEERING IN NIGERIA
I have heard some people argue that a “Volunteer Culture” doesn’t exist in Nigeria. I beg to differ. It is my belief that historically, individuals have participated in their various communities. In fact, volunteerism played a major role in the Nationalist movement before 1960. Our founding fathers, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe must have volunteered great amounts of time and talent for the growth of the various movements they where part of.
Even today, a lot of informal volunteering occurs in our various communities, in religious organisations, community development associations and the like. Non Governmental Organisations and Civil Society Organisations are also encouraging volunteerism in Nigeria through various initiatives.
Some Volunteering quotes:
“the assumptions we make in our youth that we have have a long time ahead of us is not even true….”
-Zaira Abbas
“Human beings are fragile….. One human being can have huge impact in others…”
-Zaira Abbas
“We have received so much, yet some of our actions show ungratefulness”
-Zaira Abbas
“When you help someone in need you gain the world.”
-F.A. Attah
“The best way not to feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen, if you go out and some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope you will fill yourself with hope”.
-Barack Obama
“The best antidote to worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge if helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or She who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served”
-Gordnon B. Hinckley
“Doing nothing for other is the undoing of ourselves”
-Horace Mann
“Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more”.
-H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“Service to humanity is service to God”
Lailah G. Akita
P.S. What is your experience of volunteering like? Please share in the comment space. | https://medium.com/lets-volunteer/lets-volunteer-c178180a9c31 | ['Ferdinand Aguliash Attah'] | 2018-02-10 07:11:05.773000+00:00 | ['Volunteering', 'Community', 'Work', 'Employability'] |
Trump: Road Runner or Coyote? | Trump: Road Runner or Coyote?
Looney Tunes
We are DJB and Jim West, and we are starting a new project to bring you both sides of political issues. Jim will be providing the Red View, DJB the Blue View. We will assume that each of our beliefs are based on goodwill and positive intention. It’s important to understand this because much of the divide in our country comes from assuming evil intent upon the other. Too often, we assassinate each other’s characters with labels like “racist” or “Nazi” or “dope” without listening. Let’s stop doing that. We believe we can have disagreements while accepting the person. We hope our stories will enlighten, promote understanding and maybe even narrow the political divides in America. Your input is appreciated and encouraged; we just ask that everyone be respectful and civil in the comments.
To start this experiment, we open with something more light hearted. This election has been so heavy, like an anvil on our souls. Let’s try to have little fun.
So, is Trump the Road Runner or Wile E. Coyote?
The Red View:
After some intense and overwhelming research inspecting cartoons, it is obviously (and painfully) clear that Trump is the Road Runner.
First off, can we all agree that Trump has a limited vocabulary (Meep Meep)? See, even that isn’t a word, kind of like “bigly.” (It’s actually a word but hasn’t been used for 300 years. Thankfully, Trump stopped using it too.)
Secondly, aside from his speed, the Road Runner isn’t exceptional in any way. He doesn’t make elaborate plans or conjure up intricate escape routes to get away. He just runs. He’s kind of simple that way. When being chased by Wile E., who is closing ground because he has a missile strapped to his back, Road Runner just follows the road around the bluff or stops before the cliff while Coyote plummets to his fate over and over. Let’s just say the Road Runner is not playing 3-dimensional chess.
The interesting part is how well Wile E. Coyote represents the Democrats and the media. How many times have we seen the Dems and media set a trap for Trump: spying on his campaign, collusion with Russia, peddling influence on a Ukrainian phone call, impeachment, yet Trump always slips away. Again, he’s not brilliant about it. He just stops before the cliff to let the Dems and the media make fools of themselves while they get caught spying, and even their top coyote, Mueller, found no crimes.
Pelosi too, always knew that impeachment wouldn’t be successful because she didn’t have the Senate on her side, but she did it anyway, kind of like how Wile E. scans the pages of the Acme Catalog looking for a new trick to catch the avian speedster. He finds powerful magnets, rocket propelled roller skates, sticky tar, and giant malfunctioning springs. With his luck, he ought to know these tricks won’t work, but he uses them anyway, just like Pelosi.
One more: sometimes we see Wile E. Coyote focused on building his latest contraption when the Road Runner suddenly appears by his side and startles him with a meep meep. Coyote’s response usually starts a Rube Goldberg event where eventually a rock falls on his head. This is like when Trump started poking the bear (or coyote) back in the 2016 campaign when he said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” There was no laughter in the room because he was talking to humorless reporters, but the rest of us Road Runner fans thought it was pretty funny.
I rest my case. Given the antics of Wile E. Coyote and the ever elusive Road Runner, I think the evidence shows that Trump is the Road Runner. Have I made my case? | https://medium.com/politically-speaking/trump-road-runner-or-coyote-28dee19e8ec7 | ['Jim West'] | 2020-12-09 18:03:26.902000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Choices', 'Cartoon', 'Politics', 'Trump'] |
Feminist Disrupters Put Plus Size in the Picture | We set out to disrupt how media depicts the female form, by bringing plus size models together in an eye-catching, artistic shoot — only to be met with apathy and confusion for media outlets on where plus size women fit in the picture. Editors and PR teams struggled to understand the importance of showing visibly plus women showcased as works of art and put our idea on the back burner (Please note, Medium was not one of those outlets, and we’d like to thank Medium for allowing us a platform). In spite of this, we decided we wouldn’t be ignored, took matters into our own hands and released our own content because representation matters. It’s about so much more than calling curvy women ‘Ruebenesque’, a one-dimensional euphemism. This is about creating content that shows that plus size women are not only gorgeous, but also worth of adoration, affection, or even worship, as the subject of a priceless paintings.
So, we pulled together our 7-person team of NYC-base models, influencers and artists with a combined social media following of over 1 million.
After I met Sarah Hamel-Smith, a plus size model, digital influencer known as @thecurvytrini, at New York Fashion Week, we found ourselves at an event at Rosé Mansion in a room filled with roman statues of goddesses and a scene set as an homage to classic works ofart. As women who work in the plus size and body positive spheres, we noticed how these women depicted in museums would likely be fat shamed today, but that the tides seem to be turning. Thanks to what I call ‘The Ashley Graham Factor’ soft curves are once again enviable. We wondered if the uptick in curvy representation might mean “A Renaissance of the Renaissance” : a time when fuller bodies are once again society’s symbol of beauty and prosperity. We created an elaborate shoot showcasing curves, female artist and men who love them in 4 typical tropes: Venus, Goddess, Icon/Queen and aristocratic women in a Bacchanalian repose.
We didn’t want to do cliché recreations of art, but rather reimagine museum-pieces to include the diversity, power and imagery we want to see in media. “When I think of the Renaissance Era I’ve rarely seen women of color and curves depicted in the art. It is exciting to be part of this project and part of the new narrative,” says model Asia Monet, who was our exaulted goddess in a gilded frame.
Brooklyn-based artist and photographer Emily Raw was a natural and perfect fit as she has a desire to create art that can flip the script from the male gaze. Raw is fascinated and delighted with the freedom of expression bestowed on a wider array of voices by the digital revolution, including social media, which is exactly what this project stands for.
My co-creator Sarah Hamel-Smith summed up our mission perfectly. “We don’t have to wait on the approval of an anti-fat editor to decide if something is relevant or important. With social media we now have the power to create content to feature, inspire and empower all types of people.”
Written by Renee Cafaro, US Editor of plus size magazine SLiNK and founder of @FoxyRoxyFashion :A Curvy Girl’s Guide to Couture.
Renee Cafaro and Emily Raw: art direction Emily Raw: photography Lizzy Weinberg: hair stylist Models: Jonna Capone as Venus reimagined (@curvycapone ), the goddess (@modelAsiaMonet), the Queen/Icon (@foxyroxyfashion) and a bacchanalian scene featuring Sophie Turner (@sophieeturner), Sarah Hamel-Smith (@thecurvytrini) and a male friend who agreed to model, Lorenzo Dinia, PhD (@lorenzo_dinia ) | https://medium.com/@renee.cafaro/feminist-disrupters-put-plus-size-in-the-picture-58405c57477d | ['Renee Cafaro'] | 2019-08-24 02:07:25.460000+00:00 | ['Fashion', 'Feminism', 'Body Positive', 'Body Image', 'Plus Size'] |
Risk factors for COVID-19 death revealed in world’s largest analysis of patient records | Risk factors for COVID-19 death revealed in world’s largest analysis of patient records
The largest study to date, analysing NHS health data from 17.4 million UK adults between 01 February 2020 and 25 April 2020, has given the strongest evidence on risk factors associated with COVID-19 death.
Academics at the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), working on behalf of NHS England and in partnership with NHSX, have analysed the pseudonymised health data of over 17.4 million UK adults to discover the key factors associated with death from COVID-19 .
This is the largest study on COVID-19 conducted by any country to date, and therefore gives the strongest evidence on risk factors associated with COVID-19 death.
Compared to white people, people of Asian and Black ethnic origin were found to be at a higher risk of death. Previously, commentators and researchers have reasonably speculated that this might be due to higher prevalence of medical problems such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes among BME communities, or higher deprivation. The findings, based on detailed data, show that this only accounts for a small part of the excess risk. Consequently, further work must be done to fully understand why BME people are at such increased risk of death.
Additionally, people from deprived social backgrounds were also found to be at a higher risk of death, which also could not be explained by other risk factors.
Results confirmed that men are at increased risk from COVID-19 death, as well as people of older ages and those with uncontrolled diabetes. People with more severe asthma were also found to be at increased risk of death from COVID-19.
The study linked data about patients that had been hospitalised with COVID-19 with data held in primary care records processed by TPP. This was carried via the OpenSAFELY analytics platform, a new secure mechanism which allowed the GP records to be linked where they are stored for individual care. This minimises the security risks associated with transferring and storing data elsewhere, to deliver analyses quickly and safely while preserving patient privacy. All identifiable data remains in control of the NHS and data is pseudonymised before it can be accessed by researchers.
Professor Liam Smeeth, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at LSHTM, NHS doctor and co-lead on the study, says, ‘We need highly accurate data on which patients are most at risk in order to manage the pandemic and improve patient care. The answers provided by this OpenSAFELY analysis are of crucial importance to countries around the world. For example, it is very concerning to see that the higher risks faced by people from BME backgrounds are not attributable to identifiable underlying health conditions’.
Dr Ben Goldacre, Director of the DataLab in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, NHS doctor and co-lead on the study, says, ‘During a global health emergency we need answers quickly and accurately. That means we need very large, very current datasets. The UK has phenomenal coverage and quality of data. We owe it to patients to keep their data secure; and we owe it to the global community to make good use of this data. That’s why we have developed a new highly secure model, taking the analytics to where the data already resides.’
Further analyses using OpenSAFELY are already underway, including investigation into the effects of specific drugs routinely prescribed in primary care. The platform can also be used to evaluate COVID-19 spread with innovative approaches to modelling; predict local health service needs; assess the indirect health impacts of the pandemic; track the impact of national interventions; and inform exit from lockdown. | https://medium.com/oxford-university/risk-factors-for-covid-19-death-revealed-in-worlds-largest-analysis-of-patient-records-d22afb80adb7 | ['Oxford University'] | 2020-05-14 09:31:18.456000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Covid 19', 'Nhs', 'Epidemiology', 'Coronavirus'] |
You Should Start A Podcast : Effective Content Delivery | If you’ve made it this far, congrats. That means you’re committed this. To reward you, I’ve got something that’ll make this process podcasting even easier.
So Set-forward to start your own podcast.
First of all, no one is like you. No one has the same experiences and stories to share. No one is going to podcast the way you do, and your vibe will attract your own tribe. We’re still in the early days of podcasting. So like I said, your timing is great.
Below, you’ll find the step by step easy method for starting a podcast using just your mobile device.
#1. Choose a Topic for your podcast.
Write down a list of twenty-five potential ideas for the podcast topic(s) you have in mind. if possible like to engage in episode wise topics, potential guest names, too, you were going to interview those people.
For the fact, getting some one to listen your thoughts is the greatest asset in this busy world. So look for unique and relevant topics, rather than already existing ones.
You don’t need to worry about the exact things — just come up with unique ideas.
#2. Pick a Show Title
The title of your podcast is one of the first things people see, even before they listen to a single word of your show. So naturally, this is a really important decision. It defines your branding, your artwork, what you say, how you share it, and many many more things. Just thing;
Who is the show for?
Think about this question. The answer is not everyone. Who is your audience? Who do you want to reach?
#3. Formatting your Podcast
Formatting refers to What’s your podcast going to look like?. Podcasts can take many forms: one-man shows, co-hosts, guests, call-in, etc.
I listen to a lot of podcasts and the most typical format is 2 or 3 hosts and sometimes one guest. I’ve never subscribed to a single-person podcast before because I’ve yet to find a single-person-talking podcast that is interesting enough to stick with… Two or three people chattering to each other is the most common format but it’s possible to take it too far. Stick to 2–3 people on your show.
#4. Get a Logo/Artwork
Your podcast is going to need some artwork — a square image that represents your show. As much as podcasting is an auditory medium, the graphical, visual element that represents your podcast plays an extremely important role.
It’s a really good idea to get a logo for your podcast. Sure, you could do it yourself on Canva if you really want. It’s all up to your choice.
#5. Choose a Podcast Hosting Platform.
As for me, before starting to recording episodes. I looked forward towards the best Podcast Hosting platform, and its diverse features. Sign up to a platform you wish, i wish is to join either Buzzsprout or Anchor.fm (check out the links to view the features).
For the last 6 months, i was using Anchor.fm . So i prefer to go with it.
In my instincts, Anchor provides a better user friendly mobile application with in built option for audio recording, sound library and episode. That means for beginners can even use your headphone or condenser mic to record podcast sessions and edit through there devices.
#6. Recording, Uploading, and Promoting
Before you press the record button, there are couple steps to prepare for your podcast.
Gear to get Started
A quality podcast will mean quality equipment.Sure, you can scrape by with a bare minimum setup. You can record a podcast with nothing more than your smartphone, but it’ll sound like just that — a phone call recorded on a mobile device.
Buy a microphone.
Audio quality begins and ends with a microphone. The better microphone you buy, the sharper your podcast will sound. And audio quality reigns supreme when a person’s podcast choices include heavyweights like WNYC, NPR, and ESPN.
If your prefer in creating a professional podcast, take a look on the Podcast Insight’s Equipment List
Invest enough to create a quality podcast, see if people like it, then advance from there.
Outline A.K.A Scripts
Your best bet for a podcast that sounds organized and professional is to practice beforehand by figuring out what you’re going to say and coming up with an outline for your recording. You don’t have to go so far as to script things out. Just have a road map for where you’re headed and what you want to touch on.
Photo by Jukka Aalho on Unsplash
Here’s a Sample Outline to Consider,
Show intro (30–60 sec) : who you are, what you’re going to talk about.
(30–60 sec) : who you are, what you’re going to talk about. Intro Jingle (30–60 sec) : repeat for each show, create a brand awareness for your show
(30–60 sec) : repeat for each show, create a brand awareness for your show Topic 1 (3 min-10min, in case of multiple topics you opt; go for the least time with maximum content delivery)
(3 min-10min, in case of multiple topics you opt; go for the least time with maximum content delivery) Interlude (30 sec) : music, break or ads
(30 sec) : music, break or ads Topic 2 (3 min-10min)
(3 min-10min) Closing remarks (2 min) : thank audience, guests, give a glimpse about next show.
(2 min) : thank audience, guests, give a glimpse about next show. Closing Jingle (1 min) : i suggest same as that of intro jingle.
(Note: If you have co-hosts, you might consider each of you recording your end of the conversation and stitching the separate audio files together in post-production. This makes for cleaner audio.)
Pat Flynn, Host of Smart Passive Income Podcast — Guide on Editing and Recording Podcast.
After you’ve finished recording, editing, and producing your podcast, you can upload it to hosting sites like Anchor, Buzzsprout and Soundcloud. Most of these platform performs distribution of your show to wide Podcast Directories like Google Podcasts, Breaker, Spotify, so on. Some of the Directories like Apple iTunes require manual submission.
Promotion
For promotion and sharing of your podcast, a lot will depend on the site where you upload. You can also share directly to Twitter, Facebook, and more, and you can embed the audio directly into your blog posts.
Embedding audio is perhaps the best way to sync your podcast with your blog content. Many top blogs use their podcast as an additional blog post, adding the audio directly into the body of the post and providing either a full transcript of the podcast or a list of topics and resources covered in the podcast.
The ideal everything for podcasts
We get quite a kick out of learning the ideal length and frequency for a number of different types of content, and podcasting is no exception. There’s less research out there about podcasts, so what I couldn’t find, I ran the numbers myself from top-notch podcasts.
Maintaining an ideal timing, frequency and duration of each episode can have a vital role in improving your podcast stats.
#7. Monetize your Podcast
The most common way podcasts make money is through advertising or sponsorships. Companies may pay you money to have you read off a script or talk about their company in different parts of your podcast episodes.
This can be very rewarding, but at the same time, it’s hard to find sponsors when your show is just starting out. They want to know people are going to listen before they pay you.
I’d recommend starting with affiliate marketing (Amazon’s associate Program). that means you can generate income by recommending various product or by marketing your own product to the listeners. You can start with this kind of income generation from day 1, and even if you don’t have many listeners, a year from now when you do, you can see the clicks coming in.
If you wish to know more tactics to grow and market your podcast show, take a look on: Opinions by 50 Podcasters on there Growth Formula.
Thank You
I Appreciate You!
I truly hope you enjoyed this tutorial about how to start a podcast.
Feel free to share this with your friends and colleagues who you think could benefit from this, too.
Lastly, if you still feel you need more help, you are free to contact me!
Cheers, and I’ll see you and your podcast very soon! | https://medium.com/zinxters/you-should-start-a-podcast-effective-content-delivery-c56aebfef275 | ['Sinan Thahir'] | 2020-12-14 17:17:24.775000+00:00 | ['Content Marketing', 'Startup Lessons', 'Guides And Tutorials', 'Podcast'] |
Three Different Things: January 10, 2019 | Early Hours
For things just getting started. | https://medium.com/early-hours/three-different-things-january-10-2019-c27dc85d2ff7 | ["Sean O'Brien"] | 2019-01-10 15:44:45.585000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Customer Experience', 'Digital Transformation'] |
Mental Health Awareness | People are afraid to interact emotionally with others due to some stigmas and getting depressed day by day. We must have a platform to connect them so they can release their pain and minimize their problems.
A mental illness is a physical illness of the brain that causes disturbances in thinking, behavior, energy or emotion that make it difficult to cope with the ordinary demands of life. Research is starting to uncover the complicated causes of these diseases which can include genetics, brain chemistry, brain structure, experiencing trauma and/or having another medical condition, like heart disease.
Mental illnesses affect 19% of the adult population, 46% of teenagers and 13% of children each year. People struggling with their mental health may be in your family, live next door, teach your children or work in the next cubicle. I have been always very concerned about this due to my observations and after witnessing few incidents. I decided to put some effort whenever I will get a chance to bring change in someone’s life and to help them getting out of the cell of their thoughts.
After researching it a bit I decided to experience it personally and I talked with some people to get the better idea about how they are getting effected and how much they are aware of this problem. I got to know that most of the people around us are suffering from this problem and many of them don’t even have an idea about it. I found that they are in need of a platform which can help them.
I interviewed some people virtually due to covid’19 and asked different question from each to know about their different situations.
I observed from her condition that she is suffering with depression but she is afraid of the stigma that what people will say and keeping everything to her self. She want to change her condition but doing it by her own ways due to judgmental thoughts of people.
There is always a fear of people and even sometimes it can be your own family who is not going to support you. People have no idea how their unsupportive behavior and their judgement effects others. There are some people out there who want to get help but the stigmas are always there to stop them.
The people who luckily got the chance to be aware of mental illness and its solution, they are thankful for this thing to happen with them. So, I must say that we should create platforms for people and try our best to remove stigmas of mental health. After talking to these people I really got a lot of knowledge and experience about it. It bring happiness in their life to know that someone is supporting this idea and doing something to bring change.
We can create a platform by a group, where we will give people chance to share their problems and let them know what they are going through. | https://medium.com/@bushrashahbaz462/mental-health-awareness-956e03355f7d | [] | 2020-12-25 16:32:43.424000+00:00 | ['End The Stigma', 'Mental Health Awareness'] |
Why is Java so popular in commercial development? | Java has been one of the most common programming languages since it was created. It’s estimated that somewhere around 3 billion devices worldwide run on Java. Since its launch, Java has blossomed into one of the top five preferred languages for software developers for many different types of development.
As a programming language, Java is as relevant today as it ever has been, unlike many other programming languages, which have seen their importance and usability diminish as technology has evolved over time. In defiance of this, Java continues to improve and grow stronger with every upgrade that is released. As a result of this, Java has a reputation as a `serious` programming language that won’t simply disappear next year, or when the developers lose interest.
A brief background of Java
Java was developed in the early 90s. It was first designed for the digital cable television industry, and known initially as Green Team. In 1995 the name was changed to Java, based on the island in Indonesia where the coffee that the team used to drink came from.
In the mid to late 90s, Java was considered a cool and interesting programming language, and many programmers really wanted to make the switch to it. Companies found that they could hire good programmers by holding out Java migrations of code bases. Its usage also was pushed hugely by tech giant IBM, who invested heavily in the development of Java’s technology, community, and ecosystem.
As the Age of the Internet took off, so did growth in the use of Java. This is thanks to the core values that Java was built on, and which are still relevant for developers today.
How is Java used?
Java is a very useful programming language for many different purposes. One of the main reasons for this is that Java is a platform independent language. For example, you can create a program on Windows, and then run the same program on Mac and still get the same output.
There are many places where Java is used in the real world — from commercial e-commerce websites to Android apps, from scientific applications to financial applications like electronic trading systems, and from games like Minecraft to desktop applications.
Here are some of the principal uses for Java:
Android apps — Although there are other ways to make Android apps, most of the applications are written in Java using Google’s Android API.
— Although there are other ways to make Android apps, most of the applications are written in Java using Google’s Android API. Enterprise apps — Java is considered as the default programming language for the majority of enterprises, as it offers flexible integration and independent code
— Java is considered as the default programming language for the majority of enterprises, as it offers flexible integration and independent code Desktop apps — These include library management systems, attendance management systems, and billing systems.
— These include library management systems, attendance management systems, and billing systems. Web apps — Many government, healthcare, insurance, education, and defence departments have their web applications built in Java.
…as well as:
Robotics
Cloud computing
Smart cards
Computer games
As mentioned earlier, Java is a programming language that’s supported by tech giants. IBM and Google are just two examples of this. They have decided to use Java as a primary programming language of their core technologies. The effect of this has been to aid the development of Java at an accelerated pace as a result of the popularity of these huge companies. Thanks to the large commercial outputs of these companies, Java has been catapulted into the heart of commercial development — and it looks like it is here to stay.
What is it about Java that makes it so popular in commercial development?
Java has certain attributes that have contributed massively to its popularity. These include:
1. Java is user-friendly
Java is regularly the very first programming language that beginners try to learn. The syntax is similar to English, which makes it easy for many people to understand. By starting out with Java, users can do some simple things fairly easily, and the kinds of mistakes that they are likely to make are easily understood and corrected. Java is easier in particular than C or C++, where it’s easy to make mistakes that produce really baffling errors. If you already have a solid grasp of C and C++, it shouldn’t take you too long for you to master Java. What’s more, when you write Java once, you can run it almost anywhere at any time. This is the foundational strength of Java and why many developers program in it.
2. Java has excellent documentation
A key advantage of Java is that it benefits from many open source libraries that can serve as a resourceful reference. Java is very well documented, and you can find a detailed guide that will identify any problems that you might be facing while you’re coding in Java. Open sourced technologies such as Java are generally popular within the market because of their low barriers to entry.
3. Java has a large suite of powerful development tools
One of the main ways that developers can make sure they write rich and bug-free Java code is by benefiting from the many powerful development tools associated with the language. This includes automation tools, editors and debuggers, as well as much more. Each of these tools has been carefully crafted to alleviate different concerns from developers, but there is one common theme that runs through all of them, and this is that they all offer excellent support for coding and development. IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, Eclipse are four of the most popular Java IDEs (integrated development environment).
4. Java has high levels of security and robustness
As cyber criminals continue to advance and improve their methods, developers need to fortify their software with innovation and advanced security systems. Thankfully, Java’s language and runtime systems have a number of effective security features written into them. For example, Java has eliminated the concept of pointers, so that people can’t access memory. Java is also very robust. Any developer who has previously used C++ or C will understand that Java is a far superior language for building applications due to its structure. It’s strong because it does not let you access its addresses, and also has powerful memory management, and good garbage collection.
5. Java is a multi-threaded programming language
A multi-threaded program contains two or more parts that can run at the same time, and each part can handle different tasks simultaneously. This is useful as it makes optimal use of the available resources, which comes in handy when your computer has multiple CPUs. When developers choose Java as their programming language, they can develop multi-threaded programs. This makes it a perfect programming language for the creation of responsive and interactive applications.
6. Java has a high level of portability
One of the most popular aspects of Java is that it can be written and run across nearly all platforms, making it an extremely flexible and versatile programming language. This is all made possible due to Java’s virtual machine, which allows Java programs to run on any device or operating system. An additional advantage is that Java is available in a number of frameworks, meaning that the developer does not need to spend ages writing code in order to implement a particular function, which shortens the development process and makes it much simpler.
7. Java’s popularity means that there is an abundance of developers
There are hundreds of programming languages out there — some are simple and some are complicated, and some are common and some are rare. Java is one of the few languages that is both simple and common. This means that it is a language for which there are many developers who can use it with ease. For companies looking to recruit developers for a project, choosing the Java technology stack will mean that they open themselves up to many more potential developers. This is preferable to choosing a much more rare programming language, where very few developers would be available — and would probably cost a lot more money!
8. Java has a large online community
The fact that Java has been such an integral part of the software world over the past two and a half decades means that it has a massive online community, where you can easily seek out the answers to questions you may have, get support if you’re stuck, or offer your own valuable experience. Plus, the Java community has been in existence for a much longer time than those concerned with more modern programming languages like Python and Ruby, so debates are more mature, and built on many more years of experience.
Conclusion
Although there are multiple programming languages available for enterprise software development, there are some who are much more accessible than others. Since its inception in the early 90s, Java has been an essential language for developers around the world to learn. It has managed to fend off challenges from more modern programming languages which have tried to steal its popularity. This has been achieved by keeping it simple, secure and versatile, and frequently upgrading itself to make sure that it stays useful and relevant.
Its flexibility and ability to mould itself to different projects mean that it is a common solution for many different types of commercial need. For many developers it’s their preferred language, and will continue to be so for many years to come, given Java’s ability to adapt to changing trends.
If you are looking for a development company which is competent in Java to create seamless and feature-rich services, then get in touch with OmegaLab today. | https://medium.com/@omegalab/why-is-java-so-popular-in-commercial-development-3b2b353ae524 | [] | 2020-12-02 07:48:01.275000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Javascript Development', 'Software Development'] |
Rejoining The Iran Nuclear Deal | Are nuclear weapons worth going to war over? If you ask the Trump administration, the answer is likely less. Some might wonder how that answer squares with the Pentagon’s recent announcement concerning US troop drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq. As with most things in foreign policy these days, the response usually amounts to a shrug, the reality being that there are no overarching goals in foreign policy, only individual use cases.
For Iran specifically, the mission has been clear for a while: prevent Iran from constructing a nuclear weapon. Much hay has been made stretching back even to the Bush administration about Iran’s potential to develop nuclear weapons. John Bolton has been recklessly advocating for strikes against Iran for decades to prevent such a thing from happening. Conservatives have been chomping at the bit to turn the heat up on Iran for years, a desire that has exploded in recent years. Dealing with war and suffering in such casual terms should be alarming to anyone paying attention, especially if that war is in the name of global safety. These are some of the people who complain about endless wars in the Middle East in the same breath.
I know we all are numb by the two decades of military occupation in the Middle East. Still, when I watched the video of Iranian missiles raining down on a US military base in Afghanistan in response to the US assassination of Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, my heart dropped. Thankfully Iran and Trump stepped back from the brink, but next time around, that may not be the case.
Barack Obama knew all of this. In 2015, on the eve of the Iran Nuclear Deal’s implementation, he gave a speech saying, “ What’s more likely to happen, should Congress reject this deal, is that Iran would end up with some form of sanctions relief without having to accept any of the constraints or inspections required by this deal…Now, because more sanctions won’t produce the results that the critics want, we have to be honest. Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any US administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option — another war in the Middle East…Without this deal, Iran will be in a position — however tough our rhetoric may be — to steadily advance its capabilities…Does anyone really doubt that the same voices now raised against this deal will be demanding that whoever is President bomb those nuclear facilities?”
Let’s check the tapes. The Trump Administration announced its withdrawal from The Join Comprehensive Plan of Action (The Iran Nuclear Deal or JCPOA) in 2018. Since then, we’ve come to the brink of war with Iran about a half dozen times now, with the New York Times recently reporting that in the last week, Trump asked for Iran strike options but then eventually was persuaded against following through on any plan of attack for now. Additionally, the Trump Administration continues to ratchet up sanctions because Iran keeps finding a way around them, and Iran has been steadily increasing the amount of enriched uranium it controls since it got rid of almost all of its stockpiles when it entered into the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Supplanting a nuclear deal, specifically put in place to prevent Iran from gaining the means to create atomic weapons, with an overly aggressive package of sanctions and potential strikes against Iran was always a bizarre way to ensure stability. Now, we have two years of proof. All of this bluster and strongman schtick from Trump and his cronies has been woefully ineffective. They have failed to come anywhere close to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and are even now working to make rejoining the JCPOA politically untenable.
What’s the goal here? The American public is beyond tired of war, and concerning our objectives abroad, we are basically back to where we were in 2015. The only conceivable reason I can think up for the Trump Administration to continue to act so brazenly is a reckless refusal to admit they were wrong and a political calculus that values legacy over people’s lives. Frankly, I’m surprised Iran hasn’t told the United States to suck it and overtly race to develop the bomb. They could easily pull a North Korea and use a nuclear stockpile as a pretense to finally stop the US from jerking the country around.
To their credit, Iran has signaled a willingness to rejoin the JCPOA in response to a US lifting of sanctions. Biden has also stated multiple times that he would commit to doing this within the first few months of his administration as well. Still, it’s frustrating and reckless and pointless to realize that the level heads of Iran and not the US are the ones prevailing and that ultimately, we’re the ones who need to be brought back to the table instead of them. Nevertheless, here we are, and the first step is clear. It’s time for Biden to get back into the Iran Nuclear Deal. Everything else is secondary. | https://aninjusticemag.com/rejoining-the-iran-nuclear-deal-2cbacedd9808 | ['Robert Potter'] | 2020-12-01 00:08:53.213000+00:00 | ['Biden', 'Iran', 'Trump Administration', 'Nuclear Weapons'] |
The Real Story of Automation Beginning with One Simple Chart | The Real Story of Automation Beginning with One Simple Chart
Robots are hiding in plain sight. It’s time we stop ignoring them.
There’s a chart I came across in 2017, and not only does it tell an extremely important story about automation, but it also tells a story about the state of the automation discussion itself. It even reveals how we can expect both automation and the discussion around automation to continue unfolding in the years ahead. The chart is a plot of oil rigs in the United States compared to the number of workers the oil industry employs, and it’s an important part of a puzzle that needs to be pieced together before it’s too late.
What should be immediately apparent is that as the number of oil rigs declined due to falling oil prices, so did the number of workers the oil industry employed. But when the number of oil rigs began to rebound, the number of workers employed didn’t. That observation itself should be extremely interesting to anyone debating whether technological unemployment exists or not, but there’s even more to glean from this chart.
First, have you even heard of automated oil rigs, or are they new to you? They’re called “Iron Roughnecks” and they automate the extremely repetitive task of connecting drill pipe segments to each other as they’re shoved deep into the Earth.
Pictured: National Oilwell Varco’s AR3200 Automated Iron Roughneck
Thanks to automated drilling, a once dangerous and very laborious task now requires fewer people to accomplish. Automation of oil rigs means that one rig can do more with fewer workers. In fact, it’s expected that what once took a crew of 20 will soon take a crew of 5. The application of new technologies to oil drilling means that of the 440,000 jobs lost in the global downturn, as many as 220,000 of those jobs may never come back.
Now look back at the chart again, and notice how quickly this all happened. It took TWO YEARS. How did it happen so fast? Because the oil industry didn’t really need the workers it lost in the first place. It’s the oil industry. It’s used to making lots of money, and when you’re making money hand over fist, you don’t need to focus on efficiency. Being lean and mean is not your concern. However, that changes when times get tough, and times got very tough for the oil industry as oil prices plummeted thanks to new competition from yet another technological advancement — fracking.
So once it became important to increase efficiency, that’s exactly what the oil industry did. It let people go and it invested in automation. In the summer of 2016, oil prices were no longer under $30 per barrel, and had gone back up to around $50 per barrel where they remain. That’s half of the $100 per barrel they’d gotten used to, which is fine as long as they’re able to produce at twice the efficiency. As a result, like a phoenix rising, they emerged transformed. Oil rigs returned to drilling, but all the rig workers didn’t. Those who were let go became simply unnecessary overhead.
Sleeping Through a Wake Up Call
This is a story of technological unemployment that is crystal clear, and yet people are still arguing about it like it’s something that may or may not happen in the future. It’s actually a very similar situation to climate change, where the effects are right in our faces, but it’s still considered a debate. Automation is real, folks. Companies are actively investing in automation because it means they can produce more at a lower cost. That’s good for business. Wages, salaries, and benefits are all just overhead that can be eliminated by use of machines.
But hey, don’t worry, right? Because everyone unemployed by machines will find better jobs elsewhere that pay even more… Well, about that, that’s not at all what the history of automation in the computer age over the past 40 years shows. Yes, some with highly valued skills go on to get better jobs, but they are very much the minority. Most people end up finding new paid work that requires less skill, and thus pays less. The job market is steadily polarizing.
Decade after decade, medium-skill manufacturing/office jobs have been disappearing, and in response, the unemployed have found new employment in new low-skill service jobs. People unemployed by machines still require income, so they end up finding what they can get. At the same time, they are competing against others doing the same thing (as long as the labor market remains involuntary) and thus people are bidding down their own wages and taking any job they can get in a race against the machines. This also serves to make investments in automation less attractive. As an added bonus, the jobs that are being automated are more productive jobs than most of the jobs being newly created. Cheaper human labor and an increasing number of low productivity jobs together then result in a “paradoxical” deceleration of productivity growth. Long story short, the middle of the labor market is disappearing. That’s the reality, and it’s been happening for decades.
A landmark 2017 study even looked at the impact of just industrial robots on jobs from 1993 to 2007 and found that every new robot replaced around 5.6 workers, and every additional robot per 1,000 workers reduced the percentage of the total population employed by 0.34% and also reduced wages by 0.5%. During that 14-year period of time, the number of industrial robots quadrupled and between 360,000 and 670,000 jobs were erased. And as the authors noted, “Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, we do not find positive and offsetting employment gains in any occupation or education groups.” In other words, the jobs were not replaced with new jobs.
It’s expected that our industrial robot workforce will quadruple again by 2025 to 7 robots per 1,000 workers. (In Toledo and Detroit it’s already 9 robots per 1,000 workers) Using Acemoglu’s and Restropo’s findings, that translates to a loss of up to 3.4 million jobs by 2025, alongside depressed wage growth of up to 2.6%, and a drop in the employment-to-population ratio of up to 1.76 percentage points. Remember, we’re talking about industrial robots only, not all robots, and not any software, especially not AI. So what we can expect from all technology combined is undoubtedly larger than the above estimates.
Automation has been happening right under everyone’s noses, but people are only beginning to really talk about the potential future dangers of automation reducing the incomes of large percentages of the population. In the US, the most cited estimate is the loss of half of all existing jobs by the early 2030s. It’s great that this conversation is finally beginning, but most people have no idea that it’s already happening. And about half of those people who know it’s happening, are relying on magical thinking to support their beliefs that automation is of no concern. To the contrary, it is of massive concern.
Charting the Course of History
One of the most telling statistics I’ve come across in regards to the automation discussion is how almost everyone in the US knows we’ve lost manufacturing jobs over the past three decades. 81% know that very real fact according to a poll of over 4,000 adults by Pew Research. What few people know however is that at the same time the total number of jobs has decreased, total manufacturing output has increased. The US is manufacturing more now than it ever has, and only 35% of the country knows that’s true. The percentage of Americans who know both of the above facts are true is a mere 26%.
Only one out of every four Americans knows that thanks to technology, we’re producing as a country far more with less. Most people don’t know that, or blame things like immigrants or offshoring for job losses, even though offshoring is only possible due to technology improvements and only accounts for 13% of manufacturing job loss. That’s a problem. We can’t make the changes we need to make if people aren’t aware the problem exists, or think the existence of the problem is something to be debated. We can’t agree on solutions like unconditionally guaranteeing everyone a basic income as a rightful productivity dividend if people are actively being unemployed by growing productivity and the discussion is framed as a future danger to our social fabric instead of a clear and present danger.
Consider this: What happens when the next recession hits? Falling oil prices simulated a recession in the oil industry, which responded with mass unemployment and investment in automation. What happens when all industries respond with mass unemployment and investments in automation? If we look at recent history, each successive downturn has resulted in the permanent shrinkage of the labor market. Peak labor appears to have already occurred back in 2000.
Meanwhile, technology is only getting cheaper, so each successive drop squeezes out more human labor, and is able to automate more lower-skill labor that is newly more expensive than machines. Expect the next recession to put over ten million of people out of work, and for the economy to realize they didn’t really need those people as workers after all to produce what was being produced. Where 79% of eligible workers aged 25–54 were employed, expect that to fall to 69% or below. The economy simply doesn’t need the number of people it currently employs with the technology we already have available. To add insult to injury, it’s taking longer for the unemployed to find employment, so those suffering next will suffer longer.
The Automation of an Increasingly Divided Country
To add further insult to injury, the story of automation in America is one where mostly liberal metro areas enjoy the benefits while mostly conservative rural areas suffer the consequences. According to a Daily Yonder analysis, 80% of jobs created in 2016 were in the 51 metro areas of a million people or more. These metro areas gained 1.2 million jobs between January 2016 and 2017 — just one year. Meanwhile, rural areas ended up with 90,000 fewer jobs over the same time span.
More than 52 million Americans are now currently living in counties considered as being in economic distress. A report by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a bipartisan research and advocacy organization, discovered a close link between community size and prosperity, where counties with under 100,000 people are 11 times more likely to be distressed than counties with more than 100,000 people.
Understand how automation is helping to divide the country along “red” and “blue” lines, and the growing polarization of our politics will immediately make more sense. This is perhaps the most dangerous effect of technological unemployment of all, the erosion of democracy itself as partisanship tears our nation apart in a process that is difficult to differentiate between that of a living cell mitotically dividing in two.
The Ignored Math of Increasingly Productive New Businesses
Another thing to recognize is that as technology enables businesses to hire fewer workers, that means to obtain “full employment”, where everyone who wants a job has one, the economy requires that everyone work shorter work weeks, or else an ever growing number of businesses is needed in order to employ the same amount of people. If the average amount of people the average business employs is 10, it would take 10 businesses to employ 100 people. Assuming “full-time” continues to be defined as 40 hours, if technology allows 1 person to do the work of 10, the average people a business employs drops to 1, so the number of businesses needed to employ everyone grows to 100. (note: compensating for population growth would require even more than 100)
So is that happening? No. That’s not happening. The reverse is happening. New business creation is slowing, not accelerating.
But the new businesses being created are rising in value every year, which matches what we’d expect to see from each new business using the latest technology to do far more with far less.
Every year there are more new businesses worth over $1 billion. Look at Tesla versus early 20th century Ford Motors, or Instagram versus Kodak, or Facebook versus all the newspapers that used to exist. These companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and employ a fraction of the people as the most valued companies of the past once did.
There’s also an assumption that human demand is infinite, and so no matter how many jobs are eliminated by technology, a human demand for infinitely more stuff will always create new jobs. This belief exists alongside continually shrinking discretionary spending as a share of total spending. This should also not surprise anyone. People can’t spend money if they don’t have any.
The More You Know…
Now, let me ask you a question. How much all of the above information were you already fully aware of, to the point none of it was new to you? Now ask yourself why? Automation clearly exists, and clearly is already affecting the economy. So why is the debate about automation even a debate at all? That’s perhaps the scariest thing about the oil rig automation chart, along with the rest of the charts I’ve included here, the fact existing evidence is not part of the debate. Just as climate change has been something we’ve debated for decades while the effects have only grown more extreme, so too is automation being denied as it grows more extreme.
My fear is that ignoring the problem will continue. Why not? We’ve ignored manufacturing being automated. Yes, we know it happened, but we’ve pretended that everyone just went on to find new paid work, without critically evaluating the nature of that paid work. Unemployment isn’t a problem, right, because the unemployment rate is at a record low? Tell that to the person who went from a 40-hour per week career with benefits and a sense of security to three different jobs/gigs without any benefits, working 80 hours per week to earn less total income in a far more insecure life just trying to get by each month. Tell that to the person who feels marriage has become something only the rich can afford any more. Tell that to the person who attempted suicide, or self-medicated their depression with opioids after their town’s manufacturing plant closed down, obliterating their town’s local economy and leaving them with no means of paying others for their own existence.
Technological unemployment is real.The only honest debate to be had is over the nature of re-employment, and all evidence points to a shrinking employment-to-population ratio, a growth in low-skill jobs, a transition to alternative work arrangements like temporary and “gig” labor, rising variance in monthly incomes, erosion of benefits, longer terms of unemployment, and what can only be called a pandemic of economic insecurity as survival — instead of the American Dream — increasingly becomes the primary goal of the majority of Americans.
Meanwhile, some other Americans are doing extremely well. Why? Because they own the machines. They own the lobbyists. They write the laws. They write the tax code. They have the power. And so they are now the sole beneficiaries of the machine labor producing greater and greater amounts of national wealth, where once that wealth was more widely shared with those producing it.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs were just lost due to oil rig automation and no one (except for those unemployed and their families) batted an eye. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost over the years to industrial robots. Hundreds of thousands more jobs were just lost this year in retail due to the unstoppable efficiency of Amazon and the more than 100,000 robots it employs. And yes, Amazon is creating lots of new jobs too, but for every job it creates, it has eliminated two or more by eliminating its far less efficient brick and mortar competition. Unless you’re talking about net job creation, and the details of those jobs created, you’re dishonestly talking about employment.
The question is, at what point will enough people recognize that automation is a very real problem that must be confronted immediately. When millions of trucking jobs are automated? When millions more retail jobs are automated? How many jobs need to be erased before we collectively create the will to do something? And at what point will we recognize that the problem of automation should not be a problem at all, and that we want as much work automated as possible? When will we realize that automation is a blessing, not a curse, and that the benefits of machine labor should be spread across all of society instead of concentrated in the hands of a relative few, especially when all the technology originated from taxpayer-funded R&D and represents a technological inheritance from those long dead who passed their knowledge down to us generation after generation? And when will the so far sole beneficiaries of that inheritance realize that although they need fewer laborers, they still need consumers?
I hope that time is soon, very soon, because I look around at our reality, and I wonder if we’re going to get our act together before it’s too late, if it isn’t already. As long as we force each other to work for money in order to live, automation will work against us instead of for us. It is a civilizational imperative that we decouple income from work so as to create economic freedom for all. Without an unconditional basic income, the future is a very dark place. With unconditional basic income, especially one that rises as productivity rises as a rightful share of an increasingly automating economy, the future is finally a place for humanity. | https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b | ['Scott Santens'] | 2018-12-14 22:03:40.356000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Politics', 'Basic Income', 'Automation', 'Technology'] |
Words from a Bipolar Mind in Real-Time | Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash
From one thing to another I happily flit and while I’m doing that I rarely finish it
Reading then listening then filling a form then all of a sudden I’m feeling forlorn
I try and stay focused, intended, and free yet it changes so much with all that I see
I bought audiobooks and happy I was, that I’d got them, at last, now they’ve shelved for tommoz
After 30 minutes of listening, I was in such awe when my mind wandered off at a knock at the door
An Amazon delivery, a parcel on the floor, a happy deliverer whose to do so much more
10 minutes later saying goodbye after 3, the book I was listening to now wasn’t for me
Shoving my food to the back of my head, the next thing I knew I was lying in bed
Cozy and warm and under my quilt, I lay there staring with a transfixed guilt
Falling asleep until around 3, I got up and made myself a nice cup of tea when all of a sudden I noticed my thinking was ‘going as fast as somebody blinking’
Racing and choppy my thoughts they were going and keeping a track sent me twoing and frowing
I thought I could handle coming off of my meds and a while I did fine now I’m sat here two heads
Back on the pills I’m having to go but it’s good that I see this, I’ll start the morrow
Hours I slept and when I did wake for the kitchen I headed and a pill I did take
Capsuled and coloured all blue and brown I felt all sped up and couldn’t slow down
Mania mania you aren’t for me and I hope this works quickly setting me free
Through years of this problem where slow becomes fast, no longer I’m left feeling quite so aghast
Somehow it’s come easy that this time around, I’m able to notice before running aground
Bipolar and mania where did you come from? You make life so crazy, you’re twisted and long
I’m thankful and glad, at this time of year with COVID and Lockdown I’m not going mad!
All locked up here in my tiny Lil flat, I write this with Cheer, not with tit or with tat
Things are a muddle right at this time but soon enough I’ll fall back and stand there inline
The way my mind races and goes off on tangents just having a pill slows it down into fragments
Fragments to see, and to ponder upon, sit still and be counted you tiny neuron
Projects of projects of myself I try, to understand and believe in and now I may cry
Filling my time should be easy to do, but my mind keeps a wandering, I’m stuck here like glue.
After being medicated for depression and pain for a long time I became aware that I was feeling spaced out, so much so that I daren’t drive, and with the doctor’s help I weaned myself off of the meds that they thought were causing the problem. I reduced and reduced until I was clean and it turned out that I had gone nearly 2 weeks free. I was feeling great in myself, focused, and clear-headed and I was telling myself that I didn’t need that shit and that I could manage on my own.
You know how things just creep up on you and before you know it you can be in the middle of something that overwhelms you? Like being in debt and not answering your letters, or putting off doing your food shopping until you’re REALLY hungry where you overspend or ignoring all the little stressy things until they blow up out of all proportion?
Bipolar does that. It creeps up on you and bang! It’s there engulfing you with either mania or depression — Up or Down, that’s how it goes.
And it also has this uncanny neat little trick of making you think that you’re fine and you can do it ALL on your own, that you’re invincible and superior, and with that comes a change of mindset where racing thoughts keep you from slowing down. Where all of a sudden you can’t concentrate or stay focused for very long at all and your world becomes one long line of chops and changes. But it’s all in the head, it’s the neurotransmitters in your brain that aren’t bridging the gaps that feed messages.
I’ve suffered from this for a lot of years now and that’s more or less the reason why I haven’t got very far in life, but after spending so much time being medicated and on that level that it gives you, I’ve learned to slow down enough, even when I do become manic or depressed and if it hadn’t have been for that awareness I don’t think that I could have realised what was happening after I came off of the meds. | https://medium.com/an-idea/words-from-a-bipolar-mind-in-real-time-28fc77458bef | ['Rob Walker'] | 2020-12-28 07:11:39.985000+00:00 | ['Positive Thinking', 'Bipolar', 'Self-awareness', 'Insights', 'Mental Health'] |
Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Review (14-inch) | Lenovo IdeaPad 3 is Lenovo’s trending bestseller laptop which is offering exciting specs at a budget price.
With a pretty decent spec sheet, The Lenovo Ideapad 3 is now been named as the new “Budget King”.
Is Lenovo IdeaPad 3 worth buying in 2020? or is there a better option?
Read on to know!
External Review
UNBOXING:
The unboxing experience is pretty smooth, Ideapad 3 comes inside a Lenovo cardboard box.
There are two pockets inside the box, one containing our friend bubbly wrapped, and one containing a 65W charger and user manual (Which nobody reads actually)
DESIGN:
The design of Lenovo Ideapad 3 14 inch is classy, it has a polycarbonate body with a beautiful metallic finish.
Although the build is quite sturdy, the laptop feels smooth in hand.
Because of its lightweight, It is easy to carry and hold making it one of the best budget laptops for students and office workers.
The lid can’t be opened with a single hand and the hinges are silent.
The overall build quality of Ideapad 3 is impressive.
WEIGHT:
The Ideapad 3 has beaten almost every laptop in the competition of weight.
It weighs 3.30 pounds only which is quite lightweight.
KEYBOARD:
The keyboard of the Lenovo Ideapad 14 inch is great for fast and accurate typing.
The placement of the keys is excellent, we tested its key pressing ability, and the results showed 97% accuracy.
This compact laptop offers a decent keyboard overall.
TOUCHPAD:
The touchpad of this laptop is responsive and smooth, it can be clicked from anywhere.
Although it does not support windows precision, it is pretty much accurate.
PORTS:
All the necessary ports are present including a 3.5mm headphone/ microphone jack and an SD card reader on the right side.
And a charging port, a charging indicator light, then we have got an HDMI 1.4b port, then we have got two USB 3.1 ports and a power on/off the light on the left side.
READ ON TO KNOW INTERNAL REVIEW OF LENOVO IDEAPAD 3 14-INCH AMD RYZEN 5 3500U: | https://medium.com/@johnlark9988/lenovo-ideapad-3-review-14-inch-e19efc888c7 | ['John Lark'] | 2020-12-02 06:48:51.470000+00:00 | ['Laptop', 'Laptop Reviews', 'Budget', 'Lenovo', 'Technology'] |
How I built the Optimizely C SDK Wrapper using the Go SDK in a week (part 2) | How I built the Optimizely C SDK Wrapper using the Go SDK in a week (part 2) Ola Nordstrom Follow Apr 9 · 8 min read
Here is part 2 of my hack week project the Optimizely Go SDK C Wrapper. If you haven’t already I recommended reading part 1. The project itself is available on Github and we are looking for your feedback.
https://github.com/optimizely/go-sdk-c-wrapper
Part 1 covered some of the overall design decisions and settling on using a handle to allow the library to maintain state in between function calls. In this post I will show how the SDK can be used in a high performance web server such as Nginx, measure performance and provide some additional pointers on interfacing Go with C. Now, why Nginx and not some other C application?
Nginx Background and Motivation
I picked Nginx because it is a well written and high performance web server written in C. According to Netcraft it is used across 233 million domains on the web today and powers about 26% of all domains. It also forms the basis of new application routers such as Kong which are used as the industry is shifting to containerized micro services running in environments such as Kubernetes. Finally, and probably the most important reason, my own curiosity. I have always wondered what the performance characteristics of Go are and this post will explore this question for Optimizely Rollouts, albeit only a little bit.
If you google Golang Performance many in depth articles show up. Everything from measuring memory allocations in the heap and stack to articles discussing how the runtime environment has been tuned over various Go releases over the years. Also, from time to time there are software teams that write about how they had to migrate from Go to some other language due to performance or memory management overhead of the runtime. This is great… for their specific workload. No (sane) product manager or software engineering manager would (should) ever approve a rewrite of a working system unless there were strong reasons for doing so. Showing that performance is a key bottleneck is one reason for moving such a project forward. Thus showing whether the Go SDK C Wrapper I have written exhibits poor performance is a factor in determining whether a pure C implementation is necessary or not.
Working Smarter (Doing Less)
In part 1 I discussed the time constraints in doing hack week projects. To do an apples to apples, a la C to Go comparison I should write a pure C nginx module that interacts with Optimizely and compare it to the wrapper I wrote, but I didn’t and I won’t.
I’m lazy. There, I said it. And stating it is cathartic. I let the computer do the work for me. I also suspect most programmers are a little lazy (or just lazy enough). I could write the code to query feature flags from Optimizely in pure C. If I dig through Nginx I will likely find it already has good abstractions for making network requests, it is a web server after all, and a damn good one at that.
My hypothesis is that in the end it won’t matter. Go is compiled and once the library is loaded and mapped into Nginx it will be fast enough so that it won’t matter to the browser loading up http://myNginxServer. The network will be the bottleneck by many orders of magnitude. Also my hypothesis conveniently aligns with my goal of doing less work (working smarter).
With that said here is the code that either displays “hello world” or whatever the feature flag string variable was set to in app.optimizely.com.
Nginx module calling the Optimizely SDK
If you’re not familiar with C the #if #else and #endif are preprocessor directives that allow the preprocessor to modify the source code to include or not include specific blocks of code. In this case the processor blocks define how the message is either fetched from the Optimizely feature flag or it is set to “hello world” if OPTIMIZELY_SDK_ENABLED is set to zero.
You can find all the code in this Gist. Yes, if you look in the gist there is much more code, but what’s shared above is the meat of it. The other ~200+ lines is all boilerplate code to set up the module for Nginx. More code to dynamically load the shared library, optimizely-sdk.so and manually set up all the function pointers to allow the SDK functions to be called. And finally, a Makefile. A lot of error handling has been omitted since this is a proof of concept.
The screenshot below shows both variations in the background and the feature flag configuration.
In the far back window is the plain hello world Nginx module. The middle window is showing the Nginx module that has loaded the Optimizely Go C SDK Wrapper. The topmost window is showing the Feature Key along with the custom greeting.
When the Optimizely SDK is not compiled into the module it just returns “hello world”. Surely this will be the fastest and the Optimizely SDK, however well written, will never be able to compete… or will it?
Performance
I used apache bench to gather these numbers on an Amazon Linux AMI EC2 instance, the gist has additional information on the hardware used. The tests were executed with the following command.
ab -n 1000000 -c 500 http://172.31.19.13/test
The host running apache bench is running in the same security group as the Nginx server in AWS.
Plain Hello World Module
For the Nginx hello world module, without the Optimizely SDK checking a feature flag, the following was returned.
$ ab -n 1000000 -c 500 http://172.31.19.13/test . . . Server Software: nginx/1.16.1 Server Hostname: 172.31.19.13 Server Port: 80 Document Path: /test Document Length: 13 bytes Concurrency Level: 500 Time taken for tests: 248.681 seconds Complete requests: 1000000 Failed requests: 0 Total transferred: 156000000 bytes HTML transferred: 13000000 bytes Requests per second: 4021.21 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 124.341 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 0.249 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 612.61 [Kbytes/sec] received . . . Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 114 66% 127 75% 143 80% 149 90% 162 95% 167 98% 173 99% 178 100% 1207 (longest request)
With the SDK
With the Optimizely Go C SDK Wrapper loaded I observed the following.
$ ab -n 1000000 -c 500 http://172.31.19.13:80/ . . . Server Software: nginx/1.16.1 Server Hostname: 172.31.19.13 Server Port: 80 Document Path: /test Document Length: 31 bytes Concurrency Level: 500 Time taken for tests: 242.083 seconds Complete requests: 1000000 Failed requests: 0 Total transferred: 174000000 bytes HTML transferred: 31000000 bytes Requests per second: 4130.81 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 121.042 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 0.242 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 701.91 [Kbytes/sec] received . . . Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 111 66% 118 75% 137 80% 145 90% 159 95% 167 98% 175 99% 180 100% 1186 (longest request)
The observed memory usage of Nginx was higher when the Optimizely SDK module was loaded but remained constant throughout the stress test. This indicates that there are no memory leaks in the Nginx module that is loading and calling the Optimizely SDK Wrapper. The increased memory usage is expected since the whole Optimizely SDK library is loaded into Nginx and Go has a runtime.
From a performance perspective I cannot tell the difference between the two runs. Thus I postulate that
For feature flagging the Optimizely Go SDK C Wrapper performance is on par with a pure C implementation.
Intuitively this makes sense. The Optimizely SDKs fetches the datafile in the background every 60 seconds (by default), then caches it and sets the feature flags. With that said, over time the Go garbage collector may have to run and will have to do work which may impact performance. This may be measurable if more advanced features of the SDK are used, but for looking up and applying feature flags it isn’t.
Odds and Ends
Go SDK C Wrapper, including tests and examples, is only ~1500 lines. Only the client package has been wrapped, it is the primary interface to the SDK. The whole Go SDK by comparison is ~33000 lines.
The Go test framework does not allow the unsafe package to be imported. I suspect that this was an explicit design decision by the designers of Go to ensure maximum platform portability. Using tests that require pointer manipulation is not only unsafe but will lead to cross platform portability pain.
Another issue when interfacing Go and C is that Go does not handle packed C structs very well. Further complicating the situation is that Go does not allow pointer arithmetic. How then does one traverse a list of C structures in Go that are of an unknown length, while ensuring that the code is safe and portable? In my case this is a list of user attribute structs that can be passed into the SDK. The answer is that you end up with a gem like this reproduced below.
Iterating over C structs
This obvious line of code is documented on stackoverflow (our 21st century man pages) here, here and here.
To save you from having to read all three posts, take a walk, come back and reread all three I will summarize them as follows.
The code creates a Go slice named attrList that points to the passed in list of optimizely_ user_attribute C structs.
The length of the slice is at most, 2³⁰ long, this is what (*[1 << 30]) does. The slice, of course, is not that long but we don’t know how long it can be so this is a convenient upper bound.
The first entry in the slice is the first entry in the user_attribute_list which is the memory location of the first optimzely_user_attribute C struct.
The slice is exactly attrCount long and this is the maximum length of the slice which is what is specified in [:attrCount:attrCount].
The size of the struct depends on how it is packed by the C compiler on the target platform and will always be known at compile time ensuring that the traversal of the slice and the underlying list of C structures is safe.
Now breathe in, we’re done!
In Conclusion
The biggest obstacle to overcome when working on this project was the mind bending necessary to switch from Go → C then back again, over and over again. The Go grammar is
variable_name <type>
When C (and the rest of it’s descendant languages) have always done
<type> variable_name;
At times my head was spinning.
The Optimizely Go SDK C Wrapper is ready to be used with your C or C++ project. If it can run in Nginx it can run in your software without impacting performance as well. Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
-Ola | https://medium.com/engineers-optimizely/how-i-built-the-optimizely-c-sdk-wrapper-using-the-go-sdk-in-a-week-part-2-eed82289f3c8 | ['Ola Nordstrom'] | 2020-04-09 17:48:20.781000+00:00 | ['Sdk', 'Go', 'Performance', 'C'] |
The Background of Design in Europe During World War II | This semester, fall 2020, I took on the challenge of created graphic props for film. Since I didn’t have a real film to work on, I chose the novel All the Light We Cannot See (ATLWCS). The novel takes place in France and Germany before and during World War II. In order to replicated images and objects from this time period, I gathered visual research and information from around the internet, and a few books, in order to ensure I would be making the most accurate props I could. Here is my collection of research on design in Europe (with a focus on France and Germany) during the 1930s and 40s.
Background
The 1930s were rough years for many countries around the globe. Not only was America facing the Great Depression, but many countries in Europe were facing an economic crisis as well. Germany, in particular, was felt a heavy economic blow. After the First World War, the countries that defeated Europe demanded reparations to be paid to them. This caused the country to become incredibly poor, thus creating a breeding ground for anger and resistance against other European countries. Hitler and his party were elected to leadership and, from there, we see the rise of the Nazi regime which would initiate the second World War beginning with an attack on Poland.
Posters
Graphic design and printing were still necessary jobs all around the world. Posters were still a primary method of disseminating information but were in competition with the radio. Lithography was the most popular printing method. The positive portions of an image or text were drawn with a greasy medium directly onto a sheet of metal (often zinc). The metal would then be placed on the cylinder and covered with water. The grease would repel the water leaving the positive image vulnerable to ink. The ink, not able to attach itself to water, would only apply itself to the greasy medium. Now that the image is coated in ink, it can be rolled over a sheet of paper to produce a copy of the image. The average person could own a hand-cranked copying machine called a mimeograph that involved creating wax-paper stencil that could be wrapped around the ink-filled drum of the rotary machine. When a blank sheet of paper is drawn between the rotating drum and a pressure roller, ink is forced through the holes on the stencil onto the paper (we see Madam Manec use this method of copying to make flyers in ATLWCS). | https://medium.com/@gmdewald/the-background-of-design-in-europe-during-world-war-ii-f624778acf58 | ['Grace Dewald'] | 2020-12-10 22:43:13.651000+00:00 | ['Design History', 'World War II', 'Design'] |
Get to know me | Hi, this can be a different story in comàrison with what you are going to find on this page because I'm here to tell you who I'm and what I like. (Don't worry this isn't a sad story)
So I'm a teen that lives in South America and I had always liked cars, f1 and also money, so while I was in quarantine I decided to learn different manners to gain money, so I can have a good life and I don't need to follow orders of anyone, but obviously, it was harder than I thought.
One day I saw a video about investing and I really liked it because it was literally everything that I wanted, so I started to look for more videos, into books, and asking people about this.
I think at the end of October I decided with my fathers that we were opening an account in a broker where I can buy stocks without a commission and that's how I started my journey as a long-term investor.
I think I have been into the stock market for a month and I think that I have already made some good moves but obviously, i have made also lots of mistakes like panic selling, not analyzing, and buying at a very high price.
Therefore if I could start investing and experimenting why don't you can, just do it with calm and patience and you are going to see results.
If you enjoyed I invite you to read the other publications that I have and obviously the future ones and belive I'm nor doing this because I want money because I'm not gaining anything with this viewing the fact that Medium doesn't have the option to put a bank from where I'm i.
Thanks! | https://medium.com/@felipe10/get-to-know-me-30263e706bbf | [] | 2020-12-14 14:06:45.080000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Teens', 'Growth'] |
Twelve Essential Principles Of Business Networking | So, you’re a developer, a CEO, a small business owner, all of the above, or [your answer here], and you’ve recently emigrated to the United States, or maybe you’re just looking to do business in the West. You’re ambitious, confident in your talent, you have some proficiency in English, and you’ve just walked into your first networking event in the USA, or maybe you’ve just sat down with a potential American client, investor, or partner… what now?
Last Month Amanda Kinney and Fedor Solokov of ELK Academy sat down with Openland to discuss ELK’s Business Communication module, a course designed to demystify the culture and standard practices of doing business in the West, and to help students develop a deeper and more global understanding of who they are as professionals.
Amanda explains, “Our students’ testimonials usually sounds something like this:
“I’ve studied the language for years, I can read in English, I can watch movies, but when it comes to really getting out there as a business person, networking and making connections, I find that part to be really difficult. How can I overcome my huge fear of speaking in English, in order to represent myself not just as an individual, but as the voice of my company?”
Across all levels of study, one of the biggest roadblocks to learning a new language is the difference between technical proficiency, “the nuts and bolts,” and actual communication.
“It’s a lot easier than people think,” Amanda reassures us, “here’s the truth: when it comes to communication in business, what you say is not nearly as important as how you say it.”
Below are ELK’s Twelve Essential Principles of Business Networking:
1 Networking is like dating
When attending a conference, everyone feels that they have to immediately sell themselves. The reality is, nobody wants to hear your pitch first thing out of the gate. If you were to go on a first date, and immediately say, “Oh my god, I think we need to get married, and have babies, come home and meet my mom tonight,” it’s probably not going to work out. When you’re meeting people for the first time in a networking environment, you want to make sure, using this principle of dating as your metric, that you’re not coming on too strong. Don’t present someone with your ten-year business plan right away, don’t launch into figures and numbers, or give a memorized presentation on your big ideas. Start the conversation by showing interest in the other person. Instead of forcing your agenda onto other people, begin by finding common ground: look for the points of connection where the two of you can build something into the future.
2 Put a cup in your hand ☕️
This simple pro tip can accomplish a lot. You’ve just arrived at a conference: instead of walking straight into your first conversation, head to the bar and order a drink. It can be coffee, soda water, whatever you want! Stopping at the bar gives you an opportunity to scan the room and make a game plan. As you walk, you’re looking for open pairs: people who aren’t facing each other directly, whose body language indicates they are open to people joining their conversation. Now you’ve left the bar and walked up to an open pair, but you don’t want to interrupt the conversation — having a drink in your hand will also help you look and feel less awkward while you take a moment to just listen. Another great reason to grab that drink: someone just asked you a tough question in English, and you need a moment to collect yourself — take a sip.
3 Use three principles of starting the conversation
1) Take a Deep Breath
Fill your lungs up with air as you’re walking up to the group, and then slowly release that breath. This will automatically calm you down, and by pushing your shoulders back you’ll be presenting a stronger front. A little taller, more confident, approaching people with these big shoulders automatically helps you project yourself as a leader.
2) Smile!
Eastern Europeans in particular are famous for not smiling — they’re considered to be stand-offish. When you’re smiling and looking people in the eye, you’re projecting warmth, and an eagerness to communicate — that’s our first goal!
3) Ask Open-Ended Questions to find connections
The best questions prompt the other person to respond with more than a simple, short (or one word) answer. Questions like “What do you do?” lead to answers like “I’m a software engineer.” This is not the way to get a person talking. A question like, “Tell me what type of technology you’re excited about today,” or, “What are you interested in getting out of this experience” invites the other person to tell their story, and allows you to learn about that person and discover things you have in common.
4 Avoid monosyllabic responses
People have a tendency to shut down and put a guard up when they have to use a foreign language in high-pressure situations. We’ve found that our Eastern European students especially tend to retreat into monosyllabic responses in order to not reveal that they might lack some knowledge of English grammar. But it’s not just about the grammar, it’s a cultural thing. You have to be polite. And you want to go beyond just directly answering the question — you want to add a little personal flavor, and invite further conversation.
5 Pass the Ball
This is a foundational principle of all conversation but is especially true of networking and small talk. When you’re speaking with someone, make sure you’re “passing the ball” back and forth. Eastern Europeans in particular like to get pretty serious pretty fast, and they often hold onto the ball for a long time. Whereas Americans get bored rather quickly, and they tend to pass the ball back and forth much faster. This means you can’t get into really big, serious concepts in small talk, because you only have 20–40 seconds before you have to pass the ball.
And when you’re not holding the ball, make sure that you’re ready to receive it: make sure that you’re being an active listener. That means an “Uh-huh,” “Me too!” “That’s so cool,” “That reminds me of…” All of these phrases, all of these “nodding alongs” will encourage your partner: it helps them understand that you’re excited about them and engaged in what they are saying.
A note from Fedor:
“Let’s consider this comparison: there’s tennis, and badminton. In tennis, you want to serve the ball so hard that the other player can’t return it. But in badminton, the goal for the two players is to try to keep the ball in the air, as long as they can, passing back and forth. This is what small talk is all about: sustaining this volley, holding the conversation in the air together as long as you can, by making it easy for the other person to receive the ball and pass it back to you.”
6 “Yes, and…”
This is borrowed from a basic principle of Improv: whatever someone says to you in conversation is a gift for you to build on — not something to negate. In small talk situations, look for ways to spin what’s been offered to your conversation into something positive. You want to say “Yes” whenever you can to the other person. For example, if someone says to you: “I really love soccer, what about you?” And let’s say you don’t like soccer, you don’t want to respond with: “No, I hate it, I think all sports are terrible.” Coming back with a negative response kills the conversation. It makes the other person feel stupid for even bringing up the subject, and no one wants to feel stupid. Instead, try something like this: “I really haven’t been interested in soccer up until recently, but we just had the World Cup in Russia and that was really exciting.” Talking about something related, without saying “Yes! I also love soccer!” is just as good of a connection, and so much better than saying “No, I hate it.” You’re looking to find common ground with people, and it’s great if the connection has nothing to do with business. Not everything you say has to be a set-up for your ultimate business goal. Sometimes networking is just about discovering the people in the room that you want to grab a beer with later.
7 Take Care of the Other Person
A common complaint from students is
“I don’t care about small talk because I’m real, I only care about what’s important, and I want to get down to business and be honest about things.”
And while that’s the ultimate goal, remember our first date principle: putting all your cards on the table from the beginning scares people off. Practice holding yourself back a little bit, and getting interested in other people.
Something else we hear from students is:
“I don’t want to compliment people. I don’t want to say that I have things in common with people if it’s not true.”
Great, don’t. You should be authentic, it’s important that you’re not lying to people, or pretending to like people you don’t like. That being said, the whole reason for communication at a networking event is to try to make a new contact. You have to reach your hand out to the other person. We’re here to build each other up, we’re here to make connections, so look for honest ways that you can complement the other person. Look for things that you really do want to have in common. Don’t come into the conversation looking to say “No.” People like people who compliment them, who say nice things about them. Even smiling at the other person is a compliment. When you smile at me, when you look me in the eye, I feel good looking, I feel more confident, I feel more intelligent. I want to keep talking to you.
8 Don’t Memorize Your Pitch
Nailing your pitch is not about memorizing a speech to be delivered by rote, it’s about getting comfortable with expressing who you are as a professional. Just as open-ended questions are a way of inviting people to tell their stories, talking about yourself should be an invitation to the person you’re speaking with — allow them to guide you in how to tell your story. You want to present multiple paths of conversation for people to walk down: touch on different facets of what you do, which could interest a variety of people in different fields, and see what they latch onto. This story is going to change every time you say it. So don’t memorize your pitch! Instead, learn who you are. You’ll need to think about yourself, and your company, a lot. You’ll need to think about what makes you different and special. The goal is that every single time you give your pitch, you’ve changed the answer. You’ve tailored it to the person you’re talking to.
9 Gauge interest and make a date.
Our students sometimes joke that, in America, whatever idea you pitch to people, they say, Great! Exclamation point! When you talk to investors they always say “Yeah that’s great, that’s amazing.” But then they never follow up, they don’t respond to your emails. Americans like to be positive (which is why you need to be positive too!). They tend not to reveal negative reactions at face value, at least not at first. The best way to determine a person’s interest is by how specific they are.
Are they saying, “Hey, this was great, we should do it again sometime!” Or, are you looking at your calendars, setting the date, and making it happen? The more specific people are, the more interested they are. This is true not only of setting dates in the future — how specific are their questions? How much are they getting into the minutiae of what you’re saying?
And when you’re looking for opportunities to continue the relationship, remember to use the Yes Ladder. Get people to commit to a little Yes and that will help them move onto a bigger Yes in the future. Instead of pitching your whole idea the first time you meet them, invite them to get a coffee with you in a week. Then, ask them to have a meeting. Push them forward slowly.
10 Make a confident exit
So you’re at a conference, drink in hand, you’ve initiated small talk, you’re smiling, you’re asking questions and passing the ball, but then at some point, you feel the conversation becoming a little tiring. How do you exit beautifully? Here are a few things to keep in mind. First: keep the conversation short. Networking events are designed for people to converse for a short amount of time, they are expected to disengage, work the room, and talk to other people. In fact, the longer you stay with one person, the less interesting you seem, and your ideas become less and less exciting to them.
Second: make sure you’re walking away with the right information. Once you’ve made the connection and established that the other person is interested, exchange business cards, LinkedIn accounts, or whatever it is that you’re doing to connect and make a plan for the future.
Finally: be honest. There’s nothing wrong or rude about saying you’re ready to move on. A great way to do it is to invite the other person along. Try this:
“It has been such a pleasure speaking with you, I’m really excited to hear more about your project, but I know that you and I are both interested in making contacts, so why don’t we join another conversation together?”
This allows the two of you to walk up to another open pair together, and naturally, the conversation will split off into two new groups.
Finally, keep in mind that in networking, just like in dating, you have to kiss a lot of frogs. It’s likely that at some point you’ll go to a conference, start talking to somebody, and there’ll just be no connection. In cases like this, it’s completely acceptable to say, for example:
“I’m so glad to have learned a little bit more about what you’re doing with your company, I’m actually here to learn more about [X], but thank you for your time!”
And if you can follow that up by giving them the contact information of someone else who might be interested in what they do, even better, but don’t be afraid to tell people, this connection just isn’t right.
11 Learn the Rules and Play the Game
The experience of going to networking events and conferences might feel weird, at first. Outside in the “real world,” on the subway and in the street, people don’t typically just walk up to strangers and ask what they do for a living. But inside a networking room, everyone is playing a very specific game, and the only rule of the game is that everyone wants to make new contacts.
It’s totally normal to just walk up to someone and start talking. They will not think you are weird, they won’t be thinking “why is this person talking to me?” They are playing the same game you are playing. And now that you’re playing the game, find ways to make it fun for yourself: by the end of this game today I will have gone up to 15 people, or: can I say orange in a conversation with someone? Don’t take yourself too seriously when you play the game — it helps you to be relaxed and more open, and you’ll actually look more confident.
12 Remember: the universe supports you
It’s normal to feel isolated and overwhelmed by the prospect of giving a presentation or attending a networking event. But the reality is that everyone else who attends a conference wants to gain the exact same experience that you do. There’s not a single person in a networking room that came there so that they could make fun of other people, or shut them down. Everyone is there because they have common goals. It’s something to keep in mind when you walk through the door: the universe is not against you in this process. And of course, your friends at ELK are always here to support you as well! | https://medium.com/@fedorsokolov/twelve-essential-principles-of-business-networking-28f54a28be51 | ['Fedor Sokolov'] | 2021-09-09 03:14:06.651000+00:00 | ['Skills Of The Future', 'Immigrants', 'Networking', 'Soft Skills', 'Education'] |
Asking and Receiving | God promises to answer prayers
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. (Matthew 7:7–8, NKJV)
The above verses of scripture tell us unequivocally that God will answer our prayers. He said that all you need to do is ask, and you will be given! Also, God said elsewhere in the Bible:
Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know. (Jeremiah 33:3, NKJV)
God promises to reveal things to us if we but ask. In other words, God says, “Instead of going to consult with soothsayers and the like; ask Me and I will reveal things to you.”
Yet, there are Christians whose prayers go unanswered
Despite the promises of God to answer prayers, some Christians’ prayers are not answered. Some cannot confidently say that God answered their prayers. The lack of answers to prayers breeds frustration among Christians, so much so that many no longer pray.
When you ask a Christian who is seeking someone to marry if they have prayed about the matter, they would answer, “I’m tired of praying and getting no answer. I am no longer praying! After all, God gave us brains and a mind to use in getting what we want!”
An answer like this betrays the frustration of unanswered prayers. Again, if you ask another Christian if they have presented their business proposal to God, and they reply, “I am not hearing from God. I’ll just run with it!,” you know that that individual is frustrated by unanswered prayers.
What happens when prayers are not answered
For people who profess faith in God through Jesus Christ, there is so much frustration resulting from unanswered prayers. A cantankerous attitude usually results from frustration, envy, jealousy, covetousness, etc., arising from unanswered prayers. This results in a loss of the joy of prayer and a lacklustre prayer life.
The Lord Jesus said:
Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:24, NKJV)
When prayers are unanswered, the joy of the believer evaporates. Indeed, many Christians are joyless because they have not received answers to their requests from God.
From time to time we encounter sorrowful, murmuring, complaining, grumbling, and envious Christians, all because their prayers are unanswered. The Bible says:
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV)
Unanswered prayers lead to sickness in the heart — not the organ that pumps blood, but the inner being, the spirit of man — which manifests outwardly as grief, sadness, depression, complaining, envy, etc. But when the desire is met — through answered prayer — the inner man is revived, there is a spring in their steps, and the ambience around them is pleasant.
Once, Nehemiah comforted and encouraged the Israelites to celebrate instead of being sad — a reflection of the value of joy — when he said:
. . . the joy of the Lord is your strength. You must not be dejected and sad! (Nehemiah 8:10, LB)
When the Christian has joy, it is evidenced by their outward expression of confidence and hope on one hand, and their joyful and pleasant interactions with other people, on the other hand.
But some do not even ask
James, speaking by the Holy Spirit says:
What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Isn’t it because there is a whole army of evil desires within you? You want what you don’t have, so you kill to get it. You long for what others have, and can’t afford it, so you start a fight to take it away from them. And yet the reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it. (James 4:1–2, LB)
Through James, the Lord is telling us that our frustrations begin from a plethora of desires which we have not asked Him to meet.
Some Christians think that having a desire automatically translates to a met need. This is not true! Having a desire is one thing, asking for that desire to be met is a completely different thing. For some Christians, their desires become so strong, they are controlled by them and they get into foolish and inordinate schemes to harm others.
This, sadly, is not how a Christian should live. A Christian, having been saved by the grace of God, depends entirely on God. Therefore, a Christian always asks God for whatever they desire!
God wants you to ask
Some Christians also believe that since God already knows what we want before we ask (Matthew 6:8, 32), they don’t need to ask. They seem not to appreciate that although God knows what we need before we ask, He, nonetheless, wants us to ask!
You must not think that things happen just because you think of them — that is telepathy and it is ungodly and unChristian. God wants you to ask every day — Jesus taught us to pray:
Give us this day our daily bread. (Matthew 6:11, NKJV)
Why? Because God wants you to develop the habit, attitude, or nature of asking Him for everything daily. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit says through Paul:
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God your needs, and don’t forget to thank him for his answers. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7, LB)
Therefore, do not give up but keep on asking (Luke 18:1) and in due season, God will give you an answer of peace.
Nothing is insignificant to ask from God
God wants you to ask Him for everything and anything — no matter how little or insignificant it may seem to you! The truth is, we don’t know what is significant and what is not, but God does. By deciding on what to ask and what not to ask from God, you are saying that you can handle some things on your own. But the truth is that you cannot handle anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, because you are just not able to comprehend the ramifications, both now and in the future.
Many people have mortgaged their future and posterity by entering into seemingly innocuous deals.
When Israel entered the Promised Land and began conquering the nations therein, the Gibeonites approached them and lied that they were from a far country, seeking a covenant with them. Without consulting with God, Israel covenanted with the Gibeonites not to harm them (Joshua 9:3–15). A few days later they realized that the Gibeonites were dwelling in the Promised Land (Joshua 9:16) and they could not renege on their commitment to them — if only they had asked God.
Centuries later, King Saul attacked and killed some of the Gibeonites, thus breaching the covenant. Long after King Saul died, there arose a famine in Israel, and upon enquiring, God told them that the famine was His judgment for King Saul’s unprovoked assault against the Gibeonites. And although King Saul had died, his descendants paid the ultimate price, as the Gibeonites demanded that they hand them over to be hung (2 Samuel 21:1–9)!
So, nothing is too insignificant to ask God for!
You never can tell what your decision today holds both for you and your posterity tomorrow!
Be sure to ask from God
We must understand that God did not say that we should ask from family, friends, or colleagues.
He emphatically said that we should ask Him!
When we ask from family, friends and colleagues, and they are either unable to help or unwilling to assist, we are despondent and may get angry at them. But the Psalmist advises:
Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; Do not fret — it only causes harm. (Psalms 37:8, NKJV)
So, be sure to ask God! Unless God directs you to ask someone else.
Keep on asking
Keep on asking God for anything and everything until He gives you an answer. Don’t give up! We need to get back our joy and strength, and the sweetness of being a Christian when our prayers are answered. Be importunate in prayer and unrelenting in your faith and you shall receive answers to your prayers.
Some are asking but their prayers are not being answered
There are Christians who believe in God’s promise to answer prayers, yet they are not receiving answers to their prayers. Why is this so? Is God a liar?
True, some . . . were unfaithful, but just because they broke their promises to God, does that mean God will break his promises? Of course not! Though everyone else in the world is a liar, God is not. Do you remember what the book of Psalms says about this? That God’s words will always prove true and right, no matter who questions them. (Romans 3:3–4, LB)
Indeed, the Bible tells us that God cannot lie (Numbers 23:19)! It is not in His nature to lie (Hebrews 6:18)!
So, why do we ask and not receive?
There are several reasons why our prayers may not be answered, but I’ll list just a few below. It is hoped that this brief list will trigger in you the necessary actions needed to achieve the fullness of joy promised in scripture as a result of answers to our prayers.
1. There is a set time for everything, and possibly, the time God has set to answer your prayer has not yet come (Genesis 21:1–2; Psalm 102:13). So, patiently wait.
2. You may be asking amiss. The Bible tells us that when we ask and are not getting answers, we may be asking with wrong and selfish motives. (James 4:3).
3. You may have set your mind on something and just want God to rubberstamp it. When you take such a position you will only get the answer in your mind! Therefore, never approach God with deception in your heart. (Ezekiel 14:1–11)
4. You are not asking in faith. Without faith, we cannot obtain anything from God (James 1:5–6).
5. You are asking, doubting. The Bible says that a doubter or double-minded man cannot receive anything from God (James 1:6–8)!
6. There may be unconfessed sin in your life. Sin isolates you and your requests from God (Isaiah 59:1–2). When you confess your sins, fellowship is restored as are answers to your prayers.
7. For husbands, you may be treating your wife contrary to God’s command (1 Peter 3:7).
8. You may have rebuffed God’s counsel to you. If you refuse God’s counsel, He will not hear your prayers (Proverbs 1:20–33)!
9. You may not have asked according to God’s will (1 John 5:14–15). To mitigate this, pray in the Spirit (Romans 8:26–27; 1 Corinthians 2:10–11).
10. You are not importunate in prayer. Continue to ask until God answers (Luke 18:1–8).
It is time to start getting answers to your prayers
It is my prayer that as you review the brief list above, the Lord will help you deal with the issues you need to deal with so that you can begin to enjoy unfettered access to God and answers to all your prayers.
But bear in mind that answers to your prayers do not always mean that you will get what you want. It simply means that you will hear from God!
Shalom! | https://medium.com/koinonia/asking-and-receiving-2f40cf839c82 | ['Abraham Raymond Eli'] | 2020-12-05 15:28:06.237000+00:00 | ['Answered Prayers', 'Christianity', 'Prayer', 'Asking And Receiving', 'Gods Promises'] |
Exploratory Data Analysis — A Machine Learning Approach to Predict Diabetic Patient Hospital Readmissions (contd..) — Part 7 | Exploratory Data Analysis — A Machine Learning Approach to Predict Diabetic Patient Hospital Readmissions (contd..) — Part 7
The EDA has been done through a mix of Tableau, Python Visualization libraries(matplotlib and seaborn) and MS Excel
Without further ado, let’s dive in. Our data set has 50 features. This would make our analysis pretty cumbersome and confusing if we don’t follow a structure. When introducing our data set (here), we had bucketed our features into different categories based on the aspect / type of information the feature was conveying, like patient identifiers, demographics, medical history, etc. We will be following the same category wise distribution of our features for exploring the variables.
The target variable: readmitted
In the data set, we have three levels of readmission: < 30, >30 & No Readmission
This makes it a multi-class classification problem. But, as envisaged in the problem statement, our aim is to predict less than 30-day readmissions. So, we will be combining the greater than 30 and NO readmission categories into a single class. This will essentially make it a binary classification problem.
‘>30’ and ‘NO’ readmission categories grouped as Class 0 and ‘< 30’ as Class 1; Readmission rate = 11.16%
Univariate Analysis of Predictor Variables — Pandas Profiling Library
For an initial understanding of the features present in our data set, we will use pandas-profiling library to understand the range of specific predictors, identifying each predictor’s type and compute the number or percentage of missing values for each predictor. Pandas-profiling enables users to quickly generate a very broad structured HTML file containing most of what we should know before deep diving into our EDA.
The overview part of the report provides us with the basic information — number of variables, number of variables, etc. It also outputs a list of warnings potentially indicating where to double-check the data and focus our cleaning efforts.
Pandas-Profiling Report
For our data set, we notice that pandas-profiling has indicated warnings against variables which have high cardinalities. We are also made aware of features such as citoglipton, examide which contain only one feature value in all the rows indicating absence of any predictive power of such features. Additionally, we notice that a few of our variables such as number_emergency, number_inpatient, number_outpatient have a large percentage of zero values.
Pandas-profiling also generates an EDA report for each specific variable including a small visualization describing the distribution of each variable. It also provides helpful indicators such as the percentage and number of missing values along with the descriptive statistics.
Let’s zoom in:
Patient identifiers — encounter_id, patient_nbr
encounter_id & patient_nbr
Patient demographics — Race, Gender, Age, Weight, payer_code
Race, Gender, Age, Weight, & payer_code
Admission and Discharge Details — admission_source_id, admission_type_id, discharge_disposition_id
admission_source_id, admission_type_id & discharge_disposition_id
Patient Medical History — number_outpatient, number_inpatient, number_emergency
number_outpatient, number_inpatient & number_emergency
Patient Admission Details — medical specialty, diag_1, diag_2, diag_3, time_in_hospital, number_diagnoses, num_lab_procedures, num_procedures, num_procedures, num_medications
medical_specialty & time_in_hospital
diag_1, diag_2 & diag_3
number_diagnoses, num_lab_procedures, num_procedures & num_medications
Clinical Results — max_glu_serum, A1Cresult
max_glu_serum & A1Cresult
Medication Details — Due to the large number of variables present in this category, only features of interest are reproduced here
Medication Details
Additionally, pandas-profiling also enables us to visualize other details of the features (by toggle details button) such as descriptive statistics, frequency, composition, etc. depending on the variable type. Let us use panda’s describe () function to achieve the same
Descriptive Statistics
Bivariate and Multivariate Analysis
Patient identifiers
We infer from the visualization that a patient can be admitted to the hospital more than once, which is identified by the unique encounter id for each admission.
patient_nbr & encounter_id
This in itself doesn’t convey much information. We should look at other features related to patient admission and discharge and see if there is any observable pattern. Other features related to patient admission / discharge can be identified as admission_source_id, admission_type_id, and discharge_disposition_id. Let us bring these features as well to the visualization.
Now, let’s put a filter on the Readmitted status to conclude any pattern for the cases of patients being readmitted within less than 30 days.
Eyeballing the resulting visualization, we note that, most of the cases of readmission are falling under admission_source_id = 7 (Emergency Room). For admission_type_id, majority of the patient records come from categories 1 (Emergency), 2 (Urgent) and 3 (Elective) and in that order. Most of the records have discharge_disposition_id as 1 (Discharged to home), followed by 18 (NULL), indicating records were not collected for these patients.
Patient demographics
Race: Majority of the population in the data set belongs to the ‘Caucasian’ Race followed by African American. The count of records per the readmitted status is also shown. We notice there is a category of ‘?’. We will deal with this in the Data Cleaning stage.
Race
Race Vs. Readmitted Status
Gender: The data is almost equally distributed among the two categories of Males and Females. Additionally, we can see some ‘Unknown / Invalid’ records, which will be taken care of in the Data Cleaning stage.
Gender Vs Readmitted Status
Age: Majority of the patient records belong to the category of 50+ years. Looking at the second figure below, we notice that the proportion of patients being readmitted within 30 days shows a gradual upward trend with the increase in age brackets. This is also corroborated by our analysis of research papers and background project.
Age Vs Readmitted Status
Weight: Almost 97% of the records in our data set have ‘?’ value. This means the weight data has not been collected for these patient records. This is a little disappointing as we had gauged from the background project that BMI (an indicator of weight) plays a crucial role in diabetes prediction. We might have to drop this feature in the data cleaning stage.
payer_code: Highest claim for the patients with readmitted status comes from those having Medicare (MC) as payer code. (11.75%). That means, of all the patients who have Medicare as their payer, 11.75% are being readmitted in less than 30 days. This is the highest among all the payer codes such as Blue Cross, Self-Pay, etc.
Payer Codes Vs Readmitted Status
Admission and Discharge details
admission_source_id: The percentage of patients being readmitted is highest for the Admission source id of 7 (Emergency Room), followed by 1 (Physician referral).
admission_source_id Vs Readmitted Status
admission_type_id: The percentage of patients being readmitted is highest for the Admission type id of 1 (Emergency), followed by 2 (Urgent) and 3 (Elective)
admission_type_id vs Readmitted Status
discharge_disposition_id: Due to a large number of categories present in this feature, there is no discernible trend observed.
discharge_disposition_id Vs Readmitted Status
Patient Medical History
number_outpatient: There is no discernible trend observed as the percentage of readmitted patients fluctuates between high and low values.
number_outpatient Vs Readmitted Status
number_inpatient: As the number of inpatient visits increase, there is an upward trend in percentage of patients being readmitted.
number_inpatient Vs Readmitted Status
number_emergency: No observable trend with respect to the number of patients being readmitted.
number_emergency Vs Readmitted Status
Clinical Results
A1Cresult: A1C levels are a strong indicator of Glucose in the body. We notice that for a majority of the records in our data set, the readings are marked as ‘None’. This is a let-down as we had concluded from our research and background project that this is a strong predictor of diabetes in patients. Though, we will look at this in the later stages and see if there is any way we could replace these records with a logical value for our analysis.
A1Cresult Vs Readmitted Status
max_glu_serum: Similar to A1Cresult, majority of the records in the data set have this value recorded as ‘None’.
max_glu_serum Vs Readmitted Status
Patient Admission Details
number_diagnoses: The line graph shows the proportion of re-admittance for across each bin. We infer that as the number of diagnoses increase in the range of 2 to 11, there is a higher risk of re-admittance.
number_diagnoses Vs Readmitted Status
num_lab_procedures: As the number of lab procedures increase in the range of 10 to 80, the proportion of patients belonging to the re-admitted category also increases.
num_lab_procedures Vs Readmitted Status
num_procedures: As the number of procedures / number of non-lab procedures increases, the proportion of patients belonging to the readmitted category decreases.
num_procedures Vs Readmitted Status
num_medications: As the number of distinct medications increase in the range of 0 through 35, the proportion of patients belonging to the readmitted class also increases.
num_medications Vs Readmitted Status
time_in_hospital: We know from the characteristics of the data set that all the patient records are for patients who stayed in the hospital between 1 and 14 days. Looking at the line graph, we notice that for number of days > 2, there is an upward trend for proportion of patients who are being readmitted within 30 days.
time_in_hospital Vs Readmitted Status
Medical_specialty: A large number of categories are present for this feature in the data set. Also, a majority % of the records are labeled as ‘?’, indicating absence of data. As for these reasons, this feature does not have much predictive power and we will most likely drop it in our later analysis.
medical_specialty Vs Readmitted Status
diag_1, diag_2 and diag_3: These are the primary, secondary and additional diagnosis, which are coded as first three digits of ICD9 having 848, 923 and 954 distinct values respectively. These features will need to be dealt with in a special way in the feature engineering stage. There would be no point constructing the visualizations of these features at this stage as they won’t reveal much information due to the level of granularity of the data.
Medication Details
DiabetesMed: Out of the total number of patients who were prescribed diabetes medication, 11.63% of the patients were readmitted within 30 days.
diabetesMed Vs Readmitted Status
24 features of medication: In itself, the features of medication don’t mean much as they only indicate whether the dosage was kept Steady / Up / Down or not prescribed at all. We will be deriving a new feature from all these 24 features in the Feature Engineering phase of our analysis.
This brings us to the end of our Exploratory Data Analysis phase. A few other visualizations we could have incorporated in our analysis could be box-plots, pair-plot using seaborn library. I did try these visualizations on my Jupyter notebook, but since there was not much additional information being added on top of the above visualizations, I decided not to include here.
In the next stage of our project, we will start with Data Pre-Processing steps. | https://medium.com/@akshay.43279/a-machine-learning-approach-to-predict-diabetic-patient-hospital-readmissions-contd-part-7-841cab2cf40f | ['Akshay Singh'] | 2019-07-06 08:47:01.846000+00:00 | ['Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Data Science'] |
Restorative Justice in the Workplace | Restorative Justice in the Workplace
Mashaun Hendricks presents at our 99th Public Newsroom. (Photo: Harry Backlund)
On March 14, we hosted our 99th Public Newsroom with staff at Local Legends Films, a video production company, and Mashaun Hendricks, a restorative justice practitioner who helped them integrate RJ practices into their workplace.
Restorative justice has a lot of buzz lately, but who in Chicago is practicing it?
In the past, we have hosted Public Newsrooms (1, 2) on restorative justice in a legal context. In 2017, City Bureau reporters followed the Restorative Justice Community Court in North Lawndale, which opened July of the same year. There, young adults accused of non-violent crimes can opt into a process where they, their victims, members of the community and court staff sit in peace circles to develop a repair-of-harm agreement. The approach is meant to center community accountability as opposed to punishment.
Restorative justice is also at work in classrooms, sometimes led by nonprofits who offer to facilitate programming, like Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) or Umoja, and sometimes by students. The Peace Warriors, a student group at North Lawndale College Prep, run peace circles to mediate conflicts between their peers and support classmates who have lost loved ones to gun violence.
When she started Local Legends Films, founder Jayme Joyce employed seasoned professionals and apprentice employees. Early on, she knew she wanted to foster a working culture that was based on a restorative justice framework. With Hendricks’ guidance, they have brought in RJ practices and now sit in a peace circle every Wednesday.
(Photo: Eliza Lambert, Local Legends Films)
“We’ve been spending the time getting acquainted, building relationships and discussing our values and commitments; the first three steps of the peace circle process,” said Christine Fugate, director of operations. She explained that when conflict does arise, it’s typically resolved in a “mini circle,” where the two staff members in disagreement work with the help of a mediator to come to a resolution. “After we hold these mini circles, grievances have been aired and cleared and everyone feels lighter, even the rest of the team who has sensed the tension between the two members,” said Fugate.
At the Public Newsroom, Hendricks took the time to make sure attendees had a foundational understanding of restorative justice. He explained restorative justice is not just a process to address and remedy wrongdoing, but a philosophy that prioritizes relationship-building. Unlike a typical punitive model, where the threat of punishment deters people from breaking rules, a restorative justice model asks participants to consider their accountability to one another.
Hendricks and Local Legends staff emphasized the importance of taking things slowly. “A big part of RJ is shedding the Western pace of tactics, productivity and process and adopting a much slower healing pace of building relationship,” Joyce said. “I only hope that more organizations will see the value in this and be willing to pay the price and investment of time, energy, active contribution to fully adopting this culture.”
We ended the evening with an activity about how to incorporate restorative justice into our work. See the prompt in the tweet below.
If you’re interested in learning more about restorative justice, you can sign up for a workshop with Hendricks in the upcoming months. In the meantime, to get a sense for the basics of restorative justice, listen to our audio recording below.
Support City Bureau’s free programming like the Public Newsroom by becoming a City Bureau Press Club member today. | https://medium.com/city-bureau/restorative-justice-in-the-workplace-b87ab6cf6047 | ['Ellie Mejía'] | 2019-04-01 17:37:42.571000+00:00 | ['Workplace Culture', 'Restorative Justice', 'Public Newsroom', 'Chicago'] |
Private Limited Company (Pvt Ltd) Registration in India | Basic Requirements For Private Limited Company Registration
A minimum of two shareholders and two directors
and two directors Shareholders and directors can be the same person
Foreign nationals and NRIs can also be directors as well
All directors must have DSC (Digital Signature Certificate)
Note*: Once you receive the Incorporation, You can choose to have an addition and removal of directors at any point in time.
Once you receive the Incorporation, You can choose to have an addition and removal of directors at any point in time. Note*: Once you receive the Incorporation, You can choose to have an addition and removal of directors at any point in time.
Once you receive the Incorporation, You can choose to have an addition and removal of directors at any point in time. Minimum Paid-up and Authorized capital
Paid-up capital: The actual amount of shares that are issued by the company to its shareholders. The capacity to issue more shares depends on the authorized capital of the company.
Authorized capital: This is the maximum amount of shares the company can issue. Approval from the shareholder and the payment of a fee to the government is required to increase the authorized capital.
The number of members/directors required is two
Separate legal entity
Limited Liability
Free and easy transferability of shares
Brand value
Continuity of existence
Scope of expansion
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
Funds can be obtained easily
The company is limited by shares
Capacity to sue and be sued
While Registering your Pvt ltd company, there are quite a few protocols that you need to follow. You need to choose the structure of your business and also decide on whether your company will be limited by shares, guarantee, or an unlimited company.
Description Of A Private Limited Company
Private Limited companies are those companies that are privately held by people. From local businesses to corporates, a Private Limited Company is one of the most preferred business entities.
Shareholders of a Private Ltd company may operate the business themselves, or hire directors to manage the company. A private limited company follows a legal Structure For Businesses.
Angel Investors, Banks, Venture Capitalists, and other budgetary organizations prefer investing in a private limited company.
Do you want to set up a Private Limited Company in India? Aavana is the right choice. When you choose us, you’ll surely get quality and budget-friendly business services.
The Types Of Private Limited Companies
The types of companies include:
Companies limited by shares
Companies limited by guarantee
Unlimited companies
Companies limited by shares: The shares of the company are owned by at least two or more shareholders or members.
A company limited by shares is a company that has the liability of its members limited to an amount that is unpaid on the shares held by them respectively. The company can enact its liabilities either on its existence or on its ending.
Companies limited by shares end with the word limited which gives us the information that this company has limited liabilities. This simply means that the liability of the shareholders is limited by the shares they hold.
All the companies that are limited by shares must be legally registered under the Companies Act 2013.
Companies limited by guarantee: It is a business structure that is viewed as a legal person and is responsible for its own debts. A company limited by guarantee has members and not shareholders.
It is a company that does not have a share capital. Such companies have a separate legal entity which means activities like buying and selling of property, employment of people, borrowing money can be carried out in the name of the company.
This structure is legally preferred for most non-profit organizations, charity societies, clubs, and other similar organizations. These companies are non-profit companies because the profits are not distributed to the members but retained in the company.
Unlimited shares: A company that is unlimited by shares does not have any limit on the liability of its members. Such a type of company is a hybrid company incorporated with or without share capital. There is no limitation on the legal liability of the shareholders or members.
The liability of the shareholders for the debts of the company is unlimited. In the case of debts, there is no separation between the personal and company resources of the shareholders. There is also maximum exposure to risks.
Get Access To Private Limited Company Registration All Over India
In India, any business venture that needs to operate smoothly requires a Company Registration. Private Ltd Registration in India is one of the most accepted and used registrations from local businesses to corporates.
We at Aavana, have a strong presence all over India and can help you with your Pvt Ltd Company Registration.
We are headquartered in Bengaluru and provide Company Registration Services nationally and internationally.
Our trustworthy Private Company Registration experts are accessible to help all over India. The team at Aavana offers quick and easy services. We are trendsetters in the services we provide and use only the updated technology to reach clients globally.
DSC (Digital Signature Certificate)
DIN (Director Identification Number)
Name Application Process
Drafting of MOA (Memorandum of Association)
Drafting of AOA (Articles of Association)
Spice+ (PLUS)
Application for PAN of the company
Application for TAN of the company
Note*: SPICe+ would be an integrated Web form offering multiple services viz. name reservation, incorporation, DIN allotment, mandatory issue of PAN, TAN, EPFO, ESIC, Profession Tax (Maharashtra), and Opening of Bank Account. It will also facilitate allotment of GSTIN wherever so applied for by the Stakeholders.
Are you planning to register a company?
Read about a few ways through which you can Save Taxes in a Private Limited Company.
Private Limited Company Registration At Affordable Rates
Aavana Corporate Solutions will also help in online private company registration. We specialize in company registration with a wide range of business entities like Private limited, One-Person Company (OPC), Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), and Public Limited Company. What’s impressive is that we offer all these services are provided at cheaper rates without compromising on the quality. | https://medium.com/@aavanasolutions16/private-limited-company-pvt-ltd-registration-in-india-523cd852a40e | ['Aavana Solutions'] | 2021-12-10 11:51:07.832000+00:00 | ['Pvt Ltd Registration', 'Accounting', 'Pvt Ltd Companies'] |
What I learned designing a new design system and how to get started | The result is a mess!
Designers don’t know which component to use and when. It takes a long time to design/ship new flows because the team have to design everything from scratch. Developers need to spend an enormous amount of time to build different components. Users are overwhelmed because of the many different patterns of interaction they have to deal with. They don’t have a coherent and consistent user experience across different platforms and customer entry points.
1. PRODUCT — Reuse design patterns for products at scale
The solution to our problem is simple: we need a design system to efficiently reuse design elements.
A design system is a set of components, with clear standards and rules, that can be used together by teams to build products at scale with the result of saving time and effort for developers and designers.
The large benefit of having reusable components becomes evident when we take a closer look at our product that have multiple components that serve the same purpose. For example, each of the different CTAs that we mentioned before represents developer, design and quality assurance time and if you multiply this across different parts of a product on multiple products and across platforms, you will soon realise this is a lot of effort.
A design system is not only one part, but many parts. For example, only a Sketch/Figma Library is not a design system. A style guide alone is not a design system, a single pattern library or a CSS framework is not a design system either.
2. PEOPLE — Teams and design system
I like to think that the design system gives teams the tools to collaborate putting people at the centre with the result of increased efficiency. You might feel that this will initially result in an increased amount of design time, but in reality, there is an overall time saving and a better end result.
With this:
The development and design teams could focus on iterating, innovating and improving rather than on rebuilding
QA tasks could be centralised and automated
The design system documentation could become a hub for reference and design/development best practices for teams and new hires (e.g. storybook)
It could be used to develop patterns across products
People in the teams will be happier because
💯 Less time spent to re-develop/re-design
🎉 More time to focus on real user problems
People using our products will be happier because
💌 Coherent user experience and more reused learnt patterns
3. PROCESS — Where to start
#1 Make a plan
In the past, I was lucky enough to work with some of the best design systems out there, but this time was different because I had to create one from scratch.
Designing a new design system is a HUGE job and requires good planning in order to get all the moving parts working.
You will need to collaborate with your peers, PMs, stakeholders, devs etc. It is a long process that will continue for months if not years, for this reason, you have to make a plan, putting down all the phases of the process and how to move forward.
When I had to begin the project I first did a discovery phase where I defined deliverables, I started to collect insights and once I had enough research I begin the ideation phase with the creation of different components and prototypes.
#2 Setup deliverables
I defined a set of deliverables for our teams to focus on, keeping in mind that our design system will evolve constantly with the product and with the new tools and technologies that we will use. We apply the design system to all the user touch points starting from the company website to platforms, to mobile. For this reason, I work closely with the marketing and content team to make sure not only the visual elements are aligned but also content and messages.
User touch points where the design system will be applied
The design system will help scale and create a visual language that stretches across platforms. I also applied the design system components and visual language to the deck that stakeholders use internally and externally with customers.
Deliverables part of our design system
#3 Conduct a visual Inventory
If you are creating the design system for a product that already exists in the market, an important thing to do is to create a visual inventory.
Conducting an audit of the current components could help you to define the different styles and components used across these products.
Collecting CTAs, dropdowns, all the different existing components gave me a big picture of the current digital ecosystem of our products. It’s a good idea to get the development team involved in this process, as they will have a good overview of what is happening inside our platforms and also helps to break silos and increase collaboration. After this process, you’ll be grouping the similar components and then you can start your prioritization. This will give you a good overview of what focus first.
#4 Define design principles
Design principles are foundations that are used across all teams to focus on the global vision and principles that our design should follow. Which also ensures that when we work on the overall design our interfaces are functional, easy to use, intuitive and memorable.
A good example is the following by Atlassian.
Our design principles reflect our design philosophy and underpin how our digital experiences unleash the potential in any team. We use the Atlassian Design Principles to inspire creativity and to continually push ourselves to make our products, websites and integrations better at helping people and teams be more effective.
#5 Create a visual language and a style guide
The visual language is important in order to articulate a general brand design direction, philosophy and approach to be used across all ecosystems of products. Consistency, visual recall and clarity are the main goals of our visual language. This will help to set up a style guide that is a set of company’s rules regarding its branding covering both visual elements, such as logos and imagery, as well as typography, palette and tone of voice. It defines how the company is represented throughout online, offline, in-house, and external appearances.
1.Typography. It is extremely important that your brand has a strong foundation of typography. Choose fonts, set a hierarchy, and integrate them with components in order to make your UI legible. Typography is an essential part of visual hierarchy which helps to reduce friction across products.
2. Colour palette. Colour distinguishes your brand. By defining a colour system you can ensure you have a single palette of colours used across products to create a consistent experience. Brand colours can be integrated into the palette in order to maintain brand personality throughout your UI. Colours need to be accessible to ensure sufficient colour contrast so that people with visual impairments can use your products. You should define a primary palette, text palette, secondary palette and tertiary palette.
Other elements of the style guide are icons, margins, padding, grids and so on.
#6 Design a pattern library
The pattern library is often influenced by a style guide and it is a collection of user interface design elements and components. This can include living documentation like HTML snippets and it focuses on user interface design.
Pattern libraries include components like CTAs, search bars, images, hero elements, sliders, cards, galleries, navigation, tables etc.
As a starting point, I didn’t create the pattern library from scratch but I used one of the many existing libraries out there in Figma as a foundation and then I iterated. This helped me to save a huge amount of time. I tested all the components with internal stakeholders but also with end-users, to ensure that they were involved in the conversation. Another thing to keep in mind is to ensure to follow the accessibility standard so that everyone can use our products.
#7 Alignment and collaboration with your dev team are gold
Collaboration and good communication between teams are the keys to move forward and to bring our design system to life. All the parts should work together as one team with a common goal.
Practices that helped and help me today to be aligned with my dev team and stakeholders:
Creating a redline specs document to be handed off to developers will ensure that designs are made according to specifications. The red lines are guides, that communicate exact spacing, margin, etc. When delivering to my development team, I use Figma and I use design tokens, comments and guides there.
It is useful to create one place to manage brand and UX components and documentation across teams. This is referred to as a single source of truth. This can be created as HTML pages and hosted on GitHub or something similar for easy distribution among your team. In the past, I’ve used Atlassian Confluence to create wikis with all the details about the design system and its use. Remember that these can be useful for not only design and development teams, but also marketing and content teams.
My design system toolkit that I use every day. Figma, Jira, Miro, Storybook
Shipping a design system pilot project. It is important you align with your PMs and plan to ship a pilot project to launch your initial design system. This will allow you to have a starting point and to measure metrics that can be used later on when you define KPIs for implementation. You will need also to create a backlog for your design system. Your PMs and developers should help you with the prioritisation of stories.
Help your developers with the creation of a storybook. A storybook is an open-source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React, Vue, Angular, and more. It makes building stunning UIs organised and efficient.
4. CONCLUSION — Summary and takeaway
As of today myself and the team are still working on the design system and there is still a lot that needs to be done.
Designing, building and maintaining a design system is hard work and it requires months of work. I learned that working on a design system is an experimental process. Patterns and components are made to be edited, extended, added or removed based on experimentation, testing and new findings. 😀
Example of storybooks:
Other useful links:
Thank you for reading! 😀 Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/what-i-learnt-working-on-a-new-design-system-4e50f10aa964 | ['Annalisa Valente'] | 2020-12-02 08:59:17.472000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'Design', 'Pattern Library', 'Resources', 'Design Systems'] |
Step by Step Guide to Authenticate Users with LinkedIn in your Express App | LinkedIn can be one of the Identity Providers of your application. We have seen this in lots of websites that let us login with our Google Account, Facebook account, or Github and LinkedIn. We want to do the same and let the user sign in with his/her LinkedIn account.
The Steps to authenticate users with LinkedIn
Create a LinkedIn app
Create an application that can authenticate users with LinkedIn
1 - Create a LinkedIn App
The first thing you need to do is visiting this address: https://www.linkedin.com/developers/
LinkedIn Create App
Login with your LinkedIn Account
After that, you need to sign in using your LinkedIn account to be able to create your app.
Login before creating an app
Create the app
Now fill the fields of the app and press the create app button:
Create a LinkedIn App
For creating the app you need the LinkedIn Page of the company. If you do not have one, press the button: + Create a new LinkedIn Page
If you do not enter a valid LinkedIn page you get an error like this one:
Invalid LinkedIn Page
LinkedIn app dashboard is available
After this step now you are able to see the dashboard:
LinkedIn App Dashboard
Verify Your app
Now you have to verify your app. LinkedIn wants to be sure that this app belongs to the company page that you have selected when you were creating this app. After pressing this button you are getting a verification URL and by going to that URL you are able to verify this app:
Verify LinkedIn app
Add Sign In with LinkedIn to your app
In the dashboard go to the Products tab and select the Sign In with LinkedIn Product. After accepting the legal agreement you can add this product.
Waiting for LinkedIn to approve
If you have done these steps you are able to see this in your Products tab:
Sign In with LinkedIn
As you can see the status of this product is review in progress so you have to wait. It should not take more than a few minutes.
After the approval you should see this product on the list of your products:
The Sign in With LinkedIn Product Added
Get the client ID and secret and add the direct URI
In the Auth tab you have access to your client ID and secret and we need those two in authenticating users with LinkedIn.
Also, you have to add a redirect URL to the list of redirect URL:
Add redirect URL(This app is deleted)
I want to develop my app on my machine on port 3000 so I added this address. In production, you need to add the address of your website here.
Scopes
The scopes are another vital part of the authentication. Be sure that you have access to these scopes:
Sign in with LinkedIn Scopes
2 — Create An Express App that can authenticate users with LinkedIn
Creating an express application:
Create an express application
Initiate Passport and Express Session for authentication
PassportJS is a well-known library for handling authentication. Express-Session is another library that helps us keep track of users by using cookies. If you are not familiar with these libraries there is no problem you can just see the implementation and the description, the implementation is easy.
Initiate passportjs
In order to use passport we need to implement serializeUser and deserializeUser functions. We did nothing here and just passed the user but you can encrypt this data or do whatever you want.
In line 12 of this Github gist, we passed the express-session middleware and passed the only required option to this middleware. After that, we can initialize passport and use passport.session .
Implement LinkedIn Passport Strategy
Passport let us implement the strategies of authentication and there are more than 500 strategies that you can find on their website. Here I used the passport-linkedin-oauth2 strategy.
linkedin passport strategy
The redirect URL in the app panel
clientID is available in your LinkedIn app dashboard in the Auth tab.
clientSecret is available in your LinkedIn app dashboard in the Auth tab.
callbackURL we have to implement this endpoint and also it should be in the list of Redirect URLs in your LinkedIn app in the Auth tab.
scope is the scope you want to access. You can see your permissions under the Auth tab.
Scopes
After the successful authentication, it returns the arguments of this function. We passed the LinkedIn profile to done function so this is going to be the user object.
Implement the authentication Route and Callback Route
Authenticate Route and callback route
After creating the LinkedIn Strategy we can protect Express routes by passing passport.authenticate(desiredStrategy) .
We redirect users to the first route when they clicked on Sign in With LinkedIn and based on the redirect URL that we gave to LinkedIn it redirects the result of the request on that route. (Here /auth/linkedin/callback ) and if the authentication was successful it redirects them to / .
Implement a simple page to see if Sign in with LinkedIn works
Implement a simple page to see if Sign in with LinkedIn works
When the user is logged in, the passport attaches the user to the request so we can check that if the user is logged in or not by checking req.user . When the user exists I extract some of the fields from his/her LinkedIn profile and the user can see the data. If the user is not logged in I show him/her the image of Sign In with LinkedIn .
The Result
Sign In with LinkedIn in an express application
The app.js file | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/step-by-step-guide-to-authenticate-users-with-linkedin-in-your-express-app-10af68b91b13 | ['Poorshad Shaddel'] | 2020-12-22 23:05:29.728000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'LinkedIn', 'Passportjs', 'Oauth2', 'Expressjs'] |
“You Hate Us So Deeply “ | “You hate us so deeply BUT yet you’re still so impressed. Why can’t you see there is history in our skin? You built this country on our backs. I’m him, he’s me. She, us, we are all blood.”
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CHf2lyxglCE/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHgneJEnsc7/
“You love my culture but do you love me?”
This is entirely fogo of truth! I say this all the time and as a marginalized person of color including mixed with Black this really hit what I feel and express all the time. It put it in a powerful way that I am very thankful to view. I’ve observed or experienced the worst to oppress us are oddly the worst to hijack our culture in some fashion as if they could be a person of color better than we can just as some of the worst examples of people of color and foul actions towards other people of color seem to blow the loudest bullhorn of self based nonsense that I can’t help but ponder “WHO listens to or believes any of this garbage?!” I’ve said this before but to me they are the same, those who oppress who are NOT of color and those who prey on and still oppress those who are merely skin wise of color but not mentally. They have more in common with white privileged oppressors than people of color thus not someone I consider a person of color. That is why I find it so important that our own protect and stand up for our own as people because as we’ve seen no one else is... including the hangers on that these movements of Black and Brown Lives Mattering is a trendy thing to do to conceal their true selves in. As they do nothing but spit on people of color especially successful ones constantly or use us as some trophy. I’ve said this to Karens or those who may as well be before that do so that obviously dual hate us via their actions, attitudes, disrespects, and behaviors, “You may hijack our lingos, our cultures, Movements for our fair treatment, at best you tokenize us to pat yourselves on the back but the truth is you wouldn’t spit on us if we were on fire. You are the problem, the cancer of bigotry in our country and world. YOU. And the pathetic thing is you’re too privileged minded and smug to even recognize it.”
AND THAT is the worst form of racism, intolerance, and bigotry there is. | https://medium.com/@voicing-freedom/you-hate-us-so-deeply-bfc0961e4034 | ['Voicing Freedom'] | 2020-11-13 04:11:35.052000+00:00 | ['Human Rights', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Truth', 'Facts', 'Civil Rights'] |
New Year Experiences, Not Resolutions | Here we go again.
Resolutions.
No thanks.
Instead of worrying about not achieving a bunch of goals by March, let’s use the New Year holiday to think about our experiences of the past year, and think about the experiences we want to have in the coming year.
I started this practice in 2018. For the first time, I didn’t take part in my usual ritual of making resolutions. For years, I tried to scale back my resolutions, making them less dramatic and more achievable. For instance, instead of trying to lose 20 pounds, I made resolutions not to gain any weight. Or I would resolve to try to stop procrastinating on deadlines. I even resolved to try to spend less at the grocery store.
That was me living life on the edge of a mundane existence. I was practicing the fine art of stagnation. It was as thrilling and fulfilling as it sounds.
In late December 2017, I decided I wanted to try things I had not tried before. My life had become a bit routine, and I kept wondering if there was some joy I was missing out on because I was too afraid, too busy, too whatever.
In my journal, I wrote a list of all the things I wanted to do. I didn’t edit any of it. It was a stream of consciousness. I didn’t put a deadline on any of it either. My list had 86 items on it by the time I was done. I had no intention of accomplishing all of it in 2018. That wasn’t the point.
The reason for the list was to get all the possibilities in front of me to make them real. The second they were written on the page, there were some that jumped out as worthy of being considered. In January 2018, I started to work on bringing a few to fruition.
My 2018 new experiences were fantastic.
I did pilates for the first time and didn’t hate it. I worked on a political campaign in a major role and felt like I finally understood the importance of our democracy. I took a ceramics class and for the first time tried the pottery wheel. Painting with sponges became a new hobby too. I made terrible works of art and loved every minute of it. I met Barack Obama briefly, and it was everything I hoped it would be. I cut my hair short. I wrote an entire, unpublished book to see if I could do it. I published my work here in this space. I created my own office space and watched my profits grow in my first full year as a small business owner. I made new friends.
So you don’t get the wrong idea, I also had a bunch of spectacular failures too. My candidate lost the election. The stock market did a number on my retirement savings based on my bad decisions. I stood by and watched a wonderful colleague perish nearly instantly from sudden cancer. I should have listened instead of acted. I was a jerk and didn’t apologize. Taking chances didn’t stop me from being a deeply flawed human being. It did make me learn.
In spite of the missteps and regrets, I’m heading toward 2019 determined to try the new experience approach. Testing my limits has taught me more about the true value of this limited lifetime. How will I know what I love if I don’t try something new?
My new favorite thing might still be out there, and I might miss it if I don’t keep trying something new.
My list of new things to try has grown from 86 to 114. Although I checked a few items off the list, I found that I was open to the unknown because of my changed mindset. I had no idea I would work on a political campaign, but when the opportunity was presented to me, instead of declining, I embraced it. I had no idea what I was doing, but here I am at the end of 2018 with a ton of new, useful knowledge that I will apply again down the road.
Make 2019 your year of experiences.
What have you always longed to do? Make your list. Then see what you can manifest in 2019 by taking actions that lead you to a whole new world of possibilities. Join me. Let’s see what we can do. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/new-years-experiences-not-resolutions-cd0ba1b3dcd1 | ['Ree Jackson'] | 2018-12-22 17:29:58.414000+00:00 | ['Self', 'New Year', 'Life Lessons', 'Life', 'Self Improvement'] |
Black Holes, Consciousness, and Deep Learning | Deep Learning and Neural Networks
Deep neural networks have seen a recent explosion in applications to nearly every aspect of our lives. They model our financial markets with arbitrary accuracy, driving investments and algorithmic stock trading. They classify images, performing facial recognition on only partial images. They write their own code and improve ours. They create webpages And apps for us from hand drawn sketches.
There are AI agents that can see through walls and predict the position and movement of humans by observing the perturbations in WiFi signals.
They drive cars. They assist us in deciding what to watch on Netflix and YouTube. They serve as therapists and doctors to us, assisting in medical diagnoses, new drug discovery, and treatment analysis.
Google has shown that AI is outperforming human doctors in treatment and diagnosis.
They have conversations with us and serve as friends. They create music. They create anime. They paint.
They create false videos, images, and voice recordings of real people in deep fakes, allowing social engineering en mass, with both positive and negative outcomes.
Using the same technology they can clone our voices with only 5 seconds of audio to learn from, allowing those of us who are camera shy the ability to create flawless podcasts, YouTube videos, and lectures.
They play video games better than any human ever has. They perform sentiment analysis of our texts, comments, and the things we say and can even diagnose schizophrenic episodes and other mental illnesses from 2 minutes of smartphone video. AI can detect and understand human emotions. They track our spending and recommend products to us on Amazon. Neural networks predict traffic patterns and offer us the quickest route, improving our commutes and effecting the price of an Uber or Lyft. In fact, the DWave quantum computer was recently used to solve this problem in particular. They adapt what our search engines show us based on our personal data. They help in job placement and hiring protocols. They are used for national defense. They discover new materials and chemical compounds. They optimize anything that can be optimized and solve physics problems formerly thought intractable or impossible. Using automated theorem proving and natural language processing they even prove new theorems in mathematics and write academic papers. They learn how to correct errors in quantum computers.
AI aided us in capturing the first images of black holes.
This encounter between machine learning and black holes is not our primary focus however.
Here, we will be concerned with understanding deep neural networks in terms of some of the deepest and most fundamental physics known to humans, the physics of quantum gravity.
In this article we will discuss how layers of neural networks can be replaced with “tensor networks”, a tool well known to physicists since at least as far back as the early 1970s, when the famous mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose first used his graphical tensor notation to describe physics. This is a running theme in many of my articles, but for good reason, as we will see:
We all live in a giant quantum computer that is constantly running quantum machine learning algorithms.
Understanding how we can treat deep neural networks as tensor networks gives a direct connection to quantum computing and “The Holographic Principle,” a principle in the theory of quantum gravity and the AdS/CFT correspondence (which we will return to later on). This will not be a light read, but for the technically courageous, it will be a rewarding read that will help in understanding why deep learning is such an effective tool:
Neural Networks mimic quantum physics and the quantum machine learning algorithms running on the quantum computer we call the universe.
In this article we will also address the “black-box” issue so often spoken of in the machine learning community. We will explain what it is, and how it can be mitigated using theoretical physics fundamental to the understanding of black holes, gravity, and quantum physics.
We will also make direct connections to quantum computing, and the sexy new topic of quantum machine learning. Replacing layers of deep neural networks with tensor networks is only one step away from replacing those same layers with quantum circuits and the methods of quantum neural networks. To top it all off, we will provide references to Github tutorials and open source software that actually puts all of this theory into action. We’ll look at how you can train your own quantum neural networks, on real quantum computers. The takeaway: The black hole singularity and the technological singularity of sentient AI very closely related via their mathematical structure. Moreover, this is not technology of the future. It is available to the sufficiently curious and mathematically adept to use and explore now, on actual quantum computers. | https://medium.com/swlh/black-holes-consciousness-and-deep-learning-fd5bcfebb151 | ['Amelie Schreiber'] | 2020-06-14 03:02:17.325000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Quantum Computing', 'Physics', 'The Singularity Research'] |
Reward Based Learning vs Meaningful Learning Experiences and Autism | I recently read a quote on Facebook that suggested that whilst autistic children might quite like getting rewards they don’t help them to learn, crazy huh? You would be hard pushed to walk into an autism classroom without your eyes being assaulted by a cacophony of token boards and reward charts and your ears being gently numbed by a chorus of ‘good job’ and high fives but do they help children learn? I began to reflect on my own teaching experiences and the conclusion I have drawn is probably not. Now don’t get me wrong I do believe that rewards can help shape up desirable behaviors such as sitting at a desk or waiting for a turn but behavior and learning are not the same thing. A behavior in the loosest sense is any action that we perform and if a behavior is rewarding we will likely do it again that is why having ‘just one piece’ of chocolate is rarely successful, we learn very quickly that eating chocolate is rewarding so we want to do it again. In the autism classroom you may see children performing all sorts of tricks to access their rewards but have they really learnt much more than ‘chocolate tastes nice?’ There are 2 main problems that I have come across working with reward based learning in education. Firstly there will be the children who show no real engagement with their learning. An example of this child’s learning experience would be if you were to place 3 photos of animals on a desk and say ‘find dog’ they would randomly point at the pictures until by chance they come across the right picture and get the reward. This child does not much care which one the dog is, they just know if they keep pointing at things they will eventually get a reward. The second problem with reward based learning is the tendency for some children to learn things by rote. This is the child who is more motivated to find the ‘right’ answer quickly to gain the reward but who does not attach any meaning to what they have learnt. An example of this is the child who can count to 100 but would not be able to tell you they have 2 hands as they have not attached any meaning to what they have learnt. Autistic children are often very good at learning facts and figures but can struggle to attach meaning to what they have learnt and we must be careful not to fall into the trap of using teaching styles that will further enhance this problem. There is another autistic child who we have all met in the classroom. This is the child who doesn’t seem to be really learning much at all, the don’t seem to be able to match identical objects, they struggle to imitate actions and don’t seem to recognize things represented in pictures and yet, give them an iPad and they suddenly show you all kinds of skills they have. They know how to turn it on, adjust the volume, scroll and navigate and can identify the symbol for their favorite app, so whats going on? This child is giving you very important information about the power of meaningful learning experiences. If we consider why most of us choose to go to work 5 days a week it is likely the reward of a salary is a big motivator and influences our behavior by making us more likely to get up and go to the office or classroom every day, however we also look for meaning in our work and you will likely find that you work harder and longer on tasks that feel meaningful for you when compared to tasks with little meaning attached to them. Learning requires effort, passive learners rarely learn as much as those who are actively engaged in the learning process and it is unlikely that we will be actively engaged in something that holds no meaning for us. Activities are normally experienced as meaningful for one of the following reasons, there is a purpose to what we are doing, there is a finished product at the end of what we are doing or we are interested and enjoying what we are doing. Autistic children will be motivated by the same things and can be more motivated to complete tasks and learn about things that interest them than their non autistic peers. It may sometimes be the case that the purpose of an activity will not be as apparent to an autistic child, this may be particularly so when the purpose is social or if the purpose is too far removed from the activity for example exercising for future good health or weight loss. If it is essential for a child to perform an activity for future health or well being that is experienced as purposeless such as exercising then a reward based system might help however in most other situations a meaningful activity will be a more powerful motivator to learning. To make learning meaningful you will need to consider what activities are purposeful and enjoyable for your learners, if a child enjoys cooking or gardening for example, consider how you can in cooperate aspects of math or literature into these activities, if your child likes art, use it to teach them about colors or shapes, you have a music fan? What a great opportunity to learn to follow instructions or use number to play a rhythm. The other great thing about meaningful learning opportunities is that they will often translate directly to vocational or leisure activities that will provide long term enrichment for the learner. So next time you are about to congratulate your autistic child for doing a ‘good job’ consider how you can adapt what you are doing so they can experience first hand what doing a good job feels like. | https://medium.com/@autismbug/reward-based-learning-vs-meaningful-learning-experiences-5796a184fea5 | [] | 2021-01-05 14:01:45.392000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Autism', 'Special Needs', 'Autism Education', 'Autism Spectrum Disorder'] |
Our Kids’ Mental Health Doesn’t Make Them Snowflakes | Our Kids’ Mental Health Doesn’t Make Them Snowflakes
I don’t need to “toughen up” my daughter.
Photo by Sandevil Sandhya via Unsplash
The state of Oregon just passed a bill expanding the reason for excused absences for students to include “mental health days.” You can imagine the kind of comments this has elicited in response to reports from news outlets.
“Snowflakes.”
“Kids need to toughen up.”
“Might as well teach them to get in the welfare line now.”
“Americans have gone soft and are now raising a generation of sissies and victims.”
TL;DR — The comments are awful and concerning.
The people making these comments are at the far end of the age range of my generation. Gen X. 50-somethings. The Boomers weren’t far behind.
They are a lawn chair away from being the “Hey kid! Get off of my lawn!” guy. They lauded how, when they were kids, they had to suck it up. I have some words for these members of my generation:
Congratulations. Look at what a healthy, empathetic, wholehearted, kind and emotionally aware human being you turned into. You are not what I want my child to grow into.
A couple months ago, my daughter came to me at six in the morning. She had been up until past midnight working on a project. She was part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Honors Program last year. She had made the varsity softball team as a freshman. She had a game. She volunteers. Because of the time I have to leave for work, it takes her over a half an hour to get to school via city bus.
That morning she was overwhelmed. She was absolutely exhausted.
“Mom. I can’t. I just can’t.” She started crying. She had hit her breaking point. I called her in sick.
I flat out told the lady in the front office, who knows my daughter, “I’m so sorry. She just can’t today.” The lady chuckled. She got it.
We all get it.
When I got home from work, she told me how much better she felt. She rested. She cleaned up her room. She worked slowly on schoolwork. She read. She just needed the pressure to go away. It did. The reset button worked.
Photo by Pixabay via Pexels
I can tell you that it is a completely different landscape my daughter sees in being a teenager then 30 years ago when I was in high school.
They’re not softer. The world is harder. They deal with things we never had to. I never feared I would go to school and never come home. For my daughter, that’s real.
If someone wanted to bully me, they would have to spend a considerable amount of time telling lies about me and getting others to tell those lies. Now, it takes the pressing of a button.
Our kids are pushed harder academically than I ever was. My daughter is 15 years old and already passed through honors level Algebra 3/4.
Teaching our kids to value their mental health and to treat it as importantly as we do our physical health is a road map to creating well-adjusted human beings.
It’s not a cop out or a means to further a victim mentality. It breaks downs stigmas associated with understanding your limits when it comes to mental and emotional fatigue.
Last month, I had a full blown panic attack at work. It last 12 hours. There’s no reason to have to power through something like that. But, we have this idea in our heads that we’re supposed to grin and bear it.
Taking care of our own mental health, and that of our children, helps us to actually become stronger, more capable people. It’s how we learn to move through a hard episode in our life and decrease it’s duration. When we are given the space and healing is encouraged, we can do great things.
Had I felt it was okay to call my boss and tell him I was having a panic attack that day and it would be in everyone’s best interest for me to go home, it would not have lasted 12 hours. It would have been much shorter.
The next day, when I got to work, I was exhausted. So, my company had two days of work from me that were solidly not my best. What good does that do anyone?
No one loses when we recognize that people need to take care of themselves mentally and emotionally. Criticizing someone for acknowledging a need for self care isn’t being tough. It’s being inhumane. We’re better than that. Let’s act like it. | https://vanessatorre.medium.com/our-kids-mental-health-doesn-t-make-them-snowflakes-1e788f62419f | ['Vanessa Torre'] | 2019-07-23 16:54:15.101000+00:00 | ['Self Care', 'Mental Health', 'Psychology', 'Education', 'Parenting'] |
Cypherium | The Controversial Issue of Scalability in Blockchain | By Sky Guo
We’ve heard a lot these last couple of months about scalability. But, what exactly is it? And why is it important?
Discussions around scalability in blockchain refer to blockchain’s ability to handle more activity (more blocks, more efficiency, more throughput). Each block is hard-coded at 1MB of data storage. In the beginning, this worked out just fine, but as Bitcoin has become more widespread, a larger amount of information is pumped into the system. The information needing to be processed is exceeding the Bitcoin Blockchain’s ability to manage it, thus, increasing transaction wait times. The disagreement about how to scale the chain throughput led us to the August 2017 “hard fork”.
The decision was controversial and split the crypto-community. Critics of this decision were concerned that by altering the original platform, the integrity of the chain would be compromised. Ultimately leading to increased volatility and uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin. While the value of Bitcoin has since gone up, scalability continues to be one of the leading issues. While we are seeing this debate manifest in the Bitcoin community, scalability remains a considerable hurdle the technology faces. Cypherium’s mission is to develop a solution to this longstanding challenge.
Using a combination of the Proof of Work and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus mechanisms, we are able to create a highly scalable blockchain. Several companies are attempting to solve the issue of scalability, however, they have had to rely on more centralized methods to do so. By creating a hybrid chain, we are able to combine the strengths from each consensus method. We are leveraging Proof-of-Work’s efficiency and flexibility and PBFT’s low latency and historical dependability. The result is a blockchain that is as open and usable as the Bitcoin Blockchain that leverages the scalability enabled by PBFT.
Another important aspect of our product is the use of multi-layer governance. By separating governance at both the protocol and application layers, we are able to achieve optimal scalability on the main chain. Developers can write and execute smart contracts within a mini-fork without interfering with the main protocol. Once this is complete, the mini-fork is deleted and the smart contract then deploys onto the main chain and is ready to handle high-volume transaction applications.
Our team combines lead blockchain cryptographers with backgrounds at companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. One of our Co-Founders and Lead Developer, Solomon Zhang, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Science and Technology of China and has extensive knowledge in cryptography and network security. Our third Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Nate Ren, has co-conducted research on blockchain implementation and has a deep understanding of the life cycle of software development. His degree is from Stony Brook University, where he studied Computer Science. It is an incredible experience to work with such a talented group of thought-leaders, who are truly changing the way the world connects.
The work that we are doing here at Cypherium is going to solve one blockchain’s most compelling problems: scalability. The fundamental technology in the Cypherium Blockchain will achieve the apex of scalability, openness, flexibility, and commercialization viability. To learn more you can read our white paper, here, or join the conversation on our Telegram channel. | https://medium.com/cypherium/the-controversial-issue-of-scalability-in-blockchain-and-how-cypherium-is-solving-it-91b80c3517b9 | [] | 2020-05-08 15:29:47.482000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Cypherium', 'Scalability', 'Tech'] |
Winter Is Magic | Winter brings:
warm hearts
indoor comfort food
neighbors and strangers sharing greetings
timely conversation — listening, speaking, and helping
empathy and compassion for oneself and others
reflecting on nature’s handiwork — snowfalls.
Winter is a time for you to clear away a lot of noise and create your magic. You are not missing out if you’re still breathing, thinking, or reading this poem. Figure out a power within you and help yourself in any way you can. | https://medium.com/passive-asset/winter-is-magic-df83865c89eb | ['Bassey Elimian'] | 2020-12-19 18:13:02.311000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Poetry', 'Self', 'Inspiration', 'Winter'] |
Ripple CEO feels Bitcoin’s influence over altcoins prices could end soon | Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse thinks that strong correlation between bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies prices will soon be broken as market participants will recognize the differences between cryptocurrency assets.
In an interview with CNBC Garlinghouse said “There’s a very high correlation between the price of XRP and the price of bitcoin, but ultimately these are independent open-sourced technologies. It’s early, over time you’ll see a more rational market and behaviors that reflect that.”
Ripple, a tech company in San Francisco that utilizes blockchain technology to rewire bank-to-bank money payments across borders that settle faster than regular transfers with what it calls an “internet of value.” According to data from CoinMarketCap Ripple’s XRP, a token that banks on the network can use to transact quickly has the world 3rd largest market capitalization after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The company is striking out against the conventional banking networks. Their increasingly widespread adoption by financial institutions gives them a firm basis to expand. According to Garlinghouse, in 2018 Q1, Ripple has signed 20 production contracts with new firms. Reportedly, on Wednesday the company announced a deal with Kuwait’s largest bank, adding to companies like MoneyGram that are already testing XRP for cross-border payments.
The number of listed digital coins on CoinMarketCap exceeds over 1,500 cryptocurrencies, Garlinghouse predicts that 99 percent of that cryptocurrency projects won’t exist in 10 years. Ripple’s CEO noted that “There’s gonna be a bit of correction along the way here where a lot of the players in the space that don’t solve a real problem are going to get washed out”.
Some of the cryptocurrency projects have been accused of swindling investors through fraudulent Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Authorities in the United States have been trying to crack down on falsified ICOs. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) clarified in March that it is looking to applicable securities laws to ICOs, crypto exchanges, and digital wallets.
Jay Clayton, the SEC chairman and a former Wall Street deals lawyer, said one of the biggest surprises of his first year heading the agency has been learning about the levels of fraud surrounding ICOs. | https://medium.com/ico-disaster/ripple-ceo-feels-bitcoins-influence-over-altcoins-prices-could-end-soon-397286ec39e9 | ['Matteo Ek'] | 2018-06-01 06:44:15.668000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
The Kidney Stone | The Kidney Stone
Things I made that Justin did not care for
A few months into my inauspicious start, I made a kidney stone. Justin did not care. I suspect he was livid that the newbie had, through a steady diet of chocolate milk, engineered a stone with a view to shirking his work responsibilities (which is caring of a sort, I suppose).
I woke up with it one day, not knowing it was a kidney stone of course, but it started as a dull ache in my left side that gradually intensified until the pain of it was all that there was.
I stumbled about for a bit wondering what I had done. In the darkest moments of my life, I’d have contemplated stabbing myself in the kidney, or chugging detergent with a bleach chaser — but after a quick recollection of the events of the night before, I’d determined that neither of those things had happened and so the pain remained unexplained and persistent.
When the ambulance arrived, I was doubled over in the garden, unable to sit still for a single moment, trying to choose between knocking myself unconscious and throwing up.
“Alright mate, what’s going on?” the paramedic asked.
“Hello there. I’ve got a pain in my side. I think I may have kidney stones,” I said awkwardly.
In truth I don’t know what anybody said — pain is a potent suppressor of memory for me. It amuses me no end though that the picture of me being in agony is basically a picture of a polite man pacing up and down with a determined grimace. I can’t even do that right.
I attempted to lie down in the ambulance, but I could no longer lie straight and no quantity of gas and air or morphine would cause the pain to abate. It was only after a second dose had been administered on the way to A&E and after a half hour of lying on a gurney having been dumped at the entrance writhing around and crying out for death, that the morphine kicked in and suddenly I no longer cared about anything.
Morphine, if you’ve never had it, is a wonderful opiate that spreads pleasant warmth and feelings of mellow contentedness throughout the body. It is like staring out into the beautiful wilderness from a heated lodge in the mountains, perhaps a single malt is tentatively sipped while observing the majesty of a buck as it strides into the clearing before you, unafraid and untamed and dropping its neck gracefully to drink at the stream. You toast the buck and raise your glass and he, he turns and nods and with that nod, you know that everything is going to be just fine.
Meanwhile, my surroundings had transmogrified to the A&E ward and the cries of bloodied individuals as they were wheeled past me rang out. I had completely forgotten about having a kidney stone. Here I was now in the ground zero of suffering and I’d been rendered docile and pain-free. | https://medium.com/the-manic-depressives-handbook/the-kidney-stone-e25e37f5092e | ['Jon Scott'] | 2019-09-20 13:30:39.988000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Work', 'Health', 'Failure', 'Life'] |
I Am… Series 2 Episode 1 (s1e01) Full Episode | ⭐A Target Package is short for Target Package of Information. It is a more specialized case of Intel Package of Information or Intel Package.
✌ THE STORY ✌
Its and Jeremy Camp (K.J. Apa) is a and aspiring musician who like only to honor his God through the energy of music. Leaving his Indiana home for the warmer climate of California and a college or university education, Jeremy soon comes Bookmark this site across one Melissa Heing
(Britt Robertson), a fellow university student that he takes notices in the audience at an area concert. Bookmark this site Falling for cupid’s arrow immediately, he introduces himself to her and quickly discovers that she is drawn to him too. However, Melissa holds back from forming a budding relationship as she fears it`ll create an awkward situation between Jeremy and their mutual friend, Jean-Luc (Nathan Parson), a fellow musician and who also has feeling for Melissa. Still, Jeremy is relentless in his quest for her until they eventually end up in a loving dating relationship. However, their youthful courtship Bookmark this sitewith the other person comes to a halt when life-threating news of Melissa having cancer takes center stage. The diagnosis does nothing to deter Jeremey’s love on her behalf and the couple eventually marries shortly thereafter. Howsoever, they soon find themselves walking an excellent line between a life together and suffering by her Bookmark this siteillness; with Jeremy questioning his faith in music, himself, and with God himself.
✌ STREAMING MEDIA ✌
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream refers to the procedure of delivering or obtaining media this way.[clarification needed] Streaming identifies the delivery approach to the medium, rather than the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies especially 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, audio tracks CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the web. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of this content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, an activity in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user may use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The term “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as for example live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”.
This brings me around to discussing us, a film release of the Christian religio us faith-based . As almost customary, Hollywood usually generates two (maybe three) films of this variety movies within their yearly theatrical release lineup, with the releases usually being around spring us and / or fall respectfully. I didn’t hear much when this movie was initially aounced (probably got buried underneath all of the popular movies news on the newsfeed). My first actual glimpse of the movie was when the film’s movie trailer premiered, which looked somewhat interesting if you ask me. Yes, it looked the movie was goa be the typical “faith-based” vibe, but it was going to be directed by the Erwin Brothers, who directed I COULD Only Imagine (a film that I did so like). Plus, the trailer for I Still Believe premiered for quite some us, so I continued seeing it most of us when I visited my local cinema. You can sort of say that it was a bit “engrained in my brain”. Thus, I was a lttle bit keen on seeing it. Fortunately, I was able to see it before the COVID-9 outbreak closed the movie theaters down (saw it during its opening night), but, because of work scheduling, I haven’t had the us to do my review for it…. as yet. And what did I think of it? Well, it was pretty “meh”. While its heart is certainly in the proper place and quite sincere, us is a little too preachy and unbalanced within its narrative execution and character developments. The religious message is plainly there, but takes way too many detours and not focusing on certain aspects that weigh the feature’s presentation.
✌ TELEVISION SHOW AND HISTORY ✌
A tv set show (often simply Television show) is any content prBookmark this siteoduced for broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, cable, or internet and typically viewed on a television set set, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are usually placed between shows. Tv shows are most often scheduled well ahead of The War with Grandpa and appearance on electronic guides or other TV listings.
A television show may also be called a tv set program (British EnBookmark this siteglish: programme), especially if it lacks a narrative structure. A tv set Movies is The War with Grandpaually released in episodes that follow a narrative, and so are The War with Grandpaually split into seasons (The War with Grandpa and Canada) or Movies (UK) — yearly or semiaual sets of new episodes. A show with a restricted number of episodes could be called a miniMBookmark this siteovies, serial, or limited Movies. A one-The War with Grandpa show may be called a “special”. A television film (“made-for-TV movie” or “televisioBookmark this siten movie”) is a film that is initially broadcast on television set rather than released in theaters or direct-to-video.
Television shows may very well be Bookmark this sitehey are broadcast in real The War with Grandpa (live), be recorded on home video or an electronic video recorder for later viewing, or be looked at on demand via a set-top box or streameBookmark this sited on the internet.
The first television set shows were experimental, sporadic broadcasts viewable only within an extremely short range from the broadcast tower starting in the. Televised events such as the 2021 Summer OlyBookmark this sitempics in Germany, the 2021 coronation of King George VI in the UK, and David Sarnoff’s famoThe War with Grandpa introduction at the 9 New York World’s Fair in the The War with Grandpa spurreBookmark this sited a rise in the medium, but World War II put a halt to development until after the war. The 2021 World Movies inspired many Americans to buy their first tv set and in 2021, the favorite radio show Texaco Star Theater made the move and became the first weekly televised variety show, earning host Milton Berle the name “Mr Television” and demonstrating that the medium was a well balanced, modern form of entertainment which could attract advertisers. The firsBookmBookmark this siteark this sitet national live tv broadcast in the The War with Grandpa took place on September 1, 2021 when President Harry Truman’s speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in SAN FRAI Am… CO BAY AREA was transmitted over AT&T’s transcontinental cable and microwave radio relay system to broadcast stations in local markets.
✌ FINAL THOUGHTS ✌
The power of faith, love, and affinity for take center stage in Jeremy Camp’s life story in the movie I Still Believe. Directors Andrew and Jon Erwin (the Erwin Brothers) examine the life span and The War with Grandpas of Jeremy Camp’s life story; pin-pointing his early life along with his relationship Melissa Heing because they battle hardships and their enduring love for one another through difficult. While the movie’s intent and thematic message of a person’s faith through troublen is indeed palpable plus the likeable mThe War with Grandpaical performances, the film certainly strules to look for a cinematic footing in its execution, including a sluish pace, fragmented pieces, predicable plot beats, too preachy / cheesy dialogue moments, over utilized religion overtones, and mismanagement of many of its secondary /supporting characters. If you ask me, this movie was somewhere between okay and “meh”. It had been definitely a Christian faith-based movie endeavor Bookmark this web site (from begin to finish) and definitely had its moments, nonetheless it failed to resonate with me; struling to locate a proper balance in its undertaking. Personally, regardless of the story, it could’ve been better. My recommendation for this movie is an “iffy choice” at best as some should (nothing wrong with that), while others will not and dismiss it altogether. Whatever your stance on religion faith-based flicks, stands as more of a cautionary tale of sorts; demonstrating how a poignant and heartfelt story of real-life drama could be problematic when translating it to a cinematic endeavor. For me personally, I believe in Jeremy Camp’s story / message, but not so much the feature.
FIND US:
✔️ https://onstream.club/tv/91605-2-1/i-am.html
✔️ Instagram: https://instagram.com
✔️ Twitter: https://twitter.com
✔️ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com | https://medium.com/@iam-series-2-episode-1/i-am-series-2-episode-1-s1e01-full-episode-5b2947c59387 | ['I Am... - Series Episode', 'Full Episode'] | 2021-08-05 02:59:21.426000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Technology', 'Politics'] |
How much money do you need to start trading the financial markets | How much money do you need to start trading the financial markets
I get this kind of question popping out from every corner, especially from Amateur traders and even some mid-level traders. The truth is that you can trade the financial markets with as little as you can afford, because the minimum amount doesn’t guarantee that you will make money in the Financial markets.
The minimum amount to start forex trading depends on the Broker and most Brokers offer traders the opportunity to open a trading account with as low as $100 start up capital, while some brokers go further to offer traders the opportunity to open a micro/cent trading account with as low as $1. To answer the question “How much do you need to start trading the financial markets,” we have to consider the most important factor, which is the:
OBJECTIVE OF THE TRADER
Traders come with varying objectives; some traders come into the markets with the objective of making an extra income, some traders come into the markets with the objective to know how much professional forex traders make, some traders come with the objective of trading the financial markets fulltime i.e., quitting their day job. But no matter the objective of the trader, the goal is the same, which is making profits from trading the financial markets. The fact that most brokers offer low entry levels of about $100 or less, doesn’t mean traders should always take the bait, yes, I say bait because more often than not traders who start trading with low entry levels end up blowing up their trading capital and who are the beneficiaries of these blown accounts? You guessed right, the Brokers!!! What can be done for traders who can not afford high entry-level capital to start trading? There is only one solution, which is the eight (8) wonders of the world; compound interest.
Compound interest
If you are starting out Forex trading with very low capital, one of the skills that you must master in forex trading that is very vital to you is your ability to compound your interest over time. Compounding your interest is called the eight (8) wonder of the world for a reason that is self-explanatory in its meaning.
Compounding of interest in Financial/forex trading simply means making gains on gains and that is one sure way of growing your Capital to the stage where you can make reasonable forex trading profit per day.
Can you make profits at $100 or less?
When trading with a small capital i.e., $100 — $500, you should focus more on the percentage gain and not the monetary gain, the same principle applies to someone that is starting forex trading with $1 ( 100 cents ) for a cent account, and this is simply because percentage gain makes it easier for you to be profitable over time, and also, it helps a financial trader to easily grow his/her little capital into a very huge capital.
Back to the question above, yes, you can make profits with $100 startup capital and that is dependent on two (2) factors as well, which are; Patience and strategy. When we say patience, some traders might not understand what role patience plays in the financial markets, but patience simply means applying the principle of compound interest while starting out with a small trading account.
Sourcing for funds
One big mistake any trader can make (whether professional or amateur trader) is: Borrowing his startup trading capital. This is a very big blunder most traders make, and they fall into this trick maybe because they must have had some very successful trading months with a demo account or a colleague advised them on taking out a loan so that they can have a huge mouth-watering trading capital and start raking in the millions on daily, this is because there is an unpopular saying that the more the capital, the more profitable a trader would be. Every trader should have one thing at the back of his/her mind; The market is not your friend, and it is not designed to reward you based on what capital you invest. Hence startup financial trading with your spare money and grow it into a six-figure account by applying the compound interest rule.
Conclusion
No amount of trading capital will guarantee you a 100% profit margin in the Financial/forex market, but with consistency, discipline, good strategy, and the compound interest rule, any capital (from $100) will guarantee you some level of consistent profit in the market.
Note: there is no Holy grail in Forex trading, but every trader can be profitable consistently with the right tools and mindset. | https://medium.com/the-capital/how-much-do-you-need-to-start-trading-the-financial-markets-aa971f526849 | ['Bartholomew Anaeme'] | 2021-03-13 16:49:26.468000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Trading', 'Forex', 'Forex Trading', 'Stock Market'] |
The Boy From Sumatra | Henrique peered over his master’s shoulder at the island ahead of them. The Captain-General stood nearly motionless, if not for the gentle swaying of the deck. Occasionally, Henrique could hear voices from the other two ships over the sound of the sea splashing against La Trinidad’s hull. Otherwise it was a quiet morning.
They had been anchored nearly since first light, with the hope that the fires that had been spotted on the land ahead belonged to friendly “Indios,” who would seek them out. That was how his master’s people referred to his own people (or the people that he had come from). Not only to his people but also to the many many people they had met along the way, on both sides of the vast Pacific Sea. Henrique’s memory of his people was a distant one. But he knew that the “Indios” he had met in the past year were not his people. Not in their appearance, not in their voices, and not even in the shapes of their boats.
But now, in the Archipelago of Saint Lazarus (as master Magalhães had named it), each island they passed looked closer and closer to Henrique’s childhood memory. Each new “Indio” boat that sailed across their path looked more and more like something that might have been docked in Malacca’s port. Or so he imagined.
Finally, a call from the lookouts in the crow’s nest — a boat was approaching. Captain-General Magalhães leaned forward slightly, as if intensifying his gaze on the sea between himself and the island. On the captain-general’s other side, the cabin boy Cristóbal Rabelo, who had been resting his chin on the rail half-awake suddenly stood up and stifled a yawn. The knight Antonio shifted his weight anxiously a few steps away. Henrique could see the man looking at Magalhães as if to speak, but they both knew it was not a time for ask for the captain’s attention.
After several moments more, Henrique heard Magalhães inhaled deeply. Henrique looked out to sea again. And he saw the boat. A small one. Antonio could be heard muttering the word, “boloto” which the previous islanders they’d met had called their small boats. It did look similar.
“Eight. Eight Indios aboard?” Magalhães said aloud, without shifting his gaze.
“Eight,” Antonio and the officers on the upper deck muttered in agreement.
Henrique stepped up alongside his master to the rail to get a closer look at those approaching. He now found his own gaze locked on the strangers. They wore plain-colored cloth. They carried spears but Henrique could see baskets and nets among them too. Fishermen, or lowly warriors? He couldn’t tell.
They began to slow down. They were well within earshot now, and Henrique could see their faces clearly enough — could return their gaze.
Henrique broke the silence by shouting the words, “Selamat Pagi!”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Master Magalhães turned his head towards him. He felt the entire crew of La Trinidad do the same. He raised his right hand at the eight men approaching, keeping his gaze on them. Henrique searched his mind for any memory of the words he had known as a teenager, a decade ago, before the man from Portugal standing beside him took him to the other side of the world and promised they’d return one day.
Henrique kept speaking to the eight strangers. Addressing them as politely as he could, inviting them to welcome his master’s presence in the hope of good trade and friendship. He hoped he was getting the words right. The Captain-General and the crew turned their attention back to the baluto riders, but they still made no response.
The baluto boat pulled up alongside at a short distance. Finally one among them spoke up,
“Selamat pagi!”
Henrique repeated the phrase again with a smile. Magalhães gave some order to a crewmember that Henrique didn’t hear and a net was lowered over the side for the strangers to climb aboard.
Henrique did his best to invite them aboard using the Malay tongue. He promised that his master would have valuable gifts and kind hospitality. The Captain-General looked back and forth between Henrique and the strangers anxiously, and Henrique explained softly that he had just offered them gifts.
Captain-General Magalhães opened a small chest at his feet and pulled out a red cap. He lifted it in his left hand for the strangers to see and waved at them with his right, saying in his language, “gifts for you!” He pulled more items from the chest, his items from Spain — a glass mirror, a comb, a steel knife.
Seeing that the baluto riders still sat motionless, Magalhães gave more orders to his crew. Henrique hardly listened, still watching the strangers and digging in his mind for any other Malay words that he could use.
Soon, a crewmember was placing the gifts Magalhães had shown in a sack and tying it neatly to a broad plank of wood. He and another crewmember carefully floated the plank on the seawater between La Trinidad and the baluto and pushed it towards the others with poles.
The baluto riders took it up and looked more closely at the items, their expressions finally turning to curiosity rather than anxiety or contempt, whichever it had been.
The one who had spoke before made eye contact with Henrique again. He spoke loudly in Malay, but too quickly for Henrique to catch every word. But somewhere in there was the word “raya.” What the knight Antonio and the Captain-General would call a “king” of “Indios.”
Before Henrique could respond or ask more, the stranger had nodded curtly and raised a hand in farewell as the others paddled the boat around to turn back the way they had come.
As he watched the baluto leave, Henrique heard the knight’s voice,
“Are they going to tell their raya?”
Before Henrique could turn to the knight, master Magalhães was already standing squarely before him, with an expectant look on his face.
“Will they tell their king?” he asked.
“Yes, Captain-General. They are going to tell their king. They will come here today to meet you…”
Magalhães let out a long breath of relief and turned away, looking out to the island again. Antonio stepped up alongside the man and began saying something about their boat and their style of dress in comparison to the ones from Suluan.
Henrique dutifully excused himself from his master’s sight and stepped to the rail at the stern of the ship. One of the voices he had just heard rang in his ears. An echo from a decade into the past. A voice from a world away. From right here. The voice of a boy who prayed the same prayers his mother and father prayed. The voice of a boy whose name was not Henrique. He breathed in the island air deeply. When he let it out, the boy from Sumatra felt tears rolling down a man’s face… | https://medium.com/@josephcmw/the-boy-from-sumatra-8d738ffd29f2 | ['Joseph Cmw'] | 2021-09-11 19:23:43.208000+00:00 | ['History', 'Philippines', 'Asian Representation', 'Magellan', 'Historical Fiction'] |
This glorious 65-inch 4K Roku TV is a jaw-dropping $400 today | The Super Bowl is coming, and if you plan to watch the big game you're going to need a bigger screen. Best Buy has you covered today with a Westinghouse 65-inch 4K Roku smart TV for a measly $400Remove non-product link—$200 off the MSRP and one of the best prices you'll ever see.
The TV itself features 4K resolution, as well as HDR 10. We wouldn't call that true HDR as this TV doesn't get quite bright enough to qualify, but you'll certainly notice the improved picture over similarly sized sets without it. With Roku on board, you have access to all your favorite streaming services including Apple TV, HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Starz, and more. This TV also works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant for voice control, as well as integrating with other smart home devices.
For ports, it has three HDMI one of which has HDCP 2.2, as well as one USB 2.0 for thumb drives and other storage devices. It's also packing one digital optical audio out and analog audio out. For connectivity, you get Wi-Fi and Ethernet, but no Bluetooth.
Add it all up and you've got one heck of a bargain for just $400. So go grab one and get read to watch the big game in style.
[Today's deal: Westinghouse 65-inch 4K Roku smart TV for $400 at Best BuyRemove non-product link]
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@karen54089664/this-glorious-65-inch-4k-roku-tv-is-a-jaw-dropping-400-today-d9d9f78e7ad0 | [] | 2021-01-27 11:44:45.455000+00:00 | ['Electronics', 'Security Cameras', 'Connected Home', 'Consumer Electronics'] |
5 Sites for Journalists to Learn How to Code | With the growing use of data journalism in Arab newsrooms there is a necessity to tell the press the story in an interactive way to ensure that the reader microcontroller drawing context of the story and make it interacts more with the data, which requires the press to deal with Coded Albermjbh other than text, images and video clips to build a press story interactive.
For this purpose may cooperate journalist with the software developer in the Press Foundation, which works to their advantage to work together to produce a press story, or by learning to do this through a number of sites that offer ready-Coded for more graphic formats to use and which are easily adapted to make it suitable for the content of any story press, which what makes journalistic story takes half the time to provide the parts can be built upon.
The following are the top five sites Coded software allows a quick preparation, you can easily be discovered by embedding tags Albermajh and make some minor adjustments:
1- Google Developers
The site provides all the different types of forms such as drawing graphs and graph linear drawing circuit diagrams and columns, as well as the multiple world map of BB, as well as maps tree. The site does not require high skill of the press to deal with the software code where it was easy to copy and modify the data inside of the changes automatically figure chosen according to data by the press by placing them in compiled code, and in less than a few minutes can press out the story of journalist interactive, here are interactive for Exporting Countries Map fighters in the organization of the Islamic state, and you set up using maps Available on-site.
2- d3plus
Location depends on open source codes, which the programmers designed the initial version and publish them for everyone to develop and work to improve it, and here the journalists could get a ready-made tags and add data to the press Baksham code. The site being put largest of shapes and graphs of the number, plus they are characterised with high quality in design, making it more attractive to the reader.
3- d3.js
The site contains more than 250 software code fast preparation, divided according to the different categories most notable is the basic graphic formats animation and graphics in addition to the innovative visual models to display the data and Mgarantha each other. You can also use the site Kmthelh from previous sites by copying the software code to your website and then work to modify the data in it. But you could also use the developer of the software if you wish to modify the spaces and colors, what distinguishes the site is Onha Atdmanan a large number of models and visual perceptions that address data and make the relationship between the data in an easy and graphics, here an interactive map has been implemented using the codes available on site.
4- site datavisualization.ch
The site does not work according to the usual way in which it operates previous sites which displays graphs and Coded their own, while the site displays journalistic projects that have been Anjazha by software developers and explains how to implement, it also provides the possibility to communicate with the press entrepreneurs to obtain a copy of the compiled code own and then work on the modified and developed to correspond with other press story.
5- OpenProcessing
This site comes in the last list in terms of the multiplicity of forms and ease of use, as it does not offer a lot of free models, and provides updated monthly subscription service in return for providing the largest number of ready-made tags.
Despite the fact that the previous five sites were not displayed is the leading provider of software Coded noodles, where preceded Manyeyes site and site refuse but they were not able to evolve and keep pace shift that occurred in the data processing industry. | https://medium.com/info-times/5-sites-for-journalists-to-learn-how-to-code-ea326bd1d30 | ['Amr Eleraqi'] | 2016-12-19 20:57:10.486000+00:00 | ['Infotimes Blog', 'Design', 'Data Visualization'] |
Buying Bitcoin: The complete guide | Have you heard of Bitcoin yet? Are you curious? Have you often thought that you would like have and use bitcoins? Did you get stuck trying to figure out how to get your hands on bitcoins. Did it seem too hard and complicated? Don’t worry. We’ve prepared a guide to help you to buy bitcoins.
The most common method to acquire Bitcoins is to buy them. Especially if you want to acquire a large amount of bitcoins fast, just head over to any of the many marketplacesor exchanges. There are platforms in just about every country where you can exchange your currency for bitcoins. Just take a look at our list of exchanges, marketplaces, and trading platforms for your currency.
Lists of Exchanges and Marketplaces for important currencies
You can exchange nearly every important currency against Bitcoin. Here we present a list of exchanges for some currencies:
US Dollar (USD):
Coinbase, BitStamp, Kraken
Euro (Euro):
Bitcoin.de, Kraken, Bitstamp, Bison
Japanese Yen (JPY):
BitFlyer, CoinCheck
British Pound (GBP):
CoinFloor, Bittylicious
Polish Złoty (PLN):
BitMarket.net, BitBay.net
South Korean Wen (KRW):
Korbit, Bithumb, UPbit
Indonesian Rupiah (IDR):
Indodax
Brasilian Real (BRL):
Mercado Bitcoin, Negocie Coins
Australian Dollar (AUD):
ACX.io, Independent Reserve, BTCmarkets.net
Canadian Dollar (CAD):
Kraken
Of course, there are many other stock exchanges, marketplaces and exchange offices. You can find some overviews here:
Bitcoin
Bitcoincharts
Buybitcoinworldwide
If your local currency is not represented on exchanges, you can often use peer-2-peer platforms like LocalBitcoins, PaxFul or HodlHodl.
How to buy Bitcoin on Exchanges and Marketplaces
In general, you have to register on a platform in order to be able to buy bitcoins. This normally requires some kind of identity verification. For smaller amounts, showing your bank account is usually enough; for larger amounts, you often have to verify your identity through a video service or by uploading identification documents. These processes have now been standardized, so they generally only take a few minutes.
When done so, you can buy Bitcoins to a fixed price. On exchanges this is usually called “market order”. To be able to buy Bitcoins, you first need to transfer money to the bank account of the exchange. On marketplaces you can accept the offer of other users, usually by clicking on it. In most cases you pay them directly via bank transfer or other transfers.
If you are not in a hurry, you can put your own offer on exchanges and marketplaces. To do so you determine a price and an amount of Bitcoins to buy. Then you wait until someone accepts your offer. On exchanges this is usually called “limit order”.
Bitcoin-ATMs and Gift Cards
In addition to internet platforms, you can also purchase bitcoins through bitcoin ATMs. These normally operate by depositing cash, and don’t involve identity checks or waiting times. There are maps that show the distribution of bitcoins ATMs; in Switzerland, you can even buy bitcoins at ATMs in local train stations.
CoinATMRadar
In some countries — like Austria and France — you can also purchase bitcoins at kiosksthat sell bitcoin vouchers. In Liechtenstein you additionally have the option of purchasing bitcoins directly from local post offices.
BitBucks
Yet, we from BitBucks didn’t create our wallet to store your savings in form of bitcoins. It’s more about a simple and secure payment tool, for the quickest and easiest way to pay with Bitcoin. Download our simulation app on iOS now and help us bringing BitBucks into the life of everybody! | https://medium.com/@bit_bucks/buying-bitcoin-the-complete-guide-1a4ddb93e54f | ['Bitbucks Wallet', 'Pay With Bitcoin'] | 2019-08-06 11:30:01.564000+00:00 | ['Exchange', 'Marketplaces', 'Payments', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin'] |
Explaining AlexNet Convolutional Neural Network | Overfitting Prevention
Having tackled normalization and pooling AlexNet was faced with a huge overfitting challenge. Their 60-million parameter model was bound to overfit. They needed to come up with an overfitting prevention strategy that could work at this scale.
Whenever a system has huge number of parameters, it becomes prone to overfitting.
Overfitting — Given a question that you’ve already seen you can answer perfectly but you’ll perform poorly on unseen questions.
They employed two methods to battle overfitting
Data Augmentation
Dropout
Data Augmentation
Data augmentation is increasing the size of your dataset by creating transforms of each image in your dataset. These transforms can be simple scaling of size or reflection or rotation.
See how no. 6 is rotated in various directions Source
These schemes led to an error reduction of 1% in their top-1 error metric. By augmenting the data you not only increase the dataset but the model tries to become rotation invariant, color invariant etc. and prevents overfitting
Dropout
The second technique that AlexNet used to avoid overfitting was dropout. It consists of setting to zero the output of each hidden neuron with probability 0.5. The neurons which are “dropped out” in this way do not contribute to the forward pass and do not participate in back- propagation. So every time an input is presented, the neural network samples a different architecture.
This new-architecture-everytime is akin to using multiple architectures without expending additional resources. The model, therefore, forced to learn more robust features. | https://medium.com/x8-the-ai-community/explaining-alexnet-convolutional-neural-network-854df45613aa | ['Rishi Sidhu'] | 2019-06-07 14:40:48.833000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Technology', 'Neural Networks', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
How a 6 Year Old Learned Her Father to Nourish His Inner Child | How a 6 Year Old Learned Her Father to Nourish His Inner Child
Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash | Logo by Today I Lived
“Dad!” The little girl yelled. “Will come and play hide and seek with me?” She ran towards her dad and stopped right in front of him. Waiting for him to put down the paper. She didn’t get a response. “Dad?” She asked again.
“I don’t want to. Go on and find some friends to play with. Don’t you have any new friends around here?” Her dad said. They were on a holiday. Visiting the beautiful country of Italy. Although the girl had made loads of friends, all around the campsite, she now wanted to play with her dad.
The girl stayed. Just looking at her dad. “Why aren’t you going away?” Her dad had a grumpy voice. For a small second, he puts down the paper, looks at the girl, and then continues to read. “Daddy? Can I read the paper with you?” The little girl asks.
“No you can’t this is grown-up stuff. Besides you won’t like it either.” Her dad replied stubbornly. The girl was sad. “Do you like reading the paper dad?” She asked.
“No I don’t, but it keeps me up to date with the world, which is important. Now leave me alone. I want to read.” Her dad said. The girl didn’t care. “But dad why would you read the newspaper if you don’t even like reading it?” She asked. Her dad sighs. The girl knew he wanted her to leave. “Dad?” She asked one final time. “Why would you do anything that you don’t like doing?” The little girl asked.
Anyone’s heart would have melted seeing the effort that this little girl put into this. Trying to get her dad to play hide and seek was hard work for the little girl. | https://byrslf.co/how-a-6-year-old-learned-her-father-to-nourish-his-inner-child-ba3493059ea0 | ['Daan Uijterwaal'] | 2021-09-12 14:26:52.471000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Beyourself', 'Happiness', 'Spirituality', 'Spiritual Growth'] |
Getting Back on Track with Email After a Vacation | Photo by chen zo on Unsplash
This is the last email in our 3 part series about email management. (If you haven’t read part 1 or part 2 yet, I’d suggest you do!)
You know that feeling. You’ve just been on the beach for a week. You’ve actually disconnected. You finally had time to read that novel you’ve been meaning to read all year. You’re relaxed. You’re happy. You get back to the office excited to tell everyone your vacation stories; maybe you’ve even brought back some treats to share. You sit down at your desk for the first time in a week and you are INUNDATED with email. It feels incredibly overwhelming and you’ve got a meeting in 30 minutes. You’ve gone from elated to deflated in a matter of seconds.
Today I want to talk about how to avoid that feeling, and that situation. So, let’s talk about how we deal with email after a vacation. With a little extra prep, by fostering a little goodwill and setting the right expectations, we can get back on track, and feel in control, pretty quickly.
Let me show you how:
A Couple of Weeks Before Your Vacation
Block off the last day (or afternoon) before your vacation on your work calendar as a prep day so that no one can schedule a meeting.
Use this time to wrap up all loose ends.
Provide updates to others on your team, document where all your current projects are and share that info with your manager and relevant coworkers.
Make sure that your colleagues have all the info they need so that they won’t feel compelled to reach out to you on vacation in the first place.
Block off the first day you’ll be back on your work calendar so that no one can schedule meetings with you on that day.
The Day Before Your Vacation
Send out an email to your manager and relevant colleagues documenting the status of all of your projects.
Thank your team in advance for handling anything urgent while you’re away and let them know to ask you any questions they have before the end of the day.
Set up your “Out of Office” auto-reply
Reference the contact info for the coworker(s) who will be covering for you.
Indicate that you will respond to emails “the week of MM/DD” to give yourself a little buffer, and to properly set expectations.
When You Return from Vacation
Process all of your email (you are aiming for inbox 0 by the end of your first day back; remember? that day that you’ve blocked off already so that no one can schedule a meeting with you and you have time to get caught up).
Respond as necessary. (You will probably find that most things have been dealt with already by the time you return, and you can just read the thread to make sure you’re up to date.)
Delete all junk and unsubscribe from any mailing lists you don’t want to be on. (This can be a great time to see how much junk you are actually getting, and put a stop to it.)
Add any action items that arise out of email to your task list.
Have a chat with the colleague who was covering for you to get an update on any developments.
Let the know team know you are back and thank them for covering for you.
Give yourself a pat on the back for being completely caught up on your first day back instead of scrambling and stressing all week.
You are going to have a lot of email upon your return; no ifs, ands or buts about it. So, instead of thinking you’ll be able to handle it along with your normal workload, set yourself up for success and keep the good vacation vibes flowing by actually dedicating time in advance to deal with what you know is coming. | https://medium.com/@alexis-haselberger/getting-back-on-track-with-email-after-a-vacation-9595ac076c3d | ['Alexis Haselberger'] | 2019-08-02 17:23:15.131000+00:00 | ['Vacation', 'Planning', 'Email', 'Inbox Zero', 'Productivity'] |
Cut from Crooked Curves | My truth is cut from the crooked curves
little creek chased by little country road
I can see the ghost of my youth
in the falling darkness of a fresh Fall evening
I was born of the rocks and the water that carried them
raised on the rolling hills, darting in between trees
the wild thorns of thirsty roses have tasted my blood
and welcomed me as one with their wildness
Here in between the collision of the seasons
I have grown into the patches of wind
that fall down and rush through the holler
here I am rooted to a place that slips in and out of time
I have grown from the summer storm to the February freezes
I can see the ghost of my youth
fed by all these roots I have planted and were planted before me
my truth is cut from the crooked curves | https://medium.com/literally-literary/cut-from-crooked-curves-8b5ce085285b | ['Gregory D. Welch'] | 2020-09-28 05:33:10.187000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Poetry', 'Poems On Medium', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poem'] |
The second day of Mr. Dragon writing | The second day of Mr. Dragon writing
Because there is nothing at all, what on earth can provoke dust? I am Mr. Dragon. I mainly share between two people or parties trust.
I am relatively strange. Sometimes, I do not know why I trust a person. But more often than suspect a person’s malicious motive. I do not know why that is too.
The queer trust is likely to suffer losses in theory. But maybe it is a fortune cause. It has not yet caused great loss, up to now. Of course, I also try to change the bad habit.
In most cases, an ordinary being wants to get a thing done. He needs these three things: solid determination, plenty of patience and enough confidence.
I browse a youtuber’s job vacancy, which makes me a little sad. But I still take heart of grace in the end, and send it to my bio. The process lets me realize studying English is relatively easy. After all, no comparison, no harm. But, what is laughable is that I write an article that is still painful for me.
Being unable to read English causes a lot of pain yet. Whatever it takes, this time I must hold on, hold on, hold on, defeat the English! I import 1h, inpur short essays of 300 words or more.
Oh, up to now, only write 200 words, the rest of 100 words should write what? The dormitory’s power is out. The university in my country will have a blackout at 23:00 on non-holidays. And my computer battery life is poor, so I probably only have half an hour to code the remaining 60 words. In addition, I published articles. The reading amount was 0 as of one hour ago. This undoubtedly made me more upset.
Oh, I plan to publish it on reddit. Oh, I am 22 words short of 300. It’s funny to think about it. After all, I used to have difficulty sharing 300 Chinese words every day.
About good vision, I hard studying English the reason why is love.
Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/@minerva-dragon/the-second-day-of-mr-dragon-writing-405de66d3e13 | [] | 2021-05-05 15:19:52.836000+00:00 | ['Pain', 'Sad'] |
Isn’t This the World We Want? | Norman Rockwell was an illustrator in the previous century who, for over fifty years, created covers for The Saturday Evening Post magazine. While he painted Presidential portraits and engaged with hot-topic social and cultural issues such as the Second World War and the civil rights movement in the 60s, he is best known for capturing images of a simpler, if overly sentimentalized time when all seemed right with the world.
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
Of course, all wasn’t right with the world. Not even close. My black friends certainly do not look back upon the 50s with wistful nostalgia. But we deeply desire Rockwell’s world of peace on earth. Even if the perfect world didn’t really exist then, we long for it now. I haven’t met anyone who enjoys the economic stress, environmental catastrophes, social unrest, racial tensions, and pandemic angst we have lived and breathed over the past year.
Where do we look for the world we want? Not to Rockwell. Not the 40s or the 30s. We have to go all the way back to the early chapters of Genesis. In Eden, humanity experienced perfect peace. No racism. No violence. No theft. No financial crises, no health problems, no marital conflicts. And no insurance premiums. No stress. No anxiety. No worries.
Perfect peace.
Then, in one fell swoop with the great rebellion we call “the fall,” paradise was lost. In the garden, the first humans committed high treason against the King by believing and acting upon the lies of the enemy.
Living Under the Curse
Since that time, if perfect peace has been the longing of every human heart, it has been equally elusive. Like trying to catch the fog in your hands. The curse upon humanity now covers the globe, infecting every family unit, every political structure, every business, school, civic organization, non-profit, and church family. Even creation itself has suffered the effects of the curse.
But there is hope because at the very same time paradise was lost, a promise was made. The promise focused on a descendant of Eve who would undo the curse.
That promise continued through Adam’s family line, from Seth down to Noah, Adam’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandson. From Noah, the promise was carried through the family line of his son, Shem down to his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandson, Abraham. From Abraham, it passed through Isaac and Jacob and then to Judah. Eventually, “the Messianic line” would pass through a shepherd-king named David. Many more generations later, the promise of God to undo the curse would come to fulfillment in the city of David, where, the long-awaited descendant of Eve would be born.
His name would be Jesus.
Placing his birth in history, along with people, places, and dates, Luke 2 records the arrival of the newborn King, not upon a throne but in a manger, which was a simple, wooden feeding trough from which barn animals would eat hay.
At the realization of the Messianic promise being fulfilled in this child, an angel announced to a group of shepherds outside of Jerusalem that the Christ had been born. It was a message that was heralded as good news for a cursed world — news that would ripple through history, bringing great joy for those longing for liberation from the curse.
The Angels Sing
On the heels of the words “great joy” being spoken into the night sky, a host of angelic beings, likely thousands upon thousands, appeared to sing in a magisterial chorus, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to those on whom his favor rests.”
In this song, the angels sing of three things.
First, They Sing of Glory.
Glory is one of those words that we know is important but have a hard time defining what it means. In Hebrew, the word for glory is kabod, and means “weighty, substantive, and abundant.” Synonyms for glory in English include grandeur, greatness, and splendor. We speak of a glorious sunset that creates a sense of awe and wonder. We describe a championship victory as glorious as the crowd cheers and confetti falls.
The angels ascribe glory, praise, honor, and acclaim to God in the highest heaven because of the incarnation of God as a human being. The long-awaited promise that has traversed thousands of years was being fulfilled!
Up to this point, no event in human history carried more weight, more significance than what was taking place in Bethlehem, just six miles south of Jerusalem.
It had been so long. Over four-hundred years since God’s people had received any prophetic word from the LORD. Had he forgotten? Was it really true, anyway? Or was the promise an empty religious pipe dream?
No, he had not forgotten. It was true. The dream was alive — literally alive — with flesh and blood, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. The glory of this moment and what it represented would echo the praises of God to the highest heaven as the angels sang at the top of their voices, “Glory to God in the highest!”
Second, They Sing of Peace.
But not just peace in heaven. They sing of peace on earth! Peace in our world, on this side of the garden. Now.
Whether we are able to articulate it or not, the peace we crave the most is not just a lower degree of financial stress or worry about whether or not we’ll get the job. We want peace with God. We most deeply desire forgiveness. Not cheap forgiveness that wears of by Wednesday, but real, lasting, substantive — glorious — forgiveness. The kind that lasts. The forgiveness that never wears off and will not ever, ever reveal the former stains of our sin.
This is the kind of forgiveness for which Jesus was born to secure.
In Matthew 1:21, the same angel who appeared to the shepherds in Luke 2 told Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, “[Mary] will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
The apostle Paul wrote to his pastoral disciple, Timothy, “ Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy 1:15)
The same apostle would encourage the Roman believers, saying, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1–2)
It is experiencing that kind of peace — peace with God — that influences every other kind of peace. When we know that we have a God who has loved us unto death, we are able to rest through the storms just like Jesus slept on the wave-tossed boat on the Sea of Galilee.
“Peace isn’t the absence of storms. It is the ability to rest in the storms.”
Finally, They Sing of Favor.
You may have noticed that the final line of the angels’ song has been translated in different ways.
KJV, “peace on earth, goodwill toward men.”
ESV, “peace on earth among those with whom he is pleased!”
NIV, “peace on earth to those on whom his favor rests.”
Each of these English translations is trying to adequately communicate the meaning of the Greek word, eudokia.
Eudokia is formed with two Greek words, one meaning “good” and the other meaning “to think or feel a certain way about something or someone.” When we put these two words together, we get the idea of “looking upon someone favorably.”
But why would God look favorably upon a sinner? Religion says that God looks favorably on those who are good. But the gospel tells us that God looks favorably upon sinners not because of the good they have done but because of the grace they have received.
The only way for God to think well of a sinner is because the baby who was laid a manger would be nailed upon a cross to break the curse of guilt by serving our sentence of death. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Christ redeemed [set us free] us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” (Galatians 3:13)
In Jesus, our chains of guilt are broken. Our sentence of death is revoked. And the curse is undone. On a cross, the Prince of Peace became the object of wrath so that the favor of the Father could rest upon us.
An Ancient Promise
The prophet who called the coming Messiah the Prince of Peace was Isaiah, who is the same prophet who calls us to believe and embrace an ancient promise, which says of the LORD, “You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!” (Isaiah 23:6, NLT)
That is the simple two-fold application for each of us in view of the angels’ song.
First, trust that you are forgiven and that you are his. Believe that when he sees you, he is well-pleased. His favor rests on you. Not because of your own righteousness but because of the gift-righteousness of Jesus in which you now are clothed.
Believe that when he sees you, he is well-pleased. His favor rests on you. Not because of your own righteousness but because of the gift-righteousness of Jesus in which you now are clothed. Second, fix your thoughts on him. As a beloved child of the Father, you may be confident that is working all things for your ultimate good as his redemptive story of grace unfolds — as hard as that story may be at times. We remember that story was excruciatingly painful for Jesus. Be encouraged that the Christ who suffered for us, died and rose is the sovereign Lord who reigns right now.
And so, like the Jews of old, we wait patiently and confidently — but not for the inauguration of the Kingdom in the first coming of the King. We wait for the return of the King and the consummation of his Kingdom when he makes all new things, where “He will wipe every tear and there will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain…” (Revelation 21:4)
Until then, we sing with the angels.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new-born King!
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled.”
Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’ angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem.” | https://medium.com/the-mustard-seed/isnt-this-the-world-we-want-fd6682100a61 | ['Mckay Caston'] | 2020-12-18 14:18:06.712000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Gospel', 'Bible', 'Christianity', 'Grace'] |
How Much Does It Cost To Hire An App Developer In 2021? | We have to face it.
There is no escaping from mobile applications. Whether you’re a large corporation, a small-medium enterprise, a startup, or a one-person company, you have got to be mobile! You need to have an online presence if you are willing to survive and make it big in this competitive digital marketplace. Once Bill Gates said;
Image Source: AZ Questes
It shows the importance of having an online presence or mobile apps.
There is no surprise that the mobile application industry is growing like anything, as there are 3.5 billion smartphone users and are expected to reach 3.8 billion in the year 2021.
Image Source: Statista
If we look at the app downloads per year, it has been continuously increasing for both Google play store and iOS app store.
Image Source: ThinkMobiles
As per the study of Emarketer, most people spend more time with mobile internet with 88% of that time within apps.
The above-stated statics about mobile apps usage and download is enough to prove that mobile apps are the future of digital businesses. And we are seeing that many businesses have realized this and are looking to hire mobile app developers for app development.
And if you are one of those businesses who have made mind to develop a mobile app, you might be bombarded with a lot of questions like;
How much does app development cost?
How to hire mobile app developers?
How to find an app developer?
How much does it cost to hire app developer? And the list goes on.
Don’t worry, my friend! You will get the answers to all of your questions. Let’s begin!
How much does it cost to hire an app developer? The cost of developers can vary on various factors such as;
Location of the App Developer
Type of App Development
Mobile App platform
The complexity of App Project
Expertise and Experience
To find the answer to your question, “how much does it cost to hire an app developer?” let’s dig deep.
When you are planning to hire a programmer to make an app, there are two things that matter; the rates of developers and obviously your budget. You would be looking for a mobile application developer with expert skills and experience whether you want to build your app from scratch or want to upgrade the existing application.
Now let’s look at the factors that affect the cost to hire an app developer;
Location of the App Developer
One of the major factors affecting the cost is the location of the developers. The reason is that developers in different locations have different hourly rates. That’s why the app developers’ location plays a critical role.
Let’s see the cost of hiring an app developer in various locations;
Cost to hire app developers in India;
iOS app development: $18-$40 per hour
Android app development: $20-$35 an hour
Cost to hire app developers in Ukraine
iOS developer: $30 per hour
Android developer: $60 per hour
Cost to hire app developers in Russia
iOS developer: $50 per hour
Android developer: $60 per hour
Cost to hire app developers in Australia
iOS developer: $150/hour
Android developer: $200/ hour
Cost to hire app developers in the USA
Android developers: $120-$170/hour
iOS developers: $100-$150/hour
Now you would understand why many businesses hire developers in India as you have understood the different locations’ hourly rates for hiring app developers. But let me tell you that cost is not the only factor behind that. There are a number of other reasons that make India a perfect location to hire remote developers.
2. Type of Mobile App Development
Your mobile app development cost also varies based n the type of mobile app. If you are planning to hire an iOS App developer or an android developer, the cost can fluctuate for a specific type of application you want to build. Let’s take a look at the types of applications;
Image Source: ThinkMobiles
Let’s take a look at the detailed cost evaluation before you decide that weather these rates are low or high for a specific type of mobile app.
With this table, we can see one thing clear is that you can hire android developers at higher rates than iOS developers. Well, it is because the iOS platform is more advanced and polished, whereas there are many things to be taken care of while developing for the Android platform.
3. App Development Complexity
Your app development project timeline can vary from weeks to months and sometimes even years based on your app development idea, design, functionalities, features, and integrations of the application.
When you identify the requirements of your mobile app, it will be easy for you to understand the tech stack requirements, development methods, and phase and the required amount of time to complete the project. When you explain to developers a simple and basic requirements, your app development duration will get reduced.
4. Mobile App Development Platform
When you have decided to build an application, you need to think about which platform you want to develop app iOS, Android, Hybrid, or Cross-platform? The cost to hire a developer for your application development will vary based on the choice of your operating platform. Here’s how.
Suppose you want to develop a native app either on Android or iOS, you need to hire iOS developer or Android developers who can create a codebase for the particular platform. Now, building a native application for multiple platforms leads to an increase in development cost and time.
Now, let’s see in a different scenario. If you want to build an application for multiple platforms, you can go for a cross-platform or Hybrid app. Hence, it will take less time and cost because of a single codebase.
Let’s take a look at the average prices of iOS/Android developer;
Image Source: GoodFirms
5. Hire Mobile App Developers As Per Experience
There are a number of programming languages, frameworks, and technologies that are available for developing mobile apps. Still, the success of your application depends on how developers utilize for customizing the feel and look of the application. Developers having different expertise and experience in different technologies handle the projects differently, and thus their hiring cost varies accordingly.
Conclusion
Hiring app developers for your mobile application is never challenging if you know what you want from developers, the required skill set, and the project budget for turning your app idea into reality. | https://medium.com/quick-code/how-much-does-it-cost-to-hire-an-app-developer-in-2020-21-82db25257d4c | ['Bharti Purohit'] | 2021-01-01 05:22:09.043000+00:00 | ['App Development', 'Mobile App', 'Hire Developers', 'Mobile App Development'] |
[.NET Core] Using CQRS pattern with MediatR [Part 1] | This post series will introduce to you the CQRS design pattern, and how to implement this pattern in a real world example with MediatR at .NET Core
Next Part
[.NET Core] Using CQRS pattern with MediatR [Part 2]
Context and problem
In traditional architectures, the same data model is used to query and update a database. That’s simple and works well for basic CRUD operations. In more complex applications, however, this approach can become unwieldy. For example, on the read side, the application may perform many different queries, returning data transfer objects (DTOs) with different shapes. Object mapping can become complicated. On the write side, the model may implement complex validation and business logic. As a result, you can end up with an overly complex model that does too much.
Read and write workloads are often asymmetrical, with very different performance and scale requirements.
The traditional architecture
There is often a mismatch between the read and write representations of the data, such as additional columns or properties that must be updated correctly even though they aren’t required as part of an operation.
Data contention can occur when operations are performed in parallel on the same set of data.
The traditional approach can have a negative effect on performance due to the load on the data store and data access layer, and the complexity of queries required to retrieve information.
Managing security and permissions can become complex because each entity is subject to both read and write operations, which might expose data in the wrong context.
Solution
CQRS addresses separate reads and writes into separate models, using commands to update data, and queries to read data.
Commands should be task-based, rather than data-centric. (“Book hotel room,” not “set ReservationStatus to Reserved.”) Commands may be placed on a queue for asynchronous processing, rather than being processed synchronously.
Queries never modify the database. A query returns a DTO that does not encapsulate any domain knowledge.
The models can then be isolated, as shown in the following diagram, although that’s not an absolute requirement.
The CQRS basic architecture
MediatR is an open source implementation of the mediator pattern that doesn’t try to do too much and performs no magic. It allows you to compose messages, create and listen for events using synchronous or asynchronous patterns. It helps to reduce coupling and isolate the concerns of requesting the work to be done and creating the handler that dispatches the work.
Thin Controllers
In the traditional Controllers, you usually implement almost business logic flow in like as Validation, Mapping Objects, Savings Object, or Get Object, Return HTTP status code of request and the data response if have. However, if you will loop almost these steps again in every controller, your controller will get more fat. And who will maintain these controllers like this, I believe you will want to throw it away because too hard to see, let’s see these pseudo codes:
We can replace by these simple pseudo code like this:
CQS
This approach allows separate read and write operations. But for commands and queries, we need some handlers. And this is exactly where we can apply MediatR library.
As I mentioned before, this library is a simple implementation of MediatR pattern. This pattern allows implementing commands/queries and handlers loosely coupled.
Example MediatR
For example, I would like to implement code to get a user’s detail
Request
When you start using MediatR library, the first thing you need to define is request. Requests describe your commands and queries behavior.
The GetUserDetailQuery class describes a query that requires Id and returns the User data transfer object. All requests should implement IRequest interface. This interface is a contract which will be used by the handler to process request.
Handler:
When a request is created, you will need a handler to solve your request:
All handlers should implement IRequestHandler interface. This interface depends on two parameters. First — request, second — response. More details about requests and handlers you can find here.
Controller
So, we have our query and handler, but how to use them?
All you need is to define controller, inject mediator and send the query. That’s all.
In the first part, I have introduced the basic of CQRS architecture and how to implement it with MediatR.
In the next part, I will show you how to implement a real-world example.
The source code for the next part already done and published in Github: | https://medium.com/@ducmeit/net-core-using-cqrs-pattern-with-mediatr-part-1-55557e90931b | ['Duc Ho'] | 2019-08-20 11:10:27.561000+00:00 | ['Software Architecture', 'Cqrs', 'Mediatr', 'Design Patterns', 'Aspnetcore'] |
Surface Safety Done Right | It All Starts With a Plan
Since runway safety spans several different operational domains, the FAA’s effort takes on a collaborative approach to ensure all the key players have a say in the decision-making process. There are three main pillars of support: the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO), the Office of Airports (ARP), and the Flight Standards Service (FS). Each of these three, along with a supporting cast of internal and industry stakeholders, plays a distinct role in how surface safety is executed in the National Airspace System (NAS).
These collaborative efforts are also in line with the agency’s guiding light on surface safety, the National Runway Safety Plan (NRSP). This report provides the framework for the FAA’s risk-based and data-driven approach towards enhancing NAS safety on a local, national, and international scale. Its success stems from the integration of Safety Management System (SMS) principles to create a systematic approach for managing safety. A prime example of the NRSP’s effectiveness has been the ability to identify wrong surface operations as a rising risk in recent years, and to create an action plan to mitigate that risk.
Air Traffic Organization
While the NRSP provides the overarching strategy for improving runway safety, FAA Order 7050.1B, Runway Safety Program (PDF download), details the organizational structure and policy framework necessary to carry out the plan’s initiatives. As outlined in the Order, the focal point for the FAA’s runway safety initiatives is ATO’s Safety and Technical Training Directorate which provides executive level oversight of the FAA’s Runway Safety Program. But where you’re more likely to see the “rubber hit the runway” in terms of day-to-day execution is with the Runway Safety Group (RSG), formerly known as the Office of Runway Safety. This group is broken out into three main service areas: Eastern, Central, and Western, as well as a headquarters team in Washington, D.C. Each service area is further split into three regions to ensure proper coverage of the NAS (see Figure 1). The service areas (including headquarters) each have a team manager, and there are regional runway safety program managers in place at all nine regions.
Figure 1: FAA Runway Safety Group Service Areas & Regional Offices
RSG members at the regional level routinely work with local airports, flight schools, airport tenants, and various other stakeholders to research and resolve runway safety issues, develop regional runway safety plans, and provide outreach at events. These are among the people you’re likely to see chatting up pilots at a fly-in or discussing airport hot spots at the local Runway Safety Action Team (RSAT) meetings (more on that later). Service area involvement in the RSG tends to be on a broader scale with an emphasis on managing air traffic resources for that area.
Screenshot of the Runway Safety Group’s weekly “Making the Connection” meeting where participants from headquarters, field offices, and stakeholder groups share and discuss surface safety information.
One unique difference is with the headquarters service area. This group is responsible for coordinating with the Runway Safety Council (RSC), an executive steering committee that is a combination of agency and industry partners. RSC members work together to identify root causes of surface safety issues and develop mitigation plans. Airmen and operators get a seat at the table for policy decisions via representative organizations like AOPA, EAA, NBAA, or the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. The RSC also corrals various FAA resources across different lines of business to ensure a holistic approach to problem-solving. This process will be formalized in an upcoming revision to the 7050.1 Order and will give the RSC more of a lead role in resolving critical runway safety issues and promoting a more proactive safety culture.
Headquarters service area runway safety program manager Christine Madden works closely with the RSC and the associated Surface Safety Group (SSG), a collaborative team of subject matter experts across the FAA and industry who develop and monitor surface safety initiatives in line with RSC objectives. A major focus for Christine and the SSG is outreach. Together they have developed tools to educate both vehicle drivers and pilots on how to prevent runway incursions. Two recent examples include the Runway Safety Pilot Simulator and the From the Flight Deck video series that details runway safety strategies at specific airports. | https://medium.com/faa/surface-safety-done-right-491c772d7f2f | ['Faa Safety Briefing'] | 2021-03-25 18:17:45+00:00 | ['Aviation Safety', 'Airports', 'Employees', 'General Aviation', 'Faasteam'] |
Reduce: The Powerful and Mighty | “Every developer who specializes in any programming language will tell you there’s a powerful tool the language provides that they rarely use and wish they knew more about. For me, it’s Array.prototype.reduce .”
What is Reduce ?
The reduce() method is used to apply a function to each element in the array to reduce the array to a single value.
The syntax looks like this
const reduced=arr.reduce((acc,val,ind,srcArr)
reduce() takes a callback with 4 arguments
Accumaltor(acc) : the accumulator accumulates all of the callbacks returned values.
2. currentValue(val) : The current element being processed in the array.
3. index(idx): The index of the current element being processed in the array. Starts from index 0 if an initialValue is provided. Otherwise, starts from index 1.
4. sourceArray(srcArr) The array on which reduce() is being called.
Example For Reduce :
You can think of reduce() as a for loop, that is specifically for using the values of an array to create something new. Consider the following code:
const arr=[1,2,3,4,5] const reduced=arr.reduce((acc,val)=>acc+val); ///15 //Array has been reduced to a single value
Passing initial value to reduce
we can pass initial value to reduce for Example:
const arr=[1,2,3,4,5] const reduced=arr.reduce((acc,val)=>acc+val,100); ///115 //First value in accumulator is 100
Pretty cool huh? With just one line of code we can take the number 100 and add it to the sum of an entire array!
Reduce can return objects
Methods like forEach and map were created to avoid side effects, and reduce is no exception. In this case, however, reduce can return an Object other than an Array
let’s take an example for Counting Array Elements and returning it in Object
var names = ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Tiff', 'Bruce', 'Alice'];
var countedNames = names.reduce(function (allNames, name) {
if (name in allNames) {
allNames[name]++;
}
else {
allNames[name] = 1;
}
return allNames;
}, {} ); // counted Names is:
// { 'Alice': 2, 'Bob': 1, 'Tiff': 1, 'Bruce': 1 }
Note that the {} , which is the last argument to reduce , is starting/default object to be returned. If there were no items in the array, {} would be returned. Also appreciate that an array method returns an object literal and not a modified array!
Awesome!
let’s see one more example where we group an array of people’s info with age
with Quokka.js plugin
Reduce makes our life easier It’s crazy that I’ve not used reduce more.
Learn More :
Thanks | https://medium.com/@ahmedsu868/reduce-the-powerful-and-mighty-8fc81f68942d | ['Suhail Ahmed'] | 2019-08-22 20:19:15.634000+00:00 | ['ES6', 'Programming', 'Arrays', 'JavaScript'] |
A Checklist Manifesto | Merge Request Templates
Most software companies use Git in conjunction with platforms like GitHub or GitLab to provide version control for their code.
It’s common for the production code to live on the master (or main) branch. When developers are writing new features or fixing bugs, they create a branch off of the master branch, write their code, and then create a merge request asking to merge their new code into the master branch. Another developer would then review the code, approve (assuming the code looks good), and merge the new code.
Both GitHub and GitLab allow you to configure your repository to include a merge request template, which is basically just a form that a developer fills out when creating a merge request.
Merge request templates are optional, but I’d like to argue here that they are essential! A good merge request template helps create an engineering mindset of excellence and can help keep the quality of your code high.
A merge request template might look like this:
Description: what are you changing and why Ticket Info: links to tickets in your task management system like JIRA or Workfront Test Plan: step-by-step instructions for how someone could verify that your code works QA Risk: low, medium, or high Screenshots or Videos: proof of your code working properly Additional Checklist Items:
[ ] I have written automated tests for this change
[ ] I have updated documentation as needed
[ ] The code works in all supported browsers
Your merge request template might include more or less than what I have above, but these six fields provide us with a solid foundation. Let’s examine why. | https://medium.com/better-programming/a-checklist-manifesto-3f686ed135f8 | ['Tyler Hawkins'] | 2020-11-05 17:18:27.956000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Mindset', 'Software Development', 'Quality', 'Programming'] |
What Can We Learn From Quibi’s Failure | What Can We Learn From Quibi’s Failure
Prevent these mistakes to succeed in your startup
P.C — The Author
With a new craze of binge-watching, online streaming services are on the boom.
Yet, Quibi, ‘the could-be’ streaming video giant, pulled the plug on their service on October 21, 2020, within just six months of their startup.
Their main USP was short entertainment videos under 10 minutes. Because of our busy schedules, their theme looked promising. Moreover, having many A-list star cast featuring Jennifer Lopez, Chrissy Teigan, Sophie Turner, Liam Hemsworth, etc., made it look like a fairy tale venture. Even the telecommunication investing giants like Disney, Sony Pictures, MGM, 21st Century, Warner Bros, etc., helped Quibi raise $1.75 billion of funding to commence their startup.
Despite this great startup, what went wrong?
Did the cut-throat competition kill Quibi, or it sabotaged itself?
When Fortune Magazine asked Quibi’s management about their failure, they replied, “Our failure was not for lack of trying; we’ve considered and exhausted every option available to us.”
Up to an extent, their answer is agreeable but went wrong exactly? Could they have saved their business, or was it predestined to fail?
Though the authorities blame the COVID Pandemic situation as a significant reason for their debacle, it’s not easily digestible because the facts mentioned in #6 proves otherwise.
Let’s find out their mistakes and how they could have prevented it. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/what-can-we-learn-from-quibi-failure-586b42f7450c | ['Darshak Rana'] | 2020-11-12 21:16:12.045000+00:00 | ['Business Strategy', 'Business', 'Marketing', 'Technology', 'Social Media'] |
Breaking Up With the Narcissist | He left me. It was abrupt, unexpected and mean.
He chose the day in advance, to surprise me — and he even said so. He chose my birthday to walk out — just so that he can hurt me even more. And hurt me he did. It was a carefully orchestrated plan, to maximise my pain, to ruin the day and never to forget.
I spiralled into a quickly spreading depression with full-scale anxiety and a blooming PTSD with flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia. And it hurt. It hurt like hell.
How can a breakup hurt so much?
Love is an addiction
When you fall in love and when you are in love it’s a chemical-induced craze that hacks your brain — rendering you irrational, craving for more. The biochemical explanation of this is crystal clear. Helen Fisher pointed out that love activates the same areas of the brain that cocaine does. From the first ecstasy to the last bit of withdrawal symptoms. The dopamine rush we feel near our love is causing real addiction, to make us want to come back for more, always more.
At the point of the breakup this very addictive, cocaine-like dopamine kick has no fuel, so it leaves our systems. We start to have withdrawal symptoms — of a natural drug, but it is still a drug.
“If the beloved breaks off the relationship, the lover shows all the common signs of withdrawal, including depression, crying spells, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite (or binge eating), irritability, and chronic loneliness. Like all addicts, the lover then goes to unhealthy, humiliating, even physically dangerous lengths to procure their narcotic.”
The narcissistic love is especially an addictive one — in the love-bombing phase the intensity of the dopamine can take extreme lengths, and with the intermittent reinforcement (playing push and pull all the time) they are establishing an even unhealthier addiction. | https://zitafontaine.medium.com/breaking-up-with-the-narcissist-21650085f89b | ['Zita Fontaine'] | 2020-05-12 06:44:45.766000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Love', 'Lifestyle', 'Relationships', 'Abuse'] |
3 Simple Strategies to Motivate Your Team & Enhance Performance | We all know that workplace performance is impacted by employee motivation. When motivation is lacking, performance can suffer, and when motivation is high, performance is enhanced. So, the solution to improving performance is to increase motivation, right?
Yes and no.
It depends on the type of motivation and the type of work being performed.
Motivation: There’s extrinsic motivation, which is experienced when an individual engages in an activity because of external factors, such as monetary incentives. Then, there’s intrinsic motivation, which happens when an individual participates in an activity for its sake, finding it inherently interesting.
Type of Work: If employees do work that is systematic or repetitive, extrinsic motivation can positively impact performance. However, when the work involves creative, problem-solving skills, extrinsic motivation can actually diminish performance! Instead, in this case, intrinsic motivation is the key to augmenting performance.
Chances are, most of the work your team does is in the creative, problem-solving category. So, let’s talk about three simple ways you can increase intrinsic motivation, per self-determination theory.
Essentially, self-determination theory states that employees have three basic psychological needs that must be satisfied to increase intrinsic motivation:
1. Autonomy: employees have choice and control over their actions. Translated to the workplace, this means providing employees with more control over their job tasks and including them in decision-making. A specific strategy that can be used to increase job autonomy is the ROWE method (Results Only Work Environment). It allows employees to choose where and when they work, so long as their work is accomplished well and on time. Some companies have found that the ROWE method has created a more positive work environment where employees are more committed to the organization. If ROWE isn’t the perfect fit for your organization, think of other ways to create more job autonomy because the research shows that it’s associated with better mental and physical health, and of course, intrinsic motivation.
2. Competence: this is confidence, self-efficacy, or mastery — whatever you want to call it, it’s the idea that your team believes they can perform their tasks well. Managers can bolster employee competence by being coaches who provide employees with challenging assignments, remind them of past achievements, and express confidence in their capabilities. A real-life example of this can be seen in the philosophy of the company, Motley Fool. The organization believes in hiring people for life. Consequently, it recognizes that to retain staff on a long-term basis, the work has to be challenging and fulfilling. As such, Motley Fool uses the Agile method of organizing work where employees work on several different projects simultaneously. As projects begin and end regularly, employees are continually learning new skills and developing their mastery. Maybe the Agile method isn’t perfect for your organization, but you can certainly foster a coaching approach among managers.
3. Relatedness: employees feel connected to and valued by others, and this need can be met by fostering positive connections and helping employees find purpose in their work. Indeed, when workers understand how their work matters, it becomes more meaningful and relevant, thereby driving greater intrinsic motivation. Additionally, adopting a leadership style that makes employees feel valued and developing quality relationships between leaders and employees is crucial in cultivating a sense of relatedness.
So, next time you’re wondering how to motivate your team, first consider the work they do and then select the appropriate motivational strategy. If more intrinsic motivation is called for, focus on meeting the three basic needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and watch the positive shift in behavior.
If you want more ideas for how you can cultivate motivation and engagement, just download my book for free: 25 Tips for Leaders: How to Leverage the Science of Happiness to Increase Performance, Productivity, and Profitability. And check out my podcast, The Positive Leadership Movement.
References
Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 331–362. doi:10.1002/job.322
Goyette, K. (2016). Stop trying to motivate your employees [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lhVUedc1a4
Latham, G. P. (2012). Work motivation: History, theory, research, and practice (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Lauritsen, J. (2018). Unlocking high performance: How to use performance management to engage and empower employees to reach their full potential. New York, NY: Kogan Page.
Lunenburg, F. C. (2011). Self-efficacy in the workplace: Implications for motivation and performance. International Journal of Management, Business, and Administration, 14(1), 1–6. Retrieved from http://nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Lunenburg,%20Fred%20C.%20Self-Efficacy%20in%20the%20Workplace%20IJMBA%20V14%20N1%202011.pdf
Nielsen, K., Nielsen, M. B., Ogbonnaya, C., Känsälä, M., Saari, E., & Isaksson, K. (2017). Workplace resources to improve both employee well-being and performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Work & Stress, 31(2), 101–120. doi:10.1080/02678373.2017.1304463
Ogbonnaya, C., Daniels, K., Connolly, S., & van Veldhoven, M. (2017). Integrated and isolated impact of high-performance work practices on employee health and well-being: A comparative study. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(1), 98–114. doi:10.1037/ocp0000027
Olafsen, A. H., Halvari, H., Forest, J., & Deci, E. L. (2015). Show them the money? The role of pay, managerial need support, and justice in a self-determination theory model of intrinsic work motivation. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 56(4), 447–457. doi:10.1111/sjop.12211
Pink, D. (2009). The puzzle of motivation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_the_puzzle_of_motivation
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. doi: 10.1037110003–066X.55.1.68
Shahzadi, I., Javed, A., Pirzada, S. S., Nasreen, S., & Khanam, F. (2014). Impact of employee motivation on employee performance. European Journal of Business and Management, 6(23), 159–166. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.684.9465&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Thomas, K. W. (2009). Intrinsic motivation at work: What really drives employee engagement. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. | https://medium.com/@alexjbratty/3-simple-strategies-to-motivate-your-team-enhance-performance-d51c604c6fec | ['Alex Bratty'] | 2020-12-19 00:43:34.993000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Positive Leadership', 'Performance', 'Positive Psychology', 'Happiness At Work'] |
Kafka For Beginners — Part 1. Kafka is a transformative tool, and a… | Kafka is a transformative tool, and a key component to many event-based systems today.
A publish-subscribe (pub-sub) message system that allows messages (also called records) to be sent between processes, applications, and servers. Simply said - Kafka stores streams of records. Conceptually, we can think of Kafka as comprising three basic components:
An Event Log , to which messages are published.
, to which messages are published. Publishers , which publish messages to the event log.
, which publish messages to the event log. Consumers, which consume messages from the event log record can include any kind of information.
typical message queue and its consumers work
For e.g. have information about an event that has happened on a website or could be a simple text message that triggers an event so another application may connect to the system and process or reprocess it.
A Kafka cluster consists of a chosen number of brokers/servers (also called nodes). Apache Kafka itself is storing streams of records. A record is data containing a key, value and timestamp sent from a producer. The producer publishes records on one or more topics. You can think of a topic as a category to where, applications can add, process and reprocess records (data). Consumers can then subscribe to one or more topics and process the stream of records.
Kafka is often used when building applications and systems in need of real-time streaming.
Topics :
All Kafka records are organized into topics. Topics are the categories in the Apache Kafka broker to where records are published. Data within a record can be of various types, such as String or JSON. The records are written to a specific topic by a producer and subscribed from a specific topic by a consumer.
Partition:
Kafka topics are divided into partitions.
Partitions allow you to parallelize a topic by splitting the data into a topic across multiple nodes.
Each record in a partition is assigned and identified by its unique offset. This offset points to the record in a partition. Incoming records are appended at the end of a partition. The consumer then maintains the offset to keep track of the next record to read. Kafka can maintain durability by replicating the messages to different brokers (nodes).
A topic can have multiple partitions. This allows multiple consumers to read from a topic in parallel. The producer decides which topic and partition the message should be placed on.
Consumers and consumer groups
Consumers can read messages starting from a specific offset and are allowed to read from any offset point they choose. This allows consumers to join the broker at any point in time.
Each of those consumers would then belong to a single consumer group. The purpose of the consumer group is to ensure that all messages from a topic are read and processed by the application, while allowing this processing to be done in parallel.
Replication — the power of copying and reproducing
In Kafka, replication is implemented at the partition level. The redundant unit of a topic partition is called a replica. A follower that is in-sync is called an in-sync replica. If a partition leader fails, a new in-sync replica is selected as the new leader. Each partition usually has one or more replicas meaning that partitions contain records that are replicated over a chosen number of Kafka brokers in the cluster.
It’s possible for the producer to attach a key to the records and tell which partition the record should go to. These keys can be useful if you wish for a strong order, in case you are developing something that requires, for example, a unique id. When attaching a key to these records, it will ensure that records with the same key will arrive at the same partition.
Reference: | https://medium.com/@bawya-pandian/kafka-for-beginners-part-1-5c16680e461d | ['Bawya Pandian'] | 2020-12-25 12:37:44.226000+00:00 | ['Kafka Part1', 'Kafka', 'Kafka Streams', 'Kafka Connect', 'Kafka Beginners'] |
Week 6 — Clustering. In data mining, this will be one of the… | In data mining, this will be one of the method of data mining. Data mining tools’ capabilities and ease of use are essential (Web, Parallel processing, etc). Beside we learned about association, prediction, time-series relationship, we will now learn more about cluster, which is part of segmentation.
Different type of data
Type of clustering:
K-means (PartitionING method)
Basically, this is assuming that a fixed number of clusters, ‘k’ and create as much as compact clusters. What I understand from k-means algorithm, we can get different numbers from randomly initialize clusters and assign data points to nearest clusters.
But, how many clusters could we create?
We can use elbow method. The idea of the elbow method is to run k- means clustering on the data set where ‘k’ is the number of clusters
Within the sum of squares (WSS), it is defined as the sum of the squared distance between each member of the cluster and its centroid.
After studying the behavior of a population, you have identified four specific individual types that are valuable to your study. You would like to find all users who are most similar to each individual type. This study will be be the most appropriate for this algorithm.
2. Hierarchical (Agglomerative method — Dendrogram, Tree, sub-clusters)
It is divided into 2: Divisive (top-down) and Agglomerative (Bottom-up)
Meaning all items is in one cluster or the other way around. Each item is in its own cluster.
The Graph is generally known as Elbow Curve.
• Red circled a point in above graph i.e. Number of Cluster =6 is the point after which you don’t see
any decrement in WSS.
• This point is known as the bending point and taken as K in K — Means.
This is the widely used approach but few data scientists also use Hierarchical clustering first to create dendrograms and identify the distinct groups from there.3. Nearest neighbor clustering
Discrete random variables
Discrete and continuous random variablesDensity-based
in R, it is an unsupervised learning, groups are not pre-define.
Hard vs fuzzy (soft) vs biclustering
Distance or similarity measures
Distance = inverse of similarity
Gender is symmetric attributes:
Distance between Jack and Mary
Distance (similarity) threshold
Graph representation
Studies on machine learning algorithms can be used for inputting missing values of both categorical and continuous variables. K-means clustering, linear regression, K-nearest neighbor, and decision trees. | https://medium.com/@noviaayup/week-6-clustering-aaeab6486809 | ['Curiosity To Data Analytics', 'Career Journey'] | 2020-05-09 02:51:20.694000+00:00 | ['Data Science Marketer', 'Data Science', 'Dendrogram', 'Clustering', 'K Means'] |
I found this out recently, such an easy an affective step! | Keep sentences small. They’re easier to work with that way.
The Only Book About Writing You’ll Ever Need | https://medium.com/@jamiestyles/i-found-this-out-recently-such-an-easy-an-affective-step-78c7cf100a39 | ['Jamie Styles'] | 2020-12-26 20:10:15.131000+00:00 | ['Writing Life', 'Writing Tips', 'Essay Writing', 'Writing', 'Writing Prompts'] |
Lack of Love or Wrong Love? | The general belief was that people who lacked of love in early childhood are hungry for it in their adulthood. But is is true? Is it that we lacked of love or rather we learned the wrong kind of love?
Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash
To understand ‘lack’, first we must see what it looks like to ‘have’ enough love. It turns out that you could never had enough, for love can’t be quantified. It is not about the number of loving strokes that hits you. So what is it?
Now let’s revisit the other one. Wrong kind of love. The same here we must dealt with the invert: what does the right kind of love looks like? Well, again you can’t defined it unless you resort to generality. You can’t defined right and quantified enough love. But we could come up with some answer that might not logically make sense, but hold some truth in it “Love is the absence of concept.” Like a small child who have yet to learned right & wrong, he is just is. He might be naughty and caused trouble but we never felt wrong intent from him, just love.
Okay, so now we talk about wrong love. I give the spoiler in front “Wrong love is the kind that seek for it.” The story might be different for everyone, but usually it goes like these
A caregiver (usually but not always parents) tried to manipulate the child to do what he/she wanted. He do so by instigating that for the child to have value, he must seek validation from the caregiver. If the child do what the caregiver wanted, he was given a validation and thus feel loved. But else — in the absence of anything particular — he felt empty and unvalidated.
See, the contrast is stark. One is a love like small child that is free without intent. The other is hungry that never satified unless something happened. Everyone talked about love, but it turns out everyone has a different kind of love.
Now we know that, we wanted to have right love thus avoid the wrong love. But then there is instigation here: you cannot have right love. You cannot earned it, you could only give it away. And usually for people who craved -and been so long- this strikes as conflicting. Wanting something that cannot be gotten.
To say to not-seek would be a conflicting statement. For trying to not-seek is a seek in itself. That’s why I am in favor of the term “having no concept” for when you don’t have concept, you are not seeking anything. You still do things in the presence or immediate future, but not as much looking to possessed anything or anyone. | https://medium.com/@hyapadi/lack-of-love-or-wrong-love-782d8ce98b2c | ['Hansel Yapadi'] | 2020-12-22 13:36:00.586000+00:00 | ['Abuse', 'Childhood', 'Psychology', 'Love'] |
Useful JavaScript Tips — Arrays and JSON | Photo by Mike Benna on Unsplash
Like any kind of apps, JavaScript apps also have to be written well.
Otherwise, we run into all kinds of issues later on.
In this article, we’ll look at some tips we should follow to write JavaScript code faster and better.
Calculating the Average and Median
We can get the average by calculating the sum of the array and dividing that by the length of the array.
For instance, we can write:
const values = [2, 10, 28];
const sum = values.reduce((total, current) => current + total, 0);
const avg = sum / values.length;
We have the values array, which we get the sum of by using reduce .
Then we divide the returned sum by the length of values .
To get the median, we can sort the array, then get the average of the low and high middle value from the sorted array.
For instance, we can write:
const values = [2, 10, 28];
values.sort((a, b) => a - b);
const lowMiddle = Math.floor((values.length - 1) / 2);
const highMiddle = Math.ceil((values.length - 1) / 2);
const median = (values[lowMiddle] + values[highMiddle]) / 2;
We call sort to sort the array in ascending order by using the (a, b) => a — b callback.
Then we get the index of the low middle value by getting the floor of value ‘s length minus 1 divided by 2.
Likewise, we get the index of the high middle value by getting the ceiling of that.
Then we get the average of both values entries to get the median .
JSON.Stringify
We can turn objects into a string with JSON.stringify .
For instance, we can write:
const obj = {
foo: 1 ,
bar: 2
}; const selectedProperties = ['foo']; const str = JSON.stringify(obj, selectedProperties);
We have the obj object which we called stringify on with obj and select the properties with the second argument.
Then we get:
"{\"foo\":1}"
as the value of str .
We can also pass in a function:
const obj = {
foo: 1,
bar: 2
}; const selectedProperties = (key, val) => {
if (!key || key === 'foo') {
return val;
} return;
} const str = JSON.stringify(obj, selectedProperties);
We have a function that checks when to return val according to the given property.
Object.defineProperties
We can use Object.defineProperty to define a property to get more control over it.
For instance, we can write:
Object.defineProperty(obj, 'prop', {
value: '123',
enumerable: false,
writable: false,
configurable: false
});
We defined the prop property in obj value '123' , and all other properties set to false .
enumerable means whether we can see it from Object.keys or the for-in loop.
writable means whether we can change the value of it.
configurable means whether we can change the property descriptors.
Flattening Multidimensional Arrays
We can use the flat method to flatten multidimensional arrays.
For instance, we can write:
const arr = [[1, 2],[3, 4, 5]];
const flattened = arr.flat();
Then we get [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] for flattened .
We can also use concat to concatenate arrays.
For instance, we can write:
const flattened = [].concat.apply([], arr );
Also, we can use reduce to do the same thing:
const flattened = arr.reduce((flattened, curr) => flattened.concat(curr));
The spread operator can also do the same thing:
const arr = [[1, 2],[3, 4, 5]];
const flattened = arr.reduce((flattened, curr) => [...flattened, ...curr]);
That returns the arrays merged together.
We can also use the concat method with the spread operator:
const arr = [[1, 2],[3, 4, 5]];
const flattened = [].concat(...arr);
We spread the arr entries into arguments of the concat method.
Then concat appends the entries from the arrays.
Deduplicating an Array
We can remove duplicates from an array in several ways.
We can use the filter method to only return an array with the first instances of each entry by writing:
const deduped = [1, 1, 'b', 'b'].filter((el, i, arr) => arr.indexOf(el) === i);
We use the indexOf method, which returns the index of the first instance of entry to check whether it’s the first instance.
Also, we can convert it to a set to remove the duplicates and put spread it back into an array:
const deduped = Array.from(new Set([1, 1, 'b', 'b']));
or:
const deduped = [...new Set([1, 1, 'b', 'b'])];
Converting an array to a set removes the duplicates. Then we use Array.from or the spread operator to turn it back to a set.
Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash
Conclusion
We can use built-in methods and operations to calculate averages and medians.
Also, we can use them to remove duplicates.
We can also use them to flatten arrays. | https://medium.com/javascript-dots/useful-javascript-tips-arrays-and-json-d59cc854daed | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-06-21 03:35:35.904000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Software Development', 'Technology', 'Programming'] |
For the Love of Covid! | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/resistance-poetry/for-the-love-of-covid-5c984a32f82a | ['James G Brennan'] | 2020-11-16 17:50:24.454000+00:00 | ['Resistance Poetry', 'Covid 19', 'James G Brennan', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poetry'] |
How I Overwhelmed the New MacBook Air With the Apple M1 Chip. | How I Overwhelmed the New MacBook Air With the Apple M1 Chip. Thomas Underwood Follow Dec 7 · 6 min read
Stressing out the new Macbook Air
I drove 3 hours round trip to get the new MacBook Air the day after I ordered it. It was either that or wait 3–4 weeks for delivery. I don’t know about you, but I was too excited to start playing with this new laptop and putting it through its paces. I have had several MacBooks over the years. Being a contractor (programmer) I have worked on fully loaded versions of 2017, 2018, and most recently the 2019 MacBook Pro with an i9 and 32GB of ram.
Like many people, I have been intrigued by the performance claims and glowing reviews for the new Apple M1 chip along with the outlandish battery life. That got elevated to new levels of hype watching different YouTube videos of the MacBook Air being able to drive five 1080p and 4K monitors on the new Apple integrated graphics built into the M1 SoC (system on a chip) which includes the processor, ram, gpu, and other Apple hardware features all in one package.
The hype is real
When I strolled up to the window at the Apple store the salesperson was excited to give me the new MacBook Air (16GB with 1TB SSD) and tell me about how incredible the performance was. He said that he and the other employees had been throwing 4K video editing content and other stress tests at the MacBook for hours and hadn’t been able to crash it or cause the computer to become unresponsive. I took that as a challenge to see if I could max out the new M1 SoC with my day-to-day work-flow. I wasn’t surprised when I was able to do exactly that.
Recently, in another one of my posts, I decided to try and build a high-performance image hosting service. The basic premise is that I need to be able to load thousands of photos (thumbnails) almost instantly. I don’t want to wait for buffering, loading screens, or downloads. See my article below if you are interested in reading more about that project.
One of the tasks that I mention in my previous article is that I have to process images and reduce their size by scaling down each one into a thumbnail of 250x250 instead of loading the full resolution image. This reduces the image size roughly by 1/10th of the original size and allows me to load thousands of image files seemingly instantly without loading screens. I am able to do this by writing this lazy Node.js code.
Lazy Create Thumbnails Code
Any astute Node.js developer will probably say “that isn’t a very efficient script” — and you would be right. That is the point in testing out the performance of the new 8-core M1 SoC and 16 GB of ram. I wrote something that I would generally do in a hurry to batch process large amounts of data within a reasonable amount of time. If the code isn’t performant enough for what I am doing then I would begin to optimize it for my needs. It reminded me of one of the old adages one of my professors would always say “Who cares if you write a poorly performing program. In 2 years it will run twice as fast when the next generation processors come out.” He is definitely right when it comes to server-side code, but in the front-end space, we have to be as efficient as possible to prevent terrible user experiences like unresponsive pages.
For this stress test, I was processing about 7,000 images at once asynchronously with Node.js and converting them to 250x250, and writing them to the SSD.
A batch of images to process into thumbnails
You will see below that the new MacBook did fairly well. It made it to about 5,000 images before the performance began to drop exponentially. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-i-overwhelmed-the-new-macbook-air-with-the-apple-m1-chip-d8cf011729a0 | ['Thomas Underwood'] | 2020-12-23 12:06:08.865000+00:00 | ['Front End Development', 'Technology', 'Nodejs', 'Programming', 'Apple'] |
Tips to Boost your Amazon sales. | We really recommend you to use this tool if you are really looking forward to earn a serious income from amazon. All in one tool to boost your sales and improve your listing. CLICK HERE to know more.
1. Improve your Title.
To grab your buyers attention you must have the best title out there. Always apply this general formula of brand name + product name + features (e.g. colour, size, gender, use, etc.).Good titles will make you capitalise on high ranking keywords.
This will also tell shoppers what to expect and what your product is. There are various super tools to improve your title.
2. Guard Yourself Against Competitors
SKUs are a fundamental piece of selling on Amazon, however not really with regards to your missions. At the point when you’re setting up custom names for tiering items by their cost, attempt to try not to utilize SKUs — they can go about as a marker for contenders to pay heed and undercut you.
3. Automate Product Prices with a Repricer.
Know what happens when you manually reprice your inventory? Your repricer-using competitors are gobbling up your sales because their products are being mass-repriced while you’ve only started.
Unless you’re selling super low volumes or almost no competition, using an automated repricer is the way to go. Here is one of the top tool for everything to increase your amazon sales. CLICK HERE
4. Feedbacks.
Although reviews can be tough to get, it’s crucial to never stop trying. A little while ago, I was looking at replacing my worn-out tent and the final decision came down to two. Both were nearly identical in function and price, but ultimately, I made the choice based on feedback.
One tent had 41 reviews with 78% 5-star ones, while the other had 17 with 71% 5-star reviews — the former made me feel that much more comfortable.
5. Sync Your Inventory
If you sell on multiple platforms, then syncing your inventory makes it a lot easier to sell on all of them. You’ll be able to keep track of inventory easily, keep a consistent tone in descriptions, and update changes seamlessly. Plus, you’ll be able to save a lot of time not having to do everything multiple times, which you can devote to the other tips on this list.
6. Product photos.
You must need top quality photos of your product to attract your customers. You don’t need to be a pro or spend too much time and money to get those images. Follow these simple tips to improve. To be selective and improve your product photos we really use this tool.
Shoot with as much natural light as possible. Shooting closer to the window translates to soft light with dark, soft shadows while shooting further away means a more even light with lighter, but sharper, shadows. Don’t use flash and set your white balance to auto. Set up your camera on a tripod, even if you’re shooting with a smartphone, to avoid shakes. Use a white or light-neutral backdrop. Draping a white cloth over a chair creates a seamless background that doesn’t compete with the product. Shoot the product from multiple angles. Consider putting your product in lifestyle situations so buyers can see how it should be used.
7. Follow Amazon’s Rules and Terms of Service
One of the fastest ways to low product sales is to break Amazon’s rules. Can’t sell if you are suspended or shut down, right? Going the other way means you’re giving yourself the best chance of success.
Knowing what Amazon requires of sellers means you can set up your listings in the high-quality way they want, which leads to higher buyer trust and an increased chance of landing more sales.
8. important of split tests.
If you really want to maximise your earnings its better to do monthly split tests. It will give you a detailed report of your listings. Many sellers from all part of the world really earns 20%-30% more profits after split testing.
we really recommend this tool for your split test, keyword planning , and improved listing stabilisation. Click here to get this all in one tool to increase your sales.
The end.
Disclaimer: This article consist of affiliate links and if you purchase something using the link I will earn a commission. | https://medium.com/@enterpreneurhub18/tips-to-boost-your-amazon-sales-482be8362456 | [] | 2020-12-24 17:59:55.668000+00:00 | ['Amazon Selling Tips', 'Amazon Sellers', 'Amazon Listing', 'Amazon Fba', 'Amazon'] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.