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The Mucky Middle of Your Novel? Muck On! | The Mucky Middle of Your Novel? Muck On!
If you make your novel into a sandbox, castles will emerge.
I was recently asked whether it’s more difficult to write the beginning or the ending of a novel. My answer? Neither. The most difficult part of a novel to write is the middle — popularly known as the “muddy middle,” or just the “muddle.” Whatever it is, it’s a mucky place to be.
When you’re writing the beginning of your novel, your words tend to flow to the glowing enchantment of your novel idea — a momentum sparked by the excitement of pursuing a shiny new idea and exploring new worlds. Then, one day, you’re likely to hit a slow patch, and then another slow patch, and then… you might find yourself stuck — and perhaps even sinking.
Every novel is full of such perilous moors. When you feel your words enter such swampy territory, it’s easy to concede victory to those naysaying voices in your head pulling you ever deeper into the mud. And sometimes defeat can seem strangely comforting. You drop onto those fluffy pillows of complacency where you expect little of yourself, and perhaps little of life.
But don’t sink! Don’t let your novel die! Here are seven different approaches to keep your words moving.
1.) Let go.
Turn off your computer for a spell. Sink into Netflix. Do some jumping jacks. Maybe even clean your house (the houses of NaNoWriMo writers tend to need cleaning at this point of the month). Do whatever it takes to feel a sense of lightness and not think about your novel. It’s easy to think that the answer is to keep forging ahead, but sometimes letting go is the way to open the next door of your imagination.
2.) Stay positive (even if you don’t feel like it).
Part of what creates the mud of the muddy middle is self-doubt. It’s easy to not only question your novel idea, but to question yourself as a writer (and perhaps even yourself as a human being). Remember this: Every writer hits patches like this — even your favorite writer — so you’re not alone. You have to give yourself a pep talk and write your way through the muddy middle to discover the amazing gift that your novel promises to be.
3.) Shake things up.
Introduce a character. Kill a character. Exacerbate character flaws. Your main character has a hidden dark side, and it’s your job to go deep into it — as in spelunking. The middle of a novel begs for escalating drama, and your pen is begging for it as well. If you feel like being kind to your characters, practice being mean to them.
4.) Shake up things even more.
Go crazy. Introduce a time machine, a dragon, a space alien. Every novel needs a ghost or two. A poltergeist. A cute animal that turns into a murdering menace. A lovable zombie who likes to knit. Find ways to make the world around your characters mysterious, questionable, and beguiling.
Author Erin Morgenstern wrote, “I like to think of NaNo-ing as excavating… Things that felt like desperate, random nonsense on page 72 (the broken pocket watch, a partially obscured tattoo, that taxidermied marmot on the mantelpiece) are suddenly important and meaningful on page 187. Everything could hinge on the fate of that marmot. Or the marmot may be a red herring. Or perhaps the marmot is just a marmot. You have to keep writing to find out.”
5.) Writing prompts.
When in doubt, turn to a writing prompt and do a word sprint. I once planned an entire novel by choosing one writing prompt for each chapter. You can do a sprint with a prompt in several different ways during NaNoWriMo: 1.) check out @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter; 2.) go to a NaNoWriMo write-in in your local region; 3.) Give yourself a prompt.
6.) Skip ahead.
Films aren’t made chronologically, and there’s no rule that a novel has to be written in a linear fashion either. Having trouble with Chapter 7? Then skip to Chapter 11, that chapter you’ve been wanting to get to because that’s where all of the exciting stuff happens. Once you write a few scenes, you’ll replenish yourself enough to go back to Chapter 7.
7.) Just skip.
If you’re still having trouble with that devilish Chapter 7, then give yourself permission to skip it altogether. Move on and just try to reach the end of your novel. Sometimes it takes a while to solve the bedeviling questions of a novel — sometimes it even takes several drafts. So just sketch some notes in Chapter 7 and move on.
When you’re in the muddy middle, it’s difficult to remember that your mind is actually an acrobat. Your imagination can take you anywhere. So remember that writing one sentence will likely lead you to another sentence. Simply put one word in front of another, and you’ll begin to sense this great gift waiting for you. The gift of your novel.
Grant Faulkner is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He’s the author of Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo and the co-host of the podcast Write-minded. His essays on creative writing have appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, LitHub, and The Writer.
For more, go to grantfaulkner.com, or follow him on Twitter at @grantfaulkner. | https://medium.com/nanowrimo/the-mucky-middle-of-your-novel-muck-on-ae01ab09d95c | ['Grant Faulkner'] | 2020-11-14 18:04:01.666000+00:00 | ['NaNoWriMo', 'Creative Process', 'Creative Writing', 'Novel Writing', 'Writing Tips'] |
HOW IS PASSIVE INCOME TAXED? | There are other ways to generate an additcianal cash flow, apart from the salary. One of the best ways is passive income. It helps you concentrate on you full time job and still have some earnings to pay you bills. Maybe you can even save some money for a rainy day.
Just like a regular income, a passive income is also taxed to pay. In fact there are differences between the two. First of all, the passive income tax rate are different from regular income tax rate. The income levels at which those rates increase are also different.
What is Passive Income?
Let’s first understand income can classify as a passive income.
According to the IRS, passive income is when you make money from rental property or a business without being actively involved. For example, you’re the silent partner or an investor in the business.
To clearify, earned income is your salary, bonuses, tips, commissions, and net gains from being employed or self-employed. Another type of income is portfolio income which is earned interest, dividends, and capital gains.
Continue reading: https://openloans.com/blog/passive-income-taxes | https://medium.com/@lidiastaron87/how-is-passive-income-taxed-f3414df9c9f8 | ['Lidia Staron'] | 2021-05-05 13:45:46.852000+00:00 | ['Income Tax', 'Passive Income', 'Taxes', 'Passive Income Ideas'] |
Stream These Podcast Live Events | Stream These Podcast Live Events
Photo by Finn Hackshaw on Unsplash
While we’re all self-isolating, we’ll continue to collect and share podcast live events happening online. If you would like your event to be added to the list, send it to us at [email protected].
Each Weekday
Richard’s Famous Food Podcast hosts a daily “Live At Five” event on Instagram. Recent cooking demos and interviews have included Diep Tran (Ugly Delicious), Wesley Avila (Guerrilla Tacos), Marc Johnson (Majordomo), Andrew Chau (Boba Guys). Livestream begins at 5pm PT.
Monday, April 27
AIR is hosting a webinar with podcast strategist Rekha Murthy called, “ Building Podcast Audience: Start Strong and Carry On.” RSVP to get livestream details. Event begins at 5:30 PM ET.
webinar with podcast strategist called, Building Podcast Audience: Start Strong and Carry On.” RSVP to get livestream details. Event begins at 5:30 PM ET. It’s Reading Rainbow for the internet age: LeVar Burton reads books for children on his Twitter livestream. Tune in 9am PT/12pm ET.
Tuesday, April 28
Slate launches a new live series, “Care and Feeding Live with Nicole Cliffe.” Cliffe will discuss and offer advice on parenting questions, and answer questions from viewers who tune in. Livestream begins at 11 AM ET.
Wednesday, April 29
You’re never too old for story time: LeVar Burton reads Young Adult books aloud on his Twitter livestream. Tune in 6pm ET/3pm PT.
Thursday, April 30
Join the team behind Israel Story for “ IsraPalooza ” — a special “corona-days” virtual event for Israel’s 72nd Independence Day (Yom Ha’Atzmaut). Throughout the day they will be hosting intimate conversations, interviews, family-friendly workshops, cooking classes and concerts. Suggested donation is $18 per person, but event is pay what you will.
” — a special “corona-days” virtual event for Israel’s 72nd Independence Day (Yom Ha’Atzmaut). Throughout the day they will be hosting intimate conversations, interviews, family-friendly workshops, cooking classes and concerts. Suggested donation is $18 per person, but event is pay what you will. Radiotopia will host a virtual “Listen In” between Executive Producer Julie Shapiro and Jody Avirgan , co-host of This Day in Esoteric Political History. Register to receive link to the livestream. Event begins at 4:30pm ET.
and , co-host of This Day in Esoteric Political History. Register to receive link to the livestream. Event begins at 4:30pm ET. Join Tonya Mosley , host of KQED’s Truth Be Told, for a virtual listening party to discuss Episode 4, “Deportation Wounds.” Register to receive a link to the livestream. Event begins at 5:30pm PT.
, host of KQED’s Truth Be Told, for a virtual listening party to discuss Episode 4, “Deportation Wounds.” Register to receive a link to the livestream. Event begins at 5:30pm PT. The Endless Thread team will host a live discussion of their new series, Madness. Register to receive a link to the livestream. Event begins at 7pm ET.
team will host a live discussion of their new series, Madness. Register to receive a link to the livestream. Event begins at 7pm ET. Each week, Locatora Radio broadcasts a special edition of their show on Instagram Live. 7pm PT.
Friday, May 1
Join Planet Money’s Amanda Aronczyk and NYU’s Ellen Horne to discuss how journalists have reported during, and on, the pandemic. Livestream begins at noon ET.
and NYU’s to discuss how journalists have reported during, and on, the pandemic. Livestream begins at noon ET. Producer Emily Shaw will be going live with her favorite creators to talk about the creative process. This week: illustrator Nien-Ken Alec Lu. Conversation begins 3pm ET/noon PT.
will be going live with her favorite creators to talk about the creative process. This week: illustrator Nien-Ken Alec Lu. Conversation begins 3pm ET/noon PT. Dr. Cassius Adair will lead a two-part workshop that brings together “craft and production practices with a justice-minded queer and trans critical lens.” The workshop is free, but registration is required to receive session information. Event begins noon ET.
will lead a two-part workshop that brings together “craft and production practices with a justice-minded queer and trans critical lens.” The workshop is free, but registration is required to receive session information. Event begins noon ET. Neon Hum’s Jonathan Hirsch will be hosting a virtual podcast club to discuss The Other Latif. Series host Latif Nasser joins. RSVP to receive livestream details. Event begins at 2:30pm PT.
will be hosting a virtual podcast club to discuss The Other Latif. Series host joins. RSVP to receive livestream details. Event begins at 2:30pm PT. Tell Them, I Am host Misha Euceph will host a daily Instagram series throughout Ramadan (April 24-May 23). Broadcast times will vary each day.
will host a daily Instagram series throughout Ramadan (April 24-May 23). Broadcast times will vary each day. Every Friday night, join Sutanya Dacres , host of Dinner for One, on Instagram Live as you assemble a dinner for one together from her Paris apartment. Cooking begins at 7pm CDT/2pm ET/11am PT.
, host of Dinner for One, on Instagram Live as you assemble a dinner for one together from her Paris apartment. Cooking begins at 7pm CDT/2pm ET/11am PT. Circle ‘round. Tonight, LeVar Burton reads books for adults aloud on his Twitter livestream. Tune in 9pm ET/6pm PT.
Saturday, May 2
PRX’s Podcast Garage and Misha Euceph will host a two-part virtual workshop, “Make Your Show Sound Unique,” where participants will learn how to craft a sonic identity for their show. The first session will take place Saturday, May 2 at 11:00am ET, and the second will take the following week on Saturday, May 9 at 11:00am ET. The workshop is $75 for non-members and $65 for members.
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
Subscribe to the Bello Collective fortnightly newsletter for more stories, podcast recommendations, audio industry news, and more. Support our work and join our community by becoming a member. | https://bellocollective.com/stream-these-podcast-live-events-b44d424fe759 | ['The Bello Collective'] | 2020-04-29 15:27:47.721000+00:00 | ['Podcasting', 'Live', 'Live Streaming', 'Quarantine', 'Podcast'] |
Gender Norms and Why I Do Not Want to Pass | However, I have reached a point in my transition where passing is not required, nor desired. I live in a liberal state, New York, that has its own gender protection laws, and violence towards trans people seems to be at a minimum. Additionally, I feel like I can now live authentically and unapologetically as I was meant to all along.
I remember when I first came out a few years ago and went through the tedious and anxiety ridden process of coming out to my loved ones and friends, I was asked by several of them how far I was going to transition, and frankly at the time I didn’t know. My response was “until I feel comfortable in my own skin”.
Now it is three years later and I have reached that comfort level. Oh, sure I still have bouts with my old friend Gender Dysphoria, but they seem to be more like spats rather than all-out war like it did for so many decades of my life. I have had a hair transplant; electrolysis of my beard, an orchiectomy and breast augmentation and they have all helped to a degree.
But I realize now it is not only the physical, but my emotional outlook that has allowed me to feel comfortable in my own skin. Until I was able to stop the hiding and lying to myself (and everyone else) about who I truly am, I was never going to reach this point. The anxiety, shame, guilt and pain of living a duplicitous life is gone now. I am out to everyone, and no longer have to cover up the truth that I am transgender, resulting in a clearer emotional state, finally letting go of the anxiety, shame, guilt and pain with a lot of help from my fantastic therapist. | https://medium.com/empowered-trans-woman/gender-norms-and-why-i-do-not-want-to-pass-b4a548a2f9bc | ['Rachel Brindell'] | 2020-11-29 03:51:11.196000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Gender Identity', 'Gender', 'Transgender', 'Equality'] |
Inside Pune homes: How Interior Design Aesthetic Blends Cultural Tones With a Contemporary Vibe — HomeLane Blog | Inside Pune homes: How Interior Design Aesthetic Blends Cultural Tones With a Contemporary Vibe — HomeLane Blog HomeLane Interiors Apr 12, 2019·3 min read
Pune, known for its educational institutions, and booming employment opportunities in IT, automotive and service industries has attracted people from all over India. This has led to a cosmopolitan culture in the city, a fast developing infrastructure, and a modern housing landscape. Architecture and interior design in Pune have always been vibrant and practical to suit the times, as it is today as well.
Evolving home design trends in Pune
Pune home design has typically been native in design with influences from neighboring areas. Great functionality has been at the core of home designs in Pune. This was true even in the Wadas which were built more than 350 years ago, at the height of glory of the Maratha empire. These were mansions with the courtyard design meant to house multiple families and safeguard them from outsiders. The design was an amalgamation of Mughal, Rajasthani, and Gujarati architecture combined with local techniques. These Wadas later inspired smaller Wada-style houses in the 1900s, followed by multi-family buildings and independent bungalows.
Since the 2000s, these old bungalows and Wadas have been rapidly replaced by apartments and townships. Pune homeowners increasingly prefer compact apartments in smarter townships or independent bungalows as opposed to conventional developments.
What do homeowners envision their homes to be like?
If you visit homes in Pune, you will notice the reflection of personal tastes blending with nuances from the family’s own multi-cultural backgrounds. The furniture and textiles used are often modern and functional. Ethnic and contemporary accent pieces are used aesthetically for added effect.
Interior design here is usually inviting and personalized. There is a clever mix of traditional Indian elements in a sophisticated, clutter-free, modern setting. Most importantly, homeowners are particular about conveying a story of who they are and their aspirations through their interiors.
Working with interior designers who do not understand this sentiment often proves to be a cumbersome exercise. The designer needs to work collaboratively to bring the owner’s vision to life. An interior design expert who understands this pulse of a Pune homeowner will be an ideal partner in building a dream home.
HomeLane comes to Pune with an irresistible guarantee
HomeLane, India’s leading end-to-end, vertically integrated interior design and manufacturing provider, launched in Pune this year. Their promise to deliver beautiful interiors in 45 days through a stress-free process is one of the company’s most attractive features. The team focuses on designing lifestyle-based homes, combining functionality and aesthetics. Rest assured, the team at HomeLane are experts in assessing your needs and translating your vision into a compact, modern home using contemporary design techniques. | https://medium.com/@homelaneseo/inside-pune-homes-how-interior-design-aesthetic-blends-cultural-tones-with-a-contemporary-vibe-ecc822b50a40 | ['Homelane Interiors'] | 2019-06-06 07:10:01.861000+00:00 | ['Home', 'Homedesign', 'Home Improvement', 'Home Decor', 'Interior Design'] |
KineMaster 4.15.9.17782.GP Latest Version Download(No Watermark) | Feature updates:
1. Adds support for 3:4, 4:3, 4:5, and 2.35:1 aspect ratio exports
2. Adds support to duplicate a project to a different aspect ratio
3. Adds the ability to apply a text layer’s styles to all text layers
4.Adds Media (video and images) category to the Asset Store | https://medium.com/@imtravelhunter/kinemaster-4-15-9-17782-gp-latest-version-download-no-watermark-f46e338879f1 | ['Travel Hunter'] | 2020-12-07 12:05:50.384000+00:00 | ['Best Video Editor Apps', 'Editing', 'Videoeditingcourse', 'Kinemaster', 'Edit'] |
Start Meditating in 6 Easy Steps | So, here we go —
Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash
1. There is No Right Place or Right Time
First things first, there is no need to find the right place or the right time. Just sit wherever you are and begin to meditate.
Joseph Goldstein, an expert on meditation and mindfulness, has an account of meditating while travelling in a bus full of people with all kinds of noise and sounds around him.
2. Be Mindful of your Surroundings
Know where you are. Notice your posture and the environment around you.
When you sit, know that you are sitting. Gently relax your shoulders and eyes and choose to be aware of everything that is happening around you.
3. Focus on your Breath
Focussing on your breath is the hook for meditation. The journey begins from here. Remember that it is not the only thing we do in meditation but something to hold on to, to regain control of our thoughts.
You have to let your mind wander, and when it does, acknowledge the thought or the feeling and come back to your breath.
4. Make Mental Notes
Start by making a mental note of your breath. Inhale — In. Exhale — Out.
Make a mental note for thoughts, feelings and sensations. Mental notes are what they are, one-word notes, which let you acknowledge the journey your mind takes and helps you be present and in the moment.
5. Let Everything In
It is quite common to feel irritated when you are trying to meditate and are disturbed by say, some traffic on the road or some pain in your body. This external sensation tends to fluster us a bit and result in our failure to meditate correctly.
But that’s just something we all think and believe. Having a perfect setup to meditate is hard, especially when we are always on the move all day and want a few minutes to relax.
And that’s what meditation is all about — letting everything that’s happening around us, in.
Invite all the external sounds and internal feelings into your mind. Make a mental note of the most dominant feeling or sensation. For example, if you have a happy thought, note it as a “happy thought” and come back to your breathing.
6. Keep Going. Don’t Stop.
Consistency is the most important thing. You have to keep at it every day. Try to sit and relax, even if it is for only 2 mins. Establishing a system is more important than hitting the jackpot in the first few attempts.
Keep going and slowly find yourself meditating every day as part of a newly formed habit. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/start-meditating-in-6-simple-steps-4e7dc559dab3 | ['Diksha Bathula'] | 2020-11-17 18:09:48.469000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Relaxing', 'Productivity', 'Mindfulness', 'Focus'] |
Rebutting A Right Wing Talking Point — Polls Are Largely Accurate | Rebutting A Right Wing Talking Point — Polls Are Largely Accurate
One of the common talking points on the right is that the polls are wrong in light of Trump’s surprise “victory” in the electoral college in 2016. Trump’s enablers like to repeat this talking point because Trump is an historically unpopular president and he trailed Biden and Warren in a recent Fox News poll by 10 percentage points. In that same poll, Bernie Sanders led Trump by 9 points.
The reality is that this tired GOP talking point is simply wrong. The final Real Clear Politics (RCP) average in 2016 predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote by 3.3%. Seven of the nine final polls projected a Clinton victory in the popular vote by anywhere from 2 and 4 percentage points. As it turned out, Clinton ultimately won the popular vote by 2.1%.
Similarly, the final RCP electoral college projections in 2016 were essentially accurate and forecast a very close election. Clinton had a safe lead in states that added up to 203 electoral votes and Trump led in states that added up to 164 electoral votes. Fourteen states with 171 electoral votes were considered to be too close to call. Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania were all in that category. (Wisconsin was leaning to Clinton.) As it turned out, Trump drew to an inside straight in the electoral college and took just about all of the states that were in the too close to call category.
The reality about 2016 is that the polls were largely accurate. The race became very close after then FBI Director James Comey violated his agency’s rules and released his infamous letter on October 28, 2016. At that time, Clinton led in the popular vote by a 6 to 8 point margin. The Comey letter reduced that margin to two points and cost Clinton the crucial battleground states.
The people who got it wrong in 2016 were the pundits — they misread the polls. The NY Times gave Clinton a 90% chance of winning. The most cautious forecast came from Nate Silver. The 538 election guru was criticized in the run up to the 2016 election for giving Clinton a 70% chance of winning. Silver even wrote a piece that contended that Clinton’s battleground firewall wasn’t as strong as Obama’s. Apparently, the pundits (like most Americans) simply couldn’t believe that a buffoon like Trump could get elected.
As a result of the 2016 outcome, there was some skepticism about the polls in the run up to the subsequent 2018 mid-term elections. However, once again, the polls turned out to be largely accurate. The final RCP average predicted that the Democrats would win the House national popular vote by 7.3%. Eight out of the last eleven polls forecast a Democrat margin of between 7 and 9 percentage points. Once all of the 2018 votes were counted, it turned out that the Democrats had their best showing since 1974 and won by 8.4%.
The only real polling errors in modern times were in the 1948 and 1980 presidential elections. In 1948, polling was in its relative infancy and the final poll was taken about two weeks before the election. The final Gallup poll gave GOP nominee Tom Dewey a five point lead over Harry Truman. Obviously, no poll was taken that detected Truman’s surge in the last fourteen days of the campaign.
The conventional wisdom in November 1980 was that the election was too close to call. Apparently, the pollsters failed to detect the big movement toward Reagan in the last few days before the election. Carter’s pollsters didn’t discover this surge until the day before election day. Reagan won the popular vote by a 51% to 41% margin over Jimmy Carter.
In most election cycles, the polls have been accurate. I think we can safely assume that Trump’s re-election prospects are in serious jeopardy and that support for impeachment is surging. Nonetheless, we can take nothing for granted in 2020. Already, Trump has indicated that he will recruit foreign help for his 2020 campaign and smear any opponent. All of us need to dedicate ourselves to helping Democratic candidates up and down the ballot in 2020. Now let’s get it done! | https://medium.com/@dennispcrawford/rebutting-a-right-wing-talking-point-polls-are-largely-accurate-77347cab2d09 | ['Dennis Crawford'] | 2020-10-09 01:02:54.525000+00:00 | ['Politics', '2016 Election', '2020 Presidential Race'] |
Benefits of Crypto Part 1 — to Countries | We live in constant change — there is no pause button.
While there is a misconception that cryptocurrency are bad for governments and countries, we believe the opposite is true. Blockchain technologies and cryptocurrency will be mainstream. It’s inevitable. Just a matter of time. Early individual adopters have already become billionaires, as evident from the latest issue of Forbes. The same applies to governments. Early adopters will become new financial leaders of tomorrow. The opportunity is right in front of us, now!
Proper understanding, early adoption and intelligent governance of the cryptocurrency industry is key. Crypto exchanges are at the heart of the cryptocurrency industry. Supporting regulated exchanges to operate in a country will have significant positive effects on the local economy.
Attraction of Funds
Wherever there are favorable regulations, they will draw in crypto projects and businesses. This leads to a huge influx of funds to the local economy, in hundreds of billions of dollars (USD), from all over the world. Crypto investments are borderless. Good ICOs are invested in by people from all over the world.
Attraction of Talent
Crypto businesses are lead by the sharpest minds on the planet. They are early adopters and developers of technology and financial industry. They push the envelope forward. Clear and favorable regulations on how ICOs are accepted by governments, listing on exchanges, and competitive personal tax policies are key to attracting these talents.
Local Job Creation
Crypto businesses are well funded. In 2017, crypto businesses raised $5.7 billion USD from ICOs, bigger than VC investments in the same year. In Jan of 2018 alone, crypto businesses already raised more than $2 billion USD, and the trend is accelerating. These businesses must hire people to grow their teams, creating job opportunities in the local community.
Tax Revenue for Governments
Unlike startups in other industries, cryptocurrency startups are often profitable from the beginning. Some are extremely profitable (see later). These profits generate significant tax revenue for the government, often in hundreds of millions of USD for each business.
Industry Growth
In addition to the direct tangible benefits, there are significant intangible and long term benefits, which we believe, far outweigh the immediately quantifiable ones mentioned above.
With more crypto business booming in one area, they will build a local culture that is crypto friendly and crypto advanced. This is similar to the startup culture in San Francisco, financial culture in New York, etc. With this culture built, it will help to shape the local economy, to be a world leading one. Early adopters could realize trillions of dollars in benefits compared to late adopters.
Benefits Binance can Bring
Binance is the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange. In the first 3 months from inception, profits amounted to $7,500,000 USD. In the 2nd quarter, profits amounted to $200,000,000 USD. The 3rd quarter is still in progress, and is expected to have further growth. Any country that can attract Binance to open a branch in their location will receive a handsome tax income revenue.
Binance is a leading brand in the crypto industry. Wherever it lands, it will attracts other crypto businesses to follow. Binance has listed more than 200 coins, many of them are also looking to open branch offices around the world. They will follow.
Binance is aggressively recruiting, and is projected to recruit over 2000 employees this year alone, and even more next year. This will help grow the local job market.
Binance also have incubation and charity funds, further helping the local startup economy and welfare.
We are happy to work with forward thinking regulatory bodies, share our experiences and expertise, and help forge a leader in tomorrow’s blockchain-enabled world.
Countries
Initially, smaller countries with developing financial markets have the most to gain by adopting blockchain technologies. This should have less disruption to their existing institutions, as well as being easier to manage given a smaller size. As adoption in these countries increase, larger countries with established financial markets will feel the disruption. In this line of thinking, established financial markets should adopt blockchain technologies as early as possible too. As the saying going, it is always better to disrupt yourself than waiting to be disrupted by others.
Whether you are representing a nation that is looking to lead for the next century, or a responsible officer that aims to keep your organization relevant, we hope you are that forward thinking body that is daring to disrupt yourself to maintain/become a leader of tomorrow.
CZ, Binance.com CEO | https://medium.com/binanceexchange/benefits-of-crypto-part-1-to-countries-bae878238dd1 | [] | 2018-03-03 06:34:39.955000+00:00 | ['Articles', 'Blockchain', 'Binance', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
The Outpost 3x11 - Season 3 Episode 11 (ONline) | Show Info
Name Episode : The Hardest Part of Being Queen
Network : The CW
Genres : Action, Fantasy
🔴 Now Streaming :: https://tvmoon.site/tv/79340-3-11/The-Outpost.html
The Outpost centers on Talon, who is the lone survivor of a race called “Blackbloods”. When she sets off to the edge of civilization to track her family’s killers, she discovers she possesses a mysterious supernatural power that she must learn to control.
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The Outpost centers on Talon, who is the lone survivor of a race called “Blackbloods”. When she sets off to the edge of civilization to track her family’s killers, she discovers she possesses a mysterious supernatural power that she must learn to control.
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Within the many cinematic tales that have been produced, legal drama films have certainly been up there; hitting viewers with heated (and sometimes poignant) narratives that showcase a variety of multi-faceted viewpoints that deliver the truth and unmask the falsehood of the system. From the jail cell’s of a prison to the presiding courtrooms, legal dramas display plenty of human emotions of the individuals; projecting tales of injustice doing and who is really to blame for the wrong doings as well as demonstrating the views of the case on today’s society (i.e. social standing, race, religion, gender, etc.). Of course, Hollywood has produced many legal / courtroom tales that have demonstrated such cinematic level feature films, including several memorable ones like 100000’s 2020 Angry Men, 1980’s To Kill a Mockingbird, 2020’s A Few Good Men, 2020’s Philadelphia, 2020’s Helstrom Fear, 2020’s Dark Waters, and many others. Now, Warner Bros. Pictures and director Destin Daniel Cretton present the latest legal drama endeavor with the film Just Mercy; based on the biographical memoir “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson. Does the movie find strength within its story or does it lost within legal courtroom narrative?
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⌘ THE STORY
After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) forgoes the standard opportunities of seeking employment from big and lucrative law firms; deciding to head to Alabama to defend those wrongfully commended, with the support of local advocate, Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). One of his first, and most poignant, case is that of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx, who, in 22927, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 27-year-old girl in the community, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and one singular testimony against him by an individual that doesn’t quite seem to add up. Bryan begins to unravel the tangled threads of McMillian’s case, which becomes embroiled in a relentless labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt unabashed racism of the community as he fights for Walter’s name and others like him.
⌘ THE GOOD / THE BAD
Throughout my years of watching movies and experiencing the wide variety of cinematic storytelling, legal drama movies have certainly cemented themselves in dramatic productions. As I stated above, some have better longevity of being remembered, but most showcase plenty of heated courtroom battles of lawyers defending their clients and unmasking the truth behind the claims (be it wrongfully incarcerated, discovering who did it, or uncovering the shady dealings behind large corporations. Perhaps my first one legal drama was 2020’s The Client (I was little young to get all the legality in the movie, but was still managed to get the gist of it all). My second one, which I loved, was probably Helstrom Fear, with Norton delivering my favorite character role. Of course, I did see To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in the sixth grade for English class. Definitely quite a powerful film. And, of course, let’s not forget Philadelphia and want it meant / stand for. Plus, Hanks and Washington were great in the film. All in all, while not the most popular genre out there, legal drama films still provide a plethora of dramatic storytelling to capture the attention of moviegoers of truth and lies within a dubious justice.
Just Mercy is the latest legal crime drama feature and the whole purpose of this movie review. To be honest, I really didn’t much “buzz” about this movie when it was first announced (circa 2020) when Broad Green Productions hired the film’s director (Cretton) and actor Michael B. Jordan in the lead role. It was then eventually bought by Warner Bros (the films rights) when Broad Green Productions went Bankrupt. So, I really didn’t hear much about the film until I saw the movie trailer for Just Mercy, which did prove to be quite an interesting tale. Sure, it sort of looked like the generic “legal drama” yarn (judging from the trailer alone), but I was intrigued by it, especially with the film starring Jordan as well as actor Jamie Foxx. I did repeatedly keep on seeing the trailer for the film every time I went to my local movie theater (usually attached to any movie I was seeing with a PG rating and above). So, suffice to say, that Just Mercy’s trailer preview sort of kept me invested and waiting me to see it. Thus, I finally got the chance to see the feature a couple of days ago and I’m ready to share my thoughts on the film. And what are they? Well, good ones….to say the least. While the movie does struggle within the standard framework of similar projects, Just Mercy is a solid legal drama that has plenty of fine cinematic nuances and great performances from its leads. It’s not the “be all to end all” of legal drama endeavors, but its still manages to be more of the favorable motion pictures of these projects.
Just Mercy is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose previous directorial works includes such movies like Short Term 2020, I Am Not a Hipster, and Glass Castle. Given his past projects (consisting of shorts, documentaries, and a few theatrical motion pictures), Cretton makes Just Mercy is most ambitious endeavor, with the director getting the chance to flex his directorial muscles on a legal drama film, which (like I said above) can manage to evoke plenty of human emotions within its undertaking. Thankfully, Cretton is up to the task and never feels overwhelmed with the movie; approaching (and shaping) the film with respect and a touch of sincerity by speaking to the humanity within its characters, especially within lead characters of Stevenson and McMillian. Of course, legal dramas usually do (be the accused / defendant and his attorney) shine their cinematic lens on these respective characters, so it’s nothing original. However, Cretton does make for a compelling drama within the feature; speaking to some great character drama within its two main lead characters; staging plenty of moments of these twos individuals that ultimately work, including some of the heated courtroom sequences.
Like other recent movies (i.e. Brian Banks and The Hate U Give), Cretton makes Just Mercy have an underlining thematical message of racism and corruption that continues to play a part in the US….to this day (incredibly sad, but true). So, of course, the correlation and overall relatively between the movie’s narrative and today’s world is quite crystal-clear right from the get-go, but Cretton never gets overzealous / preachy within its context; allowing the feature to present the subject matter in a timely manner and doesn’t feel like unnecessary or intentionally a “sign of the times” motif. Additionally, the movie also highlights the frustration (almost harsh) injustice of the underprivileged face on a regular basis (most notable those looking to overturn their cases on death row due to negligence and wrongfully accused). Naturally, as somewhat expected (yet still palpable), Just Mercy is a movie about seeking the truth and uncovering corruption in the face of a broken system and ignorant prejudice, with Cretton never shying away from some of the ugly truths that Stevenson faced during the film’s story.
Plus, as a side-note, it’s quite admirable for what Bryan Stevenson (the real-life individual) did for his career, with him as well as others that have supported him (and the Equal Justice Initiative) over the years and how he fought for and freed many wrongfully incarcerated individuals that our justice system has failed (again, the poignancy behind the film’s themes / message). It’s great to see humanity being shined and showcased to seek the rights of the wronged and to dispel a flawed system. Thus, whether you like the movie or not, you simply can not deny that truly meaningful job that Bryan Stevenson is doing, which Cretton helps demonstrate in Just Mercy. From the bottom of my heart…. thank you, Mr. Stevenson.
In terms of presentation, Just Mercy is a solidly made feature film. Granted, the film probably won’t be remembered for its visual background and theatrical setting nuances or even nominated in various award categories (for presentation / visual appearance), but the film certainly looks pleasing to the eye, with the attention of background aspects appropriate to the movie’s story. Thus, all the usual areas that I mention in this section (i.e. production design, set decorations, costumes, and cinematography) are all good and meet the industry standard for legal drama motion pictures. That being said, the film’s score, which was done by Joel P. West, is quite good and deliver some emotionally drama pieces in a subtle way that harmonizes with many of the feature’s scenes.
There are a few problems that I noticed with Just Mercy that, while not completely derailing, just seem to hold the feature back from reaching its full creative cinematic potential. Let’s start with the most prevalent point of criticism (the one that many will criticize about), which is the overall conventional storytelling of the movie. What do I mean? Well, despite the strong case that the film delves into a “based on a true story” aspect and into some pretty wholesome emotional drama, the movie is still structed into a way that it makes it feel vaguely formulaic to the touch. That’s not to say that Just Mercy is a generic tale to be told as the film’s narrative is still quite engaging (with some great acting), but the story being told follows quite a predictable path from start to finish. Granted, I never really read Stevenson’s memoir nor read anything about McMillian’s case, but then I still could easily figure out how the movie was presumably gonna end…. even if the there were narrative problems / setbacks along the way. Basically, if you’ve seeing any legal drama endeavor out there, you’ll get that same formulaic touch with this movie. I kind of wanted see something a little bit different from the film’s structure, but the movie just ends up following the standard narrative beats (and progressions) of the genre. That being said, I still think that this movie is definitely probably one of the better legal dramas out there.
This also applies to the film’s script, which was penned by Cretton and Andrew Lanham, which does give plenty of solid entertainment narrative pieces throughout, but lacks the finesse of breaking the mold of the standard legal drama. There are also a couple parts of the movie’s script handling where you can tell that what was true and what fictional. Of course, this is somewhat a customary point of criticism with cinematic tales taking a certain “poetic license” when adapting a “based on a true story” narrative, so it’s not super heavily critical point with me as I expect this to happen. However, there were a few times I could certainly tell what actually happen and what was a tad bit fabricated for the movie. Plus, they were certain parts of the narrative that could’ve easily fleshed out, including what Morrison’s parents felt (and actually show them) during this whole process. Again, not a big deal-breaker, but it did take me out of the movie a few times. Lastly, the film’s script also focuses its light on a supporting character in the movie and, while this made with well-intention to flesh out the character, the camera spotlight on this character sort of goes off on a slight tangent during the feature’s second act. Basically, this storyline could’ve been removed from Just Mercy and still achieve the same palpability in the emotional department. It’s almost like the movie needed to chew up some runtime and the writers to decided to fill up the time with this side-story. Again, it’s good, but a bit slightly unnecessary.
What does help overlook (and elevate) some of these criticisms is the film’s cast, which are really good and definitely helps bring these various characters to life in a theatrical /dramatic way. Leading the charge in Just Mercy is actor Michael B. Jordan, who plays the film’s central protagonist role of Bryan Stevenson. Known for his roles in Creed, Fruitvale Station, and Black Panther, Jordan has certain prove himself to be quite a capable actor, with the actor rising to stardom over the past few years. This is most apparent in this movie, with Jordan making a strong characteristically portrayal as Bryan; showcasing plenty of underlining determination and compelling humanity in his character as he (as Bryan Stevenson) fights for the injustice of those who’s voices have been silenced or dismissed because of the circumstances. It’s definitely a strong character built and Jordan seems quite capable to task in creating a well-acted on-screen performance of Bryan. Behind Jordan is actor Jamie Foxx, who plays the other main lead in the role, Walter McMillian. Foxx, known for his roles in Baby Driver, Django Unchained, and Ray, has certainly been recognized as a talented actor, with plenty of credible roles under his belt. His participation in Just Mercy is another well-acted performance that deserve much praise as its getting (even receiving an Oscar nod for it), with Foxx portraying Walter with enough remorseful grit and humility that makes the character quite compelling to watch. Plus, seeing him and Jordan together in a scene is quite palpable and a joy to watch.
The last of the three marquee main leads of the movie is the character of Eva Ansley, the director of operations for EJI (i.e. Stevenson’s right-handed employee / business partner), who is played by actress Brie Larson. Up against the characters of Stevenson and McMillian, Ansley is the weaker of the three main lead; presented as supporting player in the movie, which is perfectly fine as the characters gets the job done (sort of speak) throughout the film’s narrative. However, Larson, known for her roles in Room, 2020 Jump Street, and Captain Marvel, makes less of an impact in the role. Her acting is fine and everything works in her portrayal of Eva, but nothing really stands in her performance (again, considering Jordan and Foxx’s performances) and really could’ve been played by another actress and achieved the same goal.
The rest of the cast, including actor Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk and O Brother, Where Art Thou) as incarcerated inmate Ralph Meyers, actor Rafe Spall (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Big Short) as legal attorney Tommy Champan, actress Karan Kendrick (The Hate U Give and Family) as Minnie McMillan, Walter’s wife, actor C.J. LeBlanc (Arsenal and School Spirts) as Walter’s son, John McMillian, actor Rob Morgan (Stranger Things and Mudbound) as death role inmate Herbert Richardson, actor O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Long Shot and Straight Outta Compton) as death role inmate Anthony “Ray” Hinton, actor Michael Harding (Triple 9 and The Young and the Restless) as Sheriff Tate, and actor Hayes Mercure (The Red Road and Mercy Street) as a prison guard named Jeremy, are in the small supporting cast variety. Of course, some have bigger roles than others, but all of these players, which are all acted well, bolster the film’s story within the performances and involvement in Just Mercy’s narrative.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s never too late to fight for justice as Bryan Stevenson fights for the injustice of Walter McMillian’s cast against a legal system that is flawed in the movie Just Mercy. Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s latest film takes a stance on a poignant case; demonstrating the injustice of one (and by extension those wrongfully incarcerated) and wrapping it up in a compelling cinematic story. While the movie does struggle within its standard structure framework (a sort of usual problem with “based on a true story” narrations) as well as some formulaic beats, the movie still manages to rise above those challenges (for the most part), especially thanks to Cretton’s direction (shaping and storytelling) and some great performances all around (most notable in Jordan and Foxx). Personally, I liked this movie. Sure, it definitely had its problem, but those didn’t distract me much from thoroughly enjoying this legal drama feature. Thus, my recommendation for the film is a solid “recommended”, especially those who liked the cast and poignant narratives of legality struggles and the injustice of a failed system / racism. In the end, while the movie isn’t the quintessential legal drama motion picture and doesn’t push the envelope in cinematic innovation, Just Mercy still is able to manage to be a compelling drama that’s powerful in its story, meaningful in its journey, and strong within its statement. Just like Bryan Stevenson says in the movie….” If we could look at ourselves closely…. we can change this world for the better”. Amen to that! | https://medium.com/the-outpost-s3e11/episode-11-the-outpost-3x11-series-3-episode-11-online-461d43861670 | ['The Cw'] | 2020-12-27 10:57:57.074000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Fantasy', 'Action'] |
[Dream Report] Climbing the Ocean Cave to a Palace of Stone and Water | This one was sort of disjointed. There were times I was in one place, but then was in another with no clear recollection of how I got there, including skipping back and forward in time. I will skip most of that stuff as it’s confusing and adds nothing.
I recall walking through enormous caverns, illuminated faintly by rays of sunshine coming in through gaps in the ceiling. There was also water pouring in through the gaps like so many waterfalls into a pool far below. My companion wore mountain climbing gear.
When I asked where we were going, she answered we had to descend to the pool at the bottom of the cavern. I balked and said we’d never make it but she egged me on until I gave in and began to rappel down the slippery wet side of the cavern. There was also some light bouldering to be done near the bottom.
Once down there, we found an aquarium set up with a laptop and some sensors. She explained she captured some of the species of fish native to the caves and was monitoring their health in captivity compared to those still in the pool to determine whether they could be brought back and raised in the lab.
There were other climbers down here. They were hard at work cleaning fish they caught. My companion, who must’ve been a marine biology student specializing in caves or something, scolded them for contaminating her research. They ignored her.
I remarked that what they were doing looked interesting, and I wanted to try. I asked if anybody could do it. The one nearest me snapped that no, of course not just anybody could do it and asked who I think I am. I apologized, then returned to the boulders at the base of the cavern wall we’d descended.
After a long, physically strenuous climb back to the ledge we’d been walking along, we took a break to eat and drink. I got out a neon green Gameboy with a bright backlit, high resolution color screen. As if you took modern technology and put it into an old Gameboy case you spray painted.
I was playing some sort of 2D Metroid style game. There was a beautiful forest of red trees in crisp detail I was exploring until I fell down a hole. I then found myself in an underground cavern, in the game, just like the one we were actually in. After exploring for a bit, I captured some sort of snake-like dinosaur.
After placing it in a hole, it transformed into a biological missile which I stood on top of and rode back up out of the hole and into space. Once in space I landed on an asteroid with gross pulsating organic insides. It became a forced scrolling level where I had to keep moving right to survive.
I fought these enemies who could roll up into a ball just like me, but they were pale white human sized insects. After trying to escape them by rolling down into a maze, I couldn’t find the exit before the forced scrolling moved the screen enough that I was caught against the edge, and died.
It was time to get up and resume the hike anyways. The ledge ascended like a ramp, then another, then another until we reached the top of the mountain this whole cave system was inside of. At the top was a jaw droppingly beautiful palace, or temple of some kind.
It was all perfectly geometric. Steep, sharp angles, smooth surfaces, painstakingly carved out of the tip of the mountain itself. It was shaped, at the base, like a truncated pyramid. That is to say, the top half of it chopped off to create a flat surface where people could walk around.
This big flat platform had artificial hot spring style pools carved into it. We approached the steaming water and got in. Our clothes simply disappeared. I was embarrassed until I saw nobody else was, then I stopped caring. In the center of the big, flat stone platform jutted up a massive inverted stone pyramid. I noticed some of those coin operated binoculars around the very edge for scoping out the landscape.
I then reasoned that if there was a flat platform down here, there was an even bigger one at the top of the inverted pyramid. So we got out of the steaming pool and headed for a doorway in the base of it. Our clothes did not reappear. I tried to cover myself until I noticed my companion didn’t even bother and was amused that I even cared. “Do you not trust people?”she asked, as I puzzled over what that had to do with it.
When I asked how our clothes could do that, she told me I’m dreaming. Oh, of course I thought, wholly unfazed. After ascending a stone stairwell carved right out of the center of the inverted pyramid, we emerged onto a huge flat space, the top of the inverted pyramid.
There were spaces carved out here into which soil had been deposited so they could plant grass, palm trees, and ferns. But those were all on their own little “islands”, as nearly the entire platform was just one gigantic steaming pool. We swam up to the edge to discover the rim was made out of glass.
This made it feel very precarious, as if there was no edge to it at all. We luxuriated in the steaming water for a time until getting pruny. Then headed back down the stairwell, descending the stone ledges as we re-traced our steps through the cave system. On our way, we passed those people cleaning fish.
I spotted the one who snapped at me. “So this really is a dream, right?” She nodded. I looked at that guy, and erased him. He just popped out of existence. She was shocked and appalled. “What? He’s just part of my dream” I protested. She pointed out that she’s also part of my dream and asked if I would also delete her so casually if she upset me.
That got me thinking about the morality of eradicating parts of myself I don’t like rather than finding productive outlets for them or simply embracing myself as a flawed individual. For some reason, at the base of the mountain was a parking lot, like this mountain cave palace thing is some sort of tourist attraction.
She and I parted ways here as I searched for my car. Instead I found my electric moped which I use most of the time to save on gas. “Was I really so dumb to come all this way on a moped” I wondered, but then realized it’s not like I had any gear on me. Everything looked so real, I couldn’t believe I was dreaming.
I touched the handlebars and they felt real. I flipped up the kickstand, and it felt real. Everything looked and felt like reality, with the same clarity as waking life. But then I noticed the parking lot had about a dozen other identical mopeds. When I approached them, they weren’t just the same model.
They were identical copies. Same stickers, same dings, everything. It drove home for me that no matter how real it looked and felt, I must really be dreaming. “Well that’s a relief” I thought, “at least I didn’t actually kill that guy.” I don’t think I woke up immediately after this, but there were no more dreams after it. | https://medium.com/predict/dream-report-climbing-the-ocean-cave-to-a-palace-of-stone-and-water-9b3014dd2499 | ['Alex Beyman'] | 2019-02-16 14:30:29.990000+00:00 | ['Dreams', 'Sleep', 'Diary', 'Stories', 'Dreaming'] |
A Prayer of Penitence | Spiritual Life Icons Collection | Source
O Allah
Bless Muhammad
and the family of Muhammad.
Let the light of Muhammad
and the family of Muhammad
be my guide.
نور.
Let me not be deceived
by the Morning Star
whose light tempts,
and only leads astray.
Knowing that the light
also comes from the Light.
A servant fallen
is a servant still.
The work of temptation
is the shadow by which
we know the Light is.
It is proof of the Light.
Iblis
disobeyed the first command,
to obey the First Command.
Humbled arrogance.
O God, bless Muhammad
and the family of Muhammad.
Let me stand with my Imam
on the Day of Judgement.
I have not the pride of Iblis,
nor the proximity of Iblis.
Yet, I err like Iblis,
taken by the light of Iblis.
I hear the whispers,
and sometimes listen.
I seek forgiveness,
and to be in the Light.
Some mistakes are
from ignorance,
from not understanding,
from trying and failing.
Some are from
the whispers,
the soft light,
arrogant humility.
It is from these
and more
from which I turn,
and turn to the Light.
Even in my intention,
there may have been
ghalat,
but never ghaflat.
I seek forgiveness,
penance, intercession,
because I remember,
with every beat, Who is closer.
O God, bless Muhammad
and the Family of Muhammad.
May the salwat, be pleasing
to God and the angels.
May I be a greater
lover than Iblis.
Of more service
than Iblis.
May the Mercy
shown to me,
be greater than that
given to Iblis.
O God
Bless Muhammad,
the Family of Muhammad,
and the mu’minin. | https://medium.com/@islamoyankee/a-prayer-of-penitence-f1ef3fdb81df | ['Hussein Rashid'] | 2020-12-28 02:51:52.669000+00:00 | ['Forgiveness', 'Shia', 'Prayer', 'Muslim', 'Islam'] |
Power of Data Visualization in 4 New Compelling Examples — DataViz Weekly | If you love good data visualizations, you’ve come to the right place at the right time! Every Friday, we choose the four most interesting projects making good use of charts and maps, from those we have come across out there just lately, and introduce you to them. Here are the visualizations we’re going to tell you about this time on DataViz Weekly:
(False?) dichotomy between saving lives and saving the economy during the second wave — Michael Smithson on The Conversation
COVID Resilience Ranking revealing the best and worst places to stay during the pandemic — Bloomberg
Length of summers in Spain since 1950, by municipality — Predictia
The most popular Thanksgiving pie in each state — Instagram
(False?) Dichotomy Between Lives and Economy During Second Wave of Pandemic
Generally, сharts are employed to discover trends, patterns, and relationships in data. But it is also possible that applied to certain data, they reveal nothing of the aforementioned, which can still be very helpful. Here’s a nice example.
It is usually voiced that containing COVID-19 by means of strict lockdown measures leads to severe damage to the economy. So saving the economy and saving lives are believed to be opposites and governments have to balance between the two while combatting the second wave. Michael Smithson, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, looked at the relevant open data and concluded the claimed dichotomy is actually false.
For his analysis, he took several basic economic indicators for 45 countries (37 OECD member states and 8 other major economies) from the OECD’s QNA dataset and COVID statistics from Our World in Data, and charted them on scatter plots. The visualizations made by the professor show no clear evidence of the relationships one would expect to observe if the claimed dichotomy existed in reality. So, according to his conclusion, the problem should not be considered as a clear trade-off between health, on the one hand, and economic costs, on the other. Check out the charts and read more, on The Conversation.
Best and Worst Countries to Live in During Pandemic
As the entire world remains challenged by the pandemic and its impact on the economy and people’s lives, some countries are significantly more successful in coping with the crisis than others.
No single parameter could determine that, however. So Bloomberg analysts developed what they call the Resilience Score, a complex measure based on ten indicators of the COVID status and quality of life extracted from various carefully selected sources. Then they ranked the 53 largest economies accordingly, revealing where the novel coronavirus has been contained most effectively and, at the same time, with the lowest degree of economic and social disruption.
The components of the COVID Resilience Score include one-month cases per 100,000 people, one-month case fatality rates, total deaths per one million, positive test rates, and the number of vaccine supply agreements — as well as lockdown severity, community mobility, GDP growth forecast, healthcare coverage, and Human Development Index.
Explore the COVID Resilience Ranking, in an interactive table or map, and find out what countries are the best (and worst) places on Earth to stay during the pandemic. Scroll down the article for more insights.
Length of Summers in Spain by Municipality Since 1950
In 2019, Spain was the second most visited country in the world, after France. (Wondering where they are on Bloomberg’s resilience ranking? You will not find them even close to the top. They are ranked 41st and 45th out of 53, respectively.) Warm and sunny summers attract especially many tourists to Spain, and the good thing for the country’s tourism industry is that summers there are getting longer overall.
Predictia, a Spanish data intelligence company, represented climate data from AEMET (Spain’s State Meteorological Agency) and the University of Cantabria in an interactive visualization. When you open it, the first thing you see is a map accompanied by a sidebar with the settings. There, you can choose to view the average first day of the real summer weather, the average last summer day, or the average summer length for the periods of 1960–1982 or 1983–2015, or differences between the two periods, on a municipality level.
You can see that summers on most of the territory of Spain have had longer summers over time. For some places, however, that is not the case. Look into the data with the help of the map and click on municipalities to learn more about their summers 1950–2015 in bar and range area charts.
Most Popular Thanksgiving Pie in Each State
We hope those of you who celebrate it had a happy Thanksgiving Day and enjoyed your meal! So what kind of pie did you eat? Pumpkin? Sweet potato? Cherry? Now we can try to guess it based on where you live!
Instagram revealed the most popular Thanksgiving pie in each state based on the number of likes and mentions of the corresponding pie flavors in stories and feeds in November. According to the map shared on Instagram’s Facebook page, a cranberry pie leads in most states and is the favorite Thanksgiving pie in 14: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Sweet potato comes second, winning in the District of Columbia and 10 states: Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. Cherry, blueberry, and pecan pies lead in 6 states each. Strawberry wins in 4. Pumpkin is the most popular in California, Nevada, and Arizona. Finally, an apple pie tops the list of the most popular Thanksgiving pies in only one state, Connecticut.
In the comments on Facebook, some people expressed doubts that these results could be extrapolated to the real world. Based on their own experience, of course. Check if the picture looks true for your state. | https://medium.com/data-visualization-weekly/power-of-data-visualization-in-4-new-compelling-examples-dataviz-weekly-38bfec92af31 | [] | 2020-11-27 17:29:42.820000+00:00 | ['Data Journalism', 'Infographics', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Visualization', 'Charts'] |
Predicting King County House Prices with Multiple Linear Regression | Photo by Maximillian Conacher
Introduction
The King County House Dataset contains a wealth of information about the price, size, location, condition and various other features of houses in Washington’s King County. In this article, I’ll present how I built a multiple linear regression model in Python to predict house prices.
Here is a complete list of the modules I used in this analysis. Many, but not all, are included in the code embedded below. You may find that some of the variable names are ambiguous, so here is a brief description of each:
To get started, I read the data into a pandas dataframe and ran df.info() to learn about the shape, columns and datatypes.
We can see that it’s a large dataset, containing more than 21 thousand entries and 20 columns. Almost all of the columns contain numeric data, which is convenient for linear regression!
Missing Values
Next, I looked at the proportion of missing values in each column.
Next, I took a look at the value counts for each of the 3 variables with missing values. I decided to drop ‘yr_renovated’ due to its high proportion of missing values, fill the ‘waterfront’ NAs with 0 (which matched the majority of other values in the column, and indicates ‘no waterfront’), and fill the small number of missing ‘view’ values with the column’s mean.
Outliers
To exclude buildings that likely aren’t single-family homes, I checked for outliers in the bedrooms and bathrooms columns using the following code format:
The outlier count was 187 for bathrooms, and 47 (excluding overlaps) for bedrooms. The above code treats any value that’s more than 3 standard deviations away from the mean as an outlier, and drops all the rows containing outliers.
One-Hot Encoding
There’s one variable in the dataset that we would expect to be highly related with price, but which doesn’t have a clear linear relationship: condition. The value descriptions for this column state that it is coded on a 1–5 linear scale, with 1 being ‘poor’ and 5 being ‘very good.’
Interestingly, the below scatterplot shows that ‘average’ houses tend to perform the best in terms of price:
This may be due to the fact that the condition values are relative to age and grade (which refers to the design/quality of construction rather than the utility/functionality of the building). A new, excellently designed, very expensive building could be given an ‘average’ condition rating if some functional repairs are needed. As we can see in the scatterplot below, average condition houses also tend to have the highest grade rating.
There might be a clearer linear relationship between price and specific condition values, which we can explore more effectively by one-hot encoding the variable. The below code creates a dummy variable for each condition value, drops the first value to avoid the dummy variable trap, drops the original column, and joins the new variables to the data frame.
Now we can visualize the relationship between each condition rating and house price on scatterplots. A value of 1 indicates that the house has the condition rating that corresponds to each column, while a value of 0 means that it does not:
Now there are linear relationships for each column, with condition ratings 2 and three having the most pronounced relationships.
Multiple Linear Regression Assumptions
There are four assumptions that must be checked as part of the multiple linear regression analysis process:
No multicollinearity
Linear relationship between explanatory and response variables
Homoscedasticity of error terms
Normal distribution of model residuals
We’ll dig deeper into each of these assumptions as we check them.
Multicollinearity
Using seaborn, I created a heatmap of correlations between each variable and all the others. The absolute value of the correlations was calculated because only the strength, not the direction, of a linear relationship matters for satisfying this assumption.
As we might expect, many of the variables related to the size of homes (e.g. sqft, number of rooms) are highly correlated with each other. Generally, we don’t want to include any two x variables whose correlation exceeds .80 in the same model. We do, however, want to include variables that are correlated with the y variable. Below, I create and display two small data frames that narrow down the correlations we are most interested in.
Although sqft_living and sqft_above are both highly correlated with price, only one of them can be included in a multiple regression model because they are also highly correlated with each other. Fortunately, the other two variables whose correlation violates this assumption (condition ratings 3 and 4) have a relatively weak correlation with price.
Linear Relationships
Scatterplots are a simple way to check if the relationships between explanatory and response variables are linear. After creating objects for the variables that have the strongest correlation with price, I made the following scatterplots.
The ‘view’, ‘floors’, and ‘bedrooms’ variables do not have a clear linear relationship with house price. Sqft_living has a stronger linear relationship with price than sqft_above, so it will be used in the multiple regression model. Due to its multicollinearity with sqft above, sqft above will be excluded.
Building a Multiple Regression Model
The next two assumptions — normality and homoscedasticity — require us to first create a regression model because they refer to a model’s residuals rather than its features. In linear regression, residuals are the vertical distances between actual values and those that are estimated by the regression line. Before creating a multiple regression model, I completed a simple linear regression analysis for bathrooms, grade, sqft_living, and sqft_living15. During this process, I discovered that the the residuals for the sqft variables didn’t fully satisfy normality and homoscedasticity. To address this, I used np.log() to update price and the sqft values to their natural log.
For the multiple regression model, I included the four variables that had the highest correlations with price without violating the multicollinearity assumption:
The r-squared value, 0.535, indicates that the model can account for about 53% of the variability of price around its mean. The null hypothesis for multiple regression is that there is no relationship between the chosen explanatory variables and the response variable. All of the p-values round to 0, which means we can reject the null hypothesis. Now we can confirm that the model satisfies the assumptions of normality and homoscedasticity.
Normality of Residuals
Quantile-quantile plots are one way to check the normality assumption. If the residuals are normally distributed, their points will mostly fall along a straight line. Below is a Q-Q plot of the model’s residuals.
Since almost all of the data points fall along a straight line in this QQ-plot, we can consider the normality assumption satisfied.
Homoscedasticity
The homoscedasticity assumption states that for any value of x, the variance of the residuals is roughly the same. To visualize this, I made a scatterplot with the model’s residuals on the y axis and fitted values on the x-axis. For the homoscedasticity assumption to be satisfied, the shape of the points should be roughly symmetrical across a line at y=0.
We can see that the points have a roughly symmetrical blob-like shape that is consistent across the x-axis. The model satisfies — last, but not least — the assumption of homoscedasticity.
Model Validation
The final step in evaluating the quality of the model is cross-validation, which gives us an idea of how the model would perform with new data for the same variables. I used sklearn’s train_test_split function to split the data into two subsets: one that the model will be trained on, and another that it will be tested on. By default, the function takes 75% of the data as the training subset and the other 25% as its test subset.
Mean Squared Error
The code below creates train and test data for the x and y variables, use the x subsets to predict new y values, and then calculate the distance between these and the actual y-values. Finally, we use the mean_squared_error function to calculate the MSE for both subsets.
The MSEs for the train and test subsets are similar, which suggests that the model will perform similarly on different data.
Conclusions
Together, square footage, grade, number of bathrooms, and the size of neighbors’ homes function as the best predictors of a house’s price in King County. The model does have some limitations: given that some of the variables needed to be log-transformed to satisfy regression assumptions, any new data used with the model would have to undergo similar preprocessing. Additionally, given regional differences in housing prices, the model’s applicability to data from other counties may be limited.
So, if you’re looking for housing that won’t break the bank, it may be wise to skimp on the square footage and share a bathroom with three other people. But aren’t most of us urban dwellers already doing that? | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/predicting-king-county-house-prices-with-multiple-linear-regression-84de5feeafb2 | ['Avonlea Fisher'] | 2020-08-30 17:30:59.514000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'Housing', 'Statistics'] |
Pipeline Maintenance and Asset Integrity Management for Oil & Gas Industry Conference Amsterdam | Primo Eventi 17–18–19 May 2021 Amsterdam , Netherlands is bringing together technical and strategic leaders from major O&G Companies, Pipeline Owners/Operators, Gas TSOs and Refineries to brainstorm on major challenges in pipeline integrity and adopting optimal maintenance strategies for smooth operations.
This year’s event will have a focus on pipeline integrity management, maintenance & inspection processes — Inline Inspection (ILI), crack assessment, use of drones & UAVs, corrosion prevention (piggable & unpiggable pipelines) & mitigation for both onshore & offshore pipelines. The event will enable attendees in gaining a competitive advantage by benchmarking their strategies alongside proven best practices shared by our Decision-makers. This is ensured through exchange of pragmatic ideas, problem solving & high-quality business-friendly face-to-face networking environment.
Topics to be addressed:
How to minimize the environmental impact from pipeline operations
Detecting pipeline leaks, threats, encroachments etc. using satellites
Pipeline Safety & Integrity Management In Gas Transmission Networks
Holistic approach to pipeline integrity — Cradle to grave concept
Issues of ageing pipelines and the problems that come with it
Introduction & integration of Pipeline Integrity Management System (PIMS)
Optimising corrosion growth predictions from ILI data
ILI false-positives — How to deal with it
Detecting and eliminating SCC
Field Kelvin Probe (FKP) for corrosion detection
Target Market and Audience:
Oil & Gas Operators
Pipeline Owners/Operators
Gas Transmission Systems Operators (TSOs)
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Who Should Attend
MDs, VPs, Directors, Heads, Managers, Chiefs & Experts of:
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Technical Advisor/Technical Division/Pipeline/Technical Authority
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The conference could be Booked Virtual or In-Person “Amsterdam ”
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About US
Primo Eventi Market Research GroupFor More DetailsMichael [email protected] | https://medium.com/@primo-eventi/pipeline-maintenance-and-asset-integrity-management-for-oil-gas-industry-conference-amsterdam-92380fd72a6f | ['Adrian Vanhands'] | 2020-12-27 13:58:30.843000+00:00 | ['Energy', 'Oil And Gas', 'Project Management', 'Conference', 'Amsterdam'] |
Episode 5: A beer, please! | Episode 5: A beer, please!
Storing transactions in a distributed ledger
Our friends at The Blockchain Bar just introduced their own bar tokens. But how will they manage them?
Carol: “I don’t want to handle my tokens all the time for each drink. I’m used to paying when I leave the bar.”
Oscar has an idea: “Easy! Everyone remembers how many drinks they had. At the end, they give away the right amount of tokens.”
Bob is sceptical: “And what if someone ‘forgets’ a beer or two?”
Again, Alice has the solution: “We all keep a list of all drink orders. If you want a beer, you shout ‘one beer’ and everybody takes a note.”
When someone leaves the bar, our friends just have to count the number of beers since the last visit and collect the respective amount of tokens.
The best thing: You cannot game the system by “forgetting” drinks, because many others have the correct list and would find out.
Bitcoin works very similar: If someone wants to send money, they just inform other computers in the network about whom to send what amount, and the computers all record the transaction. These records are called “distributed ledger”.
But what happens if there is an error? How do they notice? Find out in the following episodes …
Or maybe you first want to learn some more about distributed ledgers on TheBlockchainBar.com. | https://medium.com/blockruptions-blockchain-bar/episode-5-a-beer-please-f32a94ad2aea | ['Collin Müller'] | 2018-08-30 14:27:46.242000+00:00 | ['Distributed Ledgers', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
Time Is Everything | When I saw my Parents
Leaving this world
left me and my sister alone
I realized in my childhood
Time is everything.
I love her from bottom of my heart
She broke it By leaving me
Now I permanently live with her memories
I realized in my adolescent
Time is everything.
One day In my office
My Boss fired me
with no reason
I pulled out by Boxer
I Realized in my young age
Time is every thing.
We are zero in front of time
Time control us
Only thing we can do is
Let go things which we can’t control. | https://medium.com/flicker-and-flight/time-is-everything-7b7fa26253ca | ['Mike Ortega'] | 2020-12-17 18:38:55.082000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Life', 'Culture', 'Self', 'Self Improvement'] |
WHAT IS CONTACT TRACING AND HOW IS CONTACT TRACING TECHNOLOGY BEING USED TO FIGHT CORONAVIRUS | Where we look at the meaning of the term contact tracing and how technology is being used to carry it out in the war against COVID-19
With the Coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc across the world, contact tracing is a term that we are hearing a lot about now. In fact, many tech companies have already worked on contact tracing apps so as to help the healthcare authorities. Yet many of us may not know what it means and why it is needed. In this blog, we shall take a look at all this and more.
What is contact tracing?
A common term in public health, contact tracing refers to the process where people who may have come into contact with an infected person are identified and subsequently, data about these contacts is collected. Tracing the contacts of infected individuals, testing them for infection, treating the infected and tracing their contacts in turn helps the public health authorities contain the spread of infection.
This explains why contact tracing has a crucial role to play in fighting infections today. It has been resorted to against several diseases, including tuberculosis, vaccine-preventable infections like measles, sexually transmitted infections (including HIV), blood-borne infections, bacterial infections, and novel infections like SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2). In fact, the eradication of smallpox has more to do with contact tracing than universal immunization. Exhaustive contact tracing yielded a list of all infected people who were then isolated and their surrounding community was immunized so as to contain its spread.
The goals of contact tracing are rather clear. Firstly, it is about breaking the chain of infection transmission and reducing its spread. Next is alerting all those who have been exposed to infected persons about the possibility of infection and offer preventive counseling or prophylactic care. It also aims to help prevent reinfection of the originally infected patient and to help the authorities learn about the epidemiology of a disease in a particular demographic.
How does contact tracing work?
Contact tracing typically has the following steps:
1. A person is recognised as having a communicable disease (also called the index case). Public health authorities are informed of this case and at times, the primary health care provider continues to take charge of the patient’s treatment.
2. The index case is thoroughly interrogated so as to glean detailed information about his/ her movements, who all they have been in close contact with.
3. As per the disease and the nature of the infection, family members, neighbours, health care providers, and anyone else who is aware of the case’s contacts can also be interviewed.
4. These contacts of the index case are then zeroed in on by public health workers who also offer them counseling, screening, prophylaxis, and/or treatment. Contacts may be isolated (for instance, required to remain at home) or excluded (prohibited) from certain locations, say a school or a gathering,if deemed necessary for disease control.
5. If contacts are not individually identifiable, like in cases of people attending a mass gathering, broader communication channels like media advisories can be used.
Today, given the spread of the Coronavirus and the urgent need to reduce its spread, the need for contact tracing is more important than ever. And if we wish to lift social distancing measures like school, shop and office closures and orders to stay home, public health agencies need to carry out contact tracing a lot more aggressively.
The role of technology in contact tracing
The above reasons explain the greater need for contact tracing — especially using digital tools — today.
Below are the key methods used by contact tracing technologies/ apps.
Bluetooth proximity tracing
Here, as the name suggests, Bluetooth, specifically Bluetooth Low Energy, is used to track encounters between two phones. Bluetooth basically transmits anonymous, time-shifting identifiers to nearby devices. Devices receiving this then add these identifiers to a locally stored contact history record. Bluetooth protocols with encryption offer privacy protection and usually do not take up a lot of battery power either.
However, in this type of contact tracing, the user’s location cannot be tracked since it is not logged as part of the protocol. So such a system on its own won’t be able to track patients who may have become infected by being exposed to a surface touched by a patient. Another problem here is the potential inaccuracy of Bluetooth; it is not 100 percent reliable when it comes to detecting contact events.
Location tracking
Location tracking can be carried out through cell phone tower networks or using GPS. A contact tracing protocol of this type was first used in Israel. Cell phone tower network-based location tracking also rules out the need to download an app.
On the other hand, GPS logging contact tracing protocols are more private than Bluetooth based ones since the GPS can be passively logged by smartphones.
GEO-QR code tagging
This is a contact tracing technique where a venue or a place is assigned to a QR code and people scan the QR code with their phones in order to tag their visits to the place. This is thus a method of voluntary online check in and check out from the said location and users have control over their privacy, plus they do not need to download any app.
If a positive COVID-19 case is identified later, the system will be able to look for and detect possible encounters within the venues that are registered on the system with their respective QR codes. This method has been used in Malaysia by their government and in Australia and New Zealand by private sector parties.
Leading contact tracing protocols today
Contact tracing app protocols then are essentially frameworks that rely on digital tracking systems, as shared above. They typically work through mobile devices so as to establish and record contact between an infected patient and a user. Since the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic, many non-standard protocols have been developed to aid large-scale digital contact tracing. Among these, ENS and BlueTrace are the most notable ones.
Exposure Notifications System (ENS) is a framework and specification aimed at aiding digital contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed by tech giants Apple and Google and originally called the Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing Project, the framework improves upon more traditional contact tracing techniques hitherto used by health authorities by automatically recording contacts with other ENS users using their Android or iOS smartphones. Essentially a decentralized reporting based protocol, ENS dwells on a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy technology and privacy-preserving cryptography. It is being used as an optional feature within COVID-19 apps developed and published by authorized health authorities. Launched on April 10, 2020, it was first made available on iOS on May 20, 2020 as part of the iOS 13.5 update.
The first country to release an app using ENS is Switzerland which did so in May this year. Several other countries have followed suit and among these, the ones released in Ireland and Germany, called Covid Tracker app and Corona Warn-App respectively, are ranked high by the MIT Technology Review’s Covid Tracing Tracker, a project that monitors the development and rollout of contract tracing apps across the world.
While 37% of Ireland’s population downloaded their Covid Tracker app in the very first week since the launch, Germany’s app has been downloaded by more than 20% of citizens, also considered to be a fairly impressive percentage of adoption.
Meanwhile, in the US, a nationwide app seems unlikely and states are planning to roll out individual apps using ENS, with Virginia now the first state to make use of the protocol.
Another popular contact tracing protocol is BlueTrace. An open-source application protocol, it relies heavily on preserving privacy and co-operation of health authorities. To begin with, personal information is collected only once at the point of registration and is only used to get in touch with potentially infected patients. Users have the option to drop out at any point, allowing them to delete all personal information and ensure that previously recorded data is untraceable. Contact tracing is done fully locally on a client device using Bluetooth Low Energy, which stores all encounters for the past 21 days in a contact history log. Users in the contact log are then zeroed upon using anonymous time-shifting temporary IDs issued by the health authority. This ensures that a user’s identity can only be confirmed by their respective health authority.
With temporary IDs changing regularly, the information is also protected against third parties. So when a user tests positive for infection, the health authority asks for the contact log. Only if and when the user chooses to share his / her encounter log, it is sent to the health authority who can then match the temporary ID with the contact information.
The BlueTrace protocol was developed by the Singapore government for their TraceTogether app and now it has already found a taker in Australia with New Zealand also likely to use it.
Contact tracing using badges
Contact tracing badges are also being used to maintain social distancing between workers who have had return to work during the pandemic. For instance, Fleetwood Group Inc, an electronics and furniture manufacturer, has come up with what it calls Instant-Trace badges; the company says that these will be particularly useful at manufacturing facilities, fulfillment areas and for general contractors.
Costing $99 each, the employees basically wear these badges near the chest or the hip; the badges are said to vibrate and blink when social distances are not maintained. Upon the end of a shift, employees scan the QR code on the badge at a kiosk that stores the data. The contact-tracing information thus collected can be accessed by company leaders using the Internet; the info is typically stored for up to 21 days thereby helping establish the chain of contacts.
Another such example would be that created by wearable technology company Proxfinity. It has come up with what it has named ResCUE, essentially a contact tracing platform aimed to help companies and organizations track if social distancing is being followed in the workplace in real-time.
Here, employees simply wear the smart badge around their neck or in their pocket. The badge then gets activated only upon coming within a certain distance of another badge; it then records when the distance limit was breached and for how long. Through a personalized dashboard, Proxfinity’s backend platform analyzes this data. ResCUE badges have a battery life of 3–5 days and they store data independently by syncing with the cloud-based SaaS backend when secure WiFi is available or when docked. The badges and the data can be anonymized and do not require personally-identifiable information to function.
Thus, these ResCUE badges act as SaaS (Software as a Service)-powered wearable devices that let companies know about the potential level of coronavirus exposure among their employees. They claim to be a better quality and more private alternative to the contact tracing protocols mentioned earlier, that typically depend on personal devices, app downloads, GPS, always-on WiFi or Bluetooth.
Threats associated with contact tracing
Contact tracing in matters of public health is no doubt needed now more than ever before, but it is also important to acknowledge the fact that it doesn’t come without any perils attached. As a matter of fact, it is encumbered by ethical constraints. The biggest issue is the loss of privacy.
There is a lot of scope for it to be abused wherein raw location data is made available to the authorities, in turn subjecting individuals’ personal/ professional lives to unwarranted scrutiny. For instance, the issue with Bluetooth-based solutions is that smartphones continuously sending RF signals every 200ms can be spied on. Also, a system relying just on Bluetooth is not too dependable in any case, since the likelihood of so many users having it on is also not that high right now.
Similarly, digital contact tracing solutions that ask users to share their location trails to a central system without encryption are also exposed to security threats. The BlueTrace and Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) contact tracing protocols, for instance, use centralised report processing, which can come in the way of ensuring privacy. Such centralised report processing protocols need users to upload their entire contact log to a health authority administered server, which means if the health authority fails to maintain security on its server, all the user info is under threat.
The PEPP-PT in fact deserves a special mention here. A full-stack open protocol, it was created to help with digital contact tracing of those infected by the Coronavirus. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy to find and locally log clients near a user. It then sends this log for each user to a centralized reporting server and offers the advantages of keeping humans-in-the-loop and allowing for health authority verification. But the big downside here is the loss of privacy. It is said that users do not have to register with their real names but the fact remains that the back-end server can process pseudonymous personal data leaving it vulnerable to cyber attacks.
The bottomline remains this: privacy protection, regardless of the contact tracing app protocol being deployed, is imperative. Recognising this will ensure that the information gleaned is used only to protect public health and once the pandemic is behind us, we will have not handed over all our information to the government authorities. Contact tracing apps thus need to factor in this need to not violate privacy — as far as possible, anyway — even as they perform efficient contact tracing.
(This blog was originally posted in the Blogs section of the YoungWonks website on August 19, 2020 under the headline: What is contact tracing and how is contact tracing technology being used to fight Coronavirus. To read more such blogs and to claim a free trial coding class for your child, please visit: https://www.youngwonks.com/
Blog written by: Team YoungWonks (Written by: Vidya Prabhu; Illustration by Leonel Cruz) | https://medium.com/youngwonks/what-is-contact-tracing-and-how-is-contact-tracing-technology-being-used-to-fight-coronavirus-f188cc331720 | ['Youngwonks Content'] | 2020-12-16 17:02:23.461000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Covid 19', 'Contact Tracing', 'Contact Tracing App', 'STEM'] |
The journey of purpose starts by design. | The journey of purpose starts by design.
I’m not gonna have an intellectual discourse with you on purpose. Just know this you can’t have purpose without design and you can’t have design without a designer. Good luck finding your true purpose without God.
I know you can find A purpose and call it yours truly. But it won’t be THE purpose. Do you really wanna live for a purpose? Like a dog living for a purpose any 4 legged animal can have. Think about how many 4 legged animal there are! A lion’s purpose versus a dog’s? Imagine a lion stuck in a cage adopting the purpose of a dog. I mean what do we do with all that teeth and killer instincts; that mane or those claws. Oh boy, THOSE claws! Or the jaws.
Be like that. Be living for a generic purpose. When she broke my heart, I questioned my designer and His purpose more than I allowed myself to feel the pain. I had decided that my purpose in part included marrying this beautiful woman and raising kids together. But you see, that was a purpose I pursued because she was the woman in my life in front of me.
It hurt like hell. Again, not because of her but because I was wrong. Everything about what my life was about needed a whole cosmetic surgery to change it back to what it was before my butt and face overhaul. The beautiful thing though was I had my designer’s number. So for 2 straight years, I called Him every day angry that I need to get reworked back to fit what He made me for. I was definitely a whiny little bitch because she cute, and she fine and she was mine but more so because I drank some real serious Kool aid and now I gotta spit it back out before I pee it out.
Purpose. You see, the point is, man’s greatest need is to be in alignment. Have you ever driven a car that is out of alignment? Everything about the experience feels wrong, it feels like a drag. As a driver, I know it’s no fun but I wonder what it must feel like as the car. The closest I can think of is when I chipped part of my meniscus and had a particle dancing all over my knees. It literally would grind my knees to a halt and I would just take a bit to let it wriggle out so I can walk away. Being out of alignment sucks. It’s worse when you don’t know what alignment is, or when you have never been in alignment to begin with.
I am here to tell you, alignment is possible. Loon it up. And while you do that, look up purpose too.
Living in alignment with purpose is the single most significant determinant for fulfillment, legacy, essence, and all the beautiful states of life that we subconsciously live for. Don’t get me wrong you can have a season of fulfilled life where u aren’t necessarily in alignment but u feel good about whatever it is you allow yourself to be a vessel for. In the same way a horse can fill in as a dog when it’s little but as it grows to its full size it becomes painful to wake up and sleep in a house that the doors doesn’t fit its stomach.
There is a God sized hole in the heart of man that he will shove plenty things in but there is only one voice begin enough to fill it to it’s exact specification. It’s that voice of the one who made you.
See my recent pain was my breakup, it’s the lens that reset my perspective and it was painful. However, I believe each and everyone of us have different vehicles to ask the same question I’m curious to know if you are living without asking those questions and if you have asked, what are some of your answers and how do you know those answers are worth selling everything to live for. When I say it that way, it’s kinda scary. Sell everything to live for but that is the power of purpose. It’s unlike marriage where you can find a way to escape your spouse if needed. Purpose is that while that causes creaking every waking day. Until you align with it, it will serve you reminders in the most opportune moments.
In pain, purpose can be the most powerful source of perspective because well, have you ever talked to the chemical compounds that form the gold that made the ring possible. They would tell us that they hated the heated especially when they were yanked off the earth for no apparent reason. They will say, in less than 24 hours, I went from chilling in the dirt and expecting to spend the rest of my life hidden in nature to feeling incredible heat that gave me a new found appreciation for whatever the temperature of hell will be like. They will say that they hated going from strong robust and powerful to melting into liquid so soft like common water. They will say that they hated looking at themselves in the mirror and being unable to recognize this liquid form easily tossed and poured about from one mold to the other. They will say a lot of things but in the end; they will also say this:
I did not know that my life’s purpose was to be a living breathing symbol of love for the rest of my life. To be showcased to joyful gasps for air because of the beauty and price for which I was bought. But I am grateful that He who made me, who saw me in the dirt chose to be patient with the process. I am glad that I endured and I didn’t run away and pour away into the dirt or hide in the mold that was to form me. I am glad that I poured when I needed to and didn’t stay liquid but let the temperature change make me solid again. I am glad that I made the journey to become who I was made to be.
To you human who has tried so many different ways to be useful, to be human, to be purposeful, to you: find your designer.
The journey of purpose starts by design. | https://medium.com/@adedolapoolisa/the-journey-of-purpose-starts-by-design-7df6663d63d7 | ['Adedolapo Olisa'] | 2020-12-14 06:50:07.337000+00:00 | ['Self Reflection', 'Journey', 'Purpose', 'Purpose Driven Life', 'Becoming'] |
Not a Haiku | Haiku by Matsuo Bashō: “Quietly, quietly, / yellow mountain roses fall — / sound of the rapids”
There comes a time in late September when one no longer wants to kill flies,
seeing how they fly slower, hum lower,
bumble confused on the window sill
like an elderly person who can’t remember how they ended up
locked in the stairwell, too embarrassed to ask how to get back in.
They would wander the SRO where I stayed when I first came to this City. Whole floors smelled of cabbage. Some rooms were dorms,
the young and the old checkerboarded together
With our hot plates, our minifridges, waiting.
Down the hall lived a girl that my landlord
-if the host of an illegal six-week sublet can be termed a landlord-
called The Fucks-a-lot Girl.
She was loud. A drama student of course.
As we drank wine out of plastic beer cups,
My not-quite-landlord would squat and try to peek through her keyhole,
then spring up and try to peek through the peephole
Which of course never works, at most you’ll get
a giant fisheye right back at you,
but I liked the hint of violence in his thighs
as he crouched and rose and crouched again.
The Alzheimers lady from #302 drifted back and forth behind us,
cooing, burnt-orange cardigan hanging to her knees.
I suppose it was ill advised to sleep with the not-landlord
before moving in, a bad idea to hand over
twelve hundred in cash and leave with nothing in writing.
But he was a Bulgarian pianist and I was in my Slavic phase,
having liked Dostoevsky in college.
I saw on Facebook he has some serious disease,
and also male pattern balding.
Both are honorable fates I suppose.
Has it really been a quarter century? | https://medium.com/@ctjackson/not-a-haiku-4840651df76f | ['C.T. Jackson'] | 2020-12-11 18:01:56.578000+00:00 | ['Autumn', 'New York City', 'Mortality', 'Poetry', 'Haiku'] |
Xcode 12.3 模擬器的黃色問題 | 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/%E5%BD%BC%E5%BE%97%E6%BD%98%E7%9A%84-swift-ios-app-%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C%E8%A7%A3%E7%AD%94%E9%9B%86/xcode-12-3-%E6%A8%A1%E6%93%AC%E5%99%A8%E7%9A%84%E9%BB%83%E8%89%B2%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C-d99ab11da28c | ['彼得潘的 Ios App Neverland'] | 2020-12-18 04:08:22.572000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Xcode', 'Swift'] |
EoC AMA | Q1. What is the background of yourself and the EOC team?
Hello everyone, I’m Paul from EOC ,and I have been in the gaming industry for almost 15 years. Now I’m one of the game producers of Era of Civilization: Ancient World (EOC). It’s an honor to be here today to share our GameFi project with everyone in the community. I hope that through today’s AMA, more people will know what we have done at EOC.
This is the situation of other members of our game production team:
The entire EOC technical team has 5–10 years of experience in game development and has cooperated for many years. Whether it is H5 games, consoles or mobile games, they are all at the top level in the UK.
Our art team has 2 master-level game artists, working with our UI designers and special effects designers with 5–8 years of game experience. The art team undertook the outsourcing of large-scale foreign game projects in the early years, and has very rich experience in providing 3D large-scale project services.
Our sound effects engineers have many years of working experience in major domestic and foreign film companies, including Sony Pictures and Columbia Film Group. They mainly focus on sound effects production and editing. They have mature technology and aesthetics, and their works are in line with mainstream players.
Q2. What are the ambitions or purposes that EOC is try to achieve?
What EOC wants to bring to our players is an element of fun.
We firmly believe that those existing Gamefi projects cannot be called “games”. Gaming is an entertainment service industry, and in essence it still needs to bring people some entertainment. If a player plays a game just to make money, it may not be called a “game”. It can even be said that these people are working for game companies.
We also believe that we will see countless games based on the concept of meta-universe. You might say that your virtual products in those existing Gamefi projects are valuable in the game, but in fact, the so-called value is ultimately diluted infinitely. The usual GameFi sells scarcity and uniqueness. But in fact, scarcity and uniqueness have nothing except the concept of NFT.
So in the world of EOC, we spent a lot of time designing different game elements. EOC allows players to develop different strategies in medieval battles. In EOC, players can continuously collect heroes of different attributes and levels by opening blind boxes. Heroes can participate in adventures, participate in alliance war games, explore adventures, complete different daily tasks, or participate in country building in the game through farm work. Different combinations of strategies are allowed between different tasks, resulting in different game results. We have learned from the combination of many strategy games, which greatly increased the diversity of the game ecology.
The above is just the basic situation of EOC, but the content of this game is very rich and complicated. I may not be able to express its essence in a few words. It is recommended that everyone can participate in the game and explore this wonderful world together. Enjoy the fun of playing.
Q3. It is understood that game players can obtain income in various ways in the EOC world. Can you tell us more about the detail of the methods to obtain income in the game?
The EOC team strives to guarantee the earning of the EOC players.
As a GameFi project, we do our best to provide all participants with the best tokenomic model to maintain the entire ecological value for our players and ultimately allow anyone to earn EOC Coins (EOCC) through proficient game skills. Since all in-game items in EOC are digitized as NFT, players can easily complete the transfer and transaction of NFT assets through the EOC game market at any time.
The difference between EOC and the usual play-to-earn GameFi models of all other blockchain games is the realistic reward system in EOC. This game will truly make all EOC players rich by rewarding players with a series of mainstream crypto assets, including Bitcoin, which has never been seen in other games. Therefore, players can enjoy a higher level of fun through the most advanced GameFi reward mode in EOC.
The key concept of EOC is play-to-live (P2L), which has given many players-starting from poor players in rural realities, and now gaining the ability to make money through playing games in the virtual world. We can call it the leisure economy.
Now it cannot be said that players are working for the EOC company, because we have given players valuable third-party assets, so game players don’t have to worry about being unable to get back their investment in the game when the price of GameFi project tokens drops in the secondary market.
Q4. What are the functions that MMR and EOCC tokens have in the EOC game setting?
MMR is a platform token that supports the decentralized computing power trading platform Make Me Rich, which naturally combines traditional Filcoin mining with mainstream DeFi game settings through a unique Staking protocol.
Since the Make Me Rich platform is one of our main investors, in addition to consuming BNB tokens as gas on Binance Smart Chain, EOC also consumes EOCC and MMR.
Users with MMR not only can draw blind boxes at the beginning stage of the EOC to gain rare in-game items, at the same time the platform will also feed users back with multiple benefits:
◇ The earned MMR 50% will go into the game union pool to increase the income of players which build the game union;
◇ The earned MMR 10% will be collected by the foundation to provide incentives for future community governance, etc;
◇ The earned MMR 20% will be used to contribute liquidity to MMR and EOCC to maintain the game economic system.
And EOCC, as the currency in the game, EOCC exists in every corner of the game and has an initial price 1EOCC=0.0001U. The specific usage scenarios of EOCC include buying blind box, creating game unions, triggering union wars and hero leasing. EOCC integrate organically with different parts of the game. The more EOCC you have, the more advantageous it is to complete with other players.
Q5. There have been many very successful GameFi projects around. What innovations has EOC made in terms of functions and gameplay setting to get more attention and participation from players?
I think EOC has the following advantages:
First, even players who have not participated in the closed beta can see from our official promotional video that our game is beautifully made, has strong playability, excellent music and art, and great combat special effects;
Second, because it has borrowed from the current mature economic model, it has a complete investment-earning-return mechanism so it can adapt to the same type of GameFi player group to the greatest extent;
Third, we have shorter profit cycle of playing EOC, combined with the mainstream crypto asset reward system, which allows our players to achieve low investment and high return;
Fourth, EOC meets the various needs of users. Many GameFi projects are just simple web game products. EOC supports a variety of scenarios such as web version, PC version, Android version, IOS version, etc., allowing users to play our games anytime, anywhere.
Q6. Where did the inspiration come from? Why did you choose BSC?
Our team believes that there is no doubt that BSC is the biggest winner in this round of GameFi boom.
According to the latest statistics, 20 of the top 50 most active GameFis run on BSC, accounting for 40% of the total. The remaining 30 GameFis are distributed in infrastructure such as Ethereum, Flow, Tron, Solana, and Avalanche. Games such as Wizardium, Fortified, and Universe Island on BSC still maintain high popularity. This is why we choose BSC as our supporting blockchain.
Q7. What is the status of your product development? Describe more detailed information about the EOC project roadmap.
Popularity is crucial for GameFi project. The EOC whitelist entry officially starts on December 20, which caused quite a stir at the blockchain game circle abroad. it takes only a week for EOC to attract 150,000 daily active followers on all the social media of EOC, including Telegram, Twitter, Medium, and Discord. The total subscribers of the EOC channel exceed 1.3 million.
Let me introduce more about our project route.
◇ 2021/11 EOC official website is online;
◇ 2021/12 EOC officially launched the rare blind box draw event on December 20;
◇ 2022/1 EOC will complete the underlying design and battle calculus DEMO development; define the hero prototype, combat skill design and world background design;
◇ 2022/2 EOC will be officially launched, including the first blood challenge system;
◇ More forms of EOC competitions will be launched in the middle of 2022/2, including in-game union battles;
◇ The next development roadmap for the MMR platform and EOC will be announced in late February 2022.
◇ We will also launch a beta version of the NFT game market soon.
In addition, I can’t help but want to spoil everyone here. EOC will launch a cross-chain gameplay soon, and there will be surprises for participation. Anyone who interested can first follow our official website https://www.eocryptoken.com/, and we will post the latest news on the official website. Thank you.
Live questions:
Q1. What is the minimum capital required to start playing with EOC, when can we start playing?
The starting point for playing EOC is that the player has at least one hero (to take different game challenges), so the minimum cost of the EOC player is to spend 20USDT to draw a primary blind box to obtain a hero.
Q2. How to get EOC token, or just play this game we get EOC token?
Yes, an easy way to get EOC tokens (EOCC) is to participate in daily challenges in the game. Another way is through the farming system in the game. You can find more details in the official white paper of EOC.
Q3. Why you choose BSC network? I think if we need gas fee to transaction, HECO is better.
As we said, the most important element for GameFis is popularity. No one wants to play a game without other players interacting with them, so the number of potential players is the first priority of our development team. I think this is why the EOC team, like many other game development teams, chose BSC as the game medium. Even HECO can achieve a lower price.
Q4. The guild system in the game is very powerful, but building guilds need a lot of money, can we reduce the cost to attract more guilds?
An important mechanism in our game is that we use DAO to let players vote to rewrite unbalanced game content. The DAO mechanism will become an important part of the EOC ecosystem. This information will be available on our official website soon.
Q5. And also what mechanism does your game have to balance small funding players and “whale” players?
We spent a lot of time on EOC to balance the advantages of small players and big players. Big players can bring them huge profits through mechanisms such as guild wars; but small players can still gain their own unique advantages through the blind box mechanism and the hero lending system. Communication and cooperation between players, instead of competition, is the most important part of our game.
About EoC:
EOC is a blockchain game that can develop different strategies while fighting in the Middle Ages. If you are looking for realistic medieval battles and ready to embark on a dangerous path to glory and wealth, then this game is for you. Participants can enjoy a higher level of fun through the advanced Play To Earn (P2E) GameFi model.
This game will truly make you rich by rewarding users with a series of mainstream crypto assets including Bitcoin. It features multiplayer GvG tournaments, blind box draws, first blood challenges, and ruthless battles in the arena of the stunning and grim medieval era.
Website|Twitter|Discord|Telegram | https://medium.com/@EraofCivilization/eoc-ama-abc1596cc6e8 | ['Era Of Civilization', 'The Ancient World'] | 2021-12-26 13:12:10.064000+00:00 | ['Ama', 'Report', 'Bsc', 'Gamefi'] |
ATT&CK Sub-Techniques Preview | ATT&CK has been in constant development for about six years now. Over that time, ATT&CK has grown quite a bit while still sticking to our original design decisions. This has all resulted in techniques at different levels of granularity: some are very broad and cover a lot of activity, while others cover a narrow set of activity.
We want to fix this, and we need your input as we do that. We think we can do better to address some of these issues while also giving the community a more robust framework to build onto over time. We’ve heard from you that techniques being at different granularity is an issue for you, too, including mentions at ATT&CKcon and many discussions we’ve had with various teams — some have even started to develop their own concepts for sub-techniques.
This will be a big change in how people view and use ATT&CK. We’re well aware re-structuring ATT&CK to solve these issues could cause some re-design of processes and tooling around the changes. Even though we think these changes are necessary for the long-term growth of ATT&CK (many others have said so too), we are sensitive to the impact it will have, and we want feedback from the community as to how it will affect you.
Here’s our ask: take a look at what we’re thinking below, then reach out to us to let us know what you think at [email protected] . Use a subject line that starts with “Sub-technique feedback” so it’s easy to spot.
What are Sub-Techniques?
Sub-techniques are a way to describe a specific implementation of a technique in more detail. Oftentimes in technique entries we describe various ways techniques can be performed. A good example is with Credential Dumping.
ATT&CK Credential Dumping technique
Within the technical description of Credential Dumping there are several sections describing various ways the action can be performed (nine total), like Windows SAM and Cached Credentials. That’s quite a lot of different behaviors lumped into one technique even though the end result is similar each time. With sub-techniques, we would split this up and have a top-level Credential Dumping technique with nine sub-techniques underneath to cover those variations in more detail for how they apply in specific ways to individual platforms.
Techniques and sub-techniques will be pretty much identical as far as what fields exist and information is contained within them (description, detection, mitigation, data sources, etc.) — the difference will just be the in their relationships, with each sub-technique being under a technique.
Persistence and Privilege Escalation Sub-Technique Examples
We’ve done a lot of work over the past year and a half to determine when techniques should be broken out into sub-techniques, combined, or added. There were also quite a few “back to the drawing board” moments since we’re trying to maintain the same look and feel of ATT&CK. It hasn’t been a perfect science, so we felt the best way to get our point across is to show the details. As a concrete example, here’s the new set of proposed Persistence and Privilege Escalation techniques with sub-techniques listed. The specifics are subject to change, but we wanted to be transparent about what we’re thinking so far. You can take a look at the images below (new techniques and sub-techniques in bold) or click here for a detailed spreadsheet:
ATT&CK Persistence Tactic with techniques and sub-techniques
ATT&CK Privilege Escalation Tactic with techniques and sub-techniques
There are a few key types of changes we’re proposing from the ATT&CK you’re used to:
New ID numbering — With the addition of sub-techniques tied to individual top level techniques, we can expand the technique IDs to identify sub-techniques: T [ technique ].[ sub-technique ]. Sub-techniques will start at .001 and increment with each new sub-technique under a technique. For example, Access Token Manipulation will still be T1134, but “Token Manipulation/Theft” will be T1134.001, “Create Process with Token” T1134.002, etc.
— With the addition of sub-techniques tied to individual top level techniques, we can expand the technique IDs to identify sub-techniques: [ ].[ ]. Sub-techniques will start at .001 and increment with each new sub-technique under a technique. For example, Access Token Manipulation will still be T1134, but “Token Manipulation/Theft” will be T1134.001, “Create Process with Token” T1134.002, etc. New techniques — We added a few new techniques to help us better organize sub-techniques. For example, we added the new technique “Pre-OS Boot” to Persistence because it was a broader way to describe the purpose of using Bootkit, Component Firmware, and System Firmware (which are now sub-techniques).
— We added a few new techniques to help us better organize sub-techniques. For example, we added the new technique “Pre-OS Boot” to Persistence because it was a broader way to describe the purpose of using Bootkit, Component Firmware, and System Firmware (which are now sub-techniques). Technique decomposition — Some techniques like Account Manipulation and Process Injection had several sub-techniques created from content in their previous definition. In other cases the techniques will get decomposed and sub-techniques will be assigned under other applicable techniques. For example, Local Job Scheduling was decomposed into sub-techniques that fall under “Scheduled Task/Job” and “Scheduled Task/Job (Escalation Possible)”.
— Some techniques like Account Manipulation and Process Injection had several sub-techniques created from content in their previous definition. In other cases the techniques will get decomposed and sub-techniques will be assigned under other applicable techniques. For example, Local Job Scheduling was decomposed into sub-techniques that fall under “Scheduled Task/Job” and “Scheduled Task/Job (Escalation Possible)”. Technique realignment and deprecation — The analysis of techniques necessary to do sub-techniques led to some technique realignment between tactics and deprecation of techniques. We pruned back several techniques that didn’t fit the core definition of the tactic, like Hidden Files and Directories not fitting under Persistence, and a small number that needed to be deprecated, like Hypervisor where we’ve found no documented use cases beyond proof of concepts. (We’ll cover this in more depth in the future.)
— The analysis of techniques necessary to do sub-techniques led to some technique realignment between tactics and deprecation of techniques. We pruned back several techniques that didn’t fit the core definition of the tactic, like Hidden Files and Directories not fitting under Persistence, and a small number that needed to be deprecated, like Hypervisor where we’ve found no documented use cases beyond proof of concepts. (We’ll cover this in more depth in the future.) Technique-to-sub-technique demotion — We moved many techniques into sub-techniques. For example, since we added the technique “Pre-OS Boot,” we moved the existing Bootkit technique underneath it as a sub-technique.
Reading into the details, there’s some additional things to note.
Some techniques are so unlike anything else in the Tactic that we don’t see a good way of grouping them at this point (e.g., BITS Jobs, Port Knocking, SID-History Injection) and remain as techniques with no added sub-techniques. (Whew, some things AREN’T changing!)
You’ll observe that this change would reduce the number of techniques in each tactic. As of this example, Persistence has been reduced from 59 techniques into 19 and Privilege Escalation has been reduced from 28 to 13.
Intuitive scoping of techniques and sub-techniques has been quite a bit more difficult than anticipated. You’ll see some aspects of this in how we’ve defined two techniques for one type of behavior based on whether or not that technique’s sub-techniques can be used to escalate privileges. An example is with “Event Triggered Execution” and “Event Triggered Execution (Escalation Possible)”. This helps to preserve a one-to-one mapping from sub-techniques to techniques if a technique can be used to accomplish more than one tactic. Both techniques would then fall under Persistence, but only “Event Triggered Execution (Escalation Possible)” would be under Privilege Escalation.
Crosswalks can help to understand our decisions and how things map between old and new techniques. If you want to dive into the details of how “old ATT&CK” maps to “new ATT&CK,” for Persistence and Privilege Escalation you can see that spreadsheet here — be warned that it is not final and it’s detailed, but we realize some of you want that level of detail so we want to be transparent. Below is a preview of what this may look like.
Crosswalk example mapping old techniques to new sub-techniques
Benefits of ATT&CK with Sub-Techniques
We already mentioned the key reason we’re proposing this change: to address the issues with levels of granularity in techniques. In addition to that, there are several other benefits to this enhancement to ATT&CK’s structure. I’ve mentioned some already, but lists are useful. We hope adding sub-techniques will:
Allow the top-level techniques to change less frequently since techniques will be consolidated into more enduring categories. (For example, we can consolidate narrow techniques such as Rundll32 and Regsvr32 under existing higher level techniques like Signed Binary Proxy Execution. If a new method of Signed Binary Proxy Execution is found, we can simply add a new sub-technique.)
Help users with assessing coverage since they will better understand that there’s several ways a technique can be performed. We’ve had several conversations where people have expressed that it’s difficult to say you’re “covered” (or not) for a broad technique like Scripting, so we hope adding the additional detail of sub-techniques will help users create more accurate coverage maps using ATT&CK.
Simplify the process of adding new domains like Cloud that have a clear overlap with Enterprise. We can now express domain-specific behaviors sub-techniques with new cloud-based platform tags. (For example, the Account Discovery technique may be used differently in cloud environments, so we can add a sub-technique under Account Discovery for how it might apply to Office 365 or other SaaS applications.)
Lead to more refined data sources that apply to techniques and sub-techniques on specific platforms. (In the above Account Discovery example, the data you collect from a traditional IT environment to detect that will be different than the data you collect from a cloud environment, so we can better express that difference.)
Provide a structure for others to add their own local sub-techniques under existing techniques to meet their specific requirements. (For example, the Deloitte Threat Library Team added their own sub-technique of DNS Tunneling to the Technique Custom Command and Control, which you can check out in MITRE ATT&CK The Play at Home Edition on slides 73–74).
Make it easier to fit the ATT&CK Matrix with techniques on a single slide. (Look, we make a lot of PowerPoints, and we know you do too!)
What We Want from You
These changes are essentially a whole new generation of ATT&CK. They’re big and likely should have been made a long time ago. For many of you it likely won’t be a straightforward task to implement them. We have two main questions for the community to make sure we aren’t doing this in vain.
Are we going about this the right way to meet your expectations on what sub-techniques should be? Do you agree these changes are necessary enough to put into the work to implement them?
Please reach out to us at [email protected] to let us know what you think. We may not get back to you right away as we’ll likely be inundated with emails but rest assured that we will read and consider your feedback.
What’s Next
Above all, we will listen to your feedback. We know ATT&CK is widely used by the community, and we don’t take decisions to change ATT&CK’s structure lightly. We will spend time reviewing your feedback and considering how we should go about this.
Going forward, our plan is that sub-techniques won’t sit at attack.mitre.org right away. We intend to publish a companion site that includes the changes for sub-techniques alongside the main ATT&CK site to give everyone a chance to preview the full scope of the changes and work to process them before we make that version the “official” one. There will be a delay of at least 2–3 months, (maybe more depending on your feedback) before the old site is deprecated and added to the previous versions for historical reference.
To assist with the transition, we plan to provide a crosswalk from old technique IDs to new ones wherever this is possible. This will help in most of the cases where an existing technique becomes a new sub-technique. Sometimes the mapping won’t be as straightforward, like when a technique gets decomposed into sub-techniques (as we discussed above). In those cases, we can map to an appropriate higher-level technique since there will likely be some analysis required on your end to map it more specifically, but at least the mapping will still be valid. An example is with the current Path Interception technique that will get decomposed and the resulting sub-techniques will reside under the new “Hijack Execution Flow” technique. Mapping existing intel or detection analytics to the top-level technique initially may be the best action until a review can be performed to see what new sub-technique they fall under, “Path Interception by Unquoted Path” or “Path Interception by Environment Variable”.
How Will This Affect Me?
This change will affect you differently based on how you’re using ATT&CK right now.
For those mapping detections or tooling to ATT&CK, this change will likely result in you reviewing new techniques and changes to refine detections for anything new. As discussed earlier, we expect many sub-techniques will map directly to “old” techniques, so in those cases you should only have to update IDs. You will have some level of effort with mapping new techniques and sub-techniques as well as determining how to assign things like detection analytics to those sub-techniques that have been decomposed.
For those mapping intel with ATT&CK, we expect this change to be more challenging. We plan to keep the historical site and STIX objects available as a reference for older intel that is mapped to the prior, pre-sub-technique version of ATT&CK. The crosswalks may help with intel mapped with structured formats, but anything analyzed and mapped by hand will likely require a significant amount of work to redo with sub-techniques. If you are mapping intel to ATT&CK, you should plan that this change will be significant for your historic repositories and consider how you may want to approach that (e.g. only map new intel to the new ATT&CK version). We are experiencing this same challenge and expect that we will devote significant effort to re-mapping old intel reporting, meaning there will likely not be new Group/Software additions as we do this. For those mapping intel to ATT&CK, we are interested in hearing whether there are ways we could help you during this transition.
For those focused on ATT&CK visualizations, we intend to have support for sub-techniques in how ATT&CK is visualized on the site as well as in the ATT&CK Navigator. Below is one proof of concept of how to interact with sub-techniques. The number of sub-techniques are listed as a number on the technique name and you can expand the sub-techniques to show the names and heatmap coverage.
Example ATT&CK Matrix visualization with sub-techniques
For those not yet using ATT&CK but thinking about doing so, you may be wondering if you should hold off until this change. We would advise you not to wait and to start now. The core concepts of how ATT&CK can be used aren’t changing, just the structure of the techniques. There are ways you can get started with the concepts to see if they’ll work for you. Check out the Getting Started blog series starting with Katie Nickels’ post on Getting Started with ATT&CK: Threat Intelligence.
Please keep these points in mind as you’re thinking about how to integrate these changes and let us know if there’s anything else we’re not considering for how you’re using ATT&CK.
Wrapping up
Adding sub-techniques is a big change for ATT&CK. We’re sensitive to what this means for the community and want to mitigate any issues and concerns you have before we continue to implement these changes and roll them out later this year. Let us know at [email protected] what you like, don’t like, or want to see with these changes. If there’s a specific pain point you have or you’ll hate us forever if we make these changes, let us know so we can try to work through the issues! Above all, our goal is to make sure ATT&CK remains a useful resource for you, the community that we want to help.
©2019 The MITRE Corporation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Approved for public release. Distribution unlimited 19–00696–9 | https://medium.com/mitre-attack/attack-sub-techniques-preview-b79ff0ba669a | ['Blake Strom'] | 2019-08-22 17:41:40.825000+00:00 | ['Mitre Attack', 'Attck', 'Mitre Attck'] |
Basic Terminologies in Task 13 | What is a Computer Network??
A computer network is a group of computers that use a set of common communication protocols over digital interconnections for the purpose of sharing resources located on or provided by the network nodes.
What is an IP address??
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two main functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing.
What is Private and Public IP??
Private IP address is used with a local network and public IP address is used outside the network. Public IP address is provided by ISP, Internet Service Provider. Private IP Address is used to communicate within the network. Public IP Address is used to communicate outside the network.
What is Ping command?
Ping is the primary TCP/IP command used to troubleshoot connectivity, reachability, and name resolution. Used without parameters, this command displays Help content. We can also use this command to test both the computer name and the IP address of the computer.
Some Other Important commands used in the Setup of Task 13
1. route -n
Used to view the contents of the routing table
2. route add
Used to add a new rule in the routing table.
3. route del
Used to delete an existing rule in the routing table
4. ping -4
Used to ping to an address through IPv4 routing table.
5. nslookup
Used to get some information about the public IP address a domain name on the Internet.
**************Thanks For Reading *************** | https://medium.com/@geetanshsharma2018/basic-terminologies-in-task-13-2faac64e5517 | ['Geetansh Sharma'] | 2020-12-22 17:32:03.884000+00:00 | ['Ping', 'Networking', 'Linux'] |
Insomnia | Insomnia
In the early morning hours of the day,
I lay wide awake, into your arms.
Listening to your melodic meditative breathing.
And watching the rising & falling of your soft mounds.
Like a naughty kid behind the curtain for the first time.
In your sleep, you murmur about parting of the lovers,
And blackbirds perched on the iron gate.
And wandering through fields of lilacs, holding my hands.
You talk about the rising seas & the split mountains.
And I start to wonder what I reveal in my sleep-talk?
Do I tell you that I am do not deserve such pure love of yours?
Or maybe that all souls have no bodies, but blue faces.
Your whispers turn into moans and I start to kiss you.
Knowing that this is the closest to heavens I will ever be.
So I drink deep from the bounty of your love. | https://medium.com/illumination/insomnia-b6ac63ddc889 | ['Akhtar Mehmood'] | 2020-12-27 04:42:20.693000+00:00 | ['Illumination', 'Life', 'Love', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poetry'] |
Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters | Reviewed by Ann Landi
Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters
by Phyllis Rose
Yale University Press, 272 pp, $26.00
We live in an age when shows of photography are a mainstay of many major museums, and a handful of artists who seriously pursue the medium have even achieved celebrity status (think Sherman, Arbus, Mapplethorpe). So it’s almost mind-boggling to realize that the struggle to get photography considered a “fine art” rather than simply a mechanical craft, at least in this country, is little more than a hundred years old, and that the medium’s meteoric launch into the public consciousness is largely thanks to the efforts of one man: Alfred Steiglitz.
Stieglitz was himself a master photographer whose varied career and accomplishments could stand alone in the annals of art history. But he was also a savvy dealer whose efforts brought to the American public works on paper by Europeans like Matisse, Rodin, and Cézanne. Beginning in 1905, with the famed gallery called, simply, 291 (after its Fifth Avenue address), he also nurtured and developed the painters we have come to think of as founders of American Modernism: Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Arthur Dove, and, of course, Georgia O’Keeffe. His long-running and often tumultuous marriage to O’Keeffe, 23 years his junior and destined for perhaps greater fame, is a story that could stand alone as the subject of a book (its beginnings were memorably told in a 2009 movie with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen).
Now Phyllis Rose — biographer of Virginia Woolf and Josephine Baker, among other notable books — has ably condensed Stieglitz’s life, photography, friendships, romances, and professional achievements into a lively and readable account of fewer than 300 pages. Generously illustrated, her story traces the maestro’s development as a photographer: from his pictures of street urchins and a smartly composed portrait of his lover in Berlin in the 1880s, through his late, wholly abstract studies of clouds, known as “Equivalents.” Part of the pleasure of Rose’s book is her astute analyses of Steiglitz’s photographs; she is herself a capable photographer and brings to her interpretations both a sharp eye and a thorough knowledge of the medium’s technical challenges.
Born into a prosperous Jewish family in Hoboken, Stieglitz spent his formative years in Europe studying mechanical engineering and chemistry. Photography, at first a novelty, soon became an obsession, and professional recognition came fast. “From buying his first camera in 1883 to gaining international fame as a photographer took Stieglitz only seven years,” Rose writes. “By the time he went home, he was exhibiting in shows, winning prizes, publishing in photo magazines, and serving on photo show juries.”
His father set him up in business with commercial printing companies, but after three years the young Stieglitz wanted out, and, still nominally supported by the family, he turned his attentions to photography, writing reviews and articles for publications like the American Amateur Photographer, and participating in the Society of Amateur Photographers. (As Rose notes, the word “amateur” had different connotations at the time, signaling a serious and informed enthusiasm rather than a part-time hobby.)
In 1893, at the age of 29, Stieglitz married Emmeline Obermeyer, the sister of a good friend and heiress to the family brewing business. When he first met her, Rose reports, “he thought her spoiled and difficult. She was not beautiful. The only thing in her favor was that she would not expect him to support her.” According to the author, the marriage was not consummated for four years, but that gave Stieglitz the time and freedom to indulge his aesthetic side, including taking photos and overseeing the merger of two key organizations into The Camera Club of New York. Its handsome quarterly, Camera Notes, “became the means through which Stieglitz pushed to present photography as an art.” By the turn of the century, Stieglitz “was the leading light of American photography.”
Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Photo by Dorothy S. Norman
It was through his friendship with Edward Steichen, who abandoned 291 Fifth Avenue for larger quarters next door, that Stieglitz opened his first gallery — a top-floor space about the size of a one-bedroom apartment — with a show of the artists who were part of a movement known at the Photo-Secession (the group lobbied for greater “pictorialism” — manipulating negatives and prints to arrive at more painterly results). The gallery was from the first a rousing success, and within five years Steiglitz was showing both European modern masters and ground-breaking works by young American artists. This was also the period of some of the artist’s most memorable photos, like those of the Flatiron Building and The Steerage, a photo of greater complexity than first meets the eye, as Rose points out in her excellent dissection of its subjects and meaning.
Alfred Stieglitz, “Georgia O’Keeffe.” 1920
By 1915, Steiglitz was America’s best-known photographer and a powerful force in the New York art world. “He had been famous for a lifetime,” as the author reports, “but he had not yet, at the age of fifty-one, even met the person who brought him new life, inspiring his art and joining him in a partnership that became legendary.” Georgia O’Keeffe had quietly visited 291 while studying in New York but did not come to his attention until a friend showed him the ambitious drawings she had been making at the school where she taught in South Carolina. Stieglitz instructed the friend to tell O’Keeffe that they were the “purest, finest, sincerest things that have entered 291 in a long while.”
When Stieglitz included the drawings in an exhibition at 291 without her permission, or so he claimed later in life, O’Keeffe “came into the gallery that spring [1916], identified herself as the artist, and demanded that the work be taken down.” The great photographer was immediately smitten: “Self-reliant, strong-minded, tart and snappy, she was the free American Girl who had never been to Europe and had no interest in going there.”
After an intense two-year correspondence, during which Stieglitz continued to show her work, he persuaded her to move to New York. The affair that ensued led to a series of highly charged, adventurous, and erotic photographs that break most conventions for portraying the nude, isolating sections of O’Keeffe’s body, hands and torso. “He made love to her with his camera and she made love to him by allowing herself to be seen and photographed naked.”
Forced to make a choice by his outraged wife, Stieglitz moved into O’Keeffe’s small apartment on East 59thStreet, “first with a blanket hung between their beds for propriety.” Astonishingly, given the heat and affection so evident in the photos, the two did not become lovers until months after her arrival. They were married six years later, and although the relationship had already started to cool, they would remain deeply tied to each other for the rest of Stieglitz’s life. O’Keeffe needed space, and her mentor-husband needed flirtations with other women. “Constantly coddling her and trying to protect her, he liked to think of her as frail,” Rose writes. “She proved herself to be in fact a sinewy creature who thrived outdoors and in solitude and didn’t get enough of either in her hothouse life with Stieglitz.”
Alfred Stieglitz, Portrait of Dorothy Norman. c. 1931–1932
When O’Keeffe visited New Mexico in 1928 and soon after decided to decamp for the Southwest, the relationship took a turn not many marriages can survive. As Rose observes, a pact evolved between them: “If they could not fulfill each other’s needs, they would allow each other the freedom to fulfill them by other means. Only by defining their marriage as a higher, more abstract partnership could they stay married.” Rose is as astute at plucking apart the strands of this difficult union — financial, familial, and professional — as she is in analyzing Stieglitz’s photography. And as she notes, “Georgia O’Keeffe, American artist, may be his most consequential and unselfish accomplishment.”
Georgia would blossom into the grande dame of the high desert, while Stieglitz found a new and more conventionally compliant partner in Dorothy Norman, also married and more than 40 years younger, who could act as the selfless devotee in a way O’Keeffe could not. Yet O’Keeffe remained in his life to the end, spending part of the year in New Mexico and part with Stieglitz in New York or at his summer home at Lake George.
Alfred Stieglitz attached this photograph to a letter for Georgia O’Keeffe, dated July 10, 1929. Below the photograph he wrote, “I have destroyed 300 prints to-day. And much more literature. I haven’t the heart to destroy this…” (courtesy of NPR)
Stieglitz continued in his career as impresario and gallerist, and in 1931–32 produced striking photographs of both O’Keeffe and Norman. “If the first infatuated pictures of O’Keeffe show a man eager to explore every inch of the body of his new treasure, Stieglitz’s photographs of Dorothy Norman show a man trying to convince himself that the beautiful thing he is lucky enough to have is really there in front of him.”
He continued as “godfather to American photography,” mounting shows of works by Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter, but in 1938 suffered the first of several massive coronaries. Eight years later, following a fatal stroke, he fell into a coma. According to one account, O’Keeffe shooed Norman out of his hospital room so she alone could be with him when he died. Rose reports that she told the other woman to clear out of An American Place, his last gallery, and for the next three years set aside her own work to arrange for the distribution of his photographs and collections.
There are many books on both O’Keeffe and Stieglitz, but few so succinctly and compellingly sum up both the enormous accomplishments of the latter and the remarkable, though difficult, union of the two. Rose’s book is a must read for anyone with an interest in American art of the last century.
Alfred Stieglitz, “Georgia O’Keeffe,” 1932
@riotmaterial
riotmaterial.com
. | https://cvonhassett.medium.com/alfred-stieglitz-taking-pictures-making-painters-927974a476c9 | ['Riot Material'] | 2019-07-01 18:57:17.530000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Painting', 'Review', 'Photography', 'Art'] |
Create high perfomance custom graphs and charts in Angular | Create high perfomance custom graphs and charts in Angular
How to create performant custom charts and graphs with d3 and ngx-chart
Introduction
Recently my colleagues and me were developing a solution for an IoT company. This company had a lot of different devices, that were sending a huge amount of data from their sensors. Our goal was to show these indicators in a web view. We chose angular as a framework for the client-side with the ngx-charts library.
First, ngx-charts was suitable for our requests. In fact, it’s a great tool for data visualization. But at some point, when we started getting more and more data from the sensors, we were running into huge performance issues. One chart that had 100.000+ points took over 1 minute to be presented to the user. On top of that, the customer wanted to have some unique graphs (e.g. a graph that shows not only values but also tolerance). So, we started searching for ideas on how we can do this.
Since ngx-charts uses d3 under the hood, we thought it might be a good idea to use it directly for our needs. We created a custom chart with d3 on canvas and used ngx-charts as an emulator for axes because we wanted to be consistent with other charts in our project.
Today I want to show you how we implemented a custom graph with d3 and emulated coordinate axes with ngx-charts.
Step 1: Init app
As any other project let’s start with the setup.
Install angular cli. Create a new angular app ng new angular-custom-graph. We’re not going to use routes, so select “n” and choose scss. Remove the sample code in app.component.html. Install packages:
cd .\angular-custom-graph\ npm i @swimlane/ngx-charts — save npm i @angular/cdk — save npm i @angular/animations — save npm i d3 — save npm i @types/d3 — save-dev
5. Add NgxChartsModule and BrowserAnimationsModule to app.module.ts.
Step 2: Component preparation
Create a graph component ng g component ScatterLineChart. This is going to be our custom chart. Let’s extend BaseChartComponent by changing the scatter-line-chart.component.ts as following:
Add following code to app.component.scss:
and app.component.html:
Step 3: Sample data generation
For the graph, we need some sample data. Let’s create a model for this and a service, that will provide the data.
Generate service: ng g s DataProvider. Create file shot-data.ts next to data-provider.service.ts and paste the following code:
3. Generate data in data provider (data-provider.service.ts):
4. For this demo inject the service to the AppComponent and log the chart data in the console to see if it works. It should generate 100.000 random points:
Step 4: Graph configuration
In this section are going to create a chart configuration and provide it to ScatterLineChart.
Create file scatter-line-series.model.ts in scatter-line-chart folder and paste the following code:
2. Implement GraphColorManager and GraphConfig in shot-data.ts:
3. Provide config to ScatterLineChart. Create config instance in AppComponent:
To provide the data and the chartConfig to the chart component add [results]=”data” [config]=”chartConfig” to app.component.html:
Also, you will need to add @Input() config: ChartConfig<T>; to scatter-line-chart.component.ts
After all these manipulations your chart will get configurable for the data selector, color selector, and data itself.
Step 5: Draw points
After we got data in the chart, let’s draw it. For this step, we will need to create canvas, painters, and calculate view dimensions.
Let’s create painters, they will draw points on the canvas. Create two files circle.painter.ts and scatter-series.painter.ts and paste the code below:
2. Next, we need to calculate the scales based on the incoming data and view dimensions. Update your scatter-line-chart.component.ts to this:
3. Finally, add canvas to scatter-line-chart.component.html:
Voila! If you were following this tutorial you should get the next chart:
Visualized 10000 random points
You can change the number of points in the data provider service to 20. You’ll see something like this:
Visualized 20 random points
Step 6: add the coordinate system
The final step is to add a coordinate system. Everything we have to do is to add ngx-charts-chart to scatter-line-chart.component.html, because all calculations are already done. scatter-line-chart.component.html will look like this:
2. As for now, the coordinate system is added, but it’s not aligned with the graph. Let’s add some css to fix it. Change scatter-line-chart.component.scss as following:
Result and conclusion:
Final result (600 points)
In the end, we get the this custom chart, where the blue points show tolerance and the colored points show custom data. This graph is performant and can handle a huge number of points. We are using d3 to calculate point coordinates and render them on canvas. ngx-charts provide us the coordinate system.
We are still using ngx-charts library for other graph renderings, but when it comes to huge amounts of data it’s better to implement custom rendering. Although it raises other questions like how to show a legend or tooltips, but this is another topic, which can be told in another article.
The full example can be found here: https://github.com/aosyatnik/angular-custom-graph | https://medium.com/medialesson/create-high-perfomance-custom-graphs-and-charts-in-angular-b8575e72162a | ['Anna Melashkina'] | 2020-07-09 10:02:22.259000+00:00 | ['Angular', 'D3', 'D3js', 'Ngx Charts', 'Charts'] |
A New Face for FACINGS | FACINGS’ New Logo
A logo serves many purposes, especially in the creative world. Landing on an effective logo is a task nearly as daunting as starting the company itself. It’s the first impression to potential customers, clients, and competitors. It conveys the first notes of taste and attitude. An effective logo not only represents the brand, but the level of quality and consistency synonymous with the products or services the company provides. No doubt, when you think of shoes, streaming services, social media platforms, or even hamburgers, a specific logo immediately comes to mind. If you are reading this on your phone, your home screen is more likely than not lined with logos. They mean something, for better or worse.
Golden ratio — A staple in design that aided one of our creatives, Eduardo Garay, in developing the new logo
Here at FACINGS, we went through a lot of ideas for logos. Like, a lot. Every member of the creative team was tasked with developing their own collection of ideas; we even consulted an outside branding agency. I personally came up with 30 or so different designs. But as any illustrator will tell you: illustration and graphic design are not the same. But we all gave it a shot. Because we all have strong feelings about what we want FACINGS to be, and what we want it to represent in the ever-competitive and ever-evolving landscape of NFTs.
A guiding design by Eduardo Garay
After a lot of “maybes” and “strong contenders”, at the zero hour, a member of our team by the name of Eduardo Garay dropped magic on the table. And just like that, it made sense. The logo harkens back to the indie explosions and 90’s counterculture that many of us either grew up in, or in the wake there of. It is reminiscent, familiar, slick and concise; to meet the taste of the corporate monoliths that are slowly getting turned on to this “brand new” market of NFTs.
Eduardo Garay’s FACINGS’ design integrating above principals
Our aim is for our logo to become inseparable from our collective goals and values: top-shelf service and guidance to our clients as they enter this still-forming market, products that stand apart because of their quality as opposed to quantity, and fair and equitable treatment of various talents needed to make it all happen.
Meet the new face of FACINGS.
We’ll see you around.
~ Adam Mathison-Sward
Lead Artist
Near the River, MN | https://medium.com/@facings/a-new-face-for-facings-2acea85b7a7b | [] | 2021-09-03 17:20:13.690000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Logo Design', 'Crypto', 'Nft Collectibles'] |
Free As a Bird | [This week, an important analysis of the Andean condor was published in Spanish and English. “Saving the Symbol of the Andes: A Range Wide Conservation Priority Setting Exercise for the Andean Condor (Vultur gryphus)” presents the work of 38 specialists from seven countries participating in an in-depth systematization of studies carried out on the distribution, ecology, and conservation status of the species along the Andean mountain range — from Venezuela to Argentina and Chile. The objective is to promote a conservation strategy at a continental level that ensures healthy populations of condors and recognizes the importance of working across boundaries for the high-flying and wide-ranging condor. The following story captures one way in which that strategy is being implemented.]
In the age of social media sometimes a WhatsApp message can mean a great deal. As a 50something wildlife biologist I never thought I would write those words, but in mid-April 2019, messages appeared in my WhatsApp that lifted my mood and those around me.
“Palca! She´s alive and well and flying all over the place!” I shouted through the office. Smiles and whoops abounded.
The WhatsApp messages were from a Bolivian colleague, Diego Mendez, an accomplished wildlife biologist and PhD candidate at the University of Madrid. Diego’s doctoral thesis concerns the movement ecology of one of South America´s most iconic wildlife species and the very symbol of the Andes: the magnificent Andean condor (Vultur gryphus).
Palca is an Andean condor — the first in Bolivia to provide data on the movements of a species renowned for its huge wingspan, prodigious soaring ability and wide-ranging behavior.
Diego had received data from a solar-powered satellite tag and was updating the Palca Release Group on WhatsApp. Palca is an Andean condor — the first in Bolivia to provide data on the movements of a species renowned for its huge wingspan, prodigious soaring ability and wide-ranging behavior.
Palca takes her first steps to freedom after being rescued in Palca near La Paz and cared for at the Vesty Pakos Muncipal Zoo in La Paz. Photo: Rob Wallace/WCS
While there have been significant condor studies in Argentina, as well as in Ecuador, less is known about condors occupying the birds’ huge middle range in Bolivia and Peru.
Palca has been helping fill in the gap, but the whoops of joy that day in my office in 2019 attest to the fact that were it not for a careful rehabilitation effort, this magnificent bird might never have played an important role as our research associate.
For reasons still unknown, in late January of 2019, Palca crash landed near the town with which it shares its name, an hour’s drive from the hustle and bustle of La Paz. After injuring her chest, she was rescued by the townsfolk of Palca and taken to La Paz’s Vesty Pakos Municipal Zoo.
With the help of zoo director Andrea Morales and her team of keepers and veterinarians, Palca began eating again. A little over a month later, health tests revealed she had fully recovered.
Palca hopped out, surveyed her surroundings, and stretched her formidable wings. Everyone held their breath, and then she leapt and was gone, immediately gliding away on a mountain up swirl across the valley.
Meanwhile, the Bolivian Andean Condor Working Group — made up of Diego, Andrea, Grace Ledezma from the zoo, Isabel Gomez from the National Natural History Museum, Juan Carlos Campero from the Bolivian Lawyers School and myself — developed a comprehensive release plan for Palca. We worked with the relevant environment authorities to ensure all adequate permits were in place before identifying a suitable release site and date.
On the morning of Friday, March 8, 2019, on a mountain top near Palca with the resplendent Andean peak Illimani — the symbol of La Paz — in sight, dozens of schoolchildren gathered with municipal and community authorities, the Ministry of the Environment and Water, the mayors of La Paz and Palca, staff from the zoo, POFOMA, the local hospital, and national press.
As community leaders performed a ritual and Palca waited in her covered cage, a pair of mountain caracaras appeared to investigate, followed by two condors swooping high above before disappearing into the distance. Many local people indicated this was a good sign, but everyone involved was nervous to see what would happen next.
Palca’s vast movement highlights the unique conservation challenge Andean condors face and the complex conservation measures required to be effective across huge geographies.
After several minutes of quiet calm, Palca´s main keeper approached the cage and opened the door. Palca hopped out and surveyed her surroundings, a transmitter tucked into a backpack harness. Cameras whirled and everyone held their breath as she stretched her formidable wings, then leapt and was gone — immediately gliding away on a mountain up swirl, across the valley and onward.
The crowd gasped a collective sigh of relief and clapped and smiled. And then as if by magic, in the distance, two condors appeared and swooped to greet Palca before the three of them banked into the next valley. Bolivians are a beautifully superstitious people.
Diego Mendez and Isabel Gomez of the National Museum of Natural History in Bolivia underline the conservation importance of each individual Andean condor with the mayor of Palca, Mr. Rene Aruquipa. Photo: Rob Wallace/WCS
One year on, Palca is revealing just how far condors can fly in this stretch of the Andes. The data from the 80-gram solar-powered satellite transmitter comes in steadily and the female condor is documenting regular roosting sites for the species in this portion of its range — flying a 400 km stretch of the Andes including the entire Cordillera Real and Cordillera Tres Cruces, and south as far as Cochabamba, Torotoro, Challapata, and Lago Poopó.
Palca’s vast movement highlights the unique conservation challenge Andean condors face and the complex conservation measures required to be effective across huge geographies. Worryingly, over the last few years Andean condor experts have begun to document poisoning of livestock carcasses, often retaliating against Andean carnivores such as the Andean fox or the puma. Scavenging condors succumb to the poison.
For a species with fewer than 10,000 individuals estimated in the wild, these events can be catastrophic. And the natural rarity of condors highlights the importance of every individual, including Palca. She now represents hope for the species, and a potential communication mechanism for reconnecting and reemphasizing the unique cultural value of Bolivia’s national bird to the nation.
Rob Wallace is a Senior Conservation Scientist with WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society). | https://wildlifeconservationsociety.medium.com/free-as-a-bird-fdd1edc08f87 | ['Wildlife Conservation Society'] | 2020-09-06 13:10:51.269000+00:00 | ['Condor', 'Environment', 'Vulture', 'Bolivia', 'Conservation'] |
Willpower Is Not a Limited Resource | Willpower Is Not a Limited Resource
And the belief that it is can be damaging
Photo: ULTRA F/DigitalVision/Getty Images
You come home after a long day of work and immediately curl up on the couch for a few episodes of the latest Netflix craze. As you watch, you’re simultaneously scrolling through Twitter on your phone and digging into a bag of potato chips, even though your resolution was to eat healthier. You look around and see that the garbage needs to be taken out, the laundry needs to be folded, and your child’s toys are strewn across the living room floor. The list of productive things you could be doing seem endless, yet you can’t seem to find the willpower to get started.
Sound familiar? This is called ego depletion, the theory that willpower is connected to a limited reserve of mental energy, and once you run out of that energy, you’re more likely to lose self-control.
Ego depletion would seem to explain your post-work defeat — after focusing all day, you’re just tapped out. But some research suggests that we’ve been thinking about willpower all wrong, and the theory of ego depletion isn’t true. Even worse, holding onto the idea that willpower is a finite resource can actually be bad for you, making you more likely to lose control and act against your better judgment.
The evidence against ego depletion comes from a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her team wanted to see how people reacted when they were fatigued. After putting participants through a demanding task, the researchers asked them to drink sugary lemonade for an energy boost, and then evaluated how they reacted. And while the sugar did give a boost to the people who believed their willpower had been exhausted, it had no effect on those who didn’t see willpower as a finite resource.
If Dweck’s conclusions are correct, that means that ego depletion is essentially caused by self-defeating thoughts and not by any biological limitation. It’s an idea that makes us less likely to accomplish our goals by providing a rationale to quit when we could otherwise persist.
Other research illustrates the power of this effect. A study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that individuals who believed they were powerless to fight their alcohol cravings were much more likely to drink again. Studies of cigarette smokers found that those who believed they were powerless to resist were most likely to fall off the wagon after they quit. And the same theory could be applied to other things as well, such as working out, dieting, or self-control in a relationship.
A new decision-making tool
Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and the principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social Neuroscience, offers an alternative view to Dweck’s conclusions. Inzlicht believes that willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion. Just as we don’t “run out” of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows based on what’s happening to us and how we feel.
Seeing willpower through this lens has profound implications on the way we focus our attention. For one, if mental energy is more like an emotion than fuel in a tank, it can be managed and utilized as such. For example, a toddler might throw a temper tantrum when a toy is taken away, but will, over time, gain self-control and learn to ride out bad feelings. Similarly, when we need to perform a difficult task, it’s more productive and healthy to believe a lack of motivation is temporary than it is to tell ourselves we’re spent and need a break.
But sometimes a lack of motivation isn’t temporary. Feelings are our bodies’ way of conveying information our conscious minds might miss. When a lack of mental energy is chronic, we should listen to our willpower just as we should listen to our emotions, using it as a tool that provides us with insight about what we should and shouldn’t be spending our time on. When we treat willpower as a helpful decision-making assistant, working in tandem with our logical capabilities, we can find new paths that may not require us to do things we fundamentally don’t want to do.
What we say to ourselves is vitally important. Believing you have poor self-control is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than telling ourselves we failed because we’re somehow deficient, we should offer self-compassion by speaking to ourselves with kindness when we experience setbacks.
This article originally appeared on NirAndFar.com. | https://forge.medium.com/this-is-what-most-people-get-wrong-about-willpower-72deab39fa59 | ['Nir Eyal'] | 2020-02-10 18:42:48.042000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Growth Hacking', 'Psychology', 'Willpower', 'Self'] |
Journal — January-April 2020. Hello guys, I am back with your… | Hello guys, I am back with your favourite area- the Journal part, where I pin down my experiences, how all my days went and the lessons which I learned and which through sharing may help you. (The language used here is quite casual).
Last Journal stopped in December (Read here)
The year 2020 began with a bang, but my new year began with Data Communication Exam. The exam was fine that expected, but it had a lot of things to be learned byheart like FDM, TDM, CDMA, Switching etc. The final exam was Soft Computing, which was on 6th, but the excitement could not be stopped after 1st Jan. On 3rd Jan I came across the news of rising tensions between Iran and the USA. I wrote a blog on the same which got published on 12th. That incident brought somewhere close to a WW3 since the cold war.
After Soft Computing Exam, all of them were over and I had about a week more before S6 started. So being, the editor MUNner’s daily, had published two blogs one on Iran issue as I mentioned and other on Australian Bushfires written by Sangeeth S which began on 7th.
After a brisk weekend, the classes began on 13th. S6 seemed a bit lighter because we have subjects like Web and POM which are considered to be easy. While we have two extremely was subjects, Design and Analysis of Algorithms and Computer Networks. Despite classes starting just after exams didn’t make me happy, my mind was continuously drifting elsewhere. The bad news was wtr to labs, the tough network programming lab and microprocessor lab.
SB MUN (17–19)
This was the best thing which ever happened to me in the month of January. After one and half months of exam and boring classes, SB MUN was indeed a saviour. SB or St Berchmans College is a famous college in Changanassery Kottayam District. On 17th, from early morning I began my journey from Aluva Railway Station, along with Ananda Sai A in Trivandrum Mail. I realised that Sleeper charges skyrocketed. I paid 180 rs for the journey, while I remember just paying 140 for an ordinary journey till TVM. From Thripunithra, Hemanth joined us. After reaching there, we took accommodation provided by SB MUN. It was just Rs 300 including food, cheap after all. As usual, MEC MUNSOC had a collaboration with SB MUN. Harinarayanan Shaji and Rose were directors representing MEC.
At the inauguration, I met Kavith Viswanath buddy, Barath Arjun, Harinarayanan Shaji, Jugal O Jayan, Akhil Sreekumar, Joseph Jose, Safal, Anjana, Karthik Uday, Merlin and many others. Seeing most of them after quite some time. I was in the Press committee along with Akhil Sreekumar and Annamariakattampally. Reema madam was our head, she gave important instructions and assigned duties. It was my first time in IP, I was excited to bring out the journalist in me. I was given the CCC committee. In the committee, I also met Davis Jacob Thomas, Kavith’s best friend. Akhil helped me a lot, making me understand how IP works and on different types of reports.
The best part of SB MUN was the food and hospitality. For the first day, it was Shezhwan fried rice with Chilli Potato, one of the yummiest I ever had. Chilli potato looked to me at first like Friend Fries put in a Chinese gravy. For dinner, we had Porotta with Chilly Gobi. At evening, Barath, Karthik Uday, Hemanth, Ananda Sai, Rose, Snehal and me went on to roam in the town. We went to Desi Cuppa, I ordered Watermelon with Ice-cream which was tasty and cost only Rs 50. I had to write the event report late at night. CCC was highly boring on the first day, baring the awesome timeline prepared by EB.
Read my SB MUN CCC reports -
The second day, went on smooth, had fried rice and chilly gobi for lunch. In IP we are expected to note down all the points, made by delegates and report it. Also, I had to interview a controversial delegate. I interviewed the delegate of the UK, who claimed that “North Korea assassinated Sir Boris Johnson”. In the evening we had socials, meeting people, music, lighting, ambience, and finally dinner- Roti, Paneer and Mayonaisse. Back in my room, I had to submit two writeups- One Opinionated Article and other based on the interview. After submitting reports, I and my room-mates had very conversation midnight on MUNs in Kerala, MUNSocs and many peripheral topics. I helped Barath and Ananda Sai prepare their DR.
On the last day, we had an ethnic day where all delegates and OC members come in Ethnic dress, I wore a Red Kurtha with Dhoti. Had Porrota and Peas curry for Breakfast. I also had a brisk conversation with people from MACE delegation especially Jais Benny, prospective DSG of MACE MUN. As it was a Sunday, I had a family meetup, but I was unhappy I couldn’t attend it. For IP, it was a press conference. I had prepared questions which violated many of the delegates foreign policies as well as that they find difficult to answer. But given that CCC was highly dynamic, delegates violated their foreign policies too. There was not much left in the press conference as delegates just vaguely answered them. Thus because of that, we couldn't follow up or counter-question them. I prepared the final report and submitted it.
For lunch, we had traditional Kerala meals on the banana leaf. Post lunch Reema mam gave us general feedback and since there were over 20 reporters competition was high. I didn’t get any prize, neither did anyone from CCC. So it was obvious that CCC has fundamental flaws during Press Conference because, in other UN committees, journalists can quote UN resolution, news articles etc. Akhil Sreekumar got the best reporter from IP. Ananda Sai, Kavith, Davis, Barath Arjun got Special Mention. Noel and Snehal got Honourable Mention. It was really a successful venture for MUNSOC. Post the event we had a Group Photo session and later I left for Railway station as I didn’t have any time left. Since there were no trains, I went to KSRTC Bus Station to catch a bus. I got only a Palakkad bus, which didn’t go to Aluva. So, I got down in Perumbavoor at 10 pm and after waiting for some time got Aluva bus. In 15 mins, I reached home. In the bus Reema Mam, texted me saying that I had written good reports but missed out marks in the Press Conference.
Takeaways- After classes began, it was a great relief to be at SB MUN. Met new people, interacted with old friends and took away a lot of memories. SB MUN, being a maiden MUN set up high standards for a MUN in the state. It was really a commendable event put up by Martin-Rohith and team. Also, had a good experience of Food and Hospitality there.
It was my first time as an IP journalist. I had not expected much but I had worked a lot but again there are quite some things which I missed up. I really got a good understanding of IP and Journalism. | https://medium.com/journal-of-knowledge/journal-january-april-2020-e1c4e2f5fb3 | ['Jairam R Prabhu'] | 2020-05-04 12:38:55.175000+00:00 | ['January', 'Journal', 'Diary', 'Lockdown', 'April'] |
Writers, Keep a Notebook for Your “Scrap Heap Ideas” | Neil Gaiman has a wonderful trick to ensure nothing goes to waste, not even ideas.
I think it’s really important for a writer to have a compost heap. Everything you read, things that you write, things that you listen to, people you encounter, they can all go on the compost heap. And they will rot down. And out of them grow beautiful stories. — Neil Gaiman, taken from his MasterClass
It’s so simple. Have a notebook solely dedicated to capturing random thoughts and ideas in your head. Every so often, revisit the old pages of the notebook to remind yourself of these old thoughts. Have they changed? Do they mean something different?
A friend of mine recently said during a phone call, “I have the most boring success story, I just show up to work every day.”
I liked that so I wrote it down. Will it become an article? Will I casually mention it in a post? I don’t know yet but I know it’s there, in my scrap heap notebook, bidding its time.
On another page, quickly scrawled at the bottom, is, “Just managing the middle.” I don’t remember writing this. I don’t even know what I meant by it. But maybe one day I’ll find myself in another conversation where this phrase comes to mind and it’ll spark a whole new idea.
Unlike a painter or a sculptor, you can’t go out and buy better paint or better marble to create your art. Your ideas are your raw material. Why let any of them go to waste? | https://medium.com/60-second-spark/writers-keep-a-notebook-for-your-scrap-heap-ideas-9cff697a3dfa | ['Declan Wilson'] | 2020-12-21 17:03:15.853000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Creativity', 'Writing Tips', 'Art', 'Short Read'] |
Pope Francis commits Vatican to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 | “Pope Francis urged countries on Saturday to work towards net zero carbon emissions and committed Vatican City — the world’s smallest state — to reaching the target by 2050.
Francis, who has championed environmental causes since his election in 2013, told a U.N. climate summit the 108-acre (44-hectare) city-state surrounded by Rome would be doing its bit to fight climate change.
‘The current pandemic and climate change, which are not only environmentally relevant, but also ethically, socially, economically and politically, affect, above all, the lives of the poorest and most fragile,’ he said in a video message to the summit.
‘In addition to adopting some measures that cannot be postponed any longer, a strategy is needed to reduce net emissions to zero,’ Francis said.
He committed the Vatican ‘to reducing net emissions to zero by 2050,’ as well as intensifying environmental management efforts and furthering the rational use of natural resources such as water and planting more trees.”
View the whole story here: https://www.autoblog.com/2020/12/12/vatican-net-zero-emissions-2050/ | https://medium.com/@tonycowger/pope-francis-commits-vatican-to-net-zero-carbon-emissions-by-2050-8ca3eb66220d | ['Tony Cowger'] | 2020-12-17 04:34:24.627000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'News', 'Pope Francis', 'Electric Car', 'Carbon Emissions'] |
Philippe Blondin Applauds the Upturn in Israeli-Moroccan Relations | Philippe Blondin Applauds the Upturn in Israeli-Moroccan Relations
The first commercial flight between Israel and Morocco. Photo courtesy of MAP.
Rebuilding relations between Israel and Morocco under the aegis of the United States is a positive step in the service of peace and harmony between the two sides, Philippe Blondin, President of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, stated on Thursday.
“ It is a great pleasure for me to learn this good news which makes us all happy in the gloom of the end of the year,” P. Blondin said in a speech to the MAP.
He highlighted the centuries-long ties between Moroccan Jews, as well as their common history and culture.
He referred in this context to the heroic gesture of the late HM Mohammed V who opposed the introduction of anti-Jewish laws during the Vichy regime and refused to hand over the list of Moroccan citizens of the Jewish faith to Marshal Pétain.
He also underlined the vision of moderate Islam advocated by HM King Mohammed VI, which established the roots of living together and tolerance that distinguish Morocco from other countries.
The president of the Jewish Museum of Belgium also mentioned the tremendous potential for cultural cooperation between Morocco and Israel in view of the common history that unites Moroccans of the Jewish and Muslim faiths. | https://medium.com/@houdabelabd/philippe-blondin-applauds-the-upturn-in-israeli-moroccan-relations-d3ae050bffe4 | ['Houda Belabd'] | 2020-12-25 16:23:53.528000+00:00 | ['Peace', 'Jewish Museum', 'Morocco', 'Philippe Blondin', 'Israel'] |
What Traveling Taught Me About Myself | Experiences are more important to me than materialistic things.
I always thought that I wanted nice things, designer shoes, and handbags. I thought that once I had the ability to afford these luxuries, I would jump at them. I do want them still. But now that I have the ability to afford some of them- I don’t see myself waiting in line for the next Supreme drop. Rather, I find myself on Skyscanner, casually browsing flight tickets, or using Google Trips exploring their suggested day plans.
When I graduated, I rewarded myself with all my internship money to take a 35-day tour across Western Europe. If given the opportunity, I would choose to do that again and again.
My travel experiences are ingrained in my memory and will never wear out. I still remember the smell of coffee in Italy, the taste of the sweet and light macaroons in France, the sight of the imposing mountains in Switzerland, the touch of the warm Greek water, and the sound of the street musicians playing the guitar in Spain. These memories will never wash away and tiny reminders like the smell of string coffee can transport me back to that feeling I had when I was traveling.
This feeling of wandering and getting lost in cities is the sense of awe I feel when I walk down a street in a new city. It is magical, transporting, transformational.
I can be self-sufficient.
Traveling to another city is hard. There is a feeling of discomfort because you are out of your comfort zone and things are new and different. When I first embarked on my 35-day tour across Europe, I was in London and the London Bridge attack happened. Two days later, I was in Paris and there was an attack near Notre Dame. These were terrifying experiences, and something difficult to cope with as a first-time traveler to Europe.
But, I did not let those experiences put a damper on my plans. Rather, I used them as a learning experience. I became a little warier when wandering the streets to make sure I was safe and never walked alone at night. It probably seems like common sense to most people, but when you are 22 you feel invincible.
I also learned how to get around the city. I was lucky because many people speak English but there have been several times where I was in a location and just needed to navigate using my broken Spanish or pictures. It was difficult but I learned and picked up some cool words along the way. These experiences showed me that I have the capability of fending for myself and I don’t need that safety net.
The best part of traveling is all the people you will meet.
I love history, whenever I travel, I love to learn about the reason why and how a city evolved to the way it is now. I cannot tell you how much I fangirled over the fact that I was standing in Greek ruins where Aristotle probably walked.
But what I learned is that the people that tell me this story makes a huge difference. Some of the best people I have met and interacted with are the locals that stop and explain to me the history of the building I am walking into. Or my tour guide that has lived in the city for his whole life — recounting with so much passion how he saw this house being built since he was young. Or the waiter who thoroughly explains the process involved in making his favorite dish. Or the drivers taking you on a mini-tour as they drive you back to the hostel.
Traveling makes me realize how much I love people and makes me crave more interactions with people I don’t know. It is hard to find friendly faces in NY willing to take 2 minutes out of their day to explain directions to you. But when traveling people really show their love as they sprinkle your drops of water from their ocean-sized knowledge.
Planning is part of the fun.
Planning seems stressful, this is really the nuts and bolts of your trip as you detail out your extensive itinerary, frame them into time brackets, and hope you catch the train on time. But this is a huge part of traveling. Planning gets me excited about a place before I even get there. It allows me to learn about a place in more depth as I make tradeoffs on where to visit first in a particular city. The anticipation of visiting a new place is something so gratifying and fantasizing a city before getting there is such a magical feeling. | https://medium.com/be-unique/what-traveling-taught-me-about-myself-9cd4dda0cdbd | ['Dipali Gupta'] | 2020-06-04 13:06:30.324000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Life Lessons', 'Travel Tips', 'Explore', 'Reflections'] |
The European startup landscape of New Car Ownership — 2020 | By Clara Juppé
We are on the verge of a huge shift in the way we move.
Car ownership has long been perceived as a symbol of independence and played an important role in marking one’s success. However, times are changing.
Today, it’s becoming increasingly easier to get around cities in private vehicles without having to own one. Car renting, carpooling, carsharing, and other alternative car ownership platforms have led to billions of new mobility patterns, which is in turn shaping the automotive industry. And for younger people, buying a car is beginning to be viewed as both a hassle and a waste of money (not to mention an environmental disaster as more people are living in cities!)
Mobility being one of the areas we are passionate about at Aster, we wanted to share the European startup landscape of New Car Ownership that we put together.
© Aster Capital — 2020. All rights reserved.
We organized the Car Ownership landscape into the 8 categories listed below:
Ride sharing: startups that enable shared rides between drivers and passengers that have similar origins and destination pairings.
Car sharing: startups that enable customers to use a vehicle on a short-term basis, whether it’s for a couple hours, days or weeks, at unattended self-service locations 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
Short-term car rental: startups that enable customers to rent a vehicle on a short-term basis, whether it’s for a couple of days or weeks, based on a stationary model.
Car subscription: startups that enable customers to use a vehicle for an all-inclusive fee, including insurance. Car-as-a-Service (CaaS) or car subscription is a growing segment in the value chain.
Sales & leasing: startups that enable customers to own a vehicle, through an increasingly digital user journey, and with financing agreements over a defined period.
AFTERMARKET
Spare parts: startups that sell or enable customers to buy replacement parts that are made by a company other than the car’s original manufacturer.
Maintenance: startups that enable customers to service a vehicle to keep it from having a major breakdown.
Aftermarket telematics: startups that sell telematics devices made by a company other than the car’s original manufacturer, which are retrofitted into vehicles via OBD-II.
Despite these evolutions, we believe that car ownership will not disappear yet because of the Car bundle. More information on that in this article: https://danco.substack.com/p/the-car-bundle | https://medium.com/@AsterCapital/the-european-new-car-ownership-startup-landscape-2020-bc09353c39ba | ['Aster Capital'] | 2020-03-20 10:38:44.053000+00:00 | ['Mobility', 'Startup', 'Landscape', 'Cars', 'Venture Capital'] |
The ‘Adults in the Room’ Could Be Scientists | The most vivid experience from my childhood is long dinner conversations during which I would ask a question and the “adults in the room” would pretend that they know more than they actually do in answering it. This was actually the better experience. In other circumstances — when my question was too challenging, the adults would dismiss it and return to their comfort zone. “The inevitable friction in the tumultuous life of an adult must generate a lot of friction which tends to erode the sharp edges of our inquisitive mind, but we should never give up wondering,” I reasoned as a child.
As I grew up, this bruising experience guided me to a tenured appointment in science, which promised the privilege of maintaining my childhood curiosity. But to my surprise, many of the adults in the halls of academia behave no differently than those I remember from my childhood. They pretend to know more than they do and when they have no satisfactory answer, they dismiss the question and move on, carried by a wave of “likes” on Twitter.
But the people in my room changed recently. At long last, I was fortunate to assemble a team of 70 exceptional, like-minded scientists, in a Zoom meeting room and demonstrate that even adults can wonder about the world without worrying about their image.
The string that ties this “bouquet of flowers” is simple. We know that our technological civilization sends equipment into space. The statistics of habitable planets discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope enlightened us that the conditions on Earth are not rare and could have been replicated tens of billions of times in the past history of Sun-like stars within the Milky Way galaxy. If one of the Earth-like planets produced an extraterrestrial technological civilization (ETC) like ours a billion years ago, its equipment could have reached the Solar system by now — even at the speed of chemical rockets, which is ten thousand times slower than the speed of light for both Sputnik and New Horizons. We should therefore examine the solar system as if it was a mailbox — collecting packages that were sent long ago, even if the senders perished by now. This ETC mail could appear in the form of weird interstellar objects like `Oumuamua, interstellar meteors, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena near Earth. My childhood question is: “shouldn’t we check whether our mailbox is really empty as we naively think?”
Most adults in the halls of academia ask for extraordinary evidence before willing to engage in the search through our “mailbox” for ETC “packages”. But such evidence will never appear without searching the mailbox in the first place. The recently announced Galileo Project that I lead, breaks the circularity of this argument by seeking new data without prejudice. If we find no evidence for ETC equipment through new telescopes in the coming decades, we will, in this worst-case scenario, merely match the poor record of the search for the nature of “dark matter”, which lasted almost half a century so far and consumed hundreds of millions of dollars without success.
The experience of receiving a delayed package that has passed its moment of relevance would resemble the discovery of old love letters in a closet. But the significance of a lost opportunity might be amplified if it involves a prescription for the salvation of the human species. In that case, our fate will depend on whether we search our “mailbox”. It would be unfortunate if the mail remains there, unopened, even unsought, long after it would have done literally a world of good. If we are not intelligent enough to search for it, perhaps we do not merit to survive by Darwinian selection on the cosmic scale.
The traditional SETI quest for radio signals is equivalent to attempting a phone conversation, which requires an active counterpart. The chance of success in finding a radio-transmitting ETC that responds to our signals might be compromised by the short window of time during which we communicated in the radio band since Guglielmo Marconi’s transmission in 1895, which is thirty-six million times shorter than the age of Earth.
As apparent from our political landscape, adults are not always guided by scientific evidence. This applies to public health policies regarding COVID-19 as well as to overarching notions of the world. For example, there are self-sustained communities of “adults” in both the public and academic spheres, promoting unfalsifiable world views regarding objects near Earth as well as regions of spacetime to which we have no access.
Even though I specialized in theoretical astrophysics throughout my career, I accept the superiority of data from telescopes in educating us about our cosmic neighborhood. After all, Edwin Hubble’s data was needed to convince Albert Einstein that the universe is not static, even though a static universe is more philosophically appealing since it has no beginning. The discovery of an expanding universe eventually made sense to everyone because the entropy of a static universe that existed forever would have been infinite. Similarly, if we find ETC equipment, its meaning will ultimately appear obvious to all the “adults in the room”.
But for now, my participation in the Galileo Project along with like-minded scientists provides the closure I needed for those frustrating dinner conversations in my youth. The benefits are simple: I am not alone; they are not alone; we are not alone. Pun intended. | https://medium.com/on-the-trail-of-the-saucers/the-adults-in-the-room-could-be-scientists-81cb489a98ad | [] | 2021-09-15 19:13:47.902000+00:00 | ['Astronomy', 'Space', 'Aliens', 'Kids', 'Life'] |
Motion Recording for Oculus Avatars & Game Objects in Unity With VR Labs’ Free MotionTool | Recording Avatars, but why?
One possible reason, as mentioned above, is the need to record a stereo 360° video containing Oculus avatars among other stuff. But being able to record and replay the actions of avatars opens up a whole new world of possibilities. You can:
have a prerecorded avatar that greets the user and guides him through your experience.
simulate different scenarios in environments like classrooms, workplaces, public institutions, banks, hospitals and so on.
use avatars to teach or demonstrate certain actions inside your application
prerecord avatars and replay them as reactions to your user’s actions
use recorded avatars for aiding your development and testing your application
use Avatars as NPCs
There are many more ways in which to make use of prerecorded avatars and in the end it’s up to your own, specific use-case. But all those cases require the same prerequisite, namely the ability to record and replay them. This is where our tool comes into play and gives you value by saving you time and pain.
But why a tool?
Why would you bother using a tool in the first place? If you are reading this article, then you probably know the answer already — Oculus do not have a tool of their own that does that, neither did we find any 3rd party tool that does it. The other, more important reason is, that it’s a bit of a complicated process and it’s lacking transparency. Oculus have created a mechanism to transfer avatar pose information over the network, as the core idea of the avatar construct as such is to give its users an appearance, which improves the social experience and interaction between them. But the way they accomplish this is by writing binary “packets” at fixed time intervals (most commonly 30 times a second) and sending them over the network, where they are read by the other participants or clients, “decoded” and applied to the avatar that represents the person that sent them. The process of encoding and decoding the packets and applying them to some avatar is completely opaque to the developer, so they have to use those packets themselves, whether they like it or not. This might be a bit too “low-level” for many developers, especially when they have other tasks at hand and their time is precious. Based on those packets and a couple of examples from the Oculus SDK, we created our tool, which can store all the avatar pose information for a given period of time in a separate file. It can later apply the stored poses on one or more avatars, thus creating something like “canned” avatar animations.
How to use it?
The tool comes ready with examples and there is a series of tutorial videos, which I encourage you to watch before using the tool for the first time:
It contains different Unity components that you can attach to GameObjects in your scenes and assign them the objects that you want to record or play back on. The tool stores the data in its own .asset file formats. It also has a couple of synchronization components in case you want to record or play back to/from multiple data files at once. If your use-case is similar to ours, i.e. you want to play back the motions over the same avatars and objects that you record from, then you can use our special “Record Director” editor utility. It can automate the setup process entirely, you just need to tell it which avatars and objects you want to record and it takes care of everything.
At the time of writing this article, you can use the MotionTool for recording only in the Unity Editor. You can’t record in a built Player, no matter the target platform. You can though, play back recorded data in a Player.
Share your feedback
Share your experience with the tool, send us suggestions for useful features or improvements, what you would like to see and what would be beneficial to you (for example record-in-player functionality) or report issues or bugs that you have stumbled upon — every feedback is greatly appreciated and will help us improve even further!
We are looking forward to get in touch, you can reach out here! | https://medium.com/telerik-ar-vr/motion-recording-for-oculus-avatars-game-objects-in-unity-with-vr-labs-free-motiontool-1299aee5223f | ['Hristo Zaprianov'] | 2019-05-16 14:59:05.674000+00:00 | ['Oculus', 'Unity', '360 Video', 'Free', 'Virtual Reality'] |
Looking for a service design job? Here are some ideas | Looking for a service design job? Here are some ideas
A Post from the International Service Design Institute
Just because there is a pandemic raging across much of the globe, there are still service design jobs to be filled.
Courtesy of Pixabay
I’ve had a few requests lately for service design job-search ideas. For one, I know firsthand that when you are in your own job search it doesn’t always come to mind to stop the tedium of filling out applications to review your job search plan or to stay on track with it.
And sometimes, it’s not a question of following a plan, but coming up with new ideas. So here are some ideas that I’ve recommended to others that might be of help.
I’m seeing more SD jobs now on LinkedIn and on Google Alerts https://tinyurl.com/y6qdesqn than ever. For both of these platforms, you should set up alerts https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/. These links should take you right to the pages.
Networking — There are Service Design Network SDN chapters (https://www.service-design-network.org/chapters) throughout the world that you can join for free. Plus, SDN hosts events (https://www.service-design-network.org/events). Facebook is also emerging as a platform for service design communities, and a search for service design will bring those up. Some communities include “drinks” in their titles.
Many major companies and organizations hire service designers, and the jobs can be found in hospitality, finance and banking, transportation (including auto manufacturers), consumer products, healthcare, and public service. Nowadays many service designers are employed with national, state, and local governments.
Along these lines, I suggest searching for service designers on LinkedIn to find out who they are working for and the kinds of work they are doing and where. This might be obvious, but this is a critical part of figuring out where you will be most comfortable working.
There are also a growing number of boutique agencies offering service design to clients. A plain Google search of “service design near me,” might bring those up.
Additionally, I would include the major global SD consultancies, such as IDEO (https://www.ideo.com/), Live/Work ((https://www.liveworkstudio.com/), Designit (https://www.designit.com/), Engine (https://www.enginegroup.co.uk/), Koos (https://www.koosservicedesign.com/), and others that I know I’m neglecting.
And finally, every global major management consulting firm, the likes of Accenture, PwC, Sapient, Booz Allen Hamilton, McKinzie, Bain, and BCG, all offer clients forms of service design, service improvement, service transformation, and so on. CAVEAT: They may call their teams by a variety of names, but the work remains designing and improving services.
Among all these, I have no doubt something will come your way!
And don’t leave out preparing for a job with our online courses and reference books. The Institute’s brochure: https://tinyurl.com/yxlgb38d. Online courses: https://tinyurl.com/y3awqjug. And, guides and references https://internationalservicedesigninstitute.com/handbooks/
The International Service Design Institute offers service designers valuable resources for professional development, including the Service Designer’s Handbook Series, a suite of sequential guides and references with accompanying online courses.
For more, visit www.InternationalServiceDesignInstitute.com | https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/looking-for-a-service-design-job-here-are-some-ideas-1c32c2de64d9 | ['Steven J. Slater'] | 2020-10-15 23:03:47.812000+00:00 | ['Creative Process', 'Design Thinking', 'UX Design', 'Design Process', 'Service Design'] |
Infinite Tapestry: | Infinite Tapestry:
Photo by Gama. Films on Unsplash
As the United States galloped into the 20th century, this young nation (with less than 150 years under its belt) was enjoying unprecedented economic growth. This growth was made possible in part through the development of the Southwestern territories, a generous hunk of land that it had won from Mexico only 52 years earlier in the Mexican-American war. Although the natives of these regions suddenly found themselves living under a new flag and ruled by a new government with a new language, they held fast to their identity as hard-working and honest folk. These Spanish-speaking Americans along with their former paisanos in Mexico lay the foundation for this booming economy. Although this was their ancestral land, millions of Mexicans would cross the line at the Rio Grande that had been drawn by their neighbors in the North to make a living for themselves and their families as farmhands. In doing so, they helped to create one of the largest and most successful economies in the world. The US encouraged it, enjoying the cheap labor, and in 1942 they created the Bracero program, a farm labor agreement that helped fortify a war-torn workforce and keep the new world power happily fed (Radical History Book Club).
Despite the obvious boon that Mexican workers brought to an economy that couldn’t function without them, they were met with hostility and treated as foreigners in a land that had been theirs for generations. Much like the Indigenous tribes to the East, the children of Braceros, immigrant workers, and even US citizens of Mexican descent were segregated and forced to attend “Mexican Schools,” where they were coerced to forget their native tongues in favor of English and abandon their culture to make room for the new White-American status quo (RHBC). While educational institutions are commonly idealized as places of learning, enlightenment, and prosperity, the opposite has been true for many millions of American citizens and residents. For most of the United States’ history, schools for people of color have provided little more than institutionalized gaslighting and “fostered a cultural self-hatred.” As the Radical History Book Club points out: “Cultural shame can be deeply internalized when your people have been branded a plague on the country you call home.” In this essay, I will attempt to show the work that many radical educators have done (and are still doing) to acknowledge the brainwashing methods of the educational system in order to change them from the inside.
Chicanx, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples are not the only groups who have had to endure language repression. As the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the National Council of Teachers of English (CCCC/NCTE) has clearly asserted in This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!, Black students have been taught to hate themselves through a dismantling of their linguistic structures for as long as they have been allowed to attend schools. They have five major demands:
That teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm, which reflects White Mainstream English! That teachers stop teaching Black students to code-switch! Instead, we must teach Black students about anti-Black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy! That political discussions and praxis center Black Language as teacher-researcher activism for classrooms and communities! That teachers develop and teach Black Linguistic Consciousness that works to decolonize the mind (and/or) language, unlearn white supremacy, and unravel anti-Black linguistic racism! That Black dispositions are centered in the research and teaching of Black Language!
While I do not have space here to fully dissect the educational history of each demand in context to the extent that I would like, all five demands speak to the same hypocrisy that Chicanx and Latinx students have suffered. Namely, that the United States owes much of its culture, identity, swagger, and clout to the languages and linguistic systems of people of color. As a general rule, the best and most profitable pieces of these systems are plucked from the whole without context while the human beings who helped create and sustain them are tossed to the side and forgotten. In a nation where nearly all the cultural gems of our language (and indeed, the way most people talk outside of the academy) come from black culture (ie: lit, woke, yas, bae, bet, on fleek, spill the tea, straight up, word up, after party, no cap, etc…) how does it make any sense that our educational institutions at large teach the dialects that these phrases come from as ‘informal,’ and ‘incorrect’?
As the CCCC itself states:
We are witnessing institutions and organizations craft statements condemning police brutality and anti-Black racism while ignoring the anti-Black skeletons in their own closets. As language and literacy researchers and educators, we acknowledge that the same anti-Black violence toward Black people in the streets across the United States mirrors the anti-Black violence that is going down in these academic streets (Baker-Bell, Jones Stanbrough, & Everett, 2017). …In reflecting on the current historical moment and movement for Black lives, Baker-Bell (2020) argues that “the way Black language is devalued in schools reflects how Black lives are devalued in the world . . . [and] the anti-Black linguistic racism that is used to diminish Black Language and Black students in classrooms is not separate from the rampant and deliberate anti-Black racism and violence inflicted upon Black people in society” (pp. 2–3).
The term “standard English” itself is an oxymoron, and although the attempt to educate our students in it might seem benign, it is not. Just like the line across the Rio Grande, the rules of grammar are drafted by the victors of conquest. The nonsensical structure of the English language itself speaks to the many invasions the British Isles endured from Angles, Saxons, Romans, and Brittany. It is full of contradictions and hardly makes sense (just ask any immigrant who has had to learn the language in order to thrive here). The English language is an ever-flowing river of magma, kept fresh and liquid by the constant eruptions of invasion and migration. The lava has never cooled, and the norms have never solidified. This is why we need a translator to read our own foundational texts like Beowulf or Shakespeare in order to understand them. A Spaniard reading Don Quixote would not have to work so hard. So, to claim that this language has ever had a solid structure is ludicrous, and to punish or shame students based on that false belief is nothing short of lunacy. The CCCC shines a light on a truth that is seldom acknowledged: Educational institutions hail from a tradition of language suppression, which has always been a key instrument in oppression because thoughts take form from words. If an institution can control the way you speak, then they can control the way you think.
While segregation and language suppression are not as blatant as in the days of “Mexican Schools,” “Indian Schools,” and “Negro Schools,” the problems that arose from them are still ever-present. When students are told that their way of speaking is not only incorrect but makes them seem stupid, uneducated, or of a lower class, it is clear that the CCCC is right on target with it says that “standard English” does little more than enforce White Mainstream English and foster a culture of resentment. The student resents the teacher for demeaning them while at the same time downloading instructions to hate themselves for the way they speak.
The way we speak is inseparable from the way we think, which in turn is inseparable from our personal identities as human beings. In her study, English May be My Second Language, but I’m Not ESL, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper points out that “learning in a second language is not simply the accrual of technical linguistic abilities but rather is intimately related to identity — how one sees oneself and is seen by others as a student, as a writer, and as an ethnolinguistic minority,” (Ortmeier-Hooper 392). This study follows three students who have had to take English as Second Language courses, and yet reject the title of “ESL Student,” because it is a glass-half-empty model that focuses on what the student lacks rather than what they can bring to the table. Beyond that, it also ostracizes students, making them feel like imposters or outsiders in their school. They feel isolated. Like they have nowhere to turn, and often do not seek out help, even when it is available to them. While observing these students, and the studies of many other students, Ortmeier-Hooper has noted “that the ‘imposter’ or ‘outsider’ image is a strong one that perpetuates a deficit model of “ESL” that can discourage students from seeking academic assistance.” Indeed, this deficit model leaves many students “convinced that the whole educational enterprise [is] a game, a test of survival,” (393).
There is some good news, however, amid this discussion of racism, language suppression, and colonization. Many educators today recognize the effects that the colonized classroom can have on their students and are working to change things from the inside. Author, professor, and pioneer of freewriting Peter Elbow has explored in his writing how to turn the classroom into its ideal form: a place of learning rather than a brainwashing facility. Much of his approach includes taking a calculated step backward in order to empower the students to hold each other accountable and to take learning into their own hands. In Grading Student Writing: Making It Simpler, Fairer, Clearer, Elbow notes how even the traditional system of grading can get in the way of learning, and do more to create that cycle of resentment:
Grading tends to undermine the climate for teaching and learning. Once we start grading their work, students are tempted to study or work for the grade rather than for learning. They see writing as an exercise in trying to say “what teachers want” rather than working out their own thinking. Students resent the grades we give or haggle over them and, in general, see us as people they have to deceive and hide from rather than people they want to take into their confidence (127).
In saying this, Elbow highlights both the platonic ideal of all that teachers could be, while at the same time showcasing the reality that most students face. Even the most kind-hearted teachers must recognize that they are in a position of power when they teach, and this power dynamic affects the psychological landscape of the classroom and skews it. Elbow is a master at recognizing all the historical and emotional baggage that a teacher takes on, and devises methods to account for it. In A Method for Teaching Writing, Elbow proposes a much more democratized classroom where the students grade each other’s work. In this kind of classroom, students focus on creating writing that is simply “good,” rather than trying to fluff up their papers with academic jargon that they think will please their teachers. In this model, students are able to improve their writing at a holistic level because they are not forced to artificially insert language that is foreign to them while at the same time deleting and omitting so many aspects of their personality that make their identities as writers unique.
Ann Johns echo’s much of what Elbow is saying in her 1986 essay for TESOL quarterly, Coherence and Academic Writing: Some Definitions and Suggestions for Teaching. Johns argues that “rather than relying on teacher correction, the students devote more time to monitoring their own work and to providing an audience for their peers. The teacher sees a more finished product which cuts down considerably on grading time”(254). Although it does not explicitly intend to do so, this model of teaching helps resolve many of the issues of identity posed by Ortmeier-Hooper and the CCCC. Namely: when students are asked to write within the strict confines of the academy they are often forced to excise crucial aspects of their identity. When they are allowed to write without the behemoth of language repression breathing down their necks, the pressure of not embarrassing themselves in front of their peers proves to be a much healthier method by which to produce good writing. This writing is clear and coherent, while at the same time a unique expression of the student’s identity and voice.
The author, feminist theorist, and political activist bell hooks speaks to the fact that writing and reading at the academic level can be more of a hindrance to learning than a help. In an interview with Gary A. Olson, she comments on the deep linguistic gorge that many students and working-class people have to jump over in order to have access to most educational texts. She compares the heady, superfluous, and often lengthy writing in academic journals to a simple book called Breaking Bread by Shahrazad Ali and had this to say:
I wondered how we expect people who work every day to come home and read these ten-and twenty-page essays we are taught to write in the academy. And so I learned from Shahrazad Ali that you can write a kind of book like Breaking Bread…in which people can come home and open it up to any page and read that page and feel that they got some idea and that they understood it, that they could digest it… This is a real challenge to us academics who have been trained to write longer pieces, and I see it as a subversion of the whole sense that there has to be only one monolithic writing style that can be given scholarly legitimation in the academy. Sometimes I write ten pages of something and I think this could have just as well been said in three pages, but most journals aren’t going to want to publish three pages. I’d like to see journals become more open to publishing smaller pieces if they can truly say what we have to say in that short space. (Hooks, Olson, 4).
So, it becomes clear that the pedantic language and self-indulgent length of many pieces of academic writing act as a wall to a world of knowledge that is simply not accessible to most folks. As hooks notes, most of this writing could be dramatically shortened and made more accessible to more readers, but there is no room for that kind of thinking in much of University culture. Looking at writing from hooks’ perspective, we can see the academic register as a classed system, coded specifically to be more accessible to white, upper, and middle-class folk.
Navigating through this kind of language is difficult enough for students of privilege, who have had the resources to learn how to properly translate this kind of language into common understanding. But students who have not been so fortunate, or students who must focus first on learning common English before they can hope to learn “standard English,” the gorge opens up even wider. And so, there is a disparity between what this “monolithic writing style” claims it is doing, and what it is actually doing. It claims to be creating clear and decisive writing that can be used for the betterment of humanity*. That asterisk on “humanity” represents what is hidden in the fine print: that this knowledge will only serve the people inside the wall, who have been able to pay for the price of admission. Recognizing this disparity between what the academy claims it is and what it actually is, forces us to ask a foundational question: What is the university for?
The British-Ghanian author and philosopher Kwame Appiah asks this question and more in his essay What is the Point of College? He explains that there are “two distinct visions of higher education [which] contend throughout our classrooms and campuses,” each with its own agendas and philosophies. These two universities are at the same time connected to each other and at war: Utility University vs Utopia University.
“In the Utility vision,” Kwame explains, “students are consumers; they have needs and desires to be met, at a price they’ll pay.” This vision “focuses on how college can be useful.” It places emphasis on preparing students for the workforce, on GDP growth, and on ROI. The other vision focuses on “building your souls as much as your skills.” Here, priority is given to critical thinking, empathy, and the pursuit of happiness. But from which of these visions do the problems of Language Repression and linguistic wall-building arise? One might be tempted to say Utility U is the culprit, but that would be taking the easy way out. In fact, in an attempt to keep the customer happy, Utility U will often remove much of the necessary intellectual heavy lifting that Utopia U might require of its students in favor of bigger Gyms and shorter class times.
The answer is that both the university-as-business and university-as-utopia have grown from a tradition that has placed quite a lot of emphasis on keeping people out. Both visions take the exclusionary approach when they are operating under the assumption that something like “standard English” could actually exist. Language (the means by which we transfer all knowledge and information) is too grand of an egregore for us to properly classify and standardize. Language creates itself and uses humans, not the other way around. As long as humans exist, languages will be there also, and the rules of those languages will be dictated and maintained by the intimate subcultures that add their own stitch to this infinite tapestry of communication.
Many students and educators recognize this. They know that they are operating in a system that has prejudice and exclusion written into the very code of its being. They acknowledge that by attending or working at a university, they take part in a tradition of education that has often focused just as much on who it can keep out as who it lets in. And so, the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of students and educators to become surgeons as well as philosophers. To look deep into the system and slowly remove and reform the oppressive structures that are often taken for granted and hidden under the guise of the status quo. It is not easy work, and it is work that will never be complete. We will never be able to fully rectify the dark, prejudiced history of the academy with its more altruistic and utopian ideals, but that is exactly what makes the work all the more in need of doing. | https://medium.com/@giovanjmichael/infinite-tapestry-fed5d6f086e1 | ['Giovan J. Michael'] | 2020-12-21 00:51:37.735000+00:00 | ['Language', 'University', 'Radicalisation', 'Education', 'Justice'] |
Skycoin Fiber Platform | “The infinitely-scalable and highly customizable parallel peer-chain architecture of the Skycoin platform.”
Skycoin’s Fiber architecture is a transformational, better-than-blockchain solution which solves existing problems using distributed ledger technology. Fiber is the foundation of blockchain 3.0 and can be best described as an infinitely scalable network of blockchains laid side by side, like strands. This is a technological feat that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum will never be able to achieve, as they were never engineered to scale infinitely.
Bitcoin’s single blockchain can handle 6 transactions per second (TPS) and Ethereum’s single blockchain can handle 30 TPS. With Fiber, each blockchain strand can currently handle 300 TPS with a target of 3000 TPS in future implementations. Fiber offers performance and reliability that are unmatched by the other blockchain solutions currently available.
Fiber achieves this high level of performance due to its elegance. Fiber is less than 5000 lines of code, compared to Bitcoin’s 100,000+ lines of code. Large and convoluted codebases introduce bugs, thus requiring band-aid patches of code, whereas Fiber is elegant and brilliant in its simplicity. This simplicity and elegant architecture is the driving force behind creating a performance blockchain platform for the next generation.
The Superiority of Parallel Peer-Chain Architecture
Parallel peer-chain architecture is unrivaled when it comes to reliability. With Ethereum, for example, the architecture is set up in a centralized manner. If the Ethereum blockchain goes down, all Plasma child-chains will go down with it. The same is true of network congestion — congesting the main Ethereum chain congests all child-chains. Parallel blockchain architecture solves this major problem. If one Fiber blockchain goes down, the rest of the strands are unaffected.
Skycoin is bringing transaction speeds and on-chain scalability to a new dimension with Fiber’s integrated parallel blockchain architecture. Fiber does not compete with first and second generation cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, instead, it replaces them by providing each customer with their own dedicated, customizable, free and simple-to-implement blockchain strand.
Fiber is the foundation of blockchain 3.0. Each strand added to Fiber strengthens the whole network and constructs the fabric of the entire ecosystem. Each company and project hosted on Fiber gets its own fully customizable, private blockchain capable of Visa-like speeds. This enables blockchain solutions for businesses running private or private-public blockchains in a manner that allows them autonomy and full control.
Let’s explore a quick example…
Skycoin Fiber In Action
Delaware, the corporate capital of the US responsible for 83% of all new IPO incorporation, has stated recently that companies are legally able to incorporate in Delaware and put their stock shares on a blockchain. From day one, any company incorporating in Delaware can be a publicly traded company on a blockchain.
To do this, they will need their own private blockchain. Each blockchain will have its own requirements for computing power, storage capability, bandwidth, throughput, transaction speeds, and other factors depending on the company’s business sector.
On top of their individual operational requirements, they will also need features such as wallets, an exchange for the trade of tokens, a dedicated hardware platform for running their applications, and also “plug-and-play” functionality in order to scale their blockchains accordingly.
Furthermore, these companies may need to have a law firm to replicate their data in case their nodes go down and the data needs to be retrievable for legal purposes. Currently, this is a very messy process that is either done by paper or by slow and centralized SQL databases prone to data errors.
All of this is offered by Fiber and the Skycoin ecosystem. All of the typical problems that are experienced while setting up a blockchain-traded company goes away when using Fiber due to its well-developed architecture and comprehensive platform.
Skycoin Fiber Platform: The One-Stop Solution For Blockchain Projects
Since Fiber architecture allows the individual blockchain strands to come together, data sharing agreements can be easily put in place and executed flawlessly between any private blockchains in the larger Fiber ecosystem. This is one of many ways in which Fiber strives to build a faster and brighter future for us all.
Skycoin Fiber architecture is particularly useful for enterprise and government entities wishing to use blockchain to improve their efficiency and operation of their organization. These entities usually have very strict compliance requirements which must be met in regards to privacy, security, and customer obligations. Blockchain 3.0, and specifically Skycoin Fiber, offers a solution for these organizations.
By implementing a private singular blockchain (a single strand in Fiber), all privacy and security requirements for each individual customer can be achieved. Fiber is meant to be a one-stop solution for most blockchain projects, which will work effortlessly when you set up the base blockchain.
Benefits Of Skycoin Fiber Platform
From fledgling blockchain projects to enterprises looking for solutions, Fiber is the answer.
The benefits of running a blockchain project on Fiber are tremendous. Creation of a blockchain strand in Fiber is quick and easy. Each project starts off with a base blockchain that can be customized to the needs and desires of the project. The Skycoin Coin Hours mechanism comes built-in as well, if desired, offering free and fast transactions.
Cryptocurrency exchanges have grown to the point of wielding monopolistic power in the market. Getting a listing on an exchange can take months and millions of dollars, depending on the exchange you choose. When a project launches using Fiber, it will get listed on one of Skycoin’s decentralized exchanges (coming soon!) immediately upon launch, and at no cost.
Projects will never have to compete for bandwidth or suffer from fee bloat from other projects that get overrun with stray cats. Nor will they have to be beholden to the developers of the entire platform to make changes to their own blockchain. The power will be entirely in their hands.
On top of the benefits listed above, Fiber is going to offer the projects or companies running on the Skycoin platform the other necessary components to operate safely and securely. Components such as mobile and desktop wallets, hardware wallets, dedicated hardware nodes, and standardized deployment for applications will all be available.
These Fiber peer-chains will be simple to scale out because the dedicated hardware platforms allow operators of their individual blockchain to easily buy more of the resource type (storage, computation, bandwidth) they need and connect it to their existing hardware infrastructure. This will offer a true “plug-and-play” functionality, making Fiber’s entire platform extremely user-friendly.
Skycoin Fiber is destined to be the premier blockchain platform for the new generation, incorporating technical superiority, full customization, and a feature-rich environment for all who join Skycoin in building out Fiber and the new internet. | https://medium.com/skycoin/skycoin-fiber-platform-bf64debfc60f | [] | 2018-04-03 13:35:01.161000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Skycoin', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
5 Steps To Finding The Perfect Co-Founder For Your SaaS | If you want to start a new SaaS business in 2021 without tearing your hair out, my advice is:
Find a co-founder.
You shouldn’t have to do it all on your own… and it’s better that you don’t.
Finding the right co-founder means having someone who will work just as hard as you, can do the things you can’t, and gives your business a fighting chance in the market.
If you’re a non-technical founder, that could mean finding someone technical.
You grow the business, they build the product.
Or if you are a technical founder, then it means finding someone that can help you assemble a world-class team and market your product effortlessly while you write the code.
But picking the wrong co-founder spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.
You end up losing a big slice of the most valuable asset in your business:
Equity.
Don’t ever, EVER, EVER give equity to the wrong co-founder.
So how do you find the right co-founder? How do you track them down and get them interested? How do you negotiate a fair equity split?
I’ve got you covered.
This week’s video is the 5-steps to finding the perfect co-founder for your startup.
Exclusive Download: Dream 100 — Learn How to Identify The 100 People That Will Transform Your Life
We’re going to break this down logically and uncover:
What to look for in a co-founder
Where to find a technical co-founder
How to know they are right for you
What to say on your first introduction
How to discuss equity
The safest way to split equity fairly
Every SaaS company I’ve launched has been with co-founders. I even launched Spheric with a co-founding team of 4.
Could I have launched my businesses entirely on my own? Maybe.
But growth would have been slower, I’d have torn my hair out, and my family life would have suffered.
I like working with people… and my businesses are better for it.
Yours can be too. Check out the video here and drop me a comment if you have any questions.
P.S. Prefer audio? Subscribe to the Growth Stacking Show directly on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and make sure to leave a rating and review if you find the show helpful.
—
Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get access to all my latest business hacks.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited three tech companies: Spheric, Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on Twitter @danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome. | https://medium.com/@danmartell/5-steps-to-finding-the-perfect-co-founder-for-your-saas-491227499663 | ['Dan Martell'] | 2020-12-14 13:59:19.023000+00:00 | ['Equity', 'Cofounders', 'Founders', 'SaaS', 'Partners'] |
Choose right Stop Shop for Cars, Dogs & RV Wash Service | There are so many people who look for the easiest way to get their cars or dogs washed and now it has become possible. There are so many companies that offer self wash services to the car or dog owners. If you really want to wash your car, dog or RV yourself, then you should look for the right equipment or company that can offer you required equipments and support. There are array of collection of the equipments that can be used to make the car amazingly clean. Poway Car Wash can be an ideal option that can provide you an array of collections from high to low pressure wash, spotless final rinse, tire cleaning and more. You can wash your whole car within less than 5 minutes with the help of Poway Car Wash.
Fast
This is easy to access and you can get your dogs and cars washed within few minutes as you can get each and everything that you need to clean your dog or car. This is something that every car or dog owner can use. From vacuuming, cleaning, washing, polishing to drying, you can take each and everything to get it done. In this fast paced world, you can make car washing and dog washing quickly and hassle free with the support of some companies or service providers like Poway Car Wash. It offers best San Diego car wash services. This can be the right dog wash station where you can wash your dogs without getting stuck into bath tub. You need not to run behind them, you can find the best place that offer easy dog wash service San Diego.
Cheap
This service is affordable and many people have used this service. You need to pay few bucks in order to get these services. It is easy to pay as company offers payment in cash as well. You just need to look for the right service. Whether you are planning to get your dog washed or your car cleaned, you can get it done within your budget. Less time and cheap service can make this service provider popular in this area.
Easy
Mobile car wash service San Diego by Poway Car Wash is open 24 hours in a day. It is accessible to each and every car or dog owner. You can take the advantages of this service 365 days a year. This is easy to go and get your dogs or cars cleaned without any risk or issues. You can access high quality and state of the art equipments such as blow dry systems, self serve bays, engine cleaners, vacuum cleaners and more.
These are the few reasons to go with Poway Car Wash. You just need to visit powaycarwash.com to know more about the services. This can be the right place to fulfil your car washing or dog washing requirements. You can find quality services at best price, so go for it.
For More Info:- poway car wash | https://medium.com/@powaycarwash01/choose-right-stop-shop-for-cars-dogs-rv-wash-service-5efa9ef388a3 | ['Poway Car Wash'] | 2019-09-14 19:46:44.086000+00:00 | ['Startup'] |
Doctors Are Writing, But is America Paying Attention Anymore? | Doctors Are Writing, But is America Paying Attention Anymore?
Winter is coming. Unfortunately, we are not referring to another exciting episode of Game of Thrones. Instead, the dark winter refers to the next 90 days as the United States grapples with the exponential community spread of Covid-19.
Hospitals around the country are nearing surge capacity just in time for large family Thanksgiving gatherings. Lab facilities report a lack of supplies, reagents, and personnel creating long lines and backlogs as the demand for testing increases. NYC closed school as the city reached its designated case threshold.
On a positive note, Pfizer officially applied for Emergency Use Authorization of its much anticipate mRNA Covid vaccine. Moderna’s vaccine is thought to be close behind.
Each week our writing team highlights the scientific discoveries and provides commentary on the findings. Don’t miss Dr. Sohail Merchant’s story, Breakthrough: First Drug Synthesized by AI Goes into Clinical Trials, explaining how artificial intelligence may be the future of new drug creation.
Last week Dr. James Goydos highlighted how robotic technology is changing surgery. This week Dr. Patricia Farrell shares how robotics may also alter mental health therapy in her story Robots Are Besting Real-life Psychotherapists in Some Studies.
Being Well Writers are being recognized for providing reliable, actionable, and evidence-based content on Medium.
Our writers had several stories highlighted in Medium-owned publications this week. Elemental’s Coronavirus Blog featured two important stories regarding pregnancy outcomes in women with Covid-19. We appreciate Alexandra Sifferlin’s continued support.
Coronavirus
Psychologist James Coyne debunks the media portrayal of scientific studies showing Covid-19 brings a wave of mental illness.
Robert Turner goes after charlatans exploiting vulnerable people during the pandemic. New Age Health websites, churches, wellness guru’s, and disgraced medical professionals use the internet’s power to line their own pockets.
Grant H Brenner analyzes new research showing coronavirus increases psychiatric illness and how prior psychiatric illness may increase infection rates.
People on both sides of the aisle agree that pandemic politicization is one of the fundamental problems with the US failure to control Covid-19. Robert Turner lays out the current politics of the upcoming vaccine.
Exhausted frontline workers rarely get to hear gratitude from the public. Patient Jacqueline Doody shares a beautiful message to all healthcare workers during this challenging time.
Nancy R. Gough, Ph.D. explains how genetic variations and interferon signaling explain certain severe COVID-19 cases.
Women’s health
Preeclampsia is a common pregnancy disorder causing 70,000 maternal and 500,000 fetal deaths worldwide. What if low-cost, readily available aspirin could reduce the risk? Dr. Jeff Livingston explains the research.
My partner Dr. Reshma Patel at MacArthur Medical Center adds another useful article to the Medika’s preparing for surgery library. This story helps women get ready for a labor induction when it is time to have a baby.
Retired general practitioner Thewriteyard and editor of Illumination writes a thought-provoking story about labor birth plans. Are providers and patients focused on the right things?
Fitness
Everyone is trying to lose the Quarantine 15. Psychiatrist Loren A Olson covers the benefits of intermittent fasting.
Could walking be just as effective as running for weight loss? Dr. Michael Hunter explains the science.
Alexandra Walker-Jones shares research-backed nutritional advice on preventing disease, protecting longevity, and taking care of our body from the inside out.
Jonathan Adrian helps us navigating the dieting scene with these helpful tips.
Dr. Michael Hunter discussed new research linking cardiorespiratory fitness and muscle strength with mental health.
Life
Nutritionist Tim Rees shares his experience with the hot new trend of mouth-taping to encourage nasal breathing as a transformative sleep aid.
Many healthcare workers plan to leave medicine after the pandemic. Michelle Middleton shares the things she is looking forward to in her upcoming nonclinical career.
Surgeon and clinical trial lead James Goydos, MD reminds us one of the easiest ways to spot visible signs of skin cancer is to check ourselves in the mirror.
Pediatrician OAO discussed how excessive pandemic screentime affects children’s eyesight.
Mental health
Dr. Patricia Farrell puts us on high alert for websites and individuals who are ready to assist others in suicide or self-harm and advise others.
The editorial team updated the submission guidelines to help you get your stories published. Here are our tips and tools.
Let’s grow together
Growing a publication is a community effort, and we can not do it without you. Follow the Being Well writers list on Twitter. We will follow you back. Adding your Twitter account to your Medium profile helps readers around the world find your work and read your stories.
Check out the Being Well Facebook page. Help support the page by following and sharing. We notice engagement and reads increase when authors join in the discussion. | https://medium.com/beingwell/doctors-are-writing-but-is-america-paying-attention-anymore-f08c4136402c | ['Dr Jeff Livingston'] | 2020-11-23 00:50:39.181000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Fitness', 'Heath', 'Doctors'] |
Scientifically Proven Tricks To Study Better (and faster) | As this blog is not only about administration but also about learning, this time I am going to leave you tips and methods that you can apply in your study time. No matter what you are dealing in with your studies proofreading, writing, editing, essay, assignments you name it and this guide will help you do it.
This article will be divided into tips that you will be able to apply in a general way and methods that you will be able to carry out depending on the subject of study. Let’s start.
Organize the study
Before opening any book you will have to organize yourself with the subject, which implies asking yourself: “What do I have to learn?” and “How am I going to do it?” For this I recommend that you obtain the following information:
• Academic Calendar: schedules, beginning and end of the course, date of partial and final exams.
• Information on the subjects: you must find out if the content of the subject is theoretical or rather practical, its complexity and the demands of the teachers.
I recommend that you create a calendar with the dates of exams and practical work to be delivered, which also includes personal events, such as a birthday, since they are events that will take away study time.
Place of study
You must have a space that is exclusively for studying. Your desk should be tidy and before starting, check to have everything you need at your fingertips. If it is at home, try to be away from television in a quiet environment devoid of distractions. Yes, I know it is not easy, but the idea is that you identify those factors that are harmful and minimize or eliminate them. Try proofreading an essay and your brother is sitting by and watching TV.
Some tips to achieve this: if you do not live you can only talk to your family or the people you live with so that they know and understand that at certain times you have to study. Another option is to take advantage of those quieter hours such as those in the early morning or at night. Going to the library or another similar place is another possibility.
Study sessions
When we begin to study, our attention span is high, but as the minutes go by, performance drops. That is why it is recommended to study for periods of time of 25 or 30 minutes maximum, since from that moment our attention and concentration begin to decrease. When pausing, our information retention capacity returns to an optimal level. In this way, you will implement the Pomodoro Technique, the method used to improve the management of time spent on an activity.
The technique consists of dividing the time into 25-minute intervals of activity, called Pomodoro, followed by 5 minutes of rest, with longer pauses every four Pomodoro. For instance, you are proofreading an article and its way too long to get it done in one sitting. You can divide the proofreading process in 25 minutes intervals. This is how you will be able to proofread the whole paper effectively and efficiently.
There are many mobile applications that fulfill this function, they will even allow you to silence all notifications while you study.
Study routines
You will have to prove in what schedule you pay more to study: in the morning, before going to study or going to work, in the afternoon or at night. Once this is done, try to always keep that schedule, since your body and mind will know that you have to study. Make yourself comfortable with your own schedule. Try to break it down like 1 hr for proofreading your written material, 1 hour for writing, 1 hour for reading and so on.
Another key point is to set study objectives, but not measured in hours but in the number of sheets or material to learn. If for example you say: “Today I am going to study four hours”, it is most likely that of that amount you actually study half the time, hopefully. On the other hand, if you say, “Today I am going to study six sheets”, you will have a measurable result: the number of sheets. The good thing about all this is that you can add certain rewards. For example: “If I learn these 6 sheets before 06:00 pm I can go out with my friends”; motivating you to study better and faster.
Study techniques
To memorize long-term, I will discuss some scientifically supported techniques that will help you remember concepts and facts more effectively. These techniques will help you enhance your memory as well as support you in doing tasks like writing, reading, proofreading and scheduling.
Perform self-assessments
A 2011 investigation published in the journal Science analyzed 3 commonly chosen methods to study: memorize and repeat, draw diagrams and schematics, and make evaluations.
To check effectiveness, they followed up on 200 students, who divided into 3 groups, each with a different study method. The researchers found that 3rd is the most effective, and improves learning volume by up to 50%
Conceptual maps
Using concept maps represents a great advantage since you can reduce a large number of sheets in one scheme. It is dynamic when reviewing, avoiding possible distractions that are generated by having too much text.
The steps to make a concept map are:
1. Identify the topic and the focus question that will help you develop your map.
2. Find enough information on the topic.
3. Highlight the main ideas.
4. Identify the concepts that you consider most important and necessary to explain your idea, summarizing them with keywords.
5. Begin to pose the most important concepts at the top of the sheet and the least important at the bottom.
6. You can relate concepts from different segments of the map through cross links and their respective link word.
7. When you’re done, read through the paper from beginning to end to make sure all relationships are correct and the focus question was answered.
8. Make the corrections that you consider pertinent.
According to a Harvard study, other methods such as handwriting and alternating study subjects can improve your performance. | https://medium.com/@essaysurfer/scientifically-proven-tricks-to-study-better-and-faster-e0dbe84415c7 | [] | 2020-11-23 11:10:10.985000+00:00 | ['Students', 'Study', 'Tips', 'Tips And Tricks'] |
Flipside Crypto: Ethereum 2.0 Validators Earn 0.002792 ETH Or 1.7 USD Per Day | The Average income from Ethereum 2.0 staking for a validator with 32 ETH is 0.002792 ETH per day. At the same time, for a particular day, some validators receive significantly less rewards, and some more.
To participate in ETH 2.0 staking, you need to stake 32 ETH, so the average daily income of the validator corresponds to 0.008725%. In a year, they should receive an income of about 3.2%, but it will decrease with the growth of the number of validators. In addition, according to Flipside Crypto, 30 validators were excluded from ETH 2.0 staking because of incorrect setup.
The zero phase of Ethereum 2.0 called Beacon Chain was launched on December 1. With the launch of the Beacon Chain, the possibility of staking ETH to participate in the confirmation of transactions and generate income has appeared. At the time of launch, 881,569 ETH were staked in the Deposit contract, and 21,063 validator nodes were active in the main network.
Note: All the figure mentioned in our post are from Flipside crypto. We bear no responsibility whether these figures properly display ETH staking rewards or not. | https://medium.com/the-capital/flipside-crypto-ethereum-2-0-validators-earn-0-002792-eth-or-1-7-usd-per-day-f71626b428eb | ['The Crypto Basic'] | 2021-01-02 13:46:50.716000+00:00 | ['Eth', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Ethereum Blockchain', 'Ethereum'] |
Shor’s Algorithm Deep Dive (Shor to blow your mind) | RSA Encryption
Alice and Bob have been friends forever… but Alice wants to tell Bob she loves him using a secret message (to prevent people from finding out and gossiping). Alice tells Bob she needs to give him a secret message and they decide to use the RSA algorithm. This is a type of public key cryptosystem, where anyone (like Alice) can encrypt their message but only one person (Bob) can decrypt it. Check out the visual I made below to see how Alice shares her secret to Bob 👀
Bob has successfully decrypted the message! There’s no way a public attacker, like Carl, can decrypt the message because he doesn’t know the value of the private prime numbers p and q, which he needs to find Ψn and then e. The only way he could find p and q is by prime factoring n. Luckily for Alice and Bob, no existing computers have the power to find p and q in a practical way. It would take thousands of years! By then, both Alice and Bob (and Carl) would be dead.
Shor’s Algorithm
Enter quantum computers!
Quantum computers speed up the process of factorization by turning it into a period finding problem (more on that later). Shor’s algorithm harnesses these computers’ constructive/destructive interference and ability to make simultaneous calculations to cleverly get to the correct answer.
In fact, the “big O” (aka, number of computational steps needed to find the solution) for the Shor’s algorithm is exponentially less than that of a classical algorithm.
notice how the exponent is gone for Shor’s Algorithm!
The algorithm has a classical part and a quantum part, which will be discussed below:
Classical Part
Here is a snippet of my code for a simple classical way to factorize. It can factorize the number N, which is 15.
How this works:
First it chooses a number a that is coprime with N. In other words, a and N do not share any common factors. Then, it uses modular exponentiation to store 13^z mod 15 in a list for z ranging from 0 to 14. The mod function is basically the remainder you get when dividing 13^z with 15. For example, 13² mod 15 is 4. What is interesting is that these values end up repeating no matter how large 13^z gets. In the graph above, you can see that the y-axis repeats 0, 13, 4, and 7. Now that we have a repeating function, we need to find how often it repeats. This is denoted by the value “r”, called the order or period. r is the smallest number such that 13^r mod 15= 1. Lastly, it checks if r is an even number. In this case, it assigns a variable x = 13^(r/2) (mod 15) and finds the prime numbers p and q by finding the greatest common factor between x+1 and N and x-1 and N. If r happens to be odd, we need to choose another number a that is coprime with N.
This sort of works but there’s a catch. If r is too large, it might be an issue because classical computers aren’t too great at calculating large exponents. It also gets tough to find the period of a more complicated function, which you see for larger values of N.
Here is the same graph with N= 375 instead of 15. It’s way more chaotic!
Where classical computers struggle with period finding (step 2) for such large numbers, quantum computers excel. They use calculations like the quantum Fourier Transform and Phase Estimation (insert cool sci-fi music) to accomplish this.
Quantum Part (aka quantum phase estimation)
Let’s say we were factoring the number 15 using a quantum computer.
Here’s a drawing I made of the circuit
How this works (note, the steps refer to the left):
Create two sets of four zero qubits. We are using four qubits because it can be used to represent 2⁴ (or 16) states, sufficient for N=15, which we are trying to factor. Next, we add a Hadamard gate to the qubits on the x register (top). This effectively transforms the qubits from the computational basis to the Fourier basis.
These are qubits in the computational basis (aka, the z axis). Image from Qiskit Textbook
The Hadamard gate transforms them to the Fourier basis (aka, the xy plane). Information is stored in terms of angles around the z-axis. Image from Qiskit Textbook
The x register now contains values from 0 to 15.
3. Now, we add a unitary operator, U, which uses modular exponentiation to bucket the values 0–15 from the x register into the values 1, 13, 4, and 7. Sounding familiar? That’s because this is analogous to step 2 of the classical part! The main difference is that quantum computers perform the modular exponentiation to all of the vectors 0–15 simultaneously, holding the values in a superposition. Here’s a mathematical representation of this step:
Note: the left vector represents the x register and the right is the w register (which is in superposition to x). 1/4 is a normalization constant, and the plus sign with the circle around it is a bitwise operation. Image from Qiskit
3. This step is unnecessary, but lets do it for the sake of learning! Here’s what it would look like if we measured 7 on the w-register:
Image from Qiskit
4. This is where we apply the QFT dagger (inverse quantum Fourier transform) to the qubits on the x-register. In other words, we’re taking these qubits out of the Fourier basis and back into the computational basis (recall step 2). During QFT dagger, most of the terms would cancel to zero (thanks to destructive interference) and you’d be left with 0, 4, 8, or 12 (the values where 13^r mod 15=1 would be 1!).
5. Now we measure the x-register. You’d have an equal chance of it collapsing into an answer of 0, 4, 8, or 12. With all of these different possible values, how can you find the factors of 15? Time for some classical post processing!
Classical Post-Processing
We’re at the final stretch! Now, we just need to analyze the measured value. We know these measurement outcomes are equal to some j(N/r) where j is an integer, N is 2⁴=16, and r is the period we’re looking for. After a little trial and error, we would plug r into step 3 of the first classical part.
If we measure 0, we would have to run this again since this is a trivial solution (j would need to be 0 and r could be anything, so that doesn’t help us).
If we measure 4, one pair of j and r is j=1 and r=4. You would run r=4 in step 3 and successfully find 3 and 5 as the factors.
If we measure 8, one pair could be j=1 and r=2. Plugging in r=2 into step 3 yields the factors 1 and 3 which is a partial solution. In this case, we could just divide 15 by 3 to obtain the other factor, 5. If we were to plug in r=4 (for j=2) then we would get 3 and 5.
If we measure 12, j=3 and r=4. We would get the factors 3 and 5.
And we’re done! Woohoo!! 🎉
Pitfalls
As amazing as this Shor’s algorithm is, there are some issues.
We don’t have enough qubits! The amount of qubits, n, we need is over log₂(N). In most general cases, we actually need 2n qubits. For example, a 1000 digit number we are trying to factorize will require 2000 qubits. Today’s quantum computers are not up to this level, so for now, RSA encryption is safe.
The amount of qubits, n, we need is over log₂(N). In most general cases, we actually need 2n qubits. For example, a 1000 digit number we are trying to factorize will require 2000 qubits. It may not meet the conditions! There’s a chance (less than 50%) that r is not even or a^(r/2)+1=0. In this case, we will not be able to carry out the classical post-processing and find the prime factors.
Conclusion
There are many steps and calculations involved to completely understand how the Shor’s algorithm works. Boiling it down, this algorithm uses quantum computers to turn factorization into a period finding problem and help find the period. Then it gives the period to classical computers to factorize. Luckily, Qiskit Aqua has created a module called Shor, allowing you to do this entire process with one line of code.
And now, the grand question: what does this mean for RSA encryption and the security of basically all of our online transactions? Well, to be honest, cybersecurity experts are trembling in fear of all of the Carls out there with eventually capable quantum computers. To prepare for post-quantum cryptography, experts are working on quantum-safe cryptography systems.
Beyond all of the math and equations, there are real electrons and photons using their mysterious quantum properties to carry out this incredibly impactful calculation. And that, I believe, is Shor to blow your mind. | https://medium.com/@aashvi22/shors-algorithm-deep-dive-shor-to-blow-your-mind-a4471e424d01 | ['Aashvi Manakiwala'] | 2021-03-08 04:28:23.816000+00:00 | ['Mathematics', 'Shors Algorithm', 'Cryptography', 'Quantum Computing', 'Cybersecurity'] |
Australia’s Official Representation in Latin America — Should we do More? | With Australia’s Asia centric international trade relations, where does Latin America fit into the fold? Two very different regions make for a complicated trading relationship, hence a lack of official Australian representation in the Latin American region. With basic things like language and proximity acting as a barrier to trade, Australia needs to take it’s focus away from Asia and Europe and focus on a market that’s growing at a rapid rate and that has huge potential.
Granted, Latin America has a chequered past with a historically volatile political landscape, often being overlooked by more established stable nations. But it’s an everchanging and evolving landscape that has been developing in leaps and bounds over the last century. Containing some of the fastest growing and largest economies globally like Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Peru, Latin America is developing into a hugely attractive market for foreign investors.
From a Latin American point of view, countries within the region need to search for new opportunities. Whilst a lot of them are seeking to renew relations with one of the region’s biggest trading partners, the USA, its current administration is taking a more protectionist approach to trade and foreign investment. Latin America should look to Australia for trade opportunities. According to Austrade, Australia is one of the safest places in the world to invest and do business. Despite being a country that is home to only 0.32% of the world’s population, it’s the 13th largest economy in the world with a GDP of around AUD$1.9 trillion. With high productivity levels, a highly skilled and educated workforce and political and economic stability, it would make sense for Latin American countries to develop ties with Australia.
With drastically different economic and cultural landscapes comes challenges in doing business. The complexities of trading in Latin America can be seen as a barrier for international investment. Australian investors are guaranteed to face challenges like language barriers, differences in business culture and best practices, different legal and financial requirements, a lack of knowledge about the local markets and corruption. Countries like Colombia and Mexico are still trying to sever ties with their in-country problems of drug-trafficking and violence, and Argentina is only just recovering from former protectionism policies that have hindered foreign investment.
But it’s not all bad news, trade between the regions has been steadily increasing over the past few years, regardless of the lack of official Australian representation in the Latin American region. Governments all around the region have been changing policies and frameworks to make international investment easier, encouraging international trade through bi-lateral agreements. And the Australian government is working hard to promote trade with Latin America. Between 2015 and 2016, Australia’s total trade value with Latin America was a staggering AUS$11.2 billion. While the economies continue to expand, foreign investment opportunities for Australian investors keep growing in the region.
Improved diplomatic relations are encouraging trade between the two regions; Australia is increasingly identifying the need for greater official representation in the region. The recent upgrading of the Bogotá Consulate to an embassy is Australia’s sixth overseas post in the region, showing promise for stronger ties. The Australian Government has acknowledged that the establishment of the Australian Embassy in Bogotá, is part of the single largest expansion of its diplomatic network in nearly half a century. With 14,000 Australian visitors to Colombia annually, the embassy will significantly enhance Australia’s presence in the region. Not to forget that Colombia is the fourth largest economy in Latin America that has recently stabilised politically; Colombia’s total annual trade with Australia is worth AU$500 million, with Australia’s investment into the country totalling AU$3 billion. The new stability is creating opportunities in industries where Australia is a global leader, like mining, hydrocarbons, education, agribusiness and insurance.
Colombia is a member of the Pacific Alliance, along with Chile, Peru and Mexico, Latin America’s strongest supporter of trade liberalisation, economic amalgamation and engagement with the Indo-Pacific. A new Free Trade Agreement, that was only passed last year, allows for trade between Peru and Australia.
With staggering figures like 17,000 enrolments by Colombian students into Australian educational institutions in 2016, demonstrates the strengthening connection between the regions. Many Australian universities relying on foreign student fees to deliver effective education to Australian citizens, as well as pay for their services. Australian universities are gradually turning more and more towards Latin America, attracting students from all over the region. With huge revenue streams coming from this market, due to a rapidly growing middle-class and a greater ability for Latin American students to travel, it’s a no brainer that Australian universities are wanting to attract Latin American students.
The region as a whole has seen significant improvements over the years; economic growth has decreased poverty levels, the formation of economic alliances has encouraged trade relations and a shift away from the acceptance of corruption has improved investor confidence. Luckily for Australian investors, the presence of local companies that can assist with security checks, due diligence reports, risk mitigation etc. gives greater confidence to those wanting to invest.
Latin America is not without its problems; however, it makes total economic sense for Australia to continually build trade relations with Latin America and increase their official presence in the region. Governments all around the region have seen the benefits of international trade so they’re doing everything in their power to encourage international investment by making the process as easy as possible.
The continual growth of the region opens up opportunities for Australian investors in a variety of sectors, from mining to infrastructure and agriculture. A lot of these sectors are primary industries within Australia and Latin America, giving Australia a competitive edge. Australia has so much to offer to the region in terms of knowledge and skills, and vice versa.
If Australia continues to value the importance of this region, and continues to understand how important it is to have official representation, then there is a bright future for trade between Australia and Latin America; the current mutually beneficial relationship will only strengthen over time. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/australias-official-representation-in-latin-america-should-we-do-more-2430a1cb5ffe | ['Craig Dempsey'] | 2019-02-15 13:56:07.502000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'Australia', 'International Relations', 'Foreign Policy', 'Business'] |
The US Farm Sector is Gearing Up to Cash In on Climate Action | As my friend Rhishi over at Software is Feeding the World so aptly wrote recently, “Everyone and their brother has a carbon market.”
Among the group frantically hoping to set up private markets are the venture capital darling Indigo Ag, Nutrien, the EcoSystem Market Consortium, Bayer’s Carbon Initiative, and the COMET-Planner, just to name a few. Even new advisors on Biden’s agriculture transition team want the US Department of Agriculture in on the action.
The basic idea behind carbon markets is simple; carbon-emitting companies and industries will pay farmers to sequester carbon in their soil to offset emissions, and this will create a market for carbon sequestration credits. Sounds great, right? Big companies like Amazon and Exxon can go on, business as usual, and offset their enormous impact on the environment by funneling money to farmers to suck their sins right out the air and bury them in the soil.
But the thing is, no part of this solution is as this simplified description would make it seem; not the existing context, not the science, not the potential structure of the market or the incentives. Not the outcomes, the impacts, or the players.
This idea didn’t fall from the sky recently, for one. For years, the agricultural industry has been fighting this very thing, commonly referred in to in the past as “Cap and Trade,” tooth and nail.
The New Cap and Trade?
Why the sudden about face? Because currently, there is no cap (and there seems to be no real policy effort coming to create one), so no actual forced limits on the amount of carbon being emitted, which helps farmers, because the average US farmer emits a lot of carbon. Without the cap, and with carbon markets being nebulous and privately-run, there’s a good chance farmers can be cashing in on minimal “carbon neutral” or “carbon negative” activities, like no-till or cover cropping (the latter being an activity the USDA will pay for farmers to do anyway, so they could end up getting paid twice).
You may be thinking, “Good! Farmers deserve to get paid for good conservation practices.” But they already do. In fact, the 2018 Farm Bill provided around $5 billion in direct payments and cost shares for farmers under the heading of “conservation.” What does that look like for an individual farmer? This cattle and turkey farmer in Virginia makes $17,000 a year from conservation programs alone.
[Sidebar: And the fascinating thing about Farm Bill conservation programs is that, it’s well known that they’re farm income-supporting programs first, and good for the planet second. You can tell because they’re shoehorned into the Farm Production and Conservation mission area, the same one that provides price support and crop insurance. In other words, subsidies.]
All the Money, None of the Regulation
So if farmers are already getting paid to do conservation activities, why the sudden interest in carbon markets? Because privately set-up markets, with less public oversight and transparency on their workings, offer a huge opportunity to funnel wealth from big companies to farmland owners, under the guise of “saving the planet,” while in reality changing little about farming’s real and significant impact. (You could make a good argument that farmers should be required to offset their own pollution/impact before they can start selling credits beyond the farm.)
One good indicator that the new obsession with carbon markets is more a money-making scheme than good conservation is that one of the most reported on points of contention is not whether the science works, how outcomes will be measured, or how standards will be enforced, but how much farmers will have to be paid to cajole them to take better care of our soil, water, air, and public spaces.
Plus, there’s a lot of skepticism in the scientific community about the science that’s underpinning these efforts. For one, the technologies to measure the stock of carbon in the soil at a given time (let alone consistently over time), which would be a vital part of any market, barely exist. A few publications have covered the lack of depth in the science of soil carbon sequestration, but few have been willing to admit the obvious, Farms Can’t Save the Planet. Consider in particular the difference between soil carbon, which is continuously shifting into plants and animals, and being release and re-absorbed into the atmosphere, and fossil carbon, which was previously trapped and relatively stable/isolated beneath the Earth’s surface. Soil as a storage vehicle is not similar to deep Earth wells, where much of our current atmospheric carbon came from. This is obvious, but rarely part of the discussion.
*Clutches Pearls* But we’ll starve!
I’ll pull another instructive point from Software is Feeding the World;
“The WRI [World Research Institute] scientists are not convinced that soil carbon storage is effective, and might have unintended consequences due to conversion of cropland to pasture. It can lead conversion of other lands to production to maintain food production.”
Now we’re getting to the (forgive the pun) meat of it. Because there’s something glaring being left out of the above statement “conversion of other lands to production to maintain food production” is unnecessary, especially in the United States, because US agriculture has been experiencing sector-wide over-supply of commodities grains for years (to dig into this complex statement, check out Escaping 1980, an ag history and economics podcast that will break this allll the way down). Barring a weather catastrophe year to year, this is why you’re always hearing farmers talk about prices being too low. Prices are low because there’s simply too much of the corn, soybeans, and other grains in the market, and there has been for decades.
The creation of the Renewable Fuel Standard and perpetuation of ethanol is an instructive piece of evidence. The RFS created the market for ethanol, and is a prized farm policy (and a part of every Iowa caucus) because it raised corn prices for a while, by increasing demand. Prices were up, that is, until farms across the country expanded to take advantage of those higher prices, in many cases bringing new acres into production or even converting acres from food production to commodity corn. The RFS was created to eat our surplus commodity crops, and in doing so, it encouraged farmers to till up marginal lands, push for higher yields with more fertilizer and other chemicals, and focus on the high-soil impact crop, corn, over everything.
Today, farmers have filled most, if not all, of the expanded demand from ethanol, and the thing is, I can pay a premium at my local gas station to buy gasoline *without* ethanol. It’s a product, in an artificial market created by federal policy, that consumers will pay *not* to use. If we got rid of the RFS today, the economic carnage in the US ag industry would be considerable. But the thing is, we might want to do it anyway. Doing so would free up a lot of acres for food production, wildlands, or anything else. And the thing is, over the past three years, farmers have received more than $60 billion in direct federal payments (that’s checks in the mail). Arguably, we’ve already provided a lot of support to help farmers through this kind of inevitably painful transition.
So the suggestion that inefficient soil sequestration would threaten food supplies, at least in the US, doesn’t make much sense. The US has around 90 million acres (about the size of Montana) in commodity corn production at the moment. Converting any significant amount of those to human food production, grasslands, forest, or wetlands would not only improve environmental outcomes and create additional economic benefits for the farmer/landowner, it would actually contribute to raising commodity prices for other farmers, by reducing supply.
So, yeah, don’t let anyone tell you pursuing environmental outcomes in US farming will lead to food shortages.
The best way to overcome the industry’s current inertia and achieve all the above sited good outcomes would be environmental regulation, which we know works. But the ag industry has a strong lobbying arm in Washington (that’s how you know farmers aren’t poor — how many poor groups do you know have strong lobbying outfits?) who’s insisting on voluntary programs only. So what’s the alternative?
In Soviet Russia, You Work for Farmers
The companies to whom farmers sell their crops and products could demand that they pursue better environmental outcomes. We know the power the purchase order has, and we know that using it as a tool to negotiate better practices works. This is the, “if the government won’t step up (with regulation), we’ll do it ourselves!” option. But consider this chart for a moment;
State of Sustainability Report, Trust in Food. By way of Software is Feeding the World
On first blush, it probably makes sense. If farmers are going to change their practices, they should be compensated for it. But let’s consider this in a different context. If your boss told you that you need to work smarter and more responsibly, and that if you failed to do so, you would need to find work elsewhere, would your first instinct be to say, “I’ll only do better if you pay me, otherwise, eff off?” Or would you carefully consider whether you can possibly work better (an option that was, indeed, on the survey) without making too many sacrifices, and take time to look within yourself and possibly determine if it might even be in *your* best interest to work smarter and more responsibly, and only as a last resort approach your boss to talk about a potential pay increase to accommodate the added work load?
Sure, you can say that “a farmer’s customer is not their boss.” I’d argue that’s wrong. Our culture tells us that “the customer is always right,” we are a service-oriented people, and we expect even the CEOs of multinational companies to care about their products and their customers wants and needs (because that’s generally how they stay successful, right? And more importantly, we value people who value people). All of this to say, more than 50% of farmers in this survey are, essentially, saying they’d rather lose a high value customer than consider investing in their own good practices (in many cases, to improve the quality of a privately held land asset *they own*).
This is a mindset we should be worried about in farm entrepreneurs.
Conserving Our Resources, or Yours?
Another way to think about this point. In the above sited State of Sustainability Report, “74% respondents believe farmers should receive monetary incentives to utilize certain production practices that benefit the public good.” Again, another idea that doesn’t sound too controversial. But let’s consider, for example, methods like cover crops that keep harmful nitrate in the soil and prevent soil runoff. First of all, USDA has a cover crop program already that provides funds to farmers to pay for the practice.
Second, though *not* poisoning your neighbors ground water with nitrate is, I suppose, a public good, it’s not exactly something we want to be actively rewarding people for. Rewarding people for not doing others harm is a literal protection racket (“nice water system you’ve got there, rural community, would be a shame if anything happened to it”). We don’t get paid for *not* drunk driving or *not* spitting in people’s food at restaurants. We get punished when we do. We are regulated, and we generally all agree that that’s for the best, paying people to be virtuous is not a good substitute. So no, the argument that farmers should be paid to not harm others is not a good one.
Third, keeping topsoil on the farm is actually something the farmer/landowner is doing for themselves, not for “the public good.” Farmland is a capital asset, valued by its quality and productive capacity. Maintaining its quality builds the farmer’s bottom line wealth in the long term, and does not accumulate value to the public. Paying farmers to protect their own topsoil is like paying people to mow their own lawns, paint their own houses, or (literally) maintain their own business. That’s not for our good, it’s for theirs, and if a business can’t afford its own maintenance, we should be asking the hard question of whether it should survive. | https://medium.com/@sarah-k-mock/the-us-farm-sector-is-gearing-up-to-cash-in-on-climate-action-7e0a56ee8685 | ['Sarah Mock'] | 2020-12-06 16:30:56.614000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Agriculture', 'Farming', 'Carbon Emissions', 'Future Of Food'] |
International Data Transfer — 9 months after Schrems II | Britt Fuller — Madonna and Child: Migrant Cotton Picker with her baby. Maricopa County, Arizona, 1940
My compatriot Maximilian Schrems has become famous. From Vienna, Austria, his legal activism has shaken up the world of data transfers between the US and the European Union (EU) since 2013, as Lydia de la Torre recounts in her article “Schrems and the future of EU-US data transfers (or lack thereof…)” on Golden Data from July 2020.
On July 16, 2020, the CJEU (Court of Justice of the European Union) declared the European EU-US Privacy Shield, a legal framework to comply with the EU’s data protection requirements, invalid in the so-called “Schrems II”-case. The level of data protection in the US was not considered equal to the protections guaranteed by the EU´s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A similar conclusion was drawn in September 2020 by the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) of Switzerland about the Swiss-US Privacy Shield. Thereby, Privacy Shield followed the path of its predecessor, Safe Harbor, which had been declared invalid in 2015 in the “Schrems I”-ruling. As a result, one could no longer rely on Privacy Shield as a mechanism for data transfers from Europe to the US.
Schrems II one more time withdrew the import of data from Europe to the US of an important legal basis. According to a study by the “Future of Privacy Forum” from last year, more than 5,400 companies had signed up for Privacy Shield since the program’s inception in June 2019. For those companies, it has become crucial to assess alternatives. After all, as the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) had emphasized in its FAQ a week after the judgment, transfers based on the Privacy Shield were declared unlawful by the CJEU without granting any grace period.
It has been nine months since the CJEU´s judgment on Schrems II. I would like to give a short overview of the developments since July of last year in reference to the basic mechanisms of international data transfer. I will conclude with the very recent progress on both sides of the Atlantic.
What has Schrems II changed regarding the transfer of personal data from Europe to the US?
As a general rule, the transfer of personal data for processing outside Europe can take place when certain conditions are met. The protection granted to personal data by the GDPR applies to the European data wherever it goes. The level of protection in third countries does not need to be identical, but essentially equivalent.
The GDPR allows for three general mechanisms as a guarantee that the rights of the individuals are adequately protected: adequacy decisions, appropriate safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) by the EC, Binding Corporate Rules (BCR), and derogations.
What are the consequences of Schrems II in regards to these mechanisms?
1. Adequacy decision only invalid from Europe´s perspective
Findings by the European Commission (EC) that the legal framework in a country, territory, sector or international organisation provides “adequate” protection is called an adequacy decision (Article 45 GDPR). Examples are the Privacy Shield and SafeHarbor in regard to the US — by now declared invalid– or decisions by the EC regarding Canada, Israel, Japan, or Argentina. The latest news is the conclusion of EC-adequacy talks with South Korea on March 30, 2021.
Even though the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework is no longer a valid mechanism to comply with EU data protection requirements, the decision does not relieve participants in the EU-US Privacy Shield of their obligations under Framework. The US Department of Commerce continues to administer the Privacy Shield program, including processing submissions for self-certification and re-certification to the Privacy Shield Frameworks and maintaining the Privacy Shield List. The commitment is still enforceable under US law.
If an organization wishes to withdraw from the Privacy Shield, it must contact the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, and fill out a questionnaire to verify what the organization will do with the personal information that it received under the Privacy Shield. It must be indicated if it will retain the data, while the Privacy Shield Principles continue to apply to them, retain it while providing “adequate” protection to it by other authorized means (e.g. by incorporating the standard contractual clauses instead, see below), or delete the data.
2. Appropriate safeguards such as SCC and BCR may need supplementary measures
Article 46 GDPR allows for data transfer under appropriate safeguards. These don´t require any specific authorisation from a supervisory authority. Of all the options, the most commonly used are Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) by the EC and Binding Corporate Rules (BCR).
BCR are considered the “Gold standard” for data protection compliance. They are legally binding data protection policies adhered to by an enterprise group established in the EU for transfers of personal data outside the EU. BCR have to be approved by the competent national data protection authority or authorities in the EU (depending on if the group is located in one or more member states) and are then submitted to the EDPB for final approval. Standard Contractual Clauses on the other hand are adopted by the EC and meant to ensure appropriate data protection safeguards for international data transfers. The data exporter and the data importer can include the standard contractual clauses in a wider contract.
Although in Schrems II, the CJEU has basically upheld the validity of the Standard Contractual Clauses, it has pointed out that due to their contractual nature, SCCs cannot bind the public authorities of third countries. The Court stated that it is therefore necessary to verify, on a case-by-case basis, whether the law of the destination of the data transfer ensures an essentially equivalent level of protection, and if not, supplementary measures are needed.
The same is probably true for BCR. While the EDPB stated in its recommendations of November 2020 (see below) that the precise impact of the Schrems II judgment on BCR is still under discussion, it seems clear that if the data is transferred from the EU into a country whose laws make it impossible to fulfill the privacy protection promises made in the BCR, then BCR cannot be used as a basis for the transfer of EU personal data. In these cases, the BCR will also need to be complemented through supplementary measures.
Guidelines of the European Data Protection Board
In light of the findings of the CJEU in Schrems II, and because neither GDPR nor the CJEU defines or specify the “additional safeguards”, “additional measures” or “supplementary measures” to the SCCs and other transfer tools mentioned under Article 46 GDPR, the EDPB adopted recommendations on supplementary measures on November 10, 2020.
These EDPR recommendations define a six-step assessment process for the sufficiency of protections when personal data is sent from Europe:
Map the international data transfers Identify the data transfer mechanism under Chapter V of the GDPR Assessment of legislation in the third country Identify and adopt supplementary measures Take necessary formal procedural steps (e.g. authorization from a supervisory authority) Re-evaluate and monitor at appropriate intervals
Also, the guidelines came forward with a long-awaited clarification of what safeguards (see 4.) companies could in fact implement when foreign protections fall short compared to legal standards in Europe. Supplementary measures are technical, contractual and organisational, and can be found in Annex 2 of the EDPB recommendations.
Technical measures include:
Encryption (in-transit and at-rest with cryptographic keys retained solely by the data exporter, or other entities in Europe or a third country with an adequate level of data protection).
(in-transit and at-rest with cryptographic keys retained solely by the data exporter, or other entities in Europe or a third country with an adequate level of data protection). Pseudonymization (has to happen prior to the transfer; any additional data or algorithm has to be kept separately by the data exporter within Europe or an “adequate” third country).
(has to happen prior to the transfer; any additional data or algorithm has to be kept separately by the data exporter within Europe or an “adequate” third country). Split processing (splitting the data for transfer to two or more independent data importers located in different jurisdictions prior to transmission).
Contractual measures include:
Requirement for the data importer to use specific technical measures .
. Transparency obligations (e.g., reports on access requests by public authorities, information when contractual commitments cannot be met, audit rights).
obligations (e.g., reports on access requests by public authorities, information when contractual commitments cannot be met, audit rights). Obligations to review and challenge disclosure orders of local law enforcement authorities under certain circumstances.
of local law enforcement authorities under certain circumstances. Stipulation that data may only be accessed with consent of the exporter and/or the data subject, and a commitment to assist data subjects in exercising their rights.
Organizational measures include:
Internal governance including standard operating procedures for cases of governmental access requests.
including standard operating procedures for cases of governmental access requests. Documentation of governmental access requests, legal reasoning, and actors involved.
of governmental access requests, legal reasoning, and actors involved. Regular transparency reports concerning governmental access requests.
concerning governmental access requests. Data access and confidentiality policies , strict need-to-know principle, monitoring in form of regular audits with possible disciplinary measures.
, strict need-to-know principle, monitoring in form of regular audits with possible disciplinary measures. Involvement of the data protection officer in all international data transfer matters.
in all international data transfer matters. Adoption of state-of-the-art data security and data privacy policies (e.g., ISO norms) and best practices (e.g., ENISA).
Regular review of internal policies to assess the implemented supplementary measures.
to assess the implemented supplementary measures. Commitment of the data importer not to forward data.
The Annex lists examples of different use cases. The proper and sufficient implementation of additional safeguards depends on the individual circumstances and an assessment has to be done on a case-by-case basis. For cloud services, for example, sufficient additional safeguards are:
strong encryption before transmission, the encryption algorithm and its parameterization (e.g., key length, operating mode, if applicable) conform to the state-of-the-art and can be considered robust against cryptanalysis performed by the public authorities in the recipient country, taking into account the resources and technical capabilities (e.g., computing power for brute-force attacks) available to them, the strength of the encryption takes into account the specific time period during which the confidentiality of the encrypted personal data must be preserved, the encryption algorithm is implemented by a certified software, the encryption keys are reliably managed and the encryption keys are retained solely under the control of the data exporter, or other entities entrusted with this task for which the EC has established that an adequate level of protection is ensured.
In other scenarios, the EDPB states that when unencrypted personal data is necessary for the user service, transport encryption and data-at-rest encryption even taken together will not constitute a supplementary measure that ensures an essentially equivalent level of protection. When no effective supplementary measures can be found, a transfer of personal data outside of Europe may not be conducted.
The same day the EDPB adopted the recommendations on supplementary measures, it issued its recommendations “on the European Essential Guarantees for surveillance measures”. Therein it defined four European Essential Guarantees based on the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection that apply to everyone, irrespective of their nationality:
Processing should be based on clear, precise, and accessible rules
Necessity and proportionality with regard to the legitimate objectives need to be demonstrated
An independent oversight mechanism should exist
Effective remedies need to be available to the individual
These guarantees also have to be taken into account when supplementary measures are adopted.
New Standard Contractual Clauses:
Only two days after the EDPB had published the recommendations on supplementary measures, the EC published its draft for a new version of SCC. An update of SCCs is overdue but was accelerated by Schrems II.
These new SCCs have not yet been adopted but will contain a brand new version for the transfer of personal data to third countries outside of the EU. The latest development was the publication of joint opinions by the EDPB and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) on SCC in mid-January 2021. Finalizing and publishing of the new SCCs by the EC is expected at any time. If the approved version will match the draft, it will be required to replace all existing SCCs within 12 months of the decision’s adoption.
In any case, the new SCCs will not change the need for an assessment and implementation of supplementary measures if necessary, as the drafts already reference the EDPB recommendations and respectively incorporate some of the supplementary safeguards mentioned by the EDPB.
3. Derogations may be wider applicable
The data transfer can also be covered by an exception according to Article 49 GDPR. These are:
Explicit consent to the transfer
to the transfer Transfer necessary within a contract with the affected person. Or expectation of the contract with the person, and the transfer is necessary to take steps requested by the person
with the affected person. Or expectation of the contract with the person, and the transfer is necessary to take steps requested by the person Transfer necessary within a contract between the controller and another natural or legal person in the interest of the data subject
between the controller and another natural or legal person in the interest of the data subject Transfer necessary for important reasons of public interest
Transfer necessary because of legal claims
Transfer necessary to protect the vital interests of a person when he/she is physically or legally incapable of giving consent
of a person when he/she is physically or legally incapable of giving consent Transfer is made from a register with public interest
Even though Schrems II had no implications for companies that rely on derogations, they could come into play as a possible alternative for a data transfer previously based on the Privacy Shield.
Regarding derogations, the EDPB has generally stated that they are an exemption from the general principle that personal data may only be transferred outside the EU if an adequate level of protection is provided for in the third country or if appropriate safeguards have been adduced. Therefore, relying on them can only be done occasionally and not in the case of repetitive transfers. It is rather necessary to ensure that the transfer is restricted to specific situations, meeting a strict necessity test.
On the other hand, the Future of Privacy Forum reported that relevant voices spearhead a different view. Prof. Dr. von Danwitz, the judge-rapporteur in the Schrems I and Schrems II case, explained at a conference organized by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior in January 2021, celebrating the 40th Data Protection Day, that the CJEU had decided to annul the Privacy Shield with immediate effect because the Court saw no legal void in its absence, but GDPR Article 46 safeguards and Article 49 derogations “cover the absence of an adequacy decision”. He said that derogations could particularly be explored if SCCs are not possible. In his view derogations may not necessarily be interpreted so narrowly as to restrict data transfers, especially within one corporation or group of companies when such data transfer is required and necessary.
This view is also reflected by Paragraph 202 of the CJEU’s Schrems II judgment: “in view of Article 49 of the GDPR, the annulment of an adequacy decision such as the Privacy Shield Decision is not liable to create (…) a legal vacuum. That article details the conditions under which transfers of personal data to third countries may take place in the absence of an adequacy decision under Article 45(3) of the GDPR or appropriate safeguards under Article 46 of the GDPR”.
Recent cases from Europe
National Data Protection Authorities and National Courts in the EU recently came forward with some Schrems II-findings. Here are two of the most recent and relevant:
A decision issued by the Bavarian Data Protection Authority (Bavarian DPA) on March 15, 2021, is the first German enforcement action in connection with Schrems II. It found the transfer of personal data to the US-based email marketing platform Mailchimp to be unlawful. The transfer had been undertaken on the basis of SCCs without assessing whether supplementary measures were necessary. As the publisher had stopped using Mailchimp immediately, the unlawful transfers were incidental, contained no sensitive data, and the nature and gravity of the infringement were minor, the Bavarian DPA did not impose a fine.
In contrast, just a few days earlier, on March 12, 2021, France´s highest court, the Conseil d´Etat, had accepted sufficient safeguards deployed by AWS Sarl, an EU-based subsidiary of Amazon Web Services. The plaintiffs had criticized that hosting sensitive health data by the company located in the EU, but subject to US law, poses high risks of data access requests by US authorities. The Court acknowledged that even though the contract provided that the data must be hosted on EU servers, AWS Sarl, as a subsidiary of a US company, might be subject to access requests by US authorities, and therefore examined the level of protection to personal data under the contract.
AWS Sarl had guaranteed in its contract that it will challenge any general access request from a public authority. It had further declared that the data hosted is encrypted and the key is held by a trusted third party in France, not by AWS. Also, the data is deleted automatically after three months and can be deleted manually by the data subjects themselves at any time. Due to these legal and technical safeguards in place, the Court ruled that the level of protection offered was not insufficient.
Developments in the US
In the US, efforts to fix the issues resulting from Schrems II continue. On March 15, 2021, the EU and US have announced that they will intensify negotiations on an enhanced EU-US Privacy Shield framework that would be compliant with Schrems II.
This came just a few days after the release of a report by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) of March 17, 2021, assessing the implications of Schrems II for the US and pointing out possible follow-up steps for the US Congress, including:
issuing an executive Presidential order to further limit bulk intelligence collections or provide additional redress mechanisms for individuals, or to establish an executive office or tribunal with the power to adjudicate complaints and issue binding decisions on the intelligence community;
to further limit bulk intelligence collections or provide additional redress mechanisms for individuals, or to establish an executive office or tribunal with the power to adjudicate complaints and issue binding decisions on the intelligence community; seeking diplomatic solutions between the US Department of State and the EC, which could include establishing a new framework to replace Privacy Shield;
between the US Department of State and the EC, which could include establishing a new framework to replace Privacy Shield; the possibility of US Congress adopting statutory requirements to address the CJEU’s concerns in Schrems II, such as by amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to prohibit bulk data collections by intelligence agencies; and
to address the CJEU’s concerns in Schrems II, such as by amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to prohibit bulk data collections by intelligence agencies; and considering the adoption of a comprehensive federal level data protection law applicable to commercial entities, which would address the EU’s surveillance concerns.
Outlook
With the old framework gone, new rules of data transfer between Europe and US are forthcoming. While the guidelines by the EDPB are well described they yet need to be harmonized with US interests, both in commercial and intelligence space. As new developments are announced almost weekly, the regulatory framework affecting US companies is in a constant state of flux. It is very important to follow new cases as they occur to ensure compliance and avoid hefty fines. | https://medium.com/golden-data/international-data-transfer-9-months-after-schrems-ii-ef4bf63c2ebf | ['Katharina Koerner'] | 2021-04-20 15:03:34.522000+00:00 | ['Privacy', 'Data Protection', 'Cjeu', 'Data Transfer', 'Gdpr'] |
What we learned from creating a viral map | It was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek exercise, to visualise how many jackpot and group 2 (snowballed amount if nobody wins the jackpot) winners there are in each outlet. We did not consider factors such as the frequency of winners relative to the area’s population, how long each outlet have been active, and other variables which would have skewed the frequency of the winners.
What we didn’t expect was that it became viral, thanks to a local news site called Mothership.sg which featured the map.
The responses were mostly positive, with the majority using the map to decide which “lucky outlets” they should hedge their bets.
The outlet with the highest frequency of winner is actually online (see the big purple blob on the map?) with a total of 80 winners so far.
Some adopt a more zen-like approach to the whole situation, leaving it up to the higher beings to decide on their fate.
Roughly translated as “life and death are fated, wealth depends on heaven”.
In Singapore, there is a long association of lottery buying with religion, specifically Taoism. People pray to deities like the “God of Wealth” to ask for lucky numbers, buy offerings to deities to increase their odds of winning the lottery, and may consult spirit mediums (tangki in Hokkein dialect) for advice. Locals also tend to buy lottery numbers of car plates (during accidents and purchase of a new car), house addresses, birthdays, and mobile numbers.
There were also comments who rightfully pointed out the limitations of the map:
While our purpose was to visualise this dataset from Singapore Pools without additional analysis, we understand that translating the information into a map has the consequence of making it an unquestioned fact regardless of our intentions. As this interview has pointed out, maps have the unique power of persuasion.
People tend to believe them. You put something on a map and it looks true. It feels true. There’s an idea that maps are trying to display some reality.
As a data visualisation company which focuses on using maps to tell stories, we understand how useful maps can be.
Storytelling is about navigating from point to point, keeping its readers or listeners entranced to find out “what happens next?” A map visualisation allows us to take the reader on a literal journey from one location to another, and situate our stories in the countries that were mentioned.
Maps bring in context as well. In our story on Rohingya, we have a map that shows the different ethnic groups in Myanmar, and where they are located. It allows us to contextualise the extent of this “crisis”, which more conventional reports that may unwittingly inflate with their choice of words.
We could extoll on the virtues of maps till the cows come home (in a separate post perhaps!), but this incident is a reminder to us that maps are a powerful tool that can change perceptions. And so we will use this power responsibly, to rephrase our favourite neighbourhood superhero: | https://medium.com/kontinentalist/what-we-learned-from-creating-a-viral-map-fe1a45f03088 | [] | 2019-03-21 07:24:27.691000+00:00 | ['Stories', 'Mapbox', 'Data Visualization', 'Lottery', 'Maps'] |
Visualising a nowhere differentiable everywhere continuous function | While going through Baby Rudin, I came across an interesting idea where Rudin constructs a function which is continous everywhere but differentiable nowhere. This was interesting. I tried to think of what could a function like this look like. The simplest function which is continuous but differentiable at a single point I could think of was the absolute value function, which is differentiable everywhere except x = 0. This looks has a V shape, so I thought if I could somehow compress the V to create more and more jagged edges then one could obtain a function which has more and more edges where the function is differentiable, but no matter how many edges you create, there are always a few points where the function is continuous.
So how did Rudin construct the function?
By using the concepts of series of functions, uniform convergence and continuity.
The proof is easy to understand and in the book (Theorem 7.18, Edition 2). I will show some visual aspects of the construction here, what the finally constructed function looks like, and why it is continuous everywhere and differentiable nowhere on R¹(domain of the function constructed)
I don’t know how Rudin was able to think of this (as many other things in Baby Rudin) but probably the idea was to construct a series of functions where each function reduces in height by a factor, and gets compressed by another factor.
First we took the absolute value function and restricted its domain. We also made it periodic, so that we are able to cover the complete domain R¹.
The perioidic function phi(x)
Note, that this periodicity also allowed us to bound the function, a fact that will play a key role in the convergence proved later.
Rudin goes on to show that this function is indeed continuous everywhere by invoking the Lipshitz continuity.
Then we define the function that we need by constructing a series from the function defined above. The key feature of this series is that every term in the series reduces in height by a factor of 3/4 and gets compressed by a factor of 4 as compared to the previous term in the sequence.
Here are some of the
terms of this series, with all the functions of the series being periodic with a period of 2.
These are how the terms of this series visualised. Notice how they get shorter in height and compressed.
Then by summing up all these functions in a series, the hope is to get a function which-
converges uniformly on R¹ is continuous everywhere is differentiable nowhere
This function,
is the function that we want. But the question arises about how does this look like? And why does the sum of all these scaled and compressed functions converge at every x?
Well, Rudin makes an argument that since every term of this series is positive and bounded by 1, we can use the M-Test to say that the series converges uniformly. To what value does the series converge at each x is irrelevant for the argument.
Then one can say that the limit of a continuous series of functions is also continuous if the series converges uniformly, so f(x) is continuous.
Let’s go ahead and see what this function will look like. For the purpose of visualising this I am taking a large number (500) as infinity.
Now, that’s a weird looking function. On closer inspection it makes sense, as this function is symmetric and looks like what you will get if you add a huge(infinite) amount of compressed and scaled periodic absolute functions. When I zoom into this function, I see lots and lots of zigzags. Well, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking then we’re both thinking Fractals! I wish I could have chosen a very very large value to see the infinite repetition on zooming, but I will just replay the gif here to kind of produce that effect.
Well, the idea kind of fits in if you think about it. The function is so jagged as it the series such that at every point it’s not possible to find the derivative. Rudin shows this rigorously in the book by showing that the slope of the line between two arbitrarily close points (which is the derivative) becomes arbitrarily large as the difference between the point tends to zero, thus completing the argument.
As a final animation, I will try to point the value this function outputs at each x in the domain (R¹), to show that it actually assumes one value at each point thus showing that the function does indeed converge at every x thus also being continuous at every x. The moving marker in the animation below is the value the function converges to (infinity assumed to be 500) at every x. | https://medium.com/@saksham-malhotra2196/visualising-a-nowhere-differentiable-everywhere-continuous-function-ff32778c41c3 | ['Saksham Malhotra'] | 2020-12-23 19:33:03.199000+00:00 | ['Real Analysis', 'Math', 'Mathematics', 'Visualization'] |
JavaScript’s Array Reduce Method | Reducer() Function
The reducer() function is a callback function that takes four arguments and, importantly, only returns one single value after the final iteration. It has the following syntax:
function reducer(accumulator, currentValue, currentIndex, array) { // some code here }
The reducer is executed on each array element and returns a value. This return value is then passed to the accumulator as an argument at the next iteration. On the last iteration of the reduce() function, the value of the accumulator is equal to the single value returned by the reduce() function.
Remember that in the reduce() method, the initial value is an optional argument. If it is provided, the initialValue becomes the value of the accumulator on the first iteration of the reducer function. The table below from JavaScript Tutorial’s website is a great illustration of what happens depending on whether an initialValue is passed or not: | https://medium.com/better-programming/javascripts-array-reduce-method-3bcea104a975 | ['Cindy Kei'] | 2020-11-18 17:03:17.233000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Arrays', 'Web Development', 'Software Development', 'Coding'] |
Happy Christmas 2020 | Last week our alpha sibling sent us a NatGeo article on the history behind the holiday tradition of Christmas trees.
The Rockefeller Tree had a stowaway owl this year
wonder | wander | women agree it’s a strange tradition and we adore it anyway. Every December, people in regions around the world head to the nearest forest, chop down a tree, drag it into their homes, adorn it with lights, baubles, and tinsel — then unceremoniously drag it to the curb in January.
“Evergreens at midwinter festivals were traditional since the ancient world, signifying the victory of life and light over death and darkness.” ~ Carole Cusack , professor of religious studies at the University of Sydney
vintage tree toppers
At last night’s family Zoom call to greet our 87 year old mother a happy birthday, we all had a blast showing each other our different versions from our socially distanced homes.
Little Christmas tree / No one to buy you, give yourself to me / You’re worth your weight / In precious gold, you see / My little Christmas tree
Mom all merry & bright
This year we are missing our holiday trip into New York City to enjoy the lights and celebration that has become our regular treat here in the East Coast.
Through the years the Christmas tree has stood for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Queen Victoria the trend setter, US Presidents since Coleridge in 1923, Rockefeller Center’s yearly giants felled since 1933, and many more around the world.
A Christmas story about a little fir tree by the MOME2 class
Promise you will be / Nobody else’s little Christmas tree / I’ll make you sparkle / Just you wait and see / My little Christmas tree
Happy Christmas 2020 to all and a prosperous 2021 for us all! | https://medium.com/@woawomen/happy-christmas-2020-ed127bb813de | ['Woawomen Urra'] | 2020-12-28 00:35:55.995000+00:00 | ['Treats', 'Christmas', 'Tales', 'Tree', 'Traditions'] |
The promises of secure email | A German regional court recently forced secure email provider Tutanota to monitor a particular email account. Though this order has been called an encryption backdoor, it is not that: Tutanota is asked to monitor something they can see anyway, but aren’t necessarily looking at.
Still, it is a bit awkward: one important reason to use encryption is that you don’t even have to worry about court orders, because they can’t break the unbreakable. Indeed, Tutanota promises “end-to-end encryption” on its website, only to explain in the FAQs that emails to and from email accounts that don’t use Tutanota aren’t fully end-to-end encrypted.
That’s not Tutanota to blame though: that is just how email works. Email goes back to the early 1980s, several crypto wars ago, when encryption and authentication were neither practical nor considered necessary. The email protocol is still more or less the same.
That doesn’t mean that emails are sent unencrypted over the Internet today: connections between mail servers, as well as those between mail apps and mail servers, are typically encrypted, so that even a powerful intelligence agency can’t just tap Internet cables to read everyone’s email. But the mail servers themselves still have access to the unencrypted emails.
That is not ideal. But maybe this situation is good enough for most? That’s less of a personal opinion (I’m a big supporter of strong encryption) and more of an observation.
First because email hacks, such as the infamous 2016 hack of John Podesta’s email account, tend to go after the email accounts themselves, either through phishing or through compromise of the endpoint. Even end-to-end encrypted email wouldn’t prevent that.
And secondly because after the 2013 Snowden leaks, people have worked on email replacements that were end-to-end encrypted. The most promising of these is DIME, which I once was excited about, and which I still believe could have replaced email if there was enough of an incentive to replace it. Apparently, there wasn’t.
(DIME, in case you are curious, solves the usability problem that PGP has by handling key management and lookup, while also encrypting most of the metadata that PGP leaves in the clear. It is designed to exist side by side with email during a transition period, so one would be able to use a single mail client. Moreover, it allows for multiple levels of security, depending on how much you trust your mail provider and how much you are willing to compromise usability.)
And thus it’s likely that we’re going to be stuck with email for the foreseeable future: good enough for most use cases, but not for all of them.
This makes email potentially problematic for people and groups with more complex threat models, such as journalists and human rights defenders. Many of them are using secure email providers like Tutanota or Protonmail for the extra security they offer compared to big providers like Gmail or Outlook.com. The court order served to Tutanota reminds us that there is a limit to this security: ultimately, it is still email, protected by promises (by the company and the legal system in which it operates) rather than by mathematics.
That is not to say that this is a reason to avoid secure email providers and ditch email altogether (which may not be practical anyway). The legal system in Germany, hardly the world’s most authoritarian state, may well offer ample protection for a particular individual or organization. But they would do best to be aware of the kind of security offered by these email providers. As they should, of course, be about any third-party provider. | https://medium.com/@martijngrooten/the-promises-of-secure-email-5ce78d632ed7 | ['Martijn Grooten'] | 2020-12-14 16:12:44.129000+00:00 | ['Email', 'Encryption', 'Tutanota', 'Civil Society'] |
How To Use Color In UI Design Wisely to Create A Perfect UI Interface? | Whenever found an interface that looks nice, clean and elegant, I save it. Now I have a collection of more than 100 UI interfaces. After learning, making use of or simply viewing it again and again, I finally realized something in common. It is always the color that steals my heart at the very first look. So here, I’d like to make a conclusion about how to use color in UI design wisely. A serious note first, what I wrote can’t turn you into an excellent UI designer magically, but I promise you’ll learn something here. If this is actually useful, please leave me a comment.
1. The magic power of color
Color can speak, as powerful as language. You just can’t argue me about that. Think back whenever you encounter a site or a product, it is the visual appearance, which largely depends on color, that always leaves you the very first impression.
So, what color can do actually?
1) Reflect the personality of a brand
Color can set the basic tone,mood, connotation and conception of a brand or a product. A research made by CCICOLOR says that users only take 90 seconds to estimate products online, and between 62% and 90% of the judgment of their initial view is upon the colorscheme.
2) Achieve better user experience
The right choice of color can support better readability of the information. Beside, it can increase usability sharply, such as strengthencall-to-actions, enhance navigation, stimulate intuitive interactions, satisfy aesthetic needs and visual solutions. In all, to create clear and harmonious style that meets users’ needs.
3) Influence the purchasing decision
According to Kissmetrics, the visual appearance of a product is the key factor influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions. Also, research from QuickSprout indicates that 90% of all product assessments have to do with color. Nowadays, many companies take Colors, especially color in UI design, as one of their marketing strategy.
2. Fundamental concepts about colors
Each color hasformed its unique meaning and connotation in the long run of human life. Read the meaning of each language, please check here.
3. Tricks to use color wisely
1) Choose the right color in the right usage pattern
We can’t say a color is “bad-looking”, only you use it wrong, then it may look bad. Imagine this, if Mcdonald’s uses gray and black instead of yellow and red, you still have a hungry appetite? Women wear black dress and red lipstick at party, why?
It looks sexy and charming, that’s it.
Different color conveys different meanings and senses. Use it wisely means hit the 5 “rights”: choose the right color, at the right time, in a right usage pattern, with the right users, and target the right goals.
If you want to use color in UI design wisely, please pay attention to the above chart, I am serious. Unless you would like to take a big risk to be unique.
2) Pay attention to BLUE
Why talking about blue?
Just have a look at your most commonly used Apps or sites, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Safari, etc. What’s in there? Yes, you’ll see, they are all in blue. Various kinds of blue.
According the research, blue is the NO.1 color that women and men both like. Blue is like everywhere, in nature, in sites, in clothes, etc. and as I enter the words, I see the interface of Microsoft Word is in blue.
Blue is definitely a safe color that can cultivate user’s trust and be accepted, blue is a typical example of color in UI design. If you have no better choice, just use blue.
3) Color variations between the background and the elements
Check the following interface:
Regardless of it’s blue again, let’s focus on the variations. The theme color is Blue, and the other elements are darker color variations and brighter color variations. But in all, they look good, harmonious and work with each other.
How to do it?
Just one simple golden rule:
“ Darker color variations are made by lowering brightness and increasing saturation. Brighter color variations are made by increasing brightness and lowering saturation.”
This is echoing what others have said, you can check this excellent observation at the source.
4) Golden ratio in color proportion — The Golden (6:3:1) Rule
You can’t walk away from color combinations completely when doing UI interface design. To combine color in UI design is easy, but how to avoid chaos and overload? how to get rid of plain and stay on sophistication?
Remember in mind the 2 principles:
The first is: 6:3: 1 rule
The 60% + 30% + 10% principle is the best proportion to reach balance among colors. This criterion can work perfectly by cultivating a balance, neat, harmonious interface that brings pleasure to the users. Also, it can ease users’ eye to move comfortably from one point to the next.
The second: max 3 primary colors
This rules match with the The Golden (6:3:1) Rule. It’s also a good way to avoid chaos and keep in balance in your color scheme.
5) Color combinations and Complement: clean and eye-friendly
What matters when delivering a harmonious color scheme? There are several factor need to consider:
First, Tints, Shades, and Tones
based on a “hue”, you can create many changing variations on the color wheel. There is a trick: adding white then you can get a hint, black for a shade, and grey for a tone. And here, i suggest use single color scheme.
Second, Contrast
Color contrast is also a practical method of color in UI design. Contrast can evoke various emotional response from users. Colors on opposite sides of the color wheel can generate the strongest contrast, like black and white. Strong contrast can draw users’ concentration and tension; while light contrast can bring comfort and please by displaying a relaxing and casual design.
Be careful not to pile it on, or you are causing troubles and confusions to the user.
6) Black, white and elegant
Black is the strongest of all the neutral colors, while white is the most used background color. As mentioned above, those two are the greatest level of color contrast. Adopt black with white properly, you can create a UI interface that looking elegant. This color scheme is mostly used in website. Black can give a feeling of sophistication, and white space can create a sense of freedom and imagination.
7) Get inspiration from nature and art
Nature and art are the main resources of color inspiration. Just go outside, look at the sky, you’ll see the most various and natural blue. Color in nature is the best choice to create a feeling of user-friendly and natural. To extract color from nature can ease users’ eye and bring them the magic power of beauty. While art is the direct reflection of nature, so just make the most of it.
8) Color knows about gender
It’s like born this way, women don’t like gray, orange, and brown. They like blue, purple, and green, while men don’t like orange, purple and brown. Men like blue, green, and black. It’s definitely a disaster if you doing a sporting design in purple. Just remember, whenever you are targeting to men, choose the color that convey maleness. Similarly, use female color to do the design that mainly used by ladies.
And one more, pink is not the universally-loved female color!
4. Tools and templates
Tools and anything that can be useful can make things much easier. Here i picked some of the best UI design tools for choosing color palettes. They can be a big time saver when adopt color in UI design.
Coolors.co is a professional color picker. It allows you to lock your selected color and press space to generate palette. You can also upload images and then make a color palette from it. Coolors.co also provides you a picker to modify reference point.
Mockplus is a smart tool to do UI interface design. You can import directly all kinds of sample projects and templates with nice layouts and interfaces. The coolest thing is that you can use the common functional page templates to quickly build some specific pages including homepage, sign in/up page, setting page, help/about page, search page, etc. Also, the color picker inside and various properties allows you create ideal UI elements.
Paletton is a good tool for to pick color. It’s kinda similar to Kuler but the good thing is that you are available to more than 5 tones. This tool is especially useful when you have picked your primary colors and want to generate extra tones.
It is a tool for checking foreground and background color combinations of all DOM elements and determining if they provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits.
A note: Do remember the usability is everything
To use color in UI design wisely can create a gorgeous UI interface, but creating gorgeous UI interfaces is never the final destination. To achieve the excellent user experience goal that can make users’ life happier is the key. So, in perspective of color choices and usage in UI, designer should always remember that the interface should be highly usable and clear. What can do and what can’t in user-centered should always carry weight. | https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-use-color-in-ui-design-wisely-to-create-a-perfect-ui-interface-2af42f901f4 | ['Trista Liu'] | 2017-10-19 03:01:09.031000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'Design', 'UI', 'Colors', 'User Experience'] |
5 Ways To Get Hyped About Writing In The New Year | 5 Ways To Get Hyped About Writing In The New Year Prince Shakur Mar 8·4 min read
I am a writer that likes rituals, ceremonies, and holidays that feel like closing chapters. As I prepared to leave my current artist residency in Key West, I’m thinking of how the writing journey, if it really is a love-at-first-sight kind of thing, is endless. Having finished Book #1 last year and working through Book #2 right now as I’m awaiting news from submissions for Book #1, I have to be willing to give some advice to both help readers of this newsletter and myself as I try not to check my email too.
So here are 5 ways to get excited about writing in the new year…
#1 Reread some old writing and reminisce on memories from your writing past.
While editing a video a few days ago, I found myself scrolling through Facebook for footage. I was 15 when I went to Gambier, OH to attend a two-week writer’s workshop. During those two weeks, I came out of my shell as a writer, tried new genres, made new friends, and took all sorts of weird clips on my phone. Looking at those video clips lead me to look at old poems, stories, and parts of novels.
Sometimes looking back can be an act of procrastination. It can also be a way to remind ourselves of an era of time when we gave ourselves permission to be more creative, creative in different ways, or totally indulgent in what we made.
And if you know any teenagers that love writing, tell the check out the workshop at Kenyon College.
#2 Give weight to your writing.
This means make flashcards of plot points. Print out your poem and stick it up on a corkboard. Make a mock trailer. Attach songs to moments in your project and let those songs anchor you to it when you are not writing.
#3 Set a daily writing goal
This goal can be 400 words a day or 800 words or more than 1000 words. Or three pages a day. No matter what the goal is, make it something that is both achievable and still a challenge depending on how tired you are on that writing day.
Setting. a basic daily writing goal is a really effective way to get invested in a project. Before you do this, spend a little quiet time thinking of various plot elements. Research things that those characters may like. Ruminate on the themes and motifs of the work and think of scenes that can express them.
Or think of it this way. Writing 800 words a day for 30 days equals 24,000 words.
In this past month at this residency, I’ve written roughly 30,000 words in 30 days.
#4 Find a writing or accountability buddy.
This tip can help in more ways than one. Mining the people around for the ones that are hoping to write and need someone to be in community with can be really fruitful. In college, I studied English and tended not to vibe with too many of my classmates. Every Tuesday, I’d go to a local cafe and read at a poetry night. Over my last three years of college, this weekly tradition spread into drinking sessions at the bar after poetry night, DIY writing workshops on the weekends and eventually joining a slam poetry group.
All of this is to say that we can find literary community and inspiration in some of the most unexpected ways. Find someone willing to be in creative community with you and foster a relationship that is creatively mutually beneficial. This can look like weekly writing sessions, reading similar texts, doing Facetime calls to talk about plot details, or even collaborating on something.
#5 Start writing RIGHT NOW!
This may be a controversial tip, but maybe the most important one. Often times we get so caught up in our heads that our own thoughts stop us from literally doing the act of sitting down and writing.
So find a quiet spot, put your phone on airplane mode, set your laptop to “Do Not Disturb”, and tell yourself, “I’m gonna write for the next two hours and not censor myself. Here we go.”
Once you can start normalizing this ritual and mindset, your writing life may very well begin to change.
What’s been helping me stay creative… | https://medium.com/@princeshakur/5-ways-to-get-hyped-about-writing-in-the-new-year-d26797e559fb | ['Prince Shakur'] | 2021-03-08 14:58:55.562000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Writers On Writing', 'Writers Life'] |
The Year School Stopped and Learning Continued | Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
While some students thrive in classrooms, other children found out that their educational needs were met using different methods during the pandemic
Spring Break 2020
Setting: Texas — Way back in the good ole days of education as we knew it. Spring break was ending. My little town was clueless about Covid. Then our local school system postponed returning to school until the following year. It was a type of forced mass exodus — students returning home to learn via the world wide web. Then some students and parents realized they LIKED the freedom of school at home. People are rethinking their priorities pre and post-pandemic. This includes which educational choice best fits their individual children and family.
COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the nation. Yet parents, students, and teachers remain flexible. They are (mostly) willing to try anything to keep cobwebs out of their students’ minds during the quarantine.
As a homeschooling mama, I do not pay a whole lot of attention to our local schedule district schedule. So education We school from home and have since my oldest was 4. She is now attending her dream college this fall- graduating a year early. (she has plenty of social skills)
What I did notice was the volume of emails, texts, and calls I was receiving in March. Everyone was asking the same thing, “how does this homeschooling thing work?” It was a hard question to answer. Our schooling looks different than a traditional classroom. | https://medium.com/@laurashepherd1979/the-year-school-stopped-and-learning-continued-8daff4887392 | ['Laura Shepherd Copy'] | 2020-12-16 20:14:43.854000+00:00 | ['Covid 19 Crisis', 'Parenting', 'Covid Diaries', 'Homeschooling', 'Education Reform'] |
Let Go | Ya Allah
Give me the strength to let go
Let go of the past
And its mistakes
The future
And its what-ifs
Let go
Of the things I have no control over
Of the things I can’t change
Let go
Of the pain
The regrets
The maybe I should have
Let go
And live in the moment
Let go
And allow you to take over
Let go
And have faith
Let go
And embrace it all
Let go
And learn
Let go
And move on. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/let-go-de7be3633995 | [] | 2020-06-10 21:44:37.766000+00:00 | ['Growing', 'Moving On', 'Reflections', 'Poetry', 'A Cornered Gurl'] |
Take Amouranth’s advice and get NordVPN to increase your security online | Kaitlyn, or better known as Amouranth, is a famous Twitch streamer, cosplayer, and YouTuber. On her Twitch, she has over 1.5 million followers, while on her YouTube channel, she has gathered almost 300k subscribers. Her content on those two platforms is quite different. On her Twitch account, she streams almost her daily stuff like workouts, random dancing, chilling in the pool, cooking, or just relaxing and chatting with the viewers. While on her YouTube channel Amouranth lately does only bikinis, costumes, dress, and other hauls. Even though her content has nothing to do with the cybersecurity topic, occasionally, in her streams, she talks about how important it is to be secure online and suggests getting a NordVPN.
Get the best possible deal!
Take Amouranth’s recommendation and increase your online security. Use her exclusive deal and get NordVPN with a 70% discount, secure yourself online for only $3.49/month with a 3-year plan.
Follow this link to apply the discount code automatically
If you want to secure all your devices, click here and download the software for iOS, or download it from Google store by clicking here.
Why should NordVPN be your choice?
This premium quality VPN is a perfect option when looking for securing yourself online and other extra perks. NordVPN has a strict no-logs policy that was confirmed by an independent audit, so you can be sure that it will log neither your usage nor connection logs. Moreover, it will help you to torrent securely with features like P2P servers and a kill-switch. Also, this premium VPN can overcome Netflix proxy blocks and unlock geo-restricted content for other well-known streaming service providers such as BBC, Hulu, and many more.
What is a Virtual Private Network?
VPN is a popular security software that allows users’ to use the internet securely and anonymously. It encrypts users’ internet traffic and can be compared to a secret encrypted tunnel that protects users’ information, which comes from devices to the internet. Even though it’s a security tool, it is also used for such purposes as streaming, torrenting, gaming, traveling, or using a wireless network in public places. | https://medium.com/@yuri.palmonson/take-amouranths-advice-and-get-nordvpn-9f7f67ad8aa9 | ['Yuri Palmonson'] | 2020-05-25 12:22:58.251000+00:00 | ['VPN', 'Discount'] |
2 Reasons Why Self-Driving Cars will be the Ultimate Game-changer for Disabled People | Technology
2 Reasons Why Self-Driving Cars will be the Ultimate Game-changer for Disabled People
Photo by Steven HWG on Unsplash
According to the forecasts from futurists, in the close future, all of our transport and most of our routine tasks will be operated by AI. This means that there will be more and more interesting and promising applications of AI that will support the global Tech for Good goal. One of the worldwide societal issues that will be solved by AI is a significant lack of mobility accessibility for people with disabilities.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 61 million Americans with one or another form of disability. This number means — approximately 25% of the nation.
“Accessible autonomous transportation could facilitate opportunities for people with disabilities to find or maintain employment, obtain better access to healthcare, and integrate more fully into the community,”
has stated the co-director of the Pitt’s University Transportation Center for Accessible Autonomous Vehicles and Transportation — Dr Brad Dicianno.
The trend of fully autonomous cars and the future that they will bring is promising and exciting. Self-driving cars/ Autonomous cars/ Driver-less vehicles/ Robo-cars/ Robotic cars — is a vehicle that moves safely without any or with little human input.
The image is courtesy of Autoblog via Giphy.com
Self-driving cars can sort out many issues, but in this article, I’d like to cover what exactly this innovation would mean for people with disabilities.
No Need for a Driving License
There are many reasons why not everyone can or even want to have a driving license. It can be the cost of the license or the car, a certain disability or simply, fear. No matter the reason, not everyone has a driving license, which has caused a significant gap in mobility accessibility.
Of course, there are public transportation services and transportation on the demand (taxis). While for some people this might be a working option, for others it might be not. Some taxi companies in the USA, Canada and the UK have faced this issue and introduced a special wheelchair-accessible taxi service. Even though, this is a great idea that helps thousands of people, the percentage of these cars and the availability of this service are extremely low.
The issue of the limited mobility for some people will be resolved when fully autonomous cars will pass all of the required tests and enter the mass production stage. With the reduced need for the driver, mobility will massively increase for people with disabilities.
The image is courtesy of Netflix Tech via Giphy.com
More accessible
As it was mentioned above, today, some big cities in the USA, Canada and the UK have introduced a taxi service that is designed specifically for people on a wheelchair. These services accept only drivers with the best rating and wheelchair-accessible vehicles. These particular cars must not only have a place for a wheelchair but also they must be specifically equipped with all of the safety measures to ensure the safe transportation of a passenger. Everything looks good here.
These wheelchair accessible taxi services are real game-changers in the taxi industry that make thousands of lives much easier. It is cheap, safe and it’s a perfect solution to the problem of the target customer. However, these programs are available only in limited cities and only in a couple of countries. This certainly shows that there are demand and an absolute need for more services like that.
Apart from the wheelchair-friendly taxi services, there are, of course, other services like private shuttles or public transportation that are equipped with a slide for wheelchair or trolley. However, according to Dr Dicianno, none of these options fully answers the problem of mobility for disabled people due to the cost, accessibility, reliability and availability.
Photo by Kelvin Ang on Unsplash
When the fully-autonomous cars will enter its mass-production stage, the cost would not be much different from the regular cars today. This will make future transport not only available and accessible to everyone but also cheaper than other options.
How would a wheelchair — accessible self-driving car look like?
This Hungarian startup has designed a wheelchair-accessible car, that looks like this:
This car has no seats and it’s designed a bit differently from regular cars. In the picture, it is clear how a wheelchair user can get inside. A driver can operate the car by putting his/ her hands on motorcycle-style handlebars.
With electric power and self-drive, it’s very easy to make a car with a flat floor and hollow shell. It’s also easy to put spaces in vans and group transport for chairs to roll into. — Brad Templeton, Forbes (2020)
While this car is not a self-driving one, the design for the wheelchair-accessible fully autonomous car might be similar.
Fully autonomous and semi-autonomous cars are not just another consumer trend, but rather an important innovation that has the potential to improve many aspects of the modern cities and make mobility more accessible. | https://medium.com/illumination/self-driving-cars-for-disabled-people-the-ultimate-game-changer-c24c8c1334b4 | ['Elena Beliaeva-Baran'] | 2020-12-14 22:54:56.547000+00:00 | ['Autonomous Cars', 'AI', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Internet of Things', 'Self Driving Cars'] |
Guinness Ad Tells People To Put Phones Down And Enjoy Their Drink | Guinness Ad Tells People To Put Phones Down And Enjoy Their Drink
Guinness Advertisement Analysis
The Guinness ad aims to convince drinkers to go out and enjoy face to face interactions while drinking at the bar instead of staring at your phone’s. The image of the advert shows a pile of smartphones stacked like bricks on top of a bar counter. Besides, the advertisement mentions additional benefits in the form of a discount and a free diagnosis. Therefore, the Guinness advertisement cleverly discourages people from using their phones in a bar or restaurant.
Guinness Ad by Guinness
Strategy
The item used in the Guinness advertisement is a vital aspect of the ability to persuade the Guinness drinkers. Thus, the ad uses the image of different sizes and shapes of phones that recreate the silhouette of the Guinness glass. These phones have been stacked on top of one another, with the black bodies of the phones perfectly mimicking the dark coloring of Guinness and two silvery phones to form the head on top.
The ad is quite brilliant, since it makes its focus entirely on smartphones and beer, and illustrates its point by showing a pile of phones that have been set aside. In social settings, it’s so easy for a phone to become a crutch, but Guinness is taking a stand against people texting while you could be chatting up someone face-to-face.
Targeted audience
The Guinness ad is structured to capture the attention of the target group. The advertisement targets mainly drinkers since they go to a restaurant or bar with their relatives or friends. Guinness ad is telling brand loyalists to put the phone down and enjoy good friends and good times. Besides, the phrase ‘a small creature for your smartphone stack like a glass silhouette’ indicates that this advertisement specifically targets Guinness drinkers. This may be due to its shape and appropriate image for drinkers who go to bars and stare at their phone screen rather than enjoying their drink and a good time with their friends.
Conclusion
Whether you go to a restaurant or bar, you probably notice lots of people are eating or drinking with their smartphones out on the table in plain view. Also, checking cell phones in public has become like yawning, this means, if one person in your group uses his/her cell phones, you may feel more comfortable doing it yourself. So, Guinness is campaigning against the usage of smartphones in a bar. Summarily, the figurative presentation of Guinness ad is telling people to put their smartphones down and enjoy drinking reasonably. The choice of creative images and pictures may get attention because it’s not the same angle as other brands that are pushing tech interactions. It is using the color of cellphones to make a glass of iconic Guinness. Plus, it focuses on the consumer, and not solely the brand. They’re convincing people to disconnect and have a good time with their friends when drinking in a bar or a restaurant as well as purchasing Guinness as their choice of beer. | https://medium.com/on-advertising/guinness-ad-tells-people-to-put-phones-down-and-enjoy-their-drink-534448036300 | ['Sarkis Ardjian'] | 2020-07-30 21:37:14.761000+00:00 | ['Creative Advertising', 'Advertising Campaign', 'Advertising', 'Advertising Agency', 'Marketing'] |
CIID Week 3: Intro to Interaction Design | Do. Feel. Know.
This article covers the design brief for this particular project and how our group approached it
“A designer’s job isn’t knowing the solution to a problem, their job is to know how to look for a solution.” — Jose Torre.
Week 3 started with a brief introduction to Interaction Design. The class was taught by Matt Nish-Lapidus and Erik Dahl. We were given a history of interaction design, and various frameworks and ways of thinking that would help guide us to design better interactions.
Groups of three were formed on the first day of the week itself, after we were given the brief.
The brief
The design brief was as follows: Design an interactive device or object related to your experience of moving to Copenhagen and adjusting to life at CIID. We were supposed to focus one interaction and build a physical product around it in four days.
The outcome
We created a product called Easy Squeezy, a handy device that soaks up information for you while sitting in a lecture. You can turn it on by hitting the button on top, and it lights up to indicate it is recording. It initially looks squeezed.
While it is recording, it soaks up information and grows in size, just like a sponge. The user can then squeeze the device to send the recordings in the form of a voice note and text to their cloud. It is similar in working to a sponge, which absorbs water, and can be squeezed to discharge the water.
Easy Squeezy in its initial state(left) and filled-up state(right), after it has soaked up information
The process
Ideation
Our group came up with problems we had faced, related to the brief. We did this individually at first, and then presented our ideas to the rest of the group. These activities were timeboxed to keep the process streamlined.
Affinity Mapping
The problems were open sorted into themes. This was repeated many times until we were satisfied with the clustering and the group theme. From these themes, we then picked the idea we liked the most using confidence voting. Read more about affinity mapping here.
Clustering problems into relatable themes
Defining the problem:
From the chosen problem theme, we tried to get to the root of the problem. We had to keep going deeper into the problem and ask ourselves “Why?” at each step. We then formulated a “How Might We?” statement. Finding the right balance for a How Might We statement proved to be tricky. It can be too specific sometimes, and too broad other times. Our statement finally was “How might we help CIID students deal with information overload so that they stay in control of their studies.”
Creating the interaction
Once we had defined what our problem was, we ideated on an interaction that could solve this problem.
In order to create different interactions, we used this framework by Bill Verplank:
Interaction Design Framework by Bill Verplank
You can read more about this framework here.
We each individually brainstormed on different interactions, and then came together as a group to brainstorm on the interactions with the most potential.
We finally settled upon a metaphor of a sponge. The affordances of soaking up and squeezing to release seemed to fit in well with information. We were excited by the idea of a device that soaks up information, and you could squeeze to dispel it.
Feedback loop of the interaction
We refined the interaction and got down to the details by testing it with the Do — Feel — Know loop. We could test the feedback loop this way, and test what the user would do, what feedback the user would receive, and what the user would learn from the feedback, and what action they would perform next, and so on.
The Do — Feel — Know loop for interactions
You can read up more on this framework here.
Creating a product around the interaction
Once we had discussed the interaction in more detail, we started thinking of the form of the product that would support the interaction. We started ideating on different physical forms the product could take.
Ideating on the form factor
We finally settled on a cylindrical form, which the user could squeeze with ease, since it’s ergonomic.
Prototyping the product
We started building the prototype on Thursday, based on the form and interaction we had decided upon. We laser cut the cylindrical form which you could squeeze with some resistance. For this, we used a tiny air pump inside the prototype, and filled the rest with cotton. There was a large circular button on top, which you could press with some nice feedback. We tested the prototype with other classmates. Based on the feedback, we kept on iterating on it. We built, tested, and repeated quickly. We then quickly finished and presented to the rest of the class on Friday.
Prototypin’
Learnings | https://medium.com/@ahujasid/ciid-week-3-intro-to-interaction-design-5b6c715df5f4 | ['Siddharth Ahuja'] | 2019-04-01 07:23:41.411000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'Design Process', 'Design Education', 'Design', 'Interaction Design'] |
Sensibo Air review: Make your air conditioner smarter and more efficient | The new Sensibo Air smart air-conditioner controller is a major advance over Sensibo’s earlier and very good Sensibo Sky product. The improvement is achieved in large measure by including a secondary sensor (called the Room Sensor) that augments the temperature and humidity sensors in the main unit.
The Room Sensor, however, can also detect motion (more on that later). In addition to targeting the specific space you’re occupying in the room, the combination of the Sensibo Air and the Sensibo Room Sensor will save energy by turning your self-contained air conditioner off when you’re not in the room.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best smart thermostats, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping.What using the Sensibo Air is likeAfter using the new product for several weeks, I can see that Sensibo has learned a great deal following the release of the Sensibo Sky. Refinements are apparent in both the app and in the hardware. The Sensibo Air is also compatible with a wider variety of window-mounted, portable, and ductless/mini-split air conditioners than the earlier product.
Mentioned in this article Cielo Breez Plus Read TechHive's reviewproduct-id="1444506" data-bkc="HomeTech" data-bkmfr="CieloWiGleInc" data-vars-bkmfr="CieloWiGleInc" data-bkvndr="" data-vars-bkvndr="" data-amazon-ajax-link="true" data-amazon-ajax-link-loaded="false" data-amazon-ajax-link-asin="B07MPG1Y23" data-amazon-ajax-link-subtag="US-003-3573071-005-1444506-web-20">See it If your unit has a remote control, the Sensibo Air should be able to control it (the earlier Sensibo Sky required the air-conditioner’s existing remote to have a display). To be sure the Air will work with your unit, you can type in its make and model on Sensibo’s website.
The Sensibo Air is smaller than the Sensibo Sky, and like that unit, it can be mounted on the wall or set on a shelf within sight of your air conditioner. It depends on a USB power adapter, however, so the primary unit must be located within reach of an outlet. The Sensibo Room Sensor is slightly smaller and can likewise be wall mounted or set on any horizontal surface, but it runs on a pair of AAA batteries and communicates with the Air via Bluetooth LE. While the Air has an attractive industrial design, the Room Sensor looks a bit cheap—Sensibo would do well to take a page out of Ecobee’s design book on that score.
Jason D’Aprile / IDG This Room Sensor is easily the Sensibo Air’s best feature.
The Sensibo Air is efficientHumidity levels play a big role in personal comfort, and the ability of both sensors to measure humidity allows you to control the level of moisture in your interior climate, not just its ambient temperature. Only the Room Sensor has a motion detector, though.
Jason D’Aprile / IDG The Sensibo Air app can control just about every aspect of your stand-alone air conditioner.
Setting the system up was a relatively quick process. The system connects to your Wi-Fi network and it has a single-band (2.4GHz) Wi-Fi adapter, which can be a problem if that spectrum is super crowded in your environment.
The trouble I had, however, was getting the Air to pair with my air-conditioner’s remote. I had to go through that part of the setup several times before the two would sync. You’ll need to download Sensibo’s app, create an account, and then link the Air and the secondary sensor to the app. The next step is the one I had trouble with: getting the Air to pair with my air-conditioner’s remote.
Once everything is installed, you can set up an impressive array of operational scenarios, from establishing a detailed schedule that keeps the room at specific temperatures at various times of the day and night, to simply having the AC kick on when you enter the room.
Geofencing is also supported, so that you can set your air conditioner to turn off when you leave home (with your cellphone) and turn on when you return. Sensibo also supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, so you can monitor and control things with voice commands. The Sensibo Air itself does not have a user interface or any physical controls.
The Sensibo Air is a good investmentThe Sensibo Air certainly isn’t the least expensive air conditioner controller on the market. Its $199 asking price is a full $50 higher than the Sensibo Sky; it also costs more than the Cielo Breez Plus that I reviewed in July. All that said, the Sensibo Air justifies is price tag with its build quality, feature set, and that very slick Room Sensor.
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/@Jack76354173/sensibo-air-review-make-your-air-conditioner-smarter-and-more-efficient-6e234080e3b | [] | 2020-09-18 11:38:52.100000+00:00 | ['Services', 'Connected Home', 'Mobile', 'Chromecast'] |
Wait: An Advent Reflection | Near the heart of the Christmas / Advent Story is the expectation that God is going to offer a gift. The head-fake in this Bible story story is that, when those waiting come up on and/or are given that gift, it’s just a baby. And I know folks have surrounded Jesus’ birth with all kinds of magic imagery, sparkles and theme music since then. But for people who had been waiting for some kind of momentous, earth-shattering socio-cultural and political sign of change, that had to be at least somewhat confusing and disappointing. If this was the gift, it meant having to wait. again.
In fact, according to the timeline in those same scriptures, the next time there is anything of significance to be made of the life of Jesus, it’s 30 years later.
And then, after 3 years of work with a small community, Jesus is arrested and those following him have to wait. again.
And then he is murdered by the State (at the behest of religious power) and those following him have to wait. again.
Here’s the thing; I don’t think that process ever ends. I don’t think the waiting ever ends. And I’ve begun to think that’s the case because the primary fruit of waiting is my formation and becoming; not getting what I’m wanting.
In fact, I think that waiting, as a practice in and of itself, changes me so that i want differently (and better). Sometimes, even if the thing I’ve waited for is exactly what I expected it to be, by the time I come upon it or possess it, I’ve changed.
Over time, my hopes and desires have changed. I try not to expect particular results or gifts or moments. Instead, I hope that my will is refined and changed. That, through my waiting, I can want differently and want more and want better.
I want differently.
I want more.
I want better.
And I think that might be the point.
The spiritual process/journey isn’t about grasping God or attaining personal greatness or holiness the way I’d grasp/attain an item at a Walmart; it’s about becoming. The tension and disappointment and patience necessary for waiting shapes me into someone who wants differently, wants more and wants better; so that, in the pursuit of better things, I grow. again | https://medium.com/@justinmcrobertswrites/wait-an-advent-reflection-1a3a188c55f3 | ['Justin Mcroberts'] | 2020-12-21 12:55:28.126000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Advent', 'Spiritual Growth', 'Waiting', 'Patience'] |
Is Bulwark Unique? | What we provide.
In short, Bulwark provides a whole ecosystem, based around our core values. Everyone from the Bulwark team would be able to provide their own distinct description, however, I believe that 2 core points we all agree on are:
Everyone should have equal access to having a private life.
Everyone should be treated fairly, regardless of wealth, background, or knowledge.
So how exactly do we apply these core values to what we create.
The Coin.
From the very beginning, Bulwark was created to have a fair distribution of coins. Using a slow start mechanism to ensure that no early miners would get a huge share of the initial coins, a fair algo to minimize the effect of ASIC/FPGA/Nicehash miners, and a small premine, sufficient to fund the coin for the 1st year while we build a community.
We see the fruits of this effort in any analysis of our coin supply, in May 2018 Omni Analytics showed that we have one of the fairest coin distributions in the privacy masternode space.
This is a particularly important figure for a Proof of Stake coin, as it means that everyone has the potential to mint coins, without the need for risky staking pools, or to make a huge investment to see returns within your lifetime (as is the case with PoW and PoS when there is an unfair distribution).
Another part of being a fair coin, is ease of use. The most advanced crypto user should not have an advantage over even the newest beginner, for this reason, we’ve made staking from your QT wallet as simple as a button press, we’ve made simple scripts to allow for staking and running masternodes as easy as copy+pasting, this also leads us to our hardware, the 1st piece of which was created to make running a masternode or staking 24/7 as simple and secure as possible.
Our Hardware.
The values we set out for the coin and our ecosystem is supported by our hardware offerings. I’ll start off with the home node, and then go in to more speculative territory with our planned offerings.
The Bulwark Secure Home Node allows anybody to support the network, we expect you would be able to pass the SHN to anybody who has used a computer before, and they would be able to use our user-friendly scripts and tutorials to run a masternode or stake their Bulwark, while supporting the network we all share with a always-online archival node. This supports our 1st value, by allowing anybody, regardless of IT ability, to host a masternode via the TOR network, ensuring their true identity remains hidden.
Additionally, this supports our second value. Many VPS hosting services may restrict who they service. With Bulwark, there is no such restriction as the purchasing process remains as anonymous as possible, by accepting crypto payments through our secure payments portal. This ensures there is no discrimination when it comes to who can run a Bulwark masternode or staking server.
As for our future developments:
The Bulwark hardware wallet, is a development with the goal of allowing anybody to access a hardware wallet for any coin. A gap we noticed in the market is that existing hardware wallet solutions had expensive listing fees for their stores or even their development packages to join the platform, so unless your coin had a large premine or was well established, there was no way to join these platforms.
The Bulwark hardware wallet will be truly open source, meaning any coin can adapt it for their platform, expanding the reach of hardware wallet solutions, allowing anyone, regardless of choice of coin, to have access to the privacy and security benefits of using a hardware wallet.
Finally, I’d like to touch on the home router. The goal of the Bulwark home router is to give anybody access to garlic encryption and routing by working with the Kovri project and bringing a hardware solution to the table. In short, the goal is to create what is in essence a VPN solution, over I2P, but with a decentralized network of endpoints formed by masternodes, meaning with each masternode that comes online, your data becomes safer and safer. We’ll have a full blog post about Kovri coming soon, with a further post about the router and how it implements Kovri closer to launch. | https://medium.com/bulwark-cryptocurrency/is-bulwark-unique-cfea3b672f27 | ['Kane Vanner'] | 2018-10-08 17:06:27.925000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Privacy', 'Hardware'] |
DAY 7: ART+TECH Festival 2020『 JOYNT 』 | DAY 7: ART+TECH Festival 2020『 JOYNT 』
Connect, Create and Celebrate with us,『 JOYNT 』 the ART+TECH Festival.
11:30am (PST) — Workshop — Mashup 3D Models with Blender
03:00pm (PST) — Workshop — 3D Graphics and Animation with Shader Park
06:00pm (PST) — Live Event — Botanic Quartet
For existing『 Live Events 』+ 『All Pass 』Ticket Holders:
Check your email with the password protected access list of events.
For any question or support, connect with us and the community on Discord.
MASHUP 3D MODELS IN BLENDER
Or get the ALL ACCESS pass to CODAME ART+TECH Festival 2020 #JOYNT for 10 days of Workshops, Live Events, and Anytime Experiences!
3D GRAPHICS AND ANIMATION WITH SHADER PARK
Thursday, December 17th @ 3:00PM PST (timezone converter)
Part of the 10th annual CODAME ART+TECH Festival
Explore 3D shader programming through a Javascript interface without the complexity of GLSL. Shader Park is an open source project for creating real-time graphics and procedural animations. Follow along through multiple examples using a P5.js style live code editor. Expand upon the examples to create your own interactive 3D graphics. Explore the Shader Park community gallery where you can fork other people’s creations or feature your own!
Or get the ALL ACCESS pass to CODAME ART+TECH Festival 2020 #JOYNT for 10 days of Workshops, Live Events, and Anytime Experiences!
BOTANIC QUARTET
Thursday, Dec 17, 2020, 6:00pm PST (check your timezone)
Botanic Quartet is a live performance of plants playing in a synchronized quartet with one another, and Scott Kildall improvising with a new DIY “SnipSynth” that he has developed on an ESP32 chip.
For “Botanic Quartet,” each plant is hooked up to a sensor — in most cases these are electrodes that read their rapidly-changing electrochemical activity. The data from this sensor gets processed by an embedded chip — an ESP32 that plays the synthesized effects.
For his performance, Scott is using records of San Francisco during SIP and will make the performance waiver on notes of frenzy as we bring 2020 to a close.
Part of the 10th annual CODAME ART+TECH Festival (included in the Festival Pass and All Access Pass )
JOYNT = Connect + Create + Celebrate
Let’s JOYNT forces to nurture Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion within the art and tech community!
Artists are innovators and producers of creative and extraordinary ideas and visions. Experiencing art and artistic processes is an important opportunity for learning and exploration. Even more so, collaborative art is a transformational force to strengthen the community and enhance well-being. CODAME invites you to become an active participant at our Festival where you can connect, create, and celebrate with our Artists.
💟 👾 💜 👾 💟
CODAME is a member of Intersection for the Arts a non profit 501(c)(3) organization. All proceeds will be split with the participating artists.
Thank you for your support for ART 💜 TECH !!! Code of Conduct for all attendees. | https://medium.com/codame-art-tech/day-7-art-tech-festival-2020-joynt-d157b6550756 | [] | 2020-12-17 04:45:32.820000+00:00 | ['Fun', 'Artist', 'Learn', '2020', 'Networking'] |
Kids Birthday photographers in Bangalore and Toddler photoshoot | Every moment in life is precious and our generation is fortunate enough to have ways of capturing these moments and storing them forever to come. To make these moments memorable, who else can help you better than a professional and creative photographer?
If you are looking for a professional Birthday photographer in Bangalore, who can conduct an adorable Baby Photoshoot in Bangalore, then Little Dimples by Tisha is the perfect place for you. The platform is perfect if you are interested in toddler photo shoots.
What can you expect from Little Dimples apart from hiring Kids Photographers In Bangalore?
The photographers specialize in multiple skills and occasions such as shooting for family portraits, maternity photoshoot, photographing toddlers and newborns, along with cake smash and sitters sessions photography.
If you are 32 to 34 weeks pregnant or more than that, it is time for you to capture every stage of your maternity. These are the moments you are going to cherish forever. If it is your first, then you must hire a reliable photographer in Bangalore. Little Dimples is good at capturing these precious moments and storing them forever for you.
If you are a toddler, then you must be experiencing new thrills each day. The baby is growing each day and trying to understand the world around them. Toddler photoshoots are done to capture the emotions of the child and parents as they grow together making memories of a lifetime.
Little Dimples also has expert photographers who have experience in photographing adorable family portraits which you can frame and hang in your bedroom or living room to add a personal touch to your home. These photographs are the stories you will tell to your children and grandchildren when they would want to know how their ancestors lived life and lived happily.
For More Information,
https://littledimplesbytisha.com/
https://littledimplesbytisha.com/newborn-baby-photoshoot-in-bangalore/ | https://medium.com/@littledimplesbytisha/kids-birthday-photographers-in-bangalore-and-toddler-photoshoot-9cae69e27d3d | [] | 2021-01-21 18:20:44.180000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Birthday Photography', 'Newborn Baby Photography', 'Newborn Photographer', 'Baby Photoshoot'] |
Can you settle credit card debt for less than owed? Even if not behind on payments? | Can you settle credit card debt for less than owed? Even if not behind on payments? Lier19725490 Apr 12, 2019·25 min read
Can you settle credit card debt for less than owed? Even if not behind on payments?
OK, few questions. If someone has say, 25k in debt — credit cards, the like is it really possible to call the companies and negotiate a settlement for less than owed? And #2, how does this reflect on the credit report? My brother in law is telling me that he is inheriting about 30 thousand bucks soon, and will be calling his creditors (credit card debt only) and negotiating with them, telling them that he has to file for bankruptcy and offer them less than owed. He SAYS he can negotiate and get them to about .30 cent on the dollar. Is this correct? And how does it appear on the credit report? I dont believe him. He says that he wants to keep as much cash as possible to open a business in a year or so. I say he will regret it because of the marks on his report. Who is right?
Answer : I recommend one to visit this internet site where one can get from the best companies: http://personalcreditsolutions.info/index.html?src=MEDFEBcahThu2ugho .
Related :
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80 difference from one credit reporting website from the other?
I have had mycreditinform.com through my credit card that reports through Experian, then wanted all 3 scores so signed up for truecredit.com. Both report using Experian, but its 80 points different. I applied for a loan and was told my score was much lower. Can anyone explain these differences to me? Should I cancel both and only check my report once a year?””
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“”Help get rid of the people with the fast loan & free credit report, are you reporting them?
Are you doing your part and reporting them?
“”
Can I get an auto loan without a source of income but with a co-signer?
I’m planning to buy a 2010 Nissan Altima in May, 2010. Wondering if I can get an auto loan without a source of income. I have many relatives who are willing to be my co-signer. In this case, can I get an auto loan. Does IRS get involved in the process?””
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#repost
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#repost
“”
How long does it take to file for bankruptcy?
“”
Getting an unsecured loan?
we have been trying to get an unsecured loan in wv, not a payday loan but just a loan of $2500.00. The credit score is not very good but we are working on it and it is gonna take some time to get the credit score up, meantime we are trying to get a small loan to help the credit and we need to do some repairs on our home. We own the house but our credit is too bad to get a home equity loan right now. I have tried and tried and there seems to be no where to get a loan, any ideas? My husband has a good job but it seems impossible””
“”
Can I get cash back on a lowes merchandise credit card?
Can I get cash back? Or is it not an option I need money!?? Really bad
“”
“”All things being equal, which percentage rate would be lower, a new auto loan or a mortgage loan?
“”
Should I pay cash or get loan for new house? Any tax advantage of getting loan?
I am a first time home buyer. I have $140K in cash for my house. Should I get loan at 6%? Currently I am earning 5% with my CD. My tax bracket is 25% and property tax here is $2500/year. Is there any tax benefits if I get loan?
“”
Where is the best place to obtain a mortgage for a first time home buyer with excellent credit.?
I make $65,000 a year.””
“”
Experian credit rating…..need answer asap please!?
Hi, i have just signed up for the free 30 day trial on experian to obtain my credit report, however am unsure what to do? i plan on getting a car on finance and was advised to get a credit rating. I see the free 30 day trial on experian however to obtain a credit rating i need to pay a further 5.95 to obtain my credit rating? i thought it was free? OR, do i just need my credit report and not my actual credit rating score in order to get a car on finance? I see there is a brief overview of my credit report under ‘My Credit Report’, but is this enough information for the car salesman to use or do i actually need a credit rating score? thanks in advance!””
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#repost
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“”What would monthly payments be on a $150,000 loan with an interest rate of 4.5% for 4 years (48 months).?
Both simple and compounded monthly payments would be excellent! Thank You! I don’t need an amortization table or anything just a very good ball park number!
“”
What is the best company to use to get my credit score?
There are many. Freecreditreport.com seems popular so does Equafax. I had a subscription to one years ago, but I cannot remember which company I used. It was like $14 a year to get a monthly update on your credit status….””
“”
Has anyone used Service 1st Mortgage inc and what do you have to say about them if so?
They are registered with the BBB, but I couldn’t find any reviews on them. I currently have a VA loan through Wells Fargo for $946.12/mo and Service 1st sent me a notice saying my loan could be included in their VA IRRRL and start paying $668.12/mo””
“”
Best credit card to build credit score?
I have alright credit (632) there are no bad marks on my score, just hasn’t built up yet, I wana get my second credit card to boost my credit is there a credit card that reports to all 3 credit places and boosts your credit faster I have capital one now””
“”
Can a 14 year-old child get a credit Card?
i’d prefer a credit card but if i can get a desent debit card tell me of some
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#repost
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“”What does it mean to monetize”””” mortgage backed securities?””””””
Wikipedia has a complicated explanation of it, I’d appreciate a simple explanation. Thanks!””
“”
“”2nd mortgage co has turned us over to collectors after 1st mort co. forclosed, will we have to file bankruptcy””
how do you know what we have been through, are you in my shoes?You don’t know my life or my husbands or how we scrimped & saved & tried to consolidate debt with that second mortgage!The day after my husband’s company closed to save $ and send business to Mexico we put our house up for sale.We tried to sell our house for 2 years & were rejected for 2 shortsales, the only offers we received in those 2 years.I put blood, sweat & tears into my beloved house only to loose it becuase my husband couldn’t find work! we contacted our mortgagers asking, begging for them to work with us only to have them reject us when we came to the table with reasonable offers!I’m sorry your job has you so bitter,but we have struggled for 3 total years over this situation & I don’t expect special treatment.I came to this site for advice, I should have known better, & yes you did mean to kick me while I am down, but that’s ok, I’m used to it by now.No more answers please, I can not take the abuse.””
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Does anyone know where i can get a free credit report?
“”
Have you ever heard of Identity Theft Protection by quizzle.com?
https://www.quizzle.com/what-is-quizzle/identity-protection Please share your thoughts :) Thanks!
“”
#repost
“”
How does investment work? could someone please explain?
This might sound silly to a lot of people, but i dont understand how you can buy shares and then make money from it. the same with investing in property? whats the point of that? the way i see it, you take out a home loan, buy a house with it, lease the house to tenants and then the mortgage gets paid off, then, you sell the house and yes, you make a profit from that, but wouldn’t it take like, 20–30 years for the house to get paid off through leasing it? Am i missing something?””
“Can you settle credit card debt for less than owed? Even if not behind on payments?
OK, few questions. If someone has say, 25k in debt — credit cards, the like is it really possible to call the companies and negotiate a settlement for less than owed? And #2, how does this reflect on the credit report? My brother in law is telling me that he is inheriting about 30 thousand bucks soon, and will be calling his creditors (credit card debt only) and negotiating with them, telling them that he has to file for bankruptcy and offer them less than owed. He SAYS he can negotiate and get them to about .30 cent on the dollar. Is this correct? And how does it appear on the credit report? I dont believe him. He says that he wants to keep as much cash as possible to open a business in a year or so. I say he will regret it because of the marks on his report. Who is right?
“
Where Can I actually get a free credit report without having to give card details?
“”
Can i withdraw partially from PPF account in a SBI branch other than the base SBI branch where my PPF account?
can i withdraw partially from PPF account in a SBI branch other than the base SBI branch where my PPF account is present? This is urgent and not been answered anywhere in internet.
“”
“”I want to see my credit score, but I don’t have a credit card. Is there anyway I can find it without one?
“”
I want to know more details about Bankruptcy?
I need to know some details, my mother and I live together with my younger sister, shes six. We’re struggling bad, we both lost our jobs, we can’t get a new one despite trying and applying everywhere. We can’t break our lease or else we’ll be penalized bad and we don’t even have the money for rent let alone paying for a severed contract, not that we have anywhere to go. We were told that we might need to file because we’re out of options and my mother has horrid credit while i have no credit which is just as bad. What i want to know, is what are the details, how do you do it and what are the downfalls/aid that could come from this action?””
“”
#repost
“”
Does WFS Financial (Wells Fargo) Report to Credit Agencies?
I recently got an auto loan with WFS Financial (Wells Fargo Dealer Services) and I was wondering if they report to the 3 major credit reporting companies? Do loan companies usually report every months car payment or just when its fully paid off?
“”
With a credit score 786 what is the chances of getting a mortgage loan?
i want to buy a house
“”
“”FHA Loan, Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium?””
I’m in the process of buying a house through the FHA loan. Anyway, is the mortgage insurance premium required if I am putting down 20% of the cost? And if so, instead of adding the insurance premium into my loan amount, can I just pay it cash??””
“”
Question about credit/background check?
Had to give my SSN for a credit check on an apartment. Will the person seeing the check be able to see old leases from 2007 from a diff state?
“”
Auto loan with experian credit report?
Anyone know of a finance company that will look at my experian report to make a lending decision. My experian score is significantly higher than my other 2. Thanks.
“”
84 Month auto loan on a $9000 dollar car?
I’m turning 16 in two months and would like to buy a car when i turn 16. (i’ll be getting my license) and was wondering if a 84 month auto loan would be a good idea. I would pay off the car when i turned 18, i have money in a trust fund that will pay off the car loan easily. so i would make like $120 payments a month until i was 18 and get my money and pay off the loan. what do you think?””
“”
Can I get an auto loan ?
If I have a 610 credit score …. What’s the best way to go to get an auto loan for $20,000 — $23,000…. I gross around $4500 to $5000 a month.””
“”
Auto loan late payment question?
I lost my job in October missed Oct Nov and Dec notes due on the 20th but I am now on active army orders to deploy have been since Dec 5th but my paperwork was messed up so I do noget paid until Jan 4th and its just enough to pay a little over one note due to my paperwork being messed up so will I still be 70 days late or will it reset please help I sm extremely worried I cant even sleep worrying because I had good credit before all of this my loan company will not answer my question so telling me to call them will not help
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Will it be too late to file for bankruptcy once the debt goes to collections?
I have a big credit card balance at a 29.99% rate with a minimum balance payment of just under 1,000/month. I’ve been behind for about 3 months now. I hate to file BK just for 1 credit card but with my decreased income I have no money and no way to pay for it. The best the crdit card offered was 600/month with direct withdrawl from my checking but i don’t have that much to spare each month so they said they can’t offer anything better. So if it’s already in collections does that mean it’s too late to file for BK to get that off my back? I offered 100/month for 6 months until I find a better paying job but they said no. I can’t do anything else so I am thinking of BK.””
“”
“”Bad credit, but need a small loan?””
I got caught up n the payday loan loop. I was doing well until a loss of hours at work, I regret my friend introducing me to these easily accessible advances. I really need a small loan of about $2000 that would help me greatly get back on track, but doubt there is a bank out there that would help. Any suggestions would help?””
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#repost
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I need an auto loan for 2000 dollars but i have bad credit?
I have a job and can pay back the money in less time than i need to but i need a car with in the next week
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Freecreditreport.com?
how long does your credit report take to show up to your email? i did it like a week ago and nothing has been sent to me yet. if you know anything please let me know thank you :)
“”
How will my employment history effect my ability to get an auto loan?
Well I asked a question a couple days ago trying to figure out if there is a chance that I would be able to get an auto loan. One of the answers talked about employment history and how long I have been at my current job. I knew it made a big difference in the banks decision but right now my employment situation is a little complicated so I am just wondering how it would effect my chance of getting a loan. Alright, I have 2 jobs. One full time and one full time. Now, I started my full time job in June. It is my main source of income, but I have not been there long so I know that kind of looks bad on a loan application, however I have been at my other job for a long time and until June I worked that job full time. Now it is a very small portion of my income…..But I have been there a long time. So will they take that into consideration when they are trying to decide if they should give me the loan…””
“”
Do you need to be 18 to buy a prepaid credit card?
I need to buy something online and my mom is old school and doesn’t trust anything with computers… I’m 17 and need to buy something with a credit card and was wondering if you need to be 18 to buy a prepaid credit card (Amex, Visa, Mastercard)?””
“”
My husband and I are lookin for a loan….?
We need help in obtaining a loan. We both are working now, and have paid off alot of things that were on our credit report. Unfortuantely we do not know how to get them off and they say they stay on your report for up to 7 yrs. We are looking for a personal loan, and we have 2 vehicles for collateral if necessary. Please help at all if you can, we have fallen into the payday loan trap and need help out. Can you tell us what our options are? Thanks.””
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“”10 points!!! Consumer math help, 1 question?””
Your parents have a credit card with a balance of $3,287.90 at an interest rate of 14.5% APR. They pay $1,200.00 each month on the due date until the card is paid off. How many months does it take to pay off the card, and what is the total amount paid including interest? Please explain, thank you so much!!!””
“”
What happens when people file for bankruptcy?
“”
Is there anyway to check my credit online or see how much i’m i debt?
“”
Where can I get a loan? I need a quick loan.?
Where on earth can I get a quick and a real loan. I need about $3000 quick. Like within a week. I don’t want a payday loan because in michigan they amount allowed is only $600. If anyone knows of any real banks here in AMERICA I would highly appreciate it. I don’t have any credit but I make decent money. I would like to get credit but the way the economy is i cant even get a credit card. But if there are any legit company I can go to for a $3,000 loan. That would make my day. Thanks””
“Can you settle credit card debt for less than owed? Even if not behind on payments?
OK, few questions. If someone has say, 25k in debt — credit cards, the like is it really possible to call the companies and negotiate a settlement for less than owed? And #2, how does this reflect on the credit report? My brother in law is telling me that he is inheriting about 30 thousand bucks soon, and will be calling his creditors (credit card debt only) and negotiating with them, telling them that he has to file for bankruptcy and offer them less than owed. He SAYS he can negotiate and get them to about .30 cent on the dollar. Is this correct? And how does it appear on the credit report? I dont believe him. He says that he wants to keep as much cash as possible to open a business in a year or so. I say he will regret it because of the marks on his report. Who is right?
“
Calculate interest rate?
Barcain Credit Corp. wants to earn an effective annual return on its consumer loans of 15 percent per year. The bank uses daily compounding on its loans. What interest rate is the bank required by law to report to potential borrowers
“”
Should I apply for a mortgage loan with a 560 credit score?
I want to apply for a mortgage loan, most likely an FHA loan. I have a credit score of 560 and I have two default negative accounts on my credit report totaling around 3,000 and one good account for my student loans. I have about 3,000 saved so far for a down payment. Should I pay off the debt or apply with my credit score as is and set up a payment plan for the debt. I really need to purchase as soon as possible but I’m not sure if I will be approved with a 560 credit score. Will paying off just one of the accounts increase my credit score enough to be approved? Will applying for a secured credit card improve my credit score or hurt my chances at being approved for a mortgage because it is new credit account? Thanks to anyone that can help!””
“”
Using credit card for mortgage downpayment?
Is there any way to do this. I would get a cash advance (I got one for 5k one year ago, 0% for 12 months) and use it for downpayment. I read that it would be good to do it at least 2 months before applying for a loan. Do you thing this would work? (I am talking only about 2–3k). Thanks.””
“”
How early can I refinance my auto loan? I am not happy with the interest rate I got from the dealer.?
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#repost
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What is the best credit card for a score of 588?
I have a credit score of 588 ( equals to a low D or poor credit) I want to know which bank or card wolud accept me n let me build back my credit I tried many student credit cards and they decline me Any ideas…thank u
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“”Payday advance loan, does anypne know of one ?
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#repost
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Which you be worse on my cerdit report: bankruptcy or foreclosure?
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Looking for a legit lender for $6000 for 4 years at a good rate.?
after seperation need a fresh start clean up some debt and payday loans.serious lenders only .
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Citi Financial Loans? Are they a scam? ~?
I applied for a Citi Loan to pay off some bills… They told me that I dont need personal property all they need is a TV or a RING or whatever I want … I have never heard of this before … Is it a scam? Has anyone here ever delt with them? What happened? Where they helpful?
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What if I remarry then what would his bankruptcy affect me then?
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#repost
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Breakdown Cost of Filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy in California?
Heeeelp Yahoo Community! Myself and a couple friends are all considering filing Chapter 7. My question is can someone who recently used an attorney to file their Bankruptcy tell us the breakdown of all the fees they were charged and not just a total amount. And please don’t tell me how much it cost for your Bankruptcy years ago, we are trying to find out Todays cost.. Thanks!!!!!””
“”
Where can I get an $5000 unsecured consolidation loan w/o having to pay any upfront fee?
I’ve seen all the ones from Africa and they all need a $100–200 cost up front which could easily be a scam for even more money; which would be very hard to get even that money back with payments continuing on and on and on. The payday loans all want you to start out with smaller amounts and then more later but their fees are astronomically high to say the least. Small business loans are hard to come buy w/o a great business plan and or good credit. I, by the way, have an average of around 600 credit socre, which is considered good but then the type of credit prroblems like lates payments and closed accounts don’t help either. Philanthropists are both hard to find and pursuade; and relatives are next to impossible it seems these days. Any ideas anyone?””
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Credit report disput?
anyone know companies to email to make disput credit?
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Will auto loan with co-signer help establish my credit?
I am trying to buy a car and build credit at the same time. I have almost a years worth of credit history specifically credit cards and charge cards. I have good scores, but limited history. I have been turned down applying for the loan by myself. I would like to cosign with a parent. Two questions. First, I was told that even if my parents scores are not the best, or even good, they have history. I do not have much history, but have good scores. And so, I was told that this would essentially be a match and I’d have a good chance of getting the loan. The second question is, if I were to get a loan with a co-signer in my parents, that it would primarily be in their name, building or hurting their credit? If they co-sign with me, and I make the payments, it will or will not affect my credit? I have a specific car in mind and the pricing online is attractive opposed to working with dealerships that have less then desirable cars that will work with no/bad credit for high interest rates.TIA””
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How Far Upside Down on a car is Too Far?
Thanks for all the great answers! Thank you for taking the Time to answer. Yea! It’s called LTV (Loan to Value) and I quickly found 2 finance companys that state they do up to 120% on their websites. Here’s a great article about it too. http://www.carsdirect.com/auto-loans/car-loan-value-why-its-important I went to the dealer tonight and I’m upside down, 6K according to them, I didn’t take the deal but he actually said he would try to put it through. You never know”””” is what he told me. I figured I was about 130% LTV on the car. I give up for now””
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Where do I print out legal bankruptcy application and legal procedures?
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“”2 questions, If I get married will my debt that I accumulated before getting married transfer? and..?””
I want to get married but I am 22,000 dollars in debt, will it transfer? and if I file bankruptcy will it mess her up when we get married next year? I am in washington.””
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Can someone obtain an FHA or Mortgage while still in Chapter 13?
Currently, we own our own home and it is paid off, we have both of our vehicles paid for and we have no bills. When we filed bankruptcy it was because of one bank. We had a $1500.00 per month interest only mortgage pymt so & had already paid 80 thousand dollars in interest. When my husband got laid off in 2006 we tried to get the bank to give us a reg mortgage on the property since we had already paid so much and they said no. We tried for almost 2 years to continue to pay the 1500, we did without everything. The baby was 3 weeks old when my husband was laid off and when our child was 3 mos old, I got deathly sick. That is why we filed chapter 13 not because we live beyond our our means. We cashed out some things and paid off everything except the loan. We owe about 10thousand on the bkrpcy. now, we’ve paid regularly for a long time. To be honest I think we got a mrtgage co that wanted the prop. we owed 170 th. and it was worth 1mi””
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What will hurt my credit score moregoing to a credit counselor to join a debt management?
program or file bankruptcy ? I know bankruptcy stays on your credit report for ten years, but how long will a debt management program stay on it? If I join this debt management program the payments on my credit cards combined will be cheaper than what I pay. The fee they are going to charge me is $11.00 a month. I am on social security disability and I will NOT be able to go back to work because my health is getting worse. The debt management people know this and the counselorr told me the credit card companies can NOT touch my social security. I do not know what to do because the medical bills are starting to come in? Please only serious answers only.””
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#repost
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“”If you are a banker and expect interest rates to rise in the future, would you want to make short-term….?””
If you are a banker and expect interest rates to rise in the future, would you want to make short-term or long-term loans?””
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Really need advice on my landlord that is giving me 2 weeks to move! help!?
“Can you settle credit card debt for less than owed? Even if not behind on payments?
OK, few questions. If someone has say, 25k in debt — credit cards, the like is it really possible to call the companies and negotiate a settlement for less than owed? And #2, how does this reflect on the credit report? My brother in law is telling me that he is inheriting about 30 thousand bucks soon, and will be calling his creditors (credit card debt only) and negotiating with them, telling them that he has to file for bankruptcy and offer them less than owed. He SAYS he can negotiate and get them to about .30 cent on the dollar. Is this correct? And how does it appear on the credit report? I dont believe him. He says that he wants to keep as much cash as possible to open a business in a year or so. I say he will regret it because of the marks on his report. Who is right?
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What online credit report retrieval site is trustworthy?
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I am 28 with no job in bankruptcy living with my parents with sever depression?
I been in a state of mind where I just beat myself up don’t really have no interest in anything. I try to push myself to do the simplest task but have no will to better myself. I smoked weed everyday for 10 years and recently quit cold turkey only to relapse and it just make me lethargic and more stuck”””” then before. I quit my job after I was discipline for making a mistake for something I was never taught to do. I just never ended going back.It was just a part time job with UPS but I know I always did all I was able to do compared to some of my other co-workers that just like to slack off and was just ridiculed for it. I can’t find one now. I have anxiety going outside of the house have no insurance so its not like I can seek help. Have not been suicidal but thought is there every day I wake up.I sleep till or past 12pm. I just don’t want to face the day anymore. I lost int rest in everything I used to enjoy. My libido is dead what there to live for? HELP!””””””
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Can auto loan balance be transfered to credit card?
my question is if i can transfer my auto loan (from a local credit union) to a credit card with 0% APR for balance transfer? please inform. if yes, what is the procedure.””
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Can I afford an acura TL 2007?
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#repost
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#repost
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Is it easier to get a Loan or a Line of Credit?
I’m not too sure of my credit rating, but I don’t think it’s bad.””
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I would like help with auto loan information!?
If I have a downpayment of 4000–5000 dollars, a credit score of around 650, am a 22 year old male, and have a pre-tax income of 2000/month, what kind of general terms for an auto loan am I looking at? I’d say I’m pretty liquid, since my current obligations (including food) amount to about $600/month. I’d be driving probably no more than 14,000 miles a year, and have a clean driving record. Would it be cheaper to buy or lease?””
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What kind of loan can I get for tattoo school?
well obviously I’m poor so that’s the question what kind of loan can I get cuz I want to go to school but I don’t have the money $5600 bucks I can save it but it’s going to take me a while and I have shitty credit so what to do and I have no idea about loans or banks and **** like that so do you guys recommend some kind of website or foundation that might help me even if I’m mexican and can’t even qualified for a sonic card yeah so just let me know
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When the fed cuts interest rates does that mean I get better deals on auto loans or home loans and whatnot ?
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Using someone else’s credit as your own?
i am 19 and should have no credit but also no bad credit i tried to check my credit score through equafax and it would not let me since i could not verify that it was me and said i have to do it through the mail. I went to the bank to get a loan and was approved with in 5 min. and lowest interest weird they said but okay and got a credit card approved just as fast they suggested i check it through myfico and it told me the same thing that i cant be verified!? i put in my social but i think i am using my dads credit score since we have the same first and last name obviously i know the pros of this but what are the cons ? never building up my own credit? and then them finding out it is not me at like age 40. comments,suggestions how to fix this are appreciated!””
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What’s the safest place to get a auto loan for a college student with 0 credit?
I’m a 22 year old college student, and I’m looking to buy a $7000 car. I have $3000 to put down on it right away. I have 0 credit right now, and every place I go I usually need a co signer. Is there any place online I can get a auto loan with no co signer that is safe?””
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How can i take advantage of the low mortgage rates ?Bought ahouse last year and have a fixed rate?
I bought my house last year and ahve a fixed rate but now want to take advantage of the low rates prevailing today.My credit is not that good and refinancing could be a problem because of that
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#repost
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How can I improve my mix of cedit without paying interest to anyone?
I only have credit cards in my credit reports. My Mix of Credit on my report was D+ In other words almost Fail. Everythiing else was A+ How can I improve this without paying interest? I’m not about to pay interest for a score.
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Is there any payday loans for really bad credit?
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“”I have really horrible credit and I need a $4000 loan, does anyone have any ideas I am in a serious bind????””
And, I forgot to say that I got scammed by some damn Nigerians at [email protected] they told me I was guaranteed a loan for $6000.00 if I sent them $495.00 for processing fee and transfer fees and I did and that was 2 weeks ago and I have not heard anything from them….And all their numbers are disconnected and they won’t respond to any of my emails and I want to report them to the FBI or something because I could have used that $495 to pay my bills””
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“”I own my car, should I get a car loan? To raise my FICO 08?””
The new FICO 08 will grade on credit DIVERSITY. I purchased my 2005 KIA SUV with cash, I have a few credit cards with low revolving balances and a mortgage. A bankruptcy in 2004 (due to divorce) is still dragging my FICO down even though from that date I have been stellar with my credit. Seems silly to ask- but the article looks like you could drop 50 points for not having diverse loans!!””
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#repost
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#repost
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Names of bad credit mortgages please?
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What makes you qualify for a Chapter 13 bankruptcy over a Chapter 7 bankruptcy?
I am more interested in the Chapter 13 bankruptcy because i would not like to sell my belongings.. I would much more like to pay a portion of the credit cards and what not back.. The reason i havent been able to do so is because the interest keeps adding up and has become too much so I really just need all of that to come to a stop
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Is there any where where I can get my credit checked for free?
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#repost
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Where can I file cheaply for bankruptcy Chapter 7 in Los Angeles.?
This is 2nd time in 10 yrs. that I may be forced to file for Chapter 7 in Los Angeles. I am senior disabled on benefits, so limited income. Last time I did it for under $200 with a paralegal. My question is where can I file for bankruptcy Chapter 7 w/limited income & a senior ? Also, because of new rules, will I get charge off for all my debts. I only have credit card debts, no personal or loans, do not own property or car, assets, etc. probably totaling no more than $25,000 or at least under $30,000. I am in Los Angeles, H’wood, California 90029–90028 zip code, thank u.””
“Can you settle credit card debt for less than owed? Even if not behind on payments?
OK, few questions. If someone has say, 25k in debt — credit cards, the like is it really possible to call the companies and negotiate a settlement for less than owed? And #2, how does this reflect on the credit report? My brother in law is telling me that he is inheriting about 30 thousand bucks soon, and will be calling his creditors (credit card debt only) and negotiating with them, telling them that he has to file for bankruptcy and offer them less than owed. He SAYS he can negotiate and get them to about .30 cent on the dollar. Is this correct? And how does it appear on the credit report? I dont believe him. He says that he wants to keep as much cash as possible to open a business in a year or so. I say he will regret it because of the marks on his report. Who is right? | https://medium.com/@8oli/can-you-settle-credit-card-debt-for-less-than-owed-even-if-not-behind-on-payments-568f901c67d4 | [] | 2019-04-12 20:11:38.605000+00:00 | ['Debt'] |
Diversity Is More Than Skin Deep | Image courtesy of the Goldfarb School of Nursing
President-elect Joe Biden has already been garnering praise for some of the historical nominations and appointments to his cabinet and administration. He has also been under mounting pressure to continue to supposedly “diversify” his cabinet simply by nominating women and people of color. The big problem with this kind of approach to “diversity” is that while you may end up with a group of people who may look different from one another, they do not necessarily think differently and represent different interests.
Diversity needs to be more than just skin deep. Mainly advocated for historically by white liberals through policies like affirmative action and quotas, this normative sort of valorization of racial and ethnic diversity above all else merely treats the symptoms of structural racism and inequities rather than fixing or dismantling the underlying structures themselves that have perpetuated these racial and socioeconomic disparities. Instead of prioritizing “diversity” as such, those who are interested in racial justice and equity should focus on addressing and correcting the ongoing systemic root causes of underrepresentation and marginalization.
Furthermore, what (typically white) advocates of “diversity” don’t often realize is that people of different races and ethnicities can have similar educations, interests, goals, and worldviews, despite their different lived experiences. And while, to a certain degree, it may be better to see people in prominent positions who are not all white, straight men, it is ultimately not very productive if they all think alike, talk alike, and share the same values.
Just seeing “Black faces in higher places,” as the expression goes, is not enough if those same Black people who managed to get to those higher places betray the interests of their fellow Black folk and the communities they came from. Activists and intellectuals like Malcolm X, Cornel West, Angela Davis, and Nina Turner have all been critical of this phenomenon. What happens is that when people from underrepresented groups attain a position of power, they are likely to become more interested in maintaining and furthering their newfound power — along with the wealth and class privileges that come with that power — rather than empowering and championing the people in their communities that did not have the same opportunities.
These interests are usually in conflict, and instead of taking an intersectional approach, many of them fall into a false trap and choose class over race. In other words, just because you have some Black faces in higher places does not mean that they are going to change anything if they have sold out (which is more often the case than not). What proponents of “diversity” lose sight of — and this is perpetuated by the media and those in power — is that the Black and Brown working class have more in common with the white working class than they do with the Black and Brown bourgeoisie.
“Diversity” is harmful — violent, even — if the only criterion for this diversity is skin color or last name alone. It tends to flatten the complexity and humanity of people in favor of a single, usually visible, attribute as standing in for a group of people who are erroneously understood as a monolith by the very same people championing “diversity.”
When Joe Biden is lauded for simply picking a person of color or a woman for a prominent position, then he can get away with choosing people who are deeply embedded within the political swamp of DC or the military industrial complex, are architects of neoliberal trade policies and advocates of globalization, are cozy with Wall Street, and are beneficiaries of and invested in the status quo (these qualifiers apply to nearly all of Biden’s picks, regardless of race or gender). Just because we have some “diversity” in terms of how these people look does not mean that we can give them a pass on their records and values.
So even though Joe Biden may have a Black and South Asian female vice president and has nominated and hired a handful of Black, Latinx, South Asian, and East Asian Americans for his team, it does not mean that he has a diverse circle around him. Most of these people went to the same elite schools, know the same people, see the world through shared lenses, have white-collar careers, are Washington insiders, and are extremely well-connected.
Real diversity is not just racial/ethnic, gender, and sexual difference. It is a multiplicity of viewpoints, backgrounds, experiences, tribulations, values, and classes. To a certain extent, these details are more important than race or gender alone.
For example, let’s take two groups of people. The first group is all white, straight men, and the second group represents a mix of genders, races, and sexualities. The first group consists of working poor, blue collar, and white collar people who span political and economic spectra and come from all over the US with various levels of eduction; the second group are all white-collar people from big cities who attended the top-ranked schools in the world and hold a college degree or higher. Which group is really the diverse one? Would you even consider the second group diverse compared to the first one? The second group is the one that Biden is assembling, and while I would hate for his senior officials to be as racially and gender homogenous as those in the Trump administration, I would champion a team like that of the first hypothetical group far more enthusiastically than I would a team like the second group.
It is imperative that Biden and others in all kinds of leadership positions think more deeply about what diversity really is if they are to reap its proven rewards and do the best work they possibly can. More than easy virtue signaling or simply placating identitarians through “diversity,” smart leaders must work harder to assemble their teams to represent a plurality of thought and interests so that they can be challenged, confronted, and better informed. Unfortunately, nearly all of the “diverse” appointments by Biden have little diversity of ideas, beliefs, and values, and many of them worked with Biden in the Obama administration. Trump was the outcome of how these people led the country, so if Biden is not more careful this time around, then we should not be surprised when Trump — or someone even worse than him who is smarter and more dangerous — returns to power in 2024. | https://medium.com/illumination/diversity-is-more-than-skin-deep-eec019aa570d | ['Riad Kherdeen'] | 2020-12-12 23:51:54.786000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Culture', 'Diversity', 'Ideas', 'Politics'] |
Why does Amazon Pay Zero Taxes | Yes, individuals can deduct a few expenses such as mortgage interest, medical and so forth. But usually this doesn’t exceed say 10 or 15% max. Where Corporations can deduct all of their expenses. In fact for individuals if they somehow find too many deductions and it gets too high there is something called the alternative minimum tax (AMT) which they will end up having to pay. This rule keeps individuals from deducting too much.
So, in the case of Amazon, a notoriously low margin business, where frequently their income statement looks something like this:
$100 - $100 = $0
They end up paying very little taxes just due to their low margin.
The government encourages risk
If their is no profit. There is no federal income tax.
One reason that Silicon Valley and the explosion of venture capital and startups exists here in the United States is due to the tax code. This is a good thing in that we now have companies like Amazon, as well as Apple, MicroSoft, Google, Facebook, SalesForce, Tesla and I could go on and on.
All of these companies have one thing in common. At the very beginning they made no money. Sometimes for many, many years.
Amazon, by design, was one of these companies for longer than just about any other. Jeff Bezos’ entire philosophy for Amazon was to sell every item for as low a price as possible, where the margin was as close to zero as possible, so that he could undercut competition and capture as much market share as he could.
Or simply put, he decided Amazon would grow their customer base instead of trying to make a profit.
Net Operating Losses (NOL)
The tax code also allows these startup companies to roll forward those losses they have in the early years.
So, for example if the first five year of Amazon profit/(loss) looks like this $(3M), $(2M), $(1M), $(0M), $1M. Then even in year five when Amazon finally made a profit of $1M they would pay no federal income tax because they can use past losses to offset current profits for up to twenty years. In fact, in this example, Amazon in years 1–4 Amazon had a $(6M) loss, and used up $(1M) of that loss in year five. But still have a $(5M) NOL to use up in future years.
This is another reason Amazon pays so little in taxes. They had losses for so long and built up such big NOL’s that they were able to use those to offset their taxes even once they started showing a profit.
Interesting aside. A lot of those NOL’s were from their early years. They were founded in 1995. Only in the last couple of years has Amazon started to show a significant profit, having made over $11B each of 2018 and 2019 and already having net income of $14.1B through September 30, 2020. So, likely will have close to $20B profit in 2020.
But the tax rule is you can only carryforward NOL’s for twenty years.
Analysts have been talking about this. Their theory, as to why Amazon has been showing profit lately, is that Amazon’s success has taken off at a trajectory where they cannot spend fast enough to keep their margin close to zero. I wonder if these past two years they weren’t using up all of their NOL’s as they are getting close to expiring. To be honest the analysts probably have it right or they wouldn’t have made $20B in profit in 2020. But I still bet a conversation back in 2016 or 2017 happened where someone said we should let up a little on the pressure to spend every penny. To take advantage of these expiring NOL’s the next couple of years.
Depreciation, Share Based Compensation and R&D Expenses
Ok, those were the major reasons that Amazon pays so little but I just want to cover a couple of other reasons that are pretty significant to Amazon as well.
To understand Depreciation first you need to understand that their are actually two sets of books for accounting. One for taxes and one for financial reporting. The one for taxes is kept and used for filing tax returns. The one for financial reporting is kept for filing financial reports such as the quarterly and annual 10-Q and 10-K’s filed to the Securities Exchange Commission. These are the reports used by analysts to tell you what earnings, revenue, PE ratio’s, and all of the other financial ratios you hear being thrown around. Including income and loss.
So, when you hear some idiot say something like this.
“Which means they paid about 1.4% of their total net income in federal income taxes.” ~ quote by this guy right here
They are actually comparing apples to oranges in a way. Since, the tax amount comes from the tax books and the income amount comes from the financial reporting books.
Depreciation
Ok, so I told you all of this to explain depreciation book-tax differences to you. (In common accounting speak, book refers to the financial reporting books, and tax refers to the tax books.)
As we all know Amazon spends a lot of money on infrastructure. After all, how do they get that package to you so fast. Lots and lots of infrastructure, massive well equipped and automated warehouses, with tons of high tech, bleeding edge equipment. Not to mention, planes, trucks, vans and the tons of office spaces for their hundreds of thousands of employees.
All of this infrastructure they can expense through depreciation.
But David, didn’t you say that they deduct all their expenses above. And that’s why their margin is so low? So, isn’t this factored into your explanation above?
Well no, because another way congress has juiced the tax code is by allowing companies to depreciate their buildings and equipment faster under the tax set of books then under the financial reporting set of books.
So, for example if they buy a piece of equipment for $1M under the financial reporting books they might depreciate over a ten year period and record $100K of expense each year. But the tax code might allow them to depreciate it over five years so they can record $200K of expense on their tax returns and lower their taxes.
I point this out. Because this is a major way that Amazon is able to manage their taxes. If it looks like they might be close to making some money in the next year or two, they might go on an infrastructure spending spree. We see them announce these all the time, where they are about to spend a few billion more building out their warehouses and shipping capabilities.
This is an easy way for them to manage their taxes and the only result is a much more massive company at the end of it.
R&D Expenses
Amazon also spends a lot of money developing new technologies. Think of their website, Amazon Prime, AWS and all of the technologies surrounding those.
Again you say David, if all of their expenses are included in that equation you showed me above aren’t these R&D expenses already captured in your explanation above?
To understand this one you’ll have to understand the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit. Above all of those expenses end up being deductions and reduce their income. A tax credit allows them to subtract these expenses from the actual amount of tax paid.
So, two examples:
A deduction. A company makes $100 and has $80 in deductions. They end up with $20 on which they pay taxes. At a 40% tax rate they pay $8 in taxes.
A credit. A company makes $100 and has $60 in deductions. They end up with a $40 on which they pay taxes. At a 40% tax rate they pay $16. But let’s say that missing $20 is able to be applied in this example as a credit. Which gets directly applied to the tax owed. So, they end up with negative $4 in taxes. That’s right they get $4 back from the government.
So, yeah, you can see tax credits are much more valuable than deductions. As the government again is trying to incentivize growth. In this case they want to encourage companies to go out and develop new technologies.
America wants Silicon Valley on that wall, they need Silicon Valley on that wall… so, congress puts things like R&D tax credits in the tax code.
Stock Compensation
If you’ve read articles similar to this about why Amazon doesn’t pay taxes you’ve probably seen this explanation. This is a favorite one to explain Amazon’s lack of taxes.
And while I agree. It’s not the biggest reason at all. So, we’ll cover this quickly.
Employees receive stock options. Say they receive an option for $20K. They don’t end up giving out any actual cash, since the employee is receiving a part of the Company. But they still get to record that $20K as expense (albeit over a few years).
This is one major way that Amazon can have a loss but yet have a positive cash flow. In case, over the past couple thousand words you were wondering how Amazon can keep losing money and still exist as a Company. Well, it’s things like this (along with in the early stages of the Company of course just receiving cash directly from investors to fund the losses).
So, is this all a problem? If it is a problem, what’s the solution?
So, first of all, I actually agree with a lot of the things that the tax code has. I don’t mind that the tax code tries to incentive risks and allows for things like the net operating losses. I don’t mind that they want to incentivize research and development that hopefully, leads to new technologies.
I think a lot of these types of incentives are what leads the United States to be one of the better places in the world to do business, and is what has made us so prosperous.
But I do think there is a limit. Amazon has reached it. And so for that matter have Google, Facebook and all of the other tech behemoths.
Put an AMT on companies of a certain size
My simple solution is to do what Congress did to individuals with the alternative minimum tax (AMT) that I discussed above.
We would apply the AMT to revenue. i.e. what we tax individuals on. Just being fair here.
I don’t want to discourage startups or the risks taking by those involved in funding startups. So, we could make a cap of say $1B in revenue. To be honest we could make it $10B. We could start at $10B, see what that does and if needed lower it in the future. Some studies would have to be done here to figure out the cap as well as the AMT percentage.
Then simply apply a percentage of say 1% to every company that has over $10B in sales and if they had calculated less taxes then in this example $100M in federal income taxes then they would have to pay the difference. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-does-amazon-pay-zero-taxes-7fc42cf59a39 | ['David Ferrara'] | 2020-12-08 17:55:04.422000+00:00 | ['Capitalism', 'Taxes', 'Amazon', 'Economics', 'Politics'] |
Day 9 …. The Inevitable. Anger: So now you come to me, for what… | Anger: So now you come to me, for what? To tell me how I’ve done wrong said wrong been mistaken. It’s like a rerun of Friends rewatching old episodes there’s nothing new. Ross will never get over Rachel & Joey still won’t share food. I’m always to blame always the villian. Because I am Anger, the rage the fire the furnace. The Ying of happiness and Yang of Love. I always have fingers pointing at me taking aim. Target practice forgetting there’s four more point right back at yourself. Forgetting that you took advantage of me and then tampered with me. Placing me on the bottom of the roster.
Poetry: Why would I call you? When I all I get from you is passive aggressive charming witty spell binding mystic bullshit. You filled me with a hate I never knew I had. The type of hate that makes Luke turn to the Dark side. The type of hate that has me dreaming of your demise. Dreaming of ways I could execute my pain, taking slices out of Chocolate. Piecing you back to like a broken art piece. You made me forget me, you obliterated my memories . It was amnesia I couldn’t recollect how I came to this place. How I was wandering aimlessly through the ruins and forgotten cities. Forgetting what I was. Am I an entity, a forgotten species. Disregarding who I was before you came into my life. Yes it was empty, I didn’t have a lot just a few soft furnishings. Didn’t have that spark, the fire that now burns everything and everyone. I live in the flames in every flicker and burst I am there. Reelingon what you had said or done that left a scorch mark on my soul. A branding that wasn’t meant for me. You have burnt the very foundations of my being, you broke the columns of my heart. Torched the sketches of me.
Anger: Mother always said you shouldn’t play with fire if you didn’t want to get hurt. Don’t poke the bear out of hiberation. Don’t try to tame the beast when it’s already devoured its past masters.
Poetry: I never tried to tame you. I opened my arms under the fire of your arrows, like the 300. I was ready to lay my life down for you. But you had laced your weapons with poison.
Anger: No wait a minute.
Poetry: No I’m not finished. You left me at my most vulnerable, left me to pick up the pieces of our picture. That were faded and torn. Crumpled in a box of what was passion. The sentiment had gone, had lost the tangible sense of love. You had diminished the very fibre of everything you ever gave to me. You tored the thread that tied our souls together. You were the weak link that broke the chain that anchored out ships together. You separated us, we are just two ships passing each other in the night. The master and his servant. The musician and his backup singers. The teacher and his student. The glove and the hand. The mother and her child. The Love and the Hate. The Poet and the poem. The inevitable always happens. One always leaves the other behind.
Sincerely Yours
Isha A Poet xxx | https://medium.com/@ishaapoet/day-9-the-inevitable-f28632cb6af9 | ['Isha A Poet'] | 2020-12-08 23:07:01.855000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Screenplay', 'Screenwriting', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
The Fascinating Secrets of Audrey Hepburn | The year 1929 saw the birth of two little girls in the Netherlands who went on to captivate the world.
One was Ann Frank and the other was Audrey Hepburn. The Frank Family as we all know went into hiding in a room in Amsterdam during which Ann Frank wrote her famous diary detailing the heart-wrenching details of her daily life. Then the family was betrayed and every person in hiding was killed by the Nazis.
Audrey Hepburn also lived only miles away from her. The daughter of a Dutch baroness and a British-Austrian father, she went ahead to become the most beloved of all Hollywood stars, known not only for her role as UNICEF ambassador but also starring in cult films like Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Years later when she became a big star, Audrey was asked to play Ann Frank’s role in a movie. Ann’s father Otto Frank had himself requested Audrey to play that role. Audrey refused and said.
“I was so destroyed by it (reading Anne’s diary) again, that I said I couldn’t deal with playing Anne Frank in a movie. It’s a little bit as if this had happened to my sister. In a way, she was my soul sister.”
That said, while ‘several biographies’ have chronicled her stardom, not one biography has mentioned her 5 years as a teenager when she had fought the Nazi rule in the Netherlands. It was an intense period in her life where every day meant either life or death.
And this was her biggest secret in life that she had kept hidden until her death and it was only later when author Robert Matzen, author of “Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II” revealed it to the world after piercing together painstakingly those “crucial” years of her life where she became an unlikely hero for the Dutch resistance.
As her son, Luca Dotti rightly says. | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-fascinating-secrets-of-audrey-hepburn-6449c1b7721f | ['Mythili The Dreamer'] | 2020-10-06 18:55:11.720000+00:00 | ['Film', 'World', 'Women', 'Feminism', 'History'] |
Gay Men & Radical Self-Love | “R-A-D-I-C-A-L!”
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
You may be wondering, What is radical self-love? Why does it matter? And, How am I supposed to do it?
I’ll start with the why. Why does it matter that we, as gay men, radically love ourselves? I, for one, can think of many ways in which we are taught to reject, exclude, and shame ourselves and each other. And I know it’s not doing us any good.
Our natural attraction to men, our femininity, body size and shape, skin color, sex position, trauma, spirituality, kink, health status — everything is used against us. It can drive us to do things like spend money and engage with people who don’t always align with what we truly want in life.
So, what do we really want?
I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
We want love. Plain and simple. We want to be loved. We want to feel love. We want to create love. We want to see love. We want to give love. We want love to go into the deepest, darkest parts within us and shine its warm, healing light. Imagine if all of the times that you experienced pain, rejection, and shame were replaced with unconditional love. How would that have changed your life? What sort of person would you be today?
Love is our power, and a lot of us have moved through life feeling powerless. A lot of us. And I’ll name ‘em.
I listened to an episode of Brené Brown’s podcast where she talks with Sonya Renee Taylor about bodies, shame, and the ladder of social hierarchy that we are taught to climb in order to feel good about ourselves. I gay gasped so many times throughout this episode; it completely blew my mind.
From brenebrown.com
One of the many truths from this episode that shook my understanding of life, and how we live as gay men in particular, is that acceptance is not enough. As an LGBTQ community and movement, we’ve learned to ask for more than just tolerance. We’ve moved beyond that meager request and toward a movement of acceptance.
However, as Taylor states, acceptance won’t get us where we want to be. She says:
“I don’t want to be accepted, I want to be loved. If you had the choice between love or acceptance, which would you pick? You pick love. Love is richer. It’s warmer. Love DOES something. Acceptance is an inert word. It does not do anything. It stops there. It just lays there. It is a passive term. Love is an active term. It is a thing that makes you get up and do something. To change something, to shift. It creates its own momentum. I want, for the world, a love that changes shit. I want the love in a way that disrupts, that destroys the ladder. Acceptance won’t get us there.”
Photo by Brian Lundquist on Unsplash
When we radically love ourselves, we stop perpetuating the negative messages that exist in society about any marginalized people. We stop them from living within ourselves and we stop pushing them onto others. This is how we destroy the social hierarchical ladder.
Instead of stepping over others and making them feel less-than in an attempt to inch your way higher up on the ladder, let go of it. Let go, and destroy the ladder within you by radically loving every part of you, every part that we’re told is unloveable or only lovable if it looks or acts a certain way.
That is what radical love is, and what it can do. | https://medium.com/rainbow-a-queer-publication/gay-men-radical-self-love-d1f6ccbcafb1 | ['Armando Sánchez'] | 2020-11-11 04:01:13.258000+00:00 | ['Gay Men', 'Healing', 'Self Love', 'Love', 'Growth'] |
increase testosterone | how to increase testosterone do you have still low testosterone? increase testosterone levels naturally with food and also some exercises through which you increase testosterone level steadily.
what is Testosterone?
Testosterone is a male sex hormone that is responsible for growth and sex power. Females also have this hormone but in a low amount but they estrogen hormone. This hormone is very important in men for beard, hair, and sperm count. Testosterone hormone increase during puberty and decreases with the level of age. here we will cover some topics about testosterone.
how to increase testosterone naturally:
here are some natural tips for the increase of testosterone :
1.weight training exercises
All exercises may increase your testosterone level steadily but high lifting weight will definitely increase your testosterone. Study shows that a man who lifts weight have a higher testosterone level than a man who doesn’t use these stuff.
Lift a weight two times a week increase your testosterone.
take some supplements such as caffeine and Creatine 101 will boost your T-level.
2. Take Protein , FOODS
Protein is a major rule for the increment of T-level in men. They are also responsible for muscle growth.
Take enough Protein for your health and they are definitely for testosterone level.
Eat healthy foods and vegetables that also responsible for your immune system. overeating is dangerous.
3.Minimize stress level
minimize your stress level it is harmful to the body and increases your body fat and heart attack problem. Hormone level imbalance and the level of testosterone decrease so you to be happy and stressless in your life.
4.Vitamin D
Sunlight during the morning is very important for vitamin D because the sun is the major source of vitamin D take around 3,000 IU of vitamin D daily.
also, take some calcium through fruit like orange and egg yolk.
5.Sleep well
According to the doctor’s advice, 6 to 8 hours of sleep is very useful for a healthy man.
This will also increase or boost testosterone because plenty of rest a day reduces stress levels.
High-quality sleep matters for long-term health. | https://medium.com/@darkiideas/increase-testosterone-8d83727fa9ec | [] | 2020-12-22 16:06:51.096000+00:00 | ['Mental Health Awareness', 'Mental Health', 'Men Power', 'Increase Testosterone'] |
Community Launch | Today marks a major milestone for OE: with our latest protocol changes running stably on mainnet, it’s time to begin opening up deployment! Anybody who meets our launch criteria can apply to be whitelisted on mainnet and will be approved within 2 weeks.
With over 750,000 transactions since our last protocol release, it’s. finally. time. The days of scalable, composable ecosystem growth are upon us. Additionally, this will kick off the process of increasing our TPS limit, starting with a doubling next week.
Why no full deployment?
While we are incredibly excited to be opening up to more projects, the OVM is still in beta. We have not fully disabled the whitelist just yet, and we’re still keeping the transaction throughput limit below L1 levels.
We have one more major upgrade upcoming in the next 3 months that will remove a majority of the remaining OVM DevEx hurdles. In general, if you will have to maintain a significantly different base of contracts (e.g. due to code size or gas) to maintain OVM compatibility, we suggest waiting for the next release to smooth things out. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on discord if you have questions!
What do I do?
If you’re as excited about this as we are, come deploy! You can check out the whitelisting criteria here, and when you meet the criteria, you can apply here. | https://medium.com/ethereum-optimism/community-launch-7c9a2a9d3e84 | ['Ethereum Optimism'] | 2021-08-19 19:21:37.973000+00:00 | ['Rollup', 'Optimism', 'Ethereum', 'Layer 2'] |
Measuring software quality at scale | A common challenge when building good software is: how do you measure your product quality at scale? What feedback would you expect to get when you’re building good software?
With hundreds of Instacart Enterprise deployments per day impacting dozens of retailers, it is impossible to verify everything by hand. To measure and monitor Enterprise software quality, the Enterprise Test Automation team has built Mango, which is an API test automation solution embedded across all of our development, UAT, and production environments.
Daily deployment counts per environment
In this post, we’ll dive into the metrics collection and reporting workflows we built.
Development Workflow
An important part of measuring product quality is to embed running the automation suite throughout the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Test runs are triggered each time engineers commit product code, but they are also triggered by every deployment including the final deployment to production. At Instacart, we also run tests on an hourly basis since a lot of test scenarios are driven by the product catalog which changes over time. These frequent test runs help us capture, collect, and report on software quality metrics.
GitHub code changes and deployments trigger the test automation workflow
By incorporating test runs into all of these workflows, we can also capture the frequency of test failures based on the environment. This allows us to set goals around test failures and bugs: we expect the number of bugs and test failures to decrease from the highest count, to a very low number (or none!) by the time our code reaches production canary services. If for some reason this metric is reversed then it’s likely that not enough bugs are being caught early during Pull Requests, which tells us we should be focusing on improving the local development workflow.
Metrics We Collect
We aim to instrument every part of the test process so that we can publish these metrics and build team and organization goals around them. Below is a list of a few key metrics that we capture
Test Status : How many test cases passed, failed, xfailed, xpassed, or were skipped. This is our most fundamental metric — in particular how many tests have failed or xfailed. When tests are xfailed, there is either a bug causing the failure or the test code itself is outdated. This is a great way to measure tech debt.
: How many test cases passed, failed, xfailed, xpassed, or were skipped. This is our most fundamental metric — in particular how many tests have failed or xfailed. When tests are xfailed, there is either a bug causing the failure or the test code itself is outdated. This is a great way to measure tech debt. Test Duration : We aggregate by environment, team, and feature. The goal is to continually reduce the average duration per test case to maintain a highly efficient test suite. Using this metric, we are also able to identify which tests are the slowest, which gives us ideas on what code we can focus on to speed up our systems.
: We aggregate by environment, team, and feature. The goal is to continually reduce the average duration per test case to maintain a highly efficient test suite. Using this metric, we are also able to identify which tests are the slowest, which gives us ideas on what code we can focus on to speed up our systems. Bugs in JIRA : How many bugs are reported in JIRA. When we investigate test failures, we create bugs in JIRA and attach them to the automation test failure. This is also a good indicator of technical debt and overall quality, and we want to keep this metric low.
: How many bugs are reported in JIRA. When we investigate test failures, we create bugs in JIRA and attach them to the automation test failure. This is also a good indicator of technical debt and overall quality, and we want to keep this metric low. Test Case Counts : We aggregate this number by team, feature, and contributors. As mentioned earlier, this allows us to give recognition to top teams and people that contribute tests, while also allowing us to identify and encourage change on teams with no tests.
: We aggregate this number by team, feature, and contributors. As mentioned earlier, this allows us to give recognition to top teams and people that contribute tests, while also allowing us to identify and encourage change on teams with no tests. Code Coverage : Lines of code coverage, aggregated by platform (API, UI, etc.). By deploying an instrumented version of the product codebase, we can collect and track code coverage metrics. This allows us to see which product areas have no tests at all, and also which code is completely unreachable! It’s really common across many companies that code changes get merged which are never actually executed in the deployed application.
: Lines of code coverage, aggregated by platform (API, UI, etc.). By deploying an instrumented version of the product codebase, we can collect and track code coverage metrics. This allows us to see which product areas have no tests at all, and also which code is completely unreachable! It’s really common across many companies that code changes get merged which are never actually executed in the deployed application. Static Analysis Reports: Automatically generated metrics, which include cyclomatic complexity, average lines per class, average lines per function, etc. We do not strictly enforce limits here — we use this to provide visibility to our engineering teams, which helps to proactively reinforce good development habits.
Quality Dashboards
All these metrics serve one primary purpose: dashboards! Dashboards allow us to add alerts, notify the right stakeholders, and, most importantly, create measurable goals and hold ourselves accountable to maintaining a high-quality product. Collecting and publishing test automation metrics allows our Enterprise Engineering teams to build comprehensive dashboards that give us a good snapshot of our product quality.
Aggregate test results across multiple retailer environments and versions. Retailer names and release versions replaced with fruits! :)
Since metrics are published to Datadog at test case granularity, we can drill down from the high-level overview shown above into test results by feature and even by test case. These metrics are great because in situations where a test case fails in just one environment the root cause is typically a specific integration issue, while a test case failure across the board is a good indicator that bad code made it through to a production deployment.
Automation test results, aggregated by feature
Automation Test Status and Lifecycle
Instacart’s Mango framework leverages pytest’s test case states and attaches a meaning for each state. The diagram below illustrates each of these states, and also the actions required to move between states:
Automation test case lifecycle
We find that these states reflect a very typical process in our SDLC. Capturing these states also provides us a way to measure how many tests need to be worked on (those in FAIL status), and also a way to measure technical debt, (a count of tests in XFAIL status).
Acting on Automation Failures
When building our quality dashboards, the most important thing we consider is “how is the information being displayed actionable?” If a dashboard exists but no actions can be taken to investigate failures and improve the metric, then it’s not really helpful to investigate the issue. With Instacart Enterprise, Mango attaches a request ID header for every API request sent, which is then published to Datadog for any test case that failed:
For each failed test case, measure how many retailers are affected, and also the API request ID causing the test failure for easy tracing and investigation
To further improve the feedback cycle, test owners are notified via Slack each time a test run fails. The appropriate on-call team member is pinged based on the test failure, and we strive to provide enough reporting information so that a failure can be troubleshoot-ed without the need to re-run the tests again locally:
Slack messages to notify stakeholders that their tests have failed against their
Test Endpoints in Product Code
We quickly realized that black box testing our API was an unmanageable approach. For example, what if we need to automate a test case that verifies if a $2 for 1 coupon offer is correctly applied to your cart? In an extreme example, a retailer may have 10 stores and only 1 product discount, so how could we quickly find such a product?
A common solution is to run a query against a Product Catalog DB or ElasticSearch instance, but this doesn’t scale well. The biggest drawback to this approach is that test code is now tied to your infrastructure and schemas. The more systems you have tests for, the more integrations you need to manage. Maintaining sensitive credentials, database connections, etc. are dependencies too big to introduce to our test framework.
Example automation workflow to verify a product discount is applied to a user’s cart item
We came up with a system which allows our tests to interact directly with our data sources using an endpoint like GET /api/fixtures/products. The test setup methods call the endpoint with a few parameters based on a particular scenario, receive products for their scenario, and carry on with the test. This is convenient because the product code already has all dependencies in place to serve such a request, and the endpoint is also reusable for UI automation tests.
Rewarding Automation Contributors
Driving adoption among product teams is a critical part of any test automation framework. It is very important to us to embed team and product ownership into automation tests and also to reward our top contributors. A little positive reinforcement goes a long way, and we want to make our engineers feel good about contributing to automation tests by rewarding them, rather than making it feeling like a chore with no positives.
A dashboard around the office is a great way to raise awareness, drive adoption and recognize team members!
Before each merge into master, we capture the github usernames of engineers who added tests and their corresponding product teams. This allows us to give “kudos” to teams that are staying on top of automation efforts, while focusing on framework support and driving adoption for lower-contributing teams. A great way to create an environment of ongoing recognition is to show a monthly snapshot of the dashboard at an all hands meeting as well on a mounted monitor at the office.
As Mango matures, driving adoption across the organization is critical. Everyone is a contributor to quality and that’s the attitude and culture we have been encouraging at Instacart. As a new Software Engineer joining the company, you can expect an onboarding workshop scheduled with a Test Automation team member in which you will cover our best quality practices and how to contribute to our automation efforts. The Test Automation team has made it easy for engineers to see how they contribute to quality, and we are now driving Mango’s usage across multiple product areas within Instacart!
Final Thoughts
As Instacart continues to improve our automated test coverage, we need to remind ourselves that it’s not just about the number of test cases — we need to measure our progress and set goals against our observed metrics. A medium to large unorganized test suite adds only short-term value to the organization; it eventually gets scrapped or rewritten because no one knows how much is really being tested and the test code base (as well as the code base being tested!) is too large to easily comprehend. Automation becomes a powerful tool to drive good quality and delivers long term value only after we start capturing meaningful metrics and delivering actionable reporting from our test suites. | https://tech.instacart.com/understanding-software-quality-at-scale-79ebb25cb3ac | ['Dragan Rakas'] | 2020-09-02 21:12:10.514000+00:00 | ['Testing', 'Automation', 'Quality Assurance', 'Enterprise Technology', 'Software Development'] |
White Nationalist Domestic terrorism | Introduction
Domestic terrorism became a front-page mainstream media and social media phenomenon. The National Football League (NFL) player Colin Kaepernick was the first professional athlete to take a knee protesting police brutality against minorities. There has always been a racial divide in the US. However, the affluent politicians running the country always kept extremism in the shadows. Then an open white nationalist became president of the United States (POTUS) in 2016. White domestic terrorists are also known as the far-right extremists took POTUS45's backing as a sign to do domestic terrorism with impunity. This brief essay will explore far-right domestic terrorism in the movies as well as reality.
Far-right movies
Hollywood does a good job of representing domestic terrorists from the far-right. There are several movies depicting neo-nazis, the KKK, "patriot" domestic terrorist groups, etc (Gage, 2018, March 26). This essay will discuss two domestic terrorism movies. BlacKkKlansman was based on a true story. American History X is a fictional far-right movie based in neo-nazi reality. BlacKkKlansman portrayed a black Colorado rookie detective to successfully infiltrate the domestic terrorist organization known as the KKK. The black detective was able to infiltrate David Duke's inner circle, the grand wizard of the KKK. The black detective along with his Jewish partner successfully fooled the domestic terrorists into revealing domestic terrorist targets. Going undercover is a great way to infiltrate domestic terrorist organizations.
The far-right neo-nazi movie was called American History X. The film was centered around a neo-nazi domestic terrorist group with similar hatred "values" of the KKK. The beginning scene shows a home robbery gone wrong then Edward Norton’s character breaks the jaw of a black robber on the curb outside the character’s house. Norton’s character goes to prison and learns the far-right ideology is a myth like many religions after getting gang-raped by his supposed far-right, anti-gay brothers. Then Norton’s character works in a community service capacity helping the police and young people get out of the far-right domestic terrorist groups.
Non-fiction domestic terrorism
Unfortunately, far-right, Christian mythology, white-power movements are not confined to movies. The movies portray the entertaining aspects of these white-power, far-right, domestic Christian terrorists are against Middle Eastern ideologies. However, the hatred breeds at the POTUS45 chair and trickles down. Open racist hatred is now a popular far-right attack message.
The confederate flag is a symbol of domestic terrorism. The confederate south attempted a coup to overthrow the US government. The primary reason for the confederate south rebelling against the US government was slavery. The confederate south was willing to become domestic terrorists in order to keep slaves. The current neo-nazi groups and far-right groups in Europe and Asia use the US confederate flag as their go-to hate symbol. The confederate flag continues to remain a symbol of domestic terrorism in the US and adopted abroad. For example, the Charleston church shooting was an example of the white-power domestic terrorism movement encouraged by POTUS45's tweet rhetoric. A lone white-power wolf terrorized the black church by killing 9 innocent people (Webster, & Leib, 2019, Spring). Charlotteville's death was also an example of far-right domestic terrorism. As long as the US government houses a pro-far-right POTUS45, the white-power domestic terror groups will continue to enjoy brazen actions with presidential praise.
Conclusion
Far-right domestic terrorism is spotlighted on terror groups associated with white nationalism. Sports athletes continue to display solidarity for minorities thanks to the brave Caperick. However, the White House cabinet is chock-full of white national loyalists. As long as there is not a POTUS46, the far-right domestic extremists will continue to plan and destroy. This brief essay explored far-right domestic terrorism in the movies as well as reality.
References
Gage, B. (2018, March 26). Hollywood and cinematic representations of far-right domestic terrorism in the U.S. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2018.1446295
Webster, G., & Leib, J. (2019, Spring). Religion, murder, and the confederate battle flag in South Carolina. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/26233769 | https://medium.com/@BigTows/white-nationalist-domestic-terrorism-11b123a8fe02 | [] | 2020-12-27 07:55:48.423000+00:00 | ['Education', 'White Supremacy', 'Law Enforcement', 'Extremism', 'Domestic Terrorism'] |
5 checklists every construction site needs | Construction is one of the most heavily regulated industries because of its inherent risks. According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), one of every 5 workplace fatalities occurs on construction developments.
Because they’re often working at height or with heavy machinery, construction workers must be diligent about following strict safety protocols to avoid injuring themselves, their co-workers, or passersby.
The best way to ensure those protocols are followed? Use a checklist.
Checklists help people across all industries — from doctors to construction workers to hoteliers — adhere to processes that ensure they maintain a safe working environment as well as comply with quality and regulatory standards.
To that end, here are 5 checklists no construction site should be without:
Construction inspection checklist
From falling hazards to confined spaces, a general construction inspection checklist enables site managers to make sure safety measures are in place to protect workers at every turn. A construction site inspection checklist covers standards for PPE, electrical safety, tool usage and more to safeguard your construction projects from injury, liability, noncompliance fines and other issues that can endanger your crews and create costly delays.
Download a free construction inspection checklist PDF here.
Construction equipment inspection checklist
Excavators, loaders, pile drivers and other heavy equipment used in construction must be inspected regularly to ensure safe operations and keep maintenance costs down. A construction equipment checklist prompts operators to assess the condition of the brakes, horn and other safety features and take note if something is damaged or needs to be replaced. This not only helps protect the operator and people working near the vehicle, but it can help identify maintenance requirements before the equipment breaks down and causes a work stoppage.
Download a free construction equipment inspection checklist PDF here.
Crane pre-use inspection checklist
Because of their size and moving parts, cranes require daily inspections using a special checklist specifically designed for them. A daily crane pre-use inspection checklist helps users ensure site safety by confirming that reciprocating, rotating, or other moving pieces are guarded, that the load capacity and recommended operating speed are posted where the operator can see, and that the operator is trained in best practices and the appropriate hand signals for the type of crane being used.
Download a free crane pre-use inspection checklist PDF here.
Boundary and security fence inspection checklist
Security fencing is critical for safeguarding construction operations and preventing unauthorized persons from entering your site. By conducting daily boundary and security fence inspections, construction managers can verify that fencing is stable and intact and includes appropriate hazard warnings to keep the public safe and protect your company from liability.
Download a free boundary and security fence inspection checklist PDF here.
Construction incident investigation form
When an incident does occur on your construction site, it’s important to conduct an investigation to protect your company if legal action is pursued and to prevent recurrence — it’s also mandated by OSHA. While it can be unpleasant, an incident investigation is a crucial step to discover what went wrong and ensure that any hazards are remediated to prevent a similar event from happening.
Download a free construction incident investigation PDF here
Streamline construction safety with mobile inspection apps
OSHA standards evolve every year and it’s incumbent upon construction companies to stay current, not only to protect your workers, but your EMR. With paper checklists, though, it’s not always easy. You have to download or update your checklists, reprint, copy and redistribute them to your teams.
Paper checklists are problematic in other ways, too: they’re easily lost or damaged, and data collected can be difficult to decipher if an inspector’s handwriting isn’t legible. And once an inspection is complete, data collected that may require action sits idle until it gets delivered to the office. Meanwhile, you have no real-time visibility into your workers’ safety habits.
A no-code mobile data collection and workflow automation platform like Fulcrum eliminates all of those issues.
When it’s time to update your checklists, you just log in, make changes using a drag-and-drop interface (there is literally no coding required!), and save. All your teams have to do is hit the “sync” button on their mobile devices to access the latest version of your checklist, and then complete their inspections using it!
With mobile inspection checklists, they can add photos and video, scan barcodes, and generate inspection reports from anywhere. As workers complete their inspections, records are updated in the Fulcrum dashboard so you can see their progress in real time and be alerted quickly when a hazard needs to be addressed.
Inspection records are stored securely in the cloud, where they can be accessed from anywhere to provide documentation that inspections were completed (including automatic timestamps and geotags) and prove that your site is compliant with OSHA standards.
Even more, you can set up automated workflows that keep operations moving: for example, if a heavy equipment inspection reveals a need for maintenance, Fulcrum can automatically send an email or text notification to your fleet manager so they can get the work order in faster. Or if a dangerous situation arises, you can respond immediately to reduce the risk to your teams and your project.
Learn more about how construction managers are leveraging our no-code mobile data collection and workflow automation platform to streamline their inspection processes here!
This post originally appeared on the Fulcrum blog. | https://medium.com/@spatialnetworks/5-checklists-every-construction-site-needs-82eb9a4d2079 | ['Spatial Networks'] | 2020-12-15 17:50:24.986000+00:00 | ['Construction Industry', 'Checklist', 'Construction', 'Checklist App', 'Safety'] |
Good Morning | This is to all the people that have problems getting up in the morning. I understand this can be a hard thing to do for some, myself included. Its okay to not want to do something, however it’s not okay to not do it. Think of waking up in the morning as an everlasting chore. Something you have to do everyday, that starts your day. Like brushing your teeth, eating, showering, checking your phone. All those things start your day. Some are optional but it just really depends on the person. Find something that really matters to you. Something that you are looking forward to today, tomorrow, or even next week. Someday’s you will wake up and say to yourself “Man, today is gonna be a great day.” and someday’s you won’t, and that’s 100% fine. Good Morning. Have a great day! | https://medium.com/@vivdial/good-morning-2ecc85fc890d | [] | 2020-12-27 13:56:46.095000+00:00 | ['Teens', 'Waking Up', 'Morning', 'Problem Solving', 'Teenagers'] |
A happy feeling | A short story that reminds of the magical winter trip I had last year!
I can’t even describe the wonderful feeling, to ride down the track, to feel the snow under your ski and the cold air while looking at the sky colors blending together in a sunrise, behind the trees sprinkled with snow. There are no worries or tasks, only the feeling of freedom. You don’t have to worry about what’s coming next, because the only important thing is what is now and now you are feeling real happiness. | https://medium.com/@yonimini12/a-happy-feeling-d23dc12c4fa1 | [] | 2020-12-22 01:15:24.480000+00:00 | ['Sky', 'Happy', 'Selfcare', 'Ski', 'Snow'] |
Write for Inspired Writer | Update for Holiday Period: To lighten the load over the next month we will not be taking any new writers. If you entered the recent Christmas Writing Contest and would like to submit your story for publication that’s fine. Any other new writers please apply after Jan 4th 2021. Thank you!
If you’d like to write for Inspired Writer, we’d love to hear from you. Please carefully read our writer’s guidelines below. If you wish to be added as a writer, all the details are in the guidelines.
You will need to send us a draft you think is a good fit for Inspired Writer with your application.
Experienced writers go here:
Emerging writers go here:
Who are we:
Kelly Eden
Hi, I’m Kelly Eden. I live on the edge of a beautiful rain-forest in New Zealand with my family.
I’m a professional writer with over 12 years of experience in the writing industry. I’ve been featured in newspapers, blogs, and online and print magazines. Some of these include Thought Catalog, Mamamia, Zoosk, Natural Parent, Family Times, and Highly Sensitive Refuge.
I have also worked with clients from around the world, helping writers, businesses, and government organisations to develop and polish their content.
I am passionate about writing and love to see others find and share their own unique writing voices.
Ash Jurberg
G’day I’m Ash Jurberg. I live in the world’s most livable city — Melbourne, Australia.
I have worked in Marketing for (a LONG time) and have written copy for advertisements, websites, brochures, and blogs during that (LONG) time.
I am a passionate writer who believes that being a successful writer is a combination of 50% writing skill and 50% marketing skill.
I would love to be able to assist writers of all levels in how best to promote, market and sell their skills — across Medium — and other markets. | https://medium.com/inspired-writer/write-for-inspired-writer-dd74d44cfd5c | ['Kelly Eden'] | 2020-12-23 04:43:17.811000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Self', 'Writing Tips', 'Creativity', 'Submission Guidelines'] |
Design Thinking — not only design but a way of thinking | Many times, we seek practical and objective solutions. Whether in your business or your life, knowing to solve a problem in an efficient way will allow you to use your time better in other things. Design Thinking is not merely a designer thing. It is a great method that may be adopted in diverse professional areas. The name is given because it uses a common logic to designers.
Designers are naturally trained to observe. Constantly, we are called to solve problems and to develop solutions for our clients. We do researches, look to capture the essence of the business, and “put it on the paper”, or at our software, our ideas that may solve what we need. We think about doing remarkable things and, for this, we need to understand what people hope to see and feel.
Think quickly about a restaurant table. Probably, you thought about a basic table, four legs, and maybe some chairs. But, when you start to think about the experience a user could have in that place, what do you imagine? Design Thinking makes us look directly at peoples’ needs and imagine what impact we could create for people who will receive the results. It is not only about solving problems but also creating solutions that really look at the user, study, prototype, and even make mistakes while we try to make it better.
When it becomes about people, many factors enter the game. There is the cultural matter, the language, the age, and so. That is why it is so important to think about who will receive our product; then, we are able to put into practice our ideas. Thinking well, you can imagine a Burger Establishment owner, for example, selecting the flavors of the menu according to his clients. Maybe a musician picking his main track due to what is playing nowadays or what his fans like to listen to. Design Thinking is something that can reach many areas and allow your work to be more empathetic and efficient.
What about looking at the world in a more designer way? | https://medium.com/@camilla-vieira/design-thinking-not-only-design-but-a-way-of-thinking-d22699076367 | ['Camilla Vieira'] | 2021-06-22 15:42:14.165000+00:00 | ['User Experience', 'Design Thinking', 'Design', 'Designer', 'UX'] |
3 Ways to Future-Proof Your Project Management Career | The role of the Project Manager is bound to evolve in the near future, with advances in AI and related technologies which could have significant impact on the very nature of the role.
Indeed, at the core, what does every Project Manager do?
It really boils down to:
Setting up a project structure, governance and managing the delivery team through the project lifecycle
and through the project lifecycle Building detailed project plans reflective of project phases, utilizing the best-suited methodology or framework to the work at hand (e.g. Agile, DevOps, Waterfall or Hybrid delivery models) — and prioritizing activities and tasks on the plan accordingly
reflective of project phases, utilizing the best-suited to the work at hand (e.g. Agile, DevOps, Waterfall or Hybrid delivery models) — and on the plan accordingly Managing stakeholder expectations and reporting on project progress, risks, issues, and dependencies to create visibility and drive resolution
Most of the above could well be largely, if not entirely, automated within the not-too-distant future.
If AI is now entering the boardroom, helping C-Suite executives make top-level strategic decisions based on vast amounts of data and self-generated insights…it can surely run projects and even programs or, eventually, coordinate entire portfolios of work by itself.
And we are only in the early days of understanding the possibilities and impacts which AI could have on the running of organizations. Sundar Pichai, Alphabet Inc’s CEO, described it as “more profound than fire or electricity”.
AI effectively levels up human Project Managers by:
Augmenting human intelligence — by having instant access to immense datasets, and independently generating insights from them. For instance, surfacing risks and roadblocks before they become real, in a predictive manner Enabling autonomous decision-making — by producing an infinite range of project scenarios, testing products, and gathering customer data faster than any human team could Taking away the repetitive, low value-add tasks — for instance by producing live project status reports, tailored to the stakeholder group the information is needed for, or automatically recording time spent by each team member on a project
So, how do you stay ahead of the curve? | https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/3-ways-to-future-proof-your-project-management-career-f9c4993df40b | ['Clément Bourcart'] | 2020-12-16 09:16:57.482000+00:00 | ['Product', 'Project Management', 'Careers', 'Personal Development', 'Business'] |
Exit Dating Limbo With These Words: “He’s Just Not That Into You.” | The Truth Will Set You Free
At times when it comes to men and dating, I feel like Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men”: Can you handle the truth? Or in this case, can we handle the harsh truth of dating realistically?
I recently read an excellent article by writer Megan Boley on Medium delivering the harsh truth about dating today. The article titled “If He Wanted to, He Would” Is Still Good Advice and its content — rings true in the present, past and future.
But humans like to be hopeful, and it is healthier to be optimistic, so we continue to hope for what we want to be true and see what we want to see instead of the reality in front of our eyes when a guy is simply not that interested in us. (We are not alone in this mistake.)
Our Friends Mean Well But . . .
Hence, we turn to our friends to analyze the guy’s actions and concoct reasons and excuses as to why he did not return a call, text or is behaving distantly. Or these days, he maybe ghosting you for which there is really no excuse except cowardice and lack of manners. Yet the answer is simple: He’s Just Not That Into You.
Unfortunately, this problem of murky dating is compounded by our well-intentioned friends and relatives who try to make us feel better. They tell us we are beautiful, a real “catch,” smart, etc etc. “it will happen when the time is right” and so on and so on. (This occurred last night with my mother as I proclaimed I am about to give up finding romantic love after __ single years post-divorce (too embarassed to post the actual number) — it has been too long; how long can one remain hopeful?)
Time to Face The Truth But Can We Handle It?
To help others out there and reinforce the gospel truth of Megan Boley ’s article, instead of turning to our friends, I recommend reading and re-reading (until it is embedded into your system) this bible for clarity on dating men: “He’s Just Not That into You: The No Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys” written New York Times best-selling author Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo (also writers and consultants for my all time favorite show Sex & the City.)
Some Harsh Truths:
“The book polled a group of men and 100% said they’ve never been too busy to call a woman they were really into. When a guy is into you, he lets you know, he shows up, he wants to meet your friends, he can’t keep his eyes or hands off of you, and when it is time to have sex, he’s more than overjoyed to oblige.” — from “He’s Just Not that Into You.”
Hence, if the guy is not pursuing you in this manner, move on yesterday and “don’t waste the pretty” advise Behrendt and Tuccillo. In my experience, if a man truly wants you, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
Words to Heed.
So don’t waste your youth, time, energy or beauty on someone not invested in being with you. “Your lost of self-esteem may take longer to find than a new man so prioritize accordingly,” writes the authors. (This statement is incredibly true; I learned the hard way so hopefully you read this and do not have to endure my mistakes.)
Here are a few other nuggets of wisdom culled from this evergreen book every woman out in the dating field should own:
He is just not that into you if he’s not asking you out. If you can find him, then he can find you. If he wants to find you, he will. Men don’t forget how much they like you. So put down the phone. If he is not calling you, it’s because you are not on his mind. “Hey let’s meet at so-and-so’s party/any bar/friend’s house” is not a date. Even if you live in New York. He’s just not that into you if he’s having sex with someone else. He’s just not that into you if he’s a selfish jerk, a bully or a really big freak. Life is hard enough as it is without choosing someone difficult to share it with. Make space in your life the glorious things you deserve.
But We Still Gotta Have Faith
Surprisingly, the book does end on light notes, which I hope are true notes. For example, one chapter states “There’s a guy out there who wants to marry you.” Well, ok, where is he? Do tell where I may find this great guy waiting to marry me. I hope the writers are oracles in this case.
The writers also insist we have to “Have faith. What other choice is there?”
P.S. Check out Megan Boley’s story which inspired and reminded me of this great book and message here: https://psiloveyou.xyz/if-he-wanted-to-he-would-is-still-good-advice-952afa42de77 | https://medium.com/@sharifahsahar/exit-dating-limbowith-these-words-hes-just-not-that-into-you-dcd001957ff0 | ['Sharifah Chammas'] | 2021-01-28 10:23:44.169000+00:00 | ['Toxic Relationships', 'Breakups', 'Dating Advice', 'Dating Tips', 'Love'] |
The Wave Divide | The Wave Divide
Including, but not limited to, the double, ultra-friendly kid country road wave.
When I was five and wholly alive, my teacher read me the story of “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse”. I liked the country one better, even though I’d always lived in cities. At that moment in Kindergarten, I decided I was going to marry a farmer and live in wide open green spaces where people were friendly.
Nineteen years later, I did.
Really.
After I moved out of town, my husband told me to wave at those I passed driving on our dirt road. He said they were neighbours, and you said hello by waving; especially along a track so narrow that someone has to give way.
“Oh, I was wondering why all these strangers keep waving at me when I have no idea who they are. I just thought they wanted to overtake, so I slowed down.”
My farmer glances skywards, telling me to just wave. Not that he demonstrated whether it was a vague flick, a two finger salute, a flash of hand, or a slow royal pivot of the palm.
From then on, I waved. I didn’t meet many people personally, but they knew my man. They knew his mum and dad, his brothers and sisters, what they did, where they were now, what class they went to in the local high school and the total family history, including pets.
Most neighbours avoided dropping in on us in those first delight filled honeymoon months. They must have been worried they were going to catch us at it if they did.
I hardly knew anyone, just those either side a few km away. I couldn’t say what sort of car they drove, though my bloke did. (Apparently, this comes naturally when you live half an hour from a township with fewer than three thousand people.)
Two months after moving to the farm, all those who lived along the gravel road got back to my new husband about the vigorous waving his new wife was doing.
I didn’t discriminate. I waved my hand back and forth four times with each passing car, all while smiling. People started talking about the manic waver who apparently married the young fella of Ralston.
“person waving reflecting shadow on teal wall paint” by Ioana Cristiana on Unsplash
“You don’t have to wave as if you’re seeing someone off on a six-month tour of Europe, you know?”
“You told me to wave, so I did.”
A look from him, eyebrows drawn together.
“That’s how I’ve always waved.”
Another frown.
“What’s wrong with waving like that?”
“You’ve never met any of them.”
“Yeah, so?”
“It’s a bit enthusiastic is all. Normally, you just nod your head a bit or put your hand up for half a second.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I didn’t think I needed to.”
“In Newcastle, the only time anyone waved near a car was to let you know there’d been an accident.”
“You’re in the country now; just tone down the waving thing, okay?”
“Surely if I do make a wave, and I do like waving now, I can wave any way I want to.”
Husband makes an audible sigh.
“I’m just saying I’m used to waving, I’ll keep going with it just the same if you don’t mind.”
There’s a second sigh from him, even more audible. It means what was an ordinary social nicety has become over the top.
After four months, the neighbours were used to my particular wave. They got in early; laughing, smiling and shaking their hands to me like a little girl saying goodbye to a beloved Grandmamma. If there were any children in the car, they waved their little arms off via the side and back window. I thought of this as the double, ultra-friendly kid country-road wave.
Decades later, I’m still waving. Now it’s more a quick hand flash, and a “Mona Lisa Smile” rather than a deluxe newbie wave that’s brim full of enthusiasm. I guess the honeymoon period was my happy place and I expressed that right into my fingertips. Now, when I’m passing someone I do know, I still go all out with a big wave.
It’s just me, but it’s also contagious.
I’ve tried the Therese Ralston Weird Wave and Smile Technique when I’m bored at traffic lights. People in other cars mostly wave back, even if they look around unsure of themselves, trying to figure out where they know me from first. Call me what you like, but I get a kick out of it.
It makes me smile more.
It gets my glow on.
It rocks my world until lights go green.
It makes me laugh out loud, especially if there’s also a dog who puts it’s head on the side to try and figure out how they know me as well.
Even better if that dog reacts at exactly the same time as the driver.
And if that dog leans the same way, or looks like the owner; I’m gone.
It’s better than sitting alone with red-light frustration any day.
Dogs also wave their tails when they’re happy to see someone. There are OTT wags and completely obvious butt wriggles I’m sure no mutt is embarrassed by; so, why not us?
Please don’t think I condone real people going around jiggling our tushes’ at everyone we meet, but why not give a little wave.
Just a small one.
It will make you feel better.
Hello, are you still with me?
I’m waving at you across the www divide.
Are you smiling, possibly waving back; or will you dismiss me lightly as a lunatic with simply too much positivity for a Sunday Medium post? | https://thereser.medium.com/the-waving-divide-d964993b8392 | ['Therese Ralston'] | 2018-09-24 05:17:29.173000+00:00 | ['Positivity', 'Smiling', 'Waving', 'Friendliness', 'Enthusiasm'] |
La importancia de los datos en las empresas | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/entel-ocean/la-importancia-de-los-datos-en-las-empresas-3d835178561d | ['Entel Ocean'] | 2020-05-11 21:35:10.135000+00:00 | ['Data Management', 'Data Science', 'Data Driven', 'Analytics', 'Data'] |
Harnessing new technologies for strengthening transport connectivity for sustainable development | Harnessing new technologies for strengthening transport connectivity for sustainable development
By Sandeep Raj Jain, Economic Affairs Officer
Technology is helping the world stay more connected. Photo: Shutterstock
International road transport requires agreements among countries on traffic rights to enable movement of vehicles of one country into another.
The signing of a transport agreement that allows movement of foreign vehicles indicates significant steps forward to reduce cross-border and transit transport costs.
However, while signing is a first step, real benefits materialize on implementation of the agreement. Implementation is normally fraught with numerous challenges as it involves unlearning the old ways of facilitating and instituting control measures and learning the new ways.
Experience in the Asia-Pacific region indicates that some transport agreements signed many years ago have still not been fully implemented. One of the major reasons for less than full implementation of these agreements has been the lack of appropriate operational tools with border agencies to implement the provisions of the agreements confidently.
Technology is helping improve the efficency of traditional forms of transport. Photo: Shuttestock
Fortunately, new technologies provide the possibility to develop tools that could help border agencies manage increasing traffic while ensuring compliance with regulations.
In 2012, ESCAP Member States adopted a Regional Strategic Framework for Facilitation of International Road Transport that identifies six fundamental issues and seven modalities to support international road transport and possible solutions to address them.
As a part of the Framework, ESCAP developed Transport Facilitation Models to support countries to implement transport facilitation agreements. One of the models that demonstrates use of new technologies in transport and transit facilitation is the Secure Cross-Border Transport Model.
The model provides a conceptualization of an intelligent transport system involving the design of a cross-border vehicle and cargo monitoring system using new technologies, including ICT, satellite positioning and electronic seals.
Ever since ESCAP developed the model, many countries expressed interest in its implementation. The Bhutan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal Motor Vehicle Agreement that was signed in June 2015 contains provision for the electronic tracking of vehicles.
Pending enactment of the above agreement, ESCAP, jointly with the Asian Development Bank has been providing technical assistance for pilot implementation of the Model on selected corridors in the countries and established techno-economic feasibility of such technologies for cross- border and transit transport facilitation.
Apart from South Asia, many countries in Southeast Asia have also evinced interest in applying the model along the specified corridors. ESCAP will soon undertake trial runs along the transport corridor among these countries.
Secure Cross Border Transport Model
In addition, an Intergovernmental Agreement on International Road Transport among China, Mongolia and Russian Federation was signed in December 2016. To implement the agreement, Mongolia has sought technical assistance from ESCAP for a pilot application of a secure cross-border transport model on the transit traffic passing through Mongolia.
Electronic tracking technologies have been emerging rapidly on the back of developments in ICT. Used effectively, they have potential to reduce transit costs by obviating the needs for guarantees due to reduced risk perception by customs, as these technologies make real time enforcement of violations by transiting vehicles possible.
The availability of diverse solutions for the tracking of vehicles, however, could complicate cross-border electronic tracking due to lack of interoperability among the software/electronic seals. Therefore, it might be appropriate to define and explicate minimum requirements for the key components of cross-border electronic tracking systems to ensure maximum facilitation.
Transportation is a crucial aspect of sustainable development. Photo: Shutterstock
ESCAP has developed guidelines on automated customs transit transport systems that combines electronic tracking of vehicles with customs transit systems. Based on the exchange of electronic messages among stakeholders, the system is fully electronic and its implementation could reduce transit transport costs, particularly for landlocked developing countries in line with the Vienna Programme of Action.
Under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, international road transport, in particular, is being scrutinized closely due to renewed calls for shifting to more sustainable modes of transport, such as railways.
However, given the comparative advantages of international road transport, road transport currently plays and will continue to play a vital role in overall transportation systems.
Moving forward, there is an urgent need to make international road transport more efficient by further reducing the non-physical barriers and integrating with other transport modes for providing sustainable transport solutions. Innovative technologies could provide a way in this direction. | https://medium.com/@UNESCAP/harnessing-new-technologies-for-strengthening-transport-connectivity-for-sustainable-development-c66be3351b51 | ['United Nations Escap'] | 2019-07-16 04:32:20.445000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'Development', 'Asia Pacific', 'Technology', 'Transportation'] |
Street-Photo Spotlight: Traffic Victims Will Never Walk in These Shoes Again | Back in mid-November, 100 people gathered at San Francisco’s sixth annual World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims to grieve those who have been killed in traffic collisions. Along the steps of City Hall, attendees left flowers amid rows of empty shoes symbolizing those who died in the city since the start of Vision Zero in 2014.
Walk San Francisco and San Francisco Bay Area Families for Safe Streets (part of the Families for Safe Streets national movement) organized the event, gathering donated shoes from the public for the memorial. Pedestrian advocates insist that car crashes and collisions are not random “accidents,” but instead the result of dangerous street design and traffic behavior throughout the city.
The advocates are calling on leaders and officials to help prevent future traffic deaths by lowering speed limits on high-injury streets like Geary, Bush, and 19th Avenue; launching a data-driven speed management program to pinpoint dangerous spots and corridors; and by expanding “left-turn calming,” rubber bumpers strategically placed in certain intersections to slow traffic. | https://thefrisc.com/street-photo-spotlight-traffic-victims-will-never-walk-in-these-shoes-again-c9a8b64b2efb | ['Emily Huston'] | 2020-12-03 22:01:55.832000+00:00 | ['Street Photography', 'Safety', 'San Francisco', 'Traffic', 'Planning'] |
Remote collaboration is here to stay. Should it be? | Remote collaboration is here to stay. Should it be?
Or, when a plane ticket is really worth it.
Without a crystal ball, it’s impossible to say which of our hard-won pandemic adaptations will stay for the long-term. Yet with so many industries facing a low-cost environment, it’s fair to say that virtual meetings of some sort will remain for some time after it is safe to be in person. During COVID-19 remote work, my Design Strategy team converted our entire physical workshop practice into a digital strength. It wasn’t easy, but I now believe it is possible to create design thinking workshops — meetings crafted to pull ideas and insights from diverse participants — that are more effective virtually than in person. However, this conclusion comes with a caveat. Human brains were not designed to create connection, build trust or derive clarity in a virtual environment. We either need to design around these virtual limitations or limit our own expectations if the long-term virtual workshop is here to stay.
Abandoning the core strength: moving from in-person to remote workshops
The in-person design thinking workshop was a staple of our Design Strategy team’s offering. Colorful, inventive, and choreographed to the minute, they were a place for our participants (in groups up to 90) to harness their creativity and collaborate with peers to solve difficult problems. We would spend weeks delving into problem definition and debating the right methods to pull insight from our participants on workshop day. One of our points of pride were the fit-for-purpose tactile experiences we would design to harness cognition — a workshop designed to create a 20-year-vision included a journal-like workbook with case studies and writing prompts, while one identifying new markets featured a flipbook where participants could mix and match markets with potential applications. The pandemic forced us to abandon these old strengths and determine new ways of working. It was nothing short of an identity crisis, but we knew we needed to pivot quickly if we wanted to help our clients evolve their businesses during an economic crisis.
Unanticipated benefits of remoteness
As expected, pivoting was hard. We learned new technologies, experimented with synchronous data capture, and built another layer into our choreography (“backstage” was now occupied with assigning people to breakout groups, monitoring the chat window, or solving technology problems). But it wasn’t two weeks into virtual work that our Design Strategy practice started to see unexpected — and even delightful — benefits of remote workshops. The first came when the Singapore half of our team started participating more wholeheartedly in our weekly team meeting. With an equal place on the grid, they could more easily join a topic. Everyone could see when someone was waiting for his or her turn to speak, and the team leveraged playful backgrounds to celebrate milestones and designed a picture guessing game using a shared digital whiteboard. (For more suggestions for improving your team’s virtual meetings, download my checklist.)
The energy of an in-person session didn’t translate. In fact, I was convinced people had checked out and were bored. But then we saw their output and it was, quite frankly, incredible.
It made sense that a team that was used to playing together could transition to remote. The real surprise came when we saw the output of our first remote design thinking session. Our task was to leverage cross-disciplinary groups to redesign laboratory equipment. Separating objectives from the traditional mechanisms for achieving them in person was critical. My partner and I split what would have been an eight-hour “maker space” session into three virtual meetings over three days. Following a short scene-setting kickoff meeting, the teams generated individual improvement ideas, then reunited several days later to combine their ideas into a prototype that would go head-to-head against other teams’ in the final day’s pitch session. The energy of an in-person session didn’t translate. In fact, I was convinced people had checked out and were bored. But then we saw their output and it was, quite frankly, incredible. They had combined their inputs effectively and generated four completely different concepts, each designed to address a critical set of problems. Their feedback after the second session was more surprising still — they were collaborating. They felt heard. They were having fun. Better yet, they felt they had generated better ideas because they had been virtual. The time to think between sessions and the chance to ideate at home, where their minds could wander, allowed them to generate better insights. It was a turning point in how we saw remote work.
Since then, my team has gone on to plan and guide countless remote workshops, intended to help teams uncover root problems, comprehend and synthesize diverse input, generate market entry strategies, or transform business processes. After one session, an executive posed the question: Can a remote session like this still take place after the pandemic is over? After all, she reasoned, we could unite disciplines from around the world without calendar headaches, jet lag or airfare — was the marginal utility of an in-person session really worth the complexity and cost?
Can we save airfare and have remote workshops, like, forever?
The answer to this question, as you might imagine, is nuanced. Cognitively speaking, there simply is no substitute for in-person, face-to-face interaction. The amount of information an individual can capture from gestures, tone, facial expressions and the like, is more than the bandwidth possible through onscreen interaction. Researchers believe humans developed language explicitly for the purpose of social unification, which would give them an advantage by organizing in service of a common goal. That interaction was not optimized for a two-dimensional flickering screen.
It follows, then, that the areas where leaders will want to invest time and money in airfare — or lower their expectations for output — are those challenging human-to-human interactions that involve either developing trust, synthesizing group experience, or deciding as a group between multiple uncertain outcomes.
At the same time, humans are resilient, and there are things we do just as well virtually as we do in-person. Basic information processing, like reading this article or digesting financial analyses, is nearly as efficient online as it is in person. It follows, then, that the areas where leaders will want to invest time and money in airfare — or lower their expectations for output — are those challenging human-to-human interactions that involve either developing trust, synthesizing group experience, or deciding as a group between multiple uncertain outcomes. In our experience, the following workshop goals are difficult enough to contemplate airfare — or to allow your team the time to implement mitigating tactics.
Download a checklist for planning your next virtual meeting here!
Workshop goals you need to consider closely before settling on remote.
1. Building trust or camaraderie. Virtual working robs us of the serendipitous connections we form from aimless small talk, which costs very little in person but must be awkwardly scheduled or inserted as an interruption to a group session while collaborating virtually. Think about the last time a customer confided in you or you had a marvelous team breakthrough. Did it happen during the staged interview or in the taxi ride to dinner afterward?
If you have to build trust remotely, allow extra time to allow informal data to enter into your conversations as a group. Schedule non-objective time. You might start a meeting by sharing what unique strength each person brings to the group. As trust is forming, schedule one-on-one sessions with members to ensure the questions they don’t feel comfortable asking online can be addressed before they do too much work on their own.
2. Synthesizing and communicating a “hive mind.” Getting everyone on a team up-to-speed with shared data is a task better accomplished in person, where the brain’s natural storytelling processing capabilities can be fully engaged. We’re much more likely to remember that story Han told about his meeting with the Prime Minister where he had egg on his tie than the fact that six out of seven respondents preferred the green bottle. This also applies when forming a new team — understanding whom to turn to when a specific expertise is needed is often a story recollection, rather than a stated fact in a shared database. These stories — or the data that teams gather individually and then assemble into a group insight — are better captured in-person.
If you have to build on team information remotely, allow extra time to establish a common format for data capture (Basecamp™, Slack™, Microsoft’s OneNote™ and Azure DevOps™, are all tools we’ve used with success) and allow time in your group meeting to bring it together verbally. When sharing verbally, ask people to share one key insight and one surprising observation from their research or past experience. This allows them to hone in on what the takeaway was, while also sharing divergent information that might add up to a group insight when the team hears it.
3. Making a decision amidst uncertainty. If data and variables are quickly changing and people need to react to that information, a virtual workshop will be difficult for people. It’s not just the added time to synthesize changing information in the meeting; the variety of information processing tendencies on any team is likely to make the verbal learners overpower the visual learners, and the kinetic learners walk out the door.
If you have to make an uncertain decision remotely, allow extra time to create clarity around the team’s ultimate objective. Depending upon the level of uncertainty and research needed, this could take weeks. As the team is working, help them process existing and new information by prioritizing based upon what they will be able to do when they have more information, and if they’ll be able to act in time once they actually know. Focus on the actionable, and recognize a level of risk with those that remain uncertain. (If you want to remember these tips after you put this article away, download a checklist here.)
The lose-lose-lose situation: an in-person virtual hybrid.
While you might use time or creative design to overcome most remote workshop obstacles, the one interaction I have consistently seen fail to live up to expectations is a meeting where one or more participants are virtual, while the rest are in-person. This is a lose-lose-lose proposition. The people in person have to slow down their thinking (and talking) to ensure people on the phone can hear them, and they can’t use tactile tools like sticky notes or templates, which so seamlessly connect kinetic and auditory learning in a workshop setting.
If it’s not possible for every participant to be in-person, these meetings are best held completely virtual.
Unless you’re using some pretty high-end videoconferencing software, the virtual participants don’t benefit from seeing everyone and cannot easily interrupt or participate in conversation. And the moderator must simultaneously juggle hearing inputs, synthesizing the direction of the team, with managing a/v hiccups along the way. If it’s not possible for every participant to be in-person, these meetings are best held completely virtual. | https://medium.com/design-at-exxonmobil/remote-collaboration-is-here-to-stay-should-it-be-dd021b531358 | ['Erica Nevas'] | 2020-11-20 21:23:57.065000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'Design Strategy', 'Team Building', 'Pandemic', 'Remote Working'] |
3 Things You Should Do Before You Go To Bed | Do you ever wake up wanting to get work done, but then mope around and get nothing done?
If this has ever happened to you, you are likely to do things wrong before bed. And as a result, don’t get good enough sleep.
You don’t ever want to wake up with a foggy mind with a deadline to meet.
Tim Roth once said:
“Sleep is an investment in the energy you need to be effective tomorrow”
Doing the wrong things before you go to sleep will set you up for an inefficient next day. You will have a lack of energy, motivation, and the ability to do anything through the rest of your day. | https://medium.com/illumination/5-things-you-should-do-before-you-go-to-bed-decfb5c10f78 | ['Mike Wang'] | 2020-12-20 20:53:25.847000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Health', 'Advice', 'Life', 'Personal Growth'] |
Puffin 全雲端隔離才是真正安全的隔離 | CloudMosa’s mission is to empower the world’s phones through cloud computing and make them universally powerful and useful.
Follow | https://medium.com/cloudmosa-tw/%E5%85%A8%E9%9B%B2%E7%AB%AF%E9%9A%94%E9%9B%A2%E6%89%8D%E6%98%AF%E7%9C%9F%E6%AD%A3%E5%AE%89%E5%85%A8%E7%9A%84%E9%9A%94%E9%9B%A2-355e671a037 | ['Cloudmosa'] | 2020-11-17 02:40:42.805000+00:00 | ['Web Isolation', 'Cloud Services', 'Cloud Computing', 'Cybersecurity', 'Remote'] |
Grace and speed | I think therefore I write. I have an MA in Creative Writing. I write fiction and short thought pieces. There is more about me and my other work on LinkedIn.
Follow | https://medium.com/house-of-haiku/grace-and-speed-574b336d1cc2 | ['David Hope'] | 2020-12-05 15:48:34.307000+00:00 | ['Earth', 'Haiku', 'Intelligence', 'Oceans', 'Orcas'] |
True Thursday | True Thursday
Owen stood as close as he could to the tv screaming French phrases and then singing a Spanish song as something completely different was playing on the screen. All of these words and songs he learned from watching Disney Junior on YouTube. I’ve always thought he considers all languages as one big happy language and the older he gets I’m pretty sure I’m right. I’m slowly getting him to ask for the other languages though. He now asks for Disney Junior in “Latina”, “Italianana”, “Germaaan”, “Spanisd”, and “Frenche”. He also asks for “avocado” but I think he is trying to say a cooking show’s host’s name. Plus, he asks for it in other languages that I can’t even distinguish. And the stronger his English becomes the more he asks me to find videos in all of these languages. Trying to convince him I cannot say all the words in all the languages frustrates him to no end. And then the screaming is out of control. I’m taking a different approach now and hoping that he will realize we don’t scream at each other. One step at a time I remind myself. He understands no personal space. He will get an inch from my nose or walk up and pull my hair out of the blue. We talk about it all the time and tonight he actually walked up to me, got real close to touching my hair but didn’t. Five minutes later he did though. He jumps constantly through our house. We have a small trampoline and lots of sensory toys but he still jumps up and down a lot. I can feel my whole house shake when he does it and I keep wondering when we will end up in the basement. I think we might need to add a little support to the floors. It took him three hours to fall asleep. “One plus one ecos two two plus two ecos fours fours ecos touch the monster’s eyes to wake it up it’s time to go to sweep” and this is where the fake snoring begins. “It’s time to go to sleep night night everybody”, he continued and then more fake snoring. I didn’t know one can fake snore for an hour but one can. His words are filled from videos and apps that he plays. He kept laughing, jumping all over the bed, and then he gave himself several high fives and finally calmed down enough to fall asleep. This momma is tired today and possibly a little cranky but according to Owen “you happy today” so I will let his smile guide me. Don’t give up on the happiness yet to come. Keep pushing forward and know that tomorrow is a brand new day. Smiles to all and donut daze! | https://medium.com/@lynnbrowder/true-thursday-dcf91454f7f9 | ['Lynn Browder'] | 2020-12-18 04:58:42.371000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Parenting', 'Autism', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration'] |
Testing a Spring Boot application with the Google Cloud Spanner Emulator | Testing a Spring Boot application with the Google Cloud Spanner Emulator Peter Runge Follow Nov 19 · 4 min read
Cloud Spanner has been around for a while, but testing your applications against a real instance could be difficult:
There is a cost involved using a live instance for testing — “Don’t test too much it’s costing us money!”
You have to be online and have decent connectivity — not great if you’re working while commuting
Recently, Google released the Cloud Spanner Emulator. The emulator can run on your own machine and is compatible with a real Spanner instance — it can run exactly the same SQL statements as the real Spanner.
In this guide, we’ll go through how to set up the emulator to run as part of a build of a small Spring Boot Java application.
Using the emulator
The Cloud Spanner emulator can run as a normal process under Linux, or with Docker on other platforms. We’ll be using the docker image in this guide since it’s easy and self-contained, and I like my builds to run anywhere.
The emulator project is here on Github. There are instructions on how to get this working under Docker here, but let’s put all this logic in our build so that other devs (and the CI server) won’t have to worry about it.
A simple Spring Boot application
Our application will be very simple, using Spring Data for data access. A couple of entities for the demo:
and their repositories:
Test Configuration
For integration testing, a bit of setup is required. This piece of Spring configuration will be used for setting up the testing environment:
We will be using a different Spanner configuration for testing, reading project, instance and database IDs from system properties, using defaults if they are not specified. This will allow users to hit a real Spanner instance if they want to run tests manually, or on special CI builds. Maybe we want to use the emulator for day-to-day CI but for builds before releases we’ll use a real Spanner instance?
The environment variable SPANNER_EMULATOR_HOST will be configured with the location of the Spanner emulator. If not specified, an attempt will be made to use a real Spanner instance instead.
When the Spanner emulator is started, there is a single project available with no instances configured. This code:
finds the only instance config available in the emulator and also finds the only available project. From this information, a new instance can be created, and then a new database. When the database ID provider bean is created (which is only once for the application), this is a good point to set all of this up. It’s pretty cheap to do anyway in the emulator, so even if you decide to do this for every test method it shouldn’t add too much overhead.
The Integration Tests
Now we have all of this set up, we can write a test:
We’ll use the repository classes to delete all the data and recreate it between each test, so we’re always testing in a known state. Then exercise a couple of the repositories just to prove the emulator is working.
Wiring everything together with a Maven project
We will start with a pretty simple Spring Boot project with Spanner dependencies:
So far, we have nothing to run the integration tests. Next, we’ll add a Docker plugin that will spin up a Docker container to run the Spanner emulator:
The first part is specifying the Docker image. The name of the Docker image is gcr.io/cloud-spanner-emulator/emulator:1.0.0 which we get from the Spanner emulator documentation. Since we want a consistent build, we’ll pick a concrete version number to use, 1.0.0. The list of available versions can be determined by listing the tags with the gcloud command line tools:
gcloud container images list-tags
gcr.io/cloud-spanner-emulator/emulator
The emulator exposes a TCP port which we’ll use. The configuration:
<port>+spanner.emulator.host:spanner.emulator.port:9010</port>
will map port 9010 in the container to a randomly selected free port on the host, and will also save a couple of system properties containing the host port and the Docker host itself. Usually the Docker host will be localhost but now always — it depends on your platform — for example users that use docker-machine for launching Docker will have a host corresponding to a virtual machine.
Below that, we instruct the Docker plugin to not continue with the build until the TCP port 9010 is responding — we don’t want to kick off our tests before the emulator has fully started up.
The remaining part is to configure the execution of the integration tests themselves using the failsafe plugin:
The SPANNER_EMULATOR_HOST environment variable is being configured with the host and port of the emulator that was spun up by Docker. The rest is stock-standard integration test configuration for failsafe.
Run mvn verify and the Spanner emulator will be started in Docker, then the tests will run, and finally the emulator container is stopped and removed again. The first time this is run you’ll need network connectivity to download dependencies and the Spanner Docker image, but after that the build can be run even if you don’t have any network/Internet access.
Using a real Spanner instance
If there is a need to run tests against a real Spanner instance, we can change the project a bit to allow this.
Let’s define 3 build properties that could potentially be configured from the command line: test.projectId, test.instanceId and test.databaseId. The JUnit test code previously written already accommodates these, so let’s thread these through in the build file by redefining the failsafe plugin configuration:
But what about the emulator? Let’s move all the emulator code into a Maven profile:
Here we have a profile that will be always activated unless test.projectId is configured, so it will work like before. The SPANNER_EMULATOR_HOST environment variable will only be set in failsafe if this profile is active.
So now, without any properties set, the emulator will run and the build will run the tests with the emulator. But if there is a need to run against a real Spanner instance, set those three properties:
mvn verify -Dtest.projectId=helix-sydney -Dtest.instanceId=myinstance -Dtest.databaseId=cats
You’ll need to configure credentials for your instance before you run. | https://medium.com/google-cloud/testing-a-spring-boot-application-with-the-google-cloud-spanner-emulator-3c4d5d6b52fb | ['Peter Runge'] | 2020-11-19 17:31:04.179000+00:00 | ['Maven', 'Cloud Spanner', 'Google Cloud Platform', 'Java', 'Spring Boot'] |
An Egoist Critique of ‘‘The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything | An Egoist Critique of ‘‘The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything Alexander Hope Aug 5·16 min read
Let us look at how the book, ‘‘The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything’’ depicts Dialectical Egoism. For some reason or another, this book is hailed by post-leftist circles and also by leftist circles, but this book is the anti-stirnerite per excallance under a false analysis.
The book starts out by making two contradictory statemenets from the get go:
‘‘1
Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society.
2
The present forms of greed lose out, in the end, because they turn out to be not greedy enough.’’
First and foremost Greed is not in it’s fullness in communist society, but at its most lowest. Secondly it claims that the old forms of greed lose out when they are not ‘‘Greedy enough’’ — this claim seems to be correct until it is coupled with statement 1. The book tries to explain how the Narrow Egoism of Max Stirner is a weak egoism when compared to ‘‘communist egoism’’ — because Stirner’s egoism takes into account only my quantity of ‘‘egoism’’ — while in communist society, egoism is quantitavely much larger in scope, because all of ‘‘society’’ is egoist. So therefore the book dialectically argues that the ‘‘weaker Stirner’s egoism’’ will lose out in the end because it is not as greedy as communist egoism — a society where people are so egoists that they demand a stateless, classless and moneyless society where the surplus value of labour is retained and all members of society enjoy the fruits of labour according to their need.
My private egoism is weaker than collective egoism, therefore collective egoism is stronger and wins over my individual private egoism is the argument in a nut shell. But this is an ignorant argument for two main reasons
First reason: ‘‘I can make the claim that anything is stronger in collective form — for instance I can claim that christanity out of a wish to ‘‘enjoy heaven’’ is a much stronger form of egoism than my private egoism’’ — The argument this book makes does not solely exist for ‘‘communism’’ but can literally apply for any ideology in existence, therefore the argument makes no sense.
Second Reason: ‘‘Communist egoism is not the highest form of egoism, because an egoism that demands of me to resign myself and become an addict of society, like a junkie who always wants a fix from ‘‘communist society’’ according to my need is certainly not the most liberatory form of egoism. The egoism that is most liberatory has no ‘ ‘highest form’’ — there isn’t a stage where the egoist stops and thinks and says ‘‘That’s as far as I can liberate myself’’ — because the egoist will always liberate himself as far as he possibly can, until death. Therefore, the book has a misconception of egoism and tries to explain it in ‘‘communist terms’’ — while communism has a ‘‘final historical stage’’ — egoism has no such ‘‘final stage’’.
The essays in this book in particular seem to confuse Stirner’s Egoism with ‘‘blatant egoism’’ or rather ‘‘Greed and selfishness’’ — this is an incorrect approach to Stirner, — Egoists aren’t just selfish people who want to increase our selfishness, the primary point of egoism is to ‘‘free oneself’’ from any fetter and chain by being unique and in so doing, it therefore follows as a secondary determined factor, that one be ‘‘selfish and egotistic’’ — Selfishness itself is a secondary notion of Stirner’s egoism that is determined by one’s wish to acknowledge himself as the unique one and to free onself from all chains of oppression. This book seems to deny that analysis and instead simply analysis it from the point of view of ‘‘greed’’ in the most obscene and bourgeois manner. The book claims that Narrow egoism shall be transformed into communist egoism through the ‘‘socialization of greed and selfishness’’ — but a selfish society is necessarily a capitalist society, I as an individual can be selfish and still not be capitalist, but a society that is selfish is necessarily a capitalist one, not a communist one. Communist society is altruisitic, even though it’s people may be selfish to a certain extent.
The book in general analyses things upside down:
Egoism as precursor to communism, Greed is socialized, Communism fulfills the Egoist.
In reality, its the other way round,
communism is a precursor to egoism, Altruism in communism is socialized as a negation of capitalist egotism and communism in turn oppresses the egoist and suppresses him. The Idler and the egoist develop as contradictions to communist society itself. It makes more sense for altruism to develop as a contradiction to bourgeois egotism — that it makes sense for expanded egoism to develop as a contradiction to narrow egoism.
In it’s analysis of Dialectical Egoism, the book claims the following,
‘‘Communism is not the self-repression of egoism. It is only when narrow egoism wants to transcend itself for its own deepest reasons: when it finds internal reasons, egoistic reasons; when it sees itself becoming its own ruin, defeating to itself, self-defeating, and — therefore, self-contradictory — that it brings itself to its own end, and communism begins. Private egoism historically is its own undoing. Its exercise brings about its own socialization — social egoism. Communism is the negation of egoism only by virtue of being a higher form of egoism — egoism’s own higher form. Narrow egoism, the ideology of self-gratification and self-realization, and the practice of exclusive self-gratification and self-realization becomes, at a certain stage in its development, a fetter upon self-realization and a fetter upon selfgratification. It becomes the main limit and obstacle to its own goals. It becomes a barrier to itself. This is the self-negativity which awakens in it the desire for its own transcendance: for self-transcendance, a supersession in accord with itself, with its own essence, and on its own terms, basing itself on the possibility of the community of gratification as the unlimited amplification of gratification. This is the immanent self-critique of narrow egoism; the death sentence which it pronounces upon itself. Thus the determinate negation of narrow egoism can only be through its own organic development, its own further development. That is, it can only be self-negation. “Happiness” at the expense of others; the exclusion of the others’ happiness from your own henceforth appears as a miserable basis; as the opposite of happiness, as misery, and private property as a wealth of poverty, compared to the new basis which has grown up secretly with modern society itself. Communism is the comprehension of exclusive egoism as historically self-contradictory and thus finite: doomed to perish — as not eternal “human nature” but, on the contrary, self-canceling; transitory; transitional; as the decidedly unnatural (antisocial) condition of man prior to the historical self-completion of the human species. Communism is the comprehension of bourgeois egoism as already containing and implying its own historical negation, as containing its own negation in embryo — containing the seeds of its own destruction — by virtue of its being false to itself. Society, “socialism” — and social production — was its repressed essence all along. — (The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything)
First and foremost it claims that communism is not the repression of egoism. I must first clarify, that egoism has always been repressed by social systems, whether feudalism, whether capitalism and even communism. Dialectically this book observes ‘‘Egoism’’ as the phenemonology of the subjective within historical development. The book treats egoism as a precursor to ‘‘communism’’ as a precursor to the transcendentalism to the phenemonological development of objectivity in history. It is rather the other way round, communism is a precursor to egoism and the phenemonology of objectivity is a precursor to the phenemonology of subjectivity. This can be simply verified through philosophical historical events themselves, whilst Hegel was an ‘‘objectivist’’ and within the early Hegelians we observe the historical development of objectivity, we observe that this acted as precuros to the historical development of subjectivity that we find later on in Kierkegaard and Stirner. The Egoist can never ‘‘Transcend’’ himself, because the ego is all there can possibly ‘‘Be’’ — the unique cannot transcend himself beyond what he is, he can only acquire the power he already has. Everything the egoist accomplishes in future times, is not because of a new power which he has achieved by ‘‘transcending himself’’ but through a power that was always buried within himself from the beginning. There’s no such thing as a ‘‘narrow or a larger egoism’’ — because the egoist is always fully egoist, not a little bit egoist now, and more egoist later. I always remember Stirner’s quote in cases like these:
‘‘We are perfect altogether! For we are, every moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more.’’
Another quotation I remember, regarding the inability to transcend oneself is specifically this by Stirner,
‘If you are bound to your past hour, if you must babble to-day because you babbled yesterday,[21] if you can not transform yourself each instant, you feel yourself fettered in slavery and benumbed. Therefore over each minute of your existence a fresh minute of the future beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you get away “from yourself,” — i. e. from the self that was at that moment. As you are at each instant, you are your own creature, and in this very “creature” you do not wish to lose yourself, the creator.”
This is the paradox of Stirner’s dialectics, we are namely contradictory individuals, on one hand we are our own creature, on the other hand we are the creator of our own creature. It is true that we are dialectically transformed from creature to creator and vice versa — this is the ‘‘egoist dialectical law’’ — if we want to use a technical term. However Stirner does not call the transformation from creature to creator a ‘‘progress’’ or an ‘‘improvement’’ or a ‘‘transcendence’’ — because even if we are transformed into a creator, we have not transcended over the fact that we shall find ourself as ‘‘creatures’’ — if we do not transform ourselves we feel enslaved and fettered, because we remain a creature, meanwhile, in our being a creature we do not want to lose ourselves the creator. Why is this a paradox? — Because creature and creator are both contradictiory elements within the individual that are not reconciled through the dialectical process of the unity of opposites. This is the essence of Stirner as a paradoxician in dialectical fashion, but books like these ‘‘The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything’’ change Stirner’s dialectics in herectical fashion. From the paradox of Stirner’s dialectics, it instead focuses on a ‘‘marxified’’ dialectics of egoism, that only focuses not on the individual’s egoist development, but on the transformation from ‘‘Narrow Egoism’’ — into ‘‘social egoism’’ — this ‘‘social egoism’’ is as much a spook as ‘‘social altruism’’ because it is a ‘‘generality, an absolute ideal’’ — and even if such a thing as social egoism existed, it would still be in the form of ‘‘individualist narrow private egoism’’ — because only individuals can be egoists, societies do not have hearts and minds that can express themselves, we can say that a society is ‘‘egotistic’’ in it’s economic framework, but we cannot say that society is a functioning egoist, or a functioning individual, because society is an ideal all the spookmongrels of the world aspire towards as an absolute.
But let us suppose there is such a thing as a ‘‘narrow egoism’’ — that there is such a thing as the narrow viewpoint of ‘‘My Egoism’’ as an individual, does this imply that my private egoism shall meet its own undoing?
The book claims that communism is a much higher form of egoism that has done away with ‘‘private egoism’’ — but what the author of the book does not understand is that the private egoism he’s refering too, is the private egoism in bourgeois society, the egoism in communism is a different variant of egoism — however by no means is the ‘‘egoism’’ in communism the highest version of egoism. Namely there are two forms of egoism:
‘‘The Narrow Egoism within bourgeois society’’ is not egoism persay but rather ‘‘egotism’’
Second Form: ‘‘Communist society destroys only ‘‘bourgeois egotism’’ — these are the ‘‘social egoists’’. Social egoism stands as a negation to bourgeois egotism
Third Form: ‘‘The egoism of the unique one that is the negation of the ‘‘social egoism’’ of communism.
Clarification: ‘‘The Egoism of the unique one can exist at any moment in history, but it shows itself most clearly in contradiction and negation with the social egoism of communist society.’’
Does narrow egoism bring about its own death dialectically? — This essay seems to think so when it says that the egoist in communist society shall ‘‘negate himself’’ — Even if this is true, that the egoist shall negate himself, then it follows, that egoism shall form oncemore when it meets with the contradiction of the self that negates the ‘‘non-self’’ — Perhaps the author does not understand egoism at all, — How does the author maintain that these ‘‘social egoists’’ still exists, while also maintaining in the same breathe that the egoist shall ‘‘negate himself’’ — clearly this would imply the death of the egoist, not the fulfillment of egoism as the essay has claimed. Even if these social egoists existed, one can still maintain that the most advanced egoist is the egoist who is not a ‘‘social one’’ but an ‘‘anti-social’’ egoist that socializes only when he has too in the form of a union of egoists, or perhaps if he so wishes, never in his life decides to socialize.
The egoism of communist society is the egoism of ‘‘society’’ — it is not my egoism, but rather the egoism of a society at large. Whenever this society has a certain egoism which differs from mine, the society will prioritize itself over my interests, and thus the egoism of society triumphs over my egoism. How can this possibly be the most pure form of egoism, if at a moment’s notice it will demand of its members to sacrifice their egoism, for the egoism of society at large?
The book doesn’t reconcile contradictions at all, rather it adds unto more contradictions that make no sense, such as the concept of the ‘‘social egoist’’ or ‘‘social individual’’ — the idea that society cannot exist without the individual and vice versa, — this of course I also believe to be incorrect, The book claims that,
‘‘Society, without the individual, is empty, is without its existence, just as the individual, without society, is without its existence — and even outside human society, is not a human individual (even if it should chance to survive as a biological individual. However, even as such, it is the issue of a human social — in this case, sexual — relationship). Unless both these moments can be affirmed simultaneously, univocally; grasped as a single, unitary concept — in fact as a conceptual singularity — their contradiction having been transcended (to begin with, in thought), then neither “the individual” nor “society” has been understood.’’
This is indeed correct, society without the individual is empty and barren, however, the individual does not recquire society. Society needs the individual but the individual does not necessarily need society. There can be such an individual that lives alone for eternity, but there can never be a society that exists without the individual.
The book goes on with the idea, when it says,
‘‘Dig deeply enough into the individual and you will find society. Dig deeply enough into society and you will find the individual. Dig deeply enough into either and you will come out the “other” side. The concept named “the individual,” fully grasped, is the same as the concept named “society.” The concept named “society,” fully grasped, is also “the individual.” One is impossible, does not exist, without the other. At the heart of society is its “opposite,” the individual. At the center of the individual is his “antithesis,” society. We must speak of the social individual. Both of the abstract universals, “society” and “the individual” find their concrete universal in the social individual.’’
One one hand it says the individual and society are one concept, on the other hand it says that the individual is the opposite of society and vice versa. Two contradictory statements at one go, with no sort of dialectical solution. These contradictory statements cannot possibly be reconciled.
Again it is incorrect, when it treats the individual and society as two sides of the same coin and more worse as the same ‘‘concept’’ — While it is true that the individual and society are contradictory to one another, there can be no such permanent synthesis, the only synthesis there is a transitionary one — in a union of egoists — this however is not a synthesis, because it not ‘‘permanent’’ — rather it is transitionary like ice and steam — Imagine for a moment, that the union of egoists was ‘‘Ice’’ — bonded matter together, forming their own society of egoists, but when it comes time to go their sepearate ways, the particles or the ‘‘egoists’’ want to live a life apart again, they want to become like ‘‘steam’’ — particles not close to one another, but far apart. The book also claims that ‘‘individuals produce societies and societies produce individuals’’ — again a half-correct statement, individuals do indeed produce societies, but it makes no sense to claim that society produce individuals — this is an ignorant statement, because of the ‘‘Chicken and the Egg Problem’’ — Which came first, the ‘‘Chicken or the Egg?’’ — Who produced whom first, was it society that first produced individuals or was it individuals who first produced society, and if for instance, individuals produce societies, it would imply that individuals already exist, up to which point it wouldn’t be possible for societies to produce individuals if they already exist in the first place. Bruce Gardner and the San Francisco Bay Area pro-situationist group ‘‘For Ourselves’’ that wrote this book must have been a little drunk when they wrote this, but everyone makes slight mistakes, even I, and therefore we’ll just brush this off under the rug for one moment and focus on more important concerns specifically on the title itself of the book, ‘‘The Right to be Greedy’’ — it already shits on Stirner’s name by having the word ‘‘Right’’ as the main title of the book, already it shows the spooked synthesis this book has cooked up between the contradictions of communism and egoism. Egoism has always been about ‘‘Might’’ and not ‘‘Right’’ — the negation of ‘‘Might’’ is the existence of ‘‘Rights’’ — for it is those without Might that engage with Right and they do so ironically with the force of Might, but because they feel threathened to use the force of might against a force they know they might not win, they use the force of Rights.
The unique one doesn’t want a communist egoism, he wants everything for himself, and he’s willing and ready to make communist egoism itself his property. I am the owner, the master of my might, through property am I my power, through my power am I myself. If this power, and this power is shared upon communally, then it is not my power, it is not my property, it is not I, but it is society and its monopoly of power, over that which I no longer have and no longer can its master be.
The essay also claims the following regarding dialectical egoism,
‘‘The actual negation of narrow egoism is a matter of transcendance (“aufhebung” n3 ), of the transition from a narrow to a qualitatively expanded form of egoism. The original self-expansion of egoism was identically the demise of the primitive community. But its further self-expansion will resolve itself into a community once again. It is only when greed itself at last (or rather, once again) beckons in the direction of community that that direction will be taken. Here the ancient Christian truth that no earthly force can withstand human greed rejoins us on our side of the barricades.’’ — One of the first errors is the word ‘‘transcendance’’ in trying to explain Egoist matters — it rekindles me with a deep desire to bleach my eyes from this Kantian bullcrap. This quotation in particular uses the law of dialectics called, ‘‘The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa’’ — which is an accurate dialectical law, however it is applied in a false manner. According to this argument, Narrow Egoism is transformed into ‘‘An expansive egoism’’ in communism through the ‘‘influx increase of egoists’’ in communist society. The argument therefore threats egoism as precursor to communism — but this is incorrect — I can make other arguments in the same manner and it would still make sense — my christian example for instance. I can say the following, ‘‘That the Narrow Egoism of Judaistic sects would be transformed into the the ‘‘expanded egoism’’ of christanity who sought no longer to remain a sect, but to preach the gospel to all earths, because the more souls they saved, the more guarauntee they had, they could attain Heaven’’ — Does this therefore imply that Christanity is the most advanced form of egoism? How can this be so if Christanity demands of me to sacrifice my life to it’s traditions and way of life? and in the same manner, how can I freely be the most ‘‘free’’ egoist, if communism demands of me to live always in accorandance to the communist way of life and the ‘‘communist mode of production’’
It also does another error — that of claiming that narrow egoism will bring about its own socialization. How is this possible? How can my egoism, my desires, my uniqueness be socialized into society at large, and if this occurs, that my essence as the unique one is given to ‘‘all’’ — than rather than remain ‘‘unique’’ — I will cease to be unique and therefore become the ‘‘same’’ in communal essence as everybody else — therefore this ‘‘communist egoism’’ is not egoism at all, but a subtle communist critique of egoism. It is simply impossible for my unique essence, for my desires to become ‘‘communal’’ and socialized by society. The productive forces can be socialized as the means of production, but the unique one and one’s own egoism can never be socialized — one cannot even begin to make comparison between the means of production and the unique one — they are seperate things — but for the sake of the argument if communists socialize the means of production — they become masters over the means of production, in the same manner if egoism is socialized under communism — then communists become masters over egoism, and as masters they will suppress egoism, rather than fulfill it. They are not masters of themselves as the egoists are, rather they are masters over egoism and in so being masters over egoism, they repress their own egoism because of communism.
If Communism is the master of egoism just as he is the master of the means of production? Then how can we possibly call the egoist ‘‘free’’ ? This book clearly illustrates one reality — that the egoist is suppressed under communism and he is developing as a contradiction and a negation of communism that will eventually in itself overthrow communism and replace it with an egoist world. | https://medium.com/@alexanderhope74/an-egoist-critique-of-the-right-to-be-greedy-theses-on-the-practical-necessity-of-demanding-cbc67eac061b | ['Alexander Hope'] | 2021-08-07 05:44:56.466000+00:00 | ['Marxism', 'Communism', 'Egoism', 'Anarcho Capitalism', 'Capitalism'] |
From Y-DATA to ACDL 2019 | Y-DATA Demo Day — Best Project Award
Hi, my name is Ilia Kravets and I’m going to tell you what I did last summer.
I’ll start right where my almost-a-year-long studies at Y-DATA program ended: At Y-DATA Industry Projects Demo Day, where Tal Heletz, Roman Gurevich and myself won the best project award.
Our project dealt with Pulmonary Nodules detection in CT scans. The goal of the work was to improve both speed and quality of lung cancer diagnosis by radiologists by creating an end-to-end ML pipeline to assist their work. Our pipeline first detects potential tumors (pulmonary nodules) and then retrieves similar cases from a historical database, containing both diagnosis and further disease development history.
The prize was the best thing a machine learning freshman could dream of — more ML studies! Yandex sponsored our participation in 2nd Advanced Course on Data Science & Machine Learning, a.k.a. ACDL 2019, and a few weeks later we found ourselves on a plane to Italy.
The course venue is nothing like your usual campus or conference venue. Certosa di Pontignano is a real medieval monastery situated in a rural Tuscany near Siena, Italy. We joked that for this week we became monks worshiping ML gods. And so the prophets came down to us (down the path of steepest descent, of course) in the form of top-notch ML professors and industry experts to teach us the Word of Machine Learning. But that’s enough theology for now — let’s move to what really went on in ACDL. So as not to bore you, I’m going to choose and briefly describe only seven of the topics covered in the course.
Josh Tanenbaum from MIT introduced us to computational cognitive science and described how he uses probabilistic programming to “reverse-engineer the cognition” and allow the computers to learn a little bit more like humans do.
Leslie Kaelbling from MIT took the opposite approach and described how she makes robots learn and perform complex tasks without striving to emulate human cognition.
Phillip Isola from MIT talked about generative models, and generative adversarial networks in particular. Fellow Y-Daters may know him as a co-author of the CycleGAN paper we studied back in class.
Ruslan Salakhutdinov from CMU and Apple talked about natural language processing and incorporation of domain-knowledge in deep learning.
Joaquin Vanschoren from TU/e took us all the way from introduction to AutoML and hyperparameter optimization to network architecture search and meta-learning.
Naftali Tishby from HUJI blew everyone’s mind with the information-theoretical approach he invented to analyze and explain deep neural networks’ performance.
Oriol Vinyals & Ioannis Antonoglou from DeepMind talked about the reinforcement learning advancements leading to the famous AlphaZero and AlphaStar achievements.
When we weren’t learning we had a chance to mingle with young researchers and seasoned scientists alike, discussing everything from a recent lecture topic to our life stories. One afternoon was dedicated to a guided tour around old Siena, where we saw some churches, found our way through the tiny old streets and heard stories about the Siena horse-racing tradition and the ancient rivalry between Siena and Florence.
At the ACDL 2019 poster session — Proudly wearing our Y-DATA merch
Then there was the poster session: an evening dedicated to young researchers looking to share their recent work. Here attendees had an opportunity to show their ongoing research as well as appreciate the work of others. As many of the attendees were either academic or industry researchers, both the quality and quantity of the works presented was impressive. Unfortunately, I missed many of the presentations by the authors due to being busy presenting our own project — the one which earned us our ticket to ACDL in the first place. However, it turned out to have paid off big time: we were recently notified by the ACDL committee that our project has won ACDL 2019 Best Poster Award! Such a huge achievement for somebody who was only studying introduction to machine learning less than a year ago. Needless to say that without Y-DATA program we could only dream about this. | https://medium.com/y-data-stories/from-y-data-to-acdl-2019-c83c460d7296 | [] | 2019-12-08 22:32:03.870000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Y Data', 'Data Science Training', 'Acdl'] |
On (Programming) Language Design | What makes us different from all other species? Well, several things. We are the only species that has a sense of humor. We’re the only ones that cry. But, most importantly, we’ve been changing ourselves and the world around us faster than any other living being.
Take a look at where you are today. You may be some meters above ground level. You can control the weather inside those walls. To go somewhere, you can take your pick from a medley of means of transportation. You have power in the form of electricity coming out of plugs in the walls. You have the Internet flowing in the air.
If you have all these, it’s because humankind has two big advantages: we are tool builders, and we have language.
Tools and Language
The pen, the airplane, the clock, the phone: tools. Aristoteles’ work on logic, Newton’s “Principia Mathematica”, Darwin’s “Origin of the Species”, Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity”: language. All human civilization was built upon tools and language.
When we think about a problem, some of us might see images, but all of us use words to think. The most common view is that language is a way for us to communicate. But it’s way more than that: it’s also a tool for us to think with higher-level concepts.
And the language itself influences the way we think. A study showed that people whose native language has no strong future tense (like German or Finish, where they say “I go to the cinema tomorrow” instead of “I’ll go to the cinema tomorrow”) save more for retirement and have lower smoking rates. People don’t distance themselves from their future selves.
There is an aboriginal tribe in Australia that does not have the words ‘left’ or ‘right’, only ‘North’, ‘South’, ‘East’ and ‘West’, so they have a far better sense of direction than everyone else.
So what a language doesn’t have is just as important as what it does have. The core of a language is not words and sentences; it’s the meaning of them in the heads of the people who use it.
Now say, for example, the word ‘pen’. A mental image of the object crops into your head, which may not necessarily be the same as the mental image of someone who speaks another language. Yet there is a universal consensus of what the word ‘pen’ represents.
The same can be said about programming languages. That’s where visual language comes in.
From Spoken to Visual
The words that make up a language do indeed affect the way in which a person processes the world around them, but it’s not the only means of referring to objects or actions. Graphic, or visual, communication is not simply aesthetic, but rather has a functional role in communicating. In programming language, that couldn’t be more obvious.
Let me give you an example. The other day, a colleague of mine was working on an application using the OutSystems low-code visual language. She looked at a timer and immediately said that it would not scale and that she needed a “heavy timer”.
A heavy timer is a pattern known by advanced OutSystems developers, where records are processed, thus committing the transaction, and, after a specified time, the timer wakes itself over again. It works like a processing queue.
So it is not part of our core visual language, it’s part of our extended language. But it’s also a tool that allowed her to spot a problem and a fix at a higher level. She saw it in her head. She heard it in her head. And then she fixed it.
Regarding programming languages, you may already know this quote:
Naming things… Language, right? But let’s focus on another one: do you know why there are so many off-by-one errors? Because arrays start counting with 0 instead of 1, unlike humans do.
Another: Tony Hoare, the creator of Algol (a precursor of C) said that null references were his billion-dollar mistake. Every time I see C# or Java code, with all those null checks, I know that’s a severe underestimation.
A last one: Why do object-oriented languages lead to messy spaghetti code? Because of inheritance and because state is spread all over. That doesn’t happen so much in our visual language as there is no inheritance.
So What’s OutSystems Doing About it?
Our company is lucky to be focused. OutSystems is not for creating websites, games, scientific research, or operating or embedded systems. Our low-code approach allows the creation of enterprise web and mobile apps. At the same time, the scope is so broad, and there is so much need for it, that if we continue evolving in the right way, we might have an impact in future programming languages and tools.
And as for the difference between language and tool: our users don’t care if something is solved with the tool or with the language. They view it as a whole. They may think “How can I solve this pain/new challenge?”, and we at OutSystems understand their struggles and needs. And we can offer a solution to solve their problem. What’s important is the whole developer experience.
So these choices matter. What we put in the tool and on the language, and how they work together, matters. It’s hard to make these calls, but it’s supposed to be hard. Because OutSystems is a pioneer in low-code, and our choices might live a lot longer than us or this company. They will be our legacy.
Designing a Tool and a Language
Programming languages were born from the bottom up as a way for people to understand, and leverage, how computers work. That view is now outdated; it should be the other way around.
A programming language and tool needs to be a way for computers to understand what humans want. And for humans to think and work collaboratively on higher-level challenges.
That’s our contribution to human evolution: making a language and tool that work together in that way is our noble responsibility.
Based on an internal presentation. | https://medium.com/outsystems-engineering/on-programming-language-design-f02617651ab4 | ['Tiago Simões'] | 2020-09-11 16:02:21.095000+00:00 | ['Outsystems', 'Perspective', 'Computer Science', 'Programming Languages'] |
Handsome | Handsome
On my 73rd b-day (TODAY!) I revisit a piece published (in a prose format) earlier — after all, one can never spend too much time staring into a mirror! Terry Trueman Follow Dec 15, 2020 · 3 min read
Image courtesy of author’s priv pics
I never realized
And never gave much
Thought to the notion
That I was considered
Mostly handsome by the ladies
Throughout most of my life.
Image courtesy of author’s priv. pics
Some girls liked my eyelashes
(and, “You have such lovely eyes”)
Some women loved my hands (“Oh my,
Do you play piano? You should!”).
For many of those years, I had a full beard
And even a full head of hair for awhile.
Image courtesy of author’s VERY OLD priv. pics
I could always make the ladies smile
And nearly as often, laugh.
But my looks
I never thought about . . .
Image courtesy of author’s (EVEN VERY OLDER) priv. pics
. . . until recently.
At the age of 71 and ½
I looked into a mirror
Close-up, to see how my new glasses
Looked . . .
Image reluctantly and regrettably shared from author’s selfies
. . . and holy shit!!
I’d become an old man!!
Portrait image Deborah Cole, photographer
I’m not sure how to end this thing:
I guess I’m glad I had such good luck
For as long as I did;
And I guess I’m a bit disappointed
That the luck finally ran out.
On the plus side, the new glasses
Look okay,
Image courtesy of Em M., Unsplash
But I’m afraid to say,
They aren’t helping much.
**************************************
Wikipedia & Encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Trueman
The poem Handsome can be found in: | https://medium.com/the-haven/handsome-f97110e8c55f | ['Terry Trueman'] | 2020-12-15 19:42:58.608000+00:00 | ['Beauty', 'Ego', 'Perspective', 'Again'] |
Introduction to AutoML: Using H2O Flow | It is widely known that the field of Data Science is highly dynamic and there is something new in DS stack every day. The advent of AutoML is certainly a commendable push to this stack. Not only it enables people with zero programming background to create and build an ML model but also it makes the life of Data scientists much easier.
So, What is AutoML?
Well, AutoML is here to stay, an abbreviation for Automated Machine learning that aims to automate training and building of machine learning models. AutoML ensures machine learning is available even to people with no particular background in programming.
Gone are the days when Data scientists needed to build a baseline model from scratch(depending upon the use case, Of course!). Enter AutoML, just a few clicks, and your baseline is ready.
H2O is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 and has a Web User interface called H2o Flow.
Basically, H2o Flow is a web-based interactive tool that allows data selection from various sources, visualization, a seamless environment for model building, prediction, evaluating, and exporting your model. In my opinion, H2o’s core strength is it’s distributed in-memory processing.
H2O is written in Java and it supports algorithms used frequently in Data science, For instance, GBM, Random Forest, and Stacked Ensembles. H2O works with R, Python, Scala on Hadoop/Yarn, Spark, or your laptop.
Installation
You can get H2o here. You would probably need Java installed in your system for H2o Flow to work. Also, if you have python installed on your system, you can simply install this package with a conda install. see below :
conda install -c h2oai h2o
You can safely ignore the above step if you gonna use H2o Flow. Notably, H2o is also available for R, and Hadoop. Downloading H2o will replicate a zip file on your system and that contains everything you need to get started.
Head to your terminal, unzip, and start H2o. Here are the commands that might be helpful:
cd ~/Downloads unzip h2o-3.30.0.6.zip cd h2o-3.30.0.6 java -jar h2o.jar
Go to your browser and open H2o.
H2O Flow Home Page
In this post, we’ll not discuss the menu icons and bar at the top as these are fairly self-explanatory. You can always check the help section available on the right.
We will use USA housing Dataset which is available here to build a simple regression model that can predict house prices based on given features such as Area Population, Average Area Income. We will follow these steps in order to build a model:
Import Files
Split Frame
Build Model
Prediction
Please note that there are other steps in Machine learning Pipeline like EDA(Exploratory Data Analysis), Pre-processing, etc. which are not covered in this tutorial.
Let’s get right to the routines that will help you build a simple regression model.
1. Import Files
This is where you can define your data source, parse your input file, and define parser as CSV, AUTO, XLSX, or even parquet files(source file format for Hadoop which is efficient in terms of storage and performance).
Import files into H2o
Set up your parser as required, see below for reference.
Parser set up
Once it is loaded into H2o, you should be able to view a nice summary of columns in your dataset, the number of columns, rows, and even missing values.
Loaded Data
H2o also allows you to impute values for missing fields for example with the mean value. Simply, Click on the column labels, this will take you to that particular column details where you can perform actions such as Impute and Inspect. Inspect the values for generating plots such as distribution plots and line charts. | https://medium.com/swlh/introduction-to-automl-using-h2o-flow-15f257707021 | ['Shashvat G'] | 2020-07-12 22:55:19.040000+00:00 | ['H2o', 'Automl', 'Data Science', 'Tech', 'Machine Learning'] |
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