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What to do when you feel like giving up | This might be the worst book I ever wrote.
And I feel like giving up every single day.
Even today I felt like giving up.
I procrastinated the whole day tying to find excuses so I could stop writing that book.
So I finally started writing at 8pm.
Even though I could already have started at 9am. 11.am. 2pm. And pretty much every other hour of the day.
But I started at 8pm.
And I was still thinking about how it would be a great idea to just give up.
To just stop the whole thing.
And that’s exactly how I felt when I wrote all my other books.
Every single day.
That’s exactly how I feel every single day when I sit down, take a look at that blank page and try to fill it with my thoughts.
I’m always close to the edge of giving up.
I don’t know if it’s just me.
But if I look around and read about all of this productivity, live your dream and follow your passion self help porn out there I feel like I’m the only one who isn’t crushing it. Who isn’t killing it.
The truth is I don’t feel like I’m killing it. Ever.
Some days I feel like I’m doing ok. And other days I feel like I could do a lot more than this. That I could do a lot better. That I should have put more time, thoughts and energy into this or that.
But the truth is that sometimes you’re going to have a bad day. Or a bad week. Or a bad month. Heck, maybe you’re even going to have a bad year. Or maybe even a bad decade.
And there’s nothing in the world we can do about it. There’s nothing we can do to fight those bad days. Weeks. Months or maybe even years.
All we can really do is to not close our eyes.
Because what’s going to happen when you close your eyes is that you’re not going to see the light at the end of the tunnel ver again.
Will there ever be a light at the end of your tunnel?
I don’t know.
I really don’t know.
And telling you that it’s going to get better, that one day you’ll be killing it, that one day you’ll be crushing it is like spitting in your face while you’re already down in the gutter.
So what can you do when it feels like the sun is never going to shine ever again?
I don’t know.
I really don’t know.
But I think the first step is to realize that no one is really killing it. That no one is really crushing it.
We all wear as many masks and layers of makeup as possible to hide our scars.
To hide our ugly and painful truths, experiences, fears and doubts.
But the truth is that nothing that really matters is ever going to be easy.
And the more something matters to you, the harder it’ll get.
The more your scars and your truths are going to shine through.
And it’ll get harder and harder every single day.
It’ll get harder and harder the longer you do it.
It’ll get harder and harder the closer you get to the finish line.
Just like someone a lot smarter than me once said…
Today will be difficult.
Tomorrow will be even more difficult.
But the day after tomorrow will be beautiful.
Most people give up tomorrow….
P.S. This was part of my new book. You can pre-order it here. | https://medium.com/thought-pills/what-to-do-when-you-feel-like-giving-up-d9046b39fbd3 | ['Yann Girard'] | 2017-09-05 20:02:24.124000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Poetry', 'Life', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Writing'] |
WhatsApp Amazing Tricks You Should Know! | Published On: https://pakinform92.blogspot.com/
Article Link: https://pakinform92.blogspot.com/2020/12/whatsapp-amazing-tricks-you-should-know.html
Asslam Ao Alikum
In today’s article, I will tell you some such tricks of WhatsApp which will be useful for you and everyone who uses WhatsApp. So let’s start without wasting time.
1- See When Your Friend Seen Your Message.
Guys if you sent a message to a friend and you want to know when he saw this message and when he read it then you have to hold down on this message for 1 to 2 seconds. When you hold it the background of the message will turn blue and a little bit above you will see that some options have appeared, then you have to click on the third option in them. When you click on that option, a page will open in front of you which will contain all the information.
2- Send Message Without Saving Number.
If you want to send a message to someone without saving their number, all you have to do is open any browser on your mobile and type “ wa.me/Number “ in the address bar and then their number. But remember that you don’t have to write + at the beginning of the number but you have to write your country code number at the beginning and then you have to search. When you do this, a page will open in front of you, This page has an option called “ Continue To Chat “ you have to click on it then you can chat very easily without saving the number.
Open Browser > wa.me/number > Continue To Chat
3: Hide Message Information
Guys, whenever you read someone’s message, a blue tick appears on that message and they know that you have read the message, but if you want this blue tick not to appear and they don’t even know it. If you have read the message then you have to follow the settings that I am telling you. If you look at the top of your screen, you will see three dots. As soon as you click on them, some options will appear in front of you. In these options, if you look, there will be a setting option. You have to click on it then you have to click on the account option After clicking you have to click on the privacy option then you will see there an option called Read Receipts it will be enabled then you have to disable this option.
Three Dots > Setting > Account > Privacy > Disable Read Receipts
For More Visit: https://pak92inform.blogspot.com/2020/11/Whatsapp-Tricks.html | https://medium.com/@pkinform/whatsapp-amazing-tricks-you-should-know-75bf72a1e2ae | [] | 2021-01-01 04:22:36.250000+00:00 | ['Tips And Tricks', 'Whatsapp Tips And Tricks', 'WhatsApp', 'Android', 'Android Tips And Tricks'] |
Things You Must Know Before Trying a Low Carb Diet | A low carb diet can help you lose weight and enjoy other implicit health benefits. Numerous studies suggest that cutting back on carbs may contribute to stabilizing your blood sugar and reducing your threat for diabetes and certain heart conditions.
Still, there can be risks. For illustration, your body needs time to acclimatize to your new diet, and you may miss some of your favorite foods.
Read this, If you’re allowing about consuming smaller carbs. You’ll learn whether a low carb diet can keep you healthy and satisfied.
Losing Weight on a Low Carb Diet
It’s possible to slim down by avoiding carbs, but it’s not guaranteed. Success depends on knowing how to make smart choices.
Try these strategies to help a low carb diet work for you
1. Suppose long term. There’s some substantiation that low carb diets produce further weight loss within the first 6 months compared to low fat diets, but the difference declines over time. However, you may prefer a less restrictive diet, If you don’t need to reduce snappily.
2. Understand ketosis. That original weight loss is grounded on ketosis, where your body responds to the lack of carbs by burning its own fat for energy. As you eat more protein and fat, your appetite is reduced too.
3. Stay regular. A lower affable side effect of ketosis is constipation. Rely on natural remedies like exercise and water rather than laxatives.
4. Drink water. Speaking of water, a low-carb diet can be dehydrating. You may need to drink at least 2 quarts of water a day to keep your body running easily.
5. Refreshen up. How’s your breath? Metabolic changes may leave your mouth with a banal odor, giving you a fresh reason to drink further water.
6. Control portions. While numerous low-carb foods are healthy, some of them are high in calories. That includes nuts, seeds, full-fat dairy products, and meat. Ensure that you stay within sensible limits.
7. Take supplements. Any restrictive diet where you cut out numerous foods can produce nutritive scarcities. Your croaker may recommend supplements for folic acid and other vitamins and minerals.
8. Be flexible. Strict diets can also tempt you to cheat. However, you may get the results you want with lower discomfort by taking a more lenient approach, If you’re having trouble sticking to a low carb diet.
Safety Considerations for a Low Carb Diet
Utmost experts agree that further exploration is demanded to understand the long-term goods of low carb eating. While there are numerous different ways to interpret a low carb diet, some plans endorse getting as little as 30 of your total calories from carbohydrates compared to current US government guidelines that recommend 45 to 65.
Follow these tips for safety while on a low carb diet
1. See your croaker. Your croaker can help you decide if a low carb diet is applicable for you. Bandy your fitness pretensions and your options for reaching them.
2. Cover your feathers. Any high protein diet places redundant strain on the feathers. Thus, low carb diets aren’t recommended for grown-ups with order conditions. They’re also injudicious for teenagers and pregnant women.
3. Increase your fiber. Eating too important meat and too little fiber can beget bloating and more serious gastrointestinal symptoms. Leave room for low carb vegetables and fruits like mushrooms, spinach, berries, and peaches.
4. Make it sustainable. Overall, choose a healthy diet you can maintain for life. Diurnal habits produce lesser results than following each new trend.
Talk with your croaker to determine if a low carb diet is right for you. Indeed if you decide to follow a different plan, you can presumably still profit from cutting back on the refined carbohydrates plant in eyefuls, delicacy, and other reused foods.
Click here to choose custom diet food plan for you | https://medium.com/@myanna08/things-you-must-know-before-trying-a-low-carb-diet-bf1ef342f95a | ['Susiana Andreastuti'] | 2021-12-22 08:56:50.170000+00:00 | ['Keto Diet For Beginners', 'Low Carb Food', 'Weightloss Foods', 'Low Carb Diet', 'Weight Loss Tips'] |
A perspective on intergenerational approach to racial justice | This is a 10 minute talk I gave as part of a My Life, My Stories / Encore.org digital event on how we can address racial justice in 2021.
My name is Frankie Huang. I am a writer, illustrator, and strategist based in the Boston area. I’ve written quite a bit on contemporary Chinese culture, women’s issues, and more recently, about my observations on race in America.
I was born in Beijing, China, and moved to the US when I was 9 years old. Then in 2013 I moved to China for work, and only returned to the US at the beginning of 2020 for Covid-related reasons.
A lot of my understanding about race has been shaped by living in these two very different countries, and having lived both as the ethnic majority as a Han Chinese person in China, and as an ethnic minority in the US, where white supremacy has shaped much of the status quo as we know it.
In terms of identity, I belong to a dominant group as well a marginalized group. In mainland China the government is actively homogenizing the national culture to align with Han Chinese culture which I am familiar with, while minority cultures like Uyghur muslims are being systematically erased through oppressive policies.
When I am in the US I’ve lived with racism all my life and have gotten anti-China slurs flung at me since the onset of the Covid pandemic and the president’s blame-shifting rhetoric.
Why am I bringing this up?
I want to highlight how much our identity profoundly shape the way we experience the world, and how we all exist within one power structure or several of them, and precious few of us are without some form of privilege attached to our identity.
In my opinion, each of us who feel committed to social justice must first look within ourselves and interrogate our own position, our privilege, the harm we cause or are complicit in before we can effectively and earnestly engage in activism and be good allies to those who need our support.
Otherwise, it is easy to say you believe in great causes like Black Lives Matter and reproductive justice, and feel like you mean it, but still make no impact at the end of the day except to signal to others that you are a good person. Worse yet, you could feel so good about having progressive beliefs that you become oblivious to actions you can take to actually realize those progressive beliefs.
So now I’m about to say something that routinely makes a lot of folks uncomfortable: if you are someone who exists in a very privileged position in America, a middle-class straight white man for example, you don’t need to be actively discriminating and hurting marginalized people to perpetrate harm. Your comfortable state of being is quite likely built on the discomfort of others, like when a white-sounding name has a better time finding work, or a white face leads to securing a loan, and for white folks, becoming aware of this is integral to making a real difference in making the future safer and better for all.
I grew from childhood to young adulthood in the US, and my parents made sure I understood that this is a “white people’s country” and that I must be a person that offers a lot of value, and don’t stand out in a foreign way, in order to thrive in it.
This is part of what is known as the “model minority myth”, and for a very long time it felt natural for me to to strive to be more “American”, speak English without an accent, dress in a “mainstream” way, adopt American customs and etiquette, etc.
For a second generation immigrant like me, this is part of a process known as assimilation, and when I first learned the term, I did not think about the amount of erasure of immigrant identity it requires, nor the amount of performance it requires on my part. A simple and imperfect analogy to this is when you’re young, and you’re trying to fit in with the popular crowd, and try to be just like them, it’s all about faking it til you make it, pretending to be someone you are not.
Trying to seem “whiter” is not a full-time thing though. Like so many others I have always code-switched, like when I’m with my parents or around other Chinese people or immigrants, I’d let my Chinese side be more apparent, but in environments where I was surrounded by white people I revert to sound more “white”, sometimes I don’t even notice myself doing this.
But after living in China for the last almost 7 years, I’ve become a little rusty at this, so when I moved in with my white in-laws in February of this year, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was not at the top of my game when it comes to blending in, and it made my in-laws uncomfortable.
A little bit about my husband’s family: they are very nice, middle class New Englanders, they are well-educated, politically liberal, and have never, and probably would never say anything that would be considered overtly racist.
“Racist” is a loaded term these days, because it’s so often narrowly defined as inflammatory, hate-filled expressions. A lot of other types of racially insensitive or abrasive interactions get shuffled into a category called “micro-aggressions”.
I find the term “micro-aggressions” to be a silly term, because it is grounded in the perspective of those who commit them, whose thoughtless words and acts that are not meant to harm. But on the receiving end, these can be bracing, even traumatizing. And when micro-aggressions are committed within an extended family unit like mine, one that brings together a white American family and an immigrant daughter in law, addressing the situation can go directly in opposition with maintaining a friendly, harmonious atmosphere.
Without going into too much detail, over months of living with my in-laws, I’ve come to understand that my fluent English and my ease with a lot of surface level aspects of mainstream American lifestyle gave the impression that I also have American values just like theirs. This makes me think of when I lived in China, and noticed how many Han Chinese people don’t really think about how there are other Chinese people who think and live differently than they do. When you are the mainstream demographic, you can go through your entire life without ever understanding other kinds of people, and not even feel like you’ve missed a thing.
Going back to what I said earlier about how our commitment to social justice must start within, I think if my in-laws were able to acknowledge and anticipate how we may have differences in values and in the the way we communicate and express our feelings, we could have had an easier time understanding one another. I would not place this responsibility solely on them, but like many people of color in this country, I have been watching and imitating white people all of my life, while many white people don’t even know this is going on the whole time.
As our country become increasingly diverse, and as more culturally and ethnically complex families are formed, I ask that each of you think about how conflicts can form from simple misunderstandings, and that those misunderstandings are in fact opportunities to create better understanding. Bridging difference can be hard work, but it’s not impossible.
When someone with a different background as you come into your life, as a colleague, as a friend, as family, there are conversations to be had about what the world is like through their eyes, I think our lives can all be a lot richer when we have more of these conversations, rather than wonder why someone doesn’t behave the way we think they ought to.
Learn more about My Life, My Stories here.
Learn more about Encore.org here. | https://medium.com/@putongwords/a-perspective-on-intergenerational-approach-to-racial-justice-c26a3e2b417d | ['Frankie Huang'] | 2020-12-09 18:14:04.478000+00:00 | ['Intergenerational', 'Racial Justice', 'Asian American', 'Micro Aggression', 'Assimilation'] |
Luke Akehurst: The Butt of many a Joke, but he’s no Laughing Matter. | The Labour Party NEC Elections reach a critical point tomorrow as the ballots open, papers start to arrive and votes start being cast. After seeing the level of appeasition and not opposition within Labour, I hope members are aware of just how critical it is we have a robust, left-wing NEC and will be casting their votes for the Grassroots Voice slate as their first 6 choices under this STV system that’s been forced on us by the right wing & for Mark McDonald as their 7th choice. There are of course 9 votes to cast should you wish to cast all 9.
That brings me to this blog, which isn’t another promo for the left-wingers I back, but a reminder that should we get this wrong, things are all but over for the left and the biggest threat to all that is one man, a man who has been the butt of many a joke, many a meme on social media, a man who is so deeply unpopular within his local Party that his own CLP refused to back him for the NEC elections, but nevertheless he crossed the threshold anyway and is on the ballot. A man who has been described to me as probably the most dangerous man in the Labour Party today and he isn’t even an MP. His name is Luke Akehurst.
It’s a name many on the left are familiar with. There’s been many a titter about the fact that he’s put himself forward yet again to stand for the NEC, since he’s consistently failed to claw his way back onto it since he got booted off in 2012 but actually, with Starmer now leader and with fractured relations within the left-wing groups earlier this year, two of his Labour to Win slate colleagues already sit on the NEC and they’ve been a nuisance, even going so far as attempting recently to push all business back until November, when they hope the new NEC will be even more right wing, a situation they helped bring about by switching to that STV vote instead of the traditional FPTP system previously used — a blatant attempt to favour their own faction. I’ve heard it said that all the jokes, all the finger-pointing and laughing at Luke is to distract from the other awful candidates on his slate, but if Akehurst were to join any of these guys back on the NEC now, it’d be disastrous.
So who is Luke Akehurst?
He’s a right-wing Labour activist, a former councillor in Hackney, where he tried multiple times to have incumbent MP Diane Abbot deselected. He’s a former prospective parliamentary candidate, a former NEC member, a former organiser within Keir Starmer’s CLP under his predecessor Frank Dobson before moving to Oxford, where he was the CLP secretary before being routed from the role by an increased left-wing membership.
The names of the right-wing Labour groups Labour First & Progress are familiar to most of us. The mainstream media is fond of referencing them when speaking to certain MP’s and essentially paints a picture of their views being the political mainstream of the Labour Party, when of course they’re not, these are the right-wing organisations and Luke is involved here too, being the Secretary of Labour First, who’s about us blurb on their main page literally states that:
‘Labour First is a network which exists to ensure that the voices of moderate party members are heard while the party is kept safe from the organised hard left, and those who seek to divert us from the work of making life better for ordinary working people and their families.’
Safe from the organised hard left, who Akehurst himself in 2016 defined as:
‘The “Hard Left” is a self-definition adopted by the Bennite left in the mid-1980s to differentiate themselves from the older “Soft Left” which they saw as making too many compromises with people like us! In parliament the Campaign Group for Labour Democracy is “Hard Left” and the Tribune Group is “Soft Left” whilst most of our supporters are in the Clause I group of MPs. We believe the “Hard Left” would damage national security through their opposition to nuclear deterrence and their ambivalent stance towards NATO; that they are reluctant to address issues around immigration in any meaningful way; and their economic stance is not credible as it veers towards a command economy.’
A bit wordy, but the Campaign Group for Labour Democracy is the Socialist Campaign Group, those that actually voted against Keir Starmer’s abstentions recently, including the likes of Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn, Richard Burgon and Zarah Sultana and Luke, together with Labour First, are ideologically opposed to listening to the left, going so far as to describe them as dangerous. Literally the best hope we’ve had in decades of a better life, a better country to live in, a transformative agenda and this bunch call that a threat, claiming they offer the best hope when, whilst in power, did nothing of the sort. That whole Broad Church diatribe is a nonsense and always has been. The NEC slate Luke is part of, the Labour to Win slate, is the Labour First/Progress slate, this is their core belief, so you can see why any of them securing NEC seats would be incredibly dangerous for left-wingers who have stayed in the Party.
We’ve only scratched the surface here with Luke however because although we’ve explored Luke’s political beliefs and positions he’s held or still holds, he’s been much more than just that.
Luke has been a corporate lobbyist, having worked for Weber Shandwick Public Affairs from 2000 through to 2011, as a defence specialist, briefly overlapping his time on the NEC and certainly covering the period in time he was a PPC for New Labour in 2001 and 2005. Hark back to that quote regarding Luke’s view of the hard left and keep in mind that defence specialist bit as we continue here.
To give you an impression of how influential this lobbying firm Weber Shandwick has been, particularly regarding New Labour and Blairism, of which Luke is a staunch supporter to this day, you only need look at who else has worked for them. It’s current CEO, Colin Byrne, describes himself as a hippy in a suit and has been quoted as saying:
“Of course some PRs do send out vacuous rubbish and bogus surveys dressed up as a story. Of course some political PRs do try and manipulate the news.”
Which kinda brings into question how ethical a CEO he might be. He was also a former flatmate to the Prince of Darkness himself, Peter Mandelson, Blair’s answer to Dominic Cummings.
Other employees for this firm have been Andrew Brown, brother to Gordon Brown, Current Home Secretary and immigrant basher Priti Patel and chair for the backbench 1922 committee Sir Graham Brady. It used to be the case that many people, myself included, couldn’t put a fag paper between the Tories and Labour back then and when lobbying firms like this, employing such people as this, and indeed Luke Akehurst, it’s hardly surprising to see why that was. The last thing we need is a return to that, we’re seeing enough of that under Starmer now, without Luke’s influence returning to enable that further.
Whilst at Weber Shandwick he picked up a number of high profile clients, such as Finmeccanica, an Italian defence and security company which had strong ties to the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Arms sales. Another was GKN, a British Company involved in, amongst other things, the aerospace industry. It was at one point the parent company for AgustaWestland, which it later sold to…Finmeccanica. Previous to this, GKN were also involved in the sale of water cannons to the regime of Indonesian despot Suharto in the 90’s, when he was committing genocide in East Timor, so arms sales here too, albeit before Luke’s time. Luke also had as a client the now infamous Serco. Now we know Serco seems to involved in everything these days, but what you might not know is that Serco is part of a consortium operating Britain’s Atomic Research Establishment, a scientific research facility that is responsible for the design, manufacture and support of our nuclear deterrent. Yeah — Serco is involved in our nuclear deterrent, what could go wrong there, but also in the consortium overseeing this is Lockheed Martin, the worlds biggest arms manufacturer. It’s little wonder Akehurst earned himself the nickname ‘Luke the Nuke’. It wasn’t just about his support for selling arms to Saudi Arabia, or the Iraq War in case you thought it was — something he still defends to this day, though knowing what you do now about his links to arms manufacturers, it isn’t hard to see why. He took these ‘defence’ clients with him after leaving Weber Shandwick, but it isn’t known whether he’s still advising them — he’s certainly not admitting to it on his LinkedIn!
Never mind it’s Yemen they’re bombing though eh Luke.
So he’s left Weber Shandwick by 2011, but by that same year he’d been headhunted, ‘enticed’ to come to work for BICOM by it’s then CEO Lorna Fitzsimmons, herself a former Labour MP under Tony Blair.
BICOM is the British Israel Communications and Research Centre and it was founded in 2002 by the Billionaire Poju Zabludowicz, who inherited his vast fortune from his father Shlomo, who founded the family business Soltam, an Israeli defence contractor now owned by Israel’s top weapons manufacturer Elbit. Luke and the arms industry just keep walking in lockstep don’t they. Zabludowicz is resident in the UK, one of the richest people in the country and a regular donor to the Tory Party. An investigation by the journalist Peter Oborne discovered in 2009 that Zabludowicz also has a stake in a shopping centre built in occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank.
BICOM is essentially a public relations body for Israel and at a time when Israel is increasing hostility towards Palestine, who’s lands they’ve illegally occupied since 1967, it says something of the sort of people who want to help them do that and anyone working for BICOM is doing just that. They have the ear of politicians, with strong links to Labour Friends of Israel — heck, some politicians work for them! I’ve mentioned Lorna Fitzsimmons already, but the most prominent MP of recent times has been Ruth Smeeth, most recently seen introducing Keir Starmer at his digital conference speech.
Ruth Smeeth with Keir Starmer
She lost her seat last December, so look out for her the moment a by-election opens up, but she has also been BICOM’s director of public affairs and campaigns. They also have the ear of journalists, seeking a sympathetic outlook towards Israel, something they clearly feel they’d lost around the time they recruited Luke, since the BICOM conference of 2011 was titled ‘Winning back Britain for Israel’. So they’re clearly patriots…just not necessarily to this country.
Luke was recruited by BICOM to set up We Believe in Israel, something he does proudly boast of in his LinkedIn profile and this is BICOM’s pro-Israel advocacy arm and having set it up, Luke has remained the director ever since, the self-declared Zionist Shitlord, here pictured next to Matt Pound, part of Keir Starmer’s campaign team.
Luke Akehurst (left) Matt Pound (centre) & Marlon Solomon (right) who is allegedly connected to the notorious pro-Israel group Gnasher Jew.
We Believe In Israel push for things like no sanctions on Israel, arguing against an arms embargo on Israel, arguing for solidarity with Israeli’s under attack and so on and so forth. They also provide material to the likes of the Board of Deputies. If the arms manufacturing links haven’t put you off, if the attacks on the Labour left haven’t put you off, if supporting those who would support the Labour left hasn’t put you off, then the partisan support for a wealthy nation, a nuclear power no less, which has settled illegally occupied lands should disgust you. Akehurst has even gone as far as defending the occupation by saying that the Geneva Convention does not apply on the basis that it was designed to stop forced deportations of the sort undertaken by Hitler and Stalin, despite Israel having never having transferred its civilian population. The Red Cross, the UN and the International Court of Justice have all weighed in to disagree with this assertion.
This is what you get if you vote for Luke Akehurst or any of those happy to stand on a platform with him under the Labour to Win slate. Pro-Israel, anti-Palestine, anti-socialist, pro-war, pro-lobbying Torylitism. A world where the truth becomes distorted and free speech is a lie.
What on Earth are we winning by electing these right-wingers, because it’ll be the death of the Party, a renewal of the purges and the end of any semblance of a left wing party in UK politics. The mistakes they made which led to Corbyn becoming leader will never happen again. We’ve one, last shot at retaining our clout and that involves ensuring the sovereign body of our Party, our NEC, is dominated by left-wing voices once again. Make sure your first 6 votes go to the Grassroots Voice slate. Make your 7th vote for Mark McDonald. Choose from anyone other than the Labour to Win slate for your last two votes. Do not take a chance with this. It really is our last roll of the dice. For heaven’s sake use that vote when it comes. The most dangerous man in Labour and his slate mustn’t come anywhere near power ever again.
They mustn’t win.
If you enjoy my work, feel like it and can do so without hardship, please also consider contributing to the ongoing development of the page, or just buy me a coffee.
This blog has been ranked 10th in the top 35 UK Political Blogs by Feedspot.com! Not bad going for someone who’s only been going a few months! Do check out some of the other blogs I’m listed alongside, be one of the best informed people out there! | https://medium.com/@cornishdamo/luke-akehurst-the-butt-of-many-a-joke-but-hes-no-laughing-matter-20a0af53095e | ['Cornish Damo'] | 2020-10-18 19:57:14.538000+00:00 | ['UK', 'Luke Akehurst', 'UK Politics', 'Labour Party', 'Nec'] |
5 Best Resources for learning NLP — Natural Language Processing | “You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way.” — Marvin Minsky
Natural language processing provides ability to the machines to understand and interpret human language. This is one of the subdomains in Artificial Intelligence.
The power of natural language processing has changed the way we interact with the devices around us. It has let us interact, search, order a machine the language humans use in day to day life. NLP has applications in almost every domain Medical, E-Commerce, Defence etc., The widespread adoption of this technology has lead to rapid development in the recent times.
In this article, I will list out 5 major resources to get started with NLP.
Before we begin, There are some pre-requisites in order to understand the following materials.
Python
Calculus, Linear Algebra, Basic Probability and Statistics
Foundations of Machine learning
1. Stanford CS224N
The first and foremost resource would be the lectures by Stanford. This course starts with the basics, word embeddings. Neural networks, Backpropogation, Dependency parsing, Language models, RNN, seq to seq, Attention, Transformers. It is a perfect resource to get started as it gives strong foundations about all the topics.
Course Link: https://web.stanford.edu/class/archive/cs/cs224n/cs224n.1194/
2. Deeplearning.ai NLP Specialization on Coursera
This course focuses more on application based learning. Various tasks like sentiment analysis, Question Answering, Translation, Summarization, Chatbots are covered. This is a more structured specialization. The specialization is divided into four courses. Specialization requires you to subscribe. But if you take the courses separately you can audit the courses and access the contents.
Following is the list of four courses
3. Dive into Deep learning
Dive into Deep learning is a Deep learning Textbook. It has end to end concepts about Deep learning and a specialized section for Natural Language Processing. Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 cover the NLP Topics from basics to advanced.
Most impressive thing which I liked about this resource is that the code snippet is provided in three frameworks Tensorflow, pytorch and MXnet. This helps a lot when you want to understand the implementation in any of the frameworks.
Textbook link: http://d2l.ai/
4. Blog posts by Jay Alammar
Jay Alammar has written very expressive blogs about various concepts about Machine learning and Natural Language processing. The Illustrate Transformer is the best resource to understand the Transformers Architecture. There are various well illustrated blogs on Word2Vec, BERT, GPT2, GPT3.
5. Natural Language Processing Fundamentals — Datacamp
This resource is best for learning the concepts by coding, rather than just going through the materials. Regular expressions, NER are the highlights of this fundamental course along with interactive coding IDE.
DataCamp
Course Link: https://www.datacamp.com/courses/natural-language-processing-fundamentals-in-python
Having the right resources to learn at the beginning is very important. Since, many a times we end up spending a lot of time sticking to a single resource and then giving up without completing it.
Proper resources motivate you to learn more
I hope you will find the resources handy when you are getting started or looking to learn a new concept in NLP. | https://medium.com/@avinashbenki11/5-best-resources-for-learning-nlp-natural-language-processing-d5df16f24cbc | ['Avinash Benki'] | 2020-12-20 09:05:49.658000+00:00 | ['Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Best Resources', 'Nlp Courses', 'NLP', 'Materials'] |
I Subscribed To Push Notifications From 12 News Outlets For 3 Months — Here’s What I Learned | Intro
If you’ve been wondering what it’s like to consume news round-the-clock during this interesting time in American history, well, I am here to tell you it is exactly as stressful as it seems.
While it certainly was not the healthiest choice I’ve made for my sanity, or now lack thereof, in December 2016 I elected to subscribe to iPhone push notifications from 12 news outlets, all of which send snippets of information that generally cause tremendous pain.
A haphazard conversation with a friend was, for the most part, what prompted this absurd idea to torture myself. My friend had nonchalantly mentioned he solely relies on The New York Times updates for important news. To this I recalled the frenzy I entered by cause of the fragmented news alerts sent on the day of the most glaring media failure of 2016 — the “reopening” of the Hillary Clinton email probe that wasn’t. Had I only read those abstruse, speculative updates, or only updates from one outlet, I would have been woefully uninformed and unfortunately assume many were on that day.
This instance was not exclusive; it was rather a very potent example of the larger problems in the media. The influx of fake news, false equivalency, and media skepticism in 2016 displayed the scope of the challenges we face, but little has been done to ensure we progress in a well-informed, shared reality. Quickly following the election, it became clear most in the media would not introspect and would instead mercilessly defend their coverage. All the while, politicians have continued to confound feeling with fact on far-reaching platforms and the President of the United States has incessantly attacked the freedom of the press, whose role has arguably never been more important.
Thus, I took the plunge and subscribed to push notifications from eight additional outlets to the four I had already been using. In an effort to stress both the importance of consumers seeking more information than just a headline and the media using caution when sending out these updates, I have tracked every notification sent by these 12 outlets. I have assessed the timing, language, context provided, accuracy, and biased/unbiased manner in which they share information with their subscribers.
Below I will:
Provide background info why this is even worth considering, both for consumers and media
Specify the outlets assessed and why they were selected
Perform case studies of the outlets’ responses to seven selected events
Offer my view on each outlet’s performance
Give my suggestion on how media can improve push notifications
Why We Should Care About Push Notifications
In an age of digital dominance, emerging wearables, and not-so-subtle attacks from POTUS, it is clear that while ethical standards in journalism persist, the news landscape and media responsibilities are rapidly changing. These responsibilities stretch across every delivery system — print, broadcast, social media, mobile apps, and push notifications. In comparison, push notifications may seem minute, but I’d argue the opposite and here’s why:
To state the obvious, our methods of gathering information have had a notable switch to the digital world. Newspapers’ web traffic outpaces their print circulation by a substantial margin — anywhere from two to 78 times more than average Sunday circulation, according to State of the News Media 2016.
Of greater significance, we have developed a generous reliance on mobile, with mobile traffic for news outlets outpacing desktop traffic by a margin of at least 10%. As of July 2016, seven-in-ten Americans (72%) get their news on their mobile devices, a significant jump from 54% in 2013, according to the Pew Research Center. And, more than half (55%) of these smartphone users receive push notifications from news outlets on their screens.
Now, here’s the number that should really concern us:
Fifty-two percent of those who get news alerts do not click through to the full story or search for more information.
That equates to roughly 66.5 million Americans, based on U.S. population at the time of the Pew Research Center survey, who receive push notifications, but do not click through or search for any more information. To put that number in perspective, 66.5 million people is more than the population of: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington D.C., Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming combined.
That statistic is simply alarming.
News bites can suffice at times, but updates and headlines are predominantly messages that lack context, are sensationalized, or are deliberately misleading. Ideally, to address these concerns, we would all seek out information from various credible sources and would have a comprehensive nationwide conversation about media literacy. However, as found in Nic Newman’s News Alerts and the Battle for the Lockscreen, many users already regard push notifications as ample information that delivers a considerable value.
Given this sentiment, media have an ethical responsibility to recognize the influence these updates have and to deliver them in a contextualized and unbiased manner. And, if acting out of concern for the public good is not persuasive enough, push updates are accompanied by significant business implications that media companies must consider.
Publishers see the combination of news apps and push notifications as a key channel for rebuilding direct relationships with users on mobile devices, as noted in News Alerts and the Battle for the Lockscreen. These notifications are increasing the regularity with which people return to their favorite news brand in the face of rising competition from social networks and other aggregators.
This is a good sign for the media. Consumers are considerably fond of receiving news through updates, which in turn can help media either weed out or become the competition if they utilize them appropriately.
Across markets, there is a strong sense that the language used in notifications needs to be factual, sober, and serious, providing a clear and accurate summary that reflects the nature of important ‘breaking’ news items that lies behind them. Clickbait or sensationalist headlines are widely viewed dismissively.
If outlets do not send updates that meet and maintain these criteria, they are less likely to earn and retain loyal users.
But, again, delivering on the responsibilities held by the Fourth Estate is frankly the right thing to do.
The Outlets
An informed democracy relies on an independent, investigative press and the checks they make on the government. As emphasized by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the operations of our mainstream media are critically flawed. Media are increasingly cozy with the powers they should be watchdogging, mergers in the news industry have limited the spectrum of viewpoints that have access to mass media, and outlets are overwhelmingly owned by for-profit conglomerates.
We need to, of our own volition, evaluate the news we are reading to detect bias. These guiding questions from FAIR are an excellent starting point on how to do that:
Who are the sources?
Is there a lack of diversity?
From whose point of view is the news reported?
Are there double standards?
Do stereotypes skew coverage?
What are the unchallenged assumptions?
Is the language loaded?
Is there a lack of context?
Do the headlines and stories match?
Are stories on important issues featured prominently?
Accordingly, every outlet can be scrutinized for having various levels and types of biases. In selecting which outlets to track, there was no way to avoid these biases or to make a baseline to only assess outlets whose biases were at comparable levels. Had data been publicly available on news outlets’ app downloads and push notification subscriptions, I would have used that as my guide on which outlets to track, but it unfortunately was not.
Instead, I used the following criteria to determine the outlets I would track:
Outlets with a U.S. base considered “mainstream” based on reputation, lifetime, readership, and viewership
Have an iPhone app with an option to subscribe to push notifications
Cover national news and U.S. politics
With that criteria, I landed on the below twelve outlets:
These twelve allowed for a range of mainstream media types — members of the ‘big four’ news agencies (AP, Reuters); top cable news channels that also happen to be top news alert providers (FOX, CNN); other cable news (NBC); top traditionally print newspapers (NYT, WaPo, USA Today, WSJ); non-profit membership media organization (NPR); disruptor media (BuzzFeed); and trade specific (CNBC) — to be assessed.
Analysis
Any and all notifications can, and should, be evaluated for accuracy and reliability. To perform my analysis, I opted to review specific nationwide events that have occurred over the past three months instead of individual notifications to allow for constants when comparing the outlets’ responses.
Below I will identify the seven events, present the updates sent regarding those respective events, share where you can learn more information, and provide my personal assessment of said updates’ language, context provided, accuracy, and biased/unbiased nature.
However, I will leave the bulk of the assessment to you and allow you to draw your own inferences based on what the twelve outlets did or did not publish. As you read the push notifications, ask yourself: | https://medium.com/rantt/i-subscribed-to-push-notifications-from-12-news-outlets-for-3-months-heres-what-i-learned-290f43843ebc | ['Cassie Dagostino'] | 2017-02-27 15:25:35.773000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Politics', 'News', 'Journalism', 'Media'] |
All The News Fit To Viz | Latent Topical Brokers:
(“nodes that have an unusually high rate of influence (betweenness centrality) to their frequency — meaning they may appear not as often as the most influential nodes but they are important narrative shifting points.”)
— “chat”
— “bungle”
— “steady”
— “ease”
— “global” | https://medium.com/listening-for-secrets-searching-for-sounds/all-the-news-fit-to-viz-e0d8b5b1ec1f | ['Adam Meldrum'] | 2020-05-16 19:06:27.557000+00:00 | ['Network Graph', 'Coronavirus', 'Headlines'] |
November 1: Reflections from ‘Along the Path to Enlightenment’ | With Additional Context:
Q: There is some variation in the depictions of the Ultimate Reality (God) among the world’s religions and between them and the great mystics, enlightened teachers, and avatars. How can these variations be reconciled?
A: If properly recontextualized, any differences resolve through understanding the levels of consciousness. If we look to the avatars, great teachers, and enlightened sages throughout history, their descriptions of the Ultimate Reality (God) are the same. There is an absolute concordance that Divinity is infinitely compassionate, loving, peaceful, silent, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and benign. It is obvious to all that the essence of God shines forth as Creation and is the Infinite Totality and Source of all existence. Divinity is without parts or division.
Any depictions of God that depart from these universal truths stem from lower understandings that are products of lower levels of consciousness. The most frequent is the anthropomorphic error in which aspects of the human ego are projected onto God. These distorted views can be easily calibrated and tracked to their historic origins. Because God is the ultimate context of nonlinear Reality, that reality precludes divisions or positionalities. Within nonduality, positionality is not possible; thus, dualistic perceptions stemming from positionalities are the source of the misunderstandings about God for which, unfortunately, mankind has paid a great price.
From the above, it can be seen quite clearly that God does not ‘act’ or have ‘purposes’ and is free of positionalities and programs. Action is a linear concept that requires a subject, an object, and a verb, plus a motive, a means, and an end. If God is beyond action, then there is no basis for the fear of God who is Essence and not form.
It is to be remembered that the evolution of the consciousness of mankind has been progressive. Many early religious doctrines lacked accuracy,much as navigation did before the advent of the sextant or compass. The real error was in not realizing the limitations of the ego. Because much of ecclesiastical doctrine resulted from positionalities, it lacked inherent authority and substituted authoritarianism. That which is arguable is fictitious because within the realm of Truth, no argument is possible.
Q: Is all religious argument therefore based on misinterpretations and lack of awareness of the limits of the intellect?
A: That is so. The dedicated student of today, however, has immediate access to higher levels of truth and, by kinesiologic test verification, can reach their own conclusion. All that is truly of God brings peace, harmony, and love, and is devoid of all forms of negativity. A spiritually aware person realizes that they can only carry the message, for it is the inner truth that is the teacher.
From: “I: Reality and Subjectivity” (2003), Chapter 17, The Inner Path, pp. 295–296 | https://medium.com/daily-reflections-along-the-path-to-enlightenment/november-1-reflections-from-along-the-path-to-enlightenment-74936e123d7e | ['Along The Path To Enlightenment'] | 2020-11-01 18:52:19.638000+00:00 | ['Consciousness', 'Spirituality', 'David R Hawkins', 'Enlightenment', 'Levels Of Consciousness'] |
Tending the Soil of Renewal | Tending the Soil of Renewal
Coping with a broken church.
It’s no secret that the church is broken. Human beings are involved, so brokenness goes along with the territory. But there is also a pervasive myth that the church, and Christianity’s influence on the wider culture, is irreparable. In fact, the myth demands that in order to meet the larger goal of a just and sustainable world, everything to do with religious expression, spirituality, and faith must be jettisoned.
In Mark Sayers’ new book, Reappearing Church, he describes how the secularist-progressive myth, “seeks to gain the fruit of God’s kingdom — such as justice, peace, prosperity, and redemption — but without the King.” To conform to this myth, one only has to ascribe allegiance to the idea that in spite of the challenges that beset us, humanity will find a way to survive and thrive. As Sayers’ puts it, “In the post-Christian vision, progress replaces God’s presence as the engine of history.”
But there are cracks in the armor:
“Our current Western context deforms our hearts and lives in profoundly destructive ways. Big Business, Big Data, and Big Porn’s ability to reshape our inner worlds is unparalleled in human history.” — pg. 38, 39, Reappearing Church
There is a growing sense of discontent that the secularist-progressive myth is failing. The standard of living in the West is at an unprecedented high, yet we are rapidly destroying our planet. Nationalist leaders around the world are drawing hard lines in a hopeless effort to sustain an unjust status quo. Anxiety, depression, and suicide rates are skyrocketing. What’s going wrong?
In Mark 4:1–20, Jesus tells a story about a farmer that sows seed around his property. Some falls on a barren path and is quickly eaten by birds. Other seed is sown in gravel, grows rapidly, but withers in the heat of the sun. Still other is sown among weeds which choke out the young plants. Finally, some seeds fall on good soil and produce an abundant harvest. Later, when Jesus is alone with his disciples, he explains that this story illustrates how the message of God’s Kingdom either fails or thrives depending on the quality of the soil in which it is planted.
It’s interesting to note that Jesus mentions four kinds of soil and only one of them is good. We should not expect good soil to be in abundance. It is, in fact, a scarce resource.
For would-be hearers of the Kingdom message in the West, the soil in which they have been sown is becoming thoroughly hostile. The birds eat our young while they are consumed with social media. Consumer Christianity sells an inch-deep-mile-wide faith that is destroyed by the challenges of everyday life. The liberal-conservative divide feeds our anxiety, fear, and anger, which chokes out hope.
Sayers points us to the Chinese general Sun Tzu’s strategy of establishing a “death ground” for battle:
“There are only two choices: do or die…The church in the West is at a renew or decline moment. Our cultural crisis is burning the boats for us. By continuing with the status quo, we plug ourselves into the anti-renewal machine. Business as usual, the satiating of consumer Christianity, the mere provision of pleasing religious goods and services, will see us infected and eventually die of the toxicity in the system of the culture.” — pg. 53, Reappearing Church
Hope comes in the form of renewal, which is the reconnection of the church to God’s presence and our involvement in his plan to redeem the world.
My wife and I have been organizing and leading small communities of faith in South Florida for the past twenty years. They have never been substantial in number, but have consistently had a thread of renewal, which is the expected and natural, organic outflow of our being with God and each other. Sometimes they have looked like recovery groups for failed churchgoers. Sometimes a raucous dinner party, complete with fights and too much sangria. Sometimes, they are a spiritual Crossfit gym where we equally share our triumphs and failures. But in this soil, a death ground of church-on-the-margins, we have witnessed the transforming presence of God when the soil is tended well.
In the next article, I will talk more about our experience and about how we have planted and tended seeds of renewal. Then, I will show how these young plants bear fruit according to Jesus’ parable in Mark 4. But in order to get there, the soil must be prepared. As individuals, we have to recognize that the soil in which we are planted is toxic to kingdom growth. We have to pull out the weeds and rocks; drive a shovel into the hard pan of our functional atheism. As communities of faith, we must create spaces of respite where minds and hearts can reconnect with God’s world and perspective. And finally, we must learn to submit ourselves to prayer, acknowledging that in order to see authentic renewal in our lives, our churches, and the world around us, we need the living power and presence of King Jesus. | https://medium.com/interfaith-now/tending-the-soil-of-renewal-287b1ff4a623 | ['M.J. Bishop'] | 2019-10-19 16:31:44.242000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Christianity', 'Church', 'Church Leadership', 'Religion'] |
Product Sprint 2: Ideation and Prototyping | On Figma, we each worked on separate features that we felt were imperative for a minimal viable product (MVP), while still continuing to collaborate and communicate throughout the process. To maintain a standardized and cohesive look throughout the app, we consulted each other for opinions on colors, fonts, sizing, and placement of different components. Through demonstrating how one would make and respond to an event and our use of Google integration to make our app experience simple, we differentiated ourselves from our competitors while showing how easy and smooth it would be to use our app. The aspects of the app that we focused on for Demo Day were our login page, the dashboard (where a user can see all of their groups), how a specific group looks, and most importantly, the events.
Initially, coming up with a basic design in Figma was challenging — Angela and Ava only had experience designing mobile apps, so adjusting to the sizing shift and larger window area was difficult. For Allison and Mindy who had less design experience, there was a similar learning curve to making components and adding transitions between frames. We experimented with other features on Figma, like vector drawings, to design our logo. Since we had previously experience using Figma to prototype a mobile app during HackOurCampus, we had to make sure that we didn’t go overboard with transitions that couldn’t translate to web apps.
Initially, coming up with a basic design in Figma was challenging — Angela and Ava only had experience designing mobile apps, so adjusting to the sizing shift and larger window area was difficult. For Allison and Mindy who had less design experience, there was a similar learning curve to making components and adding transitions between frames.
Color Palette
We experimented with other features on Figma, like vector drawings, to design our logo. Since we had previously experience using Figma to prototype a mobile app during HackOurCampus, we had to make sure that we didn’t go overboard with transitions that couldn’t translate to web apps.
On Demo Day, we presented our work throughout the semester to fellow Cornell students, faculty members, and other guest mentors, and talking with the audience helped us gain insight on potential issues in user flow and design. For instance, one mentor mentioned that the layout of various functionalities sometimes felt unintuitive. Others suggested additional features, such as allowing users to prioritize groups, implementing events without groups, and allowing more customizability. Given such feedback, we intend to continue iterating over our design and developing our product through December and January. | https://medium.com/@ac2677/product-spring-2-ideation-and-prototyping-b42abdd567d9 | ['Angela Chen'] | 2020-12-15 05:00:06.027000+00:00 | ['Product Development', 'UI Design', 'Product Design', 'Product Management', 'Computer Science'] |
Developer Spotlight: Diana Gabriel | How would you describe your job to a child?
Imagine you ask your dad to make apple muffins with cinnamon. I taste it first to check that he made it well. Then, to my surprise, I find out that dad put in banana instead of apple, salt instead of sugar, and forgot to add any cinnamon! My job is to tell dad to make the muffins better so that you have a yummy muffin :-) Still, no one’s perfect, and he might get the quantity of cinnamon wrong, but hopefully, we can make it as tasty as possible!
What was your most challenging experience at work?
I think the most challenging experience was when we completely removed Flash from our creation platform. Flash was tightly integrated with a lot of eko Studio’s core components from its very early days, so untangling it proved a real challenge. Though it wasn’t the first time we said goodbye to Flash in one of our products, it was much more complicated than previous operations. I think it had more QA cycles than any feature I have ever tested. The difficulty wasn’t in the type of tests that I had to do. It was the number of cycles we had, which included many sanity tests. If you work in QA, you know how unforgiving that can be. Thankfully that’s now behind me. RIP Flash!
What’s your passion? What do you love doing?
I love reading. I like to linger on words as I read. And read them over and over again if something is beautifully written. Languages and the origin of words, and the connection between words in other languages fascinate me. One day I hope to write my own book (and illustrate it — another of my passions — but that’s another story…;)
What is similar to QA in other offices, what is different?
We use some of the same QA methodologies as in other offices, and we have some standards and QA tools used in many other places. But even so, eko is different in many ways. We don’t stick to the rules, and there is much freedom in the way we work. Our emphasis is on moving fast while not compromising on quality. If I choose to test something without a standard test plan and in an unusual way that deviates from what is accepted in the QA community, no one cares as long as the results are satisfying.
Also, the developers here are close and friendly with the QA team. Unlike other offices I used to work in, they patiently teach me a lot of stuff, and we both want to make the product as refined as possible. It’s a joint effort here. You’re not alone.
What are the QA challenges?
Many times we forget to think outside the box. We can lose the big picture, and we might miss trivial or important bugs.
Sometimes development time comes at the expense of testing time. That ends up forcing us to prioritize our tests and cast aside things that we wanted to test or test things in a superficial manner. It can be really disappointing because, in the end, the quality of our work is measured by the quality of the product.
Sometimes, we don’t have time to test and examine the features in-depth because we are busy with other tasks on parallel other products. We need to be creative in real-time and improvise quickly to do the best we can.
What do you think is needed to be a successful QA engineer at eko?
You need to be open to changes. You need to be mentally flexible, curious, diligent, and agile. You should know how to discern between what is bland what is important, and you shouldn’t be afraid of insisting on things you view as essential to the product’s quality. On top of that, don’t stop learning new things, don’t break from routine tasks, trust your intuition, be nice, be humble, and try to keep a sense of humor. | https://medium.com/ekoengineering/developer-spotlight-diana-gavriel-2b112ff382d2 | ['The Eko Devs'] | 2020-11-26 20:24:53.528000+00:00 | ['Developer Stories', 'Startup Life', 'Work Culture', 'QA', 'Office Culture'] |
Forget About the Federal Government and the States—Cities Should Regulate Big Tech | In his 2016 book, The Attention Merchants, law professor and tech scholar Tim Wu tells the story of Paris in the 1860’s and the brightly colored posters — first introduced by Jules Cheret — that came to dominate the cityscape. Initially, because of the novelty, color, and movement-like quality of the posters, they were embraced by citizens and even admired. They were also profitable, and before long the city was overrun, from chimney to sidewalk, by posters. At that point, writes Wu,
“…critics said that the advertising poster was destroying her [Paris’s] reputation as the world’s most beautiful city. Groups including the Society for the Protection of the Landscape and Aesthetics of France, and Les Amis de Paris (Friends of Paris), gained followings by declaring war on the ‘ugly posters.’”
Eventually, a veritable anti-poster movement was born and these groups and others began to lobby city government to regulate them. According to Wu,
“In Paris, the municipal authorities did indeed take aggressive action, restricting the placement of posters, which they came to view as a blight, a weed in need of containment.”
This brief history of posters in Paris is instructive for us today, especially as it concerns social media and targeted advertising. To be sure, there are numerous reasons Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple have come under increased scrutiny as of late and are now under antitrust investigation from 50 state and territory attorney generals, the FTC and DOJ and have seen a spate of federal legislation proposed against them meant to curtail some of the addictive technologies they utilize and regulate free speech on their platforms. This is nothing to say of the argument that Big Tech stifles innovation and poses a threat to democracy.
The Problem With Targeted Advertising
Underneath all of these challenges facing Silicon Valley companies is their business model — built on the harvesting of data and the implementation of targeted advertising. While for years targeted advertising was tolerated because of the world of social media and search it brought to us for “free,” some are beginning to wonder out loud if it should be banned. The nefarious effects of targeted advertising include being able to choose the demographics of who sees ads, down to race, age, and marital status. Furthermore, Facebook can identify when teens are feeling “insecure” or “anxious” and use targeted advertising to exploit them at their weakest.
The U.S. has a long history of regulating advertising, though it has yet to do so in regards to targeted advertising on Facebook, Google, and Amazon. The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969 banned cigarette ads on television and radio, the Telephone Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act dealt with the marketing of 900 numbers to children under 12, and even in the digital age legislation has been passed to protect children from data collection.
Cities Should Regulate Big Tech
And while these laws set an important precedent for regulating targeted advertising, they were all administered at the federal level. Perhaps we would do well and take a cue from the Parisians of yesteryear, and start with regulating advertising not at the federal level, but at the municipal level.
There is a tendency in American politics, whenever problems are identified, to think they need to be addressed at the highest level. To be sure the federal government has a role to play in the regulation of advertising and has done well to protect children and keep cigarette ads off the airwaves. But what if instead of starting at the top, we started at the local level? The cogs that power the machine that is the federal government are many and slow. Local governments are much smaller and more agile.
Mid-sized American cities like Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle have the progressive pedigree and are nimble enough that they could pass ordinances regulating how Big Tech companies operate within city limits. That means they could ban targeted advertising on devices that are within their jurisdiction. And without a doubt Google, Facebook, and Amazon know where each and every device is.
This would actually be a service to the rest of the country and the federal government as lessons could be learned as to what works and doesn’t work when it comes to regulating Big Tech. It was Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who wrote that states are the “laboratories of democracy,” but in reality it is our cities that fill that role today. For example, Berkley, California, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and St. Paul, Minnesota are pioneers in ranked choice voting and Stockton, California is currently running a pilot program to study the effects of universal basic income (UBI) on residents.
Cities Have Regulated the Tech Industry Before
And cities are not without a history of regulating disruptive tech startups that seek to do business on the roads and in the houses of residents. When Uber came to town dozens of cities scrambled to respond and regulate in a way that was fair to all involved. Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas emerged as leaders and critics of the destructive business practices of Uber and implemented regulation accordingly.
With Airbnb, Seattle and and New York have responded swiftly and effectively, keeping the balance of power in city hall and ensuring the platform follows the rules if it wants to keep operating in their lucrative markets. In Seattle, a short term renter’s license is required for individuals to join Airbnb as hosts, and New York requires the tech platform to strictly adhere to its “One Home, One Host,” policy.
Some cities have even begun to work together. In the wake of the scooter craze, the non profit, Open Mobility Foundation was created and is utilized by numerous cities including New York, Chicago, San Francisco and others to “develop[e] and promote technology used in commercial products that either use the right-of-way or that help government entities manage the public right-of-way.” Essentially, Open Mobility serves as a tool for city planners to see who is using scooters and how are they using them.
Big Tech Won’t Go Quietly
Of course regulating Big Tech at the municipal level might not be as easy as it sounds. Google and Facebook aren’t Lime or Bird. Their not even Uber or Lyft. They are two of the most resourced companies in the history of the world and are not afraid to lobby. So far that lobbying has taken place on capitol hill, but if a wave of municipal regulation overtook the country, they would move their efforts to every city hall in America. And whereas officials in Austin might have been fine with Uber and Lyft leaving town, people would rebel if Google and Facebook voluntarily pulled out of certain area codes or made their services paid products in particular jurisdictions.
Even so, cities that band together (or banned together) would have some leverage over the social media and search behemoths. Google especially would have to weigh the cost of not complying or pulling out of a city as ethical alternatives like Duck Duck Go are profitable, growing, and waiting in the wings.
The timing might be perfect. Just as the citizens of Paris in the 1860’s grew weary of their cityscape tarnished by ads, Americans are tired of an internet landscape polluted with targeted advertising. There is no reason to wait for the FTC or DOJ to do something about it, cities have the progressive pedigree, the precedent, and the power to end targeted ads. Now. SDG.
John Thomas is a freelance writer. His writing has appeared at The Public Discourse, The American Conservative, and The Federalist. He writes regularly at Soli Deo Gloria. | https://medium.com/soli-deo-gloria/forget-about-the-federal-government-and-the-states-cities-should-regulate-big-tech-c0d9b6007928 | ['John Thomas'] | 2019-11-25 12:24:12.678000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Government', 'Social Media', 'Society', 'Technology'] |
Empathy Will not Win the Presidency | At a time when social norms and expectations of moral character and good conduct have eroded, the Election season brings on a renewed hope of re-establishing what we want to see in our leaders. Our standards are much higher for our President and future Presidents when it comes to character. What makes a good leader? Do all leaders and Presidents past and present have the same character stack?
In the last 12 years, empathy has permeated the culture, an empathy revolution in fact, perhaps as the leading social energy that blead over from all the anti-bullying phenomena in schools, work places and other institutions. Empathy is the new fashion. BUT empathy is essentially an emotional state. It is not something you can emulate and you certainly can not teach it. It is of course a human quality that few may not have but the way empathy is manifest varies with every person and yet today among the more liberal it is the prevailing benchmark for judging if someone is capable of making good decisions. Remember, empathy is an emotional state. I would hate to depend on a President’s empathy on a daily basis to lead our country.
The main complaint about Donald Trump has been that he does not show empathy. Is empathy on the top 10 must haves for a leader? Here is what Steve Jobs said about leadership:
“Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.”
Persuasion or inspiring does not require empathy. Does Trump need to feel a connection with someone to persuade them? Does he need empathy to inspire someone do the impossible? No he does the impossible therefore he inspires the same.
Deep Patel former Forbes contributor describes great leadership:
1. Self-Managing
2. Acting Strategically
3. Being An Effective Communicator
4. Being Accountable And Responsible
5. Setting Clear Goals And Persisting In Achieving Them
6. Having A Vision For The Future
7. Managing Complexity
8. Fostering Creativity And Innovation
9. Team Building And Promoting Teamwork.
10. Creating Lasting Relationships
11. Learning Agility
Empathy is not on the list but it doesn’t mean it does not have an integral place in leadership. The problem is that no one can judge wether someone is empathetic or not. Empathy is a good quality but is not necessary for effective leadership. Empathy makes a great social worker, parent, friend or an AA counselor. With that said what has made Biden appealing to anyone who did not vote for Trump? Empathy: He seems to have empathy. He speaks empathetically to his credit but is a hallmark of leadership? Look at it this way: The main reason people are turned off Trump’s leadership is for his lack of “showing” empathy (NOT required for leadership) and the only reason Biden has appeal is for his empathy (the only quality NOT required in a leader).
Time Magazine wrote a good article on common traits of historic world leaders that included: Energy, Ability to plan and Adapt, A Great Memory, Luck, Understanding Public Sentiment Well-timed Unreasonableness, Steady Nerves, Inspiring Persistence and so on. Empathy is included but not an absolute prerequisite for being a great leader:
It is perhaps more important to look at outcomes and how systems set in place reveal a President’s character rather than the rule of empathy, as “A prophet is never accepted in his home town” Luke 4:16. The question we might ask— could Trump have brokered a peace deal with UAE and Israel without having some form of empathy? Is national security not important to him to want to keep our country safe, free of unnecessary wars and be energy independent?
It will take some time to raise our collective emotional IQ to find empathy where we least expect it. When we do, we will have found that great empathy is found in people who display it the least and move people deeply through action by negotiating and finding out what is the desire of a people. That is the kind of leadership that I seek. | https://medium.com/@reginacampbellorehoff/empathy-will-not-win-the-presidency-47910dd3f044 | ['Julia Caesar'] | 2021-06-11 11:29:46.692000+00:00 | ['Leadership Skills', 'Election 2020', 'Trump', 'Empathy', 'Biden'] |
The Ride 2 Stop Suicide | The Ride 2 Stop Suicide
ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2021, Aaron Hunnel will pedal 3,100 miles across the country to honor those military veterans we’ve lost to suicide. The ride aims to align military veteran organizations, communities, friends, and families to work together to solve the problem of veteran suicide — and get bikes in the hands of veterans.
“We want to get more veterans involved in this physical journey so they can experience the benefits themselves. Access and knowledge are two of the greatest barriers that exist when it comes to getting involved in an endurance sport. We’re setting out to remove those barriers — one bike and one veteran at a time.”
Aaron Hunnel, US Army
A military veteran and active duty service member with almost 17 years of service, Hunnel got into endurance racing ten years ago when he ran a marathon while stationed in Iraq. To his surprise, the experience was life-changing.
“There were times when I felt like quitting. I felt like giving up. I felt like I was going to die. And I gave myself two options. Either quit. Or keep moving forward — no matter how fast or slow. That became the mantra for my life. Just find a way to keep moving forward.”
Hunnel says one of the things the Ride 2 Stop Suicide aims to do is bring light to the veteran community and let veterans know that they’re not alone, and that there are many ways to reestablish a sense of purpose and connection to life.
“It’s connections and relationships that act as a buffer to improve our mental health and keep our thoughts on positive things. Connections and relationships make life meaningful.”
Hunnel believes endurance racing is worth so much more than the feeling you get when you cross the finish line. The preparation leading up to the race challenges and strengthens you mentally and physically, and he’s seen how the experiences — in yourself and with others — carry over into other aspects of your life.
Hunnel’s experience during a race in 2014 serves as an example and a reminder of the impact an endurance sport can have — not just on the body, but on the heart, mind and spirit.
My friend Adam and I pushed and pulled our friend Katie through the Ironman Wisconsin. Two hundred meters from the finish, a volunteer saw we were going to help Katie try to walk to the finish line. “I don’t know if you should do this,” he said. “You guys are exhausted.” Katie looked up and said, “It’s okay. I’m going to do this with my willpower.”
We picked Katie up, and together we trudged the last two hundred meters — arm in arm. Nine minutes later, people had gone from cheering to crying. As we put Katie back in her wheelchair on the other side of the finish line, she smiled. “That’s the farthest I’ve ever walked in my life.”
Through endurance sport, Hunnel learned that he had been limiting his potential, often getting in his own way. Through the teamwork involved in elite racing, he experienced the kind of connection he had previously only felt while in the military.
“When you put that uniform on, you get a sense of purpose. And when you put that uniform on with other people, you feel a sense of connection. You’re part of a team. When you leave military service or come back from a deployment, those two things can vanish. That can be tough on people.”
Hunnel believes cycling is one way to combat depression, anxiety, and even PTSD. Physical activity is one of the most powerful interventions for someone who’s struggling with their life, health, or wellness. And for Hunnel, cycling represents not only the proven mood boost that exercise can provide but also a powerful metaphor for mental health.
“For the bike to move forward, you have to pedal it. It doesn’t move forward unless you input energy by pedaling. And that’s a lot like life. If I don’t put the energy or effort into my life, I’m probably not going to move in the direction I want. The second part of that is that a bike only goes in the direction that you steer it. That’s also true in life. You have to grab the handlebars and steer it in the direction you want it to go.”
Hunnel stresses that the Ride 2 Stop Suicide isn’t just about raising awareness, and it’s not about cycling from coast to coast. It’s about moving people forward and improving their mental health with purpose through connection. He believes that bikes, along with communities, are valuable tools to improve our mental health.
“I want veterans to get these bikes and feel like they’ve gained a valuable tool for life. Together as part of a team, you gain energy, purpose and hope. These are transferable skills that can carry over into other areas of life. It can impact your work and your relationships. It can increase your desire to help in your community. The benefits are endless.”
The grueling, 22-day ride begins in Oceanside, CA, and ends in Annapolis, MD. Hunnel will cross hot and elevated terrain and likely encounter challenges along the way. But for Hunnel, embracing the struggle is what makes life meaningful. | https://medium.com/served-with-honor/the-ride-2-stop-suicide-cbe61d86437 | ['Eric Thomas Webb'] | 2021-09-10 05:38:34.208000+00:00 | ['Veterans', 'September 11', 'Suicide Prevention', 'Cycling', 'Military'] |
Marketing Basics and its Fundamentals: What, Why and How | Are you interested in Entrepreneurship or preparing to set up your own business module?
Most likely Yes, as who doesn’t want to create wealth and be your own Boss. As in today’s era, each one of us needs financial freedom to set our own goal.
Since in a Business, Marketing starts even before launching a product or service in order to reach out to the consumers. In order to do business you have to understand marketing. This is because the primary goal is to make them aware of the product and its benefits. Depending on the requirement or demand of the consumer, the product or services is created that fits and after that the whole process completely relies on marketing and its strategies. Moreover, marketing is rooted with Human Psychology and is directly linked with the growth of any Business. If you know marketing and selling, it would be easy in building your business. The selling of your products/services would become easy. Moreover your career will be quite safe and secured.
To have an in-depth information on it let’s move on to the basics of Marketing.
What is Marketing?
Image source: Manbiz.com
Marketing is a continual process of getting potential customers or clients for your products or services. Continual in the sense, unless the consumer becomes your customer and once it does it is about keeping them happy by constant communication with them so that they remain customers for life. Process is used in the context as it requires a lot of market research depending on the needs or requirements of the consumer.
The 4 P’s of Marketing
According to E.J McCarthy, there are 4 P’s of Marketing for identifying different elements and how to work on it before creating a suitable marketing strategy.
Image source : Dreamstime.com
Product: Having a specific product is to have a lock and marketing is a key to it. A product could be a tangible(goods) or intangible(services, ideas, experiences, etc.). A product may be created depending on the demand of the consumer after analysing the market or it could be the other way around.
Place: Locations can be anything from an online store(ecommerce) to a physical store across different cities. The primary goal of the distribution strategy is to provide consumers smooth access of the products/services all around as well as have a good product experience throughout the process.
Price: For any business entity be it a company or an individual, this segment is extremely significant within the marketing strategy. What and How much price should be set for the products/services as this factor could affect other factors as well.
The maximum or minimum profit margin.
The purchasing power/capacity of the consumers.
If we want to enter a luxury market or mass market.
The quality of the product. Either cheap quality and low in price or expensive and high in quality.
The competitors price range and what could be its substitutes.
Promotion: This refers to all the marketing communications and strategy in order to reach the target audience with appropriate balance of advertising, PR, Direct marketing and Sales promotion. This includes
Message strategy- What information to be communicated with the audience.
Channel/Media strategy- How to reach out with the target audience.
Message Frequency- How often to communicate with the audience.
Why do we need Marketing?
Success of any business lies in its marketing. It is like a heart of any business. You need marketing because without it, your business may offer the best products or services in the market, but without marketing none of your potential customers would come to know about it. Good marketing helps the customer understand why your product is better than the competition, helps you reach your target audience, increase your customer base and ultimately boost your business bottom line. Here are the reasons why any business needs marketing.
On a simple term, marketing educates the customer. Knowing your product is great is not enough if your customer doesn’t know and understand. In order to buy something ,the customer needs to have a clear idea about what you are selling and how it works. Marketing is the most effective way of communicating with customers.
Marketing is not just meant to promote and sell your products/services. In order to sustain for a longer run you have to build a relationship with the customers. It’s something that businesses need to invest in, cultivate and work for it everyday so that businesses are sustained and have longevity. To flourish and grow your business, consumer-seller relationship is must and good marketing helps in minimising that gap.
Marketing is about building a brand and then nurturing a customer relationship with it by gaining trust. Once it becomes a brand and acquires all the trust, the requirement or need of marketing decreases, as the product or service automatically gets sold by word of mouth. Without proper marketing a company or individual can’t reach their goals.
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous”- Peter Drucker
Thus, marketing is for all business entities. Whether you are a small, medium or even large business, in order to grow and flourish you need marketing. While maintaining and caring for current customers, marketing also ensures reaching new customers. People are unlikely to come and buy your products if they don’t know the what and why of your business.
Importance of Good Communication Skill
Marketing also depends on your communication skill. Good communication is very much important during marketing. Now good communication doesn’t mean that you should be able to speak sophisticated english with high vocabulary. Whatever language you speak you should be able to convey the actual motive of the message to the consumer effectively. You must communicate properly what your product and services is all about and how it is going to benefit them.
Global Economics
As an Entrepreneur apart from marketing, you need to have some idea on economics. How the global economy works and what is its difference with Indian economy. Understanding the economy will help you make decision, where to invest. Is there any potential for business growth if you invest in any of the economic markets? Here demographics play a vital role in the growth of the economy. Below are the key takeaways-
Economic growth of any nation is related to the average working-age population of that nation.
Decrease in birth-rate combined with the increase in aging population declines economic growth.
However, this declination can be halted by increasing productivity through advanced technology and automation.
Hence it is very much profitable to invest in developing countries like India, China etc. In India, the current average age of the working population is around 27 years, and there isn’t any possibility of drastic change of this working age population in the next 10–15 years.
Marketing Strategies
Marketing is not limited upto one single strategy, rather a combination of different techniques and tactics. Nowadays there are various mediums through which marketing plans can be executed. One such medium is Digital Marketing.
Digital Marketing
Image source : Stock image(DigitalDeepak)
Digital Marketing is a medium through which the discipline of marketing strategy is executed entirely within a digital environment. Though for time being, this methodology is limited to attract only those potential customers who use digital platforms or are digital users. But, most likely it will be increasing in near future where marketing continues to grow. And with new world events, like the covid-19 crisis of 2020, millions of people are forced to stay indoor, creating a huge rise in the user list of digital environments.
Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing
Though in the past few years, we can see that the trend of digital marketing is everywhere. But, there are still a few limitations that can never replace traditional marketing.
Traditional marketing is quite cost effective and easier to target a wide range of customers.
India has TVs in around 197 million homes with an average of 4–5 members per household. Thus it has a reach of 800 million to 1 billion people. On the other hand there are only 5 million users of digital platforms in India. Hence digital marketing is nowhere close to traditional marketing in terms of users.
Digital marketing is the best medium for selling your products/services to sophisticated people with higher spending power.
So if you are planning to earn 1 crore in 3–5 yrs through digital marketing, either your targeted potential customer should be high with low product price or your products should be high in price with less customer base.
Image source: Stock Image(DigitalDeepak)
CATT Marketing Framework
One of the most important aspects in Digital Marketing is CATT Marketing Framework. The success and wealth of your business completely depends on this. This framework can be applied for brand building, affiliate marketing, mentoring, course creators, products and services, and almost every business you can think of. It can also be called the four pillars of digital marketing. Thus, we can say
Wealth=n^CATT, where
n(Niche): Before starting an online business, at first you have to choose your niche. Either you become the number one in a category, or you can be the only one in the sub category. Your success depends on the niche you select.
C(Content): It is the centre of your marketing, and also the first stage of the framework. To capture the attention of your target audience, you need content. It adds value to your business. Good content helps in attracting more people.
A(Attention): Driving attention of the audience(traffic) through various marketing tools(lead magnets) is necessary. When this happens only after that you will be able to know their name, email id etc. Thus, from an unknown entity to becoming your customer(lead) is a kind of tactic or magic in simple terms.
T(Trust): Once you are able to drive traffic the next step is to build trust with the audience. Trust is the most crucial part of the entire sales process. You need to gain the trust at first, only then they will start considering doing business with you.
T(Transaction): And this is the final stage where the transaction actually happens and brings revenue to your business. Once trust is built, your leads will now purchase your product or services depending on their needs.
Image source: Stock Image(DigitalDeepak)
Integrated Digital Marketing
If we look around, everywhere there is competition for customers’ attention. Be it traditional or digital marketing. So, in order to get better results by driving customers’ attention and converting it into sales one should implement the CATT marketing funnel through Integrated Digital Marketing Framework.
It is the methodology or strategy of combining all the tools, tactics, and marketing components like SEO, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Paid Advertising etc. In short, it is a well structured marketing plan. The tactics should be such that all the efforts should point to one particular topic and express the same to the mind of the audience.
Image source: Stock Image(DigitalDeepak)
Here, the execution is in such a way that the main focus is on the content. Paid advertising is utilized to showcase your content through different social media and email marketing. Moreover, organic search is also obtained through your own website or blog via SEO. Once you develop all the channels to drive traffic, your marketing works as a whole and makes more sense. Thus, you will be able to generate potential leads and will smoothly convert into your customer.
Personal Branding(Mass Trust Blueprint)
One of the important aspects of Digital Marketing is developing a personal brand.
Personal branding is the continual effort to market yourself as a brand. It is a practice of marketing yourself so that people know who you are. Knowing that you are good at something is not enough. You have to market yourself so that your work is recognised and people start building trust with you. People don’t do business with companies, they do with the people they like and trust.Once a relationship is developed, people want to hear from you. You have to convey your message in a very personalized way, so that it captures people's emotion. It can also be generalised as a Mass trust blueprint.
Image source: Stock Image(DigitalDeepak)
Learn: Firstly, you find your passion and master your talent with various skills through concepts, facts and procedures.
Work: Whatever you learn without executing practically, it won’t help you. This will develop better understanding and can also rectify the limitations.
Blog: Writing helps you remember the works and gain experience through it. Eventually you will end up developing your own personal brand.
Consult: Once you develop your own brand through your blog/website, you have an on field experience, rather than simply having it on paper. This will highlight your skills in the real world. After that you can consult others and can generate revenue for them and help their business grow.
Mentor: Mentoring is also about consulting but not one to one, rather one to many individuals. This will ascend your findings and contents to a whole different level and at the same time will influence others to be like you.
Startup: Finally, you can build your own startup and start selling your products/services. Throughout this process, you will again learn and develop new skills. Thus, the complete cycle repeats that links to one another.
Conclusion
In the coming future majority of business entities will enroll in the digital field and it’s high time to learn, understand and master digital marketing and its elements in order to sustain and compete with others. Moreover, it helps you to know your insight and accordingly build your personal brand to target potential customers.
Reference links:
Marketing basics
Digital Marketing
Copyright Free Images
Manbiz
Dreamstime
This article is an overview of the acquisition of knowledge during the week two of an internship program on digital marketing under digitaldeepak. Anybody interested in joining this internship program can click this link and register for the program. | https://medium.com/@tapankalita2010/marketing-basics-and-its-fundamentals-what-why-and-how-915a1d12d175 | ['Tapan Kalita'] | 2020-11-16 16:55:21.278000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Personal Branding', 'Marketing Strategies', 'SEO'] |
Complaint-driven Training Data Debugging | Eugene Wu
Machine learning is often called “Software 2.0” due to its reliance on training data to “program” the predictive model. These models are used to make product recommendations, predict user characteristics, recognize patterns, and extract content from text, images, audio, and videos. Its success has led industry and science to increasingly incorporate machine learning into their business processes and data analytics pipelines.
A major issue is how to debug complex workflows that combine traditional data analytics with machine learning predictions. In particular, errors in training data can cause the model to mis-predict, and ultimately affect analysis results. How can we help users and developers bridge the gap between those errors in the analysis output, which are easy to find, and errors in training data, which are considerably more challenging? Our recent SIGMOD 2020 paper, Complaint-driven Training Data Debugging for Query 2.0 proposes a complaint-driven approach towards training data debugging to address this problem.
This is a collaborative research project between Weiyuan Wu and Jiannan Wang from SFU, and Lampros Flokas and Eugene Wu from Columbia University. We will present this work at the SIGMOD 2020 conference during the week of June 14–19 2020. We presented a shorter version at MLOps earlier this year that lays out our larger motivation.
Shoot us an email if you are interested or have questions about our work!
Background
Modern analytics workflows combine ML and data analytics (diagram below). Training data is ingested (gray) and used to train models (green), the models are used to make predictions (green), and the predictions are combined with other datasets or predictions for data analysis (orange). Different parts of this complex workflow may even be managed by different development teams (the ML researchers, ML deployment, database admins).
The challenge is that errors in the training data at the very beginning of the workflow can easily introduce errors that are only caught in downstream or final outputs. When this happens, is there any hope to identify the erroneous training data that caused those errors?
Errors in training data can silently corrupt model predictions and lead to analysis errors that are only found when examining the downstream results.
This problem is difficult because analytics workflows differ from traditional programming. Traditional software will conveniently crash or throw exceptions when there is a bug, and there is a huge ecosystem of tools to assist with debugging. In contrast, ML is “programmed” by the training data, and bugs manifest as errors in the training data (or model specification). Instead of crashing, the model will simply mis-predict, and silently corrupt the analysis results. These corruptions may later manifest as unfair treatment of loan applications, inappropriate or lack of marketing to a target user base, or incorrect trends that lead to poor business decisions.
How is training data debugged today?
A dominant approach [1] used at companies like Google is to add syntactic checks during data ingestion to check that new training data contains the expected attributes with appropriate data types, and features match expected distributions. The challenge is that these checks are at the very beginning of the workflow (above) — how does a developer know what checks to write in order to prevent errors in the downstream analyses or applications (some of which may not even exist yet)? For instance, a model built by the ML team may be used by the marketing team to analyze customer trends.
The other approach is to use techniques like influence analysis [4,5] to identify training data that most influenced a given mis-prediction. However, who labels these mis-predictions? Although this may be feasible for applications that directly show predictions to users (e.g., a movie recommendation), it’s unrealistic to label mis-predictions for analytics workflows that process thousands or millions of records and predictions.
errors are defined with respect to the application... Complaint-driven debugging is a paradigm that lets developers complain about application-level errors, rather than individual prediction errors
Fundamentally, errors are defined with respect to the application (or workflow) outputs, and that’s where it is most natural to spot and label errors. Complaint-driven debugging is a paradigm that lets developers complain about errors in workflow outputs rather than individual prediction errors, and leverages the workflow structure to identify training data errors that are likely the culprit.
Rain: Complaint-driven Debugging for Query 2.0
Our paper tackles this problem in the context of “Query 2.0” — database queries that leverage ML prediction as part of the query logic. Since business data is primarily stored and analyzed in a database, it is natural to “bring the model to the data”. In fact, this class of queries is already supported and widely used in databases such as PostgreSQL[6], BigQuery[7], and SQLServer[8].
Consider an email marketing company that we worked with. The company specializes in email marketing campaigns for retail companies (their customers). Customers can define user cohorts based on user profile data as well as predicted attributes (e.g., churn likelihood). Cohort metrics are tracked in dashboards over time.
Example of Query 2.0, which computes statistics about active users that the ML model predicts will churn. The middle diagram is the analytics data flow, where the red portions correspond to ML training, and the gray portion corresponds to the analytics query. The line chart on the right plots the query results over time; the user asks why the statistic over the past two weeks has dropped as compared to her expectations.
The above shows a query that counts the number of active users that the model predicts will churn. Running the query weekly generates the line chart. The customer is surprised that the count dropped over the last two weeks, the reasons are opaque to the customer and the company’s engineers. It turned out that the customer had uploaded new training records that caused systematic model mis-predictions, which led to the drop.
Rain formalizes and solves this problem. Given a description of the incorrect query outputs (called complaints), as well as the training and query workflow, it identifies the subset of training data that are most influential in causing the user complaint.
So, how does it work?
At a high level, we want to combine two steps. First, we want to propagate the user complaints back to the model predictions that, if flipped, would help fix the complaints. Second, we want to find the training records that, if removed, would cause the desired predictions to flip.
The great news is that existing work from the provenance literature [2,3] helps address the first step by encoding the problem as an integer linear programming constraint problem, and the influence functions work [4] from the ML literature addresses the second step. Unfortunately, both steps are error-prone, and naively combining them together causes the errors to cascade. Ultimately, this leads to a method that has difficulty finding the training data errors.
Our contribution is a holistic approach that combines both steps into a single holistic optimization problem. In addition to more accurately identifying training data errors, the optimization problem can efficiently run as a TensorFlow program and benefit from the recent deep learning hardware advances.
So, does it work?
We ran experiments for a range of SQL queries (SPJA queries) and a range of datasets (an entity resolution dataset, the Adult income dataset, ENRON spam dataset, and MNIST). We also evaluated cases where complaints are made for multiple queries that use the same ML model, and show how combining the complaints together more effectively pinpoints training data errors. Overall, our experiments find that leveraging query semantics is key to identifying the training data errors that affect query result errors.
A single complaint using Rain’s approach can more accurately identify training errors than than individually labelling 700+ model mis-predictions
We want to highlight a particularly exciting result: we wanted to compare the efficacy of individually labelling model mis-predictions and using influence functions (Point Complaint), with Rain’s approach of labeling errors in query results (Agg Complaint). Here, we executed an aggregation query and specified a single complaint on its single output value. The following graph shows that a single complaint using Rain’s approach can more accurately identify training errors than than individually labelling 700+ model mis-predictions!
A single complaint using Rain’s approach (Agg Complaint) can more accurately identify training errors than than individually labelling 700+ model mis-predictions (Point Complaint).
In our paper, we motivated Rain’s complaint-driven debugging with a business analytics use case. However, it can also be applied to other settings such as model fairness. Concepts such as group fairness are easily expressed as complaints over group-by aggregation queries (e.g., count of predictions grouped by race). Making these connections is part of our ongoing work.
Final Thoughts
Machine learning is increasingly integrated into every facet of our computing systems, and data analytics is no exception. However, the universal truth in computing is that bugs happen, and programming with data means the surface area for introducing bugs has exploded. Although research that makes ML faster and cheaper is crucial for promoting adoption, research for explaining analysis results and debugging training data is crucial for understanding what we have adopted.
References
[1] Baylor et al. TFX: A TensorFlow-Based Production-Scale Machine Learning Platform.
[2] Meliou et al. Tiresias: the database oracle for how-to queries.
[3] Kanagal et al. Sensitivity analysis and explanations for robust query evaluation in probabilistic database.
[4] Koh et al. Understanding Black-box Predictions via Influence Functions.
[5] Zhang et al. Training Set Debugging Using Trusted Items
[6] Hellerstein et al. The MADlib analytics library or MAD skills, the SQL
[7]https://cloud.google.com/bigquery-ml/docs/bigqueryml-intro
[8] Karanasos et al. Extending Relational Query Processing with ML Inference | https://medium.com/thewulab/complaint-driven-training-data-debugging-94413f6a15fb | ['Eugene Wu'] | 2020-04-29 15:26:29.222000+00:00 | ['Database', 'Data Debugging', 'Machine Learning', 'Workflow'] |
The Land: Predators: A LitRPG Saga (Chaos Seeds Book 7) | Welcome to Long Awaited seventh novel of the Best Selling LitRPG Saga, Chaos Seeds, by Aleron Kong.
A mesmerizing tale reminiscent of the wonder of Ready Player One and the adventure of Game of Thrones
#1 in Epic Fantasy || #1 in Cyberpunk || #1 in Video Game Fantasy
In The Land:Predators, the Mist Village has harnessed its power. Core buildings, Professional fighters and now, their own Dungeon, the settlement is primed to grow into a kingdom of true power and magic. The path to power has not been without risk, however. The MistVillage has been noticed.
Evil nobles from the Kingdom of Law, bloodthirsty goblins fromthe Serrated Mountains, an undead lord with a penchant for human sacrifice and fanatical kobolds from the Depths, all plot the village’s destruction. The predators are circling. Richter’s people are horribly outnumbered by foes whose own power has been entrenched for thousands of years.
Richter and Sion need to be stronger than ever before. Luckily, they are. New skills have been learned, stronger enchantments have been wrought and the hundreds of villagers have answered the call to adventure. The Companions do not stand alone. While many eyes have turned towards the mists, wanting to take the treasures within, the Mist Village stares back with a simple message.
Come and get it!
https://amzn.to/2JhxDOs | https://medium.com/litrpg/the-land-predators-a-litrpg-saga-chaos-seeds-book-7-675114ec961c | ['Alex Itsios'] | 2020-12-24 22:10:49.702000+00:00 | ['Virtual Reality', 'Aleron Kong', 'Litrpg', 'VR', 'Chaos Seeds'] |
Barack Obama’s Kenyan Connections | Barack Obama’s Kenyan Connections
by Thomas Stilson
Over the course of the 2008 presidential election, the public has become acquainted with several of Barack Obama’s family members and past associates. But not all of his associations, however, have been given such publicity. The Democratic candidate’s family, by his father’s lineage, originates from Kenya’s Luo tribe. Yet, there are elements of his Kenyan relationship that have not been explained or outlined in detail by the media.
“Abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do unto me,” Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama stated at a theological forum several months ago in Saddleback Church in Orange County, California. The sincerity of the senator’s words has come under scrutiny with the discovery of the senator’s youngest half-brother in Kenya. The Italian edition of Vanity Fair reported in August that, George Obama, 26, lives on less than a dollar a month, in stark contrast to the senator’s income of $4.2 million in 2007 as reported by the New York Times.
Described in passing in Sen. Obama’s autobiography as a “beautiful boy with a rounded head”, George Obama lives in a 6 foot by 10 foot aluminum-sided shack on the outskirts of Nairobi. The presidential candidate has met his half-brother by his father on two occasions: once when George was five and again on a tour of East Africa in 2006. George Obama says of the 2006 meeting, “It was very brief, we spoke for a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger.”
Mr. Obama plans to attend a technical college soon but expounds on the large disparity between him and his older half-brother. “If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed.”
His financial plight, however, is not his only concern. Huruma, George’s home on the outskirts of Nairobi, has been an all-too common site of violence and strife.
“Huruma is a tough place, last January during the elections there was rioting and six people were hacked to death. The police don’t even arrest you they just shoot you. I have seen two of my friends killed. I have scars from defending myself with my fists. I am good with my fists.”
Mr. Obama is not without assistance, though. Dinesh D’Souza, author of “What’s So Great about Christianity?”, and, Jerome Corsi, author of “The Obama Nation”, have both created funds for George Obama. D’Souza himself pledged $1000 while Dr. Corsi recently traveled to Kenya to personally deliver a check of $1000 to George Obama.
The exchange between Barack Obama and the now infamous “Joe the Plumber,” coupled with the senator’s apparent lack of the charity for even his own brother, raises serious questions about his belief in “sharing the wealth”. While the senator has neglected his relationship with his own brother, Sen. Obama has cultivated his associations with another Kenyan citizen, Raila Odinga. Mr. Odinga was a presidential candidate in the 2007 Kenyan election.
Odinga, a self-professed Marxist educated at East Germany’s Magdeburg University, met with Senator Obama in the U.S. in 2004, ’05, and ’06. Senator Obama also spent six days in Kenya with Mr. Odinga in August 2006.
While the trip was billed as a foreign relations excursion, Mr. Odinga and the senator were nearly inseparable. Obama’s presence with the Kenyan presidential candidate provided a major boost to Odinga’s campaign. Speaking at several Odinga rallies, Obama declared, “Kenyans are now yearning for change.”
“The [Kenyan] people have to suffer over corruption perpetrated by government officials,” Obama stated after a meeting with incumbent president Mwai Kibaki on August 25, 2006.
President Kibaki responded in a Newsweek article stating, “It is very clear that the senator [Obama] has been used as a puppet to perpetuate opposition politics.”
Oddly enough, the campaign slogan for Mr. Odinga was “Kenya’s agent for change”, a disturbing similarity to Obama’s campaign slogan of, “Change we can believe in”.
Shortly after the senator’s trip to Kenya, a Memorandum of Understanding dated August 29, 2008 was released between Raila Odinga and the National Muslim Leaders Forum. The blog that broke the story, AtlasShrugs, reports that the memorandum stated, in return for complete Muslim support and votes, Mr. Odinga would institute Shariah courts in all districts of Kenya, “impose a total ban on open-air gospel crusades by worshippers of the cross”, “outlaw gospel programs”, and close meat-packing plants associated with swine amongst several other requests. Following the discovery of this memorandum, a “clean” second version was released pledging the support of the National Muslim Leaders Forum in return for infrastructure and civil service assistance on behalf of the Kenyan government should Mr. Odinga be elected.
The election did not see things turn in complete favor of Raila Odinga. He lost the election on December 30th by 200,000 votes. Within hours, violence targeting Christians and members of the incumbent president’s tribe began. Numerous churches were burned to the ground, one with over 50 men, women, and children inside. Over 600 more were hacked to death outside during rioting and violence over a period of several days. Time Magazine reports Senator Obama was in phone contact during the New Hampshire primaries with Mr. Odinga, attempting to alleviate the violence. However, the senator was unable to contact the Kenyan president during the election strife. With over 500,000 displaced and 1,500 left dead, the Kenyan government created a new position within their government- “Prime Minister”. Mr. Odinga was sworn in as the first Kenyan Prime Minister on April 17, 2008.
While Mr. Odinga denies inciting or associating himself with the political strife, there is no record of any attempts made by him to quell the violence. There are, however, well-documented records alleging him of election rigging. Furthermore, a recent report documenting the election violence, released by the Kenyan government, charged Mr. Odinga’s campaign, including senior advisors, as the responsible party for the election violence.
There is little known about the origin of this relationship. However, in a BBC interview with Mr. Odinga in January of 2008, he stated, “Barack Obama’s father is my maternal uncle.” While the senator’s “Fight the Smears” website denies this claim, it should be noted that both Senator Obama’s father and Mr. Odinga are from the same tribe in Kenya. Jerome Corsi, while in Kenya, obtained disputed e-mails where Senator Obama refers to Odinga as “Brother”. The veracity of such documents is under challenge by the Obama campaign. In a response, Obama’s “Fight the Smears” website states, “The email is so obviously made up, it’s been openly mocked.” Earlier this month while attempting to stage a press conference in Kenya to release the contents of the documents and e-mails, Dr. Corsi was detained without explanation by Kenyan government authorities for six hours until he was deported to the United States.
The essence of Senator Obama’s relationship with Raila Odinga shows either poor judgment or complete ignorance. Nevertheless, the senator’s association and campaigning with a known Marxist is troublesome enough in itself. As the U.S. presidential election nears, Raila Odinga could join the ranks of Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and ACORN on a mounting list of discarded relationships left in the wake of Barack Obama’s politically expedient decisions. | https://medium.com/stanfordreview/barack-obamas-kenyan-connections-f038767f5ca4 | [] | 2016-12-08 02:55:22.384000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Hillary Clinton'] |
The Underrated Secret to Hire Future-Proof Talent | Self-Report Personality Test
Generally represented as explicit measures, a test of this kind involves the participant completing a personality test without the presence of an employee, and usually in their own time. This type of test has been used to predict mortality, wealth, criminality, disease progression, divorce, relationship functioning, as well as numerous indicators of well-being and psychopathology.
In the case of job performance, a self-report personality test can be designed to support hiring decisions based on the respective answers. In comparison to other methods of assessment, this type of test is basic but more cost-effective.
Implicit Association Test
“The value of self-report measures seems limited for psychological attributes that are introspectively inaccessible or outside of conscious awareness” (Gawronski & De Houwer).
To overcome these limitations, psychologists have developed alternative methods that reduce the participants’ ability to control their responses.
A common implicit measure involves an IAT (Implicit Association Test), whereby two categorisation tasks are performed, one that is compatible with the psychological attribute, and one that is incompatible.
In its simplest form, an IAT can involve the presentation of pictures and words, with the assessment of matching the two dependants on their psychological attribute.
Due to the more controlled method of assessment, this type of test can costly to customise for a specific role, however, can provide solid predictions for conscientiousness.
Experimental or Behavioural Measures
Research indicates these assessments can be organised into three specific behaviour categories; impulsive decision making, inattention, and disinhibition.
Impulsive decision making
can be assessed in a variety of ways and is usually valued as highly important when hiring for management positions.
can be assessed in a variety of ways and is usually valued as highly important when hiring for management positions.
Inattention
generally tested through the participant’s ability to maintain alertness over a period of time.
Disinhibition
can be assessed by the participant’s ability to inhibit unwanted behaviours.
Each category of behaviour can be tested through different scenario examples or reactive situations, and are usually performed in an interview setting.
These types of measures are highly customisable and can be created without a costly fee. However, they can sometimes be more suited to specific roles dependant on the specifications.
The Finisher
It must be noted that conscientiousness, as with all personality traits, is best in moderation. High levels of conscientiousness can lead to perfectionism and reduced spontaneity due to high expectation. These can be seen as negative traits dependant on the role specifications.
However, by using any, or a combination of, the above methods of assessment, a hiring manager will have the best chance of understanding a participants level of conscientiousness.
Last Note
According to what psychologists term the ‘maturity principle’, traits such as conscientiousness tend to increase as we grow older. Aside from a slight decrease between early and mid-adolescence, we grow more conscientious with age.
Maybe we should just wait until we’re all a little more conscientious. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-underrated-secret-to-hiring-future-proof-talent-8394afcf6503 | ['Guy Thornbury-Phillips'] | 2020-09-29 13:12:15.801000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Psychology', 'Recruiting', 'Leadership'] |
Transforming barriers | A look at the rights of the transgender community
Illustration by Kaleigh Wyckhouse
What do Caitlin Jenner, President Barack Obama, and BOHS have in common? They all promote bathroom rights for transgender youth.
But should transgender individuals have the right to choose the bathroom of their choice? According to a New York Times poll conducted in May, 41 percent of Americans believe they should. According to a CBS poll, the percentage drops to 26. But according to a Wildcat survey of 613 BOHS students, that percentage is 61, and even more numbers reveal that statistical attitudes at BOHS toward transgender issues are higher than most national polls.
In March, North Carolina passed a bill banning transgender citizens from using a bathroom that did not correspond with their original gender. The so-called “bathroom bill” sparked a national controversy, with many businesses and corporations, like PayPal and Deutsch Bank, refusing to expand their business in the state; big-name music acts, like Maroon 5 and Bruce Springsteen, canceling concerts;, and sports organizations like the NBA re-evaluating their relationship with the state. A lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice and then a public directive from Obama urging public schools to let transgender students use the bathroom of their choice followed.
In California, however, Obama’s statement is already a state policy as Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s own “school bathroom bill” almost three years ago. The bill, also known as the School Success and Opportunity Act, allows transgender students to use the bathroom, locker room, and join a sports team consistent with the gender they identify with. And California’s anti-discrimination laws for gender identity and expression have been in effect for the past 13 years, in contrast to North Carolina’s bill, which allows gender identity discrimination based on religious beliefs.
The Wildcat survey also revealed that 81 percent of students believe that the government should protect transgender people from discrimination (compared to CNN’s poll of 75 percent), and 65 percent of students oppose North Carolina’s bathroom bill (compared to CNN’s 57 percent).
“[Transgender people] should be allowed to use whatever bathroom that they feel comfortable with. If they feel more comfortable, then it’s the best thing for anybody. If somebody believes with their heart, mind, and soul that they weren’t born in the right body, then they should be able to do something about it. They should use whatever bathroom they feel comfortable with and wear whatever they want. I think we should just respect that,” Isabel Garcia, sophomore and LGBT rights supporter, said.
The CNN poll also found a significant trend among those against transgender rights, revealing that most tended to be male, Republican, associated with a religious group, and over 45. But for Jamison Cooper, freshman, religion is a reason to support transgender rights.
“I believe in God, so I think God made everybody for a reason. He made transgender people in that way, so I think it’s perfectly fine. They should have the right to feel [like they] fit in. It’s hard enough for transgenders already to be in high school, especially with people who judge so much, and I think [allowing them to use their preferred bathroom] would make it easier for them. It would also give them some more equality to have them feel like they have the right.”
According to Cooper, she had a friend in elementary school who is transgender who impacted her position on transgender rights. “People tend to see them as different than us, but [my friend] is no different. She’s very sweet, and actually, if anything, a lot nicer than most people. You can’t look at somebody in that way. I think this issue is just like religion or skin color. You shouldn’t view them to be any different than us.”
Senior Erick Flores’s views on transgender rights were also influenced by transgender friends.
“They were my friends, and they still currently are. Honestly, they just had a hard life, and would be better for them if a couple people were nicer to them because not a lot of people are,” Flores said. “[Transgender people] should be perfectly comfortable in choosing which type of bathroom they want to use, and we as straight people shouldn’t disagree with their choices. They are people just like us. If we start segregating them, what is that going to turn into?”
BOHS’s stance on transgender students follows the state law, allowing transgender students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. Of the 10 students interviewed for this article, six agreed with the policy, two were unsure, and two opposed it..
“[The school policy] is definitely a step in the right direction as it tells the transgender people, ‘Hey, it’s okay, you can feel this way. It’s okay and it’s not wrong,’ and I think we need that now especially,” Leilani Whitmer, freshman, said. “[Prohibiting a transgender person from not using the bathroom of their choice] [is] not right; it would be like you not being able to shop at a store you want to go to because of your gender. It’s similar to that and it’s not fair to them.”
But not everyone is supportive of BOHS’s policy. According to Aidan Yeung, sophomore, the school’s bathroom policy is “inappropriate”.
“I disagree with [the policy] because, knowing teenagers, I think some kids would be using it to go into the opposite gender’s bathroom,” Aidan Yeung, sophomore, said. “Just because you think you’re a girl doesn’t mean you get to go into the girls’ bathroom. You’re still a boy so you have to qualify with the male bathroom.”
When Target announced their policy of allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice, many critics, ranging from politicians to the OneMillionMoms campaign, argued that it promotes sexual predators to pose as transgender people and access a certain bathroom with wrong intentions. Many supporters of North Carolina’s bathroom bill started a #KeepNCSafe movement, stating the bill was to protect public safety.
“[The bathroom bill] would make other people in the bathroom uncomfortable, number one, and number two, yes, people like that would be going into bathrooms to spy on other people and to stalk, because whenever a rule like that occurs, you can always count on humans and other people to kind of bend the rules and get around it,” Yeung said.
However, a liberal group called Media Matters for America has studied the bathroom issue for several years and polled public school systems with pro-transgender bathroom policies. They reported that in all the 17 public school districts with a total of 600,000 students, there was no reported case of “harassment or inappropriate behavior” related to the issue. In addition, according to the Transgender Law Center, the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union, there is no statistical evidence to support the claim of transgender-related violence in public bathrooms.
According to Principal Jerry Halpin, there have been no reported incidents of transgender- and bathroom-related misconduct at BOHS, although he has no knowledge of any transgender students at BOHS. (UCLA estimates the transgender population in America is 0.3 percent, or 700,00 people, and claims it might even be higher.)
Studies have even found that in cases where bathroom-related violence has occurred, most of the time, the transgender individual was the victim. A report by the National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 63 percent of transgender people “had experienced a serious act of discrimination” in their life, and a 2013 Williams Institute study found that “roughly 70 percent of trans people have reported being denied entrance, assaulted or harassed while trying to use a restroom”. But even though there is statistical evidence of discrimination toward transgender people in bathrooms, laws like that of North Carolina aim to protect the safety of the public, to which there is no evidence that the public is being threatened.
The Wildcat survey also asked students if they would support BOHS if it imposed a pro-transgender bathroom policy. Although the question did not inform them of the current BOHS policy, 57 percent of the students said they would support it while 40 percent said they would not.
Lastly, the Wildcat survey revealed that 65 percent of students oppose North Carolina’s law and 61 percent support Target’s policy.
And while BOHS’ statistical evidence seems to be higher than similar national polls, it comes at no surprise, considering that California is one of the most progressive states in the nation.
California was one of the first states to pass anti-discriminatory laws against the LGBT community and the first to pass a pro-transgender bathroom bill.
And its path toward LGBT rights continues even today, whether it’s at the local level, like the Los Angeles City Council prohibiting government workers from taking federally-funded trips to North Carolina, or at the state level, like California lawmakers passing unanimous legislation in April to label single-occupancy bathrooms as “all-gender” and earning the state another “first” in the country for LGBT rights.
“[BOHS’ bathroom policy] allows transgender students to express themselves and be who they want to be,” Flores said. “But [policies like North Carolina’s] impede on one’s personal rights: freedom of speech, liberty, all of that. If we put restrictions on that sort of thing, people are going to be outraged by the restriction of freedom.” | https://medium.com/the-wildcat/transforming-barriers-347065fe5eb7 | ['The Wildcat'] | 2016-07-17 17:43:57.908000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Transgender', 'Feature'] |
How To Give The Best Self-introduction For A Fresher Interview? | “The first impression is the last impression” and that is why you should know how all about self-introduction for a fresher interview.
When it comes self-introduction for freshers in a job interview, we all can’t help but freak out just a little bit. However, answering direct questions thrown at you during a job interview may seem easier than facing a non-descriptive one like, ” fresher self-introduction for an entry-level job”. Having just passed out of college or still nursing yourself to face the rest of the last semester and make the most of the campus placements, this question might seem like a lot to handle. And, that is why we are here to answer your doubts and tell you how to give the best self-introduction for a fresher interview.
Self-introduction for a fresher interview
When you are expected to introduce yourself during a job interview, it does not mean the same thing as the wildly asked “tell me about yourself”. Both these questions are similar but need to be handled in a different manner. When you are asked for a self-introduction for a fresher interview, you are given the liberty to talk more about yourself and actually introduce who you are. And to help draft the perfect answer, here are some tips for the best self-introduction for freshers.
Talk about yourself
That means, tell the interviewer your full name and where you are from. The key to nailing the opening sentence is to start with confidence and maintain a great body language. Look the interviewer in the eye as you introduce yourself. Give a nod and smile at appropriate places.
Give a brief of your educational background
When you are asked to give a self-introduction during a fresher interview, you are also expected to give a brief of your educational background. Yes, it is something that you have mentioned in your resume so you might feel it is redundant information. However, you need to talk about your education at this point in time to give a more rounded and complete “self-introduction”.
Talk about your accomplishments and hobbies
Remember, when you are introducing yourself during a job interview, you are basically selling yourself and telling the interviewer why and how you are better than other candidates with similar skill sets and education. That is why it is of prime importance that you talk about your accomplishments.
Your hobbies should make an important chunk of your self-introduction. Why? Because it is that part where you get a chance to showcase your personality and be more than what the interviewer sees on the resume.
Introduce your family
You might think that you don’t need to introduce your family when in a job interview. However, if you want to give a nice picture to the interviewer, you should talk about your parents and siblings. And, while you do so pick up specific things about them that you admire and that you have learnt and which you can bring to the job.
However, do keep it in mind that this is not a place for storytelling and your answer should add to why you should be hired for the job, instead of taking away from it.
Talk about things you want to achieve few years down the line
Don’t restrict yourself to the present and who you are. Talk about your ambitions and goals and where you see yourself in the coming years. Tell the interviewer that you are ambitious but not over-ambitious to make the right impression.
Talking about your goals and dreams will make you come across as a more zealous person who is ready to take up the job.
So, keep these interview tips in mind as you move to introduce yourself during the job interview and take the job home. | https://medium.com/@amcat.aspiringminds2020/how-to-give-the-best-self-introduction-for-a-fresher-interview-988c27c08b2f | ['Amcat Aspiringminds'] | 2020-10-08 08:58:55.335000+00:00 | ['Job Interview', 'Job Hunting', 'Self Introduction', 'Freshers'] |
7 Gift Ideas for Kids Who Want to Code | Buying gifts for a budding software engineer? These are some of the best coding toys and games to get your kids interested in STEM and spark their inner geek.
By Carol Mangis & Jake Leary
Kids are constantly glued to their devices: texting friends, playing games, watching (or creating) videos, and sharing selfies. But most children—whether or not they know it yet—are thrilled to have a more hands-on, under-the-hood experience with digital technology.
Parents who want to encourage and inspire their kids to stretch their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) muscles probably already know this, but there are plenty of toys and kits claiming to provide just that. Here’s a roundup of products that give kids a real, creative experience of electronics, robotics, and coding and to build interest and confidence in the most neophyte techies.
Elenco Snap Circuits Discover Coding
A new kit from the venerable kit-maker Elenco offers another way to introduce kids to coding. Once they learn the basics, they’re able to control Snap Circuits projects’ lights, sounds, and motors via a phone or tablet. True beginners can start with graphical coding; once they’re ready, they can move up to Blockly coding. The kit comes with more than 30 Snap Circuits part s— colorful, rugged electronic components that snap together. Ages 8 and up.
Piper Computer Kit 2
Piper’s Computer Kit 2 includes all the components you need to build your own computer: a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, mouse, battery, blueprint, and set of screws, plus nuts, wood boards for the chassis, and a screwdriver to put the case together. The kit also comes with wires, buttons, switches, LEDs, and breadboards to use with post-build coding projects.
Parents and teachers should be on standby throughout the build process, especially for kids at the low end of Piper’s recommended 8-and-up age range. Once it’s built, you can play games in a special Minecraft mod that shows you how to build hardware projects you can use, in turn, to accomplish goals within the Minecraft universe. Even better, the Piper computer also serves as an actual computer; it goes online, has a word processor, and so on. The Piper Computer Kit remains a clever smart toy and, despite its steep price, is worth every screw-turning, breadboard-wiring, code-writing second.
Kano PC
The Kano PC kit is a great launchpad that can get kids ages 6 and older interested in computers and software coding. The kit contains the hardware components you need to create a working Windows 10 tablet — including an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 quad-core processor clocked at 1.44GHz, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and 64GB of storage, as well as a MicroSD card slot and detachable keyboard.
You connect everything together by following storybook instructions. Projects include coding and making art, music, and games, and kids will learn about the inner workings of a PC and how to code through onboard apps.Your DIY tablet will also work with Windows apps such as Word and Excel, along with many others. And you can visit Kano World online to safely share projects with the Kano community. Ages 6 and up.
Robo Wunderkind Starter Kit
Young coders will have everything they need to build their own little bots, as well as code and operate them, with the Robo Wunderkind Starter Kit. You get several types of motors and sensors, wheels, a programmable button, an RGB light, and a main block with a speaker, mic, and battery; everything snaps together easily. You use two apps: Robo Code, to set your robot’s behaviors; and Robo Play, which lets you remote-control your bot. The former has tutorials and guides you through building projects — and eventually, you can create your own robots. Even better, Lego adapters are included, so you can augment your creations exponentially. Ages 6 to 12.
Microduino Itty Bitty Buggy
A builder kit that’s compatible with Lego blocks as well as with other kits from the company, the Microduino Itty Bitty Buggy comes with a base buggy to build on, as well as more than 50 snap-together mobiles with varying functions. Kids can build four fun projects with the kit: a Sloth, Ladybug, Dodo bird, and Alien. They can then code behaviors for their creations using either simple drag-and-drop coding (based on Scratch 3), more sophisticated Python, or even higher-level text-based Arduino IDE (C++). For those who want more, the Microduino Creative Expansion Kit ($19.99) features components for three more projects — or just invent your own. Ages 8 and up.
LittleBits Code Kit
We’re fans of LittleBits modular electronics kits; we’ve awarded them several Editors’ Choice awards, including the second-edition Gizmos & Gadgets Kit. The LittleBits Code Kit is designed to be used in educational settings to introduce kids from third to eighth grades to programming principles, by creating games through coding. LittleBits encourages parents to urge their schools to buy the kit. But if you really want to get your kids involved in coding and are willing to take an active role in the process, you can purchase the kit yourself. It may be overkill for some, but it’s a robust solution and an effective tool. Ages 8 and up.
Lego Boost Creative Toolbox
For kids who are a bit too young to handle Lego’s venerable MindStorms robotics kits, look no further than its Boost Creative Toolbox. Designed to introduce children to coding and robotics, the Boost kit provides building blocks with sensors, motors, and app-based coding to help them build a variety of robotic toys that can respond to stimuli. It’s a simple, fun, and relatively affordable approach that teaches the principles of programming, making it worthy of our Editors’ Choice designation. Ages 7 to 12. | https://medium.com/pcmag-access/7-gift-ideas-for-kids-who-want-to-code-2ec682ed493 | [] | 2020-12-14 17:02:35.359000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'Kids', 'STEM', 'Gifts', 'Technology'] |
Desperately Seeking Validation | You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all of the time — Abraham Lincoln
People pleasing sounds like it should be a good thing; an earnest pursuit; but actually it’s a behavioural kink formed in childhood, occurring when a child becomes overly compliant in meeting their parent’s needs, in order to gain love, approval, and acceptance.
In other words, the need to please is borne out of insecurity, low self-esteem, and a desperate need to gain power, love, approval, and acceptance .
In adulthood, this learnt behaviour can manifest itself as an insidious manipulation tool, whereby we try to become all things to all people, and are reliant on controlling the opinion of others, in order to manage our own insecurities and self-love deficit.
In simple terms, people pleasing equates to saying Yes, when inside we’re screaming No; to habitually prioritising others over ourselves; to violating our personal boundaries; abandoning our moral code; bypassing our integrity, and acting disingenuously.
There’s only one reason we contort ourselves to comply with the expectations of others in this crude way; it’s because when the validation comes, the adrenal hit feels good, like a drug, and the opposite makes us feels worthless, shameful, ‘not enough’.
In a romantic context, people pleasing manifests as ‘love bombing’ — whereby somebody cycles in and out of your life like a mini tornado, showering you with gifts, acts of service, attention, compliments, and affection, only to disappear as soon as their needs have been met.
This ‘fake love’ fix can severely test your discernment, and confuse the hell out of you, as you are picked up and put you down like a toy, erroneously given false hope for something more, but never getting it.
Ultimately, this disingenuous way of living is both exhausting and toxic, leading to endless turmoil in relationships, and huge disruption to one’s well being.
The way out of this maze is simple: embrace personal integrity; be yourself, warts and all, and care less about what other people think. Remember: | https://medium.com/change-becomes-you/desperately-seeking-validation-238f1db7c25c | [] | 2020-12-17 10:22:48.886000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Love And Dating', 'Self Improvement', 'Personal Growth', 'Relationships'] |
Building the Bitcoin Economy: The Complete Contract Governance Platform | Building the Bitcoin Economy: The Complete Contract Governance Platform
TL;DR: Bitcoin’s overwhelming value proposition is as a complete contract governance platform. As such, its unique transactional properties allow the creation of Bitcoin powered SaaS platforms that fundamentally disrupt many aspects of traditional contract applications, far beyond “smart contracts” alone.
If you have been following the crypto-universe for a few years, you can be excused for feeling that we seem to have lost the plot somewhere along the road. Perhaps, not entirely. But in a very fundamental way we are lost among the trees and have missed the forest.
Our point is this: Bitcoin’s overwhelming value proposition is as a complete contract governance platform. As such, its unique transactional properties allow the creation of Bitcoin powered SaaS platforms that fundamentally disrupt many aspects of traditional contract theory, far beyond “smart contracts” alone.
Bitcoin offers a distinct third alternative to the price mechanism of a free market and the top-down coordination mechanisms of organizations such as firms and institutions. This third alternative is a what we believe will open up an entirely new set of economic orderings: one where the functions of firms and institutions, on the one hand, and the price mechanism on the other, are, to varying degrees, both subsumed. This principle of organization is a cryptographic stigmergy.
Stigmergic organization of social activity occurs when actors self-organize by taking cues from the environment that they operate within; information relevant for the self-organization to occur in the pursuit of beneficial activity is provided by their environment.
Bitcoin’s value is in creating stigmergic environments through the creation of trust platforms.
More specifically, Bitcoin’s capacity to serve as a stigmergic environment comes from its ability to provide a platform for the creation of complete contract solutions. By a complete contract solution we simply mean a mechanism that can be implemented to reify a technology for the mapping between information and outcomes for any given context.
What does that mean precisely?
Contracts
Contracts are pervasive. They are, quite literally, everywhere. A firm is nothing but a repository of contracts: contracts with employees, with unions, with suppliers, with consumers, and so forth. The global economy is almost exclusively defined by contracts: contracts exist between countries in the context of pacts and treaties over trade, loans, and other cooperative agreements of a very broad variety. Contracts are very much part of life for individuals in equal measure: we enter into contracts with our lawyers, the builders of our homes, our insurance companies, the DJ whom we hire for our garden party, and much else besides.
These are all incomplete contracts. What this essentially means is that investments (of effort, actions, money, capital, or whatever) are made on the basis of which some outcome is realized before those who are party to the contract receive their payoffs. However, investments made by one party are put at risk whenever the other party undertakes some form of undesirable behavior. This alters the bargaining power between the parties to a contract and even reduces the incentive to enter into the contract ex ante.
Incomplete contracts are called incomplete because they cannot be fully specified; they leave gaps of information open that then create indescribable contingencies relevant to the future states of the contract. The cost to specify these contingencies may be prohibitively large, or the contingencies may be unforeseeable before investments are made. Indeed, it may even be rational to deliberately leave a degree of incompleteness built into the contract in order to permit some scope for desirable variability in future efforts around a shared reference point.
In any case, the effect is that the resulting contract is not verifiable by any independent third-party entity. When information is revealed that is contrary to the expectations of one or more of the contract’s participants, resolutions are few. The role of the third-party, usually the courts, is only relevant ex post, to adjudicate on the animus contrahendi, or the intentions the parties to a contract had when they entered into it.
A workaround for this problem, where possible, is to provide ownership to the party whose investments are most vital. This has been a fundamental justification for the existence of the firm in economic theory. The firm acts as the de facto verifier of last resort.
In all the instances of incomplete contracts, we could arguably create — explicitly — some entity in whom we reify the responsibility for the verification of parameters pertaining to contractual performance. We do this to the extent possible, and when we fail, we tend to live with suboptimal outcomes that are open to expensive ex post litigation costs, renegotiation costs, or, simply, an increased probability that the economic activity is altogether foregone, ex ante.
Enter Bitcoin as a Mechanism Creator
Starring: Coase
When asked what is Bitcoin’s use case, you might have been tempted to conclude that it is “sound money”. Perhaps, you might have ventured that it is the archetype of a new asset class, and not much more. Or, you may even have suggested that it is worthless, and that the crux of the substance is the blockchain technology.
If we are right, then none of these viewpoints are accurate. At the very least, each is utterly incomplete. And, not realizing why is akin to driving around in a car with a wheel missing. You are very likely to be hobbling not just the your own journey, but everyone else’s journey who you have taken along as passengers as well.
Bitcoin’s value proposition is its ability to provide a complete contractual mechanism that has never existed in the history of economic orderings in societies. A significant side-effect of this, it is true, is that Bitcoin is a type of money with very desirable characteristics; it is a type of asset that is novel in comparison to all others; and it is the poster-child for a promising technology.
Ironically, this viewpoint has been hidden in plain sight in Nakamoto’s white paper. Bitcoin was built as the only payment system that was compatible with a network economy. The network economy operates on certain simple but profound principles that are essentially all based upon deepening network economies over an expanding set of goods and services. To this, Bitcoin adds trust economies and serves as its platform.
Trust economies are created when transactions costs fall by virtue of shifting the organization of economic activity from the traditional economy to the stigmergic organization that Bitcoin can provide.
Such economies are substantial and significant across a range of situations that are marked by contractual incompleteness arising routinely from poorly defined and ineffectually enforced property rights. This is the crypto-Coase theorem, and it is profoundly important to understanding why Bitcoin can become central to instigating valuable economic reorganizations en masse. Bitcoin generates trust economies that lower transactions costs over alternative forms of economic organization.
To see this more elementally, consider the blockchain technology that is so often seen as the “real” innovation in Bitcoin.
The familiar mantra is that blockchains instantiate decentralized ledgers of transactions. However, the desirable features of blockchains — temporal and spatial immutability, trustless verifiability, expansibility — are bolstered by the strength of the consensus protocols that they use. The stronger such protocols are, the more transparently and clearly these desirable features become reified in the applications. The fact that the Bitcoin blockchain can itself be forked off in the creation of patently nonsensical assets is proof that the creation of a cryptoeconomy requires more than the simple application of a blockchain. The paradox is that this constitutes a fundamental tradeoff: The myriad applications of blockchains that are based on the use of more frictionless protocols increase the risk of compromising those ideals fundamentally.
Yet, these are necessary frictional costs in the construction of a platform of trust economies. Protocols are like the feathers of the peacock. They represent a handicap principle for blockchain applications. Trust economies, in other words, must be purchased. And nowhere are they better setup to do so than with Bitcoin. | https://medium.com/coinmonks/building-the-bitcoin-economy-the-complete-contract-governance-platform-54f723e88ccf | ['Prateek Goorha'] | 2018-06-06 19:55:27.844000+00:00 | ['Contracts', 'Economics', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain'] |
¿Qué es Kaggle y cómo puedes entrar en esta comunidad? | 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://planetachatbot.com/que-es-kaggle-y-como-puedes-entrar-871459da7752 | ['Planeta Chatbot'] | 2021-01-27 09:27:32.126000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Kaggle', 'Español', 'Inteligencia Artificial', 'Podcast'] |
Side By Side | Side By Side
Side by side
Same height
Pretty
Focused on the other
Bogosse and Cinderella
Unworried
Before Him and the outside
The promise
Side by side
Sealed and uncovered
No shy
Riding in the light
Day and night
Praises uncontrolled
Burning with the fire
Instilling desire
Convincing on-lookers
Side by side
Revealing the inside
Breeding opinions
Considering the outside
Peeling the onions
Birthing suspicion
Side by side
A fence in the middle
Feigning oblivion
No-name cases to settle
Head below the water
Suffocating with air for two
Mouths firing bubbles
Thoughts they can’t subdue
Side by side
Hearts over-pressured
Unable to give a sound
Forgetting the rhythm
Hushing the roommate’s pulses
Feeling the outside’s
Drinking without rigour
Beating to stupor
Acting and reacting
Fading and pretending
Side by side
Consumed
Destroyed
Heartless
Sleeping in the cold
Too late to save
The outside has gathered
Prayers to say
Side by side
Hand in hand
Right in left or left in right
Too late to matter
Each on their side
Each under their glass
Locked in their boxes
Bogosse and Cinderella
Focused on the white light
Leaving. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/side-by-side-648538eae2c3 | ['Ngansop A. Roy'] | 2019-06-17 10:21:00.753000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Couples'] |
AgenceMe is Now Bruno | AgenceMe Story: Back in 2014
If you don’t know us yet, AgenceMe is a brand and digital agency based in Paris and California. We have worked with big companies like Uber, Sanofi, Allianz, Roche, Orange, Sendinblue, Qonto, Engie… over the past 7 years in branding, marketing and web development.
But we have to tell you… we’re not a simple branding and digital agency like many others… I know, all branding and digital agencies say the same thing ;) but this time, it’s real. We are more than that… we are a family, literally.
I created this agency, 7 years ago, with Marine, my lovely wife, and Léonard, my blood, my brother. We were three during 2 years in a tiny office in Normandie. I designed, Marine took care of projects and business and Léonard developed. It was a funny period because no one went to a design and development school. We learned everything by ourselves and actually this is the best thing to do. Passion, motivation and curiosity are keys for us.
Our goal: Create a business that matters in the industry.
We started with basic skills, we met awesome people across the world, helped out some big companies and spoke with smart entrepreneurs. It’s been an incredible journey! 7 years later we can say we achieved our goal. AgenceMe is not the biggest agency in the world or even in France but in some way we feel that we’ve made an impact in our industry. We were the first agency on Dribbble France, we’ve grown to more than 100k followers across social networks, we’ve won awwwards and plenty of news talk about our work…. It’s just the beginning and Bruno will help us to do much more. | https://medium.com/bruno/agenceme-is-now-bruno-12a0a8c9d6e1 | ['Barthélémy Chalvet'] | 2021-02-22 13:01:43.468000+00:00 | ['Brun', 'Agency', 'Agenceme'] |
Indian Farm Bill 2020 | And What it holds for Indian Agriculture and Farmers in particular?
Photo by wilsan u on Unsplash
Indian agriculture is endowed with diversified agro-climatic zones and different soil types that support the production of a wide range of crops. This also makes India the world’s second-largest food producer and the number one producer of many food crops. Before delving into the Farm bill 2020, let us understand some key facts, challenges, and priority areas of Indian agriculture.
1.The total food grain and horticulture crop production of India was 295 Mn tonnes & 320 Mn tonnes respectively in FY20. India produced 208 Mn lit Milk during the same period.
2. Indian agriculture provides livelihood support to more than 60% of the population and contributes around 16% to GDP and 10% of total export earnings.
3. Average land holding of 86% of Indian farmers is less than 2 Hectares which results in subsistence agriculture in most parts of India.
4. Out of the total cultivated land, 37% have an irrigation facility, and the rest of the cultivated land is dependent on monsoon.
5. India is the largest producer of bananas, Mango, Milk, Pulses, and Spices and second-largest in Wheat, Rice, Cotton, Sugarcane, and egg production.
Key Challenges and Priorities -
1.Crop Productivity — Despite the significant increase in average production in the last three decades, still India ranks low in productivity. Precision farming, quality inputs, and judicious use of resources are key areas to focus on to increase productivity.
2. Mechanization, Water Resource Management & Infrastructure — Low landholding is key challenge in the adoption of mechanization, however, FPOs/FPCs and cooperatives farming can add significant value by increasing mechanization. As only one-third of cultivated land has an irrigation facility, efficient water resource management practices can play an important role. More investment is needed in irrigation and warehousing to build better infrastructure facilities that reduce post-harvest crop losses.
3. Credit availability and market linkage — Most of the farmers are still dependent on Arthiyas & local lenders to get timely credit and sell their crops to them at low prices. Though the Government of India has facilitated credit to farmers through the priority sector lending route, the benefit is still not reaching the farmers due to several reasons. Indian farmers also need better market access, market information, and direct market linkage to realize the better prices of their produce.
What is Farm Bill 2020 -
The Indian Farm reform 2020 comprises the following three agriculture bills passed by the parliament of India in Sep 2020.
Farmer Producer Trade & Commerce ( Promotion & facilitation) Act — This bill focuses on following key reforms
a) Expand the scope of trade area of farmers’ produce from selected area (APMC) to any place of production, collection, aggregation.
b) Allow electronic trading and e-commerce of scheduled farmers produce
c) Prohibit state government from levying any market fee, cess, or levy on farmers, traders, and electronic trading platform for the trade of farmer produce conducted in an outside trade area ‘APMC’.
2. Farmers ( Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assistance and Farm Service Act — This bill focuses on below mention reforms
a) Provide a legal framework for farmers to enter into prearrange contracts with buyers including mention of pricing
b) Defines a dispute resolution mechanism
3. Essential Commodities (Amendment ) Act —
a) Remove foodstuff such as cereals, pulses, potato, onion, edible oils from the list of essential commodities, removing stock holding limit on such items except under extraordinary circumstances.
b) Requires that imposition of any stock limit on agriculture produce be based on price rise.
Takeaway of Farm Bills 2020 -
Farmers will have an option to sell their produce either in APMC market or outside to any buyers. These reforms break the cartel of middle man/ Arthiyas in APMC market to keep prices artificially low and at the same time allow the middle man to get into a contract with the farmer to purchase farmer produce outside mandi at pre-agreed price. The farmer needs not pay any fee or cess, and will be able to realize better prices of their produce. Under contract farming, which is now available to the farmers across India, farmers will get assured prices for their harvest. As Government has targeted to create more than 10,000 FPC/FPOs, this will help the small farmer to bargain better deals to purchase inputs and to sell their produce. Reform will attract more private investment which will further strengthen agriculture infrastructure. Contract farming will act as a strong risk mitigant against market-linked price fluctuation and facilitate more credit facilities from the financial institutions. Crop insurance is anyway covering crop losses due to natural calamities therefore both farmers and financial institutions are protected. Reduction in intermediaries in the value chain will increase the export competitiveness of agricultural products.
Green Revolution in 1960 has played an important role in agriculture by improving food production and made India self-sufficient. Farm Bill 2020 will prove to be another agriculture revolution that will bring Indian agriculture to a very strong position globally. | https://medium.com/@sachin7378/indian-farm-bill-2020-d5cb6e08e293 | ['Sachin Pathak'] | 2020-12-14 02:30:24.624000+00:00 | ['Agriculture', 'Indian Agriculture', 'Crops', 'Farm Bill'] |
Well, my Thoughts Journal™️ is going to begin with complaining. | Well, my Thoughts Journal™️ is going to begin with complaining. I can’t finish my college application essay because my creative drive has dried up faster than Johnny Depp’s job prospects, so here’s my shot in the dark for some relaxing journal-type situation. I already hate this because I hate talking about myself, but since nobody ever needs to see, I’ll just string letters together and try for motivation. The puppy is barking downstairs, which means that whatever wandered past the front door made so much noise he could hear them from the crate — why am I explaining if this is just for me? Maybe I just like the font this types in better than normal. At least I don’t need to narrate, because I abhor the sound of my voice more than Bulgarian split squats, and that is a raw, passionate hatred. This special brand of stress, at least to me, began with a meeting on Tuesday for the Junior class at my high school (social distanced so far apart in the massive auditorium only twenty of us could sit at once, but at least they try) to inform us about college applications and senior year classes. Applications make me sweat and pace and ramble and procrastinate (it’s really all about the self sabotage). My mom thinks I need stronger anxiety meds. I tell her you can’t just take Valium every day and she gives me that special kind of glare that cuts straight to my bones. I’ll end this with a wish of good luck and encouragement for anyone unlucky enough to stumble here, because even if I don’t have it for me I can always have it for you.
Love others, but love yourself too. Happy Holidays. | https://medium.com/@briannatabor5/well-my-thoughts-journal-%EF%B8%8F-is-going-to-begin-with-complaining-f9189e18e483 | ['Arabella Jackson'] | 2020-12-18 15:41:02.984000+00:00 | ['Students', 'Anxiety', 'High School', 'College', 'Write'] |
6 Favourite Medium Articles for Beginner UX Designers to Read | There are many people who want to learn and work on the User Experience or User Interface Design considering several reasons including its extensity and the need all over the world. There are a couple of ways to learn such as taking online or private courses, reading books or blogs, watching Youtube videos. No doubt everybody has a different learning style and I believe that one must find the best fit method for himself/herself.
As one of those who have graduated from and work in jobs other than digital design but also are changing their roads to design during professional life, I had sorted steps here.
After taking an online course and watching several Youtube videos, I concentrated on Medium articles regarding UX & UI design. The good point is that I could and did read the articles during the inner-city-transportation, waiting times, and any time you in the day, which makes me feel really good that I used the idle time reading articles to create a new career path. Here I want to give my favorite articles giving me an expansive point of view.
1. Top Skills First-Year UX Designers Should Master
Keily Doran, UX Planet
In this article, the writer focuses on the necessary skills for a successful UX designer. According to the writer, within the UX design world, one has to work with others and that’s why interpersonal skills including analytical skills, creativity, collaborative mindset, and empathy to have are significant. On the other hand, “it’s vital for UX designers to maintain industry-specific skills that help them work more efficiently and creatively.” The article is also giving small guidance with regard to UX & UI articles.
2. 52 Research Terms you need to know as a UX Designer
Guy Ligertwood, UX Planet
It is not actually fun to read but gives certain terms of the profession with small but understandable explanations. You may need to read this article a bit slower and repeat it a few times to bear in mind exactly. But that is definitely beneficial especially for those who want to have comprehensive knowledge in the long run. Many words in the list have a relation to other IT spheres such as data analysis or marketing, which increases the remembrance-rate.
You can find a similar model article here in Bootcamp written by Christian Leong.
3. Inclusive UX Education: Designing a Free Online Learning Curriculum
Mitchell Wakefield, UX Planet
In this article, the writer evaluates the online and free courses such that anybody with financial disabilities but desire to learn and be a part of UX & UI design world may attend. With this article, I comprehended that there are many free opportunities in the design world for education. You only need time and passion. But be careful with time and fertility. You have to choose the best fit online course for yourself by comparing them considering their curriculum and content.
4. A guide to Motion Design principles
Micah Bowers, UX Collective
The article gives the idea of dynamic design that possibly takes more attention from the users. The movements are important for digital products because the human brain gets noticed more with the mobile(moving) applications. According to the writer, there are 12 motion design principles for digital products: 1.Easing, 2. Offset and delay, 3. Parenting, 4. Transformation, 5. Value Change, 6. Masking, 7. Overlay, 8.Cloning, 9.Obscuration, 10.Parallax, 11.Dimensionality, 12. Dolly and Zoom. For details click above.
5. Uses of illustration Inside UI Design
UI Blogger, UX Planet
The article focuses on the importance and certain effects of illustrations in UX & UI design projects. Illustrations may create far more impact on the users, which makes the professionals of this field use them to have a better experience. As stated in the article, there are plenty of uses of illustration, but the right choice of illustration depends on the customer firm’s needs and the demand of the users in the sector.
6. What is your UX process?
Nadeeka Athukorala, UX Collective
The writer in this article gives a small brief about the terms of UX and UI and then gives the key characteristics of a UX design process. The steps of design and the structure of the phases are examined in a unique way with her visuals.
Final Words
Here are the articles in Medium I like most within the last month. I strongly believe that there will be written much more high-quality articles about the field. From now on I will more be related to case studies and making my own design patterns, which in turn building my own portfolio. | https://uxplanet.org/6-favourite-medium-articles-for-beginner-ux-designers-to-read-f331f63b5fc7 | ['Kazim Cinar'] | 2020-12-08 08:57:42.798000+00:00 | ['Articles', 'UX Design', 'UI Design', 'Beginners Guide', 'Medium Brasil'] |
Open-Source Is the New Black | Open-Source Is the New Black
Why Open-Source is the future of collaborative development
Have you ever wondered when you’re “Netflix and Chilling” or “Spotifying”, what's it like at their codebase and ask oneself how it works? Well, I did and I recently found out that Netflix and Spotify are Open Source 😲 (Actually not all the components, but some). Both Netflix and Spotify are committed to open source and they have published some of their software components to the public. This got me to think that open-source software has a lot to offer to businesses as well as to the public domain. It is more agile and customizable to our needs and it literally saves us a lot of money. From accounting packages to full-enterprise solutions open-source software is now a popular topic in the market. And I also happen to work for a great company that provides open-source middleware technology. WSO2 is the world’s #1 open source integration vendor, helping digitally driven organizations become integration agile. By considering all the insights I gathered from there and from the outside, let’s explore some facts about open source.
What exactly is Open-Source?
In general, “Open-Source” refers to something people can modify and share as it is publicly accessible. When it comes to software development terminology Open Source Software otherwise known as OSS is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the right to study, change and distribute the software to anyone for any purpose.
Whenever we build software with great potential and has a high standard of business value, we tend to keep the source code to ourselves without exposing it to the outside world. There’s so much secrecy behind it. But the Open Source concept is totally different. OSS is an eminent example of open collaboration.
Difference between OSS and other types of software?
As mentioned earlier, some software has source code that only specific persons have access to it (The secret recipe of Coca-Cola comes into mind) and only some have the authority to modify and control it. These are known as proprietary software. When it comes to proprietary software, only the original authors of the software can legally copy, inspect and alter the software. There are almost always major restrictions on its use. The restrictions on the use of proprietary software are usually enumerated in the End User License Agreements (EULAs) that users must consent to. EULAs are usually long and complex.
OSS is totally different. Its authors make its source code available to the public domain which allows others to view that code, copy it, learn from it, modify it as they wish or share it. When it comes to OSS, the users must accept the terms of use much like with the proprietary software but the legal terms of open-source licenses are dramatically contrasting with proprietary licenses.
Popular Open-Source Software — put it briefly
Linux is the best-known and most-used open-source operating system in the world. In many ways, Linux is similar to other operating systems such as Windows, iOS, etc. It has a graphical interface, word processing applications, etc. On the other hand, Linux is also much different from other OSes because it is open-source which means the code used to create Linux is open to the public to view, edit and also contribute. Linux is highly customizable because of this feature. The users can swap out applications such as web browsers, word processors and the fun does not stop there. Users have the capability to choose core components as well such as system displays graphics, UI components, etc. How awesome is that? 😍 Click here to access the Linux repository.
MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). It is a free OSS under the terms of GNU General Public License and also available under a variety of proprietary licenses. MySQL is a component of the LAMP web application software stack (which is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python). It is used by many database-driven web applications such as Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress and websites including Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Youtube. MySQL has the ability to store data in multiple storage engines including InnoDB, CSV, NDB, and more, replicate data and partition tables for better performance and durability, Access database info with SQL commands, Use triggers and views to enforce business rules and show only data needed per user, etc. Click here to access the MySQL repository.
$20B+ worth of Apache Open Source software products are made available to the public-at-large at 100% no cost and benefit billions of users around the world.
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an American non-profit corporation. ASF is a decentralized open-source community of developers. The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, agreement-based development process and an open and pragmatic software license. Each project is managed by a self-selected team of technical experts who are active contributors to the project. Unlike some other organizations that host FOSS projects, before a project is hosted at Apache it has to be licensed to the ASF with a grant or contributor agreement. By doing that, ASF gains the necessary intellectual property rights for the development distribution. Click here to access the Apache repository.
PHP is an open-source general-purpose scripting language that is widely used for web development and can be embedded into HTML. PHP is free software released under the PHP License. The best things in using PHP are that it is extremely simple for a newcomer, but offers many advanced features for a professional programmer. PHP code may be executed with a command-line interface (CLI), embedded into HTML code, or used in combination with various web template systems, web content management systems, and web frameworks. Click here to access the PHP repository.
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. The GNU Compiler Collection includes front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, FORTRAN, Ada, Go, and D. GCC has been ported to a wide variety of instruction set architectures and is widely deployed as a tool in the development of both free and proprietary software. GCC is a key component of the GNU tool-chain and the standard compiler for most projects related to GNU and Linux, including the Linux kernel. Click here to access the GNU Compiler Collection repository.
Mozilla Firefox otherwise known as Firefox browser/ Firefox is a free and open-source web browser developed by Mozilla Foundation. Firefox has become the most flexible of all web browsers because of its open-source heritage. With thousands of plugins and extensions available, it is easy to transform Firefox into the ideal web browser. Firefox’s source code forms the basis of many specialist projects, including the security-focused Tor Browser and speed-centric Waterfox. Firefox is updated every five to eight weeks. It has this amazing feature where the end-users get the chance to try out the new features by installing the Beta version or taking part in Firefox Test Pilot. Click here to access the Firefox repository.
Mozilla Thunderbird works as a free and open-source cross-platform email client, news client and chat (XMPP, IRC, Twitter) client. Like Firefox, Thunderbird is an open-source project published by the Mozilla Foundation and is almost without a limit adaptable. Thunderbird offers many useful features such as message management, junk filtering, supports extensions and themes, big file linking, HTML code insertion, cross-platform support, etc. Click here to access the Mozilla Thunderbird repository.
VLC is a free and open-source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS, iPadOS, Tizen, Windows 10 Mobile, and Windows Phone. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple’s App Store, Google Play and Microsoft Store. VLC media player contains amazing features such as it plays Files, Discs, Webcams, Devices, and Streams, No spyware and no user tracking, fast hardware decoding, supports many kinds of file formats, subtitle synchronization, video, and audio filters, etc. Click here to access the VLC Media Player repository.
GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is a mature, feature-packed free and open-source image editor. GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows, and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes. It is widely used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, converting between different image formats, and more specialized tasks. You can adjust every aspect of your pictures’ appearance manually, or use the dozens of customizable filters and effects to achieve amazing results with just a few clicks. GIMP comes with a huge array of user-created plugins pre-installed. Click here to access the GIMP repository.
Wireshark is a free and open-source packet analyzer. It is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and you can freely use Wireshark on any number of computers you like, without worrying about license keys or fees or such. Wireshark is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications protocol development, and education purposes. Wireshark is cross-platform, using the Qt widget toolkit in current releases to implement its user interface, and using pcap to capture packets; it runs on Linux, macOS, BSD, Solaris, some other Unix-like operating systems, and Microsoft Windows. Click here to access the Wireshark repository.
Reasons to support OSS
Better Security — Given that OSS is available to the public, having more eyes on software means more testing, bug fixing, and hardening. Products that are closed to the public view may have only a set of developers and testers to test products. In that case, there’s a chance that some small flaw or a bug to get missed. This results in security flaws. But there’s a huge open source community behind every OSS. The more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely to find flaws and fix them quickly. On account of this, bugs in open source software tend to get fixed immediately. Higher quality software — In my opinion, a software package developed by thousands of developers is much better than a software package created by a handful of developers. Behind every OSS, there are countless developers and end-users working hard to improve the security as well as the performance of the software. Flexibility — OSS is less resource-intensive in nature. When it comes to OSS, there’s no vendor lock-in. If you use proprietary software, you have to keep upgrading both software and hardware until doomsday. But with OSS you can run your software as per your choice without having your vendor forcing you to upgrade. Boundless customization — Open-source software offers a great degree of customization through access to the code. Assume that your business purchased a proprietary software and the end-users are not satisfied with its features and capabilities. Be that as it may, now that you have bought the software and you do not have access to its codebase, there’s no turning back. When it comes to OSS, business users can take a piece of code and adjust it to suit their needs. Since the code is open to the public domain, its simply a matter of time and modifying it to add the functionalities they want. Attract better talent — Open-source gives the ability to attract better talent. It allows showcasing to the developer community. The developers behind the open-source community contribute to projects, learn from it and work on unsolved problems as well. If they like what they tackle with, there’s a better chance that they apply for the job. Try before buying — OSS doesn’t cost a cent. If you want to try it out first, no one is stopping you. Getting the system adapted to best meet your needs will come with a bill to pay, but this also gives you an immediate return on investment.
I strongly believe that open-source is a good way to achieve mind-blowing new solutions. Open-source is a good investment in the future. Open-source applications are continually evolving in real-time as developers fix, enhance and modify the source code. Despite the many benefits of open-source, in some cases, it can be not that helpful. The difficulty to get used to, compatibility issues are some of the main disadvantages of OSS.
OSS is the best possible solution, especially for new businesses. Many business owners use open-source software because it has little or no cost at all. If you are choosing OSS for a business, the first thing you need to do is research and evaluate all your options. Make sure that you gauge: — all the available features of the software, the stability of the product, its compatibility with your existing systems and equipment. Also, do not forget to check whether the vendor provide regular and timely security updates or patches and there is enough documentation available to support installation, setup, and troubleshooting. If you do your due diligence, there’s nothing to worry about.
I hope you guys learned something new about open source software and its capabilities. Comment below and let me know your opinions and thoughts about OSS. Keep in touch for more cool stuff! ❤️ | https://towardsdatascience.com/open-source-is-the-new-black-431d7d568e51 | ['Shanika Perera'] | 2019-12-14 06:03:08.667000+00:00 | ['Wso2', 'Open Source Software', 'Apache', 'Linux', 'Open Source'] |
Instead of Detailed Goals, I’m Writing Myself a 2021 Vibe Check. | At 10:24 pm, Christmas night, after finishing another rom com, Iliana pulled out pieces of kraft paper to draw something down together for the upcoming year. Suddenly, I hear the lyrics from Frozen “INTO THE UNKNOWN 🎼…”
In the past years, I usually start setting up goals with a few bullet points such as academic performance and personal growth, then write up a mind map accordingly. About one week later, my scatterbrain would shake up the details for new information storage, and by March — “new year resolution who?”
As someone who often spoils her brain, instead of an overwhelming goal-to-action plan, I’m writing myself a new year vibe check. A quick definition of “spoiling my brain” — guaranteed resting, documenting and expressing floating thoughts in time, nourishing it with quality contents, cutting meaningless drama, and etc. On my vibe check list, each key term is defined in Chinese, and further being explained in English.
取舍 — don’t let risk analysis stop myself from living; meanwhile, remember that life is built up from a series of decisions. 沟通 — slowly improve the relatively weak part of communication while keeping up my forte. 用心 — to read, to think, and to live. Instead of saying “I tried my best” → “I tried with my whole heart.” I know myself enough that I will not lie to my heart. 别怕 — naming my fears to acknowledge their existence, validating my own feelings, then slowly overcome them.
In this case, my brain could grasp these vibes quite easily. Later on, when the vibe meets the proposed goal, I’ll have more updated and specific information to help me design an action plan than at the very beginning of the year. On the back of my vibe check list, I also write down ideas that I’ve learned or changed perspective about during 2020.
Self-reflection helps me grow, but sometimes I get trapped or lost because of overwhelming new information. I like my new year vibe check, growth oriented and quite chill. If you think a new year vibe check sounds interesting, why not grab a pen and start crafting yours? | https://medium.com/@haocunw/instead-of-detailed-goals-im-writing-myself-a-2021-vibe-check-eac2fdc880aa | ['Kelly Wang'] | 2020-12-27 22:41:47.614000+00:00 | ['New Year Resolution'] |
IoT Device Lifecycle Management | Table of contents
Introduction
The complexity of enterprise IoT deployment
Diversity of devices and software
Scale
Security
IoT device life-cycle management
End-to-end security
Pre-commissioning
Commissioning
Operations
Decommissioning
Conclusion
Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) has the power to increase the efficiency of businesses in numerous domains dramatically and to create completely new business models. Through real-time bilateral communication with the connected smart devices, you will not only receive valuable data collected by the devices but will also be able to fulfil their maintenance and management automatically and remotely. Thus to successfully deploy an IoT solution for an enterprise, it is crucial to consider the foundation of any IoT solution: device management.
Enterprises can expect a complex IoT device landscape with heterogeneous devices that need to be managed throughout the whole device life cycle. IoT-related scenarios are getting more complex and require the execution of more sophisticated commands. Similar to the operating systems of our desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets, IoT gateways and edge devices need frequent care in the form of software updates or changes to configurations to improve security, deploy new applications, or extend features of existing applications. This white paper will show why robust device management is key for a successful enterprise IoT strategy.
An IoT solution scenario generally includes connecting devices. Web-enabled devices can be connected directly, while those that are not web-enabled are connected through a gateway. The heterogeneity and diversity of constantly evolving devices is a defining factor of an enterprise IoT architecture.
The complexity of enterprise IoT deployment
Diversity of devices and software
During the initial prototyping stage, the key goal is to show how devices can be connected and what values can be gained from analyzing the device data. Companies that deploy at this early stage without considering a feature-rich device management solution will soon find themselves unable to handle the growing number of device and software configurations. As the company’s IoT initiative expands, its IoT solution will be forced to include a varied mix of devices and connection mechanisms. With diverse and distributed devices, the operations team will also have to deal with multiple firmware versions.
Recently, there has also been a shift toward performing more processing and computation at the edge as bigger edge devices can handle more complex commands. The software for this needs to be constantly updated if it is to extract the maximum value from the analytics, and the operations team will need a central tool to enable efficient remote maintenance. Providing a service that allows all the different parts of the solution to use a common device management platform unlocks operational efficiency and shortens the time to market significantly.
Scale
Many IoT projects start with a proof of concept and are often followed by a pilot with a limited number of users and devices. However, as more and more devices have to be integrated, the company needs an application or API that allows it to manage, monitor easily, and secure the rising number of diverse, globally distributed connected devices. In short, it has to find a device management solution that can scale from day one to the various deployment scenarios. A good piece of advice here is to think big but start small.
Security
Security is one of the most obvious reasons why a device management platform is required even for small-scale deployments. Governments are introducing legislation that requires all IoT products to be patchable and to meet the latest industry security standards. With this in mind, any IoT solution should be designed with security as a fundamental requirement. IoT devices are often constrained due to cost factors, which can limit their security capabilities; however, even constrained IoT devices must have the ability to update their firmware and software due to security changes and bug fixes. You can’t afford to skimp on security.
IoT device life-cycle management
As enterprise IoT systems are expected to last many years, it is critical to design and plan for the whole life cycle of devices and applications.
This life cycle includes security, pre-commissioning, commissioning, operations, and decommissioning. Managing the IoT life cycle presents a high level of complexity and requires a wide range of capabilities. We aim to highlight some general components of the IoT device life cycle here; however, details also depend on the type of device management protocol used.
End-to-end security
Device authentication is critical when establishing secured communication links. IoT devices should be authenticated using device-specific security credentials. This then enables the operations team to identify and block or disconnect devices deemed to be a threat. One way to authenticate the devices is to supply device-specific private keys and the device’s corresponding digital certificates during production (e.g. X.509) and provide regular field updates of those certificates. The certificates enable backend access control based on well-established and standardized validation mechanisms such as mutually authenticated TLS, which ensures encryption for all types of connectivity. A device management solution should also be able to revoke certificates if needed.
Pre-commissioning
Device management requires an agent to be deployed on connected devices. This agent is a software that works autonomously to monitor the devices. It also enables the remote device management software to communicate with the device, for example, to send commands and receive responses when required. The agent needs to be configured to automatically connect to the remote device management system with valid credentials for authentication.
Commissioning
Device Registration: An IoT device must be registered in the system before being connected and authenticated for the first time. Devices are usually identified based on serial numbers, preshared keys, or unique device certificates issued by trusted authorities.
Initial Provisioning: IoT devices are shipped to customers with factory settings, meaning they don’t have any customer-specific software configurations, settings, etc. However, a device management system can match the user to the IoT device and perform an initial provisioning process to automatically deploy the required software components, configurations, etc., without any user involvement.
Dynamic Configuration: IoT applications can start very simple and become more mature and complex over time. This may require not only dynamic software updates but also configuration changes to be carried out without involving the user or disrupting the service. Deploying new logic or performing service application updates should be completed without any downtime. The dynamic configuration may apply to only one specific IoT device, a group of IoT devices, or all registered IoT devices.
Operations
Monitoring: With the complex IoT device landscape, it is necessary to have a central dashboard that displays an overview of the devices and has the ability to configure notification rules based on device status or sensor data. Because of the scale and diversity of the assets, being able to flexibly and dynamically create groups of devices using specific criteria is important for efficient operations and the monitoring of your fleet.
As for the devices themselves, it is also important to have a watchdog to ensure that, in the event of a malfunction, they can at least automatically reboot themselves — or, preferably, troubleshoot the problem autonomously.
Manageable device types: IoT deployment scenarios can vary depending on the domain and application. Modern edge devices differ in terms of capabilities and connectivity methods, and an IoT solution must support a variety of target platform types.
Enterprise IoT solutions often have to deal with smaller types of edge devices, which have limited capabilities and cannot be connected directly over the internet, but rather through a gateway. In the following section, we list the most common types of IoT devices:
Small microcontrollers: Small microcontrollers are cost-efficient and energy-constrained devices, usually battery-powered, and are very suitable for basic edge capabilities, e.g. telemetry use cases. They are customer-specific, usually embedded, and the software for them is developed as part of the product design process. This allows you to reduce the customization needed to make a device IoT-ready. Small microcontrollers support device management capabilities such as remote configuration and firmware update.
Operating system: Real-time operating systems, such as FreeRTOS, TIRTOS, Zypher
Reference devices: ESP boards, STMicro STM32 Nucleo, NXP FRDMK64F, SiliconLabs EFM32GG-DK3750, XDK Cross Domain Development Kit
Powerful microcontrollers: Powerful microcontrollers are similar to gateways in terms of hardware, but they differ in terms of software, being rather single-purpose devices. They provide advanced edge computing capabilities, such as resource and device abstraction, history, software and firmware updates, software package management, remote configuration, etc.
Operating system: Embedded Linux
Reference devices: B/S/H system master
Gateways: Gateways or routers are very common in smart homes, intelligent buildings, and industrial environments. These devices can be compelling as they need to connect with a multitude of edge devices using different communication protocols. Gateways provide advanced edge computing capabilities, such as resource and device abstraction, history, analytics, software and firmware updates, software package management, remote configuration, etc. You can also perform firmware management on the connected devices through a gateway. They can even be added to the setup at a later stage and may serve different purposes that change over time.
Operating system: Embedded Linux
Reference devices: Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, iTraMS Gen-2A, Rexroth ctrlX
The mobile device as a gateway: Modern smartphones can be used as gateways and are very convenient for smart home scenarios. They provide connectivity as a proxy for WiFi and Bluetooth LE devices, which require regular updates. When used as a gateway, mobile devices allow updating and remote configuration of the device agent.
Operating system: iOS or Android
Reference devices: Mainstream smartphone devices
5G edge node: Suitable for industrial purposes and specific environment needs, 5G edge nodes are often used in data centres on-site and can be deployed on existing devices as a 5G extension. They provide popular capabilities such as resource and device abstractions, history, analytics, software and firmware updates, remote configuration, software package management, etc.
Operating system: Linux
Reference devices: x86-powered hardware
A device management system must be able to manage a mix of all these types of IoT devices, which can be connected through diverse network protocols such as HTTP, MQTT, AMQP, LoRaWAN, LwM2M, etc. In certain cases, it may also be necessary to implement proprietary management protocols.
Here is a brief description of some popular connectivity protocols:
MQTT: A lightweight publishes/subscribe IoT connectivity protocol, useful for connections with remote locations where a small code footprint is required. MQTT can perform certain device management operations like firmware updates and is available for different programming languages such as Lua, Python, or C/C++.
LwM2M: A device management protocol designed for remote management of constrained devices and related service enablement. It supports device management operations such as firmware updates and remote configuration. It features a modern architectural design based on REST, defines an extensible resource and data model and builds on the CoAP secure data transfer standard.
LPWAN protocols (LoRaWAN, Sigfox): IoT protocols suitable for constrained devices in wide area networks such as smart cities. Due to their power-saving implementation, they fit in well for use-cases where battery capacity is a limited resource. Device management operations such as firmware updates and remote configuration are supported.
Mass device management: Mass device management, also known as bulk device management, is often overlooked in smaller IoT deployments that have not yet scaled up. Simple device management measures may suffice at first but will be limiting as IoT projects with various devices grow in size and diversity. Being able to easily create dynamic hierarchies and arbitrary logical groupings of assets, so that device management measures can be applied on a large scale, will help increase deployment and maintenance efficiency. Such measures can range from firmware and software updates to the execution of complex scripts that take into account the input from the individual devices. Also, mass device management measures may be fine-tuned through several execution scenarios — set up as one-time tasks or recurrent and automated rules, launched instantly and unconditionally or triggered by predefined events, schedules, constraints, and conditions. Such a key functionality will also be of advantage when the development team carries out A/B testing and campaign management.
Software and firmware management and updates: Device management requires the ability to update software and firmware on globally distributed devices centrally. This includes pushing firmware to the device fleet, and — with the advent of complex edge processing — pushing software packages independent of firmware packages. Such software rollouts need to be staged across a group of devices to ensure reliability even when connectivity breaks down. Future-proof IoT solutions need to be able to update over the air, as most assets are deployed in remote environments distributed around the globe. For effective ongoing software and firmware maintenance, it is critically important to be able to create custom logical groupings and automate these tasks.
Remote configuration: Being able to modify configurations remotely is crucial for the operations team. Once rolled out, devices in the field need to be updated often so that they keep pace with the ecosystem’s evolution. This may include anything from changing cloud-side URLs to reconfiguring client authorization, increasing or decreasing reconnect intervals, etc. Mass management features complement all configuration-related jobs, as the ability to trigger mass measures based on complex rules and to run them at scheduled times in a repeatable manner is of paramount importance for operations.
Diagnostics: IoT deployment is an ongoing process that involves constant monitoring and diagnostics to minimize downtime and streamlining operations. When devices are in remote locations, access to administrative audit logs, device diagnostic logs, connectivity logs, etc. is one of the most vital features for troubleshooting. If further analysis is required, the device management system should be able to remotely trigger verbose logging and download the log files for analysis, saving valuable time and improving operations efficiency.
Integration: Unless adopting a ready-to-use service, enterprise IoT solutions will usually require access to devise management capabilities through a rich set of APIs, which make it possible to integrate external services or customize user interfaces and workflows. In times of open-source development, providing REST and language-specific APIs such as Java API is a standard to fulfil remote connection and management use cases.
Decommissioning
Decommissioning might affect the whole IoT solution or only dedicated components; for example, replacing or decommissioning a single device. Certificates should then be revoked, and other confidential or sensitive data should be deleted securely.
Conclusion
Making the Internet of Things a reality is a transformational journey that inspires multiple business innovations.
Given the rising number of IoT innovations, it is critical for enterprises to select the optimum device management platform right at the beginning of this journey. This platform needs to be able to cope with the heterogeneity and diversity of a constantly evolving enterprise IoT landscape. It has to be capable of managing the growing number of connected devices throughout their entire life cycle.
Bosch IoT Suite is a complete, flexible, and open-source-based software platform for IoT solutions. It provides scalable and feature-rich services to address device management scenarios throughout the whole device life cycle, including asset and software management.
Bosch IoT Remote Manager and the Bosch IoT Suite for Device Management are fully managed cloud services that provide automatic scalability managed by Bosch.IO. They can react to changing workloads and guarantee availability based on tier features. The widely used Bosch IoT Remote Manager is additionally available for on-premises installations. In contrast, the pre-integrated Bosch IoT Suite for Device Management enables even better scalability thanks to its modern micro-service-based architecture.
Offered as directly bookable services and equipped with user-friendly UIs, our device management solutions can be used right away, but also allow full integration through modern APIs. Also, our professional services teams have been enabling customers to manage IoT devices for many years. We have the experience and expertise to assist you in your IoT journey and operationalize your IoT ideas, while you concentrate on what is important for your business. You can focus on IoT application development that adds value, rather than on IoT platform development, hosting, and maintenance. Grow quickly from prototyping to operating as a full-scale IoT-enabled enterprise with Bosch IoT Suite. | https://medium.com/@pupuweb/iot-device-lifecycle-management-334b7f8c487b | ['Alex Lim'] | 2020-12-02 12:25:11.730000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'IoT', 'Internet of Things', 'Technology', 'Solutions'] |
Primal Data Advent Calendar #8: How to successfully print a pandas or numpy object to a console | If you’ve ever tried seeing the contents of a pd.DataFrame, you’re familiar with the story: you run print(df.head()) to see the first five rows of a DataFrame df , but what you end up with in a console [0] is just a narrow preview, by default limited to 80 characters:
Example of a 10-column DataFrame printed to PyCharm Run console.
In general, constraining the console output somehow is a reasonable approach. However, what one usually works with using pandas or numpy are data structures with more than 2-3 columns — and its rarely hundreds of them, hence printing all columns can be a reasonable idea [1].
Why would one need to print all columns?
From my day-to-day experience, you almost always want to print more than the 80 char preview, limiting the number of rows rather than columns. Consider some common use cases, such as
you’ve just created a DataFrame and you want to check if the values are as expected
you loaded data from, say a csv, and you want to see what’s inside and if the dates were parsed correctly
you joined two DataFrames in SQL-like fashion and you’d like to check the result
you want to get an idea of the values ranges and distribution of the numeric columns by running print(df.describe()) . This is what you get by a plain print:
Result of print(df.describe())
In all these cases, 80 characters are rarely enough. Let’s now take the first use case as an example and see what we can do about the printing.
I have a DataFrame, what’s inside?
The following code snippet creates a mockup DataFrame with 10 columns of data regarding, let’s say, flats and fills it with random integers and string UUIDs.
Running the code results in output we’ve already seen at the beginning:
Example of a 10-column DataFrame printed to PyCharm Run console.
You can get the full list of columns along with their their data types by running print(df.info()) , but still, seeing all 10 columns and their content as a sanity check would be useful.
The solution
The answer is pd.set_option(). While there are over 40 options available for configuration, you only need two: display.max_columns to increase the number of allowed columns and display.width to increase the line width. Adding this to the previous example should do the trick:
Setting display option for pandas objects
Now we get the whole DataFrame. While it might not look so nice in a narrow-style formatted Medium article, you might appreciate it in your IDE. | https://medium.com/slido-dev-blog/primal-data-advent-calendar-8-how-to-successfully-print-a-pandas-or-numpy-object-to-a-console-d82b186e7d62 | ['Katarina Benesova'] | 2020-12-19 16:27:36.752000+00:00 | ['Console', 'Pandas', 'Python', 'Numpy'] |
Can Social Media Help Create Peace? | A new film called The Social Dilemma has everyone discussing the impact of social media during these times of COVID when so many of us are spending an exorbitant amount of time online. The film raises many important revelations about the dangers of growing online polarization, personal data-exploitation, fake news, and other dark consequences of social media on society and the world at large. Simultaneously there is a global movement that has found a very positive way to use platforms like Facebook to bring people together for the sake of presenting solutions, inspiration, and a healthy collective paradigm shift. This weekend you can experience for yourself what this movement looks like as we celebrate International Day of Peace with 3 days of visionary speakers and musical artists that culminates with a globally synchronized meditation on Monday, September 21.
If social media is so efficient at manipulation that it can trigger/worsen genocides, division, and wars, our self hatred, comparison, and criticism of others then imagine what it could do if applied differently. A simple fine tuning to the algorithms could spread more love, positivity, and unifying messages. What an incredibly powerful tool. -Kyle Colwell, Visionary Events Producer
Sustainable Development Goal #16 is Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
Unify.org is a nonprofit organization who hosted their first globally synchronized meditation on December 21, 2012. Since then they have produced hundreds of international campaigns, synchronized online events, and live-streams for things like World Water Day, Earth Day, International Yoga Day, Women’s Day and much more. During these past 9 years The Unify Facebook Page has grown to almost 2 million people while attracting like-minded individuals who share a deep love for humanity and our planet. International Day of Peace, on September 21, has been a yearly celebration where the many partnering organizations and people in the Unify Global Community come together to create a beautiful offering.
In this period of unprecedented uncertainty and systems collapse, it is time to uplift the world with positivity and inspiration. Even when the world is locked down, our spirits can be lifted and our hearts can remain open. -Voices of Unity Press Release
Never has the world faced so much polarization and conflicting narratives while simultaneously facing a global pandemic, climate change, and the rise of authoritarianism. There could not be a more potent time to come together across our many ideological divides and national borders to celebrate a shared vision and a collective experience of peace. This year the innovative livestreaming and social networking platform, PORTL will be hosting both The Shift Summit, and Global Days of Unity in collaboration with Unify. Unify will simultaneously be curating the best content and delivering it through their Facebook Page.
The Global Song Circle is an invitation for people across the world to unite through the power of singing together. Through shared song, we aim to inspire people around the planet to join their voices together each month, even though we are all currently at home, and to sing as one ‘global choir’ united for harmony, peace and love. -Global Song Circle, Featured on Global Days of Unity
Our thoughts, intentions, and emotions project a bioelectric field that can be measured around the world. A few focused moments of breathing, meditation, or prayer can lower the heart rate, and create inner calm. When the whole world does this together, something truly profound happens. If you are new to the conversation about the scientific research into global coherence, you will enjoy reading the short article, Global Coherence: Humanity’s Evolutionary Leap 2020.
“Furthermore, Dr. Persinger also suggests that the earth’s magnetic field can act as a carrier of information between individuals and that information, rather than the intensity of the signal carrying it, is important for interaction with neural networks.” -Global Coherence Initiative
Unify is an organization as well as an ethos. By welcoming diverse voices in a collaborative and cooperative way rather than a competitive way, people are able to come together around solutions instead of arguing about problems. This is a paradigm shift in itself.
Rising Appalachia will be performing at The Shift Summit
The Social Dilemma film (now available on Netflix) shows us, “the technology that connects us also controls/manipulates us.” This has to do with the underlying revenue model of exploiting users for their data and targeting them with advertisements. The COVID pandemic along with our hyper divisive political rhetoric have brought to light the many ways that our whole global economic system is built on these predatory principles of fear and outrage that ultimately divide and dehumanize us. There really is only one remedy for this situation. It is so simple and basic to us as a species that we often forget it.
Clare Dubois of Tree Sisters will be presenting at The Shift Summit
Remember that peace, expressions of gratitude, generosity, compassion, and love are the highest attributes of being human. We experience these feelings of connection when we come together in unity and a sense of mutual respect. This does not mean that we will agree on everything or that we should agree on everything. Instead it is a recognition that despite our many differences there is much that we share in common. We can not wait or depend on our political systems to create this for us especially since there are underlying financial incentives to keep us divided, distracted, and pitted against each other.
A powerful lineup of presenters at The Shift Summit
Together we can rise above these challenges. It is truly an exciting time to see new platforms like PORTL emerging that bring a real sense of community back to social media. Unify is a global movement that invites your participation and creative offerings. When we embrace our highest nature we lift each other up this inspires peace and healing to ripple around the world. Perhaps we can offset the dark clouds for a moment with a resounding vibration of love?
Global Days of Unity will present the synchronised prayer/meditation live from the Old City of Jerusalem
Please take some time to explore the lineup for the Shift Summit and schedule your weekend around these great programs. On Monday, September 21 Global Days of Unity will broadcast live from a high point overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem – an ancient city that has seen both the highest expression of spiritual devotion and the deepest pain of the human condition. The Global meditation and prayer will be held at 8pm IDT / 10am PDT / 1pm EDT / 10pm BST. Both of these events will livestream on PORTL with curated highlights and commentary on Unify.
Social media is a powerful tool. We can use it to create discord, fear, and violence, or we can use it to come together around solutions to share inspiration. Maybe we can even use social media as a means to create some peace in these troubled times. The choice is ours. | https://medium.com/@jacobdevaney/can-social-media-help-create-peace-27867b5a792a | ['Jacob Devaney'] | 2020-09-17 09:35:38.538000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Technology', 'Sdgs', 'Social Media', 'Peace'] |
GraphQL Server With Java & Clients in Go and Rust | GraphQL it’s an interesting approach for Data Aggregation. GraphQL is a query language API for existing data. You can leverage all your REST APIs and existing data sources. GraphQL it’s mobile-friendly and you can ask literally just the fields you need. GraphQL also allows you to share queries and there are clients for pretty much all languages. GraphQL allows you multiplex and de-multiplex multiple requests in one, being really great for tail latency and nice for data-intensive applications. However, not everything in graphql is flowers and I dont want to paint a rosy picture. There are issues and tradeoffs you need to take into account. I highly recommend you read these 3 series of posts I made comparisons with other approaches like BFs. BFF and GraphQL Dilemma part 1, part 2, and part 3. Today I want to share a video I made where there is a GraphQL Server written in Java and we have 2 clients one Written in Go Lang and the other written in Rust. So Let’s get started.
The video
The Code
GraphQL Server — Written in Java with JDK 15 and Maven 3
GraphQL Client — Written in Go Lang with Machinebox/GraphQL
GraphQL Client — Written in Rust with graphql_client
Cheers,
Diego Pacheco | https://medium.com/@diego-pacheco/graphql-server-with-java-clients-in-go-and-rust-518ee8ce57b8 | ['Diego Pacheco'] | 2020-11-24 00:31:23.770000+00:00 | ['GraphQL', 'Rust', 'Java', 'Microservices', 'Go'] |
Book recommendations for the budding Stoic #1 | Hello Comrades! It can be convenient and certainly appropriate to get caught up in online learning and reading articles. However, there’s something liberating and almost magical about picking up a physical book in today’s world where digital services dominate, and rightly so, wouldn’t you agree?
When running my community page “World of Stoics” for the last month (give or take a week) I’ve been asked by my fellow comrades for a list of books that would be useful for someone who is new to the philosophy and it’s core concepts: So here they are 👇
The Stoic Guide to a Happy Life by Massimo Pigliucci
Book 1: The Stoic Guide to a Happy Life
I’d call this one a modern-day (Enchiridion) handbook that you can dip in and out of, or digest in one sitting. Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of Philosophy in N.Y.C and a practicing Stoic. This book is key for any budding Stoic as it covers “Epictetean Philosophy” in a nutshell and offers guidance on how to deal with various situations you may face in modern life, as well as a conceptual map of Epictetus’ Enchiridion and Massimo’s modernised guide. | https://medium.com/@worldofstoics/book-recommendations-for-the-budding-stoic-1-7709cf236d73 | ['Enda Harte'] | 2020-12-15 14:06:06.259000+00:00 | ['Stoicism', 'Book Recommendations', 'Philosophy', 'Mindset', 'Stoic'] |
How remittance improve people’s life | Remittance is a considerable source to influence the national economy. As the growing volume of remittance earnings has a positive impact on income, growth, and poverty reduction, the potential contribution for improving the quality of life of the domestic people needs to be investigated.
In June this year, a new report released by the International Fund for Agricultural Development showed that there are currently more than 200 million overseas workers in the world to support their 800 million families living in developing countries, and 100 countries receive more than US$100 million in remittances each year. , India, China, and the Philippines are the top 3 remittance inflow countries.
However, no country is as highly dependent on remittances as Nepal. In 2016, Nepal’s overseas remittances totaled 6.276 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 32% of the country’s GDP, the highest in the world.
So, do you know how important remittance is to some countries now? Remittance can improve people’s life, that’s why so many people work overseas every year.
Remittance improves every aspect of life. Such as education, healthcare, accommodation, and so on. Because most overseas workers are from developing or underdeveloped countries, it is barely hard for them to get a well-paid job in their own country, so you can imagine that if they can’t get jobs overseas, they don’t have an income, how could life become better?
Nowadays, remittance methods are becoming smarter and smarter. Traditional remittances such as bank and draft are not the first choice anymore. Online money transfer takes an important position in the remittance market. Epay global payment believes that the remittance industry has a crucial role to play in creating financial inclusion and extending secure and legally licensed money transfer channels to global audiences. We are committed to delivering superior customer service to the widest possible global audience at competitive fees, immigrant workers can send more money home every month. | https://medium.com/@epayglobal/how-remittance-improve-peoples-life-c6b4e6951850 | [] | 2020-12-23 03:07:25.980000+00:00 | ['Remittances', 'Money Transfer Services', 'Payments'] |
Confessions of a People Pleaser | Confessions of a People Pleaser
I want you to like me, but I probably won’t like you for long
Photo by Fillipe Gomes from Pexels
Trigger warning: This post talks about co-dependant relationships between narcissists and people pleasers.
I’ve known for a very long time that I’m a people pleaser. But it is only recently that I’ve been learning about co-dependancy and the correlation with Complex PTSD.
My people pleasing is a maladaptive response to my abusive childhood. And often, the people that I get into the deepest pleasing with have maladaptive traits too. Not the same as mine, but complimentary to mine.
When I meet somebody with narcissistic traits, I change from the most authentic version of myself that I am usually working hard to be. A switch flips in my brain, and I fall into my childhood training.
I’m whoever you want me to be
When the switch is flipped and I engage my people pleasing mode with a new narcissist friend, boss or boyfriend, I become whoever I think they want me to be.
I like the music they like, quickly researching bands behind the scenes. I watch the TV shows they watch. I even share their opinions on politics.
I speed read their Facebook profile for research, and talk about whatever they like, even if it’s of no interest to me. I can keep this facade up for a really long time… Just not forever.
Eventually my mask will slip.
I trained for this
I’m who I think they want me to be, because I don’t believe that anyone will like me for who I really am.
This is not just attention-seeking or fishing for compliments. I was trained from a young age to know that I am unlikeable, unloveable, and generally quite worthless.
According to my training, the best thing I can do is mould myself into what somebody else wants, so that I don’t spend the rest on my life being alone and worthless.
If you’ve read this far, then maybe you were trained the same way.
And if you are like me, then you will no doubt have also felt how our special skills to please get turbo charged around certain people.
The narcissists we meet throughout our lifetime are like us, and not like us, in a confusing yet alluring way.
They have also experienced childhood pain. But unlike us, who internalized our abuse as being our own fault — they externalized it all. Their way of coping was to blame all of their problems on other people.
Sliding doors
A bit like in the movie Sliding Doors, we chose one path or another and that leads us a certain way.
Somebody with narcissistic maladaptive traits grew up unloved and unwanted too, just like us people pleasers did. But at some point their young mind decided that the problem was with everybody else.
Their ego swooped in to protect them from the world, and they convinced themselves that they are better than everyone else. Any hate or resentment they felt from others, must just be jealousy.
On the surface it sounds like kind of a nice delusion to have. But it is maladaptive, and here’s why it isn’t sustainable.
Their sense of self is super fragile. Those grandiose behaviors and that apparent self-belief is a lie. And this lie can fall apart at any time. So nobody can challenge them.
Have you seen a narcissist be challenged? Things get ugly real quick.
Maladaption in action
As a people pleasing partner to a narcissist, I once saw him lose himself after an argument over a parking space. A stranger dared to call him out when he stole her parking space. He went into a rant that lasted for hours, and honestly scared me so much I couldn’t speak.
Objectively, he was totally in the wrong to cut her off and take the space she had queued for. If we had been two healthy, adapted individuals, then this may not have happened in the first place. And if it had, he would have apologised, or I would have had the backbone to tell him he was in the wrong.
But the two of us being maladapted, in opposite ways, only compounded the situation. As he ranted at this other driver out of his car window, I was a statue.
Too afraid to move my head incase I made eye contact with the person who was in the right — I froze.
Flight, fight, freeze or fawn
In his book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, Pete Walker explains the ‘Four Fs’ of maladaptive responses. We have all heard of Flight or Fight, the first two. There is also Freeze and Fawn.
What I didn’t realise until this book broke it down for me, is that these Fs each correspond with a particular set of behaviours.
I recognise myself in 3 of the 4 Fs, and some behaviours that go with them.
Flight can be related to obsessive compulsive tendencies.
Freeze relates often to dissociation.
Fawn relates very strongly to people pleasing and co-dependency.
Fawning is a big one for me. It is said that us ‘Fawners’ will often seek out abuser after abuser in order to keep living in the way that we are used to.
So what of that fourth F? Well that’s Fight, and it relates to narcissism.
When I first read this I nearly fell off my chair. It amazed me to think that the very same abuse I went through as a child could have turned me into the sort of narcissistic person who I let abuse me as an adult.
I don’t know why I followed the path of the other Fs, and not the Fight path of narcissism. But here we are. Perhaps it was just a ‘sliding doors’ moment that made the decision?
It never lasts
The things about people pleasing is that it’s truly exhausting. Pandering to other people in general is an unsustainable way to live. But when you do this classic thing of getting entangled with a narcissist, then you are pandering 24/7.
Even when I was supposed to be asleep, I would be trying to please my partner. I used to try to not move in the bed incase I disturbed him.
I actually did this with two partners in a row. I have no idea how much sleep I lost over the years, trying to be small, still and quiet.
But of course, this kind of effort isn’t sustainable. Soon I become exhausted. And soon after that my exhaustion turns to resentment. I want the other person to like me, to validate me, and to think I’m a good person.
However, once I’m exhausted I begin to externalize my discomfort too. The tiredness I feel from the maladaptive way I live, soon makes me hate the other person.
I stop trying to please and I fall out of ‘love’… Then I start to realize all the awful things about my partner that I had been trying so hard to deny for so long.
It always leaves me with one big, burning question;
“Why does this keep happening to me?”
I feel like the victim for letting yet another narcissist consume so much of my life. But the truth is I was complicit in this happening. For a while at least, I did everything I could to keep this person happy.
A well-adjusted person wouldn’t have tolerated the bad behavior, let alone facilitated it like I did.
The harsh truth will set you free
Here’s the harsh truth. You might not think you want it, but you do need it if you want to set yourself free from the endless conveyor belt of bad relationships.
This keeps happening to us because it is our pattern. I say that as we need to own our side of things. But I don’t say that to let the other person off the hook entirely.
Yes, the other person probably is a ‘bad person’ in some sense of the word. Yes, you can say that they treat others badly. They are often abusers.
And if you are a people pleaser who keeps getting into relationships with these abusers, then yes, you are right in thinking you are magnetised to them. They are seeking you out, because your pleasing compliments their need to be right.
You are the missing piece to their jigsaw puzzle. You help them to maintain their facade of being omnipotent, because you agree with them and tell them they are great…
Until you can’t do it anymore.
It was only when I spotted this pattern for myself, and really let myself accept and understand it, that things started to change.
Your happiness does not lie in the next relationship
It is not simply a matter of finding the next relationship, if you are a people pleaser like me. It is a matter of breaking the pattern, or unlearning your childhood training.
You won’t stop falling in with narcissists if you don’t change what you are putting out there into the world. Those people can sense your need to please from miles away, and it feeds their need so well.
You really do need to do the work on yourself. Do the therapy, read all the books on the topic, and start getting honest with yourself.
Ask your friends to launch an intervention on you if you start dating again before you have done the work to change this.
Stop saying yes when you mean no. Start putting yourself first. Learn who you really are, underneath your maladaptive behaviors. Develop some healthy boundaries.
I’m in recovery
I started my recovery journey 5 years ago, when I left the parking space thief. It wasn’t smooth sailing.
Although I’m now well on my way to living better, I wrote all of the above in the present tense. This is because I am in recovery, and not recovered. And because I will always carry something of this with me.
We probably aren’t born people pleasers. It is likely all nurture. But it is still very deeply engrained in us. Things learned in our formative years are forged in our neural wiring.
The next narcissist I encountered in life didn’t like me for long, as I was learning to flex my honesty muscles.
I said no, I disagreed. I made myself unpopular. In the moment it was easy to think I was doing something wrong. I shouldn’t be upsetting him with my honesty, right? I was trying to be authentic, not mean…
But I was learning that it’s possible to be right in a wrong situation. Just because I was finally ready to try authenticity, didn’t mean that the rest of the world was ready.
There are so many people out there like us — going through life with maladaptive tendencies. When it’s all you know, it’s not easy to change. And in order to change, you first have to be awake to the fact that something is wrong.
If your whole world is built on a lie, then change is a pretty big feat. But it is not impossible.
I don’t want to sound like I’m sympathising too much with the narcissists in the world. I’ve been hurt by them, and that’s pretty much all they do — hurt people.
But as I’m healing and learning about maladaptive personality traits, I’m growing in understanding. For them, for me, and for all of us.
We are all imperfect beings, just trying to feel safe in a complex and uncertain world.
Moving on from people pleasing
In truth, there is no way to make every interaction in your life go well. As much as I desire a quite, happy life, I can’t control other people.
I think that by people pleasing, that’s what I was trying to do.
So you can choose to stay on the path of people pleasing with an unhappy ending. Or you can chose to walk the path of truth, with painful bits and uncertainty all the way.
I’ve been seeing a viral post doing the rounds on Instagram, that says;
“Choose your hard. Marriage is hard, divorce is hard, choose your hard. Overweight is hard, losing weight is hard, choose your hard.”
I think this applies really well here too. Being a people pleaser is hard, and being honest is hard too. Choose your hard.
Certainly, there are lots of us struggling out there. Many of us are maladapted and struggling with our relationships. Many of us abuse, and many will get abused.
But on the path of truth you will find a few genuine, well-adapted people. They are few and far between, and worth their weight in gold.
It is only since I began my recovery from people pleasing that I gained healthy relationships with some of these really good people.
I’m much happier now. And after all that confessing, I feel lighter too.
Sharing is a part of recovery, and so I encourage you to share too, if you are ready. I can’t tell you that the journey ahead will be smooth sailing. In fact, I can pretty much promise you that it won’t be.
But will it be worth it? It was for me. | https://medium.com/the-virago/confessions-of-a-people-pleaser-1332732288a7 | ['Sarah K Brandis'] | 2020-12-14 15:48:02.953000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'Personal Growth', 'Life Lessons', 'Codependency', 'Women'] |
4 Most popular Logo Design Types | Best Logo for your Brand | A logo is defined as any product’s pictorial identifier. The customers should identify your business just by having a look at its Logo. The logo should be designed very carefully by the makers as the design can surely evaluate the name of their brand which not only makes them visually better but creates trust and value for their product.
Logo price is equally considered important by the makers. Logo design with Logo prices can vary, for instance, the value of a logo design be subject to the quality and who made that. The price of making a logo design varies generally from $0 to even tens of thousands of dollars, but if you possess a small business or even startup looking for the best quality design, the best logo design should cost between $300-$1300.
Now that we know what a logo is specifically for and its main purpose, then let’s have a look at some well-known logo designs and the kind of logo design.
1. Wordmark/Logotype Logo Design
A wordmark is usually a font-based type of logo that primarily focuses on the ‘brand’s name alone. GOOGLE logo has a succinct and distinct name and this is the reason that it works very well. When the name of the brand is combined with the strong typography, it does create strong brand recognition.
A wordmark logo is a virtuous decision if you are a new business and require to get your name out there, just ensure that name is brief enough to take benefit of the design.
2. Monograms Logo
Monogram logo which is also known as lettermarks, usually consists of letters and brand initials. Many of the brands have used their initialism rather than a lengthy name for brand-identification ideas. By employing just a few letters, lettermark logos are efficient, as it is easy to remember NASA instead of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
3. Pictorial marks
A pictorial logo or logo symbol is generally an icon which is also known as a graphics-based logo. A true brand mark is just a picture, and due to this, it can be a quite tricky logotype for brand-new companies, or even for those brands without strong brand recognition. The most important thing is to select an appropriate image while creating any pictorial logo.
4. Mascots Logo
This is another type of logo that always involves an illustrated character. Those characters are usually in the form of colorful cartoonish which is the perfect way to create your customized brand spokesperson. Mascot logos are great for corporations that want to generate a wholesome atmosphere by tempting children and families. | https://medium.com/@weetechsolutionblog/4-most-popular-logo-design-types-best-logo-for-your-brand-b8872b3b31ce | ['Jenny Smith'] | 2021-12-20 12:20:59.422000+00:00 | ['Logo', 'Logo Design', 'Website'] |
Driving to Another Green World | I travel several miles ten times a day -
my outward stretching finger waving away.
By what hand is man’s progress measured?
By what arm is his spirit tethered?
The dimly lit Disciple’s doorway is enough to show the way -
the arching illumination breaking dawn into day. | https://medium.com/the-miskatonic-repository-for-speculative-fiction/driving-to-another-green-world-7e0bf3d8d2f0 | ['Alexander Nagel'] | 2019-09-16 20:31:27.214000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Spirituality'] |
How Does Hume Argue that there Is No Such Thing as Cause and Effect? | Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
Hume doesn’t claim that there is no necessary connection between cause and effect; he claims that we do not and cannot know what it is because we can only know empirically ascertainable facts and a small number of relations of ideas known a priori.
Hume argues that the“power” effecting any cause-and-effect relation is permanently concealed from human observation, so it cannot be known empirically.
Neither can the “power” of cause-and-effect be a relation of ideas because, if it were, then the negation of any proposition asserting it would produce a contradiction.
An example of a proposition asserting a cause-and-effect relation might be “Exposure to sunlight causes skin cancer.” The negation of that proposition may be true or false, but it is not a contradiction: “Exposure to sunlight does not cause skin cancer.”
Photo by David von Diemar on Unsplash
So, according to Hume, if the cause-and-effect relation is neither a matter of empirical fact, nor a relation of ideas, then it is not an object of human cognition.
In a position that looks oddly similar to Kant’s, Hume claims that we supply the “power” of the cause-and-effect relation ourselves and call it “custom” or “habit.”
In making such a claim, Hume acknowledges the existence of “power,” but dogmatically asserts that it lies forever beyond human understanding. | https://medium.com/the-academy-of-you/how-does-hume-argue-that-there-is-no-such-thing-as-cause-and-effect-b442a4dba0ac | ['Charles Gray'] | 2020-11-14 08:18:04.642000+00:00 | ['Induction', 'Critical Thinking', 'David Hume', 'Argumentation', 'Philosophy'] |
Attention Entrepreneurs: Here’s the truth behind whether Silicon Valley companies are better positioned for success | Since the dot.com boom in the mid-1990s, Silicon Valley has transformed into the global center for technology and innovation, and the home to many of the largest technology organizations and cutting-edge startup companies in the world. This phenomenon continues to reign true today as companies set up operations in or nearby the innovation hub to hire top talent and be in close proximity to a plethora of venture capitalists nearby. This surge in popularity has resulted in a meteoric rise in the hub’s cost of living, particularly commercial real estate prices, which raises a very important question for US entrepreneurs: Does being located in Silicon Valley really lead to better fundraising and performance outcomes, or is an entrepreneur better off selecting a less expensive alternative?
The US Entrepreneurial Economy
The following chart illustrates the distribution of Venture Capital dollar volume across the United States from 1995 to 2018.
As you can see above, venture capital investment has steadily climbed since the dot.com crash in the early 2000s, with almost half of that going to companies located in San Francisco (North Bay Area) and Silicon Valley (South Bay Area). Given these trends, I would like to understand whether companies located in these areas are realizing better outcomes than their peers.
Data Selection
To help answer this question, I leveraged the Startup Investments dataset from Crunchbase, a platform commonly used to uncover information around public and private companies. I chose this dataset primarily because 1) this dataset has strong longitudinal features, including company data from the last 100+ years, 2) this dataset features a healthy amount of quantitative and categorical variables, allowing for some creative feature engineering, and 3) Crunchbase is a reputable website within the Technology community, leading me to believe that their data may be relatively accurate and up-to-date.
This dataset held ~50K records of company-level investment data, including company status (e.g., operating, closed, acquired), location (e.g., city, state, country), and fundraising metrics (e.g., total funding raised (USD), funding rounds), among other variables and metrics. Although, I must caveat that I removed all ex-US companies from the dataset since they likely operate under a unique regulatory environment w.r.t fundraising than their U.S. peers, bringing my dataset to ~25K company records.
Data Wrangling
Once the data was selected, I began to assess the quality of it. For the most part there were no glaring issues. In fact, outside of removing special characters and white spaces, and converting certain data types to numeric values, the data was ready to perform analytics on.
Fundraising & Performance Success Across the U.S.
To perform my analysis, which can also be found on my GitHub, I employed a top-down approach, beginning with an initial data cut to get the lay of the land. For this data cut and my remaining analyses, I decided to split up the dataset into two pandas data frames by cross-checking a company’s ‘city’ with the top 12 cities in Silicon Valley by population, according to Google.
As you’ll see in the chart below, the initial data cut ended up informing the direction of my remaining analyses because of the slightly unanticipated results.
Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the funding (~76%) was allocated to the non-Silicon Valley companies, which comprise ~80% of the dataset. Additionally, Silicon Valley companies were almost twice as likely to get acquired than non-Silicon Valley companies, at least partially attributable to their close proximity to a vast VC community, in my opinion.
On the other hand, the average size of the Silicon Valley companies’ fundraising round was roughly $2 million less than their non-Silicon Valley counterparts. Since this metric is calculated by dividing total fundraising dollars (USD) by number of fundraising rounds, this number can increase by increasing the total amount of fundraising dollars, decreasing the number of fundraising rounds, or a combination of both. Either way, this metric seems to entail a healthy fundraising environment for non-Silicon Valley companies. To investigate this ‘a-ha’ moment, I decided to dive deeper into these non-Silicon Valley companies to learn more information.
First, I analyzed the non-Silicon Valley companies by state to identify which states were contributing the greatest fundraising and performance outcomes.
As you can see in the chart above, companies from Connecticut, Georgia, and Texas experienced the highest average size of fundraising round for non-Silicon Valley companies. Meanwhile, companies from Massachusetts, Washington State, and California experienced the highest acquisition rate for non-Silicon Valley Companies. You may be wondering: how is California still in the top-10 after removing Silicon Valley / Bay Area from the results? This is because California is home to some of the most thriving metropolitan cities for startup companies, including Los Angeles and San Diego. These are interesting insights, but surely there are other factors contributing to the high performance and fundraising outcomes for non-Silicon Valley companies, right?
To pressure test this hypothesis, I decided to isolate the companies coming from the top-10 non-silicon valley states (in terms of fundraising outcomes) and identify the industries in which these companies reside.
According to the graph above, Mobile, Clean Technology, and Health and Wellness companies experienced the best fundraising outcomes. Although, if an entrepreneur’s primary goal is to get acquired, it would be misguided to recommend that he or she build a Health & Wellness company given the very low acquisition rate in this industry, among other reasons. In such a case, an entrepreneur should look to build a Mobile, Software, or Clean Technology company as these industries experienced the highest acquisition rates.
Key Considerations
While this data may seem encouraging for non-Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, I would need a lot more data to increase my conviction in any recommendation to an entrepreneur. For instance, I used ‘acquisition’ as the sole performance success metric, which is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. Sure, there are founders who start companies with the intention or goal of being acquired, but there are also many founders who hope to achieve an Initial Public Offering (IPO) by bringing their company public. Unfortunately, this dataset doesn’t feature an ‘IPO’ variable for me to include in my analyses.
Additionally, this dataset does not provide any information related to the goals and interests of the entrepreneurs themselves, which would help us contextualize how they define success, whether it be in terms of acquisitions, IPOs, or some other success metric. Without this information, I had to assume that every entrepreneur was optimizing around acquisitions, which likely isn’t the case. In summary, there are many limitations associated with the current dataset that would need to be addressed in order to substantiate my findings.
Closing Thoughts
But, for now, it’s encouraging to see that you can achieve fundraising and performance success in many geos across the U.S., especially for renters hoping to move to Silicon Valley in the future :). Therefore, let’s continue celebrating and funding startup companies across the U.S., irrespective of their specific location! | https://medium.com/@spantoskey/attention-entrepreneurs-heres-the-truth-behind-whether-silicon-valley-companies-are-better-d10d33875937 | ['Scott Pantoskey'] | 2020-11-20 15:38:17.933000+00:00 | ['United States', 'Data Science', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Silicon Valley', 'Fundraising'] |
How Do Solar Water Heating Systems work In The Winter Season? | As you have planned to buy a solar water heater for your home, a question might pop up in your mind — Does a solar heating solution work during winters? Yes, it can work during winters. Now the question comes how?
When the temperature remains cold, the radiator fluid is used in solar water heaters. However, in states like West Bengal, solar water heaters can perform quite well during winter because the temperature is not that low in West Bengal compared to other colder states in India. It varies between 12 to 18 degrees centigrade on an average. On winter days, even if there is no sunlight available for 2 consecutive days then also a solar water heater can work well as the water gets heated up with the help of diffused radiation available in the atmosphere. Thus, you should always connect a solar water heater to an electric geyser so that you can get a continuous supply of warm water even if the weather is cold.
The radiator fluid present in the solar water heating system gets warmed up by the heat of the sun and then transferred to the heat exchange tank. The function of the heat exchange tank is to exchange the heat of the fluid with water and to keep the water warm in the storage tank. Check the radiator fluid every year before the arrival of winter to ensure proper healing.
It is necessary to buy a quality solar water heater with good insulation so that sunlight in the winter season can also heat the water quite well. Buy your solar water heater from renowned manufacturers in West Bengal. There are two key features of a solar water heater. They are –
There is a vacuum space between the layers of the glass in the solar evacuated tube.
And there is an absorber coating that allows the system to work efficiently during cold weather.
The vacuum between the layers of the glasses can prevent the transfer of heat. The solar water heater protects the inner part of the tube from the cold temperature. It also allows the sunlight to pass through the glass. After that, the metal plates get heated up with the help of the sunlight, no matter how cold it is outside. It is very difficult for the heat to escape once it is captured.
Therefore, it is clear that a solar water heating solution can give you warm water during the winters and reduce your electricity bill. It is always recommended to buy a solar water heater from well-known manufacturers like Solostar, as they sell premium-quality solar water heaters. | https://medium.com/@solostar/how-do-solar-water-heating-systems-work-in-the-winter-season-ba0c2365f5de | [] | 2020-12-23 08:14:09.249000+00:00 | ['Domestic', 'Solar Water Heater', 'Solar Heating Solutions', 'Solar Energy', 'West Bengal'] |
My Approach to Being Bullied at School | My response to being bullied at school worked for me — but was it merely a case of dumb luck?
It was my first day in senior school, after having been in junior school for five years.
I was sitting at the table in the dining hall, having just finished eating breakfast, and the boy opposite me began to concoct what looked like the most revolting drink imaginable. He used as many ingredients from the table as possible, including coffee, way too much sugar, syrup, ketchup, salt, pepper, and probably other items I cannot recall.
After stirring it up, he pushed it across the table and told me to drink it.
Now, it’s worth mentioning that this boy was large and intimidating. By that, I don’t mean fat — he was noticeably larger in structure and height and weight than most boys of his own age (which would have been 12 or 13).
I looked at the cup containing the foul mixture and refused to try it — several times.
I don’t know whether this was a serious attempt at bullying me, a not uncommon practice in boarding schools, as I was soon to discover, or whether he was testing my strength of character.
And to be honest, I thought at the time it was merely bullying. The possibility of it being a test only occurred to me later.
When I didn’t drink whatever it was, he left me alone, and I thought that was it.
I interacted with the boy many times over the following few years, and the incident was never mentioned. And when I did get bullied, primarily during my first year, it wasn’t by him.
Being a boy who liked to throw his considerable weight around, he had his group of hangers-on. Most of them were probably those who had chosen to be in his gang rather than be bullied by him. I know that happens because I was sucked into it for a short while in junior school before realizing that what I was doing was wrong.
In junior school, where I was from the ages of seven through twelve, I don’t ever recall being bullied at all. It was only once I moved up to senior school that it began.
The boy who started it started senior school at the same time as me and was in the same house and dormitory. He would push me around a bit and call me names, but he was more of a minor inconvenience than anything else. It probably helped that, being new to the school, he did not yet have his own gang of followers.
Over the next year or so, after moving out of the new boys’ dormitory to the first year one, the bullying continued and became worse and more consistent. For example, they made apple pie beds for me and poured water on my sheets. But I ignored it all.
Part of this was because I am not a physical person and didn’t want to start a fight. Perhaps if I had, the bullying might have ended sooner. Although I might have been badly hurt too. The truth is, at 61 years old, I have never got into a fight with anybody, ever.
But it was partly because I refused to let it bother me. I was fortunate in a way that the bullying was more name-calling and psychological torture. I was never harmed physically, as had happened to others in the past.
For example, there used to be a practice known as, I believe, a peppermint shower. This was where each shower in the changing room was turned on, with one shower being icy cold and the next boiling hot, and so on, alternating all the way to the end.
They would then make some poor, naked boy walk back and forth through the hot and cold water while things (usually gym shoes) were thrown at him.
I understand it was not a pleasant experience, but it had been banned before joining that house.
That is, of course, the problem with physical bullying — it tends to leave evidence such as bruises or even broken bones in extreme cases.
Within a year, most of the psychological bullying had stopped, and I’m pretty sure it was because I didn’t react. After all, there’s no point trying to intimidate somebody if they refuse to be intimidated. And by showing them it didn’t bother me, they moved on to another target. After all, there was a fresh intake of students to pick on.
I was still subjected to name-calling for most of my time in senior school, but it was more sporadic than a concerted attempt at terrorizing me.
I never let the name-calling bother me either. I remember thinking those boys would probably continue to treat others like that for the rest of their lives. Their behaviour seemed childish, even though I was still a child too. And I will admit that the thought of them never really growing up gave me a welcome feeling of moral superiority. | https://medium.com/@markfarrar/my-approach-to-being-bullied-at-school-be0dfe2afd38 | ['Mark Farrar'] | 2021-03-09 19:08:05.032000+00:00 | ['School Days', 'Personal Growth', 'Resilience', 'Choices', 'Bullying'] |
Winter | Winter
A Poem
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash
I’m not afraid
of the cold
he says
from beneath
the blanket
and the chair
This is living
in Manitoba
the knowing look
that irritates
so very much
This means mud
and salt in
the roads in
another six months
or less
with global warming
and all
Wind still makes
those special divots
on the lawn
sculptures
no one appreciates
not the cat
who must saunter
through
to find her summer
dirt
I’m not afraid
of January
he says
one hand wrapped
up in the other | https://medium.com/artrock-sexual-manifestations-queer-madness/winter-599033958324 | ['J.D. Harms'] | 2020-12-19 14:43:41.335000+00:00 | ['Image', 'Musing', 'Poetry', 'Winter'] |
HomeLand At Blank Screen! | I was just prowling inside the Medium, while I discovered the HomeLand Prompt, So Quickly wrote down whatever that came in my mind. I hope to add another HomeLand Poem that would be more accurately dedicated to my Home Land Nepal. For now, it’s just a picture of my homeland in this current moment. | https://medium.com/chalkboard/homeland-at-blank-screen-bbc23eb30289 | ['Vaghawan Ojha'] | 2017-03-02 21:14:05.090000+00:00 | ['My Homeland', 'Nepal', 'Poetry', 'Travel', 'Love'] |
Be Careful About TimeZone Configuration While Playing With Docker | After spent almost one day, I noticed that docker doesn’t care host machine timezone configuration…
So if you need to do something by current timestamp in your application, you should be careful about timezone configuration of your docker environment because it works independently by the host machine configuration.
Let’s compare date status of host machine and container we’re going to be created:
Call “date” command on the host machine first:
# date
Thu Jul 26 00:10:38 EEST 2018
And.. run a simple docker container in the same machine:
# docker run --rm -it ubuntu:16.04 date
Wed Jul 25 21:11:35 UTC 2018
Ok. Then let’s solve the issue.
Solution 1:
You can mount the “/etc/localtime” and “/etc/timezone” files to container from the host machine
# date
Thu Jul 26 00:30:55 EEST 2018 # docker run --rm -it \
-v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime \
-v /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone \
ubuntu:16.04 date
Thu Jul 26 00:30:59 EEST 2018
Solution 2:
Add “tzdata” package installation step to your Dockerfile. I’m going to give the example by debian/ubuntu based image:
FROM ubuntu:16.04
RUN apt-get update ;\
apt-get install -y tzdata
build the image
# docker build -f Dockerfile -t myimage:latest .
Pass the “TZ” environment variable to container when you created. | https://medium.com/developer-space/be-careful-while-playing-docker-about-timezone-configuration-e7a2217e9b76 | ['İbrahim Gündüz'] | 2019-08-13 11:00:47.726000+00:00 | ['Docker'] |
What I Learned By Quitting Sugar | Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash
Not only are they scarce, but they lead you down a slippery slope of artificial sweeteners. We obsessively drank sugar-free drinks in vain. But I can confidently tell you that they’re not much better. Whilst they aren’t anywhere near as addictive, many of them like Sorbitol and Matitol cause laxative effects which aren’t pleasant.
No matter which way, it seemed like you had to pay a hefty price simply for tasting something sweet.
Photo by Brian Cook on Unsplash
Once the withdrawals had cleared, like a grey storm moving away, there was finally light! I felt a sudden rise of energy in the morning, a general enthusiasm where there would have otherwise been irritability.
There was a spring in my step, my skin glowed, and I actually felt like I was sleeping good for a change.
No doubt it was because I quit sugar, but I think there’s a general euphoria when the self is able to conquer itself in any activity. I felt invincible, because I was finally free from an addiction that I’ve had truthfully my whole life.
Taste returned with magnificence, and I was appreciating the lost subtleties of flavour in even the blandest of foods. It really isn’t that different, I thought to myself, compared to putting down cigarettes.
Photo by Anthony Espinosa on Unsplash
Social Exclusion
Though we adjusted fairly well to eating things without sugar, the social exclusion (alongside lockdown) often became tiresome. When people at work bring in their home-baked cakes, I realised there’s inevitably going to be a whole range of food I’ll never taste.
Despite being the only one insane enough to refuse the cake, many felt sick after eating it. So I immediately came to see the advantages of saying no. As Nietzsche said in The Genealogy of Morals:
“As if by magic, the No that he says to life brings to light an abundance of tender Yeses.”
But it had been a month, and I thought it was about time to reward myself in some way (so not to be completely sadistic). I began eating fruit again, and became reminded of how fantastic nature’s candy truly is.
There was a bit of a rush the first time I ate a banana, indicating how truly sensitive I became, but for the first time I felt like I appreciated something I took for granted my whole life.
My sister was praised by her doctor and dentist for quitting sugar. I thought this was really funny, as I’ve never actually heard a dentist so delightfully surprised with a teenager for actually caring about their teeth! | https://medium.com/cosy/what-i-learned-by-quitting-sugar-27e723ab984d | ['Haider Samsara'] | 2021-01-16 18:51:38.829000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Addiction', 'Lifestyle', 'Body', 'Sugar'] |
Modern Tsundoku (積ん読): How to Overcome Digital Hoarding for Knowledge Workers | The Japanese term Tsundoku (積ん読) — piling up unread reading materials — is undergoing a renaissance of sorts. Ever since cloud storage became readily available and dirt cheap, we’ve been spiraling down the rabbit hole of digital hoarding.
Keeping pristine digital hygiene isn’t easy. But it gets even more complicated when companies switch to remote work. Without a solid data management plan, distributed organizations can quickly lose their way in a deluge of information.
A 2016 survey by Veritas found that 82% of IT decision-makers are notorious data hoarders.(1) To make matters worse, 85% of enterprise data is an unorganized mess that costs employees plenty of time — 2.5 hours each day — to plow through.(2)
Of course, digital hoarding isn’t just a problem of the top brass. Forgotten browser bookmarks, thousands of unread emails, duplicate files… Sounds familiar? While creative pursuits require a dash of disorganization, you can’t hope to keep that game up forever.
In today’s article, we set out to find a solution:
💡 Before you start… This article is part of our long-running series on knowledge management. Be sure to check other similar articles when you’re done reading:
So, without further ado…
What is Tsundoku (積ん読)? 📚
How many times have you bought a book/newspaper, subscribed to a newsletter, or archived an email because you thought you’d need it “one day”?
Don’t worry, we all do that once in a while.
The elegant term Tsundoku (積ん読) can either describe unread reading materials — usually books — or the habit of collecting them. According to Big Think, the term blends “[…] tsunde-oku (letting things pile up) and dukosho (reading books).”(4)
Tsundoku are either impulsive or “just in case” book purchases. Sometimes, we fall for them because the cover art looks cool. Other times, it’s the allure of owning stuff, the tactility of hardbacks, the smell of paper… you get the idea.
Tsundoku vs. Digital Hoarding 📥
While the traditional, 19th-century meaning of Tsundoku refers to printed materials, its premise is still very much alive today as “digital hoarding.”
Here are some modern, digital Tsundokus we collect:
🔖 Browser bookmarks
🎵 Digital music files
💵 Online subscriptions
🎞 Photos and videos
🫂 Social media friends (yep)
📱 Smartphone apps
👾 Video games (digital distributions)
While collecting digital stuff doesn’t seem like a problem — except for the wallet — piling up gigabytes of data can eventually become a burden.
As one Reddit user admits:
“I have a hard time getting rid of screenshots or pictures because I may need them later. I have over 15K pix on my phone alone, nearly 500 apps, and I follow over 2K people on Insta & Twitter. I always feel like it’s associated with “FOMO”, it feels like I will be missing out if I don’t follow everybody, everything, if I don’t keep (up with) everything ever.”(5)
Things get a bit more complicated when digital hoarding takes over our professional lives and starts affecting work performance.
What Makes Digital Hoarders Tick? 🔋
A 2020 survey by Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) found that there are four common scenarios of digital hoarding.(6)
🤷♀️ Disengagement. Disengaged hoarders accumulate data like unread emails or duplicate files over time, to the point where it’s impractical or impossible to organize it. They usually don’t see hoarding as a problem. 👮♀️ Compliance. Sometimes digital assets have longer ”shelf life” and may be required in the future for compliance reasons. This type of hoarding isn’t caused by disorganization or negligence and doesn’t happen on a personal level. 🙀 Anxiety. This is a classic example of: “I may need this one day, right?” Anxiety-driven hoarding is often associated with the inability to separate the genuinely important assets from clutter. Anxiety hoarders collect both. 🧩 Collection. Finally, there are avid collectors who take genuine pride in their Tsundoku. They keep their digital assets well-organized and at the ready, just in case somebody at the company may need them.
Here are some of the most popular workplace Tsundokus:
📨 “Important” unread messages
🗑 Archived and deleted emails
☝️ Outdated guides and FAQs
📑 Copies of documents
📲 Unused apps and tools
🖨 Printed documents
🗂 Duplicate files
📍 Screenshots and videos
Regardless of the motives, digital hoarding can seriously affect the performance of remote organizations. Which takes us to the next point.
The Effect of Tsundoku/Digital Hoarding On Distributed Teams 🤯
According to the CREST report we mentioned earlier, digital hoarding may pose serious security and compliance risks. It can also impair productivity by overwhelming employees with an excess of uncurated information.(6)
And it only gets worse:
🤷 Impaired decision-making . Hoarding makes it difficult to make strategic decisions without instant access to relevant and coherent business intelligence.
. Hoarding makes it difficult to make strategic decisions without instant access to relevant and coherent business intelligence. 📊 Poor data integrity. Outdated, duplicate or missing files create substantial knowledge gaps and result in unreliable data insights.
🔓 Security vulnerabilities . Too much digital clutter makes it extremely difficult to account for and control digital assets in a compliant manner.
. Too much digital clutter makes it extremely difficult to account for and control digital assets in a compliant manner. ✋ No ownership. The more digital assets there are, the more difficult it is to track who does what. This can lead to low ownership and diffused responsibility.
The good news is, the modern case of Tsundoku isn’t that difficult to manage.
5 Steps to Overcome Digital Hoarding 🧘♀️
1. Create a System 💾
The first ingredient necessary to overcome Tsundoku is a unified, collaborative, team-wide system for storing, organizing, and retrieving data.
Your team needs to understand the importance of data management and know how to deal with information on a personal and organizational level.
Here are three knowledge-management schemes that’ll help you take control of your team’s data (follow links for more details):
Each of these methods will let your distributed team separate the wheat from the chaff and keep only the important stuff.
2. Make It a Team Effort 🤝
You can cram over a few weekends and try to clean up your team wiki or knowledge base. But if you don’t get your team on board, the digital clutter will pile up again.
And let’s not forget that you have little control over thousands of unread emails, hundreds of bookmarks, and hoards of duplicate files stashed by individual users.
Here’s what you should go instead:
☝️ Set clear expectations . Make your team aware of the problem. Encourage them to critically assess their digital clutter (emails, cloud storage, documents).
. Make your team aware of the problem. Encourage them to critically assess their digital clutter (emails, cloud storage, documents). ✅ Create a process . How often do you want your team to declutter? What kind of information should they keep for compliance?
. How often do you want your team to declutter? What kind of information should they keep for compliance? 💁♂️ Create ownership . Set permissions and level of access for adding and editing files. Appoint a “data custodian” who will take on curating team knowledge.
. Set permissions and level of access for adding and editing files. Appoint a “data custodian” who will take on curating team knowledge. 🧠 Encourage knowledge transfer. Employees often create guides and templates for personal use. Refine them and share with the rest of the team.
3. Take Inventory and Simplify 🗂
Freedom from digital clutter starts with awareness. Do you know how much Tsundoku your team collects? More importantly, are you aware of your own hoarding habits?
Follow these tips to get it under control:
✍️ List your team’s digital assets (cloud storage, tools, services).
📁 Organize cloud storage into high-level hierarchical structures.
💰 Keep a list of active subscriptions and services.
🔐 Moves all passwords to a password manager.
📩 Use organization-wide email sorting rules.
🔤 Use a consistent and logical naming convention.
In most organizations without a clear data policy, indexing digital assets and keeping them organized can be a challenge.
The good news is, Taskade is here to help. 🐑
🌟 Create a single source of truth for digital assets
🌳 Organize everything using hierarchical tree structures
✍️ Upload or create documents, files, and tasks
🗂 Group assets into Projects, Workspaces, and Subspaces
🏷 Apply tags, cross-link, and run global searches
🧙♂️ Specify the level of access and user roles
And more…
Jump over here to sign up for a free account today. 👈
4. Curate and Delete 🗑
Don’t panic! You don’t have to part with your precious bookmarks, files, and emails (yet). But you also can’t stick to all that digital clutter forever.
Think of your team’s knowledge like a garden. As long as you weed the flower beds and cut the grass, the balance between assets and clutter is maintained. The moment you give up the maintenance, it’s glamour fades and the weeds quickly take over.
Here are a few tips that’ll help you weed your digital garden:
💾 Phase out redundant software (immediately)
🔂 Delete files that can be easily (re)downloaded (immediately)
📃 Scan and shred paper documentation (weekly)
🗓 Roll out automatic email cleanup (monthly)
🔴 Unsubscribe from services and newsletters (monthly)
🔖 Review and curate browser bookmarks (monthly)
🗃 Archive old project files (monthly)
🗑 Delete archived items if they’re no longer needed (quarterly)
Make sure to schedule regular cleanups in your team’s calendar so everybody knows when it’s time to roll up their sleeves.
5. Make Information Actionable 🎯
The “collecting” aspect of Tsundoku isn’t a problem in itself. It’s the lack of actionability that prevents your team from capitalizing on all that intellectual value.
You want to make sure that all bits of information your team stores — emails, documents, wikis, guides — are actionable and put to good use over their life cycle.
🔓 Make it accessible . Keep team knowledge up-to-date and accessible 24/7. Store information in a centralized system that supports content management.
. Keep team knowledge up-to-date and accessible 24/7. Store information in a centralized system that supports content management. ♻️ Recycle . Curate and repurpose content. Transform one-off checklists into templates, single documents into guides, and manuals into video tutorials.
. Curate and repurpose content. Transform one-off checklists into templates, single documents into guides, and manuals into video tutorials. 🤝 Share. When it comes to knowledge management, sharing is caring. Invite other teams to curate data and capitalize on the external input.
When it comes to knowledge management, sharing is caring. Invite other teams to curate data and capitalize on the external input. 🔔 Define “shelf life . ” Keep a record of guides, wikis, and how-tos. Set due dates/recurring reminders and update documents when needed.
. Keep a record of guides, wikis, and how-tos. Set due dates/recurring reminders and update documents when needed. 🔎 Make it searchable. Organize information into folders and categories, apply filters and tags. Make sure to index everything for easy reference.
And that’s it! 👋
Here’s a free template that includes all the tips discussed in this article. Don’t forget to copy it to your Taskade Workspace and share with the rest of the team!
Conclusion 🐑
For some, digital hoarding — the 21-century take on Tsundoku — has become a hook that’s not much different from compulsive social media use or smartphone addiction. It’s stimulating, addictive, and makes us feel genuinely productive.
Except, you already know that isn’t true, right?
It doesn’t matter if you’re a custodian of documents, photos, videos, browser bookmarks, or unread emails. If the thought of parting with digital clutter makes you feel strangely anxious, it’s time for some spring cleaning.
💡 Before you go… If you’re hungry for more tips on how to stay organized in the digital world, check this awesome interview with Cal Newport, the author of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.
Resources 🔗
(1) https://www.veritas.com/news-releases/2016-09-27-veritas-research-shows-digital-hoarding-behaviour-is-pervasive-with-employees-willing-to-give-up-almost-anything-but-their-data
(2) https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/infographic/are-you-data-hoarder-infographic.pdf
(3) https://coolnessgraphed.com/image/169367546204
(4) https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/do-i-own-too-many-books?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3
(5) https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/gycwcg/digital_hoarder/
(6) https://crestresearch.ac.uk/comment/the-risks-of-digital-hoarding/
(7) https://www.veritas.com/content/dam/Veritas/docs/reports/V0479_Data-Genomics-Index-Report.pdf | https://medium.com/@taskade/modern-tsundoku-%E7%A9%8D%E3%82%93%E8%AA%AD-how-to-overcome-digital-hoarding-for-knowledge-workers-1bcc1ade7531 | [] | 2020-12-02 02:44:09.791000+00:00 | ['Organizational Change', 'Hoarding', 'Organizer', 'Clean Code', 'Organizational Culture'] |
Self-Driving Cars: What to Know. 36,350 people were killed by automotive… | Shutterstock
Humans Are Bad Drivers
Approximately 37,000 people are killed by automotive accidents each year in the US alone, and that number is growing. Since that number might be hard to fathom, that’s about 100 deaths per day or 4 deaths per hour. Think about that.
Even worse, according to a study done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, approximately 94% of accidents are caused by human-related errors such as distraction, fatigue, and emotional driving. That’s over 2 million accidents per year, responsible for more than 2.5 million injuries. If you’re still not convinced that human error is the reason why driving is dangerous, consider that the next two leading causes of accidents, vehicle malfunctions and environment-related issues like bad weather or glare, are only responsible for 2% of accidents each.
Alright, clearly human drivers make mistakes far too often — how do we fix that? The answer is simple, take the human out of the equation and let the car drive itself.
Tesla Model 3 self-driving demonstration
Why Driverless Cars?
I can already hear some of you saying “here we go again” as you roll your eyes. Trust me, I get it. For one, it’s scary to think that a computer can or should control a vehicle with human passengers. Secondly, I’m sure you’ve heard excited entrepreneurs, journalists, and executives talk about driverless cars like they’re some miracle technology and that they are right around the corner. Any sensible person would meet that claim with a healthy amount of skepticism. After all, it sounds too good to be true, and let me be very clear — it is. However, even after we cut through all the hype and marketing jargon, I think you’ll find that the actual potential of driverless cars is pretty amazing!
Safety
Before we break down what driverless cars really mean for the future of transportation, let's back up and establish why we want them in the first place. The first and most important reason is safety. Remember, tens of thousands of people are killed each year in car accidents, and the vast majority of those crashes are due to human error. A self-driving car can’t drive drunk or get distracted by their phone. It can also react far more quickly than a human and doesn’t have blind spots because of its numerous sensors. This means that a driverless car should be able to avoid the vast majority of crashes caused by human mistakes. Of course, self-driving cars aren’t perfect, and we will talk about that too. However, I think that the number of lives that could be saved by eliminating the human error element to driving is reason enough to pursue this technology.
Example of the various sensors on a self-driving car
Future Capability
The second reason why driverless cars are the best solution is because of the future applications they enable. Perhaps the most common use for a car is to get someone to work and back home each day. Consider that outside of this commute time, the car sits idle in a parking lot or garage for about 22 out of the 24 hours in a day. As a resource, we use cars inefficiently, which is why everyone feels the need to own one. As a result, there are too many cars on the road which leads to more traffic and a huge negative impact on the environment.
Uber, Lyft, and other ridesharing services have provided a relatively cheap means of transportation to those without cars. However, imagine the day in the life of someone that owns a driverless car in the future. The car drops them off at work in the morning, then instead of simply sitting in a parking lot for 9 hours, begins to operate as an automated ride-sharing vehicle for others in the area. The car would return back to the office in time to go home while having made some extra money for the owner. Self-driving cars would increase the availability of ridesharing vehicles, meaning fewer people would need to own a car in the first place. This would lead to a decrease in carbon emissions which is better for the environment!
Google’s driverless Waymo vehicles being used as a taxi
The list of benefits for self-driving cars doesn’t end there. Things like car-to-car communication mean self-driving cars can prevent traffic slowdowns by accelerating simultaneously. If you’re interested in learning about how that would work, I’d highly recommend this video.
The Catch
As you can see, the potential benefits of self-driving cars are pretty awesome. However, as I alluded to earlier, it’s not all perfect. For starters, self-driving cars are not ready yet. There are still technical challenges such as operating in poor weather conditions and coming up with comprehensive safety standards that need to be overcome before they should be allowed for public use. Many companies have generated publicity by claiming that their self-driving cars are “coming soon” but take that with a grain of salt. It's much more important to have the technology right than to be first.
What is Safe Enough?
One of the most challenging aspects of this technology is deciding how safe the car needs to be before it should be allowed on the road. Some say that getting driverless cars to make mistakes 10x less often than a human driver demonstrates that it is safe enough to allow on the road. However, others argue that even 10x better than humans is not enough of an improvement to be considered safe. People of this opinion believe that settling for such a metric is equivalent to deciding what number of crash deaths we are okay with allowing. Finding an answer between these two extremes is something that governments and companies developing this technology will need to come to a consensus on.
Ethical and Legal Concerns
Of course, there are also many ethical questions about driverless cars that remain unanswered. How is blame assigned if a crash does happen? Does the driver always have to be able to take back control of the vehicle if it begins to malfunction? How much should the car prioritize its own passengers’ safety compared to other drivers or pedestrians in the event that a crash becomes likely? The truth is that current legislation is not equipped to handle the types of situations that can arise with self-driving cars. As great as this technology can be, keep in mind that this is something that must be fleshed out before they are allowed to be used by the public.
The Transition
Finally, many of these futuristic benefits only work if most/all cars on the road are driverless. Of course, the transition period will not be instant, and there will likely be pushback as these vehicles leave the experimental stage and move towards production. Will there be challenges when human and computerized drivers share the road? If driverless cars get to the point where they make mistakes thousands, or even millions of times less often than humans, should humans then be banned from operating cars themselves?
These are tough questions, and while I hope you found the potential benefits as amazing as I did, it would be disingenuous to claim that there are not still big question marks that come with this technology. Even though we don’t have good answers to these questions yet, I think it’s important to understand both the pros and cons in order to have a more informed opinion.
The Takeaway
Okay, so what does this all mean? I hope you can see that human drivers clearly pose a massive safety problem. Also, how we use our vehicles has caused major environmental damage as well as overcrowding of roads. Self-driving cars appear to enable solutions to all of these issues, while also providing some incredible future benefits as well.
As I’m sure you can tell by now, I am personally a techno-optimist. If you’re like me, remember to have patience and temper your expectations for self-driving cars. This technology is aiming to solve a really hard problem and it will take time to get right. That being said, don’t be blind to the ethical and legal questions that still remain. They are an equally important part of this puzzle, and we need to ensure that we aren’t introducing a new set of problems while trying to solve another.
On the other hand, if you’re still not sold on self-driving cars, I would advise you to not be so quick to judge. Remember that this technology is still in its infancy. The self-driving cars of today are like old flip phones compared to today’s best smartphones — the technology will get better! Consider how many lives are impacted or lost due to human driving errors and the future capabilities that self-driving can open. We would be remiss to not at least try such a promising solution.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (2019)
Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies (2018) DOI: 10.1016/j.trc.2018.02.012. | https://medium.com/@tpatel1781/technical-challenges-of-autonomous-vehicle-perception-systems-6cf8ed306d27 | ['Tej Patel'] | 2020-11-24 01:03:07.027000+00:00 | ['Autonomous Vehicles'] |
America’s “Long National Nightmare” Continues Unabated. Only the Night Terrors of the Trump Presidency Are Coming to an End | In his Medium article “America’s Long National Nightmare Is Coming to an End,” Jay Sizemore advances the twin propositions that:
(1) America’s “long national nightmare” is coming to an end and
(2 ) “the people” have spoken and elected Biden.
I find these disconcerting. Each is representative of a kind of unsupported, generalized overstatement that may have value as a rally-round-the-cause battle cry or as propaganda-speak, but little benefits sober public discourse. They give the wrong impression. They misstate reality. They invite the gullible and the non-discerning to settle upon a simple, feel-good postulate rather than recognize and treat with the more troublesome actuality.
Not “the people,” but barely more than one-third of the voting people elected Biden.
It is simply untrue that “the people” elected Biden. As of 7 November, the popular vote stood at
075,404,182 (051.54%) Democrats
070,903,094 (048.46%) Republicans
146,307,276 (100.00%) Total
A paper-thin majority of the voting electorate elected Biden, not The People. Moreover, the voting electorate is not the total voting-eligible population. As of 8 November, the voter turnout was projected at 66.3% of the voting-eligible population. Fully one-third of voting-eligible people chose not to show up.
146,307,276 (066.30% of voting-eligible)
074,367,348 (033.70% of voting-eligible)
220,674,624 (100.00% of voting-eligible)
Putting the numbers in gross perspective, one sees that, in 2020, slightly more than one-third Democratic voters, slightly less than one-third Republican voters, and just about one-third we-don’t-give-a-damn non-voters comprised The People.
Mr. Sizemore characterizes the election result as a “mandate proving that America recognizes it made a huge mistake, and wants to take it back.”
To state that “the people have spoken and they have elected Joe Biden” and to portray the vote as a mandate misstates reality. It wholly fails to recognize the much more troublesome actuality.
It is the Trump presidency that is coming to an end, not our “long national nightmare.”
Trump and his administration were never America’s long national nightmare. They were but its most recent manifestation, albeit the most appallingly destructive one. To elevate Trump to the level of the totality of the nightmare is to equate the most recent bit of flotsam to have floated to the cesspool’s surface with the entirety of the cesspool itself. The two do not equate.
Our long national nightmare did not begin with Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency. The nightmare was not his presidency. The continuing, deep partisan divide that has the American voting electorate split virtually 50/50 between two divergent worldviews is the nightmare.
The nightmare has been the nearly three-quarter-century-long process of converting the reasonable, public-policy-based, Republican political ideology of the 1950s into the irrational, fear-based, weaponized Republican worldview of 2020. The nightmare has been that process that perverted a Republican Party standing on a platform of objective, reasonable, public-policy choices and reduced it down to Trump Republicanism standing on no platform at all but rather chasing the subjective, irrational, fear-based, private pursuit of personal gain and partisan power.
That process was the “authoritarian takeover of the GOP” (Prius or Pickup, Verdict | Justia, 22 Oct 2018, accessed 2020.11.11), culminating in Trump’s presidency. Now, we must deal with what this new reality means for the rest of us.
In Prius or Pickup, political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler affirm that in place of the GOP’s former objective, principled political ideology, there is now a subjective, worldview-based Republican partisanship. They use the terms “fluid” and “fixed” to categorize today’s differing, polarized Democratic and Republican worldviews.
Fixed was meant to connote people who want to keep old norms and traditions fixed in place. Fluid was meant to connote people who are more open to changing them. … Fixed and fluid [connote] the substantive underpinnings of people’s worldviews
Prius or Pickup, supra.
Republicans today have a
more fixed mindset; [their] primary concerns revolve around stability, security, predictability, and definite standards. [Democrats] have a more fluid worldview, where [they] prioritize progress and are willing to navigate complexity and embrace nuance.
Please Take the ‘Prius or Pickup?’ Quiz, Inside Higher Ed — 22 Oct. 2018, accessed 2020.11.11.
What characterizes politics today is the
distinctive feature of … the convergence of worldview and partisanship. That’s been decades in the making, the product of the particular issues that the major parties have come to emphasize (race, gender equality, sexual orientation, immigration, etc.). This is polarizing because people reason about these issues more in their guts than in their heads. When the parties were divided by [political ideology,] understanding what side you were on required a lot of thinking. And the two sides could always compromise on [ideological points]. Now that the parties are divided by worldview, understanding what side you are on happens on the gut level. People’s party attachments are, as a consequence, more visceral.
Prius or Pickup, supra.
The GOP leadership orchestrated this 70-year-convergence. That is America’s long national nightmare.
When ideology informed partisanship in the 1950s, reasoned, intellectual considerations were the foundations of party choice. But that no longer obtains. The convergence of Republican partisanship with the current Republican fixed-worldview leaves intellectual reflections ragged and torn on the ground.
The two parties
cannot see each other’s humanity, because the toxic nature of partisanship today means that if you are on the other side, you are less than fully human.
Prius or Pickup, supra.
The authoritarian takeover of the GOP, the long national nightmare, has been the 70-year process culminating in today’s Republican Party’s slavish subjugation of principled political ideology to a weaponized, fixed-worldview-driven partisanship.
The convergence of a fear-based, fixed-world-view with Republican partisanship was not spontaneous. GOP leadership drove it. In 2016, when the Republican political leaders abandoned principle-driven, ideological politics for please-don’t-kick-me-off-the-band-wagon sycophancy, Trump’s corrosive brand of authoritarianism forced the convergence of party choice with worldview. That was the nightmare in culmination.
The nightmare is not over, only the night terrors.
With Trumps’ presidency, the nightmare morphed into night terrors. Divesting ourselves of the terrors may provide some relief. Still, we must remain cognizant of the fact that the nightmare itself continues to afflict the national psyche so long as the 50/50 divide between fixed and fluid worldviews remains at the center of American politics. | https://medium.com/politically-speaking/americas-long-national-nightmare-continues-unabated-despite-ending-the-trump-presidency-bd900ecf1a1d | ['Alex'] | 2020-11-16 15:27:29.492000+00:00 | ['Trump', 'Republican Party', 'Joe Biden', 'Democratic Party', 'Politics'] |
ML: GMM & EM Algorithm | GMM is a really popular clustering method you should know as a data scientist. K-means clustering is also a part of GMM. GMM can overcome the limitation of k-means clustering. In this post, I will explain how GMM works and how it will be trained.
Mixture Model
Gaussian Mixture Model equation
What is the mixture model? We can think of just the combination of the models. If you combine the Gaussian Distribution with weights, then it will be the Gaussian Mixture Model. The pi in the equations is the weight, mixing coefficient, of the model, the sum of every weight should be 1 because the probability cannot over 1. It also should be between 0 and 1.
Normal distribution
Each of the normal distribution in the mixture has its own mean parameter and covariance parameter.
Old Faithful dataset from Bishop’s book
Why do we need the mixture model? It is clear if you watch the above picture. The Gaussian should be dense around the mean but it is not. If we want to fit this properly, we need two Gaussian models, clustering.
We can also overlap the Gaussian to fit the data. The numbers next to the gaussian in the left graph are weight. The right picture shows the fitted density with a 3D image.
Generative model
We can use GMM as a Generative Model. If you select the components and you know the parameter of the corresponding gaussian, then you can sample from the Gaussian. Actually, now we can change our minds. It is somehow intuitive and tricky.
Can we think the pi, weight, as a probability? Yes, we can. What does it mean? It means how likely we choose a specific model, it can be interpreted as how likely we choose a specific parameter set of the Gaussian distribution. Then,
This will be a likelihood. Zn is a categorical variable.
We can calculate the probability of the specific data like above. This is the equivalent generative formulation with an explicit latent variable Zn. We can illustrate this.
The shaded circle is the observed data. If we know pi, we can generate Zn. If we know Zn, we can generate new data. In our case, it is Gaussian distribution but it can be any distribution you want.
Let’s look at this with bayesian eyes. If you don’t familiar with it, you can check here.
I already define the likelihood above and we define other things here. We want to calculate the posterior, it means what is the probability of the parameter given data from component k, specific gaussian distribution. The posterior is also called responsibility. We can understand this as the specific data group how likely to be assigned in the specific class. However, Gaussians contribute to every data point with weight, we need to compare this with every other Gaussians. We can calculate this with Bayes’s rule.
Posterior is calculated by multiplying likelihood and prior and evidence is constant.
Bishop’s book
We assign the data point into the class where it has the biggest responsibility and color it. It will look like this. However, you should check the last picture has a blurred area where we cannot decide which cluster is the right cluster.
Parameter Estimation
We need to find out the covariance matrix, mixing coefficient, and mean vector. First of all, we assume that we know the K. I will explain how to choose k later. It is difficult to calculate because of the covariance matrix, it is p by p size. We assume i.i.d and we can conclude the likelihood is:
The log-likelihood will be:
If you are familiar with other log-likelihoods, you can feel weird in this equation because it is hard to differentiate the function. This is a problematic part of the parameter estimation. If you just go for it, you can get this equation, we set the derivative to zero:
If you differentiate it by yourself, you can get the responsibility term. The equation above contains responsibility terms. We still can not calculate the mean because we don’t know the responsibility, it contains every parameter. We can do something for covariance.
Same result for pi.
How do we solve this? We can do it by setting the initial parameter and calculate the log-likelihood and update the parameters with respect to responsibility, we can get it because we initialized the parameters. Repeat this until convergence. This is called the EM method.
Expectation Maximization
This is one way to do maximum likelihood estimation when you have missing data. EM is an iterative algorithm.
0. Initialize the parameters and evaluate the log-likelihood.
Compute the Posterior distribution of Z gives current estimator of parameters:
2. Compute Complete likelihood under this distribution of Z (Expectation):
3. We maximize this Q functions(Maximization):
What the algorithm does is simple. We don’t know the Z. We built the distribution, in GMM, the responsibility based on previous guesses, about Z, hidden variables, based on the previous guess. We calculate the expected value of complete log-likelihood under the distribution of the missing data using the previous guess, Expectation Step, and we maximize it with respect to the parameters for the next parameter, Maximization Step.
Expectation-Maximization for GMM
We assume that hidden variables and latent variables are equal. What we are finding now is covariance, mixing coefficient, and mean.
Again, you have to remember the important point in the E step, we calculate the expected value of complete log-likelihood under the Z distribution using the previous guess.
Now, we still got the responsibility. However, it is not about the true parameter. It is the responsibility based on guessed parameters. The equation is also easy to differentiate for M step.
Responsibility becomes constant.
Same for other parameters.
This is the whole picture of EM for GMM.
Theoretical Guarantee
EM monotonically increases observed data likelihood until the local maximum or saddle point. Let’s look at why it is the case. The context you should know is Jansen’s inequality. If we have convex function f, then:
The function of the linear combination of x will less than a linear combination of functions of x. What we need is when f is a log, concave function. It will be the opposite.
We calculate the log-likelihood but now we set q as an arbitrary distribution over the latent variables. We got lower bound with Jansen’s Inequality. Finally, we get the Q function, we got the expected value of log-likelihood minus entropy. We need to choose q to maximize the Q function. To sum up, we maximize the lower bound to touch the original likelihood.
I changed the lower bound formula into -KL divergence + Log-likelihood. Our goal is to make KL divergence zero because we want to consider log-likelihood. It turns out EM did the same process, making KL divergence zero.
This picture tells the process.
BIC & AIC
These are the popular information criterion, you can use both in general. We will use this to choose K in GMM. AIC consists of log-likelihood, which we maximized for a good model and the number of parameters, k in our case. We penalized the loglikelihood with the number of parameters because many parameters can lead to the perfect model but it is definitely overfitting. BIC is almost the same but it has weight for the number of parameters, a log of the number of observed data. More data, more penalty. This is not good to build a complex model even if you have enough data.
In this graph, I would like to say 3, 5 are a nice choice for k because the model is not that complex and nice AIC and BIC score.
Covariance Types
We can have different types of Gaussian distribution depending on the covariance matrices. If the covariance is always the same in every direction, then it will be spherical. It is a diagonal matrix but the same variances. You should know they don’t share the same covariance. The diagonal means the covariance matrix is diagonal but it is not the same. Tied means they share the covariance together.
This post is published on 9/24/2020. | https://medium.com/swlh/ml-gmm-em-algorithm-647cf373cd5a | [] | 2020-09-25 22:52:25.081000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Math', 'Em Algorithm', 'Data Science', 'Gaussian Mixture Model'] |
Yitzhak Rabin: un magnicidio que sigue doliendo | 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/el-informal/yitzhak-rabin-un-magnicidio-que-sigue-doliendo-bde7fa72ec82 | ['Yossi Khebzou'] | 2020-11-06 16:35:36.335000+00:00 | ['Palestina', 'Middle East', 'Paz', 'Palestine', 'Israel'] |
Machine learning needed for a moon base | Machine learning needed for a moon base
Photo by Dieter Pelz on Unsplash
This blog post is going to be slightly off the beaten path. It is still in the realm of technology and science. Which is the stuff I normally write about. But I decided to put a twist on it. As recently I was watching a few videos about space. Namely how we would be building a moon base. I wondered how AI can fit into the mix. So this blog post is asking that question.
Before we land humans on the moon. We need to find sites that are suitable for human occupation. Luckily we are a ready doing this. With satellites and rovers. Scanning the surface of the moon. Areas that will be nice to humans and places close to water. Areas that are suitable to be terraformed. The water is important because we humans need water to live. And taking water from earth to the moon. increases the price of the rocket launch because of the extra weight. Also, water can be used to make rocket fuel on the moon. By extracting hydrogen and oxygen. This reduces the cost of the rocket launch.
The satellites do some type of radar and other measurements on the surface. Looking at different signals. Certain type of results will be water. (Or ice. As the moon is pretty cold.) As it gets that data. Humans on earth can map that data on to a map of the moon. Maybe ML can speed up that process. by having the moon mapped beforehand. And using coordinates to plot the water spot onto the map. Some results are better than others. The ML model can have a probability score on how likely there is water there. Which can help space agencies plan future missions. As they can pick a spot with the most likely chance of water.
Most likely rovers may scout an area before humans land there. So AI will be involved. Like curiosity, it may come with pre-loaded instructions. Probably check if the ground is suitable. For 3D printing. As there is a need to use the materials on the moon. To create the moon base. Verify if there is water in the area. Track how much radiation hits the area. Tons of stuff to make sure humans are safe when they land.
People say that robots may build most of the moon base before humans land. Which makes sense. So other robots will be doing the 3D printing. And fetching supplies like water. So when humans land they have a place to sleep in. That is safe. The robot will probably still be there doing the work. Of creating more buildings for the moon base. Or creating other things like bricks. Humans I guess will start work on making the moon base useable. Like adding wiring and lights. Setting up the internet. And setting up a vertical farm. So they have fresh food to eat. | https://medium.com/@tobi-olabode/machine-learning-needed-for-a-moon-base-f9ec012508a2 | ['Tobi Olabode'] | 2020-12-13 20:04:17.994000+00:00 | ['Moon', 'Satellite Technology', 'Space Exploration', 'Machine Learning'] |
13+ Examples of the Best B2B Content Marketing in Venture Capital | Content marketing is the trendiest digital marketing technique.
And venture capital gives great examples of B2B content marketing. Think about the reputation that venture capitalists have built. Both investment funds (the limited partners that invest in VC funds) and startups really trust VCs.
How?
This is what you’re going to find out in today’s article.
As an entrepreneur, you’ll get new ideas for your own marketing strategy. As an investor, you’ll get a glance at what your competitors are doing.
Bonus: Download a free PDF with 6 content marketing best practices.
But before sharing the analysis, I just want to tell what you content marketing really means.
What Is Content Marketing?
Here’s how the Content Marketing Institute defines “content marketing”:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
It’s a marketing strategy based on what Seth Godin calls [amazon text=Permission Marketing&asin=1416526668]. Instead of paying for advertising in order to get the attention of a specific audience, content marketing allows you to get their attention organically.
Here’s how it works:
Customers decide to pay attention. Not because you interrupt them with an ad, but because you’re showing them something they find interesting.
The price for the attention is not the money you spend to get your ad in a medium — like a magazine. But it’s the time and resources you spent to create a valuable piece of content.
In the context of content marketing, “valuable” mostly means “practical” or “entertaining”.
What you should do depends on your industry.
For example, the venture capital industry benefits from being practical, while the fashion industry thrives by sharing entertaining content.
A Short History of Content Marketing for Venture Capital
Venture capital investors started blogging in early 2000s. At the time, it was certainly more a hobby than a way to compete for attention.
Nobody used the term “B2B content marketing” at the time.
Since they were sharing valuable advice for free, some of them started getting lots of attention from entrepreneurs and other investors. This was the beginning of this loving relationship between venture capital and content marketing.
Sarah Tavel, partner at Greylock Partners, see content marketing as the “freemium model” in venture capital:
“We’re trying to give you a taste of what we’ve got so you take some of our money. Don’t you think that fits? All our VC blogs and tweets are the [free] 2.5GB equivalent of Dropbox.”
But with a growing competition, venture capital firms were facing a real need to differentiate from each other. Blogging wasn’t enough.
As marketing strategist Dorie Clark pointed out, a major shift happened in 2013:
Some VC firms started doing content marketing like professional publications like First Round Capital did with its own version of Harvard Business Review. They hired editors, journalists, and content marketing experts. For example, Andreessen Horowitz hired former Wired Senior Editor Michael Copeland and NextView Ventures hired former HubSpot head of content Jay Acunzo.
Does Content Marketing Always Work in Venture Capital?
But it’s not because you hire a professional journalist that things will work out. And it’s not because you have a reputable brand that people will start reading your content.
Sequoia Capital hired a professional editor and tried to launch Grove, a portal for how-to content, videos and events. It somewhat never really took off.
What does it tell us?
Content marketing is not a mere communication medium.
It has to fit with the firm’s positioning strategy — which implies that the firm knows how it differs from other VCs.
Great content marketing doesn’t just get people’s attention. It embodies a particular positioning and makes the audience associate the VC firm with a specific element of differentiation.
Now, you’re clear on what content marketing means.
Let’s see how these VC firms implemented their content marketing strategy through different formats like articles, podcasts, and videos. [1]
How Venture Capital Uses Content Marketing
Blogs: Write, Distribute, Repeat
A lot of VCs jumped into blogging when Fred Wilson’s AVC blog and a few others got traction. But many didn’t have the stamina to write regularly in order to attract a loyal audience. This is why we’re left with lots of what CB Insight calls “Zombie VC blogs”.
Writing to captivate an audience is difficult and time-consuming. You need a real passion for the art of writing if you want to keep showing up for years.
Why do venture capital investors write?
There are obvious marketing advantages. You prove your credibility by sharing thoughtful ideas. This contributes to building a name for yourself to be top-of-mind of entrepreneurs, tech journalists, and other VCs.
But writing is also altruistic, as it’s a way to help and inspire entrepreneurs. On personal level, it also helps you think more clearly and stimulate your creativity.
As Mark Suster wrote:
“It’s when I can switch from Manager to Maker. I can express and convey thoughts about complex topics that help others peel back the layers of an onion in trying to understand the worlds of startups, technology, and venture capital.”
Many VCs write. So they need to differentiate themselves. You’ll see that all the featured VC writers adopt very different strategies.
Paul Graham: Collection of Essays
Paul Graham’s collection of essays is a must-read. You feel that each essay aims at being timeless. And so the collection looks more like an ever-expanding book than a blog.
Paul Graham doesn’t just share his last new idea about startups. Every essay is carefully thought and discussed with some of the most prominent tech and business experts.
See the long acknowledgement for How to Get Startup Ideas:
Obviously, his writing is about helping but also part of a clever content marketing strategy. You notice that some essays start with a non-intrusive call-to-action that encourages you to apply to Y Combinator.
Here’s an example with Startup = Growth:
Most essays have inspired many many entrepreneurs. And they’re definitely worth reading more than once. Paul Graham’s strategy shows that sharing well-thought ideas make it easier to spread them.
My favorite essay is Life Is Short. It’s the kick in the ass that you need to remind you that nothing will last forever.
Highly recommended.
More here: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
Fred Wilson: Daily Blogging on AVC.com
Fred Wilson is one of the first VCs who started writing when blogging was still a thing (in 2003).
He takes a more quantitative approach than Paul Graham. Fred Wilson is committed to shipping something new every day. From featuring a new startup to giving precious advice to founders to curating thoughtful content, he never gives up.
One day = One new thought
Writing daily has two advantages:
It encourages your audience to come back regularly. They know that there will always be something new when they come back. The challenge of publishing every day forces you to be more creative. You have no choice. You’re committed to share something new and worth reading every day. [2]
Fred Wilson shared some insight about his blogging recipe:
“The most important part is to engage. The second most important part is own your online presence.”
Have a long form blog on a domain that you own and that is permanent. Participate actively in the social distribution platforms. Build community on your domains. Engage everywhere (Hacker News, other blog communities/comments, Twitter, Facebook, etc).
Another ingredient of the “Fred Wilson School of Blogging” is a real commitment to showing up for (13+) years:
“People ask me when I am going to write a book and I laugh at that suggestion. AVC is more than a book will ever be. It is live, it is deep (in terms of total posts), it keeps going, evolving, and ends when I end.”
Two of my faves from Fred Wilson are What Is Strategy? and Product > Strategy > Business Model that I mentioned recently here (writing about setting the right priorities).
More here: http://avc.com/
Brad Feld: Thoughts on SaaS, Startup Ecosystem, and More
Brad Feld also started early (in 2004). He doesn’t ship every day but almost.
Unlike most VCs, Brad Feld chose to write on different platforms. He shares his personal thoughts on his blog. And more practical advice on Startup Revolution and Ask the VC. [3]
Brad Feld is certainly one of the most a prolific VC writer with three blogs and multiple books.
Here’s his take on this:
“I write to think.”
Another reason for Brad Feld success is that he started demystifying venture capital at a time where things were very opaque for founders:
“There was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital (term sheets). This time frame — 2005/2006 — web 2.0 was starting. Venture capital was still kind of closed, 1st time entrepreneurs had a lot of questions that were unanswered, and there was still some sort of hand waiving around all the financing stuff and so we took it on.”
More here: http://www.feld.com/
Mark Suster: Talking Venture Capital on Both Sides of the Table
Mark Suster is another committed writer.
What I really like about Mark Suster’s writing is his transparency. He shares stories and thoughts that many would have been reluctant to share.
Here’s an example with What Do Industry Insiders Think Will Happen in VC in 2016?
We can easily say that, like Brad Feld, he has contributed to (1) making the VC industry more transparent and (2) educating entrepreneurs about how to deal with investors.
What’s particular with Mark Suster’s strategy is that he focuses on building a brand name: Both Sides of the Table. The name speaks for itself and highlights a well-defined positioning strategy.
Among the VCs I mentioned, Mark Suster is the only one who switched his blog to Medium. He’s also exploring other forms of content like what he calls Snapstorms, certainly inspired from Marc Andreessen’s Tweetstorms.
More here: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/
Sam Altman: Personal Thoughts about New Ventures, Silicon Valley, and More
Sam Altman succeeded Paul Graham as President of Y Combinator. And reading Sam Altman’s writing makes you think about Graham’s style:
Always thoughtful.
(You can see how their ideas complement each other in this article.)
His writing is much more casual. He’s not here to build an audience. Sam Altman focuses on sharing his thoughts on today’s startup world. He publishes something because he has an interesting story to share, not because he hasn’t written for while.
My fave from Sam Altman is not about business but life: The days are long but the decades are short.
More here: http://blog.samaltman.com/
Ben Evans: Analysing the Future of Tech
Ben Evans is not a VC per se, but works at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
He has done a great job at building a loyal audience thanks to the quality of his work. In less than 5 years, he went from zero to almost 300,000 pageviews/month. (It’s not the best metric to track, but it shows that Ben Evans got his content strategy right).
Let’s dig a bit into this:
Every article is the result of thorough analysis. Ben Evans does publish regularly but only when he has something new to write about. Original and well-thought ideas win. Ben Evans has a clear positioning. He writes about the future of technology, with a special focus on mobile. If you’re not interested just get out. But if you are, you’re likely to keep his name on the top of your mind. He keeps in touch with his audience regularly. Ben Evans leverages the idea behind permission marketing with a weekly newsletter. It’s a nice way to share curated content — what he reads — and to distribute his own content — what he writes.
As Ben Evans points out, building an audience is a massive challenge because:
“The problem isn’t freedom or openness but distribution.”
Everyone can create content. The challenge is to distribute it. How can you make sure that it will end up in front of the right people?
Ben Evans also exploits an unfair advantage. His job at Andreessen Horowitz is to come up with ideas about the future of technology. So there’s a real synergy between his job and his writing.
If you are not familiar with Ben Evans’s writing, get a look at his 16 mobile theses.
More here: http://ben-evans.com/
Podcasts: Interview World-class Guests
Podcasts are another way to do good B2B content marketing.
They’re great for three reasons:
Your audience can listen to them while they’re doing something else like commuting; They allow you to share stories that nobody would have put in written words; Recording a podcast episode takes often less time than writing an article.
(Interested in leadership and personal growth, subscribe to Unlock People’s Potential — the podcast I host.)
The a16z Podcast by Andreessen Horowitz: The Future of Tech & Management
The a16z Podcast focuses on two main topics: the future of technology and high-level management advice. (And I think this is what they want to be known for.)
From interviews of thought-leaders to extracts of conferences, the podcast digs deep into ideas on the world of tomorrow.
Most episodes are very technical. When the a16z team talks about tech, they always go into the nitty-gritty. Same when the topic is about management and leadership challenges.
Here’s a pretty good example: Managing Uncertainty — Layoffs and Talent with Shannon Schiltz and Alex Rampell.
More here: The a16z Podcast
Traction by NextView: Early Stage Growth
Traction does a great job at sharing the stories of early stage startups. The content focuses on those first 18 to 24 months of a company’s growth. It shows that NextView addresses a well-defined audience: the “garage-stage” founders.
It has different podcast strategy.
What I really like is its well-edited format. The podcast doesn’t sound like a typical interview. Each episode is a mix of the interview of a guest and Jay Acunzo’s voice-over sharing additional context and advice.
One of my faves is Patrick Campbell’s story about how he started Price Intelligently.
More here: Traction
The Seedcamp Podcast: Uncover the European Startup Ecosystem
Most of the resources I mentioned focus on the US startup ecosystem.
This is not the case here:
The Seedcamp Podcast puts an emphasis on the European tech scene. In each episode, Carlos Espinal, Partner at Seedcamp, interviews the founders, mentors, and investors who have contributed to building the European ecosystem.
This is how Seedcamp highlights its leading role as an early stage investor in Europe and its massive network of mentors, partners, and alumni.
More here: The Seedcamp Podcast
The Tim Ferriss Show: Long-form Interview of VCs
Although Tim Ferriss is not a venture capitalist per se, he invested in many success stories as a business angel. And he got to do that thanks to a clever content marketing strategy based on long-form articles, books, and now a podcast.
Besides the quality of his show, the reason he deserves a spot here is the great interviews he did of some of the most prominent venture capitalists and business angels:
Unlike most initiatives listed in this article, Tim Ferriss makes money out his content. It’s his main job after all. And with nearly 70,000,000 downloads in two years of existence, he would be mad to wast the opportunity to make a few dimes from advertising.
More here: The Tim Ferriss Show
Videos: Record Events and Share Them Online
Y Combinator on How to Start a Startup
How to Start a Startup (or Stanford’s class CS183B) is a series of lectures by Sam Altman and many guests who are part of the Y Combinator ecosystem.
This is pure gold for someone who wants to start a business. There are lots of advice that will help you avoid the mistakes that most first-time entrepreneurs make.
Running this class was a wonderful marketing success for Y Combinator and Sam Altman. I’ve heard of so many groups that were created in order to watch and discuss each episode together. Beyond sharing online content, Sam Altman succeeded to get into people’s offline lives.
The team also did an excellent job at sharing the content in different formats with a YouTube Channel and a podcast.
The initiative is a proof that working on your content marketing strategy with a partner works well. This is especially the case when the two partners have popular names like Stanford and Y Combinator.
More here: How to Start a Startup
Greylock Partners on Technology-enabled Blitzscaling
Following Peter Thiel’s CS183A and Sam Altman’s CS183B, Greylock Partners ran a class called Technology-enabled Blitzscaling (or Stanford’s CS183C).
While CS183B was about starting your business, this class focuses on scaling your business.
This class received less buzz than How to Start a Startup. (I may have missed something but less people seemed to know about it). I actually found out about it on Medium through Chris McCann’s notes.
But with guests like Google’s Eric Schmidt, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, it makes you appreciate that Greylock Partners and Stanford share this class for free.
More here: Technology-enabled Blitzscaling (video) and Notes
500 Startups on Traction and Growth
500 Startups does a great job with video content. And its content marketing strategy doesn’t require a lot of work.
The videos are recording of conferences that 500 Startups organise regularly like the Weapons of Mass Distribution Conference 2015. No need to come up with original ideas, the speakers do the work for you.
The content is a nice push for the new positioning of 500 Startups around marketing and growth for post-seed startups. Here’s an example with the 500 Distro series.
The goal is to highlight the credibility of 500 Startups in scaling startups with tons of expertise and a large network of growth marketers.
More here: 500 Startups
Books Worth Reading about Venture Capital & Entrepreneurship
Books are also part of a good B2B content marketing strategy. Consulting firms and so-called “experts” master the art of publishing books to sell their B2B services.
As author Ryan Holiday wrote:
“Books are no longer simply books, they are branding devices and credibility signals.”
Books are a filter.
Everyone can publish a blog article, less people can write a book. So a book generates more significant credibility signals. Write the same content in a few blog articles and people won’t take your expertise as seriously.
Here are some examples of books by VCs:
[amazon text=Zero to One&asin=0804139296] by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters — The philosophy behind the rapid growing ventures in Silicon Valley.
The Fundraising Field Guide by Carlos Espinal — A manual for the entrepreneurs who want to know more about how to raise money.
[amazon text=Venture Deals&asin=1118443616] by Brad Feld — A more technical guide to raising money.
[amazon text=The Hard Thing About Hard Things&asin=0062273205] by Ben Horowitz — Practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems a business can face.
(Look up here to find my list of the best books for entrepreneurs.)
Some Pearls of Great Price about Tech Startups
The best examples of B2B content marketing share something valuable to their audience. You see all the examples above aim to help founders build better startups.
Some ideas of content are about being a founder — personal development. Other ideas deal with how to start and grow a startup — business.
It’s often hard to explain why but some ideas take off better than others. Usually, it’s because they fill a gap. The content provides some guidance that entrepreneurs were missing.
Here are some pieces of content that went viral:
(Hacker News is also the proof that user-generated content works well in B2B too).
These “pearls” show that the major factors that make content marketing thrive are sharing practical, original ideas and doing things differently.
Evergreen content works.
Bonus: Download a free checklist with 6 content marketing takeaways from venture capitalists.
How Do Venture Capital Firms Benefit from Content Marketing?
You see now that there’s a lot of free, high-quality content out there. But why do these investors spend their time sharing this?
Three main reasons:
They love to help; They benefit from a more mature startup ecosystem; They’re competing for the attention and trust of startup founders.
If you find what they share interesting, you’re likely to trust them more and even to spread the word about their work.
So content marketing is a way for them to make sure that the day you want to raise money, you’ll have their name on the top of your mind.
Generating a good deal flow is a challenge.
So every marketing initiative is an opportunity to encourage entrepreneurs to think about a specific VC firm. This is why venture capitalists speak at conferences, network a lot, do tons of PR, and share precious advice for free.
Where Is This Content Marketing Thing Going?
Venture capital is competitive because it relies on (1) finding the right startups to invest in and (2) convincing the founders that your commodity — money — is worth more than someone else’s commodity — still money.
This means that great venture capital firms must add more value than just money — network, brand name, support…
At the beginning content marketing was a nice way to show how a venture capital firm could add value.
But here’s the catch:
After almost 15 years of publishing free advice about the rules of the startup game, almost everything has been said. Everyone has access to some of the best startup lessons for free.
Value comes out from scarcity. To stand out, a venture capital firm would have to do things differently: solve problems that haven’t been solved, talk about things nobody talks about, come with a new angle, specialise in a vertical and nail it…
Distribution, the Growing Challenge for B2B Content Marketing
Besides improving the “quality” of your content, you also need to nail your distribution strategy. As Ben Evans points out, this now the biggest challenge in marketing.
The distribution channels that perform the best are the ones that are well segmented, those who are specific to your industry. Clement Vouillon of Point Nine Capital summaries it well:
“Go beyond the obvious content distribution channels (Twitter…) and start to use industry specific channels.”
The right content marketing startegy focuses on what the audience — the customers — wants to read/listen to/watch and where they go to consume this content.
Content Marketing Is Not Only Challenging for Startups but also for Venture Capital Firms
As you see, marketing remains a challenge for the venture capital industry.
Venture capital might be seen as holding the keys for startup success. But they also are businesses with their own challenges and competitors.
Like What You Just Read about B2B Marketing and Venture Capital?
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Notes about B2B Content Marketing and Venture Capital
[1] One Thing to Keep in Mind: Who Is The Customer?
Even though most VCs share content for free because they like helping people, it’s also part of their job.
In an article, Arthur Attwell highlights how startup lovers became customers of a new market:
“This is one, a note to my future self: Don’t call your projects ‘startups’. It’s a semantic trick, but a really important one. Here’s why. ‘Startups’ have become a commodity in an industry of startup conferences, websites, courses, and competitions.”
Be aware that content marketing is an alternative to advertising. It’s another way to get your attention as a customer.
So when you raise money or take part of a startup programme, you are the customer.
[2] Shipping every is something that Seth Godin has been preaching for a while. Honestly, I’m that close to doing it. Instead, I’m focusing writing every day, but not publishing every day. It works too but makes it a bit less challenging.
My issue is that you cannot write the article you just read every day. So I have to balance shorter and longer forms of content.
[3] Here’s one thing to keep in mind when reading/listening/watching all these pieces of content: Business is an art.
VCs cannot share more than thoughtful insights. None of them holds the keys to success, even though they can help you to open some doors. This means that all this content is only based on their own opinions.
And sometimes they clash.
For example in a piece called the Illusion of Product/Market Fit for SaaS Companies, Brad Feld highlighted a disagreement between Ben Horowitz and Fred Wilson.
I love the clash because it reminds us that business is indeed an art.
You should go through the content to get some inspiration, not a clear direction. | https://medium.com/boostcompanies-archive/13-examples-of-the-best-b2b-content-marketing-in-venture-capital-eb8e9a5c3d19 | ['Guerric De Ternay'] | 2017-08-19 08:02:43.406000+00:00 | ['Venture Capital', 'Marketing Means Business'] |
No stacks in Indian investments are hurting Muslims! | Assalamualaikum,
Sorry, Indian Muslims hold no stack in major corporations!
With ansaar.in we wanted to encourage more Indian Muslims to start investing in stock markets instead of them keeping their money in savings bank accounts or fixed bank deposits.
With the release of ansaar.in we are observing a rise in the curiosity of Indian Muslims in equity investment activities.
We wanted to thank all of them for becoming curious. We wish them to make profits in equity investments and be wary of risks too!
More Muslim investment in Indian businesses means more voice in corporate decision making.
Corporate decisions impact political & social aspects too!
For example, major Indian media houses openly insult Muslim sentiments on live television.
These hateful media houses are fueled by the money of Major corporates.
With Muslims becoming owners of equity share in these corporates — they will have the capacity to question these corporates!
With the current situation where Muslims have almost no ownership of stocks in these corporates — the Muslim concerns are not important for them and are easy to ignore. | https://medium.com/ansaar-in/no-stacks-in-indian-investments-are-hurting-muslims-40278ef544ad | ['Ansaar.In Staff'] | 2020-06-19 16:18:58.235000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Investing', 'India', 'Media', 'Muslim'] |
Cyre the son of Heavens. | Cyre the son of Heavens.
We were just two days to my twenty-first birthday, i was about getting my fourth joint when he came into my room and started with his habitual sermon…i was still stucked in Limbo(that’s my how i refer to my mind) so I didn’t grab they first wave of words he uttered to me, i think he really got my attention when he said he was worried about how much I smoked now and his fears about me when I get into streets and fully become a member of the CLAN.
An underground criminal organization which had made it’s fortune from the sales of military gear and money laundering, for the broken mind that i was who was eager for revenge, the Clan seemed the perfect Alli to lift me at the heights of my ambition. | https://medium.com/@ikejesse128/cyre-the-son-of-heavens-7b55b2a2a719 | ['Fils Des Cieux'] | 2020-12-12 13:59:02.299000+00:00 | ['Nigerian Writing', 'Fiction', 'Crime', 'Art', 'Novel'] |
Bernie Sanders: Strength in Diversity | Photo Credit: The Denver Post
Coming off the enthusiasm and disappointment from the 2016 presidential election, I feel compelled and energized to do my part, however small, to advocate for the political leader I’m most aligned with and inspired by.
More than two weeks ago, I created this campaign ad addressing the ‘Bernie Bro’ narrative. The narrative — or myth, if you will — which has been disproven time and again, states his supporters are predominately white males. The recent presidential endorsements from progressive powerhouses Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) help to demonstrate this is far from the truth. In addition, I personally know more female Bernie supporters than male supporters.
Bernie’s ability to connect with people from all walks of life and attract a diverse following without pandering is the cornerstone of what makes him who he is. His unwavering 50-year history calling out America’s injustices speaks for itself. He has been advocating for gay rights since 1972, universal healthcare since 1987, and made it his life’s mission tackling income inequality and the astronomical greed in corporate America, where the top one-tenth of one percent owns as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Since 1982, the three richest U.S families — Waltons, Mars candy family, and the Koch family— all saw their wealth increase by 6,000%, “meanwhile, the median household wealth went down 3 percent over the same period.” During this same time, “between 1983 and 2013, the wealth of the median black household declined 75 percent (from $6,800 to $1,700), and the median Latino household declined 50 percent (from $4,000 to $2,000)”, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.
This is a moral outrage. As Nina Turner, co-chair of the Bernie 2020 campaign states in the ad, “He stands up and uses the people’s power to speak out against injustice.”
There’s a good reason why Bernie Sanders has been voted over and over the best, most popular, and most trustworthy member of the US Senate. Quite simply, he cares. Bernie is, and always has been, a true champion of the people. As Bernie will say, “It’s not about me, it’s about us.” | https://medium.com/@h8c-productions/bernie-sanders-strength-in-diversity-d6a776e98434 | ['Justin Christopher Ayd'] | 2019-10-17 16:30:44.294000+00:00 | ['Bernie2020', 'Diversity', 'Our Revolution', 'Bernie Sanders', 'Nina Turner'] |
K-Means and Image Processing | Suppose we take a photo of our notes on a white paper. Due to the lighting conditions, the white paper may appear grey in the image. Our objective is to remove the background color (which is grey in our case).
It turns out that we can simply apply the K-means algorithms to the image directly. Most of the pixels in the image are close to the white color and our writings only occupy a small fraction of the image. Therefore, we have two different types of pixels in the image and we only need a classification algorithm to add labels to the pixels. If a pixel belongs to “paper”, then we will set the pixel to white.
Implementation
The source code can be found here: http://compassinbabel.org/post/1c8e81b9-5e56-4c5c-9064-e2e9cd249b9e
Output | https://medium.com/@ryansblog2718281/k-means-and-image-processing-983813c27c3a | [] | 2020-11-27 01:00:19.004000+00:00 | ['Image Processing', 'Machine Learning'] |
The Time and Need for Empowerment is Here | The time and need for empowerment is here. We need to be reinventing ourselves and learn to be the leaders needed in our new way of being, our “new normal”.
This article I read recently by the Dalai Lama reminded me that we need some structure for ourselves around how to be leaders in today’s world. At the end of the day this comes down to mindset, purpose, compassion, and confidence to take inspired action. We can apply this to our business and organizations.
Here are the pillars to live by in order to be empowered leaders of others, or of your own life:
1. It’s a non-negotiable now. BE YOU, lead by example and model that to others.
2. Learn alongside your team, be compassionate to others’ growth and journey.
3. Embrace and live your passion, know how you want to contribute to the world.
4. Be honest and vulnerable, share your pain, shame, and growth.
5. Be a solution seeker, versus being a victim to uncertainty and fear.
I strive to live by these pillars every day. Be that model we need in this world.
Let’s Partner | https://medium.com/@rachelsalzberg/the-time-and-need-for-empowerment-is-here-915f329ceb9c | ['Rachel Salzberg'] | 2020-12-07 15:16:12.294000+00:00 | ['Empowerment', 'Motivation', 'Self Growth', 'Leadership', 'Inspiration'] |
The Extent to Which the Needs of Young People are Being Met in the Youth Justice System of England and Wales | The extent to which the needs of young people are being met in the youth justice system of England and Wales is a widely discussed and volatile subject. Meeting the needs of young people depends entirely on the approach the youth justice system takes. Historically the English system (which still has jurisdiction over Wales) has been a complex blend of justice with, at times, huge shifts in the balance between them. The justice approach has always depended heavily on the present government, public opinion and the type of offence. We are reminded by Martin Stephenson that welfare follows the concept that a child should be treated differently to an adult with an emphasis upon the needs of the meeting. However, media, public outcry and government vying for votes and support help a justice approach stay strong.
Within England and Wales, perceived protection of the public outweighs the needs of the child.
The relatively recent age of risk assessment has had many effects on young people especially on young offenders such as the number of interventions and how interventions are conducted. These have not always been beneficial for young offenders as they have regularly dehumanised young offenders into nothing more than ‘risks’ on a document.
It is not only risk factors; the media and public outcry have a huge influence on the interventions of youth offenders. Unlike Scandinavian countries, young offenders in the UK are mostly viewed in a negative light with words like ‘Chavs’, ‘Delinquents’ and ‘Neds’ regularly thrown about. It can safely be said that the public support for young offenders’ needs is not as high as required. Following ‘riots’ in certain estates in the UK in 1991 and 2011 these young individuals who were in the past regarded as needing protection from crime, were suddenly considered its worst perpetrators. This is a prime example of social division and the problem with social division is that it is a circular issue. Social divisions cause inequalities of material and cultural resource, which in turn cause social divisions. This helps to explain the reoffending rates in England and Wales remain high compared to other European nations. As well as the fact that approximately 4–5% of the youth population is responsible for over half of all youth crime. This shows that a lot of young offenders’ needs are not being met as they are resorting back to crime. This is also heavily supported by the fact that according to the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee from 2000 until 2015 the rate of re-offending for those released from custody remained fairly similar, around 33 to 36 per cent. The fact that reoffending rates did and have not improved is an indication that the youth justice system is still not working for a large populous of youth offenders.
Re-offending rates are not to be taken as face values either as according to the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee a re-offence is defined as “any offence committed in a one year follow-up period that leads to a court conviction, caution, reprimand or warning in the one-year follow-up”.
This means that if a young person is convicted of a crime two or three years after the first offence it is not documented as a re-offence hence the rate of reoffending is most likely higher. Interestingly enough during the same period, re-offending rates for offenders on “community penalty” or “other” sentences were between 56.7 per cent and 59.2 per cent, higher than the re-offending rate of those released from custody. Which can lead to the assumption that custodial sentences seem to have a better provision of services for young people’s needs. This was supported by findings in the youth justice board report ‘Mental Health Needs and Effectiveness of Provision for Young Offenders in Custody and the Community’. Where they stated:
“The importance of re-engaging young people in education was a recurring theme, with many viewing custody as an opportunity to achieve this”
It is well known that a lot of young offenders are vulnerable young people from underprivileged and uncertain backgrounds. A lot of these young people have problems dealing with such uncertainty and as such resort to criminal cultures and actions. Today’s young people live in an unsettled social and economic environment, where things like lifelong careers and traditional family structures are becoming unusual, it is now extremely important to be able to cope with uncertainty. Young offenders generally have particularly challenging upbringings which lead them into uncertain times and unpredictable reactions.
Photo by Pavel Anoshin on Unsplash
Childhood and adolescence have become significantly more challenging. young people in England and Wales are more likely to engage in risky behaviours that lead to situations like early pregnancy, drug and alcohol misuse, educational failure, and incarceration. Many of these issues are associated with youth crime, drug abuse has been particularly attributed to offending behaviour. It has become quite clear that criminal behaviour will be most likely to occur as a result of young people attempting to fund an addiction. Other factors that present a risk of offending are hyperactivity such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Val Harpin and Susan Young cited that “research suggests that ADHD youths are vulnerable to committing crimes and that there is a disproportionately high proportion of individuals with ADHD involved with the criminal justice system”. However, some believe that ADHD may be being used as a reason for youth crime all too quickly without including other factors. Others disorders similar to ADHD are also attributed to youth offending as numerous studies show links between high impulsiveness and criminal behaviour.
It is clear that the needs of young people in the youth justice system are great and requires specific interventions, however, What also seems to be clear is that there systemic issues in providing timely as well appropriate services for these young people exist. Numerous people suggest that a large number of vulnerable young people become trapped in a “revolving door”, with many young people being put in a position in danger from themselves or others. The worry is that a lot of young people’s needs are overlooked purposely due to lack of resources and understanding. It is a very unfortunate truth that many young people with learning or mental difficulties are commonly seen as “too difficult” to help. The issue is not only highlighted by a handful of reporters and professionals but also in the already mentioned report, Mental Health Needs and Effectiveness of Provision for Young Offenders in Custody and the Community. The report states that “young people at the boundary between the Criminal Justice System and mental health services are a particularly vulnerable group that face not only the risk of social exclusion but also stigmatisation”. As such this suggests that the needs of young people in the youth justice system are continually overlooked with resources and funding diverted to other areas of the service. In general for the entirety of its existence, research in the youth justice board has concentrated on the cost of dealing with and processing crime carried out by youths, rather than the cost of support, care and education for the youth themselves.
The report highlighted several ways to improve the service, looking at both the then weaknesses as well as the strengths. However, more than a decade on years many issues have not improved, and some got worse. In 2013 it was noted that there had been a 21% increase in self-harming and ‘incidents of physical restraint had risen by 17% each year. This raises numerous questions about why and how this happened, what was going wrong within the system for this to continue and has it improved by 2020? Unfortunately, the answer to the last question is no.
John Carvel once noted that analysis of the case notes of a cross-section of young people in custody found a third were sentenced without medical information being supplied to the court. So seemingly judgements were being made without a clear picture of the young person’s situation. It has also brought to attention by numerous people there is either a greater understanding of certain needs of young people or the system was just more willing to address them. As an inspectorate report once noted that appropriate healthcare was provided to 36% of young people on community orders with physical health needs, 37% of those with emotional and mental health needs and 58% of substance abusers. This shows that the interventions in place for helping substance abusers are far better than those for physical and mental health. Another worry is of course that substance abusers can of course also have physical and mental health problems and therefore only one need is being addressed.
Another worrying item for concern is how well the police are affiliated with youth issues such as mental health problems. Being the first line of action in most cases of youth offending one would hope they have the appropriate ability to work with such issues. Unlike previous incidents where an autistic girl spent ten hours in a cell because police wrongly thought she was drunk or other cases where 17-year-olds who, despite mental health or developmental problems, were denied access to an appropriate adult.
One common theme within the youth justice system is healthcare provision and whether this is addressed through a welfare approach or a justice approach. Back in 2011, writing for the Guardian, Carlene Firmin argued that the youth justice system could further meet the health needs of young people by adopting a more health centred approach.
Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash
In one terrible incident she recalled:
“I once met a girl, aged 14, who had already had an abortion, numerous sexually transmitted infections and was experiencing trauma, all as a result of sexual violence and exploitation. She was in custody for breaching the conditions of a community sentence she had received as a result of attacking a professional who had been working with her. Her vulnerability was stark, and anyone who met her would know that only health professionals and the health system could begin to redress that.” — Carlene Firmin
Since 2006 youth offending institutions (YOIs) have had their health services commissioned by the NHS and in secure children’s homes since 2011. Discipline staff within YOIs have continuously had numerous concerned about identifying mental health problems. They express that they are unsure about whether there are any appropriate services available and their accessibility if so. This may have some explanation to why tensions have existed in YOIs between those who work in the discipline section and those who work in therapy as a lack of understanding may lead to low working cohesion. Such tensions can be detrimental to supporting and addressing the needs of the young people within the youth justice system.
As negative as some of the reports are about addressing the needs of young people within the youth justice system it would have to be remembered that there are also positives. This is a system for two countries within the United Kingdom, a democracy with good human rights and somewhat of a welfare state in play. One positive that is helping address young people’s needs within the system is multi-agency work and strategic planning by Youth Offending Teams (YOTs). YOTs are set up in such a manner that they do have a sense of care for the young people’s needs and want to establish good working inter-agency relationships. This shows that the youth justice system has attempted to cater to young offenders needs with some success.
However, as positive as the want for multi-agency work is, it is taking a while to establish and have had many problems achieving effective communication. There are still major barriers to achieving this related to a lack of understanding about roles and responsibilities. There have also been tensions regarding different statutory requirements and interfaces based solely on written communication.
In 2014 the then justice secretary Chris Grayling planned to build the first “secure college” for young criminals in England and Wales, however, he failed to get approval. When his conservative party became a majority in 2015 an attempt to make twelve billion pounds worth of cuts was made and almost everything was then overshadowed by the mess that is and was Brexit. The party has continually expressed more of an ethos of punishment rather than welfare. So far, the youth justice system has not improved, and its future is relatively uncertain. However, it seems unlikely that meeting the needs of the young people in it will improve on its current level.
In conclusion, young people in the youth justice system have specific needs based on many factors such as race, religion, education, family, economic background, and substance abuse, physical and mental health. It seems quite sure that the extent that these needs are met is not great. Consider the murder Zahid Mubarek in Feltham Young Offenders followed by the rising self-harm rates and the unchanged re-offending rates for over a decade. More of a welfare approach is required to tackle these issues and needs otherwise the circle of social division and inequality will continue. However, before this approach can be implemented it will need public support if the UK can move away from degrading youth offenders as ‘Chavs’, ‘Scroungers’ and ‘Scum’ maybe it can move forward to a more beneficial (for all) system. As Kurt Kylloinen once said about Finland; “We do not think the proper way to take care of a child is by punishing the child”
Mark Easton, writing for the BBC once told us:
“Over 60% of children locked up by the state in the UK are known to have mental health problems. In Finland, such youngsters are more likely to be patients in well-funded psychiatric units” — Mark Easton
In Finland, you will not see the culprits described as “thugs” or “yobs”. At the end of the day the youth justice system is funded by the public and therefore to meet the needs of the young people in it, it must have support from the public to meet those needs. To change the system in England and Wales, the public attitude must first change. Such an attitude required is summed up by a conversation a BBC reporter once had with a local Finnish school psychologist:
“When I explained that in England and Wales children as young as 10 are dealt with under the penal code — and in Scotland as young as eight — the reform school’s psychologist Merja Ikalainen looked aghast”
Merja: I do not have words for that. It sounds so horrible.
Reporter: You think it is immoral?
Merja: It is.
Reporter: Why? If a young person knowingly commits a crime?
Merja: That’s not a young person. That is a child. They need care.
Reporter: But shouldn’t a child have to suffer the consequences of their actions?
Merja: Suffer! You use words that sound really horrible. A child should not be suffering. The word suffer sounds really sad.’
However, looking at the current head of the UK, the situations at hand within the country, we are more likely to get a yacht for the Queen than reform for those young people we continue to let down. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-extent-to-which-the-needs-of-young-people-are-being-met-in-the-youth-justice-system-of-england-3018e4511ab9 | ['Daniel John Carter'] | 2020-12-18 19:15:09.742000+00:00 | ['Criminal Justice Reform', 'Youth Justice', 'Youth', 'Justice System', 'Crime'] |
Getting started with Robot Framework + Selenium for automation testing (5) — Data driven testing with self defined library | As you may be aware of, it’s always a good idea to separate actual test data and test steps from test script to achieve data driven testing, therefore we can keep “robot framework” in a data file and load it during execution. There are several types of file we may take into account: “.csv”, “.xls”, “.xlsx”, “.properties” and etc. For instance, test data “robot framework” can be written into a .csv file like this:
We can create “TestData.csv” with the above setup in our project directory:
What we are going to do now is to use file reading functionality to load the test data. However, file reading functionality is not included in either built-in library or selenium library, which means we have to write it. Python allows us to create self defined libraries to cater for our needs, and these libraries can also be imported into Robot Framework. Let’s do so! First, create a python file called “DataDriven.py” under the “path_to_python/Lib”, and write the following code: | https://medium.com/@inventive-peng-zhang/robot-framework-selenium-for-automation-testing-4-data-driven-testing-with-self-defined-cba305d20f88 | ['Peng Zhang'] | 2021-01-01 05:19:58.956000+00:00 | ['Robot Framework', 'Software Testing', 'Automation Testing Tool', 'Test Automation Framework', 'Test Automation'] |
Whats your melody COVID-19’ers | Whats your melody COVID-19’ers
Yes its about that time – around 30 days into lockdown and we are now settling into a NEW ‘transient’ normal.
Parents are finding their feet as home workers, homeworkers are finding their normalcy now they have been joined by the rest of the world and the voices of the shy are begin to be heard, because they now know how to turn their mic on (and off). Those still working in offices are getting used to the new manner of operating and the contrast they may be seeing (from busy to quiet or the reverse).
In this musing I’m sharing some thoughts on the melodies that we may be witnessing with in ourselves, our workers and our managers. And contemplate the fact that the people are starting to talk.
“Businesses might not be buying yet but they can hear you though the noise….”
The melodies we are seeing
I think there’s probably around 6 melodies that we are seeing, this is obviously in my humble opinion (therefore trust what you will). Your best sense/evidence check is to reflect on your own working melody (and those of your team or peers) and see if they match one of the below (or a mix of them)…
Pattern – repeated design fixed. People are finding patterns in their day, how best to use their morning and afternoon and evening based on their work and their environment (and those within in it). This approach often has a fixed order and timeframe.
Routine – repeated design flexible. This is much like patterns above however the key difference being the start and endpoint are changeable. People taking this approach may be finding value in the known regarding the manner in which they work but are not shackled to a time frame.
Process – one direction of flow. People in this train of work feel comforted by doing A, then B, then C and so on in order. There is a process to doing what they do and messing with this could rock their productivity. It may well be that these people are suffering the most during this new working situation as other peoples melodies don’t match theirs.
Rhythm – follow the energy of the day. If you can find this and listen to your energy and the energy of the day you may well be in the healthiest place both mentally and physically. Making time for the things you need to do when you need to do them. However you may need to accept that some days you will get less done, however on others you will nail it!
Structure – known start and end. Perhaps this is those driven by an external force. Their business or their employers require them to work to a certain timeframe. That timeframe may be fixed in real terms or perhaps it just hasn’t been thought of to move it. The challenge here is if others in the home have a similar work pattern it means its hard to tag team the other task that need to be done (e.g. parenting, shopping etc).
Pace – speed of activity. These people see a desire just to get things done, get it out of the way and then move onto ‘everything else’ (parenting, teaching a child, looking after others, chores etc). However if more work comes in and it can’t be done in the timeframe they have set themselves – watch out for the ‘straw’ that may break their back (metaphorically speaking).
Personally, I have worked through a few of these… first it was all about ‘Pace’ and trying to fit it all in (father, parent educator, business owner, friend, brother, son etc). It took a week or so to realise that this was not doable, so we then went for the pattern approach.
That frankly was boring, so we now we have moved into a balance between ‘routine’ and ‘rhythm’. We have routine in a sense of the order we get things done, however both our start and end point for a day are changeable as it the ‘rhythm’ of our day. My advice, do what works for you but please…
“Don’t drag the old world into the now, it won’t serve you”
Note: if you haven’t found your melody yet, stop fighting the system, let it come…build it with your world in mind where possible. Not just with your work in mind….
What does this means for money making…
Yes I believe good two way converstions are beginning, people are beginning to talk (in a deeper manner than the fighter fighting panic we may have seen recently). Clients have survived the barrage of offers of help and are getting to the point where they can hear you within the noise of ‘Free X’ and ‘Online Y’.
They may not be ready to buy, but they are now settling into their own melody. This is one less stress in their day as they have an idea of what it may look like. With that decided ‘they can lift their heads from the desk and look up’.
By my crude math (to see these check out the previous blog – Don’t use your A game just yet) – in the UK we are entering the Neutral Zone of Bridges Transition Model – check out the image below with my estimated date line added.
Yes we still have confusion (people caught between old and new worlds), disorientation (those not sure where stuff is), frustration (a slowed working pace) and maybe even apathy (focus on process over purpose), BUT many have found their personal melody, one that seems to be working more often than not.
Source: Daniel Lock Consulting (based on Bridges Transition Model 1991 )
Its time now to listen intently to the stories being told through your social media channels and any online business gatherings (get involved and listen). I say still avoid the sell or offering to much help (even if you know you can really improve things). If you jump in too soon you gold will be missed as the noise is still to die out.
Listen to the tone of voice, ask the questions which will help you figure out where clients (potential and existing) are on the curve above and particularly what sort of melody they and their workforce have chosen or been forced into. Follow their lead, let their voice fill the spaces that have recently been populated by a myriad of ‘SOLUTIONS’ that promise fill the void of what was before…Its time to listen out for the phrase…
“I can hear you now”
And when that arrives you can recognise a subtle invite for help, their productivity is rising and their safety within this uncertain time is being replenished. At this point you can begin to consider ‘the deal’….
In closing
Look inward, listening to your own melody. When you truly have this nailed its a sign other may be there to (just behind or in front you). Use your own measure for readiness as a barometer for engaging with clients.
Question: Are you ready to buy something you don’t really know if you need becuse you are still working out where is the best place to put your home-working desk or what actually are the best times to get work done based on children needs or dog walking or caring or cooking or everything else. When you can say you have this nailed then so may your clients.
Kurt Ewald Lindley – starting to see the needle of opportunity in the haystack of information
P.S. why did you panic buy…. Photo’s taken 22 April Tesco Doncaster! | https://medium.com/@CoachDeveloper/whats-your-melody-covid-19ers-c98473c3a6e2 | ['Kurt Ewald Lindley'] | 2020-04-23 09:29:00.797000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Future', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Leadership', 'Learning And Development'] |
R.I.P. Haruwn Wesley: Pacifica mourns the sudden loss of Shampa’s Pies owner | Haruwn Wesley, the owner of Shampa’s Pies in Pacifica, died on Dec. 20 following a surfing accident at Fort Point in San Francisco.
Wesley was known as an expert pie baker and generous spirit who often rescued people caught in riptides in the ocean and gave pies for free to people who couldn’t afford to pay for them. He once saved a man whose life vest malfunctioned after the sailboat he was in capsized under the Golden Gate Bridge, for which Wesley received a Congressional Honor from the U.S. House of Representatives and was recognized by the American Red Cross, according to a GoFundMe page established in support of his family. He was an avid surfer who also played upright bass and practiced tai chi, including with the Chinese National Team in Beijing.
Haruwn Wesley and his pies were a popular presence at local farmers markets. (Image via Shampa’s Pies Facbook page)
Wesley’s sweet potato, lemon chess, pecan, chocolate cream and other pies drew a following, both at the Pacifica shop and his stands at local farmers markets. Wesley named the bakery after his mother-in-law, who had encouraged him to open a food business.
“He adjusted his recipes — or ‘mix’ — as he called it depending on the humidity, the salt in the air, the sun or clouds, in addition to the unique aspects of each batch of organic fruit since he felt all of those were essential ingredients,” the GoFundMe page reads. “When a senior citizen or child would ask about the pie and not have the money to buy one, he would say, ‘This one is for you — I can’t sell it, please take it.’”
Pecan, chocolate cream and lemon chess pies from Shampa’s Pies. (Photo by Elena Kadvany)
A GoFundMe campaign was launched in the wake of Wesley’s passing to help his family pay for medical and mortuary expenses, ongoing bills from the bakery and his children’s education, which has been paid for with income from the bakery.
“He loved people deeply and soulfully,” Wesley’s wife wrote on the GoFundMe page. “He never looked back, only forward. He was humble and generous with his time, his spirit, and literally, the shirt off his back.”
Comments on the GoFundMe page and Shampa’s Pies Facebook consistently describe Wesley as an infectiously kind soul and cherished member of many communities, from Pacifica to local surf breaks. | https://thesixfifty.com/r-i-p-haruwn-wesley-pacifica-mourns-the-sudden-loss-of-shampas-pies-owner-cf1717ea306f | ['Elena Kadvany'] | 2020-12-22 19:26:53.195000+00:00 | ['Baking', 'Silicon Valley', 'San Francisco', 'Bay Area', 'California'] |
Why Coding is More Fun than Engineering | Because coding is play and engineering is work.
What’s less obvious is that play gets more work done than work. Free from obligation, you can explore more options, discover new possibilities, and stay in flow for longer.
Let me show you.
Here’s a typical week of engineering according to my time tracker. I try to click the button every time I context switch for more than 5 minutes. Call it research into office culture, if you will.
This data is by no means perfect. Context switches happen within categories; I forget to click the button; and I’ve given up capturing the small distractions that happen.
I also spend too much time in faux meetings on Slack. Those don’t show up here.
But you can see a trend: most work happens in half-hour and aaaalmost-an-hour intervals. Then something comes up, and I have to switch. QA bugging out, absolutely horribly urgent code reviews that must happen right this instance, a deployment here and there, or a short meeting or two.
If I’m very lucky, I get to work on something for almost 2 hours. Sometimes, if the stars align just so, almost 3. That happened three times this week. Three times all week that I focused for more than an hour. 🙄 | https://medium.com/swizec-a-geek-with-a-hat/why-coding-is-more-fun-than-engineering-9605d6c906f0 | ['Swizec Teller'] | 2016-10-19 21:50:22.264000+00:00 | ['Software Engineering', 'Work Life Balance', 'Coding', 'Software Development', 'Front End Development'] |
Love and Weddings in Times of COVID — Act II, The Preparation | In the previous article, I discussed my son’s wedding postponement from June to December 2020. Now that we got a date settled here’s where the long and difficult journey begins.
As the date approached, the COVID cases increased and then surged again. A feeling of despair crept in. We honestly did not know what to do!
To postpone again would mean the couple would have to wait two years before they could actually have this wedding at this precise location. The hotel they chose is going to undergo an extensive remodel and would not be available until 2022.
After several months of back and forth, should we or shouldn’t we attend, we decided to support my son’s choice — to have the wedding in December this year!
So, yeah, they are going ahead with it!
We are going to Mexico during the worst phase ever of the COVID virus.
I know what you are thinking! Yes, I have been shamed, called a COVIDiot, and then some. But… I made the decision to attend.
What came next was an incredible act of coordination to keep everyone safe.
Needless to mention the back and forth was taking a huge toll on everyone. There were family members that wanted to be there but were not comfortable. There were die-hards like us willing to go no matter what obstacles we faced. Differences pulled some of us apart and others grew closer.
Here’s what we had to do for our travel safety.
· A recommended isolation for a week before departure. · Every guest was strongly advised to take a COVID test before they traveled to Mexico. They all complied. We took ours 2–3 days before to make sure we got the results before getting on the plane. · Next was finding flights that fly non-stop and that followed the CDC’s guidance. We flew Delta and we felt very safe. · We had to fill out a Traveler Health Form for Los Angeles 24 hours before leaving the country. (You can get this from in your state) They send you a QR code that you present in immigration · We donned N95 masks and face shields and armed ourselves with sanitizers with Clorox and alcohol to wipe down the plane seats, bathroom seats, sinks, and toilet seats. · Lastly, we sat in a less crowded area in the airport — upstairs in a lounge.
Just to be clear. I felt safe traveling, we took the necessary precautions. But I DO recommend following CDC and government policies. I strongly recommend staying at home. If everyone starts to travel, then I believe that the cases will get worse.
Away we went joined by our prayers and hopes. Stay tuned for our hotel stay and wedding festivities! | https://medium.com/@janettespeyer/love-and-weddings-in-the-time-of-covid-act-ii-the-preparation-f954ae307087 | ['Janette Speyer'] | 2020-12-24 23:07:48.266000+00:00 | ['Travel Tips', 'Covid Testing', 'Covidtravel', 'Destination Wedding', 'Covid 19 Crisis'] |
Starting and Sustaining a Successful Design Business | Designers coming right out of college tend to want to start a firm right away, but before you can put yourself forward as an expert, you need to figure out the profession which you’re going to tell clients that you’re an expert in. I know, I’ve been there, and I’m here to help you get there too.
Attracting clients
The most important part to forging a successful design practice is to start to get clients. You can always build a body of work, but how do you build relationships with companies that are going to come to you for your expertise? Sometimes you are fortunate to get referrals for your work, but luck isn’t a long-term strategy. In the early days of my company, we weren’t forced to develop a new business system because the phone kept ringing.
But when the phone doesn’t ring, how do you go out and hunt? The metaphor I always used was, if you’re cave dweller and the game keeps wandering into camp, you just club it over the head and say, “Oh great, we always have food to eat.” Now what does it look like for you to pick up the spear and go out and hunt or gather food if you need to develop both muscles?
Strong new business skills give you more control over the type of design practice you want to be. Otherwise the clients that are being referred to you end up determining your fate. I wish I had a clearer sense of understanding of that when I started.
Specialize and make yourself indispensable
In my experience, the strongest means of attracting clients was to develop an expertise in a particular area and market yourself as a specialist — this is something a lot of designers and agencies are reluctant to do. They get concerned about the limits of only working in one area and repelling prospective clients in the areas outside of their focus. I found that the benefits far outweighed those concerns. I see generalists losing out to specialists constantly. You can grow and carve out a niche in multiple categories, but I find a generalist agency with a really strong body of work will always lose out to a specialized agency. It poses less risk to a client, who is going to find proven results more persuasive than a great portfolio.
For example, if you’ve done some work in the green energy sector, it might be a way for you to start steering your body of work that way. Do some blogging on what it’s like to build brands for green companies and share your knowledge. If that becomes part of how you’re presenting your design business, it’s going to be a lot more intriguing to potential clients.
Also pay special attention to search engine optimization and ensuring people can discover your business, where to find you, and what business value you’re offering. The role of writing is more important than ever because when companies are making buying decisions, or doing research, they’re going to spend time learning about you online. If all they have is just a collection of images, they’re not learning much around how you think, how you solve problems, and what type of expertise you’re bringing to the table.
Specialization is critical these days in design, also because there are so many templates and precast designs that non-designers can just grab and use. Soon people will just be able to download a template for a brochure and paste their copy into it. And so our role as brand architects and sometimes business strategists is more prominent than ever.
Immerse yourself in the client’s business and their audience
Understanding your clients, their audience, and how to best express it in a way that’s custom-tailored to their organization is also critical because that’s not something that can be done through templates. It’s the path to having more of a quality life as a designer.
Having a deeper understanding of your client’s business and their customers will provide…
A stronger base of trust with your client;
More value in the work you’re doing for them (business value for the client means more value in the service you’re providing, which leads to your ability to bill more);
Potentially the ability to be more creative and experimental with your work
Go into a deep discovery and learn about your client’s business and the industry they’re in, as it will provide you with the information and tools you need to create a product that goes above and beyond your client’s expectations. As much as you can, you also need to become an ambassador for the customers they’re trying to reach and understand the problems they’re trying to solve. If you do that, you’re in a better place to advise the client on what they need. They might come to you for a brochure, but it could be an opportunity to sell a larger or different type of project, since you will have an understanding of their business and corresponding design needs in a way that makes you invaluable.
Prioritizing that level of deep understanding goes a long way toward building a deeper trust with the client. It allows you to be able to take greater risks and do more interesting work, because they have confidence that you understand their space and their audience. It connects with clients and motivates them.
If you lean too hard on aesthetics, and that’s all you’re offering as a service, you’re quite replaceable. It’s your job to make sure you’re indispensable and that you create something that is compelling, unforgettable, and going to be seen as an investment by the client, not a cost. Whether a client comes to you for an identify, a website or a store campaign, they need to be able to see tangible results for their bottom line. It’ll make them come back, bring you more work, and refer your company to others. Frankly, the type of fees you’ll be able to charge will be enhanced as you’re delivering demonstrated business value and not just beautiful artifacts.
My agency, for example, created affinity by having a deep understanding of the B2B enterprise technology sector. Many other agencies would have needed to spend months (if not years) getting up to speed on the technology and customer buying habits. Companies don’t have that time. If you’re a design firm that specializes in beer packaging (and you’re really good at it), the mastery that you bring to the table for your client creates a big advantage.
Develop a value-based pricing strategy
At the beginning of any working relationship, you need to have a strong contract in place, so there’s a clear understanding of what you’re expecting from the client and what they’re expecting from you. It should include your fees, payment terms, the terms of ending the relationship and an explanation of how to measure its overall success. People often skip past it but it sets the ground rules before you jump in and do the fun part.
It’s important that you base your fees on the genuine business value that you’re providing. If you create an identity, it’s more than just coming up with a logo; you might create a countless number of assets, sit down and have meetings with the client’s customers, direct photo shoots, and create a whole new experience for customers to connect, all in the name of a stronger brand identity. Move away from billing hourly for design projects and only use that model for retaining clients who just want to buy a block of time. For those projects, you can determine the going rate by referring to the The Graphic Artists Guild’s handbook on pricing and ethical guidelines.
Learn how to budget
Pay yourself — or your business — first, save and put away money for tax. Build up reserves, so that you’ve got a good foundation and are in control. That way you aren’t being forced to take on projects you don’t want, whether that’s work you might not find exciting or agree with morally, just to keep the lights on. It gives you more flexibility to pursue the types of relationships and work that you really want to be doing.
If you run a small design agency and start working with a big company, their payment terms might not be in alignment with the way you’ve been accustomed to. To bridge that relationship, make sure you have a good finance team — good accountants and a good financial advisor. It may sound daunting, but this will pay for itself over time. Financial planning (for example cash flow, tax, payroll) is as relevant for a one-person business as for one with lots of employees. And as soon as you get on the radar of a big entity, the decimal points may move a lot. It’s completely different from the budgeting and planning you’re used to, and you’ve got to be ready for that moment if that’s the type of business you want.
My agency started in an extra bedroom and over 15 years grew to 50. There were different chapters of reinvention. It was almost like six different companies, and I had to relearn my skills over and over again. Being an individual freelancer is very different from being responsible for a payroll of 50. At each stage make sure you’re armed with great counsel and advice. Business administration isn’t a mystery but it’s not talked about enough in design circles.
The more you get business literate, the more it’ll help you become a better designer. If the operations of your business are in good shape, your team will be healthy, and you’ll be mentally healthy and able to concentrate on what you love.
Enjoy yourself!
At the end of the day, it’s important to prioritize joy. The best kind of work is happening when you’re enjoying it. To that end, ensure you’ve got the fundamentals of running the business right, but also surround yourself with people that you respect and enjoy working with. Develop a trusting relationship with your team and your clients. And if you work with friends, which can be fun, be cautious that you always maintain a clear business relationship. If you keep good boundaries, both your friendship and business relationship can thrive. All those things are part of the alchemy of really strong creative work, which ultimately is what we all want. | https://medium.com/thinking-design/starting-and-sustaining-a-successful-design-business-fa5dbede901d | ['Gus Granger'] | 2020-01-19 17:14:22.195000+00:00 | ['Creative Career', 'Entrepreneur', 'Tech', 'Business', 'Design'] |
How the Blockchain Can Solve Amazon’s 400 Million Dollar Problem | Counterfeits in the Online Marketplace
Photo by Wei Pan on Unsplash
Counterfeiting, defined as [making an] imitation of something else with [the] intent to deceive, has become prevalent in today’s online marketplace. This is because there are so many fake products added every minute that large e-commerce retailers, such as Amazon, are unable to keep up and verify their authenticity.
From 2018 to 2019, there has been a 40% increase in counterfeits online.
For small companies, this is a large problem. When S’well, one of the most recognized brands in the world for their reusable water bottles, was just a start-up running out of an apartment, they too faced counterfeit issues.
Here is an excerpt from a Medium article written by Stephanie Clifford that discusses how Sarah Kauss, the founder of S’well, found her first copycat:
Kauss and her [partner] were heading to S’well’s factory in China when they stopped for a couple days’ vacation in Hong Kong. Kauss saw there was a trade show and insisted on stopping by. When she arrived, it appeared that S’well had a significant presence at the show, with bottles displayed in a case and a ribbon flaunting an award it had apparently won. “A man came over to me and gave me his business card, very properly, and said he was from S’well,” she says. His card had S’well’s logo on it, with the little TM for ”trademark.” The problem: Kauss at that point was running S’well from her apartment. It had no presence in Asia. Nor did it have a sales rep there. And it had no employees besides Kauss. She had barely gotten the company off the ground, and her bottles were being knocked off.
In a globalized marketplace, it proves difficult to enforce intellectual property rights when someone can sell imitations overseas with a low risk of being punished. Kauss’s experience is a clear example of how widespread the knockoff epidemic has become.
Why This Is a Problem for Amazon
Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash
“When a fellow says it ain’t the money but the principle of the thing, it’s the money.” — Artemus Ward
Amazon desperately wants to combat its counterfeiting crisis for one major reason: vendors are leaving them and Amazon is losing money as a result. In the past month, Nike, one of Amazon’s most popular vendors, decided to leave the platform because fake listings were superseding their content on search results.
On e-commerce platforms, SEO is key for vendors who want to grab eyeballs and drive sales. With fake listings on Amazon, the platform breeds a sense of distrust and an aversion to building brand loyalty. In the words of Jeffries analyst Randy Konik, “Amazon is just a traffic aggregator that reduces friction in consumption… it doesn’t build communities.”
On top of all this, Amazon itself has been accused of knocking off popular products. Last year, home and kitchen brand Williams-Sonoma sued Amazon by claiming the tech giant’s private-label furniture division copied one of their chair designs. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-the-blockchain-can-solve-amazons-400-million-dollar-problem-7a266c2c211e | ['Pronoy Chaudhuri'] | 2019-12-06 21:01:03.266000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Business', 'Ecommerce', 'Blockchain', 'Technology'] |
Prayer for a Saintly Sinner | feet stumbled across
tumbled stone
where whispers of
ancient slippers
meet modern feet.
one stocking —
torn,
hands cradle
my hips and
i am rocked
in rhythm
with the cadence
of ghost murmurs
and plaintive
pleas and the
constant click,
of rosary beads.
my open mouth,
bathed in
green,
blue,
red,
sucking in stained
glass hues,
a sinner sanctified
while you enter me
like a prayer. | https://medium.com/bloom-abbey-journal/prayer-for-a-saintly-sinner-e668940bb2af | ['Juliette Van Der Molen'] | 2018-12-31 13:01:00.881000+00:00 | ['Feminism', 'Sex', 'Poetry', 'Erotica', 'Lit'] |
Life in the Lockdown | How are you doing ?
What’s life been like amidst the lockdown ? Varied experiences for people basis their own circumstances have led to a vastly different outcomes. What has each one of us learnt from the predicaments that life has thrown at us ?
The lockdown to some has been of immense learning and self-discovery. There have been bakers, chefs, artists — all of these skillsets having lain dormant throughout for so long finally found an outburst with wonderful results. At the same time life hasn’t been so kind to everybody — jobs and livelihoods lost on the financial front; but more so are the innumerous lives that have been taken from us.
Have you wondered — apart from all of these statistics on deaths and positive cases; what is life like to be someone else ? Have you put yourself into another’s shoes to look at life from their eyes — their hopes and dreams and all of their memories. Life in its transience moves on — people forget; but to the ones that you mean the world to — life stands still. Can we as a species imagine the collective grief that we are going through right now ? We all seem preoccupied in bringing our lives to a semblance of normalcy — that this might often be skipped amidst the priorities that our work might impose on us. But what is more important — what could be more important than knowing our own friends and neighbors.
Do we really know them ? Can we unmask the social façade that our lives are built on ? And truly ask — How are you doing ? Would they answer ? With those questions — I’ll leave you to ponder this coming week. Think over it and truly ponder in moments of solitude — your own well-being; both physical and mental. | https://medium.com/@krusna/life-in-the-lockdown-7be75f71dbbd | ['Navaneethkrishnan Nambiar'] | 2020-12-06 20:14:34.125000+00:00 | ['Questions', 'Social', 'Wellness', 'Life', 'Lockdown'] |
Toyota and Panasonic are all for ‘connected homes’ | Deepening their existing relationship in the electronic vehicle segment, Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp and Panasonic Corp have now announced a joint venture into smart home space.
The duo plans to set up a new company early next year that will focus on technology that could be used to offer personalized services in the home, moving towards the smart home dream. They will be entering a 50–50 partnership in a new firm increasing cooperation at their respective housing operations in Japan.
“We will put our respective strengths together to offer new value in everyday life,” Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga said in a joint statement on Thursday.
The move comes at a time when lower-emissions vehicles and ride-sharing services have opened up the auto industry to new competitors, leaving traditional car makers and their suppliers scrambling to find alternate revenue streams.
Toyota has been developing connected cars that can share information on usage — data that could be leveraged for on-demand ride-sharing, insurance and maintenance.
The automaker has said it will tap into its partner network and its operations which range from building and selling cars, homes and companion robots to expand into new transportation and home energy services.
“If we are able to use this network going forward not only to manufacture and sell vehicles but to also provide new services, our future possibilities will greatly expand,” President Akio Toyota told reporters on Wednesday.
“In addition to cars, I think that having our own housing business and connected business will be a big advantage for us.” | https://medium.com/@uttarajindal.sgi/toyota-and-panasonic-are-all-for-connected-homes-ba1d2743f590 | ['Uttara Jindal'] | 2019-05-09 16:55:49.333000+00:00 | ['Autonomous Cars', 'Smart Homes', 'Toyota', 'Electric Vehicles', 'Panasonic'] |
Defining Custom Help Menu in Lightning Experience | We live in information age where we are bombarded with information. Our curious mind seeks help and we can seek answers by connecting via social media or hundreds of apps. Technology is now an enabler
and does not get into our way. Yet, somehow we sometimes feel lost while using corporate apps. We want answers but we dont know who to ask for help. This results in opening tickets, messages in slack channels, emails o
or phone calls. Tech teams end up answering the same questions fielded by different users and they end up wondering if they can ever get around this problem.
This is probably one of the underrated features of Salesforce but customizing help is a fantastic way to increase user engagement. Users can get to commonly asked questions or in-dept articles by simply clicking
on ? icon. This is also a blessing for tech or support teams as they can focus on key business initiatives while keeping their end users engaged and happy.
I think the use cases for customizing help menu are endless, you must decide which training issues or processes do you want your end users to see. In my Salesforce experience, here are most commonly asked questions:
a.) Open a ticket: Users need an easy way to contact their support teams.
b.) Training on creating reports: Users need access to data and most users dont know how easy it is to create reports/dashboards in Salesforce. If you have training videos, you can link them here. For this article, I will link to trailhead module.
c.) Questions about Insurace or 401K: Although HR makes every effort to be as detailed as possible, most employees have some questions about their policy or their 401K, etc.
d.) Price list: Sales wants easy access to price sheet, product list, etc.
Lets get started:
) Go to Set up and Search “Help Menu”
Note: Next step is not intutive. The first time I set up help assistance, I thought I could turn on the toggle to start the setup. I was frustrated and was about to open a ticket with Salesforce. But, here is how you turn on Sections.
2. Add a section title. In our case, I am adding “Demo Company”
You would think you can now click on the Toggle. Nope! You are probably thinking you can click on “New Resource” but see that option is greyed out.
3.) Hover your mouse in the Label section and click on the pencil.
4.) Do the same for URL and enter a URL.
Per our use case, I added 4 links — for product pricing, trailhead link to creating reports and dashboards, questions about Insurance and 401K as well as Open an IT incident.
Now, I really wanted “Open an IT Incident” to launch a flow such that user is taken directly to “Create” Screen. Since, I was not able to launch a flow, what I did instead was that I navigated to cases, Clicked on New, copied the link from the address bar and pasted in the help assistance. It worked like a charm!
My end result looks like this:
Give it a try and I am eager to see all your use cases.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q. How many sections can I have?
A. Only one section is allowed. You can have upto 15 resources/links within that section. My personal opinion is that 15 links should cover most of your organizations’ frequently asked questions.
Q. I added resources but dont see a new section with resources in the help menu
A. Lets make sure you have saved changes. If you have saved changes, lets make sure that you are testing in an app. Your help menu in set up is going to be different than the one in the app.
Q. Can we have different help menu for each app.
A. Not at the moment. I personally would like to see this as we could have customized help for sales, service, HR, legal, etc. Feel free to vote for this idea: https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=0873A000000U49SQAS
Q. I have added 5 resources but can only see 2.
A. Users can see only 2 resources to begin with. But, you can click on the section to expand and view all resources. | https://medium.com/@nadkarni.sujay/defining-custom-help-menu-in-lightning-experience-642dc801108d | ['Sujay Nadkarni'] | 2020-03-06 19:59:56.997000+00:00 | ['Helping Others', 'Salesforce', 'Lightning'] |
MultiClass Classification Using K-Nearest Neighbours | MultiClass Classification Using K-Nearest Neighbours
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
INTRODUCTION:
Classification is a classic machine learning application. Classification basically categorises your output in two classes i.e. your output can be one of two things. For example, a bank wants to know whether a customer will be able pay his/her monthly investments or not? We can use machine learning algorithms to determine the output of this problem, which will be either Yes or No(Two classes). But what if you want to classify something that has more than 2 categories and isn’t as simple as a yes/no problem?
This is where multi-class classification comes in. MultiClass classification can be defined as the classifying instances into one of three or more classes. In this article we are going to do multi-class classification using K Nearest Neighbours. KNN is a super simple algorithm, which assumes that similar things are in close proximity of each other. So if a datapoint is near to another datapoint, it assumes that they both belong to similar classes. To know more deeply about KNN algorithms, I would suggest you go check out this article:
Now, that we are through all the basics, let’s get to some implementation. We are going to use multiple python libraries like pandas(To read our dataset), Sklearn(To train our dataset and implement our model) and libraries like Seaborn and Matplotlib(To visualise our data). If you don’t already have this libraries install you can install them using pip or Anaconda on your pc/laptop. Or another way that I would personally suggest, use google colab to perform the experiment online with all the libraries pre-installed. The dataset that we are going to be using is called the IRIS flower dataset and it basically has 4 features for it’s 150 data points and is categorised into 3 different species i.e. 50 flowers of each species.The dataset can be downloaded from the following link:
Now as we get started with our code, the first step to do is to import all the libraries in our code.
from sklearn import preprocessing from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split from sklearn.neighbors import KNeighborsClassifier import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import seaborn as sns import pandas as pd
Once you’ve imported the libraries the next step is to read the data.We will use the pandas library for this function. While reading, we will also check if there are any null values as well as the number of different species in the data. (Should be 3 as our dataset has 3 species). We will also assign all the three species categories a particular number, 0,1 and 2.
df = pd.read_csv(‘IRIS.csv’)
df.head()
Image by Author(Top 5 columns of the Original Dataset)
df[‘species’].unique()
Output: array([‘Iris-setosa’, ‘Iris-versicolor’, ‘Iris-virginica’], dtype=object)
df.isnull().values.any()
Output: False
df[‘species’] = df[‘species’].map({‘Iris-setosa’ :0, ‘Iris-versicolor’ :1, ‘Iris-virginica’ :2}).astype(int) #mapping numbers df.head()
Image by Author (New Table with mapped numbers for output)
Once, that we are now done with importing libraries and our CSV file, the next step we do is exploratory data analysis(EDA). EDA is necessary for any problem as it helps us visualise the data and infer some conclusions initially just by looking at the data and not performing any algorithms. We perform correlations between all the features using the library seaborn as well as plot a scatterplot of all the datasets using the same library.
plt.close(); sns.set_style(“whitegrid”); sns.pairplot(df, hue=”species”, height=3); plt.show()
Output:
Image by Author (Correlation between all 4 features)
sns.set_style(“whitegrid”); sns.FacetGrid(df, hue=’species’, size=5) \ .map(plt.scatter, “sepal_length”, “sepal_width”) \ .add_legend(); plt.show()
Output:
Image by Author
Inferences from EDA:
While Setosa can be easily identified, Virnica and Versicolor have some overlap . Length and Width are the most important features to identify various flower types.
After the EDA and before training our model on the dataset, the one last thing left to do is normalisation. Normalisation is basically bringing all the values of different features on a same scale. As different features has different scale, normalising helps us and the model to optimise it’s parameters more efficiently. We normalise all our input from scale: 0 to 1. Here, X is our inputs(hence dropping the classified species) and Y is our output(3 classes).
x_data = df.drop([‘species’],axis=1) y_data = df[‘species’] MinMaxScaler = preprocessing.MinMaxScaler() X_data_minmax = MinMaxScaler.fit_transform(x_data) data = pd.DataFrame(X_data_minmax,columns=['sepal_length', 'sepal_width', 'petal_length', 'petal_width']) df.head()
Image by Author (Normalised dataset)
Finally, we have reached to the point of training the dataset. We use the built-in KNN algorithm from sci-kit learn. We split the our input and output data into training and testing data, as to train the model on training data and testing model’s accuracy on the testing model. We choose a 80%–20% split for our training and testing data.
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(data, y_data,test_size=0.2, random_state = 1) knn_clf=KNeighborsClassifier() knn_clf.fit(X_train,y_train) ypred=knn_clf.predict(X_test) #These are the predicted output values
Output:
KNeighborsClassifier(algorithm=’auto’, leaf_size=30, metric=’minkowski’, metric_params=None, n_jobs=None, n_neighbors=5, p=2, weights=’uniform’)
Here, we see that the classifier chose 5 as the optimum number of nearest neighbours to classify the data best. Now that we have built the model, our final step is to visualise the results. We calculate the confusion matrix, the precision recall parameters and the overall accuracy of the model.
from sklearn.metrics import classification_report, confusion_matrix, accuracy_score result = confusion_matrix(y_test, ypred) print(“Confusion Matrix:”) print(result) result1 = classification_report(y_test, ypred) print(“Classification Report:”,) print (result1) result2 = accuracy_score(y_test,ypred) print(“Accuracy:”,result2)
Output:
Image by Author (Results for our model)
Summary/Conclusion:
We successfully implemented a KNN algorithm for the IRIS datset. We found out the most impactful deatures through out EDA and normalised our dataset for improved accuracy. We got an accuracy of 96.67% with our algorithm as well as we got the confusion matrix and the classification report. From the classification report and the confusion matrix we can see that it misidentifies versicolor as virginica.
That is how one can do multi-class classification using KNN algorithm. Hope you learned something new and meaningful today.
Thank you. | https://towardsdatascience.com/multiclass-classification-using-k-nearest-neighbours-ca5281a9ef76 | ['Vatsal Sheth'] | 2020-11-09 14:12:53.216000+00:00 | ['Knn Algorithm', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Classification'] |
Improve and Fix Slow Magento 2 Performance Top issues | Adobe released top 10 Performance Best Practices which are silly. In this post we will review it and try to understand can we improve performance following this advice. And also we will provide community-driven advice
Adobe has this top performance issues in the list:
A SYNC ORDER PROCESSING IS NOT ENABLED A SYNC EMAIL NOTIFICATION IS NOT ENABLED DEFERRED STOCK UPDATES IS NOT ENABLED MYSQL/READ REPLICA CONNECTION IS NOT ENABLED OPCACHE SIZE NOT SET CORRECTLY CSS UNIFICATION IS NOT ENABLED CSS MINIFICATION IS NOT ENABLED JS MINIFICATION IS NOT ENABLED MAGENTO ECE-TOOLS VERSION IS OUTDATED UNUSED MAGENTO BANNER
What adobe Wrote:
Adobe’s Customer Engineering team has researched and identified the top 10 common issues that impact Magento Commerce sites. These 10 issues constitute approximately 30% of all issues identified through our Site-Wide Analysis Tool. Through this whitepaper we identify these common issues, explain the potential impact they could have, and recommend best practices to address them. Whether you are starting a new project or managing an existing implementation, Adobe recommends reviewing these issues and incorporating the practices to provide the optimal SITE PERFORMANCE and visitor experience.
Is there a more useless phrase than “Magento 2 best practices” or Magento Certified Developer?
Magento 2 Issues:
Async Order Processing is Not Enabled
The configuration Async Order Processing is disabled
There can be times when intensive sales on a storefront occur at the same time that Magento is performing intensive order processing. Having asyncOrderProcessing disabled can lead to deadlocks and slowness on the order page. To fix that Magento Commerce can be configured to distinguish between the traffic patterns for order processing and checkout at the database level. Enabling Async Order Processing will store and index order data asynchronously. Orders are placed in temporary storage and moved in bulk
to the Order Management Grid without collisions. This will improve performance and avoid conflicts in read write operations in the corresponding tables. You can activate this option
However, This optimization really doesn’t impact the performance of the catalog pages and increases debug complexity and development time in several times. It can help you if you are having more than 1 orders per second or 60 orders per minute — 360 orders per hour — 8640 orders per day. For the 99% of the Magento customers, it is not an issue at all.
Async Email Notification is Not Enabled:
When the asyncEmailNotification is disabled, it can degrade the performance of checkout and order processing, negatively impacting visitor experience.
By enabling asyncEmailNotification, the processes that handle email notifications for check out and order processing are moved to the background. This improves the performance of placing an order. You can activate this feature from
Stores > Settings > Configuration > Sales > Sales Emails > General Settings > Asynchronous Sending
Asynchronous sendingGlobalDetermines if sales emails are sent asynchronously. It is recommended that you enable Asynchronous sending.
Options:
Disable — (Default) Sales emails are sent when triggered by an event.
Enable — (Recommended) Sales emails are sent at predetermined, regular intervals.
This issue the same as previous doesn’t affect the real user catalog browsing experience. It only affects order placement performance and can’t be treated as a top issue.
Deferred Stock Updates is not Enabled
In times of high number of sales transactions, when deferredStockUpdates is disabled, it can cause deadlocks which could degrade performance of the store. By enabling deferredStockUpdates as the name suggests, can defer stock updates related to orders. This reduces the number of operations required and significantly speeds up the order
placement process.
This feature can be activated from Stores > Settings > Configuration > Catalog > Inventory > Product Stock Options > Use ‘Deferred Stock Updates’
Caution!
This option can only be used when Backorders are enabled in the store because this feature can result in negative stock quantities.
This recommendation the same as the previous 2 doesn’t improve customers' experience and catalog pages performance. It improves only broken by default order placement Magento functionality for high orders volumes per second
Redis Replica Connection is not Enabled
Redis Replica Connections are not enabled. This issue is only applicable to Magento Commerce running on a non split architecture.
During times of high traffic times, if this feature is disabled, a large number of queries could overwhelm the Primary node of the MySQL database. This could lead to performance degradation or even site outage.
Magento has some issues here. They started With MySQL replica however describes why Redis replica is needed. Both of them are not needed.
By enabling Redis Replica Connections, Magento can spread the load to multiple nodes asynchronously by load balancing SELECT queries across them.
Warning:
• Redis Replica Connection is NOT compatible with Scaled (Split) Architecture and should not be enabled for these environments. Enabling Redis Replica Reads on Scaled (Split) Architecture will generate errors of Redis Connections not being able to connect.
• Redis Replica are still active but will not be used for Redis reads
• Adobe recommends using Magento v2.3.5 and later for Scaled (Split) Architecture and implementing the new Redis Back End Config and implement L2 Caching for Redis.
This is also not the issue because it treating only the symptoms not the issue of Redis bad performance. Magento Core and Extensions Abuses Redis A lot if you are having high traffic you should use DEDICATED Redis on the fastest possible CPU with Multi-threaded enable or you can try to use multithreaded KeyDB. Also, AWS C,R,M6g instance has 30–60% better Redis performance.
Graviton 2 Redis Performance
Source: https://medium.com/@egorshytikov/redis-php-node-js-aws-graviton-2-c6g-m6g-processor-performance-vs-c5-m5-a1-instances-813b3f023b3f
If you are having good infrastructure nit the broken Magento Cloud which is a replica of the Platform.sh you shouldn't have any issues with Redis until you will have 1000 requests for non-chaced pages.
Why 1000? Because Redis Can easily handle 160K requests per second. Single Magento 2 page generates ~ 100 Redis calls. If you are having more than 100 than you need to fix code, not Redis.
Why Magento Cloud Cloud Redis is garbage?
Because it splits Server power with another service PHP, MYSQL, Crons, Elastic Search, etc. and just replica will not help. You need a dedicated high-performance Redis server.
What about Magento Mysql Replica?
Most of the merchants Don’t need MySQL to read replicas. Wha yu need it reduces the numbers of Mysql queries (N+1 SQL issue) in the Magento Core and 3-d Magento modules. Magento 2 ecosystems are amateurish and low-cost that's why 3-d party modules regularly are the biggest issues for your website. Also, you need to fix the Magento Mysql missing Indexes issues.
Magento has approximately 60 — 100 MySQL requests per page. Then you can handle 1000 uncached pages per the smallest AWS EC2 instance if you don’t have fixed Magento 2 Core and 3-d party modules. After 1000 you can use Aurora Db to have up to 15 read replicas. Magento Cloudread replica is silly it isn’t dedicated because it shares infrastructure the same as Redis. However, if you are having issues with the code Red replica will not help. And this is a little bit of math why. Bad implementation of the Magento has 3000 SQL requests per page. 90% of the Magento 2 store implementations are bad and slow. You are lucky if you are in that 10%. However, it is not the developer's issue it is the broken Magento 2 Core issue. Magento 2 is a failure from the release 2.0.
60 000 Req per inst/ 3000 req per page = 20 pages per Mysql instance per sec you can have. By adding a single replica you will not improve performance because you will have 1 read instance and on Master Write-only you need 2 read replicas. After adding 2 read instances Total (3 instances) you can generate 40 pages per second and so on. Pretty weird, isn't it? So only by fixing Magento Core and 3-d party code, using modern technologies, and by offloading features to the Magento-less microservices, you can be really happy
OP Cache Size not set correctly
On Magento Commerce Pro accounts only, there is not enough memory for OPcache
OPcache improves PHP performance by storing precompiled script bytecode in shared memory, thereby removing the need for PHP to load and parse scripts on each request. When OPcache is set incorrectly, instead of improving performance it can increase the cache generation overhead.
It is recommended to set the opcache.memory_consumption PHP setting in php.ini file to at least 2048MB to avoid performance degradation.
What 2048MG for opcache code? It shows what the garbage Magento 2 is. Any other solutions work with 128MB (default). However, this recommendation is silly even if you give 100500MB for the chance it will not cache because it has a max file limit.
OPCache stores cached scripts in an HashTable, a data structure with very fast lookup time (on average), so cached scripts can be retrieved quickly. max_accelerated_files represent the maximum number of keys that can be stored in this HashTable. You could think about it as the max number of keys in an associative array. The memory allocated for this is part of the shared memory that OPCache can use, that you can configure it with the opcache.memory_consumption option. When OPCache tries to cache more scripts than the available number of keys, it triggers a restart and clean the current cache.
So let’s just say you configured opcache.max_accelerated_files to 223 and a request to your /home route parse and cache into OPCache 200 scripts. As long as your next requests will need only those 200 scripts OPCache is fine. But if one of the following requests parse 24 new scripts, OPCache triggers a restart to make room for caching those. Since you don't want that to happen you should monitor OPCache and choose an appropriate number.
Keep in mind that one file can be cached more than once with different keys if required with a relative path like require include.php or require ../../include.php . The cleanest solution to avoid this is to use a proper autoload.
You should also set opcache.max_accelerated_files to 100 000 000 max value. The default is 4000. Alos, opcache check timestamp should be disabled on the production server and CLI opcache should be enabled.
By default settings, when PHP file is executed Opcache checks the last time it was modified on disk. Then it compares this time with the last time it cached the compilation of that script. When the file was modified after being cached, the compile cache for the script will be regenerated.
This validation is not necessary for the production server when you know the files never change. To disable timestamp validation add the following configuration
opcache.validate_timestamps=0
CSS Unification is Not Enabled
When CSS unification is not enabled, it can result in multiple HTTP requests for each partial required during page load. This can have an adverse effect on performance.
Unification of CSS files results in combining multiple asset requests to a single request which can improve performance of page load.
Magento 2 has the worst frontend page load performance in the entire universe and this advice is not relevant because HTTP/2 protocol came out allowing parallel requests (imagine multiple cashiers instead of one). With multiple cashiers, requests were served quicker as separate smaller requests rather than combined. HTTP/2 gave such massive performance increases, you would expect almost immediate adoption.
People think that because their server sent out fewer requests, it means their server did less work…but that is false thinking. Your server sends out the same amount of code no matter what. If anything, your server may work harder because you merged. Merging CSS also has a few annoying issues…instead of letting your page render immediately, it now has to wait for your entire CSS to load.
For me…most CSS should be loaded as fast as possible and most JS should be as delayed as possible (UNLESS, there is critical JS like being used for slider above the fold).
“Magento 2 single page loads 7+Mb of Javascript and has a huge DOM. Images are not deferred and the main thread being kept busy for almost half a minute(cause all that JS needs evaluating) and you’re in Heaven. Probably the worst, most amateurish platform for delivering applications. Has to be the most costly disaster that blighted the world of Software in the last 30 years.” Magento Community Software Engineer
CSS assets minification is not enabled
CSS files can be fairly large in size. When they are not minified or gzipped, the time to download at page load time can be high, providing a bad visitor experience
Magento commerce can be configured for various file optimization techniques including minification. Minification can be done from the command line by running bin/magento
config:store:set dev/js/minify_files 1
JS Minification is Not Enabled
JS files can be fairly large in size. When they are not minified or gzipped, the time to download at page load time can be high, providing a bad visitor experience.
Magento commerce can be configured for various file optimization techniques including minification. Minification can be done from the command line by running bin/magento
config:store:set dev/js/minify_files
Minification doesn’t improve performance much. You can’t even measure those improvements. Minification removes maintainability. It usually saves about 4–8kb of savings on site size. You can get more savings by compressing a single jpg or removing unused Magento Enterprise functionality.
Magento ECE-Tools Version is Outdated
Having an outdated version of Magento ECE-Tools can lead to issues with infrastructure upgrade, servers, application, and integrations.
Always run the latest compatible version of the Magento ECE-Tools
This Advice is useless because the best practices for Magento is not to use Platform.SH doing business as Magento Commerce Cloud.
Magento Cloud host has several virtual cores (vCPU) per server (2 threads per 1 physical CPU — Intel’s Hyperthreading technology) with everything running on it. PHP, MySQL, Galera Cluster, Redis, ElasticSearch, Java, HaProxy, Nginx, ZooKeeper, heavy Magento Crons, RenitMQ, Docker, NewRelic, BlackFire, GlusterFS Network File Server, other stuff and all these infrastructure elements run twice x2(production and staging share the same instance). And all these processes load several physical cores producing performance issues and Redis splitting will not help. You need real horizontal auto-scaling or serverless with 3 tire architecture to handle a huge amount of traffic.
Source: https://medium.com/@egorshytikov/magento-adobe-commerce-cloud-performance-for-anovaculenary-com-18149d89c9d8
Also, the Magento cloud doesn’t have proper infrastructure monitoring tools. To provide some tools to Merchants Magento Cloud uses New Relic however it produces 50–200% performance overhead and it is better not to use Old Relic on production.
Unused Magento Banner Functionality
When the Magento Banner functionality is enabled but is not being used, it can make an unnecessary AJAX request to the server
Unnecessary AJAX requests to a server can have a negative impact on the performance of the site.
This is especially true during high traffic periods
If the Magento Banned functionality is not required, it is recommended to follow these steps
• Disable to Magento Banner Module Output as described here. The name of the module is Magento_Banner.
This is true not only for Banners. It is applied to everything in Magento 2. Magento 2 framework has broken architecture — Many Ajax, Slow backend, legacy code, harmful AOD plugins, legacy ORM, Zend Framework 1. The best practice is not to use Magento Enterprise/Commerce because it has more code(Staging) and bad performance and more bugs. Magento 2/1(Open Mage) Open Source is the only right choice. Also, you should avoid using MSI (Multi-Source Inventory) and other bundled with Magento 2 core modules.
Magento Commerce vs Magento 2 Open Source performance:
To be continued…
You can send your issues and fixes and we can create open source list.
Send me it to [email protected] | https://yegorshytikov.medium.com/improve-and-fix-slow-magento-2-performance-top-issues-e00ac2999171 | ['Yegor Shytikov'] | 2020-10-04 12:30:24.348000+00:00 | ['Cloud', 'Magento 2', 'Magento'] |
HiddenFighters game: will use two kinds of token developed on the EOSIO platform | HiddenFighters game: will use two kinds of token developed on the EOSIO platform
HiddenFighters game will use two kinds of token developed on the EOSIO platform:
CryptoMonsters Fungible Token (CMS);
Fungible Token (CMS); HiddenFighters specific EOSIO Non-Fungible Token;
As mentioned before, the first kind of tokens will be specific for the PVP HiddenFighters game. They represent Characters skills and levels. They are unique as its owners, and they will be stronger as the player wins the PVP battles. Another EOSIO nft it’s been developed to represents game items, such as weapons, armors, and so on.
By this way, the more powerful Characters, or the more rare items, could be sold to other players at any moment thanks to the marketplace in exchange for the second type of tokens.
The second kind of token is the fungible one. It’s Cryptomonster Coin (CMS). Every player of Hidden-Fighters can use those tokens to buy specific enforcement for their characters, or, as said before, they can earn CMS selling characters and items.
To accomplish these requirements EOSIO Smart contract is been developed by our team in order to regulate the exchanges according to easy rules of transparency and sustainability.
Our team has chosen EOSIO platform, instead of others, for the minor price of resources (CPU and RAM) needed to get the smart contract up and running. Moreover, the speed and the amount of transactions guaranteed by EOSIO is not comparable, at the moment, with other public and wide accepted blockchain platforms.
The need for a specific coin for CryptoMonsters, as mentioned before, is part of the main mission of our team: Let other game developers who want to enable a digital marketplace for their specific in-game assets, to launch their projects in a platform that provides them a coin to be used by their players, an already active players community, the possibility to exchange hidden fighters items with their specific items. All those exchanges will be regulated by our smart contracts.
Therefore the game developers can focus on the game experience instead of the token economy, smart contracts or other technologies far from their business. | https://medium.com/criptomonsters/hiddenfighters-game-will-use-two-kinds-of-token-developed-on-the-eosio-platform-472a671054a4 | ['Hidden Fighters'] | 2019-04-11 10:47:17.942000+00:00 | ['Eosio', 'Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain', 'Videogames', 'Token'] |
Morpheus Labs and Steem announce partnership | Morpheus Labs is excited to partner with Steemit, the team that develops the Steem blockchain protocol and steemit.com to help build better communities, create rewarding opportunities and empower entrepreneurs.
Steemit will be fully integrated into the BPaaS, meaning developers and companies can develop on the Steem blockchain through our platform by using Ruby, Javascript, and Python libraries.
Steem is a social blockchain optimized to grow communities and make immediate revenue streams possible for users by rewarding them for sharing content. It’s currently the only blockchain that can power real applications used by thousands of ordinary people every day, like steemit.com — which is disrupting the old way of doing things by leveraging Steem blockchain technology to reward users for creating content. The users themselves decide what content deserves rewards through their upvotes. Learn more about Steemit here.
Massive social media platforms have funded their growth by capturing their user’s private information and selling it to advertisers for profit . This has put users at a disadvantage because their data has become, in effect, the “currency” being traded by social media platforms. Blockchain technology can improve the security of a social media platform, and reward users via tokens for their attention, time and data.
Morpheus Labs simplifies the process of blockchain adoption by our clients and partners, offering a wide range of interoperable dApp solutions across a variety of blockchain platforms. Its Blockchain Platform-as-a-Service (BPaaS) is built to help Enterprises and Developers overcome their pain in development due to the lack of environment; and to reduce time and cost spent to experiment on different Blockchains. Developers will gain access to tools which speed up and simplify the process of developing Steem-powered DApps. DApps can be sold on the Morpheus Labs BPaaS marketplace.
Dorel D Burcer, CIO (IT Technology Thought Leader) shared, “This partnership is a great opportunity for both Steem and Morpheus Labs on a leverage to make an impact in the social media industry with Blockchain adoption. With this partnership in place, Morpheus Labs and Steem will move forward to integration, offering both enterprises and developers a convenient and powerful tool for building their Steem-powered or Blockchain DApps.” “At Steemit our top priority is making Steem the easiest, lowest cost, and most powerful blockchain protocol in the world for powering applications, because we believe this is key to onboarding the masses to the blockchain. That’s why we are so excited to be working with Morpheus Labs to make Steem one of their Blockchain-Platform-as-a-Service (BPaas), making it easier than ever to power applications with blockchain technology. We look forward to Morpheus Labs bringing even more great entrepreneurs and developers into the Steem ecosystem by making it easier than ever to quickly integrate blockchain technology into web applications.” — Andrew Levine, Head of Communications
About Steemit
Steemit is the team behind steemit.com, the world’s most popular blockchain-powered application, and the Steem blockchain protocol which power that application along with dozens of other Web 3.0 applications. Steem remains the only blockchain protocol in existence that was built from the ground up to power web and content applications. It enables entrepreneurs to build apps and monetize content so they can build & grow their own social media community on the blockchain.
Website: https://steemit.com/
Protocol Website: https://steem.com/
Official Telegram: https://telegram.me/steem_en
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/SteemNetwork
Steem’s Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/steemit/
Steem’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steemnetwork/
Steem’s Github: https://github.com/steemit | https://medium.com/morpheus-labs/morpheus-labs-and-steem-announce-partnership-415815c062f8 | ['Morpheus Labs Team'] | 2020-10-30 03:42:30.316000+00:00 | ['Steemit', 'Crypto', 'Morpheus Labs', 'Mitx', 'Blockchain'] |
Common Instagram Mistakes Marketers Must Avoid | Currently, Instagram is one of the trending and most used social media platforms. Because of this, many business owners are active on it, but your involvement is not enough. There are some basic things that all business owners must take care of to grow on Instagram. So today, in this article, we will see some common Instagram Mistakes that people make.
Common Instagram Mistakes
1. Don’t Buy Likes and Followers
You can buy followers from your Instagram account. The trouble is, you’re getting quantity, not quality when you buy likes and follows. Your statistics may appear great, but what would be the point if your audience was just filled with robots that didn’t say anything of value? The same applies to automatic comments.
What’s the purpose if you haven’t got a genuine relationship with your fans? Successful social media companies connect with real people. The money would surely be better to focus advertisements on look-alike audiences or organize a competition to encourage followers eager to do what you are doing.
2. Upload Quality Content
Instagram is a channel of vision. Then it should be lovely to look at, or, at least fascinating, if you’re going to submit something. However, you have no access to professional photography or high-end camera abilities, attempt to shoot naturally or with neutral backdrops. No picture, you’re better off than a poor picture. But there’s no justification for posting anything awful with so many excellent tools for modifying photographs and graphic design.
Read More: How to Increase Followers on Instagram
3. Posting
The proper quantity of postings on Instagram — or other social media platforms — is a balancing act. You may look frantic or upset by too many postings and too few postings, and you may seek out or be forgotten. So what’s the perfect number for Instagram posting? You may check out the current figures here, but note that the balance point changes over time with the evolution of user habits.
It’s also up to your brand and fans. It would be reasonable for a news site to publish many times a day, but a couple of times a week may make more sense for the make-up business. So be careful while your followers are online. Analyze and experiment with their timeline to find out what their content is.
4. Analytics
Another considerable error Instagram marketer makes is to neglect data. You should compulsively monitor the data so that trends and growth are identified. How can you reproduce your accomplishments if you strive to increase your engagement rate but not check your statistics?
5. Consistency
The most significant Instagram offense is posting dull or spammy material to the Instagram public. Account owners have to give something to followers. Create posts you care about — something fascinating, informational, or enjoyable. Give value to your followers to remark, like, and share And develop, hopefully, a deeper brand relationship. Don’t post only for the sake of posting.
The provision of great material will also incentivize new individuals to follow you. For instance, with this kind of uninteresting material, this phony sprinklers firm account I established here will not be very far. The fake social media manager should instead pose a question, hold a competition, share contributions or create a new topic.
6. Have a Strategic Plan
If you do not know what you are attempting to achieve, it is hard to attain success. Choose one objective to begin and build a strategic plan for it. Thus, every conclusion and a way of measuring your growth will be guided by something.
Read More: Instagram Growth Hacks
7. Maintain Your Website
Your account on Instagram is just one of the parts of your entire brand. You undoubtedly have a website, other social media sites, and perhaps even a store. All these aspects should be consistently linked to ensure that your brand is robust and prominent. Every profile should have your logo, and the visual style and the editorial tone should be identical to each element.
8. Error-Free Content
Sometimes even expert authors make errors. But an otherwise published piece might be negligent with a small grammatical problem. Make a short revision of your social posting procedure, and look at your postings for a second time.
Conclusion
Instagram is already becoming a fast favorite for everybody. With Instagram tools like automation, it is possible to maintain consistent branding on this network rapidly. With proper usage of Instagram, one can convert their followers to leads or clients. As a trending social media platform, avoid the common mistakes you are making and use Instagram properly to enhance your exposure and view in public. | https://medium.com/@guestpostmagzine/common-instagram-mistakes-marketers-must-avoid-b517558361a0 | ['Sofiya Hayat'] | 2021-12-29 16:28:12.048000+00:00 | ['Instagram', 'Marketingmistakes', 'Instagrammarketing', 'Howtogrowoninstagram'] |
How SpaceX lands Starship. (sort of) | Landing a rocket! — The code
Now onto the fun stuff. There are some amazing libraries out there that churn through equations and do the heavy lifting of optimization, so the real “art” lies in asking the right question to the solver. If you want to follow along line by line (I promise its not that many lines) or fiddle around with it, here’s a link to a collab notebook that lets you run this all in your browser:
The library I am using to run my optimization is CasADI: https://web.casadi.org/
The Trajectory:
Time was sliced up into 0.04s chunks and variables for the rockets state and control state were generated at each step. This results in a bunch of discrete points along the path that are easier to work with then trying to come up with a closed form solution for the entire thing (pretty much impossible).
Example of a trajectory made up of three points and and a state along that trajectory
Rocket state vector: x[n] = [x, x_dot, y, y_dot, theta, theta_dot]
Control state vector: u[n] = [thrust_mag, thrust_angle]
Generating the steps and optimization variables
(0.04s was picked because it results in 1:1 playback at 25 frames a second. Yes, I did in fact change the simulation timestep because 25 fps looks nice)
To find the number of timesteps, I manually increased the number until a feasible solution was found. There are ways of having the solver discover the minimum time trajectory on it’s own (mainly: letting it decide the timestep between points), but that gets harder to animate.
The Cost Function:
Setting the cost function
(all costs are sums of squares-> cost[0]² + cost[1]² + cost[2]² … and so on)
Minimize thrust output — Ideally you would like to use a little fuel on landing as possible.
Minimize TVC gimble angle — Moving your nozzle is effort, and ideally you want it to nominally be pointing downwards.
Minimize angular velocity — Seems like a bit of wild card, but I had a hunch that angular velocity / acceleration puts the largest amount of strain on the vehicle, so you would like to keep that as low as possible.
Constraint set 1: Initial and Final conditions
The initial condition is starting 1000m in the air traveling down at 80m/s, rotated 90 degrees.
Initial and Final condition constraints
The starting height and speed were taken from the SN9 data available at Flight Club: https://flightclub.io/result/2d?code=SN91
Constraint set 2: Dynamics
Each state timestep has to obey: x[n+1]-x[n] = f(x[n], u[n]) * dt
This is essentially the “don’t break physics” constraint. It is equivalent to a discrete time simulation of the rocket, the next state is equal to the current state + the derivative * dt. (Note: I used x_dot() instead of f() in the code because I think it makes it easier to read).
Setting the dynamics constraint for all elements in the state vector.
Vehicle constants and dynamics function:
g = 9.8 m = 100000 kg (guessed a nice round number between wet and dry mass. In reality, this would change as you used fuel, but I was going for simplicity over accuracy) length = 50 meters I = (1/12) * m * length² (inertia of a uniform rod)
Defining f(x,u) = x_dot
(Note: this is a fairly poor discretization, and much better methods exist, such as collocation. However, this is the easiest and fastest way to write this out)
Constraint set 3: Variable Bounds
Thrust cannot go greater than the single raptor maximum, cannot throttle below 40%, and the thrust vector control cannot gimble beyond 20 degrees in each direction
Raptor max was taken from Wikipedia, the +-20 degrees was totally a guess, and I would love to know if there is more reliable data for this.
Setting bounded constraints for u
Optimize!
All that’s left to do is run it!
Selecting solver and running!
And that’s basically it, you call opti.solve(), which then goes and translates our problem into something that Ipopt (an open source optimization solver) can understand. After thinking for a bit, hopefully this message should arrive at the bottom of a tall stack of iteration prints:
This is what we like to see
Plot of state and control arrays
The next bit of code uses matplotlib to make a nice animation, it takes a bit to generate all the frames but the result is quite nice.
“Wheeeeee”
So “what did we learn”?
While the near perfect track is probably mostly me getting lucky with my estimations for things, there’s some interesting stuff to pull out of it, mainly:
Starship is very very likely either following a pre-planned optimized trajectory, or running real time optimization to generate an optimal trajectory on the fly. (or a mix of both)
More than this, we can go a bit further and guess that their optimization cost function / “objectives” are very similar to ours: Minimize thrust, Minimize TVC angle and Minimize angular velocity. The track is almost uncanny at times, especially with how far it slides out both ways. (I always assumed that was overshoot, but it could just be the optimal path to the landing pad). This is also a fun analysis tool, I really want to go figure out some additional constraints that cause the landing failures of SN8 and SN9 (requires a bit of tweaking: the final state can no longer be a rigid constraint).
Why actually landing a rocket is much harder than this:
Its tempting to go “woah I just figured out how SpaceX lands their rockets!!”, but sadly, that’s not really true.
Once you have generated a physically possible trajectory that gets you where you want to go, there’s a whole host of things that you need to do to actually go follow that trajectory: state estimation, closed loop feedback control, dynamically updating that trajectory based on real time conditions… and many more that someone who is an actual aerospace engineer (which I am not) would know. Beyond that, these solvers take a long time to run, and online (real time) optimization is incredibly hard to pull off correctly and safely: one wrong input and your solver could just spit back “fail”, causing the thing to fall out of the sky.
Extra resources:
Edit: (since a bunch of people appear to be finding this): Here’s a link to Lars Blackmore’s website, the lead engineer working on Starship EDL (Entry, Decent and Landing) and the person behind the Falcon 9 landing techniques. His thesis and other publications have much more comprehensive overviews of how optimal control can be used in the EDL problem. http://larsblackmore.com/ | https://medium.com/@thomas-godden/how-spacex-lands-starship-sort-of-ee96cdde650b | ['Thomas Godden'] | 2021-05-16 10:54:49.208000+00:00 | ['Spacex', 'Control Theory', 'Starship', 'Optimization'] |
Welcome to OpenSea | Welcome to OpenSea! By the end of this article, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to effortlessly move through the world of NFTs.
Read the full post on our blog. | https://medium.com/opensea/welcome-to-opensea-516473d74387 | ['Devin Finzer'] | 2020-05-20 08:11:39.096000+00:00 | ['Tutorials', 'Featured', 'Guides'] |
Chicagoans Get Vaccinated as the City Prepares for a Full Reopening | Chicagoans Get Vaccinated as the City Prepares for a Full Reopening
As the business and beaches gear up for June 11, so do the residents. Ashley Vong Jun 8·1 min read
According to Chicago.gov, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has planned to implement the city into Phase 5: Illinois Restored on June 11. Capacity limits, restricted hours, and mandatory masks (still applicable to non-vaccinated/half vaccinated individuals) will be no longer be required by law. Furthermore, large events like Lollapalooza can take place safely.
By: Ashley Vongphakdy
Looking at the graph above, we can see that around ~1.2 million Chicago residents have been reported as fully vaccinated, alongside ~1.4 million who have received their first dose. With an estimated population of 2.7 million from a United States Census Bureau 2019 report, the city is set to reopen with 43% of civilians being fully vaccinated.
One of the most anticipated events of the summer, Lollapalooza, has released a statement that “full COVID-19 vaccination or negative COVID-19 test results will be required to attend Lollapalooza 2021”. For attendees who are not fully vaccinated, a negative COVID test must be obtained 24 hours before attending the festival each day. More information on Lollapalooza’s COVID rules and regulations can be found here.
The possibility of reopening would not be possible without the hard work of Chicagoans. | https://medium.com/@lvongp3/chicagoans-get-vaccinated-as-the-city-prepares-for-a-full-reopening-1c201be39d04 | ['Ashley Vong'] | 2021-06-08 03:11:24.529000+00:00 | ['Vaccine', 'Reopening', 'Chicago', 'Covid 19', 'Lollapalooza'] |
Nova edição da Revista Bodisatva | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/revistabodisatva/nova-edi%C3%A7%C3%A3o-da-revista-bodisatva-e6b40a43fc93 | ['Plataforma Bodisatva'] | 2018-01-13 13:41:36.356000+00:00 | ['Darma', 'Budismo', 'Cebb', 'Bodisatva 29', 'Revista Bodisatva'] |
Swami Vivekanand Quiz | registration is start now. all students & others inform us to register now and win many prices. | https://medium.com/@laxmipublicationdelhi/swami-vivekanand-quiz-abf9387806ee | ['Laxmi Publication'] | 2020-12-13 06:35:29.878000+00:00 | ['Collages Girls In Delhi', 'Collage', 'Students', 'Teachers', 'Schools'] |
The Writing Cooperative Submission Requirements and Style Guide | Stories published by The Writing Cooperative are owned by the author. Writers may remove stories from our publication at their discretion. However, writers who habitually remove stories from our publication without notice will lose the ability to submit.
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Submissions containing improperly written paragraphs, and overusing one- or two-sentence paragraphs are rejected. | https://writingcooperative.com/the-writing-cooperative-submission-requirements-364b0fea36cd | ['Justin Cox'] | 2021-04-01 21:33:59.169000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Media', 'Life Lessons', 'Writing', 'Life'] |
Celer at New York Blockchain Week: Mainnet Sneak Peek, Layer-2 Meetup, New and Fun Games! | Hello New York!
Celer Network team is super excited to be part of the New York Blockchain Week for the first time! We got a series of exciting events and fun activities lined up for you!🎉🎉
Celer’s Mainnet Sneak Peek at ETH New York 👀
Celer Network mainnet is coming soon to the public. Though it has only been 7 short months since we launched our first public testnet, Celer Network has pushed the boundaries of layer-2 scaling technology, user-facing product and developer ecosystems. With blockchain mass adoption as goal, Celer Network user counts has grown by 50X to almost 20,000 monthly active users from 88 different countries. Celer Network testnet is processing around 4 million off-chain smart contract transactions on generalized state channel with absolutely ZERO cost. Amazing though the numbers already are, we want to note that this is just one application’s statistics on the still “paper-money” testnet. Like you, we are eager to see the power of layer-2 scaling fully unleashed.
For those of you who don’t want to wait, we invite you to come to ETHNewYork and get the first behind-the-scenes sneak peek of our public mainnet alpha. As an appreciate of your kind help, we will be giving out our limited-edition T-shirts and a lot of secret prizes at our booth. (Just FYI, at ETHDenver, we ran out of T-shirts on the very first day. 👀)
Friday night at 10:30–10:55pm: Celer Network SDK: Build fun and interactive dApps @ Andromeda (1st floor).
Celer Network SDK: Build fun and interactive dApps @ Andromeda (1st floor). Saturday afternoon at 13:00–13:25: Celer Network: Lessons Learnt Running The Biggest Generalized State Channel Network Testnet @ Andromeda (1st floor).
Building scalable and smooth UX dApps on Celer Network 🚀
We have proven the significantly usability improvement brought by Celer SDK, now it’s your time to get that 50X user growth, high retention and long engagement time for your dApps! Do you want to build interactive Ethereum games, online auction, prediction market or micro payment services and have a path to monetization? Are you a great indie game developer but having trouble monetizing your next great idea? Are you extremely annoyed by the disastrous UX caused not by you, but by the slow blockchain and the high transaction fees. Come to our workshop and learn how to build on Celer. We got you covered!
Bounty 1 Overview: cGamer
If you are able to build ANY game using Celer SDK, you will be qualified for a $1,000 prize! By meeting additional criteria, you will have a chance to qualify for a bonus $500 prize!!
$500: if the game involves any state exchange between multiple players
Prize Amount: up to $1,500
Bounty 2 Overview: cBUIDLer
If you simply want to try out Celer, we also got you covered. If you use ANY Celer SDK and build ANY application, or even just getting our demo application running, you are more than welcome to do so. The first two teams registering their applications built with Celer SDK will split $1,000.
Prize Amount: $1,000
The Future of Layer-2 Meetup is Becoming a Tradition!
Following our SF Edition, Prague Edition, now the world’s biggest layer-2 scaling meetup, The Future of Layer2, is coming to NYC! We invite you to be part of the tradition and don’t miss the great opportunity to talk to some of the brightest visionaries in the industry at New York Blockchain Week! On Thursday, May 16 at 6:30PM, Celer Network is co-hosting a night of beer 🍻, mingle, and tech discussion on the latest developments & breakthroughs across scaling solutions right before the ETH New York Hackathon! This will be an educational event so bring all of your questions and thoughts on layer-2 scaling! 🙌 🙌
Are you ready to these exciting events and fun activities lined up for you? Mark your calendar! Looking forward to seeing you :)))
Follow Celer Network at : | https://medium.com/celer-network/celer-ethny-2d8faa48d669 | ['Celer Network'] | 2019-05-14 20:49:33.325000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Celer Community', 'Celertech', 'Celernetwork'] |
Bridging the Impact Investment Gap: Infrastructuring Tomorrow. | Financing the Transition — Blog1.
This is the first of a series of blogs on financing the transformations that our societies need. It is part of our project ‘Re-coding for a civic capital economy’, co-financed by EIT Climate-KIC, and also builds on ideas developed through the EmergenE Room programme with McConnell Foundation, our work with Viable Cities, and the EIT Climate-KIC supported Long Term Alliance.
Introduction
Our generation is facing an unprecedented long emergency — from climate crisis to economic hardships to health emergencies to social injustice — all further exposed and deepened by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Governments around the world are increasingly aware that the scale of the present calamity requires radical capital, policy, and infrastructural solutions beyond our existing capabilities. The impact of these investment decisions will be felt for generations to come, with all the resulting implications both now and in the future. These intergenerational investments will need to address the needs of societies as a whole, carrying with them an array of accountabilities. To borrow from the future is both to assume responsibility and to operate with a duty of care for tomorrow.
In response, we have seen the development of Green New Deals around the world. Linked in part to recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and in part to a post-carbon economy, the European Union is targeting initial investment of 646 billion euros to be matched by national governments. It is undoubtedly necessary, given the current state of the world, that investment does not follow the traditional disaster capital route of concentrating wealth. Instead we need to ensure a just and equitable transition to a net-zero carbon economy, advancing not just community benefit but also community wealth in all its forms.
This future is being cast in a moment where we face an accelerating deficit resulting from Covid-related spending in 2020. Governments are equally under pressure to implement rapid solutions intended to jump-start the real economy. This drives the policy landscape, with decisions about recovery funds tending to be based on the rear-view mirror rather than on what lies ahead. Competing incentives for cities and local stakeholders are seeded, with an emphasis on job creation and the repetition of historical approaches. This is at the expense of the innovation required to enable the next generation of solutions.
It has often been stated that societies, civilisations and cities live or die by the infrastructure they build. Many of the current infrastructures across our cities and wider society are no longer fit for purpose. In some cases, they are on the brink of collapse. Furthermore, we are at risk of building the wrong infrastructures for the civilisation of the 21st and 22nd centuries. What are the social, ecological, cultural, economic, physical, and institutional infrastructures that are necessary for this new age of long emergencies?
Over the past twelve months, Dark Matter Labs has been working on this challenge with various stakeholders throughout Europe, including Viable Cities, Scottish National Investment Bank, NatureScot, and other parts of the Scottish government, the EIT Climate-KIC Healthy Clean Cities programme, as well as with partners through The Long Alliance.
This work has made it apparent that the dimensional context and the scale of investments required for initiatives such as the Green New Deal are at an order of magnitude our societies and institutions have not yet grasped. We don’t yet have the tools, frameworks, and mechanisms necessary to bridge the capabilities, capacity, and capital gaps, enabling us to address this transition. We need to ‘re-code’ capital to enable the transformations we need.
In this series of blogs, we seek to articulate an urgent need for bridging the gap between the capital clearly aggregated at a macro scale and the investment needed for implementation of transition infrastructures on the ground.
The first blog outlines the five key intervention areas that present unique opportunities for macro capital to address directly the health, climate, economic, and social crises of our time. By understanding the interventions’ core underlying features we are then able to lay out ten strategic recommendations. All of them are linked together by new, or ‘re-coded’, forms of contractual and governance infrastructure for capital. These, in turn, can help foster net-zero, wealthier, and more resilient communities, with the robust social infrastructure necessary to address this new age of long emergencies.
Pathways Forward
What has emerged over the course of our work are five key areas of societal-scale transition infrastructures:
Nature-based assets. These include trees, wetlands, and pools of biodiversity. This future is being demonstrated by work across European cities, from Milan to Vienna and from Glasgow to Madrid, where municipalities are looking for whole-population-scale nature-based solutions. Examples include the planting of millions of street trees and the transformation of canopy cover across a city through the creation of a ring of urban forests. These solutions and future asset classes have some of the highest potential for capturable spillover values, whether that relates to the ‘heat island’ reduction effects of tree canopies, improvements to water drainage systems, or an array of health benefits such as the reduction of asthma rates in children. The need and value of these city-scale interventions are obvious but the viable operational, contractual, and governance means to execute and capitalise this vision are in urgent need of development. For more details, see some of our work at https://treesasinfrastructure.com. Deep retrofitting of our cities. Many municipalities, including Malmö, Sweden, and Sofia, Bulgaria, have announced radical missions to retrofit what amounts to millions of homes across Europe by 2030. Some are exploring pathways for the physical retrofit of their entire cities. Increasingly, our work shows the need to move beyond house-by-house energy retrofits to whole-street and whole-district approaches and whole-city investment cases and business models. This needs to be integrated with parallel vertical-supply-chain innovation and collective strategic procurement across utilities, insurers, governments, and landowners. In these societal-scale aggregative models, the deployment of capital needs to be directly linked to the spillover value of a street-wide or district-wide retrofit strategy, with new mechanisms that allow for the capture of both direct and indirect benefits. By establishing community wealth models at the heart of this approach, we emphasise community-driven outcomes as a key de-risking factor for what is inevitably disruptive work in neighbourhoods.
This approach generates returns on a longitudinal and macro-investment scale, which may not always be captured through more traditional project measures such as internal rates of return (IRR). This is because the spillover effects go far beyond the direct energy savings or even the indirect health implications. They affect a city’s unemployment rates, the local velocity of spending, community wealth and GDP, and drive direct positive benefits with direct as well as more indirect beneficiaries. The contractual integration of this whole value case is vital to creating a sustainable financial proposition, and the community/street-driven transition is the key to growing distributed community wealth, moving us away from the disaster capital concentration of resources, innovation, and new monopolies.
Again, the need and value of city-scale and societal-scale intervention is clear. It enables enormous savings in yearly carbon emissions from existing residential properties — one of the key emissions sources in our cities. Yet, our capacity to institutionally structure and organise the spillover values inherent in these societally entangled interventions is still missing. Without this capacity, residential retrofits will continue to be perceived, wrongly, as unpopular, capital-intensive, revenue-ineffective, and subsidy-dependent interventions, even if they are the only genuinely smart option. Social infrastructures. The social and civic fabric in our cities has suffered significant and chronic under-investement. While new financing commitments are announced regularly, the fundamental challenge lies in the funding side of the business case, specifically targeting mechanisms to recognise and capture spillover values. A good example of a strategic social infrastructure investment is the $7-a-day universal childcare scheme in Quebec, Canada. The programme started in 1997, and over a period of twenty years led to a tripling of the number of mothers with children under the age of five who participate in the Quebec workforce. The impact has been particularly significant for middle-to-low-income women. The resulting economic benefits are vast: $5-billion added to Quebec’s GDP and a 64% reduction in the number households who received social assistance. The spillover effects over the past twenty years of every parent being in a position to choose when or whether they return to work has spread well beyond tax dollars and touched on almost every aspect of Quebec’s society. Empowered women make decisions on what level and quality of schooling their children receive, what local businesses they support, where they invest their education and retirement funds, and what types of communities they want to live in. Strategically investing in public childcare, supporting minority women and first-time immigrants by guaranteeing them a basic universal income, are all examples of social infrastructures that produce returns beyond IRR. Our ability to finance such civic goods is critical for any meaningful transition. New, large-scale, urban developments. Even as the pandemic is undoubtedly impacting on cities’ fundamental economic and residential geography, many cities are (re)developing land for growth and economic adaptation. In this new age, large-scale developments cannot be justified by land value alone. Increasingly, they also need to be structured via a systems value lens — which is critical if they are to be sustainable, including both net-zero carbon in operational terms and from an embodied carbon perspective. As illustrated by our collaboration with the City of Edinburgh (and, more specifically, Granton’s Sustainability and Strategy initiative), they need to reconfigure a city’s housing offer, making it fit for a post-carbon, post-Covid economy. In addition, these developments need to be viewed in the context of how they can drive whole-value-chain innovations, how they support the seeding of new circular material and maintenance economies, and how they support the regeneration and adaptation of adjacent settlements. Equally important is how they can create the new regulatory innovations necessary to drive the wider transition of the city, and how they drive alternative tenures to rent and ownership, with an emphasis on the value of neighbourhoods rather than houses. Large-scale projects need to account for, drive, and value these system impacts if they are to manifest the societal outcomes necessary to support transition, and to justify the real estate sector’s social licence to operate in this age of long emergencies. Agricultural land and our food systems as a whole. Our soil holds the key to both our health, as a source of food, and to carbon sequestration and restoring biodiversity. Any meaningful transition will require us to reconfigure our food and nutrition systems toward regenerative practices. At present, it is more expensive to purchase an organically grown local apple than one cultivated far away, on an industrial scale using environmentally harmful pesticides and chemicals. The latter also accumulates largely underpriced water waste and associated carbon emissions during its transportation to market. A systemic shift in the economy of land and agriculture is vital for the transition. It involves the redesign of incentives, repricing of externalities, the valuing of soil quality maintenance and regeneration, and the inclusion of carbon sequestration potential into the value of land. The system value of the asset is strategically understood, and the case, evidence, and values are increasingly validated. But we now need to build the funding, financing, contractual, and governance structures to manifest this fundamental value.
In order to address the key challenges and asset classes of the future, we recognise there is an urgent need both to organise capital in an unprecedented manner and to re-code capital in contractual and governance terms — amongst other things, to enable the equitable and effective collaboration of public and ‘private’ capital. We believe that this re-coding of capital is fundamental to unlocking these near-now asset classes in order to generate their future values.
Re-Coding Capital
In order to manifest these near-now asset classes, three structural innovations are necessary.
Long Financing: New investment instruments for the long-term allocation of capital
Assets operating and functioning like infrastructure require both long-term vision and long-term allocation of capital. Building the capacity to finance a growing list of long-term transformational infrastructures will be a vital component of transition capital provision. This is hard to achieve within the constraints of short-term budgets and the need for rapid recycling of capital. How could we aim to reconfigure our cities and our communities for seven generations to come, if the nature of underlying investment remains locked to a period of eight-to-ten years?
For example, the idea of Smart Perpetual Bonds allows us to update an old financial instrument so that it meets the societal needs of the 21st century in a complex changing world. They:
Replace the need for repayment of capital with the in-perpetuity offer of fixed income.
Create the capacity for the contingent pricing of value based on preconfigured variables with minimum transactional overheads.
Offer radical, real-time transparency in the factoring and distribution of value providing smart provenance for investment.
Offer the option for the fractional trading of smart coupons on digital secondary markets, enabling the return of capital and income.
By implication, Smart Perpetual Bonds create pathways for financing a new class of assets that yield value across the long term.
Analogue versions of these methods have long been in existence, and their digital transformation is well underway. Raising capital using digital solutions ensures additional protection against arbitraged appreciation and fixes the true value of underlying investment rather than the cumulative effect of trading opportunities and excessive servicing costs.
There is another benefit. The next generation of value-conscious investors are seeking long-wealth opportunities that both ensure a viable fixed return and lead to radical societal transformation. Private banks entrusted with managing their wealth are in search of solutions. Structuring a portfolio of long-financing instruments, with Smart Perpetual Bonds being one of them, will transition vast amounts of progressive wealth towards the solutions that our communities require.
Through The Long Alliance, we will further develop the Smart Perpetual Bond as well as exploring other methods to channel long-term capital towards ‘long assets’, which are designed to provide returns far beyond our own lifetime.
New Public Governance Models: Off public balance sheets yet for public interest
Societal-scale interventions and whole-city transition infrastructures require new models of governance and organisation, which are fundamentally wired to acknowledge the societal entanglement of value. This involves building new institutional structures, which need to be:
Systemically machine-readable. Off public balance sheets yet publicly accountable. Smart civic asset managers, which transparently balance the flows of value and interactions across an ecosystem of stakeholders with evolving incentives.
These civic-development institutions are crucial mechanisms for contracting system value flows and the adjacent many-to-many spillovers. They represent the necessary progression of Public Private Partnerships (PPP), acknowledging our complex reality while limiting rent-seeking incentives that are traditionally structured into investment propositions.
These institutions would bridge the gap in terms of:
Originating new approaches to financing. Structuring and contracting the uplift value of these infrastructure investments. Investing in the development of many micro community-driven assets — such as a network of urban forests — for generating collective outcomes. Pooling and balancing flows of value across the system.
Such civic-development vehicles will disrupt the existing dynamics of public/private relationships and prevent the use of rent-seeking mechanisms that are currently layered in every investment opportunity.
Innovating Funding: New mechanisms for contracting value flow
The challenge of financing this near-now transformation asset class is not the development of new funds in itself, but rather the structuring and contracting for spillover value in order to service the capital. This requires new ways and means of commingling the distributions of value and liabilities, generated and mitigated by these novel societal infrastructures.
This has all been made possible by developments in the application of smart contracts and distributed ledger technologies. Smart contracts give us the capacity to construct whole new sets of value flows and currencies. They allow and enable radically transparent, open, contingent, micro flows of value between stakeholders, facilitating an automated and almost frictionless means to transact, pool, aggregate, and couple across the ambient, micro, and known distributions of value and their spillovers, which, to date, were unaccountable and untradable.
While this future offers radical possibility, it also requires new digital institutional infrastructure, such as digital public registries for land. The provision of this public infrastructure is vital for unlocking this future and for creating next-generation investment markets for Civic Infrastructure Assets.
Ten Initial Recommendations
Making this future manifest in the near term requires tangible action now. A series of critical issues need to be addressed together if we are to make the necessary transition. For example, how Green New Deals and recovery investments concerning the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are structured over the next two quarters are essential to the direction we will take. While we continue to engage in research and development across several projects and with stakeholders from all sectors, the following initial recommendations are targeted in particular at governments (national and municipal) and strategic investment decision-makers. They form a six-month roadmap to create the necessary scaffolding that will enable a just transition to a post-carbon, post-Covid economy.
Novel types of infrastructure. It is vital that we broaden, at a policy level, the definitional scope of infrastructure beyond roads, public transport and energy, to include both civic and nature-based assets. We need to recognise the vital role novel infrastructure will play in the transition our cities and places face. This reclassification of infrastructure also needs to acknowledge the role tangible and intangible assets play in the functioning of our cities. While cities accept that these assets need substantial investment to enable net-zero transition, they are burdened by legacy financing and accounting mechanisms, as well as by the practical inability to capture value; both issues prevent them from making this intuitive leap. Impact investing. Social finance has paved the way for analysing a portfolio of returns rather than simply targeting a financial KPI. Now is the time to embed and advance these understandings and our initial outcomes-based finance strategies, developing a new investment thesis for transition infrastructures with a whole portfolio of impacts that can be captured in contracts. This will allow cities to escape the singularities of silo-value optimisation and the financial risk-return management of traditional infrastructures. It will enable them to capture a more holistic, population-scale stream of benefits from their transition investment portfolios. Co-beneficiary infrastructures. It is clearly critical that we take a co-beneficiary view of all our infrastructure investments, designing them specifically to build synergies instead of optimising investment in solutions for singular outcomes. For example, we can choose to optimise nature-based solutions for carbon sequestration (which will encourage us to establish fenced-off forest reserves, replacing critical agricultural land and possibly ignoring biodiversity) or we can approach nature-based solutions as vital co-beneficiary assets, which have carbon-capturing capacity but also the means to manage heat island effects for energy utilities, health outcomes for communities, sustainable urban drainage benefits for water utilities, flood risk reduction for insurance companies, and which address our growing biodiversity crisis. In this way, a tree becomes an excellent source of return beyond a traditional measure of IRR and the means to regenerate our cities. The design of infrastructure assets for co-beneficiary returns requires intentional advocacy and horizontal policy infrastructure. This will be vital if we are to use our intergenerational transition investment for greatest efficacy. Preferencing micro-infrastructures. Both resilience or anti-fragility, and community wealth development are necessary in an age of long emergencies. Across the global development landscape, we require a significant shift in our investment thesis, moving from a preference for large-scale, monolithic infrastructures to micro-networked, distributed infrastructure provision. To date, our urban and societal infrastructure development models have been skewed towards the large-scale and frequently disconnected from the local. A single, large forest is not the solution for cities, even if it feels easier and more efficient in terms of land assembly, procurement, and management. Instead, we need a network of dispersed micro urban forests, established and maintained by communities and neighbourhoods across the city, if we are to construct the intangible and tangible properties of these assets. This preference for micro and networked assets needs to be hardwired into our procurement thesis with appropriate community development and participation mechanisms. Rapid investment in digital infrastructure and capacity. The migration from analogue to digital infrastructure needs to be systemically advanced at scale and speed in order to facilitate the transitional revolution. Technical innovation investment will need to permeate a new spectrum of open, real-time, digital public services, ranging from data-sensing with Agent-Based-Models (ABM) capabilities to advanced digital public registries. Public investment in the development of these digital and oracle infrastructures — including the legal, financial, and regulatory standards and protocols — is vital to unlocking the new classes of business and value models necessary for an equitable transition. Transitioning from shovel-ready to shovel-worthy. Governments need to rapidly reassess the flow of infrastructure projects they have committed to fund, whether part of the Covid-19 recovery or pre-existing. This is necessary to ensure that they meet the priorities of the 21st century and are not locked into 2017/18 projections of the world to come. It also applies to investments in real estate, energy and transport, as these projects are often still ruled by short-term financing structures, with isolated linear value flows and private governance detached from the community wealth generation necessary as part of this transition investment. Building the rapid capacity for municipalities and provincial governments to undertake this review is vital and urgent, especially in a moment where there is increasing fiscal pressure and where economies worldwide are in a hiatus, providing a limited window of opportunity to redesign and reset infrastructures Developing new viability tools, mechanisms, and protocols. Our existing viability assessment tools and mechanisms are completely outdated, and do not take into account the strategic risks our cities and societies face. For example, we cannot speak about transformation of our food systems and urban landscape without addressing the land valuation practices that discount regenerative farming and that deprioritise urban forests in favour of condominium developments. These deeply embedded practices span appraisal firms, accounting practices, building permits, zoning regulations, and municipal tax rates. If governments commit to strategic investment into the novel infrastructures discussed here, the positive effect on adjacent industries’ assessed spillover values is bound to be significant. Strategic creation of lead markets for nature-based solutions will ensure the emergence of e.g. innovation sectors around finance, remote-sensing technologies, and smart-contracting services in cities and countries. Rebuilding public viability assessment tools, valuation mechanisms, discount rates, and appraisal incentives to take into account such upsides is a vital and necessary component of an investment system fit for an age of long emergencies. We make what we measure and, currently, we measure the wrong things. Developing alternative governance futures for transition infrastructures. PPP arrangements have not yielded the desired outcomes. Engineering a new typology of civic development vehicles that are off public balance sheets and yet publicly accountable should be the priority of every government. Rapid experiments on the ground. It is essential that governments invest early and quickly in a portfolio of experimental probes that advance novel micro-infrastructure financing experiments, from whole-street retrofits to urban forest networks. The development of adjacent supply chains, policies, institutional infrastructure, innovation, and data-and-evidence collection is equally essential. Investing to learn and build the capabilities of vital adjacent industries will be essential to the success of any large-scale deployment. We are involved in several EIT Climate-KIC projects that are already doing this, such as ReCode, the Health Clean Cities Deep Demonstration, and the Pandemic Response Projects focussing on district retrofits. Many more are needed. Market-making instruments.
Collective risk management facility. We need new hybrid institutions to pool and manage risk across both governmental departments and non-governmental sectors such as banks, utilities, and insurers. This pooling function will create the capacity to address the unmanaged long tail and the cascading risks that are a feature of the age of long emergencies. This function would further crystallise the demand for integrated procurement and co-beneficiary investment in civic infrastructure assets, thereby building the pathways for achieving outcomes such as lower asthma rates and decreased flooding occurrences.
Transition finance innovation sandbox. This should operate across government and non-governmental agencies, including policy-makers, regulators, professional institutes, standards agencies, investment houses and intermediaries, insurance organisations, rating agencies, and fintech startups, among others. Its primary purpose will be to support the design, experimentation, and implementation of new financial instruments and the necessary adjacent institutional infrastructure, including protocols, regulations, and standards for enabling the next-generation financial markets for transition investing.
Whole-value-chain investment. Governments will need to build on the learning from the many difficulties faced in initial Covid-19 response procurement, and invest in whole-value-chain renewal and innovation for a post-carbon, post-Covid economy. Addressing this crisis is not just about investing in a school or building a bridge, or even an urban forest. Its scale requires us to invest in the development of all of the resources and supply chains needed to truly build back better. The scale and speed of transition means we cannot wait for organic supply and demand matching and coordination to emerge. This will require the intentional acceleration of innovation capacity across whole supply chains.
For example, nature-based solutions require investment in remote-sensing capabilities as well as new financial instruments, and investment in elements as diverse as the production of seedlings, new labour market skills, or the capabilities and organisational cultures in municipal green space departments. The acceleration of these near-now infrastructure assets need rapid, coordinated investment across this whole supply chain, not only to match increased demand but to innovate practices, methods, and machinery for a post-carbon economy.
Building the institutional capacity to support the investments and innovation across whole value chains is vital to addressing the challenges of the transition and requires immediate governmental investment. This investment thesis needs to work in synchrony with the Green New Deals to drive the whole value chain innovation necessary for a post-carbon economy transition that is just and inclusive.
Conclusion
The structural transformation our societies and cities need present us with systemic challenges that requires a system-based response. The announcement of new commercial or quasi-commercial funds will not resolve this issue.
Our investment thesis is straightforward: we see the deep need for a new typology of value structuring which is macro in scale with regards to systemic orchestration, and micro and hyperlocal in the development of co-benefinary responses. We do not believe that projects simply connected to linear KPIs, funded by short-term investments, and governed by divergent long-term interests, are able to meet the urgent challenge any longer.
We see the roadmap unfolding through the parallel development of fundamental yet practical innovations across key asset classes, such as nature-based solutions and whole-city or whole-district retrofits. The political will and commitment is already manifest, yet the technical and functional capacity remains underdeveloped. To achieve the necessary scale and speed of systemic change will require a movement of open innovators and strategic sponsors across governments, sectors, and geographies.
We see cities and countries emerging as leaders and lead market makers as they invest in the digital transformation of their systems, creating secondary industries of technical expertise, and viewing their cities as platforms for novel asset development.
The next phase of this journey for us and our many partners is to develop on-the-ground experiments and to gather evidence in order to test and validate our investment hypothesis. We will openly share what we discover and learn.
If you want to find out more about how to engage with this mission, please contact Indy Johar, Anastasia Mourogova Millin, Raj Kalia, Joost Beunderman or Chloe Treger at [email protected]. | https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/bridging-the-gap-infrastructuring-tomorrow-d19971b1f351 | ['Dark Matter'] | 2021-03-27 11:42:55.546000+00:00 | ['Fintech', 'Finance', 'Government', 'Cities', 'Infrastructure'] |
Clustering method 3 | 找出的特徵向量如同 PCA 等降維方法一般，但此對應著最佳劃分圖的方法。最終需要再將連續的特徵向量離散化，即為特徵的劃分，進而得到欲達成的分群。
－ 演算法 －
輸入：資料集 V ，以及分群數目 k
輸出：目標分群集合 Clusters
求出資料點的鄰接矩陣 A（Affinity matrix）。 對鄰接矩陣 A 的第 i 列加總作為對角矩陣 D 第（i, i）的元素值，並算出矩陣拉普拉斯矩陣 L 。 從矩陣 L 中找出對應前 l 個特徵值的特徵向量 x_1 , x_2 , … , x_l ，並建構 n x l 維的矩陣 X = [ x_1 | x_2 | … | x_l ]。 對矩陣 X 的每一列做正規化（R → [0 , 1]），得到 Y 矩陣。 將矩陣 Y 的每一列做為新資料點（即原資料點降維成 l 維的資料點），透過 K-means 或其他分群方法分成 k 類。 若 Y 的第 i 列被歸為第 j 類，則原資料點 s_i 即為第 j 類。
－ 算法實作 －
使用Sklearn.cluster.MeanShift套件：
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from sklearn.cluster import SpectralClustering
from sklearn import datasets #create datasets
X,y = datasets.make_blobs(n_samples=50, centers=3, n_features=2, random_state= 20, cluster_std = 1.5) #parameter setting
n = 3 #number of clusters #Spectral Clustering method
model = SpectralClustering(n_clusters = n,
assign_labels = 'discretize')
model.fit(X)
labels = model.fit_predict(X) #results visualization
plt.figure()
plt.scatter(X[:,0], X[:,1], c = labels)
plt.axis('equal')
plt.title('Prediction') plt.show()
左圖為原始資料集，右圖為譜分群設定 n = 3 時的結果。
n = 2 時，譜分群就會將距離較近的兩群合為一類。
用於影像分割 …
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from skimage.transform import rescale
from sklearn.cluster import SpectralClustering
import cv2 #load image
img = cv2.imread('AIA.png')
img = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2RGB)
img = rescale(img, 0.2)
rows, cols, chs= img.shape #convert image shape [rows, cols, 3] into [rows*cols, 3]
feature_img = np.reshape(img, [-1, 3]) #consider the data without density-dependent factor
uni_feature_img, idx = np.unique(feature_img, axis=0, return_inverse = True) #parameters setting
n = 15 #number of clusters #Spectral Clustering method
model = SpectralClustering(n_clusters = n, random_state = 40)
model.fit(uni_feature_img)
labels = model.fit_predict(uni_feature_img) #results visualization
fig = plt.figure(figsize = (20, 12))
ax = fig.add_subplot(121)
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(122)
ax.imshow(img)
ax1.imshow(np.reshape(labels[idx], [rows, cols])) plt.show()
此例僅考慮顏色的因素，並不考慮密度，因此同顏色的像素都將視為同一點。
左圖僅顯示被歸為背景藍色的像素；右圖則表示被歸為白色系的像素
－ Spectral Clustering算法總結－
優點：
只需要資料點間的相似矩陣，因此對於稀疏資料點的分群有顯著的效果。 此算法利用拉普拉斯矩陣降維，所以對高維度的資料集的分群計算複雜度相對低。
缺點：
若降維後的維度依舊很高，則會影響分群的速度也會導致分群的效果不好，因此選擇降維的 k 值尤為重要。 亦會因為相似矩陣的計算方式得到不同的分群效果。
－ 參考資料 － | https://medium.com/ai-academy-taiwan/clustering-method-3-879ce60ab0d5 | ['Yuki Liu'] | 2019-03-16 02:27:05.315000+00:00 | ['Clustering', 'Machine Learning', 'Spectral Clustering', 'Clustering Algorithm', 'Unsupervised Learning'] |
Emotional vs. Sexual Infidelity: When Stereotypes Become Excuses | Emotional vs. Sexual Infidelity: When Stereotypes Become Excuses
“She was frigid” — how gender bias adds fuel to the fires of betrayal.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
By Kara Post-Kennedy
Apparently it’s official–in the largest study ever conducted on the subject, it was confirmed that heterosexual men were more likely than heterosexual women to be most angered/upset about sexual infidelity, while their partners were disproportionately hurt by emotional betrayal. The reason for this is touted by researchers as “evolutionary” rather than psychological or social–
Men face a problem that women never face: paternal uncertainty. They never know if their child is genetically related to them, there is always a chance the child could have been fathered by another man. In contrast, women never face the problem of maternal uncertainty. (1)
I guess this makes sense on a very primitive level–but the study was in no way confined to people who shared children or who hoped to one day have a child, so what gives? If sex is merely about reproduction, why would we experience jealousy at all? Is jealousy a learned behavior or is it intrinsic to the human experience of love and lust? Also, this evolutionary perspective does not explain in any way why women are so threatened by emotional infidelity.
I believe that gender stereotypes and societal norms are more to blame for this disparity than anything else. After all, don’t we collectively agree that women are more likely than men to withhold marital sex (“Not tonight, dear, I have a headache”) and men are more likely to avoid emotional intimacy/labor? So this heightens the sense of betrayal the partner feels–why can she/he open up sexually/emotionally to someone else and not me?
But the bias runs even deeper than that–a woman whose husband has “cheated” sexually is ALWAYS perceived as an innocent victim by social rules, and the “other woman” is perceived as a “slut”. But a wife isn’t going to gain much sympathy or traction if her husband is getting emotional (but not sexual) nurturing elsewhere, because that must mean she has neglected her primary feminine role in the relationship. Likewise, a man who has a wife stepping out on him sexually will NOT be perceived as a victim so much as a failure.
Now you can argue about this or that case because I am painting with broad strokes but this is societal conditioning that we all accept on some level. We believe that men crave sex and women crave connection, so a man is, therefore, more threatened by sex and a woman is more threatened by connection. But doesn’t all of this just amount to excuses for not honoring your primary relationship?
More statistics show that a whopping 80% of divorces are initiated by women, for various reasons, many of which somehow include the notion that their husbands are not “connecting” with and responding to their needs, whether because of infidelity, substance abuse, workaholism or, in extreme cases, abuse. This feeds into our collective belief that men are incapable of true intimacy–but again, that is not an inherent quality of masculinity–it is learned and modeled. It ultimately boils down to a “boys will be boys” mentality where we shrug and say that he has nothing more to offer.
But if that were true, why would emotional “affairs” exist? Why would men be out seeking emotional intimacy if they are incapable of it? For that matter, if women have less interest in sex than men, then why are they pursuing it outside of marriage in increasing numbers?
Our stereotypes are giving us all a whole bunch of built-in excuses for forming dysfunctional attachments to begin with and then betraying our commitments when our dysfunctional attachments fail to satisfy. It is a vicious circle that keeps men and women from healthy, happy love and allows for a lot of finger-pointing instead of looking in the mirror. Infidelity, whether emotional or sexual, has got to be the biggest relationship ending scapegoat there is–but make no mistake, it IS a scapegoat.
Listen, I ***GUESS*** a one-night stand type betrayal MIGHT happen in the context of an otherwise healthy marriage (nobody’s perfect?) BUT anyone who engages long-term in an ongoing relationship outside of their marriage is NOT happy in it. Full stop. UNLESS it is part of the marital agreement (zero judgments if it is, btw), stepping out to get your sexual or emotional needs met means you are otherwise not getting your sexual or emotional needs met.
But then we like to toss around our gender stereotypes to excuse our behavior and to vilify the betrayed partner, don’t we?
She was frigid.
He didn’t listen.
All she cares about is the kids.
All he cares about is work.
And so on.
Until we are willing to toss the notion that our behavior is NOT our choice, we will be unable to solve the puzzle of what makes for a great relationship. Personal responsibility is the biggest piece of the picture that ends in happily ever after. When we stop using our gender as an excuse and our partner’s gender as a directive, then we start unpacking what it means to be in true partnership.
Infidelity sucks. But it is also, in many cases, entirely understandable. Marriage is seen as the holy grail of relationships but really it is just a patriarchal institution that dates back to the days when women were property to be bartered and unfortunately it still smacks of this; in a recent study, 70% of participants felt that a woman should still take her husband’s last name.
Apart from the amazing tax benefits (hmm, doesn’t sound like separation of church and state, but okay), marriage is basically at its core just an agreement to never change your mind and/or evolve and/or assert your own best interests for the rest of your life. A truly healthy relationship shouldn’t require a legally binding contract to keep it together.
Sorry, I’m right about this.
We like to believe that “failed” relationships are always the result of “bad” people making “wrong” choices, but nothing could be further from the truth; and YES, JUST as often, long-term marriages are the result of weak people making unhealthy choices, so there you have it.
Ultimately we have to take individual responsibility not only for our actions and behaviors, but for our own happiness. Playing the blame/shame game is not for grown-ups. If you are in an unhappy/unhealthy/stagnant relationship, infidelity, whether emotional or sexual may seem like a good short-term solution to get those needs met, but it’s like slapping a bandaid on a wound that needs stitches (or possibly surgery).
Face the problems head-on, do the work to heal the rift and then, whether you decide it’s happily-ever-after or not, you will have the tools to form a more perfect union going forward.
—
More from Kara Post-Kennedy on Medium: | https://medium.com/hello-love/emotional-vs-sexual-infidelity-when-stereotypes-become-excuses-f9f30750c31d | ['The Good Men Project'] | 2020-10-15 14:31:26.287000+00:00 | ['Emotions', 'Intimacy', 'Love', 'Infidelity', 'Gender Roles'] |
Kadena and the Scalability Trilemma: | The scalability trilemma coined by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), describes that it is hard to maximize the three desirable attributes of a blockchain, decentralization, scalability, and security. Vitalik claims that blockchains can at most maximize two characteristics at the expense of the third attribute. The trilemma implies scalable blockchain systems require making these tradeoffs.
Bitcoin and Ethereum can be described as decentralized and secure but not scalable. They rolled out on the most resilient distributed application infrastructure in the history of computing, Proof-of-Work (PoW). However, little progress has been made to scale them for robust applications due to network politics and anti-competitive practices. As a result, we have long transaction times and high fees. Kadena created the world’s first scalable PoW blockchain by addressing the core issues that make it challenging to scale BTC and ETH. Kadena takes public blockchain and cryptocurrency to the next level by scaling BTC’s Nakamoto-PoW-Consensus and enhancing smart contracts with a revolutionary programming language, Pact. Kadena’s Chainweb is the only scalable base-layer-sharded-blockchain that runs on PoW. Chainweb innovates and efficiently delivers each desirable blockchain attribute; decentralization, security, and scalability.
Scalability:
The worst thing about current Bitcoin and Ethereum scalability for robust applications is not the speed. It’s the fact that a transaction might not even make it on a block due to congestion. There is a money risk and a time risk. We might never get our money, and that time we lose on failed transactions might cost us more money. You can only fit so many transactions into a block and there’s a limit to how low you can make the block time. Therefore, the only way to scale blockchains is to produce more blocks in parallel.
Kadena figured out that running chains in parallel, like previous attempts to scale BTC have done, creates two problems. Each of these completely standalone blockchains has an entirely different currency, and 51% attacks are much easier to carry out. Chainweb protocol solves both of these problems by braiding the chains together. For a simple two-chain configuration, in addition to making each block include the hash of the previous block on the same chain, you also have it include the hash of the last block on the other chain.
No matter how many Bitcoin clones appear the fundamental problem that prevents it from being scalable remains. At the bottom, we see a visualization of what two braided chains would look like.
The main scalability innovation is a graph layout strategy developed by Will Martino, co-founder of Kadena. The goal of this strategy is to provide a standard on how to scale a PoW network. The strategy is derived from graph theory and is used to braid parallel chains together using hashes. It considers the number of hops to get to the farthest chain as a diameter, k, and the number of edges (the hashes that connect the blocks from other chains) as a degree, d. This strategy is critical in making sure Chainweb does not congest; it minimizes the number of hops it takes to get to the furthest chain and minimizes the chains each chain is connected to.
This chart shows how many chains it would take to minimize the number of hops and minimize each chain's connections for multiple degrees and diameters.
This is the strategy for connecting ten chains visualized with degree three and diameter two.
This is the strategy for braiding ten chains visualized. Hashes are visualized as black lines and chains as blue circles. Here the degree is three because each chain is connected to three other chains via hashes, and the diameter is two because we can check the furthest chain after verifying the hashes of two chains.
Using the same strategy, Kadena successfully forked to 20 chains while preserving the original ten chains. This is Chainweb’s current configuration; it stores three different hashes per block. This configuration has degree three, but it now has diameter three, so we have to wait for three blocks after a transaction before the whole network’s hash power is protecting it. After three blocks, you can transfer coins from one chain to any other chain. The hash braiding gives us the Merkle tree structure needed to do cross-chain SPV proofs, yielding a single $KDA token across chains.
This is Chainweb’s current 20 chain configuration visualized. Here the degree is three because each chain is still connected to three other chains via hashes. However, the diameter is now three because we can check the furthest chain after verifying the hashes of just three other chains.
Visualization of Merkle trees and SPV proofs
20 chain configuration colorized.
Using the same strategy, Chainweb can scale to tens of thousands of chains. Potentially well into the hundreds of thousands. Obviously, there are limits. Let’s say if Chainweb forked to one million chains, there’s not going to be any way to get the bandwidth requirements, with today’s infrastructure, for that type of load. However, using the same strategy, Chainweb can adapt to handle a million chains. For any real demand, Chainweb offers the best throughput.
stats may vary
Unlike current top protocols, Chainweb’s innovations already produce industrial throughput while keeping gas prices extremely low.
Gas is an innovation from Ethereum, which implemented a cost model for smart contracts. Vitalik concluded the best way to solve the high gas price problem, for now, is EIP 1559, which does three things.
1. EIP-1559 diminishes miner revenue. An ETH hard fork could be a possibility.
2. A portion of the ETH rewards will be burned, resulting in less ETH in the market.
3. Reduces transfer fees to mitigate insufficient GAS errors.
Vitalik is aware of the high fee problem and knows the solution is not EIP-1559; Ethereum will still congest easily even after EIP-1559 leading to high gas prices. Kadena has concluded that the only way to scale proof-of-work is by producing more blocks using an innovative graph layout to braid the chains in parallel. There is no limit to the Chainweb block production rate.
Kadena is never going to have an EIP-1559 issue; miners making money from high gas fees is acceptable, but it won’t change the problem that congestion increases gas prices. Also, as seen with recent gas surges on Binance Smart Chain, even fast finality PoS systems hit a limit. Industrial-strength scalability can’t be faked. Chainweb can scale to any load; any sharded PoS system will grind to a halt with enough shards and experience massive security breaches. By solving for scalability, Kadena finally unleashes blockchain for universal adoption.
Security:
A Gauntlet.network simulation proved that Chainweb’s security stays stable for the same amount of hash rate no matter how many chains the network grows to. Chains get more secured as there are more chains to attack, a property unique to Chainweb. Ethereum moving away from PoW to PoS for scalability is creating a dangerous precedent for cryptocurrencies. The go-to consensus mechanism for creating new blockchains seems to be some form of PoS which trades off decentralization and security for scalability. Proof-of-stake requires validators always to be online as they can’t miss any calls. The entire protocol’s trust comes from this high level of interactivity. We have already seen slashing issues erupt in PoS networks where an outage leads to blameless operators being punished. If there was a massive power outage, PoW systems could return to normal in no time, not the case with PoS systems.
The crux of PoS is that it utilizes a system that allows for the free exchange of money, AKA crypto itself, with no regulation. Therefore, it bears upon economics and will. The moment a sufficiently motivated crypto whale, not someone lower like a crypto minnow, determines that they want to attack a PoS network, it’s just a matter of spending money. PoS has a structure that impedes a truly decentralized system, like central banking. PoW has been battle-tested to incentivize ethical behavior while making it challenging to be a bad actor. Currently, with all the new entrants to crypto, money is easy to make. When that changes, attacking PoS will become lucrative.
ETH 2.0 Trades security for scalability
The design flaws of Ethereum’s smart contract language, Solidity, have caused a myriad of security issues. The smart contract language Pact is an innovation by Stuart Popejoy, Kadena CEO. It is Turing-incomplete, which means it prevents the most dangerous recursive bugs that have been exploited on ETH smart contracts from being possible in the first place; it is not a limitation. It incorporates human readability where the code that is going to execute is the one you wrote, not a lower version. Pact smart contracts are more accessible because they’re stored in a human-readable format on-chain. With Ethereum, you only see the bytecode. Pact’s built-in formal verification mitigates human error by preventing unintended outcomes and consequences during execution based on the smart contract inputs. When Pact detects any errors, it will automatically roll back a smart contract to a previous state and prevent further updates. A blockchain is best used for updating states, making sure rules are enforced, continual event reporting, and security. Pact was designed with these principles in mind.
Decentralization:
Will Martino has stated that they did not believe in launching Kadena with a multi-billion market cap that would enrich early investors at launch. Kadena believes participants intrigued by their innovations should get a chance to fairly mine on the network compared to other protocols that favor the wealthy. PoW ensures that Chainweb will not suffer from an invasive centralization of wealth. Chainweb’s unique properties also result in environmentally friendly mining. It can process more using less hash power than the top protocols.
Ethereum is making it impossible to interact natively with other PoW chains. They want to prevent other PoW projects from being able to do decentralized bridges on Ethereum. They only make excuses about politics and overcomplicate the matter with unclear ETH 2.0 specifications. Ethereum is where it is today because it is PoW; it is a more useful BTC. Ethereum is hostile to miners with EIP-1559 deliberately because transitioning to PoS can crash ETH. When ETH 2.0 was first ready to deploy, multiple versions of ETH 2.0 suddenly appeared. Politics couldn’t decide which one to implement, and it was further delayed again and again. The timing of these events was interesting when considering ETH price spikes. ETH’s hashing algorithm is monopolized; only hardware made for the ETH hashing algorithm can mine ETH. These are anti-competitive and anti-decentralization practices. ETH 2.0 promises to validate potentially hundreds of chains. However, Kadena has already delivered that with Chainweb and Pact while at the same time scaling PoW.
Kadena has one of the strongest interoperability stories in the industry. Pact can be written and deployed on the Tendermint blockchain, which can then be connected to other blockchains via the Cosmos network. Kadena’s Pact language is open source and can be integrated with other blockchains. Kadena is currently developing an integration to the Tendermint chain, an open-source consensus platform, to provide a free, open-source consensus layer.
Tendermint is a key component of the Cosmos Network, a network of interconnected blockchains connected through the Inter-blockchain Communication Protocol.
The team at Kadena is going above and beyond by working with miner manufacturers to make sure limited miners are sold to single entities to produce a good community spread. Most $KDA mining was done with CPUs and GPUs at launch; FPGAs were prominent sometime after that. Finally, ASIIC’s that launched in September 2020 dramatically increased the number of miners on the network. Hardware that supports Kadena’s hashing algorithm is not monopolized and can be used to mine other coins. This theoretically enables maximal decentralization; all these factors have made Kadena one of the most profitable coins to mine recently.
It is an exciting time for Kadena. Years of hard work and collaborations with other communities are starting to pay off. Kadena is confident Pact will be adopted because it is determined to open source fundamental industrial-scale financial infrastructure. Developers are already deploying robust Pact applications. DeFi’s, NFT’s, DAO’s, every significant crypto use case will be open-sourced on Chainweb by the end of 2021. It will be a no-brainer for developers to innovate Pact code in real-time with little overhead.
Kadena has made the scalability trilemma a thing of the past.
Decentralized & Secure. Transactions on BTC and ETH can take between 5 minutes to an hour, making them hard to adopt for mainstream use. Kadena retains the decentralization and security benefits of PoW while using an innovative strategy to produce throughput that puts the competition to shame.
Security & Scalability. Secure, scalable, but centralized would describe traditional databases like SQL, Oracle, SAP, even Hyperledger. The data stored in these systems are managed by limited personnel with some backups, but not hundreds or thousands of nodes in a decentralized system. Chainweb’s properties make it more decentralized as the number of chains grows and the number of miners increases. Kadena Kuro provides a lightning-fast layer-2 rail that leverages Chainweb’s public PoW for settlement. Layer-2 is the best way to get fast finality. Kuro’s ScalableBFT protocol handles thousands of validators without slowing down, so you can ramp up layer-2 security as needed. Kuro is available on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Scalability & De-centralization. Some blockchains sacrifice some decentralization for scalability and lower security. For these blockchains, the consensus mechanism tends to be Proof-of-Stake like ETH 2.0 is supposed to be someday. As reviewed, PoS can be manipulated by whales or bad actors. Chainweb can’t be subject to this manipulation and enhances smart contract security with PACT.
Kadena delivered a real solution to solving the scalability trilemma built on a proven consensus protocol, PoW. Chain braiding adds unique properties to the mix, but each chain is still a PoW chain. PoW has withstood the test of time. PoS systems are still considered open research. There is clear value and opportunity in $KDA for scaling Chainweb on PoW and innovating smart contracts with Pact. | https://medium.com/@kadenacommunity/kadena-and-the-scalability-trilemma-68f5d72eb16a | [] | 2021-09-10 02:05:18.195000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Kadena', 'Bitcoin', 'Ethereum', 'Mining'] |
Inovia 2020 in a Snapshot & Happy Holidays! | We celebrate the end of this incredibly transformative year with gratitude. While 2020 presented significant challenges, we feel energized to have helped founders take on this new era of digital acceleration. It was also a year marked by introspection and a recommitment to the fundamentals of doing right by our communities — with a focus on health, diversity, and inclusion. We meditated together, welcomed speakers that helped us approach well-being with greater consciousness and launched our Great Board Commitment. We hope that our events and support made an impact and wish you all a safe holiday and a prosperous 2021.
2020 in a snapshot
9 new portfolio companies, including:
… plus 11 follow-on investments across
venture and growth and
15 new and follow-on discovery investments
• • •
US $1.4B raised across the portfolio
35 financing transactions
3 exits
6,920 employees
Inovia Sessions welcomed hundreds to dig in
on topics that will shape our 2021 and beyond, including
healthcare, fin-tech, remote teams, and marketplaces
• • •
And despite a lot of physical distance, we found so much to be grateful for, and new ways to stay connected: | https://blog.inovia.vc/inovia-2020-in-a-snapshot-happy-holidays-92397e75e05e | ['Inovia Capital'] | 2020-12-16 23:17:42.860000+00:00 | ['Portfolio', 'Team'] |
Necromancy for Band Geeks | The book of incantations held aloft in one hand, her jeweled athame dagger in the other, Angelica stood in the center of her living room within a protective circle of salt. She raised her eyes to the ceiling, pointed the blade to the floor and chanted the final words of the summoning invocation.
“Ba’hal arooth tich set f’tule al-gi-brah!”
A reddish, glowing circle, small and dim at first, appeared on the floor near the coffee table. Angelica worried she’d started a fire, but saw no signs of flame or smoke. A noise rose from the spot, like a windstorm growing closer, soon rattling the walls and threatening her ears with a high-pitched whine. As the spot grew in size the color shifted from red to orange, then yellow, and finally, blinding white.
Angelica shielded her eyes but couldn’t look away as a figure began to rise from the portal. Her breath stopped as a man took shape within. A man and not entirely a man. The body of a man, clothed in the rich silken doublet and hose of a Renaissance prince, but his head was that of a three-horned goat, his face the grimace of an ogre, his eyes burned red like coals beneath a flat brow and long, pointed ears. As the demon’s hideous form took shape, the light dimmed, and the roar subsided. When all was still, he stood and glared at Angelica with a malice she felt on her face like heat from a furnace.
“Who dares summon me to Earth, disturbing my work in the underworld? Who, I say!”
Angelica lowered her arms and her eyes and said, “It is I, oh lord of darkness, Angelica, who called you forth.”
“You?” mocked the ashen-colored apparition. His chuckle, like the rattling of dried bones, shivered Angelica’s spine. “You pitiful, weak, human woman? You dare invoke my name, the most feared and beloved of demons, Master Leonard?”
She raised her eyes and frowned. “Leonard?”
“Yes!” the demon boomed. “Leonard! Master Leonard, the grand-master of the nocturnal orgies of demons!”
“Wait a minute” she said, flipping pages in the book. “I thought I summoned Leraiel.”
“I have several names, mortal fool!” he growled, “Leonard is my favorite.”
Angelica hesitated, her curiosity piqued. “But… Leonard? Really?”
“Yes, really!” came the angry reply. “Why do you ask, insignificant wretch?”
“Well, it’s just…” she lowered her eyes to hide a grin. “I don’t know, I just thought, you’d prefer to be called something more… impressive.”
The fiend’s eyes widened with shock and flickered red and gold with anger. “Impressive? What’s not impressive about Leonard? I told you I am Master Leonard! I command thirty legions in hell! I am master of ceremonies for the unholiest of demonic orgies, a devourer of mortal flesh, high executioner of the living and the dead! Those who worship me gain power over the weak-willed, the ability to transform into ravenous beasts, and even to fly! That’s not impressive?”
“I guess it’s just me. See, I knew this guy in high school named Leonard, and well, I mean, we never really did anything, but we sort of…”
“Enough, woman!” The monster’s bellow shook the windows. “I am in the book, you know! The Dictionnaire Infernal, by none other than Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy! Demon number 40, right after Lechies and before Lucifer himself! I’m not some third-rate goblin you can dismiss and mock, just because you had a bad relationship with some pimply-faced band geek who happened to have my name!”
“How did you know we were in band?”
The brute narrowed his eyes and smirked. “Really? You’re going to ask me that? It’s written all over you. Once a band geek, always a band geek. One can always tell another.”
“You mean, you…? You were…”
“First chair trombone, yes.”
“Wow! What school?”
Again Leonard’s eyes flashed fiery indignation. “That impresses you? I’m a legendary, evil demon with powers beyond human imagination! But you’re all ‘wow’ at the thought I played trombone?”
“Well, with your name, it kinda makes sense.”
“Oh? Does it? What about you? ‘Angelica’? Your parents must have had stratospheric expectations of you.”
“My friends call me Angel.”
“God, that’s worse. I bet you played flute.”
“Hey, you’re pretty good at this.”
“Of course I am! I possess the mastery of arcane forces you could not fathom! I can bend time to my will! I can change the future and erase the past! I can certainly tell a flute player a mile off. You’re too small and thin for a larger instrument. And your fingers are long and delicate. If not clarinet, then flute. Add the fact that you are blonde, and it’s definitely flute.”
Angelica took note of the compliments but wondered at the blonde reference. She smiled. “Um, if you’re so powerful, do you know why I summoned you?”
“Yes. Why do you think I’m so grumpy?”
“What is it, then?”
“You still have to say it.”
“I do?”
“Yes, dammit!” Leonard screamed. Angelica smelled smoke. “You have to make the request formally!”
“Why”
“I don’t know! I don’t make the rules!”
“Okay, okay. I just figured, you being so all powerful…”
He scowled at her. “Snark does not become you.”
She pressed her lips together to fight her smile and cleared her throat. “Okay. Here goes. I want you to…”
“It begins…” he thundered, “Oh Great and Powerful Master of the Dark, Leonard!”
Angelica couldn’t stifle her laughter. It exploded from her lips before she could clamp her hand over her mouth. She coughed through her fingers, then bent over and joggled in silence.
Leonard folded his arms and stared at her, tapping his foot. “When you are quite ready” he sneered.
She turned away and breathed deeply. Her exhalations still rattled in her throat as tiny giggles. She turned back but couldn’t look Leonard in the eye. “Okay. Okay, um… okay. Here goes. Oh, great and power… powerful…” She snorted, recovered, and tried to continue. “Master of the Dark…”
It was too much. She doubled over with loud guffaws, then knelt on the floor and sat on one hip, holding her sides. A full minute passed, the grey-skinned hellion rolling his eyes and checking his fingernails.
“If you think you can contain your jocularity” he scoffed, “we can take the preamble as read. Could we speed things up a bit? I don’t have all eon.”
“Sure, sure.” Angelica cleared her throat and got to her feet. She took a deep breath, fought against one last urge to laugh and said, “Ready.”
Leonard side-eyed Angelica, waiting for another outburst. “Alright, then.” His next words came in the sing-song cadence of a high school girl reciting for a teacher she hates. “What purpose have you in summoning me from the depths of hell, puny, useless human?”
Angelica smiled, making Leonard frown and wag a sharp-nailed finger. She forced a serious look, cleared her throat again and mimicked his rhythm and tone. “I want you to be my date for the class reunion next month.”
Leonard face-palmed. The heat of his irritation sizzled away the sweat on his brow and gave off a light hiss and a wisp of steam that rose over his misshapen head. He sighed and regarded Angelica as if she were naive or stupid or both. “I knew before you asked” he sighed, “but hearing it is somehow worse.”
“Well? It’s what I want. It’s why I did all this.” She gestured at the salt on the floor, pointed to the book and the dagger and shrugged. “So? Did I do it right or not?”
“Yes, you did everything right” he said, not hiding his condescension.
“Okay” she said, “So? I did it right. Do I get what I asked for?”
“I get your soul for it, you know.”
“I know. It’s worth it, believe me.”
Leonard did not believe it possible, but he was surprised by her answer. “Really? Do you even know what that means?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I do. You get my soul. For all eternity. In hell.”
“And just what do you think that will be like?”
“I suppose it will hurt.”
Leonard stared a moment, slack-jawed. “Hurt?” He chuckled again, a bucket of cold bones thrown down an empty well. “You think it will hurt?”
“Yeah. It’ll hurt. All the time.”
“For all eternity!” he shrieked, his voice now chorused by a million tortured souls at his command. “But hurt it will not! It will be the agony of your flesh burned from your bones in the molten bowels of the Earth, then rematerialized and frozen in blizzards of ice! The shards blown by gale force winds will pierce and slice your body, leaving you bleeding from a million gashes! The wounds will attract a billion flies, who will feed on your blood, then lay their eggs in your open sores! You will endure the horror of the larvae growing inside you and consuming your flesh until you explode, a human host to a trillion biting wasps that eat your remains and excrete you as liquid goo! Then… then!” Leonard barked, his arms outstretched, his eyes blazing, “Then… you are made whole, and it all begins again!”
“I get it.” Angelica was unmoved by the fiend’s litany. “It’ll be bad.”
Leonard’s voice shook the foundations of the house. “Did I mention the ‘for all eternity’ part?”
“Yes!” she shouted back, reaching the end of her patience. “I get it! Fire and ice and blood and flies and goo! Over and over and over for all eternity! Never-ending torment and agony from now until the end of the world! I! Get! It!”
Leonard smiled. “Very well, then. You understand the terms. This will be the easiest soul I ever earned. Just be your date at the reunion, right?”
“With two conditions.”
The demon’s smile grew wary. “Ah, I should have known. What conditions?”
“Well, I’m sure you know that, being a band geek, I was teased mercilessly.”
“You probably deserved it.”
“No I did not! I listened to your spiel, now you shut up and listen to me!”
“Okay, okay” he smirked, “calm down, chill out, or whatever.”
“Yeah, sure. You can be all brimstone and hellfire, but when a woman gets angry, then it’s all ‘Hey, calm down, bitch. Don’t frown, it makes you look ugly!’ Damn! Men are the same even if they’re not human!” Angelica stood, her hands on her hips, her face set and her eyes boring into Leonard’s
He collected himself. “All right, fair’s fair. What conditions?”
“The people in my class are a bunch of entitled snobs. They were then, they’re worse now. I’ve kept up online. God! Douchebags, that’s what they are!”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“They’re successful, the bastards. A few created startups and sold them for millions or billions. But most of them are doing great, high paying jobs in the C-suite, or they married rich, living their beautiful lives with their beautiful spouses, raising beautiful kids and vacationing in the Bahamas. It’s disgusting!”
“And you want to show them up.”
“Big time.”
“So?”
“So. Can you ditch this whole ugly-as-a-blobfish get up? Can you make yourself a handsome, strong, successful human man?”
Leonard snickered, the cold bones slightly warmed over. “Easily. In fact, my specialty is appearing as a devastatingly handsome military officer, to lure beautiful young women into the forest.”
“Really? What happens in the forest?”
“I seduce them, impregnate them with cold semen, and they miscarry the babies.”
Angelica’s brow could not have furrowed any deeper. “Cold semen?”
“I said I don’t make the rules. Look it up.”
She waved her hands, still scowling. “Okay, but none of that. I’m not putting up with cold semen or miscarried babies.”
“Agreed.”
“But hey, could you be a Navy SEAL? They’re the hottest!”
“Easy.”
“An officer? A captain?”
“Commander. They lead SEAL teams. I’ve taken my men on dangerous secret operations. I‘ll hint at being the team that got bin Laden, but of course I can’t talk about it.”
Angelica’s happy laugh reached Leonard as a crystalline wind chime moved by a spring breeze. He liked the sensation.
“That’s great!” she gushed. “That’s effin’ fantastic!”
Leonard assumed a fatherly air. “If you are going to spend all eternity in hell, you’ll have to give up the fake curses like ‘effin’. It just won’t do.”
“What can I say? My mother was strict.”
“So am I.”
Leonard’s hint reached Angelica as a match struck in her belly setting dry kindling alight. She liked the sensation.
The hellion smiled. “And the other condition?”
“Yeah. Um. You won’t like it.”
“I don’t expect to.”
“They’re going to hold a talent contest.”
Leonard stared at her a beat, then burst into maniacal guffaws. The booming laughter echoed from the walls and rattled the dishes in the cupboards. Angelica squinted and held her hands over her ears. The slapping of his thighs sounded like rifle shots. Breathless, he wheezed a last chortle, and his deep inhale to recover was the roar of a tornado. A full minute passed before he could speak.
“Oh, dear Satan and all his devils protect me! You’re serious?”
She frowned at his teasing. “Yes, I’m serious!”
“And just what…” he giggled, “just what would we do?”
“Well, I was thinking… you can make us do anything, with magic, right?”
“Oh, yes. You want to do a magic act?”
“No.”
“I saw you in half? Then reveal you are really, physically sawed in half, your entrails spilling out in a great gush of blood? You smile and wave while they all run screaming from the hall?”
“No, no, no.” She smiled. “But it’s a great idea.”
He smiled in return. “Kind of a ‘Carrie’ vibe, no?”
Her laughter again reached him in a way both unfamiliar and welcome.
“I was thinking” she said, “of a magical dance number. Like if Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sold their souls to create a dance that would astound the world. You a dashing officer, resplendent in your dress uniform. Me, a Helen of Troy beauty in a fabulous, flowing gown that would make Oscar de la Renta cry. We’d float and spin and glide like glass figurines on ice. You would throw me in the air and I would float back into your arms like a leaf on the wind. A dance that could never be repeated, not by mortals, that would stand as the ultimate… the perfect…” Angelica hesitated and dropped her lashes a moment. When she looked up she met his eye. “The perfect ‘fuck you’ to those douchebags.”
Leonard’s grey cheeks blushed slightly. He smiled. “I like it. I like it a lot.” He tapped his chin with a fingernail as sharp as a scythe and made a ‘hmmm’ sound. “But I might have a better suggestion.”
“Yeah?”
“The whole reason these douchebags teased you was because you were a band geek.”
“Yes.” Her eyes darkened, remembering the torment.
“So, your ‘fuck you’ should come in the form of band geek revenge.”
She tilted her head and said, “Go on.”
“Duet for flute and trombone.”
Her surprise manifested as a ‘snuck’ in the back of her throat and a wry smile. “What?”
“You on flute. Me on trombone. We play a duet.”
“I… I don’t…”
“Not just any duet, mind you.” The malevolent spirit shook a finger and looked about the room, deep in thought.
“Flute”, she said, incredulous, “and… trombone?”
“Yes!” he said. “There are many pieces written for that duet. And for flute and cello? Hundreds! A ‘bone is a great brass substitute for cello.”
Angelica began to hear the combination in her head. “Yes.. Yes!”
“But this would be, like your dance, the ultimate duet. Never before has anyone heard such transcendent music from these two instruments, and never again will they. I, a dashing officer, resplendent in my dress uniform, playing the perfect undertones and harmonies. You, a Helen of Troy beauty in a fabulous, flowing gown that would make Oscar de la Renta cry, manifesting the melody from your flute as if the universe blew breath through the instrument. We would play such a piece as to make even the most musically ignorant stop, shut up, and listen in rapturous wonderment.”
“Yes.”
“We would make the angels weep!”
“Yes!” Angelica shook with delight at the thought of upstaging her classmates, of the shock-and-awe, of making angels weep.
“So” Leonard hissed. “You said, next month?”
“Uh-huh. The seventeenth.”
“We have time to practice.”
Angelica saw promise and threat in his smile. She returned both.
“Yes. We do.”
“Then it’s a deal?” He extended his hand, callused from millennia of whipping the damned, the sharp nails dirty with the blood and flesh of those he eviscerated with sweeps of his taloned claws.
Angelica hesitated, then slowly stepped out of her protective circle and went to him. She laid her delicate, flute-playing hand in his. He held it gently, but his skin was hot to the touch. “Deal” she said quietly, meeting his flickering eyes. “Don’t I have to sign something?”
Leonard allowed himself the slight thrill she sent through her soft fingers. His smile grew. “We can take care of the paperwork later. Tomorrow. I know I can trust you.”
“Okay. Tomorrow, then.”
He bowed slightly and said, “For once in my existence, a day will feel like forever.” He released her hand.
She dropped her hand and her eyes a moment. Then, “Oh! Do I have to do the summoning thing again? Each time?”
“No. You’ve opened the portal. As long as you don’t reverse the spell, and close it, I can come and go at will.”
“You mean, anytime? Without, you know, an invitation?”
“Yes.” His grin reached out and touched her in a way she could not name.
“Okay” she said quietly. “I guess that’s okay.”
“Then I will bid you au revoir.”
“Hey! Wait a minute!”
“Hmmm?”
“Could I call you… Leo?”
The ghastly apparition of evil frowned, considering. “Yes, I think that would be fine. Leo. Hmm. Never occurred to me. I may like it.”
“I like it” she said, “better than Leonard.”
He thought a moment, then said, “May I call you… Angie?”
“Angie?”
“It’s my favorite Stones song.”
“It’s a sad song.”
“Yes” the demon said, “very, very sad.” | https://medium.com/geezer-speaks/demonology-for-band-geeks-cba7087d0127 | ['Craig Allen Heath'] | 2020-07-01 18:46:52.265000+00:00 | ['High School', 'Geek', 'Horror', 'Fiction', 'Satire'] |
Making medical devices secure | Barnaby Jack was a world-famous hacker and security expert who is usually remembered for his ability to make ATM machines dispense cash. He also discovered flaws in insulin pumps and pacemakers that made it possible for criminals to kill a man or woman from nine metres away.
A few years earlier, in 2007, the former US Vice President Dick Cheney secretly ordered his doctors to remove his implanted heart defibrillator and replace it with one that had no wireless capability so that it couldn’t be hacked by terrorists.
The development of connected portable medical devices, wearables and apps, and implants is booming, thanks to the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), connected technology and advances in artificial intelligence (AI).
The global smart medical devices market is expected to reach USD 24,46 billion by 2025, according to a report by Grand View Research. Manufacturers must ensure these devices remain secure from cyber threats for user safety, while maintaining the privacy of all the personal data they gather, store and share with other healthcare services and providers.
The role of standards
Since 1968, IEC has been developing international standards for safety and performance of electrical equipment used in medical practice. The IEC 60601 series covers a wide spectrum of devices, systems and domains. The standards are developed by experts from the medical professions, industry, healthcare establishments, the information technology and software worlds and regulatory bodies.
Michael Appel, certified anaesthesiologist and Chief Patient Safety Officer for Northeast Georgia Health System, leads IEC work in this area and discusses the evolving challenges of the medical industry, which must follow a growing number of regulations for safety and security aspects of medical equipment and systems.
“Cyber threats and personal data privacy are the most essential questions that need to be answered. In the US, very strong privacy laws, and laws like the GDPR in the EU, could hinder the collection of such large amounts of data. This will have to be overcome, and the other big question which needs answering is: who owns the data gathered by these devices?”
From transport and accommodation, to storage and distribution of goods, technology companies are changing the way diverse industries operate, thanks to innovative software platforms, which offer new ways of doing business.
“If we’re not more nimble, new players will enter the industry, disrupt it, and do what is demanded by the market. Already there is talk of a shake up in the entire medical device and healthcare delivery world by entities not classically considered “healthcare companies”. These big tech companies will figure out a way to use the data within what is traditionally considered the realm of healthcare, so unless we acknowledge that there is a revolution unfolding before our very eyes and adapt to it, it will happen anyway”.
Evolving global demographics
World demographics are changing. By 2050, people aged 60 are expected to number nearly 2,1 billion, worldwide, and those aged 60 or over to outnumber children under 10 by 2030, according to a report by the United Nations.
Aging populations, decreasing fertility rates, increased life expectancy and a growing prevalence of chronic diseases, represent major challenges for governments, who must implement policies to address the needs of older people, including housing, employment, social protection and healthcare.
Medtech is a vital part of the healthcare solution
Medical devices play an increasingly important role in alleviating over-stressed healthcare services, by reducing the amount of doctor visits and saving costs. For example, patients can monitor their vitals in real time and send this information to their healthcare providers, who decide if treatment is necessary.
They also improve quality of life, from hearing aids, apps for the visually impaired and pace makers, to orthopaedic implants and continuous glucose monitoring devices, which check glucose readings in real-time and enhance the treatment of certain forms of diabetes.
Other rapidly evolving AI technologies such as algorithms help doctors improve diagnostics and treatments and could be used in intensive care units, to run fully autonomous systems which monitor critical patients, thereby replacing teams of specialists.
Ensuring data privacy, security and safety
When it comes to data, it doesn’t get more personal than medical. In our connected world, if the security of smart medical devices is compromised, it could be fatal for users.
Against this backdrop, IEC 80001 series of publications developed developed for the application of risk management for IT networks incorporating medical devices, also offers guidance for the disclosure and communication of medical device security needs, risks and controls.
The standards can be used by medical device manufacturers and also support healthcare delivery organizations with the risk management of IT-networks with one or more wireless links.
Georg Heidenreich, coordinates Technical Regulations and Standardization at Siemens Healthcare and leads the IEC/ISO group working specifically on safety, security and effectiveness of health software, emphasizing the specific roles and obligations related to regulated medical devices, health software and the systems that incorporate health software and medical devices among the involved stakeholders.
“Publications produced will embrace new solutions, but be independent of specific technologies. Some areas being covered are new ‘fog’ and ‘cloud’ architectures and applications in the field of digital health, artificial intelligence and data analytics. We also expect to carry out another strategic analysis of the requirements of new technologies — notably AI and analytics by the end of the first quarter in 2019”.
Creating trust through testing and certification
People will be reluctant to use medical technology unless they know it is safe and their personal medical data and records remain private. One way to address this is through testing and certification.
IECEE, the IEC System of Conformity Assessment Schemes for Electrotechnical Equipment and Components, ensures that electrical and electronic devices and equipment meet expectations in terms of performance, safety, reliability and other criteria by testing and certifying these against international standards developed by IEC.
The System also covers risks to patients, those who operate the equipment — doctors, nurses and technicians, for instance — and maintenance personnel.
As the number of smart medical devices continues to grow, both the IEC Conformity Assessment Board (CAB) and IECEE have broadened their scope to include activities related to cyber security for the medical industry, to ensure user safety from potential cyber threats and data privacy. | https://medium.com/e-tech/making-medical-devices-secure-2705021bb56 | [] | 2019-01-24 13:25:30.022000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Safety', 'Data Privacy', 'Medical Devices', 'Cybersecurity'] |
How Staffing Industry Is Championing The DE&I Cause | The world is proudly celebrating the cause of DE&I everywhere. DE&I is no longer an abbreviation but is an institution itself. On a broader outlook, one can see the term as an all-inclusive one. Besides, diversity, equity and inclusion, the abbreviation of DE&I, cause also fights for underserved and underrepresented facets like women, LGBTQ +, working mothers, war veterans, and others. In this regard, the staffing industry is playing a central role in helming the cause.
How Staffing Industry is Championing the DE&I Cause
“We in the staffing world have the unique opportunity and responsibility to help our employers be diverse with talent, thought and action” — Orlando L. Williams Chief Executive and Equity Officer, Motus Recruiting & Staffing Inc.
In harmony staffing services are increasingly getting propelled around DE&I strategies end-to-end. The goal is not only to raise awareness but to get the voices heard too — those voices that need encouragement and respect.
Why does DE&I matter to Staffing Industry
Since last year, certain events around the world have been very unfortunate and disastrous for humanity. As if, the global pandemic was not enough, the brutal killing of American hip hop artist, George Floyd raised angst and concerns all over the world. The injustice meant only one thing…especially for the corporate world to take bolder actions in driving DE&I into workplaces.
In this regard, the staffing industry is addressing DE&I at the next level, making recruitment and staffing processes more welcoming and embracing. Industry standards, senior management, work culture, recruitment norms are realigned and restructured with DE&I norms — to create access and culture for all those who deserve representations that is long overdue.
Essentially, the staffing industry consists of those firms and agencies that provide staffing, workforce solutions, and other related services to client organizations. In the year 2020, the global hire market accounted for $ 35.8 billion, which is 7.7 per cent of the global staffing market.
DE&I matters to the staffing industry because it is no longer a social norm, but a key source to many advantages and RoI as well.
“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion go beyond ownership to commitment. As the conversation around DE&I takes a deeper hold in the industry, staffing clients are increasingly looking to suppliers to demonstrate their commitment to delivering diverse talent and to enhancing equity at work, both internally and externally.” — Barry Asin, SIA President
Let’s take a look at how the staffing industry is setting major goals in championing the cause of DE&I
Infrastructure
Embedding DE&I into the workplace is neither an instant recipe nor an overnight success. It requires critical planning and renovations to onboard DE&I strategies smoothly. There will be crucial capabilities that need addressing like bias, concerns and misleading information around than just following the trends.
Vendor Management
Vendor management systems should incorporate DE&I in their modus-operandi and goals, particularly staffing MSPs who handle their client’s day-to-day operations and contingent staffing. Since they work on acute flexible lines, adapting DE&I strategies in the operational model for their staffing clients would bring stupendous benefits. It will not only attract passive, but real talents, but will also positively impact the workforce composition.
The C-Suite
When the top management walks the talk, commitments are transformed into actions. The conscious steps, C-suite takes about incorporating DE&I, either in form of SOP or KPIs make an impactful difference in the organization. It also requires engaging key stakeholders on the emotional and moral levels is very crucial. In this regard, top leaders play a pivotal role.
Voicing the same, SIA also reported that securing support from the executive level is the most crucial enabler of DE&I success in the organization.
AI to the Rescue
The staffing industry is one such industry that has effectively learnt to reap the benefits of AI in the recruitment process. While it’s true that a candidate’s fit is based on his/her ability to do the job, AI assessments that are scientific, bias-free and validated encourage DE&I in the hiring pipeline like never. In this regard, tech-enabled DE&I solutions spur a conducive environment for the workforce, irrespective of their backgrounds, status or choices.
For example, hiring algorithms can help firms on recruiting candidates on various DE&I dimensions. Also, business intelligence technologies like predictive talent analytics help staffing enterprises reflect on data on DE&I practices and their accountability.
HR Policies
Staffing enterprises are in a liaison that DE&I integration in HR policies is not a program, but a business strategy — a source of competitive advantage. For a successful transition of DE&I into the workplace, it goes beyond compliance to EEOC and ADA guidelines.
Like Kaizen, augmenting DE&I in the workplace is a continuous effort. Before amending policies and norms, HR can sync DE&I with work culture by revamping job descriptions, encouraging dialogues, eliminating biases, including gender diversity and bringing value and social justice to the forefront.
DE&I and Financial Performance
Staffing enterprises know that DE&I is not a buzzword, it need not be looked at from a moral standpoint only either. To reiterate this, statistics from major researches reaffirm that DE&I has a direct correlation with the financial performance of a company. It means a simple, influx of humongous employees elevates company profits.
When people across different dynamics are hired and valued, the vastness of opinions, skills and insights increase; lighting the innovation spark in the organization. It also opens up ways to cater to different consumer markets.
“Embracing DE&I into the workplace means more creativity and a more engaged workforce, which in turn translates to an improved bottom-line.” — Satish Kumar, Co-founder and CEO, Glider.ai
The Road Ahead
DE&I is not just any fad that fades away over time. It is a movement is seeking justice that is long, overdue.
“In such uncertain times, there’s a need for staffing enterprises to ask their teams about their well-being. One also has to be intentional with inclusion and equality and make it a part of their DNA,” — Leslie Vickrey Founder and CEO, ClearEdge Marketing.
People, highly skilled people, and talents will be the next big thing in the next decade. The staffing industry has understood this much better than any other industry. Together with corporate leadership, the staffing industry is breaking the traditional barriers of recruitment.
As a proud partner with SIA, Glider.ai effectively achieves its talent quality mission with DE&I. Glider uses artificial intelligence to lay a robust DE&I foundation in hiring as a leading talent intelligence company.
Website: https://glider.ai/articles/how-staffing-industry-is-championing-the-dei-cause/ | https://medium.com/@gliderai/how-staffing-industry-is-championing-the-de-i-cause-ebcc47824e08 | ['Glider Ai'] | 2021-08-02 07:31:42.790000+00:00 | ['Workforce', 'Staffing And Recruiting', 'LGBTQ', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'George Floyd'] |
EIB to co-invest to AI startups in Europe | Last week EIB has announced their initiative to co-invest 150M EUR into promising AI startups across EU and EU-related regions. This means that EIF now joins the AI race, where the USA and China are clear dominants at the moment.
Artificial Intelligence — the global race for dominance.
The saying that data is the new gold is so old that nobody takes it seriously anymore. At the same time, the playfield has never been equal for everyone. China has identified it as a priority vector a while ago and started various government supported programs to develop the nations AI ecosystem. Now they are challenged only by the USA.
For example in 2018 the U.S. AI startups have received over $9.3 billion in venture funding. While the latest governmental venture capital fund alone has committed to invest into AI over $30 billion.
Now EU is finally getting into the game with the 150M EUR initiative. Of course, this is no anywhere near the numbers in China nor in the U.S., but it is a good start for sure.
Who are eligible for EIB AI Co-Investment Facility?
In order to receive the investment funds and companies should meet certain criteria.
Eligibility criteria for the VC funds — funds, which are providing long term venture capital investments in the form of equity, hybrid debt-equity, or another type of late-stage or growth financing. For the companies — SME’s, large midcaps, and small midcaps who are developing, actively working, or incorporating an Artificial Intelligence core. Minimum investment 1M EUR.
What is the process of receiving the investment from the AI Co-Investment Facility?
There are just three steps in the process:
1. Once a VC fund had identified and approved investment internally, they submit a completed approval form for a co-investment proposal.
2. EIF reviews the submission.
3. If approved, EIF invests on pari-passu terms.
To conclude the topic, the initiative is definitely great and we are hopeful that this instrument will be oversubscribed early. AI is one of the technologies we are focused on and thus we are glad to see the help from EIF in the development of the AI industry in the EU. | https://medium.com/@avaventures/eib-to-co-invest-to-ai-startups-in-europe-17b74d76c16 | ['Ava Ventures'] | 2020-12-15 12:35:54.962000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Fundraising', 'AI', 'Funding', 'Venture Capital'] |
Angry Birds game (AR version) | Angry Birds mobile game’s AR version is a real delight. Here are my personal thoughts on it’s 1st impression.
I was looking for some other app related to AR on Google Play within the search list this game app was suggested… I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t aware of this game earlier. I immediately downloaded it.
According to app description details: it was launched on October 2019 so it has already completed a year successfully. Recently, it was updated on August 2020 and the current version 1.1.3 is very stable. It has ☆ 4.1 user ratings with 100000+ downloads.
* It loaded fast also tracking the surface was smooth game level assets got arranged in no time and matches perfectly with real world lighting.
Here is an actual clip from my phone:
https://youtu.be/_3YRj5092Gg
* UI and game Controls are responsive.
* On boarding hints and animations are clear and communicate well. They have built up previously set in game mental model so people who have earlier played any version of Angry Birds will not have any problem to adopt to this AR version.
* Level design and assets are AR optimised.
* collusion and aiming is accurate
* sound design is cheerful and creates the playful mood.
* frequent video ads due to freemium model disturb the flow… while the ads are playing you are back to 2D mobile screen view.
All in all this is really cool AR gaming experience. | https://medium.com/@ppsagar786/angry-birds-game-ar-version-d3ca3e050d8a | ['Pushpendra Prakash Sagar'] | 2021-01-08 22:20:40.792000+00:00 | ['Impressions', 'Mobile Games', 'AR', 'Review', 'Angry Birds'] |
USHJA Wheeler Museum Debuts ‘Through the Lens’ Exhibit | Courtesy of the Wheeler Museum.
The Wheeler Museum at the USHJA headquarters has debuted a new exhibit honoring the evolution of horse show photography from its earliest days to modern trends. Noelle Maxwell catches up with curator Denise Quirk for a behind-the-scenes look.
The Wheeler Museum, located in the USHJA office at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY, recently debuted a new exhibit highlighting horse show photography. “Through the Lens” features photos by Budd Studio, Tish Quirk, Katey Barrett, Tricia Booker, Inez Pennington, Phyllis Pennington, Randi Muster, Shawn McMillen Photography, Al Cook, and many more. According to curator Denise Quirk, the exhibit also includes items that are permanently on display at the museum, and there are plans to add works by currently active photographers, along with interactive displays. We interviewed Quirk to learn more.
Horse Nation: Who are some the more noteworthy, well-known photographers featured in the exhibit?
Quirk: Each photographer will be known by some segment of the hunter/jumper world — most likely determined by when and where people attended shows or read equine publications. Tish Quirk is likely the most well-known for her iconic images of Greg Best and Gem Twist at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the 1984 Olympic gold team, individual medalists Joe Fargis and Touch of Class (gold), Conrad Homfeld and Abdullah (silver), Melanie Smith Taylor/Calypso, and Leslie Burr Howard/Albany, and her shots at the World Cup Finals. Tish Quirk and her husband published HORSES magazine in the 1980s and Tish did much of the photography.
Inez and Phyllis Pennington shot and sold their photos as Pennington Galleries from the late 1970s through the 1990s. They covered Devon, the Hampton Classic, Lake Placid, and several other big shows along the east coast. Their shots were featured in several magazines: The Chronicle of the Horse, AHSA’S Horse Show, Practical Horseman, Grand Prix, Spur, etc. Exhibitors loved having a Pennington photo. Inez pioneered the “drop shot” (landing from the jump) and Phyllis the “gallop shot” (turning around the course and facing the camera) at a time when most wanted a classic shot at the top of the jump. The Penningtons only shot on film.
Budd Studio (Abraham “Budd” and Sid Waintrob) were the most famous photographers of the 1950s-1970s: Devon, the National at Madison Square Garden, Harrisburg, Washington, Lake Placid, all the long-gone big Long Island shows, plus Aachen and other European shows. They shot in black and white on film cameras and were also known for their photos of visual artists. Katey Barrett is well-known in California for her horse show photos from the 1970s and 1980s, and also her Thoroughbred racing photos. She’s famous for using the mirror lens, which gives an unusual background effect.
Tricia Booker was an editor, writer, and photographer at The Chronicle of the Horse for over 20 years and is currently editor of USHJA’s In Stride, shooting horse shows around the world for stories; she has a lifelong passion for photography. She still covers horse shows but has more opportunities now to shoot candid and “artsy” shots. Al Cook, Shawn McMillen, and Randi Muster were among the first digital horse show photographers and are still active on the show scene. The exhibit also features a few representative photos by the masters, James Leslie Parker, Karl Leck, and Marshall Hawkins.
The exhibit’s special feature is that photographers were invited to choose the included photos. Some chose famous horses, riders, or events (often the winner), others chose photos with a special story behind them of capturing the shot or of a surprising outcome (especially when working with film because photographers didn’t know if the shot worked out until it was developed) or because the photographers were experimenting with their technique or looking beyond capturing shots they were “expected” to catch as they documented the shows.
HN: What’s this exhibit’s significance?
Quirk: With everyone able to take pictures these days, the exhibit showcases the artistry of professional equestrian photographers and the role they’ve played as visual historians of the hunter/jumper sport. The work of show photographers is pivotal to preserving and promoting our sport. For horse people and those not familiar with horse shows, as well as those interested in photography, having the photographers tell their own stories about their careers and approach to shooting at horse shows gives visitors a unique window into the sport and a “you are there” quality to the experience.
HN: What do you hope museum visitors learn from this exhibit, and what do you believe photographers can gain from this exhibit?
Quirk: As far as museum visitors go,
The exhibit offers current photographers examples of the tradition of shows that they’re part of, along with the unique view each photographer brings to the tradition. For those who’ve never used film, a sense of both what moments can be caught on film and the equipment used for those shots given the constraints of film camerawork and developing processes. Digital photography has its own constraints, and many current horse shows have gotten so big that photographers’ access may be limited in ways different from the past, so it might be interesting for them to compare experiences.
The USHJA Wheeler Museum is open weekdays from 8:30 AM to 5 PM. For more information visit them online here or contact curator Denise Quirk at [email protected] | https://medium.com/@noelle-maxwell/ushja-wheeler-museum-debuts-through-the-lens-exhibit-ac1c522b97f7 | ['Noelle Maxwell'] | 2020-07-24 15:29:36.795000+00:00 | ['Museums', 'Horse Nation', 'History', 'Show Jumping'] |
Atomic Habits by James Clear main takeaways (bonus notes at the end) | Takeaway 3: How to form a good habit
When it comes to creating a good habit or breaking a bad habit, you can do so in 4 easy steps, according to the Laws of Behavior Change:
(1) make it obvious
(2) make it attractive
(3) make it easy
(4) make it satisfying.
Make it Obvious
Give yourself cues to start your new habit. The 2 most common cues are location and time. The implementation intention formula is a good way to put this into action: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
The environment shapes your habits, without you knowing. Let’s say you want to drink more water if you place water bottles all around your house, and the environment then you are making it obvious to drink water for yourself. Hence the “Make it Obvious” rule. Now let’s say you are trying to stay away from cookies (thus breaking your bad habit of eating too many cookies), if you do not have any cookies in your house/environment then it is near impossible to eat the cookies. However, if you had a big bowl of cookies every time you walked into the kitchen then it would be hard to resist grabbing a cookie now and then.
Make it Attractive
The more attractive a habit is, the more likely you will keep it. If you want to form a good habit, you must be tempted to do so. A good way to do so is with the right crowd. James Clear says that you tend to be influenced by 3 groups of people, the close (family members), the tribe (the majority of the people around you), and the powerful (people with high status or power). But I would like to add one more, the role models, people who you look up too but are not necessarily in the other 3 groups. So if you wish to develope a certain habit, you should place you should make sure that the 3 groups of influencial people have that habit as well. Let us say you wish to eat healthier, you should ask your family to eat healthier as well, you should also join a community of healthy eaters, you should ask your boss at work to not offer cookies to you at work and you should look at role models who eat healthy (Like watch youtube videos of someone who lives a healthy lifestyle).
Make it Easy
Make it easy to follow a habit. Be specific when it comes to doing something. Like if you wish to form a habit of taking Vitamin C every day, you want to be specific WHEN you take it. The implementation intention formula should be very clear. It should not be: I will take my Vitamin C after lunch, at the water faucet. This is because it is unclear when you will take it. Before clearing the table? After washing the dishes? Instead, it should be like: I will put my Vitamin C and a glass of water on the table before I eat, and as soon as I finish eating I will take the Vitamin C at the table before doing anything else. This way it makes it easy not to forget to take Vitamin C.
Make it Satisfying
After you accomplish doing your habit in a day, a good way to increase your chance of repeating the habit the next day is to reward yourself. If you take your Vitamin C at lunch, you could reward yourself with dessert.
What truly drives you to form a habit is the reward, or the anticipation of the reward. The brain once it | https://medium.com/@boing4boing/atomic-habits-by-james-clear-main-takeaways-bonus-notes-at-the-end-f46c5d48488c | [] | 2021-09-05 15:58:32.035000+00:00 | ['Phsychology', 'Habit Building', 'Habits', 'Atomic Habit', 'Book Review'] |
Setting up a scraping server on Digital Ocean — Part 2 | Once you have created the droplet successfully all that remains is interacting with it and configuring it for our purpose.
Step One: Logging in
Take note of the IP of the droplet, you’ll be needing that for login purposes.
Another thing which you’ll need are the keys you generated earlier.
Windows users can make use of putty which we installed in the previous part of the series and rest should be self-explanatory or you can follow this guide On OS X, you can use the following guide to connect to the server. It uses your key to connect to the server’s IP address using the username root . Make sure the path to your key is correct, and make sure you put in your IP address.
Step Two: Welcome to your server!
Let’s begin by updating the software already present on the server.
apt update
apt -y upgrade
Step Three: Install Python, update pip and install some packages
We install Python 3 using apt
apt install -y python3
2. Now we want to get PIP and the packages needed with the following command
sudo apt-get -y install python3-pip python3-dev build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev xvfb
3. Upgrade PIP with the command:
pip3 install --upgrade pip
4. Installing virtualenv will allow us to create a virtual environment and install any Python packages in it without affecting our system’s Python.
sudo pip3 install virtualenv
virtualenv /var/venv
source /var/venv/bin/activate
Step Four: Installing Chrome
First, we’ll install some packages Chrome depends on.
apt install -y libxss1 libappindicator1 libindicator7
2. Then we’ll download the Chrome package.
3. We’ll use dpkg to try to install it from the package file.
dpkg -i google-chrome*.deb
4. For some reasons it fails and then we’ll need to run the following command which fixes everything.
apt install -y -f
Step Five: Installing Chrome Driver
First, we download the chrome driver and unzip to open it.
2. Now we can use the unzip command to… unzip it.
unzip chromedriver_linux64.zip
3. Change it to executable. Then we move it into somewhere findable, in our PATH.
chmod +x chromedriver
mv -f chromedriver /usr/local/bin/chromedriver
Step Six: Installing a fake display
As we know selenium really really want a display in order to scrape the information off of the websites, so we’ll need to provide it with one here.
First, let’s install the supporting packages.
apt install -y xvfb
Then we install the main thing.
pip3 install pyvirtualdisplay
Step Seven: Test it out
Open an ipython screen by typing ipython and execute the following code
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
from selenium import webdriver display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
display.start() options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--disable-extensions')
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage') driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)
driver.get('http://google.com')
print(driver.title)
Step Eight: Let the gremlins in your head take over. | https://medium.com/@abhishekchaudhary_28536/setting-up-a-scraping-server-on-digital-ocean-part-2-3286493894ab | ['Abhishek Chaudhary'] | 2019-11-16 05:29:39.626000+00:00 | ['Selenium', 'Development', 'Digitalocean', 'Scraping', 'Python'] |
What 3 of Van Gogh’s Missing Artworks Tell Us About Him | Poppy Flowers (1887)
Van Gogh’s “Poppy Flowers”, which was stolen more recently, in August of 2010
Van Gogh frequently painted poppy flowers. Because he was too poor to afford a model to sit for him, he mostly painted still-life portraits instead of people. And poppies, growing like weeds where he lived, were an easy flower to gather for a picture. He wrote in a letter that they were his favorite flower since his youth, because of their bright color.
Van Gogh would have painted Poppy Flowers about three years before his suicide. He got the inspiration for the portrait from a painter he much admired, Adolphe Monticelli, whose art show he visited while in Paris.
Already, there is a lot of emotion that van Gogh put into this portrait, and many others like it. He enjoyed painting nature in general, but flowers were his specialty. With them, he attempted to capture as much emotion as he could: he wanted all of their color and vibrancy to be translated to his canvas.
Indeed, there is a special sort of emotion captured by Poppy Flowers. Although the backdrop is dark, the flowers themselves stand out, making the painting a cheerful one. At the time, van Gogh’s relationship with his brother had just healed over — despite his brother hating him by the end of 1886, the turn of the new year saw them bonding again — and van Gogh moved to Paris, where he experimented with new art styles. In fact, his stay in Paris helped him evolve his art style to a point where it was uniquely his own, even to the point of developing a series of pieces that were deemed commercially marketable.
So, although Poppy Flowers was, in the grand scheme of things, painted fairly close to van Gogh’s suicide, it was also a very hopeful painting for him. Although his inspiration for many of his great paintings came partly from what were likely depressive episodes, making it possible that this portrait was motivated by such, the color scheme and time period make that seem unlikely. In particular, when van Gogh was with his brother (whom he was living close to when he painted Poppy Flowers) he generally seemed to be more mentally healthy, adding a new reason for why Poppy Flowers is more a sign of hope and artistic development in van Gogh’s life. | https://medium.com/everything-art/what-3-of-van-goghs-missing-artworks-tell-us-about-him-266b1175da94 | ['Sophia Beams'] | 2020-07-26 22:55:11.860000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Painting', 'Art History', 'History', 'Art'] |
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