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Our Year in Review | Our Year in Review
May is donor reporting month at Open Cities Lab and our Founder and CEO, Richard Gevers, took some time to reflect on our 20/21 year. Open Cities Lab Follow May 10 · 3 min read
“Open Cities Lab (OCL) had a year of remarkable growth in all areas, which is a strange sentence to write with the backdrop of the global pandemic.
We experienced being pushed to the limit by the instability and unpredictability of the year. Both personally and professionally, the team and our partners experienced significant difficulties and challenges. Despite that, we were well placed to intervene directly in supporting our communities in the pandemic across our impact pillars.
In terms of building government capacity, we were able to work intensively with eThekwini and Cape Town in many areas of COVID-19 planning and implementation. We directly supported informal settlement communities through our work in Check-IT with VPUU, and assisted IBP in digitisation and data analysis in the Asivikelane project in terms of empowering citizens. We also kicked off a critical trust and accountability initiative in the Africa Data Hub, which is OCL’s first continental-focussed project.
In addition to this, our normal work continued and the organisation resumed its role in the Future Cities South Africa project. The work with them allows for deep and extensive interventions in key areas in the eThekwini and Cape Town municipalities. This meant that OCL continued to experience substantial growth in terms of our impact and initiatives due to our budget growing over four times to around R19 million. As well as our focus and region of impact growing to be continental, our team and partners needed to grow substantially to meet the demand. Through this growth, our focus has been on strategy and ensuring our team is cared for, that our processes are able to handle this growth and translate into impact, and that we grow leaders and capabilities across our ecosystem. This is in keeping with our principle of building the kingdoms around us and letting them, in turn, build ours.
This year certainly took its toll on our team with serious personal and professional challenges across the board. Disrupted ways of working, general tensions in partners from the stress of the state of affairs, and so many video calls exerted immense pressure on everyone in many ways. A major focus for us has been team care, ensuring we have mechanisms for team members to access counselling, support for emotional, physical and mental health and wellness, and trying to encourage breaks and adapting our ways of working to reduce the load on everyone. We are blessed with an amazing team and are extremely grateful for the support we have received from all of our funders and supporters over the course of the year. | https://medium.com/open-data-durban/our-year-in-review-258d40c2d84f | ['Open Cities Lab'] | 2021-05-10 08:05:28.200000+00:00 | ['Civictech', 'Looking Back', 'Mission', 'Impact', 'Year In Review'] |
Role Of QA In Banking Digital Transformation | Advancing digital technologies are changing the way industries function; industries are getting the needed thrive from digital technologies. In order to meet the expectations of digitally equipped customers, every industry is relying on Quality Assurance (QA). Similar goes for the banking sectors, consumers want the best of their services, and digital transformation in banking is picking up the pace. Banking digital transformation will result in increased data transparency, removal of intermediates in the process, and fast and secure methods to access financial and intellectual data. Banks will have the benefit of lowering the cost of overall operations and faster transactions.
Banks possess a lot of private data that can be used to understand the needs of users of different backgrounds.
Banking software testing can leverage the power of blockchain and AI (Artificial Intelligence) and helps banks to survive tough competition with other financial as well as non-financial platforms. Digital transformation in banking can automate numerous manual operations, which in turn enhances customer satisfaction. With the combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), banks can collect and analyze personal data of the customers and create more personalized offers for clients.
In today’s time, bank applications have become more complex and interconnected to provide flexibility, transparency, and speed. Quality assurance helps to bring best out of this banking digital transformation with the help of reliable testing tools while achieving high-cost savings through fully managed or automated testing services.
Model-Based Testing Workbench
This methodology is designed to speed up the creation of test scripts. In traditional methods, testers manually create each test script and use cases. The task requires great testing skills and domain knowledge. With the usage of model-based testing tools, the banking sector can automatically generate test cases from models to describe the application. A single model can generate multiple test cases in a short time.
Driving Quality and Performance with Robust Testing
Quality assurance (QA) initiatives like choosing the right kind of banking softwares testing tools for help in delivering quality products that effectively meet customer needs and preferences. With the help of Optimized QA processes and right test management programs, banks can reduce post-production defects. Quality assurance helps in increasing the reliability & security of core systems, and one can reduce the cost with the help of automation. In banking, an end-to-end testing methodology is required. It should include Omni-channel testing, continuous testing, cybersecurity testing, customer experience testing, banking app testing along with stress and load testing. QA ensures complete coverage of all business requirements as well as the functional aspect of the application.
Overcoming challenges in testing
For Banking in the digital age, Quality Assurance is indispensable for the smooth and hassle-free running of financial applications. But there are several challenges. Let us look at a few of them:
Complexity
Banking apps are complex; there are legacy systems. They require constant updates as well to stay in the competition and regulatory requirements. For a typical web or mobile app, there are 200 test scripts that need to be created and run. Thus the whole process is complicated.
Then there is added pressure of reducing the time to market. The end result is there is less time for testing, which increases the risks to quality.
Heterogeneous testing environment: QA teams test on a huge number of devices, operating systems (OS) or browser combinations such as Windows, Safari on an iPhone7, etc. To test these combinations, you require a large number of testers in manual testing. Also, as ‘wearable banking’ is around the corner, testers will need to test banking apps on Apple Watch and Google Glass to serve digitally-savvy consumers.
Regression Testing and Data Security
In quality assurance digital transformation, it is challenging to perform cost-effective regression testing over an application’s lifecycle. It is necessary to ensure that testing takes into account system integration and test data usage is as per data confidentiality norms. To tackle these challenges, an effective test suite is mandatory, along with effective and robust test data management.
One of the best ways to deliver high-performance financial applications is to embrace test automation. Automated tests are great for repeatedly; they provide exceptional accuracy and speed and helps in identifying errors in the starting phase of the development cycle. Developing a long term testing framework and roadmap helps in the proper management of resources. Following are key challenges that internet banking software testing companies face:
Concept of Omni-Channel Banking — In financial markets, omnichannel or branchless banking concept is gaining traction. It is challenging for QA to ensure end-to-end functionality and highly effective mobile applications.
In financial markets, omnichannel or branchless banking concept is gaining traction. It is challenging for QA to ensure end-to-end functionality and highly effective mobile applications. Compliance with Security Standards — Banking institutions are required to comply with FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), and AML (Anti-Money Laundering), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). They ensure that there are no frauds. In banking, the QA team needs to take security compliance seriously.
Banking institutions are required to comply with FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), and AML (Anti-Money Laundering), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). They ensure that there are no frauds. In banking, the QA team needs to take security compliance seriously. Failed Transactions in Banking Porta ls — When there is a problem in banking portal transactions, entire system collapse. The application needs to undergo repeated load tests as in banking apps; multiple transactions happen at a given point. The reliable performance of banking app is a crucial factor.
ls — When there is a problem in banking portal transactions, entire system collapse. The application needs to undergo repeated load tests as in banking apps; multiple transactions happen at a given point. The reliable performance of banking app is a crucial factor. Traceability — Testers should have an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution to bridge the gap between requirements, test controls, tasks, and releases.
Solutions For Banking Applications
To solve these issues, the following solutions must be used:
Well-defined end-to-end testing strategy
Visual planning boards, real-time dashboards, etc. to ensure proper planning and execution.
UI and UX testing for multiple users
Application testing in terms of performance, functionality, and security
Overall performance testing to cater all workflows
Agile and speedy software solutions to stay ahead in the competition in financial markets.
Final Words
Banking in the digital age is all about customers getting the best experience and ensuring that customers get the best experience quality assurance in digital work plays a vital role.
Original Post: BugRaptors | https://medium.com/dev-genius/role-of-qa-in-banking-digital-transformation-35ac9f86fe1f | ['Bally Rezed'] | 2020-11-02 14:30:37.855000+00:00 | ['Quality Assurance', 'Banking Software Testing', 'Banking Technology', 'Banking App Testing', 'Digital Transformation'] |
MintGate Jam — 8/10/21. Keep minting those NFTs with unlockable… | Keep minting those NFTs with unlockable content! Wanna learn more about our upcoming video and live streaming NFT features? Send us an email at [email protected] or DM us in our Discord channel.
Platform Updates
Only two steps to create your next NFT with unlockable content! Start now.
Connect your crypto wallet FIll out the NFT form with all of your NFT details and unlockable content.
✨ BAM! You can now monetize your links to videos, songs, etc. through NFT minting, all with no gas fees.
Are you interested in removing MintGate branding on your token gated links? Reach out to us — we’ve built the feature and it is currently in private beta.
Community Updates
We demoed an MVP of token gating links with Rally creator coins during Rally Dev Creator Day. A Rally integration would not only allow creators to gate content with their Rally coins but also NFTs and other tokens already on different blockchains! Stay tuned for more!
Special thanks to Aaron Haber and the NFT Innovation Society for hosting us this week for a MintGate product overview and brainstorming on video NFTs and royalties on their Clubhouse!
Remember to follow them on Clubhouse here.
Only Nexus Mutual members must now verify that they own a NXM token to access their insurance documents — all powered by MintGate.
JCB dropped The Key, a video NFT on MintBase, that includes MintGate gated links to the PDF to the lyrics and the full high resolution video. Incredibly sold out in 1 day!
Community Asks
MintGate already makes creating video NFTs possible — but wanna do more? We’re looking to build out a video and live streaming NFT features for video creators, livestreamers, etc. Reach out to us at [email protected] or DM us in our Discord channel. | https://medium.com/mintgate/mintgate-jam-8-10-21-fc37e2618014 | ['Jonathan Dunlap'] | 2021-08-10 16:11:40.453000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Token Economy', 'Token', 'Mintgate'] |
Magical Thinking: Odyssey | Welcome back to Magical Thinking, a look back at the art and cards of Magic: the Gathering, set by set, from the beginning. All from the view of a casual fan. Today we begin a new block with the Odyssey Block, and the titular expansion of the block, Odyssey.
Released in October 2001, Odyssey is set one hundred years after the events of Apocalypse. It’s a brand new Dominaria on a brand new continent, where five factions fight among themselves, and a barbarian named of Kamahl seeks his fortune and glory in the fight pits of the Cabal. Meanwhile the Mer empire wants to conquer the continent by flooding everything, and the White Mana aligned Order fights against the Cabal. And in the background there’s this weird magical thing called the Mirari, which is tempting everyone with dreams of conquest. What will happen next? Let’s find out.
Pretty sure Odyssey introduced Avens into Magic. It also began a trend that would continue with the Leonine and the Loxodon: using the animal type as the creature type. It’s a good idea that saves design space and makes the type more flexible since you can mix them with other non-Aven birds.
Hope you are packing some removal spells. Otherwise you got this guy to deal with, the ultimate chump blocker…who’s probably two steps away from launching into a Disney princess song.
What are they burning to get faces in the smoke? I think maybe they are burning something they shouldn’t be burning. I always thought that sort of thing was Green’s sort of thing.
The Odyssey block had a large overarching theme of “Graveyard matters”, so you got a lot of stuff that interacted with the graveyard. Like Threshold: If you have a big enough graveyard your cards do more stuff. If you’ve watched Mark Rosewater’s “Magic: 20 years and 20 lessons learned” then you know this was a disaster with players because they actually wanted to play their cards and not just put them in the graveyard, but still it’s an interesting experiment. Although one that probably just should have been for Black.
Here is the other graveyard related mechanic from this set: Flashback. If it has a gravestone next to the name, you can cast it from the graveyard then exile it. Not gonna lie, I think this one works better than Threshold.
Now this is a better Karma card than the karma card we got in the original set. Plus I like how it harkins back to the abstract art of older sets. Now instant Karma really is gonna get you.
This is a cycle of enchantment cards which shows the leader of every faction with their hands on the Mirari, which is basically what you would get if the One Ring was a Fushigi. I gotta say that bird’s Kubrick stare is freaking me out.
And here is the big bird himself in action. It seems this is also the point in Magic they began giving Legendary creatures actual creature types.
Although it’s not a great mechanic, I do like the flavor of Threshold, since it often shows a creature transforming over time. In this case growing wings and gaining magical power….
…Or corrupting into a hideous monster. I like this one because it literally goes from being Serra Angel to the Lord of the Pit. It’s like two classic monsters in one.
And here we have one of the Big Bads of this expansion. The big squid himself, who wants to drown out all the inferior air breathers. Considering Cephalid don’t really get much play anymore you can imagine how well that plan went.
Those lights on its side make it look like a cross between an eel and a bus. Like that cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro, only way more horrifying.
Hey, do you know how expensive a deep tissue brain massage is? Those magical tentacles are worth every cent.
Oh hey, it’s the card that will guarantee you never get invited back to game night. Because no one wants to play a guy with a 500 card deck who just cheats this monstrosity out and wins on curve. As a mill player I am especially offended this card exists.
Of course with all those Threshold cards, you need ways to fill your graveyard as well, right? Here’s one way.
There’s a Call of Cthulhu reference in here. I just know it.
TEEEEEEEFFFFFF
Seriously, dude. That looks like it hurts like Hell. Someone get that guy some Aspirin.
Eeesh, now that guy’s a mess. Although I do like the effect of discarding to make it stronger. Put that mana flood to good use.
Wow, and I thought the guy from Concentrate had it rough. Also, this is just a bad card. There is no way a 2/2 flyer is worth a reduced hand size.
“Drink….more….Ovaltine….HEY WAIT A MINUTE.”
Ah, Braids. I never read the tie-in novel to this set, so I don’t know how big a part she plays, but just from her cards she seems like a fun character. I always love the crazy unpredictable bad guy trope. Also she’s banned in Commander for good reason, endlessly making opponents sacrifice stuff is just no fun.
And here’s the big daddy of the Cabal himself. And of course his power involves sacrificing others to take down his opponents. Hell, he’ll sacrifice you twice; one from the playing field and once in the graveyard, if that’s what it takes.
Again, a big fan of the Threshold mechanic here, and I like the flavor of this card that it’s some kind of bogey man. Uncle Istvhan would be proud.
Love the flavor text on this one, although I’m pretty sure this is just one of those naked mole rats with wings. Hmm, I wonder if you could tape wings on a mole rate and pass it off as the son of the Jersey Devil? Let me make some calls.
This is probably one of the first attempts to create a lycanthrope type card that actually transforms. We’ll get a few more in this set, but it will take a while before WOTC gets it right in Innistrad.
You think a creature called Face of Fear would have fear all the time. Braids is right, this needs to go back to the drawing board.
Yeah I think there’s a bit more of a hint of insanity with this guy. I don’t know, maybe I’m being unfair.
Innocent Blood is one of my favorite removal cards from Black. It’s cheap, and since it’s a sacrifice effect it can bypass a lot of stuff even if you can’t aim it. I ran this in a ton of decks in my college days. To the point one of the people I played with tried to bullshit me that they made a ruling everyone playing needed a creature to sacrifice to it to play the card (which is not the case). Innocent Blood got into Arena via Jumpstart, so you can use it in historic mode. I suggest you do so, you’ll be glad you did.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a card that turns you into a lich. Just hope your opponent isn’t packing any enchantment removal or things might get messy.
This guy looks like a Mortal Kombat character to me. Maybe its just the pose, he does look like he’s doing martial arts. It’s not just me, right?
Okay, I like this card. Of course I am biased because Zombies are one of my favorite tribes in Magic, so let’s discard some cards and make some Zombies.
Hey, you can use an Anarchist to return the card Anarchy to your hand. That’s clever, right? Probably not.
I love the flavor here. It’s slow as Hell and very impractical, but it’s a lot of fun. You just need a way to delay your opponents while you blow up their creatures.
Wow, and I thought Battle of Wits was BS. Now I want to make a Rakdos deck with this and Tavern Swindler and just coin flip to victory.
Not gonna lie I am digging the Dwarves. I always felt they were under represented compared to Goblins, so it’s nice seeing them get their time to shine. All we need are some Hobbits and we’d be in business.
Flame Burst was the basis of one of my very first red decks in college. It was not a very good deck because this card isn’t very good. Even if you take into account Pardic Firecat (coming later).
Well maybe you should play a little more defensively, my dude. Because right now a rat could breath on you and kill you. At least Haktos has protection. And to think, this is the hero of this expansion.
And here is the card that goes with flame burst, so you can have at max a 10 damage flame burst if you have three other flame bursts and four cats in your graveyard. The problem is that means you never really want to play these things as creatures, you want them right in your graveyard. Which is kind of emblematic of the problem with this set: People want to play their cards, not just dump them in the discard pile. So make better cards.
HALITOSIS!
Not gonna lie, I want to buy a van just so I can have this guy airbrushed on the side of it.
I think we found Stephen Colbert’s personal Hell. How many Bears can you count in the distance?
Bears, Squirrels, Centaurs and Druids. that’s the name of the game in this set. They really need some sort of legendary Squirrel to tie all of this together.
Oh, and Elephants too. Can’t forget the Elephants. You know they never forget you. Not ever. That’s more ominous than I meant. OR IS IT?
Pretty sure Gorilla’s don’t have tails, but I’m not telling him that. Also, it’s weird while everyone is piling stuff in their graveyards here we have green clearing theirs out so they can have an 8/8 monkey.
Okay you can either have a giant gorilla or a giant squirrel, but not both. You know which one I’m going with (It’s the Squirrel).
That is one creepy looking centaur. Is it supposed to be a deer or something? Why is its head like that? What is going on here?
Snapping into a Slim Jim: The horrible truth. This is pretty much My Hero Academia the Magic card.
Another new race, the Nantuko. Bug people are always cool. I kind of wish these guys got more use.
Sorry, but it’s not a proper rite of spring unless it involves a sequence showing the rise and fall of the Dinosaurs (Granted this is Green so this isn’t out of the question).
And here we have the Green Legendary. He is certainly…there.
This is kind of neat. I like the flavor. Kind of surprised this didn’t come back in Theros, since it really fits the flavor there.
Another swing at an attempt to make a Lycanthrope card. Honestly, I’m just here for that terrible pun.
Here we go, baby! The Atogs are back, and now they’re multicolored, starting with the big grand daddy of them all, the Alpha Atog himself; AtogAtog. What does he eat? Other Atogs. Is he any good? Probably not, but I would love to use him as a commander someday.
This is probably the best Atog of them all, since it shows up again in some championship decks. Mainly because its pump abilities synergized and Blue and Black had plenty of ways to feed it. AtogAtog may be the king, but this guy is the Atog Du jour.
Here it is, the big macguffin everyone is fighting for in this block. It’s easy to see why, since it can copy your spells. It’s a pretty powerful effect, and can do some broken stuff. Where did this thing come from anyway? Who made it? And why?
Spoilers: It was made by Karn. Give him a break, he’s just starting out. Haven’t we all accidentally made the One Ring at one point or another?
Hey now I can play AtogAtog even faster.
And that does it for our look at Odyssey. Come back next time as we continue our look at the Odyssey block with Torment. Until then, stay Magical. | https://medium.com/there-will-be-games/magical-thinking-odyssey-9ffbc1cb1869 | ['Jessie Staffler'] | 2020-12-20 07:12:28.692000+00:00 | ['Hobby', 'Game Design', 'Magic The Gathering', 'Board Games', 'Gaming'] |
Letter to Military Advertisement | Attention US Military Advertisement Agencies,
You are likely very familiar with Uncle Sam. His stars-and-stripes-clad figure would lead him to become the poster boy of war propaganda. He would go on to inspire millions to serve in the United States Military, many of them fresh out of high school. Now Uncle Sam has been replaced by other forms of military advertisement, from commercial breaks during the Superbowl to social media pages. Though the medium that our military uses to entrance viewers may change, it has always tried to appeal to new generations. But one can only wonder if these advertisements are telling the truth of what the military experience is. Could it be possible that recruiters are selling viewers a false experience?
You’ve probably seen commercials that aim to recruit new soldiers before; either on huge, flashy billboards or during commercial breaks in large sporting events such as the Superbowl. A popular image portrayed is of soldiers splashing through mud, wielding gargantuan machine guns as if they weighed nothing. These images are epic, action packed, and make the viewer feel as though they could do the same thing. They sell an experience of adventure, self-discipline, and honor. However, if you ask any US veteran, they will tell you that this adventure is not as portrayed in the advertising. Conditions for new recruits are hardly luxurious, and the treatment they receive is perhaps worse. When you first enter the military, you are subjected to mostly grunt work, and likely treated by your superiors as scum. Matt Young, a former US Marine, remembers with great detail the poor treatment he received. In an article he wrote for Time magazine he mentions the way soldiers push each other; “You’re going to die,” they’d say. “Worse, you’re all f-ckups. You’re going to get us killed.” One could perhaps find solace in the fact that peers are treated the same, if you aren’t brawling with them during free time. This lifestyle is not the one presented to you by recruiters. False advertisement has led many a young person astray, for they had just assumed that their experience would be positive.
If you went to a public high school, you might remember when one or twice a year, army recruiters visited your campus, adorned with flashy medals and pins and magazines. High schoolers, like moths to a flame, are drawn to novelty and excitement. Because the military experience has been painted in a mystical light, even as a rite of passage in some areas, adolescents may feel that it’s their civil duty to enlist. Another method recruiters use in their rhetoric is to mention opportunities for scholarships, awards, and insurance that will help students later in their life. This strategy is extremely effective in convincing high school seniors to join. The future can seem daunting to the average 18-year-old, and an organization that helps you along will draw them in. The military keeps shifting their rhetoric and propaganda to appeal to the younger generations.
One of the most infamous illnesses that has afflicted veterans is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. This is a mental illness that can inhibit people who have experienced or witnessed traumatic events. Naturally, being in the military provides plenty of opportunities for this to happen. After leaving the military, patients may have flashbacks to these events that prevent them from being able to handle daily tasks. They may avoid people, places, and objects that remind them of the traumatising events. Patients are also at a significantly higher risk of depression and suicide. In fact, a study by the US Department of Veteran Affairs shows that 18% of US adult suicides were by veterans. This is perhaps the most crucial caveat that military recruiters fail to mention to those interested. If they are drafted, they are going to see horrible violence that will change them permanently. Because trauma is not usually expected, and they hadn’t been warned of negative effects, patients often fail to cope with symptoms of PTSD and usually don’t seek help.
Another less commonly mentioned ill effect of military experience is nicotine addiction. In fact, according to a 2010–2015 study conducted by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 28.3% of US military veterans use tobacco products, double the 14% of US citizens that smoked in 2017. The most concerning part: these addictions didn’t necessarily arise from conflict trauma. Training is usually incredibly stressful, especially for low-ranking soldiers, and many end up turning to cigarettes to combat this. Lighting up during free time with other soldiers is a common sight in the military, and puts soldiers at a higher risk for lung cancer and other illnesses.
At this point you may be wondering if I have heard of positive lessons that stem from military involvement. The answer to that question is yes. It is very much true that soldiers gain life skills from their participation in training. They gain people skills, comradery, kinship, and self-discipline. These skills are all helpful in future life events, and help soldiers to mature, especially if they are young. The issue isn’t with these skills. What irks me about military recruitment is that it sells viewers a false experience. The experience one could be sold an experience wildly different from the one they are about to receive. According to Tracy Westen, a former staff member of the Federal Trade Commission, this is a harsh reality for many. “Recruiting ads often don’t even meet the same standards for accuracy required of consumer ads,” she remarks. “Yet because they benefit from the US government’s credibility, people don’t view them with the same skepticism as ordinary advertising.” I believe that to combat this, recruiters must be required to make disclaimers to viewers and soldiers before they enlist. This way, viewers will still be inspired to join, ensuring that our country will have plenty of soldiers prepared to defend our country. At the same time, these viewers will be able to reconcile any misconceptions that they had about the military experience, and will be prepared to deal with the consequences of enlisting.
In the past, our military may not have been very honest about what new soldiers can expect from their experience. False advertisement has led thousands to participate in a situation drastically different than the one they were told to expect. But I believe that if the military were to inform the public about all caveats and separate fact from fantasy, our protective forces could thrive. The military offers plenty of positive experiences to soldiers, and many benefit from their experiences for the rest of their lives. There’s no reason to halt military advertisement. We just need to let newcomers know the truth about their service.
Cordially,
Nico Schafer | https://medium.com/@nicoschafer.x1/letter-to-military-advertisement-8af90c578d1f | ['Nico Schafer'] | 2019-04-01 16:21:56.795000+00:00 | ['Military', 'Trauma', 'Us Military', 'Military Recruiting', 'PTSD'] |
Rethinking the Right Metrics for Fraud Detection | The precision, recall, F1-score may not really work…
The article will describe the traditional metrics for binary classification, why they don’t work, the new cost function, and the implementation of the new loss function in Logistic Regression with sklearn and DNN with TensorFlow.
Introduction
Fraud detection plays a more and more important role in many industries: insurance, banking, retail, eCommerce, and even more. The ability to capture more fraudulent behavior and save more money for the business is how we evaluate the performance of a fraud detection model. However, to translate it into a data science problem, especially into a supervised machine learning problem, people also choose the wrong metrics when building the models.
In the traditional binary classification problems, we try to minimize the loss function such as Log-Loss or maximize metrics like F1-score, accuracy, or AUC, etc. It is totally correct for data science, but not right for real-world business problems.
First, accuracy doesn’t work because of the imbalanced datasets. In fraud detection problems, usually, we have 99% more non-fraudulent data and less than 1% fraud data. So if we predict all data points as a normal class, we will at least get 99% correct. This is called accuracy paradox.
Second, F1, AUC, and log-loss also don’t work. Why? Before going deeper about the reason, let’s recap the definition of these metrics. Feel free to skip this section if you are already familiar with them.
Traditional Metrics Recap
When the model makes the decisions for binary classification problems, it will predict whether it’s positive or negative, in other words, fraud or non-fraud, based on the testing independent features.
Given the fact, the model can predict correctly. If it predicts positive given it’s positive, we call it True Positive(TP). If it predicts negative given it’s negative, we call is True Negative(TN). However, the model will make mistakes: type I error and type II error.
Type I error, also called False Positive(FP), is the number of data wrongly identified as positive given it’s negative.
Type II error, also called False Negative(FN), is the number of data wrongly identified as negative given it’s positive.
There are also other situations: the model predicts positive correctly out of total true positives, which is called Recall or Sensitivity or TPR(True Positive Rate), and the model predicts negative correctly out of total true negative, which is called Specificity or TNR (True Negative Rate), the model predicts positive correctly out of total items identified as positive, which is Precision.
The F1-score is a combination of precision and recall-2*Precision*Recall/(Precision + Recall), while the accuracy is total items classified correctly ( TP+TN) / (TN+TP + FP+FN).
AUC, is when we randomly pick a positive case and a negative case, the probability that the positive case outranks the negative one according to the classifier is given by the AUC. Mathematically, it equals the area under the ROC curve. Notice that AUC is independent of the threshold set for classification because it only considers the rank of each prediction and not its absolute value.
New Cost Function
Now let’s go back to the question: why they don’t work well for fraud detection. Because they consider the costs for every mistake the same. In the real world, it’s totally not true. For example, customer A makes a transaction and the system predicts that it’s a fraud order, then cancel the order. The cost for the company is the customer service fee when customer A contacts the company about the transaction. Customer B makes a fraud transaction the system approves it. Then the cost is chargeback for the bank and the order value.
Given that, we will have different costs for different predicted outputs.
For the True Positive, the model predicts it’s a fraud given it is really a fraud, we cancel the order correctly, the company will have no costs or just administration fees.
For the True Negative, the model predicts it’s a good order given it is really good order, we will approve it and no costs occur. ($0)
For the False Positive, the model predicts it’s a fraud given it is good order, we will need to pay for the customer service fee( and potential the cost of losing a customer).
For the False Negative, the model predicts it’s a good order given it is a fraud, we approve the order wrongly and need to pay for the chargebacks while losing the amount of the order.(example-dependent)
So to evaluate the performance of the model in terms of costs, we need to calculate the total costs from all outputs using the following formula:
We can make a ratio (cost_ratio) from the costs by dividing it with the max_cost, which is the costs from when we predict everything as negative(approve all orders!). Now, our goal is to minimize the cost_ratio.
Modify the Loss Function in Logistic Regression
Remember that the standard loss function for Logistic Regression is log-loss, which punishes false negatives and false positives equally.
import scipy as sp
def logloss(act, pred):
""" Vectorised computation of logloss """ epsilon = 1e-15
pred = sp.maximum(epsilon, pred)
pred = sp.minimum(1-epsilon, pred)
ll = sum( act*sp.log(pred) +
sp.subtract(1,act)*sp.log(sp.subtract(1,pred)))
ll = ll * -1.0/len(act)
return ll
In our new cost function, we need to punish false negative and false positives differently.
import scipy as sp cost_fp = x
cost_fn = df['order_amount']
cost_tp = x
cost_tn = 0
def logloss(act, pred):
""" Vectorised computation of logloss """ epsilon = 1e-15
pred = sp.maximum(epsilon, pred)
pred = sp.minimum(1-epsilon, pred)
ll = sum(
act*(sp.log(pred)*cost_fn+sp.log(sp.subtract(1,pred))*cost_tp)
+ sp.subtract(1,act)*(cost_fp*sp.log(sp.subtract(1,pred))+sp.log(pred)*cost_tn)
ll = ll * -1.0/len(act)
return ll
Modify the Loss Function in Keras TensorFlow for DNN models
In Keras, a loss function must accept only 2 arguments: y_true and y_pred , which are the target tensor and model output tensor, correspondingly. But what if we want our loss/metric to depend on other tensors other than these two? We can use function closure, where we create a function which returns a function of y_true and y_pred.
# Build a model
inputs = Input(shape=(128,))
layer1 = Dense(64, activation='relu')(inputs)
layer2 = Dense(64, activation='relu')(layer1)predictions = Dense(10, activation='sigmoid')(layer2)
model = Model(inputs=inputs, outputs=predictions) # Define custom loss
def custom_loss(cost_FP, cost_TP, cost_TN, cost_FN):
def loss(y_true,y_pred):
cost = y_true * K.log(y_pred)*cost_FN
+ y_true * K.log(1-y_pred)*cost_TP
+ (1-y_true) * K.log(1-y_pred) * cost_FP
+ (1-y_true) * K.log(y_pred) * cost_TN)
return -K.mean(cost,axis=-1) return loss # Compile the model
model.compile(optimizer='adam', loss=custom_loss(cost_FP, cost_TP, cost_TN, cost_FN)) # train
model.fit(data, labels)
Reference: | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/rethinking-the-right-metrics-for-fraud-detection-4edfb629c423 | ['Louis Wang'] | 2019-08-13 17:59:17.603000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Metrics', 'Fraud Detection'] |
“He deserved it!”: Black death in the US | “Black people know what White people mean when they say, ‘law and order.’” — Fannie Lou Hamer
About two weeks have passed since video footage of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder spread throughout social media and beyond, resulting in public outrage and a demand for the arrests of his killers. Since then, both Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael have been taken into custody, facing murder and aggravated assault charges for Arbery’s death. While this seems like a step in the right direction, additional videos concerning the Black 25-year-old have recently begun circulating online.
One video apparently shows Arbery entering the garage of a home undergoing construction in Brunswick, on Georgia’s coast. According to a police report, the McMichaels claimed to be following Arbery — eventually killing him — because they suspected the 25-year-old of being linked to several recent home burglaries in their neighborhood prior to his death on February 23rd. This claim is what makes the video showing Arbery entering a house garage relevant to the investigation of his murder. Despite the McMichaels’ assertions, however, local police stated there were no reports of burglaries in the area for nearly two months beforehand. Additionally, the video of Arbery does not show him taking anything from the house under construction.
Adding to the 2020 footage of Arbery’s actions before his death are two newly released videos of him from 2017. One shows Arbery having an encounter with police, in which an officer tries and fails to use a stun gun on him. Though the interaction escalated to this point, he was not charged or arrested for the incident. However, Arbery was not as fortunate in the other video, which shows him being arrested for trying to steal a television from Walmart.
Trials and error
Despite Arbery’s past behaviors, his murder was unjustified. Even if he were a thief, the penalty for his actions should not have been death. Nevertheless, the videos that have circulated showing questionable occurrences in Arbery’s life seemingly paint a different picture. It is no secret that Black people, Black men especially, are considered criminals. This belief has led to the deaths and arrests of several Black men falsely accused of rape throughout US history. Moreover, the fear of being perceived as criminal has stopped many Blacks from wearing face coverings during the coronavirus pandemic, which is still ongoing. Showing the public videos of Arbery engaged in criminal activity or being accused of such may give off the impression that his murder was justified. Some might feel the McMichaels performed a public service, ridding US citizens of a nuisance or threat.
There is no reason for showing footage of Arbery’s past behaviors outside of, arguably, his dealings with the home undergoing construction on the day of his death. Arbery’s activity would have provided more context as to why the McMichaels felt he was robbing houses. However, thieves should not be followed and subsequently murdered by vigilantes. Furthermore, both the video footage and statements from local police in that area seemingly absolve Arbery of any criminal activity.
The aftermath of Arbery’s murder mimics how other wrongfully targeted Blacks have been portrayed by news media in the past. During September 2018, Dallas police officer Amber Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean in his apartment after mistakenly entering Jean’s residence. Though Guyger was in the wrong, police searched Jean’s apartment and reportedly found 10.4 grams of marijuana. Lee Merrit, the attorney for Jean’s family, felt this search was done to justify Guyger’s actions by portraying the victim as a criminal. On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo via chokehold. He was suspected of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. Despite Garner repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe” while on the ground, which was caught on video, Pantaleo refused to release his grip. He would later be blamed for his own death, with some claiming Garner resisted arrest while others felt his asthma, obesity, and heart condition was the cause.
Lastly, on March 13th of this year 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed in her Kentucky home by plainclothes officers executing a search warrant in a drug investigation just before 1 a.m. Both Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, both of whom have no criminal history of drugs or violence, reportedly believed their apartment was being robbed since the officers did not knock before entering. Walker, who is a licensed gun owner, grabbed his gun and shot one of the officers in the leg. A lawsuit filed by Taylor’s family stated that the officers in return began “blindly firing” more than 20 shots, striking Taylor multiple times in the process. Walker was subsequently arrested and charged with both assault and attempting to murder a police officer. The arrest of Walker, as well as a claim by Louisville Metro Police Department that officers began shooting after he shot at them first, seemingly criminalized Walker, a law-abiding citizen.
Case closed
Ultimately, it appears being Black is unlawful. Time and time again, those who are wrongfully killed by police officers and others — as was the case with Arbery — are made out to be deserving of such fate. Blaming the actions of innocent Black people for their deaths is no different from telling a sexual assault victim to wear less revealing attire. Media outlets going out of their way to justify the deaths of Arbery, Jean, Garner, Walker, and countless other Black people, whether consciously or not, continues an ongoing cycle of minimizing Black lives. Instead of revealing details about the personal lives of those slain, why not focus on information relevant to their murder? In Arbery’s case, no other videos should be seen by the public other than that which shows the McMichaels’ crime — though an argument can be made that footage of Black death is also traumatizing.
It must be understood that people are born Black, but Black is not born criminal. | https://j-stokes.medium.com/he-deserved-it-black-death-in-the-us-e90a7e13bb92 | ['J. Stokes'] | 2020-05-21 14:46:44.610000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Justice', 'Racial Justice', 'Media', 'BlackLivesMatter'] |
The Hidden Armor of Anger | The Hidden Armor of Anger
When to wear it, and how to take it off.
Photo courtesy of Flose LaPierre
Most people who meet me utter the same line: You’re such a happy person. I smile with them because the truth is, I am. While I’ve endured abuse and pain in my life, I tend to delight in moments, and I have the spirit of a young child encountering everything for the first time. As such, I exude joy.
While I don’t mind being typecast as happy, that label has caused me a great deal of stress this year, as I have become acquainted with my anger.
Understanding anger
Growing up, I was not really allowed to be upset. It’s not that my parents had a list of house rules, with one clearly outlining that children must not show anger. However, exhibiting dissatisfaction, whether it be about a meal I detested or how my mother treated us, often led to more punishment. I didn’t have a pleasurable relationship with pain in those days, so I avoided any emotion that could harm me.
Now, as an adult, not only do I sometimes consider anger a negative feeling, which it’s not — it’s a shift within ourselves that we should acknowledge and seek to understand, but I also associate it with violence.
While I have found myself lounging on anger’s couch, I continually judge myself for how I act in moments when I allow anger to overtake me. Because there’s shame in that process, I shy away from creating an opportunity for healing — for myself and those I hurt. As a healer, someone who teaches others how to alleviate trauma through a trauma-informed writing workshop, I know how flawed that reality is, so I am actively seeking to change my relationship with anger, and, ultimately, my relationship with myself and my community.
To truly understand anger, let’s talk about safety
When I think of a person experiencing anger, the images that come up are hands smashing things, veins popping out of the neck, fingers ready to blow things up — fire, destruction; never me.
Perhaps that’s because stereotypical ideas about anger have done us a disservice. The reality is, when I am experiencing anger, I am often anxious, and my cup is spilling over. Energetically, I am scattered, unsure of myself, and feeling misunderstood or under-appreciated, making me incapable of communicating effectively and healthily.
“And sometimes anger is a reminder to ourselves that safety hasn’t been achieved, yet, so anger is the protection.”
In this week’s episode of The On Being Project, Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet and theologian, reads six poems and meditates on each. The first is Dilruba Ahmed’s “Phase One,” which leads Ó Tuama into a discussion on anger where he states:
“There’s all kinds of reasons why we get caught in anger, and anger is a magnificent and important defense. And if forgiveness is ever to happen, there needs to be a level of safety. And sometimes anger is a reminder to ourselves that safety hasn’t been achieved, yet, so anger is the protection. And anger has a deep intelligence in that moment.”
In a moment of anger, I am not only experiencing heaviness and possibly transferring harmful energy onto someone else, but I am also communicating that I am not safe.
As I return to the moments where I have been most angry this year, my brain takes me to the murders of Black folks (Breonna Taylor, Toyin Salau, Ahmaud Arbery), feeling out of alignment with an organization I co-founded but not knowing how to act on that, financial insecurities, my conflict with my sleeping habits, and shaming myself rather than forgiving.
These instances communicate that this year, I have not felt safe in my skin, within a circle of close friends, and inside of myself. Everywhere I turned, danger sprang across my mind’s eye, and anger stepped in to protect me from the big bad everything.
Moving forward through forgiveness
Law enforcement agents wear bulletproof vests when they ready for danger. It would be sort of silly if they kept the vest on 24 hours a day; the same goes for anger. It’s acceptable to throw on the armor when my safety and community are under attack. However, I look ridiculous wearing my suit of anger every day.
There’s no shame in feeling angry, and experiencing anger does not make me a violent person; it makes me a human being. As such, I have released the embarrassment I once associated with being angry, and I forgive myself for the cycle of shame.
Absolution then allows me to heal, which makes way for healthy expressions of anger.
What my daily healing practice looks like
To experience anger healthily, I have drastically changed how I operate day-to-day.
For starters, I no longer use an alarm clock. The privilege of liberal work hours allows me to wake up when my body is ready, which typically happens between 7 and 9:40 am. Not only do I wake up calm, but I no longer reach for my cellphone first-thing.
Instead, I reach for my journal to complete my Morning Pages, with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way nearby.
Once I’m out of my bed, I have a glass of room temperature water and head out into my garden to tend to the plants. Doing so gets vitamin D on my skin and my bare feet rooted in the earth.
Although I don’t go on a mountain hike every day, I meditate daily, and without technology.
These nature-centered activities are self-centered and allow me to pay attention to what makes me feel safe. When a trigger springs, I am more apt to seek resolution.
I still experience anger in dramatic ways
This week, I threw my running shoes at the fridge in response to my husband asking me a simple question about flight arrangments for my uncle’s funeral. The reality is I’m grieving his death, and I still harbor financial insecurities, especially when it comes to big expenses. Although I feel safe with my husband, I was angry at the situation because I felt unsafe in three ways: My uncle’s death is a source of pain; he dying at 60-years-old means maybe my dad or another uncle is next; I fear not having enough money will get in the way of how I want to be present with my family.
Knowing what I now understand about anger, I don’t hold any shame. I forgive myself, but I also recognize that throwing shoes is an inappropriate response to a question. Realizing all of that, I have given myself time to process the heavy and sudden information by spending a lot of alone time in nature. I also apologized to my husband that day for creating a volatile environment in our home, a place where he should feel safe.
Following the sneaker-fridge-gate, I kept up my healing practice as if I were starting at day zero again, with no expectations. Although I don’t want to be an angry person, I sometimes experience anger, and it’s best to always have my “healing in progress” armor on and visible. | https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/the-hidden-armor-of-anger-c932414e49ff | ['Flose Lapierre'] | 2020-09-28 13:33:12.774000+00:00 | ['Forgiveness', 'Mindfulness', 'Anger', 'Self', 'Healing'] |
Build High-Performance Services With gRPC and .NET 5 | Photo Credit: Markusspiske
NET 5 has been released and It comes with a lot of exciting features, new technologies and performance improvements. It unifies the .net environment and replaces .NET Core. In this blog, we’ll focus on building high performance services using gRPC and .NET 5.
Why gRPC?
gRPC is not another buzzword being thrown around. It’s a popular open-source RPC framework. It has been around for a while but it’s built on new technologies like HTTP/2 and Protobuf. It’s platform-independent as it offers language-neutral contract language — which is designed for high-performance modern apps.
How does it compare with WCF and REST ?
WCF, which is also a RPC framework and achieves the same goals, but there are some key differences:
gRPC uses Http/2 (You can learn more about Http/2 in detail here).
It uses a faster binary protocol which makes it more efficient for computers to parse.
It supports Multiplexing over a single connection (It means multiple requests can be sent without request blocking each other).
It uses ProtoBuf which providers faster serialization/deserialization and also uses less bandwidth than other text-based formats.
There’s much better tooling in .NET 5 to automatically generate boilerplate code to hide the remoting complexity so you may focus on business logic.
Streaming allows multiple responses to be sent to the client and also the client to server and bi-directional streaming.
It’s designed for low latency and high throughput so it’s great for lightweight microservices where performance is critical.
Deadlines/timeouts and cancellation allows the client to specify how long they are willing to wait for an RPC to complete.
Inter-Process Communication
gRPC calls are sent usually over tcp sockets. However, if the client and server are on the same machine gRPC can use custom transport like Unix Sockets, Name Pipes, etc in IPC scenarios.
Getting Started
Install .NET 5.0 Runtime and SDK
Update Visual Studio 2019 to 16.8 or later (There’s a C# extension that supports .NET 5.0 and C#9 for Visual Studio Code)
Create your First gRPC Service
Open Visual Studio (16.8) and Create a new project Select gRPC project template
3. Select ASP.NET Core gRPC Service (You can see the “ .NET 5.0” in the framework drop if installed correctly)
4. Enable Docker Support if you want to containerize this service (to be run as a docker container).
It will create the asp.net core app with gRPC service. Let’s explore the solution folder — Protos -> greet.proto file.
What is Proto file?
Since gRPC is a contract first RPC framework, therefore the contract is defined in the proto file — which is the heart of gRPC. It’s a language-agnostic way of defining your apis and the messages.
This proto file contains service definition — which in our case is Greeter
SayHello is the method that takes a request and returns a response.
HelloRequest and HelloReply are declared as messages and can have properties similar to classes and simply defines the strongly typed data that will be transmitted.
Let’s explore the gRPC service (GreeterService.cs in our case)
This server implements the same method (defined in the proto file above) and takes the HelloRequest object as a parameter and returns HelloReply in response
(Advanced: It also has ServerCallContext object — It’s a context for server-side calls and is used for authenticating and authorizing gRPC calls).
Code Generation — Where the Magic Happens
You might wonder where are GreeterBase, HelloRequest, and HelloReply files? Well, that’s where the magic happens and they are automatically generated so they hide all the routing and remoting complexities. | https://medium.com/swlh/build-high-performance-services-with-grpc-and-net-5-7605ffe9b2a2 | ['Hammad Abbasi'] | 2020-11-25 15:58:57.354000+00:00 | ['Grpc', 'Microservices', 'Dotnet', 'Rest Api', 'Net5'] |
Simple Ways To Lose Belly Fat | Simple Ways To Lose Belly Fat
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
All you have to do is avoid refined carbohydrates such as sugar, bread, pasta, etc. Limiting the fat and sugar content of foods is a healthy choice. Many commercially produced sugary foods contain high levels of saturated fat, which raises blood cholesterol and increases the risk of heart disease.
The body breaks down carbohydrates into simple sugars, such as glucose, which are easily used by the body. Dietary fiber is a plant-based carbohydrate. Unlike sugar and starch, it cannot be digested in the small intestine.
As mentioned above, eating soluble fiber (pears, oats, beans, figs, and more) is one of the best ways to avoid storing fat in your diet. Eat fewer carbs. Limiting your carbohydrate intake is a very effective way to reduce fat. In general, a low-carb diet shifts your intake from problem foods — foods high in carbohydrates and sugars and low in fiber, such as breads, bagels, and sodas — to foods that are high or high in fiber. protein such as vegetables, beans, and healthy meats. Low-carb diets also lead to rapid water weight loss, which results in quick results (1–2 days).
Refined carbohydrates are highly processed foods that no longer contain fiber and other nutrients. They typically save you just a few calories while replacing harmless fats with low-potency carbohydrates, which are digested quickly, triggering a sugar rush and hunger returning shortly thereafter.
For this reason, the Atkins diet restricts carbohydrates and encourages you to consume more protein and fat. The main goal of the Atkins diet is to provide the correct balance of carbohydrates, protein and fat to achieve optimal weight loss and health. The Atkins diet claims that excessive intake of carbohydrates, especially sugar, white flour and other refined carbohydrates, can lead to blood sugar imbalance, weight gain and cardiovascular problems. Atkins Diet claims that its carbohydrate approach will burn fat stored in the body, regulate blood sugar levels, and help you achieve optimal health without making you hungry or deprived.
Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash
The Atkins diet also says that when you reach your weight goal, it will help you determine your personal carbohydrate tolerance — the net number of grams of carbohydrate you can eat each day without gaining or losing weight. It says that you will continue to lose weight in stages 2 and 3 until you consume more carbohydrates than your body can bear. Of course, three low-calorie meals can lose weight, but it cannot burn fat more effectively. This is the key to long-term weight loss.
It is best to stick to a healthy diet on non-fast days and avoid overeating. If someone wants to lose weight, he must know about everything that he eats and drinks every day. People with diabetes should limit or avoid foods where sugar is the main ingredient, such as sweets and cakes.
Too much sugar in the diet can cause health problems such as obesity and tooth decay. It is easy to overdo it on foods, especially drinks, that are high in sugar. With so many sugars hidden in food, it’s really easy to get more than you need.
Sugar is gaining weight faster than you think, and fruit juices and sodas are just empty calories. According to a recent Spanish study, a high protein, low carbohydrate diet can help your extra pounds lose weight, but it can actually lead to weight gain in the long term.
A 20-year prospective study of more than 80,000 women found that those who ate a low-carb diet high in vegetable fats and proteins had a 30% lower risk of heart disease than women who ate such a high-protein diet. carbohydrates and low in carbohydrates. in carbohydrates. -fat diets. In terms of the amount of protein consumed, there is evidence that a relatively high-protein diet can be heart-healthy as long as the protein comes from a healthy source. One study found that people who ate higher-quality, higher-quality protein had significantly less belly fat. Eat a lot of protein “To get rid of belly fat, you must eat 2.5 centimeters of lean protein at every meal,” says sports nutritionist David Ste.
Photo by Cheyenne Doig on Unsplash
Good choices for a high-protein breakfast include eggs, oatmeal, nut and seed butter, quinoa porridge, sardines, and chia pudding. More and more sugars are added to the Western diet, which has a certain connection with obesity, even if sugar is found in beverages instead of food. The ingredients in packaged foods and snacks often contain trans fats, sugar, salt or sodium-these three things can make weight loss difficult.
Therefore, try to eat eggs, fish, seafood, nuts, meat, dairy products and other high-protein foods as much as possible. Eating more protein can speed up your metabolism and reduce hunger. It is a very effective way to lose weight. Eating more protein is a good long-term strategy for reducing belly fat.
Consuming more protein in your diet is believed to be a long-term strategy for successfully reducing belly fat. It is known to reduce appetite, speed up metabolism and help you consume fewer calories each day.
Protein reduces appetite by 60%, increases metabolism by 80–100 calories a day, and helps you eat fewer calories (up to 400+) every day. Protein is extremely important to our health. It can increase the metabolic rate and help reduce the appetite for unhealthy foods.
Some health experts believe that consuming high amounts of animal fat and protein in accordance with the Atkins diet may increase the risk of heart disease or certain types of cancer. Numerous scientific studies have shown that eating too much sugar, mainly due to excessive consumption of fructose, can cause the accumulation of abdominal fat.
A large number of studies have shown that excessive sugar content, mainly due to a large amount of fructose, will increase the accumulation of fat in the stomach and liver (5 trusted sources). Excessive sugar and carbohydrate intake may be the main cause of excess fat in the abdomen and liver. Many studies have shown that excessive fructose can cause fat in the abdomen and liver to increase. When you consume a lot of added sugar, your liver will have to convert it into fat due to too much fructose (4 trusted).
When you eat a lot of added sugar, your liver is overwhelmed with fructose and has no choice but to turn it into fat. Therefore, when you eat too much refined sugar, the amount of fructose is too much for the liver to convert all of it into fat. Consequently, the fat in food provides twice as much energy as the equivalent amount of sugar.
Photo by Huha Inc. on Unsplash
Although sugar provides less energy than fat, it can contribute to the energy density (kilojoules) of foods and beverages. Adding a bag of sugar to the bag will eventually cause your blood sugar to rise and fall, which makes you crave junk food and can ultimately lead to weight gain. Finding hidden sugars in both everyday food and drinks is an active way to combat belly weight gain. Adding small amounts.
Thank You
Best Regards;
David | https://medium.com/@yannyeinaung86/simple-ways-to-lose-belly-fat-1f2a42e42c7d | [] | 2021-12-19 14:56:22.520000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Weightloss Recipe', 'Fitness', 'Weightloss Foods', 'Weight Loss Tips'] |
TorchServe and [TorchElastic for Kubernetes], new PyTorch libraries for serving and training models at scale | TorchServe and [TorchElastic for Kubernetes], new PyTorch libraries for serving and training models at scale PyTorch Follow Apr 21 · 4 min read
Authors: Joe Spisak (Facebook), Aditya Bindal (AWS), Kiuk Chung (Facebook), Mike Stefaniak (AWS)
As PyTorch is used more and more in production environments, we’ve continued to see the need to provide better tools and platforms for the community to scale up training and deploy models efficiently.
Today, we are excited to introduce TorchServe (Experimental), a new open-source model serving library under the PyTorch project. TorchServe is the result of a collaboration between Facebook and AWS engineers aimed at providing a clean, well supported, and industrial-grade path to deploying PyTorch models for inference at scale. This library is available for free as part of the PyTorch open-source project.
We are also announcing the availability of a new co-developed, between Facebook and AWS, Kubernetes controller with tight integration to TorchElastic (Experimental), a library for fault-tolerant and elastic training in PyTorch. With the TorchElastic Kubernetes controller, developers can create fault-tolerant distributed training jobs in PyTorch using their Kubernetes clusters, including Amazon EC2 Spot instances on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).
In the rest of this post, we describe these new PyTorch libraries in detail and provide resources on how to get started.
TorchServe
Deploying machine learning models for inference at scale is not easy. Developers must collect and package model artifacts, create a secure serving stack, install and configure software libraries for prediction, create and expose APIs and endpoints, generate logs and metrics for monitoring, and manage multiple model versions on potentially multiple servers. Each of these tasks adds time and complexity and can slow down model deployment by weeks, sometimes months. Further, optimizing a serving stack for low latency online applications is still more of an art than a science. Lastly, and until now, PyTorch developers lacked a canonical and officially supported way to deploy PyTorch models. That’s why we are releasing TorchServe, the PyTorch library for deploying trained models.
Below is a simple example of how to take a trained model from torchvision and deploy it using TorchServe:
#Download a trained PyTorch model
wget
#Package model for TorchServe and create model archive .mar file
torch-model-archiver \
--model-name densenet161 \
--version 1.0 \
--model-file examples/image_classifier/densenet_161/model.py \
--serialized-file densenet161–8d451a50.pth \
--extra-files examples/image_classifier/index_to_name.json \
--handler image_classifier
mkdir model_store
mv densenet161.mar model_store/
#Start TorchServe model server and register DenseNet161 model
torchserve — start — model-store model_store — models densenet161=densenet161.mar trained PyTorch modelwget https://download.pytorch.org/models/densenet161-8d451a50.pth modelTorchServe and create model archivefiletorch-model-archiver \--model-name densenet161 \--version--model-file examples/image_classifier/densenet_161/model--serialized-file densenet161–d451a50--extra-files examples/image_classifier/index_to_name--handler image_classifiermkdir model_storemv densenet161model_store/TorchServe model server and register DenseNet161 modeltorchserve — start — model-store model_store — models densenet161=densenet161.mar
The experimental release of TorchServe, available today, includes:
Clean APIs — Support for an Inference API for predictions and a Management API for managing the model server.
— Support for an Inference API for predictions and a Management API for managing the model server. Secure Deployment — Includes HTTPS support for secure deployment.
— Includes HTTPS support for secure deployment. Robust model management capabilities — Allows full configuration of models, versions, and individual worker threads via command line interface, config file, or run-time API.
— Allows full configuration of models, versions, and individual worker threads via command line interface, config file, or run-time API. Model archival — Provides tooling to perform a ‘model archive’, a process of packaging a model, parameters, and supporting files into a single, persistent artifact. Using a simple command-line interface, you can package and export in a single ‘.mar’ file that contains everything you need for serving a PyTorch model. This `.mar’ file can be shared and reused. Learn more here.
— Provides tooling to perform a ‘model archive’, a process of packaging a model, parameters, and supporting files into a single, persistent artifact. Using a simple command-line interface, you can package and export in a single ‘.mar’ file that contains everything you need for serving a PyTorch model. This `.mar’ file can be shared and reused. Learn more here. Built-in model handlers — Support for model handlers covering the most common use-cases (image classification, object detection, text classification, image segmentation). TorchServe also supports custom handlers.
— Support for model handlers covering the most common use-cases (image classification, object detection, text classification, image segmentation). TorchServe also supports custom handlers. Logging and Metrics — Support for robust logging and real-time metrics to monitor inference service and endpoints, performance, resource utilization, and errors. You can also generate custom logs and define custom metrics.
— Support for robust logging and real-time metrics to monitor inference service and endpoints, performance, resource utilization, and errors. You can also generate custom logs and define custom metrics. Model Management — Support for management of multiple models or multiple versions of the same model at the same time. You can use model versions to roll back to earlier versions or route traffic to different versions for A/B testing.
— Support for management of multiple models or multiple versions of the same model at the same time. You can use model versions to roll back to earlier versions or route traffic to different versions for A/B testing. Prebuilt Images — Ready to go Dockerfiles and Docker images for deploying TorchServe on CPU and NVIDIA GPU based environments. The latest Dockerfiles and images can be found here.
Getting Started with TorchServe
You can get started at pytorch.org/serve with installation instructions, tutorials and docs.
If you have questions, please drop it into the PyTorch discussion forums using the ‘deployment’ tag or file an issue on GitHub with a way to reproduce.
Kubernetes Controller with TorchElastic Integration
With larger and larger models being trained, such as RoBERTa and TuringNLG, the need to scale out to a distributed cluster is increasingly important. The use of preemptible instances, such as Amazon EC2 Spot instances, to satisfy this need is a common practice. However, these preemptible instances are unpredictable by their very nature. The integration of Kubernetes and TorchElastic allows PyTorch developers to train machine learning models on a cluster of compute nodes that can dynamically change without disrupting the model training process. The built-in fault tolerant capabilities of TorchElastic can pause node level training even when a node goes down and resume once the node is healthy again.
Additionally, using the Kubernetes controller with TorchElastic, you can run mission-critical distributed training jobs on clusters with nodes that get replaced, either due to hardware issues or node reclamation. Training jobs can launch with partial requested resources, and dynamically scale as resources become available without being stopped or restarted. To take advantage of these capabilities, users can simply specify training parameters in a simple job definition and Kubernetes-TorchElastic package will manage the job’s life cycle.
Below is a simple example of a TorchElastic configuration for an imagenet training job:
apiVersion: elastic.pytorch.org/v1alpha1
kind: ElasticJob
metadata:
name: imagenet
namespace: elastic-job
spec:
rdzvEndpoint: $ETCD_SERVER_ENDPOINT
minReplicas: 1
maxReplicas: 2
replicaSpecs:
Worker:
replicas: 2
restartPolicy: ExitCode
template:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
spec:
containers:
- name: elasticjob-worker
image: torchelastic/examples:0.2.0rc1
imagePullPolicy: Always
args:
- "--nproc_per_node=1"
- "/workspace/examples/imagenet/main.py"
- "--arch=resnet18"
- "--epochs=20"
- "--batch-size=32"
- "/workspace/data/tiny-imagenet-200"
Getting Started with TorchElastic on Kubernetes
Learn more about the Kubernetes Controller design here.
Full docs and tutorials can be found here.
Cheers!
Joe, Aditya, Kiuk & Mike | https://medium.com/pytorch/torchserve-and-torchelastic-for-kubernetes-new-pytorch-libraries-for-serving-and-training-models-2efd12e09adc | [] | 2020-04-21 17:41:19.922000+00:00 | ['Model Serving', 'AWS', 'Announcements', 'Pytorch', 'Machine Learning'] |
2,000,000 EQ Allocated by Equilibrium for Phala Users | Equilibrium will always strive to provide benefits for the community. We are partnering with Phala Network, a privacy-preserving cloud computing service in the Web 3.0 ecosystem, and doubling their bonus offer while also allocating a chunk of 2,000,000 EQ tokens to reward community backers who lock up their DOTs through xDOT. In return for this generosity, we expect our participants supporting Phala Network using xDOT will earn special rewards from them — an increased crowdloan bonus that equals 10 EQ tokens per staked DOT + 12 PHA + extra 5% for OG (contributors from the previous Khala Kusama auction will have a 5% extra reward, on top of the basic rewards).
This initiative is coming straight from Equilibrium as we see value in helping bring new people into the ecosystem which in turn decreases barriers by making crowdloan participation easier than ever before: just apply and receive funding! For such reasons, we have decided to contribute towards some part of what makes up the project that has gotten so much attention: the parachain implementation with its unique design pattern.
About Equilibrium
Equilibrium is a cross-chain DeFi super-app that combines a money market and a spot market with margin trading. The platform performs the full gamut of DeFi functions from pooled lending and synthetic asset generation to decentralized trading. EQ is the native utility token that is used for communal governance of Equilibrium. xDOT is a liquid and tradeable wrapped DOT that unlocks liquidity of DOT locked in parachain auctions and delivers multiple crowdloan bonuses on Polkadot.
Subscribe to Equilibrium’s Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, and Medium.
About Phala Network
Phala Network is a Web3.0 computing cloud that supports data privacy while remaining trustless. Unlike centralized cloud service, Phala doesn’t own any server or data center. Anyone can provide permissionless servers into Phala Network, and because of a clever combination of blockchain and trusted execution environments (TEE), we can make sure the servers can’t be evil even when they are in an edge network situation. Together, this creates the infrastructure for a powerful, secure, and scalable trustless computing cloud.
Follow Phala Network on Telegram, Twitter, Discord, and LinkedIn. | https://medium.com/equilibrium-eosdt/2-000-000-eq-allocated-by-equilibrium-for-phala-users-aab7242b6b40 | [] | 2021-12-28 14:33:46.325000+00:00 | ['Crowdloan', 'Polkadot', 'Phala Network', 'English', 'Equilibrium'] |
The Incredible Power of Giving! | (Microsoft Powerpoint ClipArt Library, extracted 16th Nov 2019)
I sometimes think (foolishly!) that giving should mainly be about giving money to someone in need. Clearly, that’s part of the plot. Not the whole narrative.
Here are some ways you can experience the incredible power of giving, and its powerful self-expansive (yes, you read it right, without the “e”) properties.
Give to your partner.
I enjoy giving Jessie, my wife of 32 years, a nice, tight hug, and peck on her lips and cheek, as she comes down the final stairs of our house for breakfast. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m the “brekkie” guy of the house. Since I’m the early riser, I took it upon myself to whip up brekkie for the wifey and family over the years. Call it a labor of love. Give. Of yourself, your time, your energy, knowledge of brewing her/his favorite cuppa, and poached egg! The girls are staying away (Rachel is in Brisbane, and Carissa lives in the city), so it’s a lot easier now. (smiley)
2. Give to the world.
If you have the passion for writing, then write light. Light is infectiously positive. It will brighten someone’s day. It may not go viral. But what the heck! Write for yourself, write for others. Write to be a blessing. Your writing can cheer someone up. Your cheery thoughts on the screen may be just what someone needed to read this morning. So give of your passion, your talent, your “brainergy”!
3. Give to friends.
If you are into spirituality, give by praying for friends who are going through challenging seasons. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve actually “felt” the power of prayer lifting up my spirits. Blessed are those who have friends and family who prays for them regularly. Giving to friends is also making time for a tete-a-tete. Yesterday, I had such a “high”, having tea with Jagdev. What an incredible gift Jagdev is. You leave him with your energy levels a notch higher than before you met. That’s how I left him (c’mon Medium, give us emoticons!). Jagdev is a massive “energizer”! Leaves the rabbit trailing!
4. Give to the Community.
Last night I gave to the community by simply turning up. The neighborhood resident association committee met up with the developer who may soon embark on works which will cause much grievance to a section of our neighborhood for about two months or more. I decided to turn up for the meeting at a neighbor’s home at 9PM (Malaysian time). I benefited. I think they were encouraged by my presence. Our presence is a gift. Our presence shows we care for the neighborhood. So get involved where and how you can. Just the littlest care goes a long way.
5. Give to your Organization.
Yes, the boss may be the biggest creep in WorkWorld! And some of your colleagues a bore! Can we still give? I love the concept of “Locus of Control” by Dr Julian Rotter. You can read his work here. http://psych.fullerton.edu/jmearns/rotter.htm (extracted 16 Nov 2019)
Dr Rotter showed me that when my internal locus of control is high, then, I am not controlled by people. I give to my organization because my motives are intrinsic, and inside of me. Not determined by the boss or bores at the workplace. Yes, it’s tough. And that’s why you and I need to be on the receiving end of incredible giving by others!
So give your BEST work to the organization. What you sow is what you reap. If your current organization doesn’t recognize or reward you, LIFE will! Unerringly. No question about it. Persistence is giving your BEST. Wherever and whenever. Of your knowledge, skills, and other abilities (KSOAs).
6. Give to the Environment
Give by keeping the world clean. Clean from plastics. Clean from litter. Including the psychological ones. Be considerate of other people’s space in the bus, mass or light transit, to the Uber/Lyft/Grab/Gojek, whatever. Give to the environment by going hiking, and trekking, and lapping up the beauty of God’s creation. It might just be in your neighborhood. Like mine. Templer Forest & Recreation Park is a 10 minute walk from my house. Get the details here http://www2.selangor.gov.my/gombak.php/pages/view/180
7. Give to yourself.
Having said all, PLEASE remember to give to yourself. Self-kindness is critical. And if you have to be critical, be kind when you critic someone or something about someone? Be kind to yourself. Give yourself a gift today. You know that you are unique, right? Try and find another thumbprint or iris that matches yours 100%.
Franklin Morais is a persistent optimist. He loves the LIGHT! Ever since LIGHT kicked out darkness many decades ago, he’s made LIGHT his passion. And LIGHT is so positive. Catch him at [email protected] or [email protected] | https://medium.com/@frankmlhelp/the-incredible-power-of-giving-119faf3016b | ['Franklin Morais'] | 2019-11-16 00:25:44.253000+00:00 | ['Power', 'Bright', 'Love', 'Giving', 'Self Improvement'] |
Steve Jobs: The Confluence of Artistry and Technology | Steve Jobs: The Confluence of Artistry and Technology
Story of a brutally honest artist who deeply cared about his creations. Yash Mishra Follow Aug 27 · 9 min read
Photo by Florian Doppler from Pexels
Steve had humble beginnings as young chap. His parents did jobs like bookkeeper and repo-man and were just able to make the ends meet. He used to get bored at school lectures but loved to see his father carving beautiful cars out of junk as hobby. He would stay on frequent fasts, fruitarian diets for weeks, would go anywhere barefooted due to his inclination towards Zen spiritualism yet could be as bratty as tripping acid and LSD occasionally. Once he travelled all the way from US to India in search of a spiritual guru for 7 months and voluntarily stayed in poverty throughout his travel. He dropped out of college and used to attend calligraphy classes. The boy knew how to get his work done even as a young chap as he once called the owner of HP to get a spare part and ended up getting a summer internship in HP.
He was born to an unwed couple or as he called them his biological parents— Joanne Schieble and a young teaching assistant Abdulfattah John Jandali from Syrian origins. The couple could not get along because Joanne’s father was against their marriage. So much so that he had to be put up for adoption by his mother. Her mother placed a condition though, that adopting parents should be at least college graduates. But good stories become great because there is a twist and this one had one right in beginning.
He was adopted by a lawyer couple which satisfied Joanne’s condition, but they later backed out because they wanted a girl and then he got adopted by a high school dropout Paul jobs and his wife Clara with a settlement with Joanne only after they pledged that they would save funds for the child’s college education. Paul and Clara jobs named their son as Steve.
In his childhood days, Steve was fascinated by Paul’s craftsmanship. Paul loved to restore old cars as a hobby and he also used to sell them later. Paul and Clara always made him feel as he was special rather than adopted. Steve felt school lectures to be uninteresting not because he was weak but because he was indeed special. Once his parents were called and told that he seems uninterested at lectures to which Paul told his teachers “If you can’t keep him interested it’s your fault”. Then one of his teachers started bribing him to the homework and she used to give him questions from 2 grades above he was in and he would do that with ease. Later, the school administration told his parents to make him skip 2 grades, but his parents settled with skipping 1 grade.
In college, Steve met another Steve. Steve Wozniak who famous for his wizardry in the class. He was a geeky prankster. He created a device that emitted TV signals and made the screen fuzzy. He would use it in a place where lot of people were watching TV together. People would think there is signal issue and would try to fix the antenna once someone tries to adjust it, he would clear the fuzziness. Just as the person moves away from the antenna, he would again make the screen fuzzy, and this go on and on till one person stands permanently with the antenna in one position.
Known as Woz, Wozniak was a super talented at electronics. He built a device which connected a keyboard and TV. Everything you type on the keyboard gets visible on the TV screen. Not a big deal now but back then it was not less than a miracle to Jobs who saw it as a huge opportunity to build something of their own. He drove Woz and the device to Homebrew computer club where all technology enthusiasts came to watch new devices created by hobbyists. They displayed their device at a club and Steve Jobs with his great articulation got a hardware shop owner to order 50 such devices in $500 each paid at delivery. They had to buy parts worth $15000. They took a loan of $5000 from a friend’s father, further credit was arranged by jobs articulation and that’s how Apple was born, and that computer became Apple I.
After their first successful delivery they developed Apple II which was a sleek machine and a super successful one as well which served as the cash cow for apple for a very long time. But Steve jobs didn’t liked Apple II. Why? Because it had more ports to connect multiple devices for the hobbyists. He always wanted end-to-end control of his product and even on its experience and those ports would never have allowed that kind of control.
By this time, his on and off girlfriend Chrisann shifted with him in his 4-bedroom apartment. Steve was sharing this apartment with a friend named Dan Kottke. It was this time she got pregnant with Steve’s child. Interestingly Steve was 23 years old at the when Chrisann gave birth to a girl child. This was the same age when his biological father Jandali had him. His daughter was named Lisa and he never shared a very cordial relationship with her. Another commonalty between his biological parents and him was — Steve never married Chrisann.
Apple went public and Steve jobs became a rich man but his quest for end-to-end control just became bigger. He applied a real growth hack when he convinced XEROX leadership to let him visit their R&D facility in return of an opportunity of 1-million-dollar investment bargain into Apple. Yes, it was a bargain!!! Apple engineers got to know about bitmapping which was the basis of GUI. The world was only aware of DOS black screen till then. This helped Apple create their own operating system which had GUI and which we know as Mac operating system today.
Steve could be an absolute charmer and verbally seducing or he can be as ruthless as calling a full-blown effort of his team as complete shit. He would leave no stone unturned to maintain end-to-end control over the user experience and not let his device become a toy for the hobbyist. So much so that even the screws for the system that had Macintosh were designed in a way that it would not open with a standard screwdriver. He would hackle over curves or lines on computer design for days until the product feels perfect to him. He could go to any limit to make his point on design. Once he took a colleague on drive to show that rounded rectangles are everywhere, and the device should also be in that shape. It was in Steve’s nature to look the world in binary as either something is the world’s most beautiful thing or complete shit.
He charmed/articulated Jhon Sculley Pepsi CEO to join Apple and take it to next level. He soon realized that Sculley was not a product person but Sculley was always under the illusion that he and Steve were very similar people. Some internal coup politics, some of Jobs bratty behavior and some management decisions like removing Jobs from Macintosh division led to a showdown between him and Sculley ending up in Steve being shown the door from the company he created.
After being ousted from Apple, Jobs created another company called NeXT which showed a lot of promise courtesy, Steve’s amazing marketing skills, but it didn’t had much to showcase on the ground. Interestingly, Steve paid a hefty amount of $100,000 for getting the logo designed for NeXT.
By now everyone was aware of his love for the intersection of creativity and technology which made one of his friend’s meet the Pixar owners. Earlier, he wanted Apple to buy it but was denied by the management. Later he went on to invest his own money and got a 70% stake. Pixar made some path-breaking, animated movies like Toy story trilogy, Cars etc. in collaboration with Disney. When Toy story 1 released Disney was having a great say in the partnership and Jobs never liked playing secondary fiddle to anyone. So, he took Pixar public and got the funds to make a good bargain with Disney now. Later, when Disney realized that they didn’t great creative people like Pixar had. They were left with no choice to buy Pixar at a very heavy price making Jobs the biggest shareholder of Disney.
Jobs wanted to go back to Apple, but he wanted that Apple should call him back. Apple was going through pretty bad times and were only 90 days away from getting bankrupt. He willed himself into Apple by making apple buy NeXT. He became advisor to the board and worked for 2 years on $1 as salary per year. He dropped around 70% of the products Apple was producing and brought it down to just 3–4 products. He also changed the narrative of apple by “Think different” campaign. He managed to get the company out of troubled waters but that was just the beginning. It’s a notion that Steve saw himself as a rebel and he thought the rules doesn’t apply to him. He used to park his car in handicapped parking or sometimes parked it on the boundary lines which sucked space for 2 cars. Just for fun some Apple employees pasted boards at the same place which said “Park different”.
Apple came up with iMac. The idea for the monitor design came up when Steve was gazing at a sunflower in his garden with his design alter ego Jony Ive. They improved the design in the next version of iMac by adding a translucent Bondi blue body to the monitor. They also added a handle to the monitor which was so nicely melted in the body that it became quite pleasing to the eye. It was a really stylish monitor.
In 2003, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he was told to get his affairs right which was a subtle way of saying you don’t have much time left to live. He avoided the surgery to remove the cancer for 9 months treating it with his own fruitarian and herbal diet. Finally, he agreed to have the surgery 9 months later. He got healthy but seeing death with such close proximity made him more aggressive towards work.
Next, they came up with the iPod with the tag line “1000 songs in your pocket”. Jobs always insisted to have simplicity in designs, and he would personally play with the wax models to get the feel of the device. He would give task to the team of coming up with an interface where the user must be able to find whatever he wants on the iPod with maximum of 3 clicks which led them to invent the beautiful trackwheel to scroll through the list of songs.
They came up with iTunes store where you could buy any song for just 99cents. This helped the music industry get regain some of its market lost to piracy. Steve was very articulate and great at negotiations which helped him get many music labels on iTunes store. However, some labels wanted royalties from the iPod sales to get on iTunes, others some wanted to sell the complete album not fragmented songs. He never agreed to it but slowly and steadily most of the music was available on iTunes. This in turn propelled the sales of iPod even more. He became one of the most powerful persons in the music industry at that point.
Then at an iconic product launch Steve came up with 3 products. An iPod, a mobile phone and an internet communication device. Steve then repeated the same and said this is all bundled in one device known as the iPhone. iPhone also went through a lot of design iterations they finally came up with one which had no keys. They also made the screen to extend from end to end and even patented the design that’s why only Apple phones has bazel-less screens. It was the first mobile to have gorilla glass as well.
He was losing weight and was not in healthy state when his cancer resurfaced in 2008. This time he got a lever transplant, but the situation was such that his family was called in the hospital as if he will not make it any further. He again denied death to see his son go through graduation which was his longtime wish and kind of a deal with god to stay alive to see this day.
He came back to launch the iPad, but he was so thin that lot of rumors about his unhealthiness surfaced and it became really messy when a rumor of his death spread. He later resigned as Apple CEO.
Before his official departure Apple became the world’s most valuable company but the most fascinating characteristic was that he kept coming back with world class product throughout his life against all odds. He left behind a legacy on which Apple is still thriving, taking full responsibility of end-to-end user experience. | https://medium.com/geekculture/steve-jobs-the-confluence-of-artistry-and-technology-5769413782bc | ['Yash Mishra'] | 2021-08-27 20:32:59.266000+00:00 | ['Lifehacks', 'Apple', 'Steve Jobs', 'Inspiration', 'Technology'] |
PORK: A Technology Resilience Framework | The story of technology today is complexity. Increasingly complicated software deployed in complex and unpredictable environments that seem to be slipping more and more out of our control. Daunting stuff, this complexity.
A Prediction: The code you’re writing today won’t be the same code running a year from now. The machines hosting your services today won’t be the same machines in a year. Your services will fail occasionally. Your business partners will change their minds about features. Hardware will need security patches to address vulnerabilities. Network blips will disrupt and change the topology of your system. Your end users will interact with your applications in unexpected ways. Your business will scale significantly (hallelujah!), but load will be uneven. Intraday releases will mean services temporarily restart at inopportune times
More examples of complexity, you ask? No problem! Distributed systems, consensus algorithms, machine learning. Team collaborations, human emotions and miscommunications. Feature enhancements, bug fixes, new competition, vendor integrations and organizational restructuring. All this, and we’re just scratching the surface of the complex factors that could impact our technology systems.
Engineers are working within a truly unpredictable and complex environment from a technology, business and human perspective. We should acknowledge this head-on by building systems to be responsive to an uncertain future.
Hungry For Resilient Software
Given the new reality of complexity and constant change, our approach to building technology systems must adapt. At Rocket Mortgage Technology, we’re striving to transform the mortgage industry as well as the technology that runs it. In my role as a Software Architect, I work with a suite of amazing teams that build custom software solutions for our Capital Markets and Treasury business partners. These business areas are critical to the success of our organization, so we need our systems to reflect that criticality. Due to the volatility of the financial markets and the speed with which the mortgage industry changes, this is an exciting and ever-present challenge. Our mission in architecting systems, therefore, is to build systems that are both resilient and flexible enough to turn on a dime.
Our mission in architecting systems, therefore, is to build systems that are both resilient and flexible enough to turn on a dime.
What Is Resilient Software?
Let’s define resiliency as the measure of how a system withstands stress and responds to unforeseen errors and urgent feature requests. More broadly, resiliency is a measure of how a system embraces change. As the needs of our clients change, our systems must change accordingly.
This article details my teams’ approach to building resilient systems through our PORK Resiliency Framework. More than 100 billion dollars of loan originations flow through our systems each year, so the stakes are high. Our framework is constructed of four principles designed to take the fear out of decision-making in this complex and business critical environment. For several years now, these four principles have been the cornerstone of the systems we build and the measuring stick to guide our technology decisions. Engineers, architects, product owners and leadership have rallied around a shared goal to deliver resilient software, and these principles have led the way.
The Four Principles Of PORK
Our teams strive for fast, frequent and confident releases of our software, but how do we balance the safety of our system with the rapid change that comes with frequent releases? Well, imagine if you could say to your engineers, “Don’t be afraid of making mistakes because we have the tools in place to quickly find and easily correct them!”
This is the essence of our framework. We strive for resiliency by observing errors as early as possible, then recovering quickly (ideally before impacting our clients in the first place). With this approach, we’re giving our engineers the runway to experiment, innovate and make mistakes. At the same time, we’re relieving the pressure from our engineering teams as they no longer need to aim to be perfect, bug free or predict the future. To liberate our team members from the fear of mistakes is to empower them to move at a higher velocity and deliver business value faster.
So, what are the four principles of the PORK resiliency framework?
Predictability
Observability
Recoverability
Keep it simple
Predictability
Just because we’re working in an unpredictable and complex environment doesn’t mean our code should be unpredictable, too. Our first core principle asserts that we value predictability over correctness. This may appear counter-intuitive at first glance, but an engineering team should design a system to behave the same way in all circumstances. If a system is wrong but wrong in the same way every time, then we’re well-positioned to quickly diagnose and fix the problem. Predictability also enables the team to better explain, support and evolve the system over time.
We believe that the same inputs fed into a system in the same order should always result in the same output. Why is this deterministic behavior important? Replicating a bug is often the hardest part of an engineer’s job. We have great talent on our engineering teams, and they’re adept at writing code to fix a bug — that’s typically the easy part. Most of the battle can be the task of reproducing the problem in the first place. With a focus on predictability, we can take a notoriously tricky task and make it trivial. If something goes wrong in a predictable system, it’s simple to pass the same inputs through our code again and replicate the behavior so we can diagnose what went wrong. From there, we can leverage our automated toolchain to fix it.
This approach may sound simple, but there are a lot of forces at play here. To make your system predictable, you’ll need to delve deep into the underpinnings of your system design, likely pursuing advanced techniques, such as immutability, retry policies, idempotency, event-driven programming and other techniques.
Challenge yourself and your teams to make engineering choices that reinforce predictability throughout your technology stack, from code to infrastructure and the space between. How do our teams achieve this? We invest in several tools and patterns, which I’ll discuss later in the article.
Observability
Broadly speaking, observability means we’re designing systems with visibility and diagnostic tooling in mind. Lack of a cohesive and reliable observability strategy complicates how we triage issues, impacts system stability and ultimately erodes trust between a technology team and its clients.
If we’re confident we can identify when our system is behaving normally (healthy), then we should also be able to identify when something is behaving out of the norm (unhealthy). Upon observing unhealthy behavior, we can alert our support teams proactively and correct it before it impacts our clients. By contrast, if we don’t have the appropriate visibility into what our system is doing, then we don’t know when something is misbehaving, and we don’t know when it warrants our attention to fix it. This almost certainly leads to unfortunate client impact, and what’s worse, our beloved clients are the ones notifying us that the system is broken. Shouldn’t we already know?
Observability is about quick and effective root cause analysis, not a few flashy visualizations to impress your leadership team. Rather than getting distracted by polished graphs and charts, I recommend you focus on a chain of diagnostic tools. We want three types of tools in this toolchain:
Proactive alerts that call out unhealthy trends
Tools to form a hypothesis of what has gone wrong (e.g. dashboards for logs, metrics, traces)
Tools to confirm or deny the hypothesis
Once you have confirmed your hypothesis, you can leverage our principle of Predictability to replicate the problem and test your bug fix. Voila!
If we’re aware we have a problem (Observability), and we can quickly replicate and diagnose the problem (Predictability), then we are in good shape to correct the problem quickly.
Recoverability
When building a system, engineers have a tendency to try to make it bulletproof against failure. This seems reasonable at first glance, but ultimately proves to be unreasonably harsh and restrictive. Engineers should be thoughtful and defensive in their coding practices, but if they’re not careful, bulletproofing can lead teams down a path of fear, long-lived testing environments, days or weeks of extensive testing and planned maintenance windows. This approach will undoubtedly manifest itself in brittle systems and slow software delivery.
As we shift our mindset toward embracing unpredictability, rather than avoiding failures at all costs, we should instead be thinking about how quickly we can respond to inevitable failures. You cannot avoid failure all together, but you can very much control how quickly a team responds to it. We need not bulletproof our systems if we can quickly observe system issues and repair them before our business partners or clients feel the impact.
Recoverability is particularly important when considering how teams manage the data flowing through their systems. Data, in many ways, is a system’s most precious resource and the backbone of our business. If your system encounters an outage, chances are you’ll lose some data and need to recover it. Have a recovery plan in place for this in advance! Have a plan to repopulate your data in caches, event streams and data stores. For example, can you work with the system of record to provide a full “state of the world” snapshot to repopulate all your data on-demand? You should have layers of protection in place and, ideally, you should practice how you use them. Don’t wait for a production outage to hatch a recovery plan. Do it now.
Don’t wait for a production outage to hatch a recovery plan. Do it now.
We leverage many additional techniques for recovery, as well, such as approaching system design with a disposable mindset. The disposable mindset encourages teams to avoid building precious, brittle systems. Instead, support teams can quickly tear down a misbehaving application and spin up a fresh new application in its place. During critical outages, we favor this approach for quick recovery so our clients can get back to work as quickly as possible. Later, once the urgency has diminished, our engineers will delve deep into the observability data we have collected to explain what led to the outage in the first place. A disposable mindset often requires stateless services, a careful plan around managing your data (as discussed above) as well as some modern tooling like Docker containers and container orchestration, which I’ll briefly discuss later.
My recommendation is to shoot for the moon and build a reset button that will quickly restore an unhealthy system to health in an automated fashion. This will certainly take a lot of work, but it’s a noble goal. Remember, due to the unpredictable nature of our complex environments, you can’t avoid failure, but with principles such as these, we learn to build resilient systems from unreliable parts.
Keep It Simple
Simple, elegant solutions are less brittle, less likely to break and easier to fix when they do break.
As we design and implement systems, we’re typically addressing multiple goals across multiple time horizons at once. These include the initial delivery of a new system, but also the ease of maintaining the system for the years to come and the ease with which our system can evolve over time to meet our clients’ evolving needs. Given the time-shifting, shape-shifting nature of these goals, unless we have a healthy respect for complexity, the software project is almost certain to fail. In my experience, the single biggest indicator in the success of a software project is simplicity. It’s also the single biggest factor in reasoning about complex systems when you’re urgently alerted to a production issue at 3:00 a.m. Simplicity allows for a shared mental model across your team. Can every engineer on your team draw a reasonably accurate diagram of how your system is architected? I hope so.
Our systems act as a record of all the hundreds and thousands of decisions we’ve made along the way. Build the simplest thing that will solve the problem. Be deliberate in your decision-making process and be able to justify your decisions. Because we must live with these decisions, maintain them, support them, debug them — it is in our collective best interest that we keep it simple.
Tools For The Job
As described, the principles of our PORK Resiliency Framework are conceptual in nature, thus not overtly opinionated with regards to programming languages, utilities or technology stacks.
That said, I’ll share some tooling and best practices that my teams leverage today to achieve the goals of our framework. We expect these tools will change over time, but we also expect the four core principles will continue to apply, nevertheless.
Infrastructure As Code (IAC)
We use Terraform, which helps provision predictable infrastructure to avoid hard to debug environmental drift issues, which arise from manual configuration across multiple environments.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
No surprise here. Tooling in this space is widely available to introduce automation, which offers us predictable and immutable build artifacts (for example, Docker images) and predictable promotion across environments. We use CircleCI and custom tooling to achieve this across our systems.
Docker
In our world, Docker refers to the containers as well as the orchestration layer that manages those containers. We love Docker as it promotes a disposable mindset, which ensures all dependencies are documented in code, and prevents snowflake environments. If a Docker container dies, another will be spun up dynamically by the container orchestrator (Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, ECS) to replace it. Because containers are immutable, the new one is just as good as the prior. The orchestration platform also offers us readily available infrastructure (compute on demand), not to mention a variety of predictability-focused tooling such as software defined networking, declarative files to describe the desired state of your system (Docker Compose, Kubernetes manifests) and a number of other abstractions to help with engineering productivity and resilient system design.
F#
We use C# in many scenarios, and C# is used more broadly across our company, but we love F# in this specific arena. F# is a functional language that addresses many of our predictability concerns elegantly (through first-class constructs around immutability and side-effect-free processing). That said, a functional language is not mandatory. You can certainly achieve predictability through C#, Python or other languages, though it will require more deliberate decision making and the engineering discipline to stay the course when the predictability path is not the easiest way forward. A functional language makes sense to us because we can emphasize immutability, testability and other predictability concerns at the code level, just as we already do at the service level and the system level. This allows for a cohesive predictability strategy up and down our technology stack.
Kafka
We love Kafka because, like the other tools mentioned here, it makes good engineering practices simpler to implement. It’s easy to integrate and deprecate services, so your system can evolve as needed over time. We believe immutable data is easier to manage, and Kafka is a durable log of immutable events kept in strict order (per partition). Your teams don’t need to reinvent the wheel and write custom code to achieve resiliency through buffering, redundancy, scalability and fault tolerance. These and other useful patterns and principles come out of the box with Kafka.
Furthermore, Kafka allows us to process data as events happen in the real world, rather than wait for a user request. Thus, we’re processing earlier and can observe anomalies sooner. This flexibility allows us to fix issues even before the user invokes a request (thus, no client impact). When we do encounter a bug, Kafka allows us to rewind the consumer offset and replay the data inputs we received earlier. This functionality allows us to diagnose the problem easily and get back to health, as described in our predictability and recoverability principles.
Splunk
We use Splunk for several reasons across our organization, but in the context of PORK, Splunk helps us achieve our observability goals using logs. At a high level, Splunk helps us describe, explain and alert on the health of our systems. We use Splunk for building dashboards and alerts that show anomalies. We leverage the Splunk DSL to quickly drill down into request-level context to troubleshoot and diagnose production issues as they’re happening.
Grafana
Metrics help us describe and alert on the health of our system, but unlike request-level logs, it struggles to explain the state of our system because metrics intentionally strip away the context of individual requests. We love Grafana, nonetheless, but we focus it where it brings the most value — quickly and efficiently graphing trends that don’t require drilling down into request-level data. We find that Grafana is great at visualizing resource utilization (CPU, RAM, disk) and HTTP endpoint status codes.
Summary
With the PORK Resiliency framework, we’re attempting to address the increasing complexity of technology and our environment by turning the design of a system on its head, such that we no longer over-emphasize the initial delivery of a system. Instead, we ask ourselves: How will our system respond to an urgent business need down the road? How will we react when we have a bug? Do we have the right tooling in place to respond quickly and confidently? The answers to these questions will reveal how resilient a team’s systems truly are. Resiliency, after all, is a quality that applies not only to the systems but to the teams that run them.
How do you ensure resiliency in your systems? Let me know in the comments! | https://medium.com/rocket-mortgage-technology-blog/pork-a-technology-resilience-framework-745207bd28d5 | ['Rocket Mortgage Technology'] | 2020-09-15 21:58:15.184000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Developer Tools', 'Software Development', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Architecture'] |
How the Data Stole Christmas | by Anonymous
The door sprung open and our three little ones joyfully leaped onto the bed, waking my wife and I from peaceful dreams of slumbering sugarplum fairies. Oh Gosh, it was 6:03am, but who could blame them. The kids wait for Christmas day all year.
I sat up as giggles thrashed with reckless excitement on the bed. My feet found slippers and I lumbered down the hall in the direction of the coffee maker. I could hear the tearing of wrapping paper and whoops of joy coming from the living-room tree.
This scene was playing out in countless ways in households all across America. Christmas is a time for family, friends and a relaxing respite from the busy work calendar. Unfortunately, it was all about to come to an abrupt end as my cell phone interrupted our family time with an impatient buzz. “Who could be calling me today?”
I should have powered it off and tossed the damn thing into a snowbank, but as the manager of a data team in a global e-commerce company, I was used to taking calls at odd times. I pressed talk and reluctantly held the phone to my ear.
It was my co-worker. All hell was breaking loose. The back-end for the e-commerce site had crashed. It was all-hands-on-deck to get it back on-line. Our VP wanted hourly status reports — the next one in 47 minutes. I jumped into some clothes, grabbed a coat and mumbled to my disbelieving wife that I would be back in a couple of hours. To make a long story short, I actually didn’t make it home until 2 am the next morning. Yes, we got the site back up, but I missed Christmas that year.
Lessons Learned
The most tragic part of this story is that it didn’t have to be this way. We had talented people on our team, but our approach to data operations in those days was based on a flawed methodology:
· We had one instance of the production environment. When the data team needed to make a change, like for example, updating a schema, we did so directly on the live operational system.
· Making changes was so fraught with risk that we instituted heavy-weight procedures to control it. This slowed innovation to a crawl and even with all the triple checking, outages still occurred.
· We tested new changes to the best of our abilities, but since our development systems used a simplified tools environment, we would encounter unexpected errors when moving code into the more complex production environment.
· Our test data was perfect whereas production data is notoriously messy. Production data always threw unexpected anomalies at our code.
Managing a continuing succession of outages while trying to keep development projects on schedule and under budget is like trying to play “whack a mole” while simultaneously reading a book. Yet, our approach in those days was mainly based on hope and heroism. We release code and “hope” it doesn’t break anything. When there’s an outage, we call in the technical experts (the “heroes”) to work around-the-clock to fix the problem. Looking back, this was no way to run a major operation. It’s not really a surprise that the head of our department got replaced about every two years. Executive management needed to pin the responsibility somewhere.
DataOps — Lessons Applied
It is tempting but simple-minded to blame outages on people. A robust business process eliminates errors and improves efficiency despite the fact that error-prone humans are involved.
When software companies (Netflix, Facebook, …) started executing millions of high-quality code releases per year, it offered an opportunity for data organizations to renew their approach to development and operations. The methodologies used by these software engineering organizations — Agile development, DevOps and lean manufacturing — apply equally well to analytics creation and operations. The data industry refers to this initiative as DataOps.
The fastest way to institute DataOps methods, even assuming the preexistence of a legacy tools and technical environment, is by aligning and automating workflows using a DataOps Platform. A DataOps Platform offers these capabilities:
· Minimizes cycle time — A DataOps Platform aligns production and development environments using virtualization and orchestrates the DataOps testing, qualification and release of new analytics code with a button push. Continuous deployment of new code is how software companies produce such a high volume of releases per year.
· Eliminates errors — The functional, unit and regression testing of code enables new analytics to be deployed with confidence that it will work as promised in operations. In addition, the data that flow through operations is tested and subject to controls at every step of the operations pipeline. Data errors are trapped and remediated before they corrupt charts and graphs.
· Fosters collaboration — DataOps integrates version control and workflow tools like Jira. The DataOps Platform enables team members to share analytics components, encouraging reuse and improving productivity. Geographically dispersed teams can use their own choice of toolchains while fitting into higher-level orchestrations.
The code and data quality supported by DataOps minimizes the unplanned work that can disrupt a data engineer’s weekend or holiday. With a DataOps Platform, enterprises can move away from relying on hope and heroism. Continuous deployment fully tests and deploys new analytics eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual steps. Tests and statistical controls ensure that data is error-free before it flows into models and analytics.
Have a DataOps Holiday Season
With DataOps in place, tests monitor the data flowing through operational systems 24x7x365. While data scientists are home sipping eggnog, DataOps works overtime to keep operational systems up and running. I may have missed a Christmas celebration with my family that one time, but with DataOps, never again. Happy holidays.
For more information about how a DataOps Platform can compress your new analytics cycle time and eliminate data errors, please give us a shout at datakitchen.io. | https://medium.com/data-ops/how-the-data-stole-christmas-78454531d0a8 | [] | 2019-12-24 13:22:33.143000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Big Data', 'Dataops', 'Analytics', 'DevOps'] |
What do UX Hack Days look like at idealo 👩🏻🎨👨🏼🔬 | Last year the UX department here at idealo.de decided to do hack days twice a year: In spring and fall we engage with topics that are outside our day-to-day business. We want to think outside the box, do research and change our way of working. Furthermore, we’d like to mix colleagues that do not necessarily work together on a daily basis and learn from each other. The goal is to keep it fresh — everything we do for fun will also have an impact on real projects.
We call our hack days FUX days. FUX stands for “Fantastic UX” — in German that word sounds a lot like the animal fox (“Fuchs”), so we already have our mascot.
A fux in its natural environment
Topics, ideas, process
Our FUX days started with a casual planning phase — everybody was invited to come up with topics that are allowed to span from abstract projects on a meta level to geeking out in detail on microinteractions. We split into two teams: Team 1 assigned themselves the task to rethink and redesign some parts of idealo, whilst Team 2 had the task of diving deep into the idealo customer journey.
In this article we want to show the results of team 1.
At first, we came up with new concepts. What could idealo be besides a website and an app? Could the core functionality be integrated into a VR or AR tool? Should we open an idealo popup store? What would the idealo website feel like if it would behave more like an app?
Lots of ideas on cliché sticky notes
The second part was about style and brand: Rethinking the qualities that support the idealo design of now and redesign the idealo image of tomorrow. What would idealo look like if it was founded in 2018 and not 18 years ago? Can we design a flexible, fresh brand for an idealo that offers direct buying only? | https://medium.com/axel-springer-tech/what-do-ux-hack-days-look-like-at-idealo-fbc3d74f15d | ['Axel Springer Tech'] | 2019-08-20 08:15:15.759000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'UX', 'Product', 'UI', 'Design'] |
What on Earth are JavaScript Prototypes? | Introduction
Prototypes in JavaScript are the mechanism to share common functionalities between objects. Nearly all objects in JavaScript are instances of Object . A typical object inherits all the properties and methods from Object.prototype .
In simple terms, prototype is an object from where JavaScript objects inherit methods and properties from.
Sounds like Greek ? Well, don’t worry. Go on. I’ve got you covered.
What is a PROTOTYPE?
When a function is created in JavaScript, the JavaScript engine adds a prototype property to the function. This prototype property is an object called as prototype object which has a constructor property by default. The constructor property points back to the function on which prototype object is a property. We can access the function’s prototype property using functionName.prototype .
Take this function as an example,
As you can see in the below diagram, the Person constructor function has a prototype property which points to the Prototype object. And in return, the Prototype object has a constructor property that points back to the Person function.
Let’s see this in action,
In the above screenshot, an object man is created from the Person function with the new keyword. You can clearly see a property __proto__ . This indeed is the prototype property mentioned in the diagram above. I have explained about this __proto__ property further below. It is quite evident that the __proto__ property is pointing to the prototype object and the prototype object is containing the constructor of the Person function. Hope it all makes sense now.
How does it work?
When you access a property in an object, something called “Prototype Chaining” takes place. This is what happens
The property is first sought on the object as an own property
If the property isn’t found on the object, it’s prototype is checked next
If the property doesn’t exist on the prototype, the prototype of the prototype is queried
This querying of prototype after prototype continues until the property is found or until the end of the prototype chain is reached and an error is returned.
For example, let’s take the man object. If I access the name property of the man object, JS engine checks whether it is the object’s own property — which is in this case. Suppose the name property is not present in the object’s own property. Then the JS engines checks the object’s prototype until the property is found. Else an error is returned.
DID YOU KNOW ?
When you take a string such as “Jane Doe”, you will be able to access and executes methods such as toLowerCase , concat , slice because they are available in the String prototype object. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/what-are-javascript-prototypes-af5a003a27bb | ['Mahdhi Rezvi'] | 2019-12-18 21:53:27.516000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Prototyping', 'Programming', 'Web Development', 'Coding'] |
Share state between screens with custom navigators in React Navigation | I’ve been using React Navigation in my React Native projects lately and liking it a lot. It has all of the features I’ve needed and is relatively straight forward to work with out of the box. If you’re here you‘ve probably been working with it too, so I’m going to assume a basic working knowledge of both React Navigation and React Native.
Recently I ran into an annoying issue that took me a while to solve — the need to share of state between related screens in a navigator. In this instance, I had a StackNavigator with a number of screens that all operated on the same data.
This was a challenge because React Navigation doesn’t, by default, expose most of the navigators you’re creating as components that could be used directly in markup, so there is no obvious way to pass a state object down as a prop to child screens. A basic React Navigation implementation might look something like this:
In the above example MainTabNavigator is a React component, but explicitly rendering it is an anti-pattern/common mistake. By default, the only navigator that gets directly exposed to the markup is the root component AppContainer which is rendered in App.js .
So what if you wanted to go about sharing some state between all of the child screens of your MainTabNavigator ?
You could manage that state wherever you render your AppContainer , but that might be very far removed from where your navigator actually resides.
Alternatively you could add a state management library like Redux or MobX, but that might be overkill and/or introduce unnecessary complexity.
Fortunately there is a third solution, which is to create a custom navigator. The custom navigator imports the built-in navigator and renders it as a normal component to which you can add additional props as needed.
The implementation of the custom navigator is actually fairly straight forward, but the details were spread across the documentation in a way that made it difficult for me to figure out what I needed to do.
The full code for this project is on GitHub. It is a simplified version of the default Tabs app created with expo init via the Expo CLI, and all it does is keep track how many times a user has switched tabs.
The steps below assume you’ve started from a basic React Native app using React Navigation with a structure like the BasicReactNavigationSetup in the snippet above.
Step one
Create the custom navigator. At its most basic, this component needs to do two things.
It needs to assign itself a router. It needs to import and render the built-in navigator component.
First let’s set up a router to tell React Navigation how this custom navigator will function.
Routers define a component’s navigation state, and they allow the developer to define paths and actions that can be handled. — React Navigation
There is a pre-existing TabRouter in the MainTabNavigator and that is what we should use for our custom navigator. All of the paths and actions are already defined, and it will provide the same behavior as if we were using MainTabNavigator on its own.
Second we need to render MainTabNavigation while ensuring that it maintains access to the navigation property.
In the above snippet, we effectively cut off our MainTabNavigator from React Navigations navigation object, and our app will throw an error if we try to run it. We can fix that by explicitly assigning navigation to MainTabNavigator
If you prefer, you could accomplish the same thing by instead wrapping MainTabNavigator with the withNavigation HOC.
Step Two
Set up your state and pass some props.
We’ll update the custom navigator to create a counter that will track how many times tabs have been switched, and a method that increments the counter. We will pass both of these to MainTabNavigator as props so that any child screen can display the counter and trigger the increment when tabs are switched.
The gotcha here is that the props can not be assigned directly on MainTabNavigator . In order for them to be correctly passed down to the screens they must be assigned via screenProps .
Step Three
Properties assigned via screenProps can now accessed from any screen that is a child of MainTabNavigator .
We can use these to create a basic screen component that will display the number of times tabs have been switched, and trigger the increment function when tabbing to a new screen.
Thanks!
I hope you found this writeup useful. It’s the first piece I’ve published here, and I would welcome any thoughts on the content or suggestions for improvement! | https://medium.com/@benjaminwfox/share-state-between-screens-with-custom-navigators-in-react-navigation-62a34e3c7f97 | ['Ben Fox'] | 2021-06-15 03:14:36.663000+00:00 | ['First Post', 'JavaScript', 'React Native', 'Tutorial', 'React Navigation'] |
Delivering the (Public) Goods: Brexit, Biodiversity, and Evidence-based Conservation | Beyond the fact that the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) will be phased out and farmers will be rewarded for delivering public goods, the details on how the UK’s future agricultural policy will actually operate are thin on the ground. This uncertainty is, understandably, causing concern in both the farming and conservation communities. With over 70% of the UK’s land area being devoted to agriculture, it is impossible to divorce farming from biodiversity conservation. However you voted, Brexit provides an opportunity to update our land-management policies and adapt them to better mitigate climate change and ecological collapse. Agri-environment schemes (AES) under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy have been the main mechanism for providing financial support to farmers in exchange for farming in ways that supports wildlife and ecosystem services. Going forward, agri-environment schemes won’t be renewed once they expire, leaving the way open for a reevaluation of how future schemes are designed and implemented. Below I’ve outlined some of the key factors that shape the effectiveness of AES at achieving their goals.
First we should consider impact evaluation; how do we know whether a scheme is doing its job? This is a common issue in AES design. The lack of evidence for success of agri-environment schemes can be attributed to a variety of factors. In the first place, it must be acknowledged that agri-environment schemes are rarely designed to provide maximal ecological benefits at the expense of other stakeholders, but are usually designed to reconcile “a range of ecological, socio‐economic, administrative and political interests” (Buller et al. 2000 cited in Kleijn et al 2006, emphasis added). This is a practical feature of scheme design, since schemes which privilege biodiversity conservation over all other concerns are unlikely to receive much support from other stakeholders, such as farmers or politicians, and so are less likely to ever be approved.
In other cases, measuring the impact of a scheme is simply never built into the project’s design, or if it is, data are too scarce or of too poor quality to allow a thorough evaluation (Kleijn and Sutherland 2003). Many schemes never record baseline data before a scheme is put into place, meaning that there’s little way to gauge its impact (Kleijn et al. 2006).
When it is measured, the effectiveness of agri- environment schemes at achieving their goals is inconsistent across the board. Perhaps this is unsurprising given that AESs take many forms, are implemented in different ways, and have many differing goals (Ahnström et al. 2009; Carey et al. 2005). Kleijn and Sutherland’s (2003) meta-analysis helpfully concluded that while some agri-environment schemes demonstrate positive impacts, others revealed ‘no effects, negative effects, or positive effects on some species and negative effects on others’. The analysis also uncovered a positive bias towards intensively farmed areas such as non-organic arable farms, which are more frequently measured for impacts, and which tend to have lower levels of biodiversity at the start of schemes anyway (Kleijn and Sutherland 2003).
“For schemes that have no demonstrable positive effects it remains unclear whether this is because of the agri‐environmental measures being ineffective, the implementation of measures by farmers being suboptimal, the schemes being implemented in the wrong locations or a combination of these causes.” (Kleijn et al. 2006)
You don’t need to be a farmer to recognize the huge variation in farmland in the UK. Weather, geology, soil type, floral composition and human management can mean a scheme demonstrates different results even with a single farm. This makes it difficult to generalize or conduct the kinds of empirical analyses favoured by academics and policy-makers (Kleijn et al. 2006). In the same vein, something which serves as an accurate predictor in one location or scenario may not do so in another, displaying the need for contextually appropriate and evidence-based AESs rather than a generalized roll-out of schemes on a national scale (Whittingham 2006). Even more unhelpfully, this effect also be applied to different time scales, as a scheme might be found to have positive results one year, but not in the next. (Chamberlain et al. 1999).
Whittingham (2006) suggests that evaluating the success of AESs is hampered by several factors. First, the rate and density of target species varies between locations; second, habitat preference may vary between species across different regions; third, the likelihood of a species using a location in a scheme is determined at least partly by their distance from breeding individuals; and fourth, species often need multiple resources in order to breed, which means larger home ranges and with a variety of food and habitat options within them.
From a biodiversity perspective, the short length of most AESs in the UK (many require a minimum of five years) is shorter than required to restore certain species and ecosystem functions (Olff and Bakker 1991; Walker et al. 2004 cited in Kleijn et al. 2006) Similarly, a 2001 study suggested that due to the length of time that it takes for results to manifest in nature, we may simply be too early to adequately gauge the impacts of some schemes (cited in Batary et al. 2015). Potter (1998, 91, cited in Dobbs and Pretty 2008) suggested that AESs may be successful at preventing further decline in biodiversity on farms but may not serve to actually increase it.
Similarly, several studies have suggested that AESs may serve to increase the number of common farmland species, such as rooks and woodpigeons, rather than conserving or increasing vulnerable or high value species (Batary et al. 2015, 1010; Kliejn et al. 2006). This may partially be accounted for by the fact that schemes are more likely to result in increased populations of target species if they are adapted to the specific needs of these species, a system Peach et al. found in 2001 to account for a low proportion of AESs (cited in Kliejn et al. 2006).
Image: author’s own
Targeting AESs to areas of already high biodiversity value is important to maintaining their value (Whittingham 2011), so it is important to check that funding is not wasted in areas less suitable to the species that are targeted (Whittingham 2006). Such targeting measures are termed ‘zonal’ schemes in comparison to broader ‘horizontal’ schemes which fit more easily into general farm management and aim to lessen the harmful impacts of some of the more industrial farming practices (Kleijn & Sutherland 2003). It can also be useful to distinguish between schemes that apply to non-productive areas, such as field margins or hedgerows, which Garibaldi et al. termed ‘off-field practices’ (cited in Batary et al. 2015) and those that are introduced in productive or ‘on-field’ areas (Batary et al. 2015).
Feehan et al. (2005) suggest horizontal schemes may be better suited for ecosystem services and ecological processes, whilst specific biodiversity needs are better served by zonal schemes.
It must be acknowledged that not all AES areas provide equal conservation value. For example, distance between protected patches, patch size, and patch quality are all indicators of their value towards biodiversity conservation; AES locations serve little value if they are too small to provide enough resources to a species, too widely spaced to allow travel between them, or of too poor quality. They also often differ from more conventional protected areas in that they often apply to small areas of land such as hedgerows, ditches, field margins, or steep inaccessible land (Whittingham 2006). Protecting these scattered areas may be less valuable for wildlife than larger areas, which may provide more resources and shelter (Whittingham 2006). A move towards landscape-scale schemes rather than field corners and boundaries may be a more effective use of resources, although these small patches may serve as “stepping stones” helping species move between areas.
The long-term viability of many species is dependent on protecting multiple habitat at different scales (Gabriel et al. 2010). For example, an AESs may be achieving its goals at local levels but this may not be sufficient to maintain viable populations of a species across a larger region (Whittingham 2011), particularly when species require different resources over their life cycles (Gabriel et al. 2010). Conversely, landscape-scale AESs may serve as a source population from which individuals may ‘spill’ out (Gabriel et al. 2010) but success in the long-term depends on these individuals having the necessary resources and habitat to thrive once they do. While the evaluation of AESs may take place on individual field or farm scales, this is rarely the scale at which broader trends in species population are observed. (Gabriel et al. 2010).
It is now acknowledged that the landscapes surrounding and between AES areas is also a factor in determining their success, in part because intensively farmed or highly-populated areas may inhibit the spread of species into new areas (Hodge 1999, 102; Whittingham 2011; Harrison and Burgess 2000, 1120). For example, despite the fact that meadow birds are more numerous in protected areas than in farmland that is under agri environment schemes, the size of these protected areas (PAs) may be too small to sustain populations in the long-term, calling for greater investment in creating secondary habitats in farmland that can be successfully colonised (Batary et al. 2015, 1013).
The UK’s new Agriculture Bill has so far been characterised by broad statements and generalisations. Hopefully it will result in evidence-based policies that demonstrate that we have learned from past experience. However, farmers don’t operate in a vacuum; while we need to follow the science when designing a new farm agri-environment system we need to be aware that the success of a scheme isn’t determined by an academic understanding of species ecology, but by a human understanding of the economic and cultural factors that determine how they’re implemented on the ground. My next article will therefore outline the human factors that shape the uptake and success of recent agri-environment schemes. | https://medium.com/@farmwheeler/delivering-the-public-goods-brexit-biodiversity-and-evidence-based-conservation-4daa0d9e5084 | [] | 2020-12-24 15:33:48.316000+00:00 | ['Brexit', 'Agriculture', 'UK', 'Conservation', 'Policy'] |
How I Keep Coming Back to Writing | How I Keep Coming Back to Writing
Now I can truly say, writing makes me happy.
Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels
I know you must be thinking what an idiot. If writing really makes you happy, then why would you keep leaving it in the first place? The answer to that is pretty straightforward — how would I know if this is what truly makes me happy if I didn’t even try something else?
That’s the reason I kept trying — sketching, calligraphy, string art, doodle art, digital marketing, search engine optimization…I know there is no correlation whatsoever. But I had to try. And I did. The conclusion? Although I may live this life working as a digital marketer, some part, some hidden part, maybe even beneath my soul wants to type the letters one by one, form words, develop sentences and write a story. There is no better satisfaction than when I hit the “full stop” at the end of an article, a story, a poem or a blog post.
Finding the truth
Close your eyes and ask, is this something you can do all day long and not get bored of? If yes, then do it and see if you truly are enjoying. I can tell you, trying different things, not liking them, and finally coming back to writing gave me more peace of mind than I expected. Now I don’t even care if I can be successful as a writer or earn enough writing for a living, all these factors don’t make sense. I know I’m willing to fight, to write, to struggle, but stick as a writer because this is what makes me truly happy. Isn’t that the most important factor to live life happy?
“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
― Allen Saunders
Life goes on
At the end of the day, it doesn’t even matter what you do, how you earn, how you live, life will go on. Time can’t be stopped. Time can’t be controlled. It’s our choice how we want to spend the remaining days.
I don’t want to sound depressing rather want to motivate you, encourage you to try different things even if you’re happy with your current life. Move out of your comfort zone and experience. You never know, a Colonel Sanders may be sleeping within you to build the next KFC or something. My point is, you never know from where life can gift you an opportunity of a lifetime. You never know until you have experienced your life, not just in terms of career growth but soul searching.
I’ve found my happiness. I’ve found my calling. Now I can heartily say, “I love writing and I want to be a writer. But can you? | https://medium.com/illumination/how-i-keep-coming-back-to-writing-8bd31d7a6876 | ['Prasanta Banerjee'] | 2020-12-27 14:57:32.786000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Thoughts And Feelings', 'Mindset', 'Writing', 'Thoughts'] |
Introduction to Statistics for Data Science | Normal Distribution
The Normal Distribution is one of the most important concepts in Statistics, since the majority of tests require normally distributed data. Normal distribution describes how equally your data points are distributed along a given scale and where the majority of data accumulates towards the center. This distribution is also known as Gaussian curve.
A Normal Distribution exists if your data is symmetrical, bell-shaped, centered and unimodal.
Measure of Central Tendency
The measure of central tendency refers to the idea there’s one number that best summarizes the entire set. The most popular are mean, median and mode.
Mean
This is considered the most reliable measure of the measure of central tendency for making assumptions about a population from a single sample. The μ symbol is used to described the population value whereas the x̅ to describe the sample mean.
Udemy course “Statistics for Data Science and Business Analysis”
We can find the mean by summing all the components and then dividing the sum by the number of components. As already said, it’s the most common measure of central tendency, but it has the downside of being easily affected by outliers. Sometimes, due to outliers, the mean might not be enough to make conclusions.
Wikipedia
Median
The median is the midpoint or the “middle” value in your orderly ascending dataset. It is also known as the 50th percentile. In order to avoid the error provoked in the mean by outliers, it is usually a good idea to also calculate the median.
Finding the median in sets of data with an odd and even number of values — Wikipedia
But what about the representation that most values give?
Mode
The mode shows us the value that occurs most often. It can be used for numerical as well as categorical variables. If there are not a single value does not appear more than once you say there is no mode.
W hich is the best measure?
The measures should be used together instead of independently. There is no best and using only one is not advisable. Moreover, in a normal distribution, these measures all fall at the same midline point. This means that the mean, mode and median are all equal!
Measures of variability
The measure of variability refers to the idea of measuring the dispersion in our data according to the mean value. The most known measures of variability are the range, interquartile range (IQR), variance and standard deviation.
Range
The range is the most obvious measure of dispersion and describes the difference between the largest and the smallest points in your data.
Range is 99–12 = 87
Interquartile range (IQR)
The IQR is a measure of variability between the upper (75th) and lower (25th) quartiles. The data is sorted into ascending order and divided into four quarters.
While the range measures the range of values in which our dataset is distributed, the interquartile range measures the interval of values where the majority of values lies in.
Variance
The variance as well as the standard deviation are more complex forms of measuring how much the data disperse from the mean value of the dataset.
The variance is found by computing the difference between every data point and the mean, squaring that value and summing for all available data points. In the end, the variance is calculated by dividing the sum by the total number of available points.
Squaring the difference has two main purposes : Dispersion is non-negative, by powerering the subtraction by 2 we ensure we do not have negative values and thus there is not the chance of them canceling out.
Amplifies the effect of large differences
Udemy course “Statistics for Data Science and Business Analysis”
The problem with Variance is that because of the squaring, it is not in the same unit of measurement as the original data. This is why the Standard Deviation is used more often because it is in the original unit. Squared dollars means nothing in statistics.
Standard Deviation
Usually standard deviation is much more meaningful than variance. It is the preferred measure of variability as it is directly interpretable.
Standard deviation is basically the square root of our variance.
Standard deviation is best used when data presents a unimodal shape. In a normal distribution, approximately 34% of data points fall one standard deviation away from the mean. Since a normal distribution is symmetrical, we have 68.2% of data points one standard deviation away from the mean. Around 95% of points fall between two standard deviation from the mean whereas 99.7% fall under three standard deviation.
With the Z-Score, you can check how many standard deviations below (or above) the mean, a specific data point is. | https://medium.com/diogo-menezes-borges/introduction-to-statistics-for-data-science-6c246ed2468d | ['Super Albert'] | 2018-11-09 10:13:47.567000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Statistics', 'Data Science', 'Education', 'Machine Learning'] |
Stop Trying to Be Good. Start Trying to Be Whole | The spiritual journey usually starts with a bang. Someone has an epiphany moment or hits rock bottom and realizes that the only way upward is inward.
However, the next step is precarious. We are rarely taught the correct actions or non-actions that will heed the most value.
So…with our righteous morality, we tend to focus on being “good.” Maybe we help out at the local food kitchen or start a blog supporting other (cough, cough) or decide we would much rather devote our 9–5 to saving children in East Africa.
While all of these pursuits are noble, they fail to do us any good if they are not rooted in who we are. If we just pursue these altruistic goals out of a sense that by doing them we may receive some penance down the road, we have completely lost the plot.
I lost the plot.
I had just come around to the notion of God when I started doing things that I believed would bring me divine grace. But I failed to understand the true meaning of Grace.
Grace is not achieved, it is received.
There is nothing we can do to come closer to the Divine aside from humbly realizing that there is nothing we can do or not do that could separate us from God.
The spiritual journey is a naked one. We are forced to realize our helplessness and ruthlessly distinguish our ego. We will never be transformed until we are utterly done with our way of thinking and have given complete control to God.
It is far better to be wholly yourself than to pursue a moral cause. The Divine doesn’t want more MLK Jr’s or Gandhi’s. He wants more Tom’s-from-Idaho and Kim’s-from-Jasper.
Remember, God doesn’t keep score. But exudes love, grace, and peace.
The root (read: radical) story of Jesus is one of full inclusion and love of ALL people. In fact, whenever someone is pushed to the margins by those in power, he rushes to the edges to be with them.
The goal then is not to be “good,” but to be wholly yourself. The Divine wants you to come home to your True Self, as Thomas Merton would call it. That place that is deepest within you.
Being true to who you are is challenging and humbling. It forces you to throw away your aspirations of righteousness and morality.
It can be hard to accept that all of your donations and volunteering isn’t getting you anywhere “faster” or more “noble” than an alternative route.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do these things, but rather that if they are not in your nature to do them than you are only wearing another mask.
Remember that phrase, “lean not on your OWN understanding?”
That right there is the basis of all spiritual and wisdom traditions. That statement when followed will open you up to real humility.
You will never understand God. Period.
But the good news (read: Gospel) is that you don’t need to understand it to have an experience with it.
And the way you experience it is by removing all of the layers upon layers of ego that keep you from your True Self. For when you find your True Self you will find God, and vice versa.
Recently, I had to remove a thick layer of righteous indignation. I was hard to look at myself and realize that I had been trying to help others with the goal of receiving Grace myself. But so goes the path to transformation.
God doesn’t want more Thomas Merton’s or Oprah’s.
He wants more YOU’s.
Be who YOU are. Not who you think you should be and you may just find that person you’ve been searching for all along.
Go Deeper
Do you hate the idea of organized religion but can’t help but to feel that there is some purpose to this life that is bigger than just you?
If so, you aren’t alone.
Join thousands of others who are Falling Inward daily to discover that which is most deep within them by signing up for my daily email list.
Click the cool picture below to sign up. It’s Free!
Ready to Fall Inward Daily?
If so, sign up now! | https://medium.com/personal-growth/stop-trying-to-be-good-start-trying-to-be-whole-a4027117525b | ['Benjamin Foley'] | 2017-09-05 13:22:24.136000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Christianity', 'Religion', 'Spirituality', 'Spiritual Growth'] |
Forex Trading Easier For You | Forex Trading Easier For You: While the potential for profits is large when trading with forex, the risks are high if you don’t take the time to gain the knowledge necessary for successful trading. Luckily, you will have plenty of opportunity to do that with your demo account. Below are some tips to initiate your Forex education.
What does trading long in forex mean? It refers to well planned longer term investments in currencies.
Keep an eye on the market signals so that you know when it’s time to buy and when it’s time to sell. It is possible to program your software package so that you receive an alert when the rate you selected is reached. Don’t lose time and energy by pondering your decisions while you are actively trading. Always determine entry points and exit points prior to executing trading orders.
Too many trades may leave you over-extended, or lead to careless mistakes. Making only a few, smart trades is often more lucrative than making many small, volatile trades.
Traders new to Forex get extremely enthusiastic and tend to pour all their time and effort into trading. You can only focus well for 2–3 hours before it’s break time. This is why you should always allow yourself to have a break in order to rejuvenate. It will be waiting when you return.
A minimal account is the best way to start. This is like a practice account, but it involves real trading and real money. This simply allows you to test drive the market to see which trading techniques work best for you, so that you can see what will provide you with the best profits.
Do not buy “black box” trading packages because over 90% of them are scams. You are unlikely to glean any useful information from these systems; even if they demonstrate impressive results, you will generally never discover how they actually got those numbers.
Risk management should be one of your most important priorities. Be aware of which losses you can or cannot afford. Before you enter a trade, establish your goals and limits. Your account could get wiped out before you know it if you ignore loss prevention. By learning specific signals of the market and when you will lose money, you will be able to get out before you are dragged into a bottomless pit.
Forex trading is happening all the time, so news and updates are constantly available online. Find information online, through Twitter and by watching television news shows. You can find it just about anywhere you look. Nobody wants to be in the dark about the world’s money!
Turning a profit on the forex markets is a lot easier when you have properly prepared yourself. The process of educating yourself on forex is an unending one; keep learning so that you can stay abreast of changes and new developments. It is important to monitor forex sites and read current events to maintain an advantage in forex trading. | https://medium.com/@tonyturnerbk/forex-trading-easier-for-you-865ece99633d | ['Tony Turner'] | 2021-12-29 14:49:23.618000+00:00 | ['Forex Currency', 'Forex Currency Trade', 'Forex'] |
What’s Coming Down the Pipe for Cannabis Research? | As our pursuit of cannabis knowledge continues to hasten, a large crop of innovative and interesting studies are sure to arise. But what should this novel research explore? How can we improve our investigative processes?
We’ve got you covered with this comprehensive look at the future of cannabis research.
Old News
Recent cannabis research has investigated a variety of topics, looking at the benefits of marijuana for a host of different ailments. Studies have addressed the effectiveness of smoked or vaporized cannabis for neuropathic pain, spasticity associated with neurological disorders, anorexia, and post-traumatic stress disorder, to name a few.
Meanwhile, another cohort of trials has been geared towards the adverse effects of cannabis. These include decreased sperm quality, reduced driving ability, addiction, lowered cognition and visual function, increased stress, and poor interactions with prescription drugs.
Blind Spot
Right now, nearly 800 clinical studies have been registered — most of which are placebo-controlled randomized trials. However, many fail to blind, which is absolutely essential to research practices of this sort; without the use of an appropriate placebo, studies can suffer greatly. Further, it is becoming more difficult to recruit study participants than in previous years. With legalization, the availability of marijuana has increased, making it harder to entice participants than before.
In future studies, researchers will have to strongly consider these issues. A unique approach to participant enrollment will be necessary, as will the proper use of placebos and blinding.
What’s Next?
Beyond the need to change how we study cannabis, the industry will also need to include a wider range of subjects in its trials. An extremely important — yet taboo — topic, the effects of recreational cannabis on adolescent youth, must be investigated. Understanding the long-term results of cannabis use is imperative to the future formulation and consumption of marijuana-based products.
About Joseph Antony, PhD
A research scientist at KGK Science, Joseph Antony contributes to manuscripts, final reports, and protocols for clients. He has extensive experience as a researcher in stem cell biology, cancer, vaccines, and antibody development, and has worked as an evaluator for the federal government. Joseph received his PhD from the University of Calgary, his MSc in Biological Sciences from the National University of Singapore, and MFSc-BFSc in Fisheries Science from Bangalore. | https://medium.com/@kgkscience/whats-coming-down-the-pipe-for-cannabis-research-f8d38e041563 | ['Kgk Science'] | 2019-06-25 20:19:15.293000+00:00 | ['Marijuana', 'Cannabis', 'Research', 'Science'] |
Kotlinx Serialization | Setting up your project to use the plugin is quiet simple, but I will include a complete setup for both android projects as well as multiplatform projects. But feel free to check out the Kotlinx.Serializer repo for instructions on this and more.
One small hiccup on the multiplatform serialisation setup is the need to add this dependency under the native dependecy section of your gradle script.
implementation org.jetbrains.kotlinx:kotlinx-serialization-runtime-native:0.9.1
SETUP GRADLE EXAMPLE
For multiplatform:
For Android:
Serialization
Serializing is done quite easily, for one you would need to annotate the intended class with the @Serializable annotation as below:
Note: This can as well work with data classes .
Now to actually use this in action let’s take an example of how to convert a JSON to object and back
The ease and simplicity which the kotlinx serializer helps us to convert objects in a clean way is absolutely amazing.
Two more annotations to note are transient and optional. Using transient will have the serializer ignore that field and using optional will allow the serializer not to break if a field is missing, but at the same time a default value will need to be provided.
Android Use Case for Retrofit
For those who would like to as well use this library in android, Retrofit 2 has an adapter for converting JSON responses to objects. The adapter can be found here. Some Sample code of adding the adapter
Assuming your class already has the required annotations, after making a request this should serialise your class into the required object.
All in all, the kotlin serializer is a wonderful addition to any project and makes serialization a painless process when you want to save objects as a string or parse them into other data structures. Here is a sample repo for the android setup with a small(non-architectural) working example:
Here is the official Serializer repo and as well the retrofit adapter | https://proandroiddev.com/kotlinx-serialization-83815cc1c57b | ['Egbai Smile Mmumene'] | 2019-01-12 13:12:19.139000+00:00 | ['Kotlin Native', 'Android', 'Kotlin', 'AndroidDev', 'Json'] |
Guarantees and Opportunities | Guarantees and Opportunities
Photo by Cullan Smith on Unsplash
Writing is an extremely individual activity and requires a writers to have a purpose. I often refer to my purpose as my passion.
I have a passion for writing and teaching; therefore I write articles about teaching writing. These often have a narrow audience but are well received by The Writing Cooperative because they fit in the publication’s theme. Since anything accepted into this pub. is chosen for further distribution, these articles are my guarantees for curation once they are accepted.
#1
Topic (Tags): Fragments, Writing, Writing Tips, Revision, Tutorial
Date Published: December 3, 2020
Publication: The Writing Cooperative
Story Duration: 5 min.
#2
Topic (Tags): Writing, Writing Tips, Teaching, Assessment, Feedback
Date Published: December 3, 2020
Publication: The Writing Cooperative
Story Duration: 5min.
My second passion is to write poetry. Lately, I’ve been trying to submit one poem each week to P.S. I Love You. Similar to the publication mentioned above, anything accepted by PSILY, gets curated so it is a guarantee and an opportunity for self expression.
#3
Topic (Tags): Poem, Poetry, Love, Poetry Sunday
Date Published: December 6, 2020
Publication: P.S. I Love You
Story Duration: 1 min.
I also work the POM, a publication for only poetry. They are an eclectic publication that is a pleasure to read and has an actively engaged audience. This is my opportunity publication because I submit material that I find personally satisfying. It is not a guarantee of curation, but this week I was happily rewarded.
#4
Topic (Tags): Poetry, Poetry on Medium, Search, Alone, Life
Date Published: December 3, 2020
Publication: The POM
Story Duration: 1 min.
My other passion is to write about topics that I believe in strongly: politics, media, education, and other often controversial topics. These are less likely to be curated, but I get to share my thoughts and possibly make an impact on others.
I will slip this title in to share my passion but as of now it is not curated. | https://medium.com/curation-matters/guarantees-and-opportunities-f047add8299d | ['Brenda Mahler'] | 2020-12-07 03:26:34.015000+00:00 | ['Curation', 'Writing', 'Publication', 'Passion', 'Poetry'] |
The Sun Is Up Forever | Photo by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels
I am a cloud of dust
Wandering through the wind.
I am on a magical journey to the unknown.
I sparkle
As I make my way through
The same breeze that caressed against your cheek.
Unbeknown to you,
That was me you felt.
That cold, humble breeze.
That was me.
You couldn’t see me.
The drops that wept from the sky
Were made from the infuriating anger
That dwelled deep within my soul.
I wanted you to see me
I just wanted you to see me.
I am the flow of the river.
The same river that you watch your reflection in.
You see me,
But I am unnoticed.
There is a mixture of chemicals
Charged beneath my surface.
Can you feel the electricity,
Or is that just me?
I am moving,
Ever flowing.
Some call me a free spirit.
I suppose that’s true.
I began as a trickle from the sky.
I learned to walk before I even began to crawl.
Before I knew it,
I was running down the side of mountains.
Raging onto the rocks and the shore.
My angst was never enough to grab your attention.
I became still and quiet,
Hoping that the reflection of perfection that I showed you
Would edge you into my loving embrace.
But life is never that simple.
My unrequited feelings
Fell victim to dreary waterfalls of darkness.
I am an unexpected lover
And a beautiful mess.
I grew into something
That I never could have imagined existed.
I was a walking contradiction.
I watched your calmness
Sleeping next to me.
I could watch a million sunrise with you
It took awhile to get here.
I was born as dust in the wind.
I grew to the range of the water.
Do you believe in fate?
Do you believe that we had to endure this journey
To be where we are right now?
As I watch you sleep next to me,
I think that it might be the case.
We had to realize that we are not moments.
We are not meant to be invisible.
We are not made to be unnoticed.
I think that, sometimes,
Fate has a funny way of showing us
What life is really about.
I think about the darkness.
Now I know the unknown,
And I never want to leave.
You are the sun,
And I want the sun to stay up forever. | https://medium.com/@bankstiffanyamber/the-sun-is-up-forever-961a08ebcfea | ['Tiffany Banks'] | 2020-12-17 21:20:06.280000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Growth', 'Fate', 'Journey'] |
Athlete Leadership: A Defining Value | Today, the Special Olympics International Board of Directors met at P&G headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. Chairman Tim Shriver opened the meeting with a review of Special Olympics’ movement values: Sportsmanship with Joy, Bravery, Athlete Leadership, Unity and Perseverance. After sharing inspiring stories he asked each board member write a few thoughts about the value that means the most to them.
Special Olympics Florida athlete and International Board Director Eddie Barbanell shared the following:
“The value of athlete leadership means a lot to me because it creates unity and bring more people with intellectual disabilities together to play unified and live unified. It brings more qualified coaches and volunteers to train; it allows athletes and their non-disabled peers to play together on and off the playing field to promote acceptance and inclusion around the world. Everyone should be accepted for who they are, not what they are.”
Each of Special Olympics’ core values describes an aspect of our identity as a global movement of nearly 4 million athletes, and hundreds of thousands more volunteers, coaches, families, and fans. So whatever role you play in the movement, tell us, what Special Olympics value means the most to you? | https://medium.com/specialolympics/athlete-leadership-a-defining-value-1a65b3df7a91 | ['Special Olympics'] | 2016-11-08 15:59:21.480000+00:00 | ['Sportsmanship', 'Unity', 'Inclusion', 'Leadership', 'Leadership Development'] |
Meticore — $150 Per Sale + 85% Comms! ⚡FLAT 85% OFF | Meticore Reviews — Does Meticore Weight Loss Supplement Really Work? Safe Ingredients? Any Side Effects? Real Reviews! Meticore Reviews Meticore Real Reviews — Ground-breaking new report shares the important information every user needs to know.
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How Does Meticore Work?
However, as Meticore is totally natural, you won’t see a single side effect. You can also say that it’s side effect free.
There are two main reasons for being fat. Lack of exercise or a non-healthy diet. However, the main problem is metabolism.
A slow metabolism makes you fat, and without knowing the real reason, you get into the ultimate pitfall of fatness.
The thing is, people consume a lot of unhealthy processed food that contains toxins in surprising amounts.
Moreover, these toxins are also responsible for slowing down metabolism, and it’s dangerous for any human being.
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Once you start taking this supplement regularly, it will start to remove the unhealthy toxins that are becoming the root cause of obesity.
Aside from that, this pill also works as an energy booster. Most weight loss programs make people lazy due to all the diet they’re doing.
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However, Meticore makes sure that you will be yourself while loose all of that excessive fat. Let’s talk about the main stuff now.
Meticore, an all-natural dietary supplement, is designed to burn fat to treat obesity and obesity-related problems.
Meticore supplement is made with a combination of nutrients, vitamins, minerals and all other essential elements your body, especially metabolism and core temperature, needs to work faster and better.
Meticore is a 100% vegetarian obesity treatment that heals your body internally.
Meticore is made in strict and sterile conditions where each and every nutrient is carefully tested for its efficiency, effectiveness, purity and potency.
This panacea for obesity is Non-GMO and has no toxins, added sugar or artificial ingredients.
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Thus, we can safely claim that Meticore diet pills are one of the safest revolutionary supplements available on the market today.
A group of scientists invented this formula for the people who have tried everything and yet haven’t been able to lose weight.
Meticore formula treats thousands of root causes of obesity. The most common cause affects more than 90% of the population: Slowing down of Metabolism.
Metabolism also works on the core body temperature. The scientists reached Madagascar, the land of potency and purity.
They tested the Meticore ingredients grown on the fertile lands of Madagascar and spoke to the locals.
This place is in Africa and it is famous for its wildlife, dense forests and amazingly pure air and atmosphere.
Although it is endangered, scientists found a way to source these ingredients on a regular basis.
In the initial phase, extremely obese people could lose up to 21 lbs within a week or two.
After testing the Meticore ingredients in government-approved labs, the results shocked everyone. It literally reverses every single pound of fat within two months.
Meticore Supplement also is very effective in treating metabolic and digestive troubles, high blood sugar and cholesterol, obesity and heart health.
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After years of research, they combined all the ingredients to place it in one, easy-to-swallow, potent capsule. They then named it Meticore supplement.
By focusing only on the root causes of obesity, Meticore is said to work very effectively on people of all kinds.
Meticore fastens up the digestive processes by releasing certain digestive enzymes. These can help your body absorb the nutrients from the foods you eat daily.
Without Meticore, your body wouldn’t be able to absorb all of it. The ingredients also help speed up your metabolism by secreting metabolic enzymes.
The enzymes speed up your cognitive abilities, fat-burning abilities, nutrient-absorbing abilities, and fat-to-energy conversion abilities.
Meticore is made using 6 potent ingredients that are extracted from the purest places of Madagascar, Africa.
The ingredients can also help increase the core body temperature so your body burns fat faster.
Each and every bottle of Meticore is formulated in an FDA approved and GMP certified facility.
A Meticore bottle has 30 capsules for a month’s supply. Each and every capsule works in phases:
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These phases can definitely help you lose weight. Since Meticore is a natural supplement, its effects are slowly visible.
You must be patient and consume the Meticore supplement for at least 3–6 months for best results.
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Remember, consuming Meticore weight loss pill for a longer period will result in excellent health benefits.
The ingredients of Meticore supplement have made it possible for Meticore to be this effective and potent.
You may have never seen such a potent combination of key nutrients before.
Each and every ingredient is proven to be safe and effective for your overall health. Here’s a complete list:
1. African Mango Seeds: Produced in Madagascar, African Mango Seeds are often known for their antioxidants, vitamins and mineral contents.
They have a great anti-ageing property that many other fruit seeds don’t have. What’s rare? Meticore fruit’s seeds can improve your body’s immunity and metabolic processes.
These are also rich in fibre. The fibrous substances help us feel full and content, hence, weight loss is promoted. Meticore supplement also helps lower blood sugar and high bad cholesterol levels.
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Meticore has anti-inflammatory, antioxidants and blood circulating properties. Meticore anti-inflammatory property helps maintain a healthy core body temperature.
Meticore helps in the process of losing weight. Meticore also promotes the regulation of blood sugar and cholesterol.
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Moringa leaves help in maintaining metabolic activities with the core body temperature. Meticore helps in secretion of essential enzymes so you can digest whatever you consume.
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The antioxidants in them can also help reverse the low core body temperature. Meticore is a very essential ingredient that helps in the absorption of other ingredients.
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Meticore Supplement is also used to treat chronic obesity and obesity-related problems.
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When consumed with other ingredients, Ginger can help flush out any excess sugar.
Also, the manufacturers have added two additional ingredients to make the absorption process easier: Vitamin B12 and Chromium.
Meticore is the rarest combination of ingredients. Even if you find them separately and consume them regularly, they won’t be as beneficial as Meticore.
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On consuming Meticore regularly, you will experience many health benefits such as…
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* You will experience anti-ageing benefits with just a few capsules.
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* Your face and hair will shine and glow.
* You take one Meticore capsule a day and you experience numerous health benefits in a few days.
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Most people who take Meticore dietary supplements experience an amazing weight loss in just a month or two.
Meticore Reviews — The Cons
* Meticore is a friendly dietary product specially formulated to balance the core body temperature for losing weight and the stubborn fat faster.
* Meticore contains the right combination of 100% natural ingredients to boost your body’s fat-melting metabolism effectively.
* Each Meticore bottle contains a 30 day supply that you can consume in a prescribed way.
* You can ask for a money refund if you are not happy with the results.
* You can keep buying this Meticore product at a reasonable price.
* Meticoreis suitable for both men and women of any age to access healthy weight loss quickly.
* Meticore is risk-free to use, and there are no side effects.
Meticore — The Best Supplement is WORTH its Cost
* You are not able to get this Meticore offline.
* Meticore would be best if you have a proper internet connection to buy this product online.
* Meticore doesn’t offer any fake promise
and not supporting people who are expecting an overnight miracle on the first day of usage.
* Meticore is not recommended for women who are pregnant or lactating ladies.
One bottle of Meticore costs $297, however, it is available at a discounted price.
* A bottle of Meticore costs $59 today.
* Three bottles of Meticore cost $147 today. ($49 x 3)
* Six bottles of Meticore cost $234 today. (#39 x 6)
Also, all the Meticore products have a small shipping fee involved.
Along with the huge discounts, you are gifted with a 60-day 100% money-back guarantee from Meticore.
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Tags: Paid Content, Impower Solutions, sponsored content, Sponsored Content
We welcome readers to submit letters regarding articles and content in Detroit Metro Times. Letters should be a minimum of 150 words, refer to content that has appeared on Detroit Metro Times, and must include the writer’s full name, address, and phone number for verification purposes. No attachments will be considered. | https://medium.com/@mayurtembhurkar/meticore-150-per-sale-85-comms-flat-85-off-70fa27b5525d | ['Mayur Tembhurkar'] | 2021-12-30 16:36:34.455000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Weight Loss Supplements', 'Health', 'Healthcare', 'Weightloss Foods'] |
A Proposal for Insurance Markets on the Blockchain | Cryptocurrencies, specifically stablecoins, are the gateway to building full-scale decentralized financial services. The broad design space enables innovation and accessibility in financial goods and services unbounded by borders and legacy constraints. Nearly any product related to the store or transfer of value and risk can be created using stablecoins. In this article we propose a framework for how insurance financial services can function on the blockchain. Core aspects of an insurance product must be preserved when migrated to a blockchain platform, with additional features to optimize and streamline contracts and execution. The result is a simple, transparent, and scalable solution with higher payouts and improved efficiency.
The State of Insurance
The global insurance business has a high barrier to entry due to capital costs and regulation which has hitherto permitted inefficiency, low levels of customer satisfaction, and lack of investment among large incumbents. High overhead from legacy systems and dawdling digital strategies leaves customers without much value and convenience. Agency risk in assessing and settling claims, and delays or denials that stem from costly processing can leave customers in limbo without funds in times of need.
The result is only 29% of insurance customers are satisfied with their current providers, and over $470 billion of premiums are ‘in play’ due to declining customer loyalty. Since nearly 2/3 of the global insurance market is concentrated in the U.S. and Europe, the rest of the world is mostly uninsured or underserved. Insurance is a sizable market that is ripe for disruption, so let’s begin…
The Future of Insurance
By combining blockchain technology, smart contracts, stablecoins, an exchange, and a decentralized development bounty program, the legacy insurance business can be improved and scaled.
Blockchain — decentralized, provable, immutable record, global, no intermediaries
Smart Contracts — safe, transparent custody of funds with automated, instantaneous processing and settlement
Stablecoin — borderless money that maintains its value
Exchange — efficient market for pricing, transferring, and pooling risk
Bounty — reward innovation, integration, and development
A global blockchain insurance solution offers buyers competitive, dynamic pricing, faster claims processing, and higher payouts than traditional insurance. Access can be extended to anyone with an internet connection. Sellers are incentivized to participate and write policies due to higher profit margins than traditional insurance, lower costs, streamlined processing, embedded protections, risk pooling and reinsurance, and new sources of global business. A seller can be anyone with capital and access to the information sets and sophisticated models necessary for pricing risk, including traditional insurance firms, banks, asset managers, and cryptocurrency investors.
One of the most compelling reasons for utilizing a decentralized insurance exchange is its potential to overhaul the cost structure of the legacy insurance market. When you consider that about 50% of an insurer’s cost base is consumed by operations and IT, and an additional 25% is taken up by sales, marketing, and other support functions, overhauling this staid industry by adapting the core business model to operate in a decentralized manner offers tremendous cost reduction and other advantages for more progressive firms.
Bootstrapping the exchange and each new product from a cold start is an important challenge to solve. The mechanics of bootstrapping are not in scope for this writeup, but could involve temporarily guaranteeing excess returns for the approved sellers that offer pre-funding, operational, and marketing support. Ensuring that the opportunity cost of capital for participants in a decentralized insurance exchange remains competitive is another consideration. Aside from the overall cost reduction compared to legacy markets, increasing ROI on the capital pools is also possible if the right custodian or smart contract investment structure is put in place to ensure safety, fairness, transparency, and a market return on committed capital. In addition, proper structuring of the risk and reinsurance pools ensures all ecosystem participants are properly incentivized and that capital is utilized efficiently. This is described in greater detail in the next section.
Mechanics of a Decentralized Insurance Exchange
The proposed design for a decentralized insurance platform allows for efficient competition and risk transfer in a market with adverse selection and asymmetric information.
Market and Risk-Transfer Overview
One of the greatest challenges of designing a decentralized financial product or service on the blockchain is ensuring that pricing, risk-transfer, and settlement can be conducted in a trust-less manner. An insurance governing body in conjunction with external developers incentivized by a bounty program, can create and approve a set of standardized insurance options contracts for listing on a global insurance exchange. Pricing is market-determined using options models and actuarial models, becoming increasingly accurate and sophisticated over time. Buyers and approved sellers agree on a price, then the insurance contract is locked into a smart contract that waits on an oracle to determine the payout. Buyers and sellers are willing to engage anonymously because both parties lock the required amount capital into a smart contract to initiate the insurance contract. The insurance contract must then be placed into the appropriate risk pool within a predefined timeframe.
Buyer funds and seller funds form the risk pool, along with an external reinsurance backstop. Sellers receive a small commission from the buyers, to increase ROI in a competitive market and to incentivize contract locking. Sellers pay an exchange fee to the insurance governing body which provisions a reinsurance pool and funds the external developer bounty. Risk pooling and automated servicing via smart contracts lowers seller costs. The segregated funds from the buyer (premium) and seller (capital) are used to settle an individual contract within the pool, while the shared funds of the buyer and seller are used to settle any contract in the pool that is triggered by the oracle, to cover the shortfall that remains after that individual contract’s segregated funds are used. The reinsurance fund is shared across risk pools, to protect against very low probability events that could drain the funds from a single risk pool. Uncorrelated ‘Act of God’ events, outside the sphere of influence of any individual or entity, are a good first market to simulate. Margin trading on existing highly liquid financial assets is another potential market.
The above example demonstrates how both buyer protection and seller ROI is increased by risk sharing, through premiums and capital as well as reinsurance pools. In order to grow the reinsurance pool more quickly, the exchange can sell reinsurance pool returns as a subsidy to scale. Risk pool collateral return can be increased once the reinsurance pools are large enough to warrant the creation of an investment tranche that can be offered to investors with different risk/return profiles. The insurance exchange governing body can tweak the economics and mechanics of products and contracts to incentivize the full ecosystem. It’s important to note that the above example doesn’t include the additional return generated from investing the committed funds into safe assets that yield market rates of return.
Efficient Market Pricing and Adverse Selection
There exists collusion risk in a trust-less, decentralized market with adverse selection with asymmetric information. Sellers can purposefully under-price policy risk and collude with buyers to unfairly gain access to the shared funds of lower policy risk pools. To eliminate this risk, exchanges should enforce both a private market and public market, identical in terms of contract offerings, so that any profits from mis-pricing policies in the public market are offset by losses on the same mis-priced policy in the private market.
The logic is simple, a set of approved sellers in a private market can be more easily monitored than the broader public market, and thus have incentive to maximize long-run profits rather than collude with each other. This type of decentralized market equilibrium has never been fully explored or proposed before. It is rooted in academic work by Prof. Anastasios Dosis of ESSEC Business School. Note that similar to any market, an additional set of parameters and bounds can be instituted to properly manage liquidity and risk, and to mitigate attack vectors. | https://medium.com/swlh/a-proposal-for-insurance-markets-on-the-blockchain-1f09b2fbb630 | ['Evan Kereiakes'] | 2020-12-16 15:37:25.142000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Stablecoin', 'Terraresearch', 'Insurance', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
All About Malas | One of my favorite things to do, before I walk out the door, is adorn myself with a beautiful mala I bought in Bali while traveling there in 2012. I distinctly remember the experience of buying it. My friend Lisa and I searched and sought for over a week until we found the sweetest little shop with handmade malas.
We held mala after mala in our hands, carefully considering the significance of the stones, the colors of the beads, etc. I chose a traditional mala with rudraksha beads and carved lava as the Guru bead (the centering bead above the tassel). Recently while at a 21 day yoga teacher training, I wore this mala and used it often for Japa meditation — a recitation of mantra 108 times, using the 108 beads as my guide.
Malas are not only an aesthetic enhancement to an outfit, but they are also a spiritual symbol. I wear mine as a reminder of the yoga journeys I have been on. I also use it in meditation. 108 is considered an auspicious number for many reasons. According to Ayurveda (the sister science of yoga), there are 108 sacred points in the body. There are also 108 energy lines within the chakra system that connect to the heart, and the diameter of the Sun is 108 times the diameter of the Earth. The significance of 108 can be found throughout history in religions, astronomy, and numerology.
Japa meditation is the repetition of a mantra or chant 108 times as you…
To read the rest of this article, visit https://www.mukhayoga.com/blogs/the-community-hub/all-about-malas.
By Liz Skarvelis; All Rights Reserved @2018 | https://medium.com/@sharonp-94230/all-about-malas-81ebb58f0837 | ['Mukha Yoga'] | 2020-12-05 00:14:48.499000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Mala', 'Prayer', 'Tibet', 'Yoga'] |
Takeaway 01 | This is a journal entry from 11th September 2021.
Yesterday was meant to be an amazing day for me.
I had spent the last two months working on a small introductory course. It was meant to be a test course for another big course that I have been planning for the past year.
I wanted to see stats, build a community by inviting a new audience that fit into my target market. It was meant to be really huge.
My equipment was pretty basic.
I used my laptop’s webcam because most of the course was meant to be a presentation with just my head visible from the corner.
I used a Boya mic for recording (something that I have been using for my podcast for the last two seasons).
I also used noise-canceling headphones and edited my recording on Windows Movie Maker.
I tried to record multiple times, but something always ended up wrecking the recording, be it loud noises or bad lighting.
One day, I don’t even know how it happened, but everything fell into place and I managed to record the entire thing with minimum distractions!
The course came out to be awesome, the content was great, the recording and visuals were good, considering my equipment was basic, and everything looked and sounded really good!
I launched my program and was waiting for the course to start working its magic!
After a few hours, however, I got a notification telling me that my course was hidden because it did not fit into the guidelines set by the platform. I was shocked as I checked the reasoning behind it.
It was things like bad lighting, the recording wasn’t in HD, and at some places, there was a buzzing noise…
Damn.
To say I was pissed, irritated, and exhausted was understating my emotions. I was glad that the content wasn’t the reason behind my course being hidden, it was the fact that my recording wasn’t the best.
I was annoyed that small-time creators like me were unable to share our content because everything wasn’t perfect.
I knew that I had to re-record everything if I wanted my course to be out there. A small part of me tried to feel grateful and look at the positive side of things that this gave the opportunity to redo everything but at a higher quality, but the irritation didn’t go away.
I put up a story to let people know that there was some issue with the course and that I will be re-uploading it soon. I also told them that I will be off the grid for a while to rest and relax otherwise I would burn out. I switched off everything and went to sleep, hoping that I would feel better the next day.
However, when I woke up today morning, that nagging feeling remained.
And I realized why. I keep telling creatives that perfection is over-rated, I believe that you can put something out there and then improve on it as you grow. Progress over perfection.
And here I had a reminder that told me that this might not work in real life.
I decided to have a chat with myself. After all, the answers to some of the most difficult questions are found within.
This is how the chat went —
Me — I worked so damn hard to get this course out there. You know that!
My soul — I agree! You worked really hard!
Me — Then why did this happen?
My Soul — Because your work did not meet the standards of the platform you wish to publish on.
Me — I get that! But-
My Soul — Look, these are the standards of the platform. You knew that. Someone is investing their time and energy into watching your content, they have to make sure that your content meets their standards!
Me — I know! But does that mean small-time creators like me need to have the best of the best to create awesome content to put it up on sites like these?
My Soul — Yeah. Listen, this is a matter of perception. The site did not hate your content. Your content is awesome, but the quality of the recording was good but not great. This is not about you. It is about their standards when it comes to quality. Think of it like this. It is their duty -
Me — Hehe duty.
My Soul — Hehe yeah *rolls their multi-dimensional eyes*, you weird kid. It is their duty to include content that meets their standards because the learner/student is spending and investing their time in viewing your content. They want to make sure that you get the best opportunity to succeed. And to do that they need for you to rise up and evolve. You can still create content with the things you have available and share it on the platforms that you have been on for the past few months. But if you want to get the opportunity to teach a bigger audience, you have to get better equipment. So… what are you going to do?
Me — Damn. Didn’t need to call me out like that.
My Soul — It is what I do.
Me — I think I am going to rise up and evolve… as you said. I have been recording content for a while now… I think it is time for an upgrade. Plus, I don't ever want my content to be rejected because it did not meet the standards of a platform.
My Soul — Yeah?
Me — Yeahhhhhh!!
My Soul — So, how are you going to go about that?
Me — Don’t I deserve some rest? I just found my key takeaway!
My Soul — Nah man. You know I don’t work like that.
Me — Damn, you are right. Hmmm, I am going to create some offers to build up and market my Patreon and start connecting with people on LinkedIn and Clubhouse to create awareness, get clients, help people, earn a lot of money so that I can buy all the equipment I require to further evolve my content.
My Soul — Damn. Noice.
Me — Thanks!
My Soul — But didn’t you feel weird on Clubhouse?
Me — Dude, I love you, but I think imma enter that door tomorrow. I have had enough learning for today.
My Soul — Fair enough. Now go ahead and rest yourself so that you can enter the battlefield with glory!
Me — Yes! We are about to conquer my content marketing strategy and grow sooooo much! SO many new opportunities await!
My Soul — YESSSSSSSSSS! Let’s gooo!!! How are you planning on resting by the way?
Me — Imma create a publication to share my takeaways and then, maybe watch Doctor Who? I have been meaning on watching that for a while.
My Soul — Smort. Alright, love, I am going to rest now. Hit me up if you need anything!
Me — Bye queen!
Anyways, if you guys stayed here for this long, this is how a typical day goes in my head. It is weird, quirky, sassy, and full of wisdom, and weird references.
Follow this publication for more conversations with me and my soul and for some key takeaways!
Tell me in the comments what is the one thing you plan to do to evolve in your life so that a particular aspect of your life is never rejected! Also, let me know if you had any other takeaway from this entry! | https://medium.com/time-for-a-takeaway/takeaway-01-26e6087cfe1f | ['Madhurima Sappatti'] | 2021-09-11 08:37:01.983000+00:00 | ['Lessons Learned', 'Journaling', 'Evolving', 'Growth', 'Personal Thoughts'] |
What is a confusion matrix? | Everything you Should Know about Confusion Matrix for Machine Learning
A confusion matrix is a tabular summary of the number of correct and incorrect predictions made by a classifier. It is used to measure the performance of a classification model. It can be used to evaluate the performance of a classification model through the calculation of performance metrics like accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score.
If you have an imbalanced dataset to work with, it’s always better to use confusion matrix as your evaluation criteria for your machine learning model.
Confusion matrices are widely used because they give a better idea of a model’s performance than classification accuracy does. For example, in classification accuracy, there is no information about the number of misclassified instances. Imagine that your data has two classes where 85% of the data belongs to class A, and 15% belongs to class B. Also, assume that your classification model correctly classifies all the instances of class A, and misclassifies all the instances of class B. In this case, the model is 85% accurate. However, class B is misclassified, which is undesirable. The confusion matrix, on the other hand, displays the correctly and incorrectly classified instances for all the classes and will, therefore, give a better insight into the performance of your classifier.
We can measure model accuracy by two methods. Accuracy simply means the number of values correctly predicted.
1. Confusion Matrix
2. Classification Measure
1. Confusion Matrix
a. Understanding Confusion Matrix:
The following 4 are the basic terminology which will help us in determining the metrics we are looking for.
True Positives (TP) : when the actual value is Positive and predicted is also Positive.
: when the actual value is Positive and predicted is also Positive. True negatives (TN) : when the actual value is Negative and prediction is also Negative.
: when the actual value is Negative and prediction is also Negative. False positives (FP) : When the actual is negative but prediction is Positive. Also known as the Type 1 error
: When the actual is negative but prediction is Positive. Also known as the False negatives (FN): When the actual is Positive but the prediction is Negative. Also known as the Type 2 error
For a binary classification problem, we would have a 2 x 2 matrix as shown below with 4 values:
Confusion Matrix for the Binary Classification
The target variable has two values: Positive or Negative
or The columns represent the actual values of the target variable
represent the of the target variable The rows represent the predicted values of the target variable
b. Understanding Confusion Matrix in an easier way:
Let’s take an example:
We have a total of 20 cats and dogs and our model predicts whether it is a cat or not.
Actual values = [‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’]
Predicted values = [‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘cat’, ‘cat’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’]
True Positive (TP) = 6
You predicted positive and it’s true. You predicted that an animal is a cat and it actually is.
True Negative (TN) = 11
You predicted negative and it’s true. You predicted that animal is not a cat and it actually is not (it’s a dog).
False Positive (Type 1 Error) (FP) = 2
You predicted positive and it’s false. You predicted that animal is a cat but it actually is not (it’s a dog).
False Negative (Type 2 Error) (FN) = 1
You predicted negative and it’s false. You predicted that animal is not a cat but it actually is.
2. Classification Measure
Basically, it is an extended version of the confusion matrix. There are measures other than the confusion matrix which can help achieve better understanding and analysis of our model and its performance.
a. Accuracy
b. Precision
c. Recall (TPR, Sensitivity)
d. F1-Score
e. FPR (Type I Error)
f. FNR (Type II Error)
a. Accuracy:
Accuracy simply measures how often the classifier makes the correct prediction. It’s the ratio between the number of correct predictions and the total number of predictions. The accuracy metric is not suited for unbalanced classes.
Accuracy has its own disadvantages, for imbalanced data, when the model predicts that each point belongs to the majority class label, the accuracy will be high. But, the model is not accurate.
b. Precision:
Precision is defined as the ratio of the total number of correctly classified positive classes divided by the total number of predicted positive classes. Or, out of all the predictive positive classes, how much we predicted correctly. Precision should be high(ideally 1).
“Precision is a useful metric in cases where False Positive is a higher concern than False Negatives”
Ex 1:- In Spam Detection : Need to focus on precision
Suppose mail is not a spam but model is predicted as spam : FP (False Positive). We always try to reduce FP.
Ex 2:- Precision is important in music or video recommendation systems, e-commerce websites, etc. Wrong results could lead to customer churn and be harmful to the business.
c. Recall:
Recall is defined as the ratio of the total number of correctly classified positive classes divide by the total number of positive classes. Or, out of all the positive classes, how much we have predicted correctly. Recall should be high(ideally 1).
“Recall is a useful metric in cases where False Negative trumps False Positive”
Ex 1:- suppose person having cancer (or) not? He is suffering from cancer but model predicted as not suffering from cancer
Ex 2:- Recall is important in medical cases where it doesn’t matter whether we raise a false alarm but the actual positive cases should not go undetected!
Recall would be a better metric because we don’t want to accidentally discharge an infected person and let them mix with the healthy population thereby spreading contagious virus. Now you can understand why accuracy was a bad metric for our model.
Trick to remember : Precision has Predictive Results in the denominator.
4. F-measure / F1-Score
There will be cases where there is no clear distinction between whether Precision is more important or Recall. We combine them!
In practice, when we try to increase the precision of our model, the recall goes down and vice-versa. The F1-score captures both the trends in a single value.
F1 score is a harmonic mean of Precision and Recall. As compared to Arithmetic Mean, Harmonic Mean punishes the extreme values more. F-score should be high(ideally 1).
5. Sensitivity & Specificity
3. Is it necessary to check for recall (or) precision if you already have a high accuracy?
We can not rely on a single value of accuracy in classification when the classes are imbalanced. For example, we have a dataset of 100 patients in which 5 have diabetes and 95 are healthy. However, if our model only predicts the majority class i.e. all 100 people are healthy even though we have a classification accuracy of 95%.
4. When to use Accuracy / Precision / Recall / F1-Score?
a. Accuracy is used when the True Positives and True Negatives are more important. Accuracy is a better metric for Balanced Data.
b. Whenever False Positive is much more important use Precision.
c. Whenever False Negative is much more important use Recall.
d. F1-Score is used when the False Negatives and False Positives are important. F1-Score is a better metric for Imbalanced Data.
5. Create a confusion matrix in Python
To explain with python code, considered dataset “predict if someone has heart disease” based on their sex, age, blood pressure and a variety of other metrics. Dataset has columns of 14 and rows of 303.
Count plot showing how many has heart disease or not.
Classification Report:
classification_report() takes in the list of actual labels, the list of predicted labels, and an optional argument to specify the order of the labels. It calculates performance metrics like precision, recall, and support.
Confusion Matrix:
confusion_matrix() takes in the list of actual labels, the list of predicted labels, and an optional argument to specify the order of the labels. It calculates the confusion matrix for the given inputs.
That’s It!
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for the read. I am going to write more beginner-friendly posts in the future. Follow me up on Medium to be informed about them. I welcome feedback and can be reached out on LinkedIn anuganti-suresh. Happy learning!
References:
Clap if you liked the article! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/what-is-a-confusion-matrix-d1c0f8feda5 | ['Anuganti Suresh'] | 2020-11-20 07:46:12.135000+00:00 | ['Confusion Matrix', 'Classification Algorithms', 'Machine Learning', 'Supervised Learning', 'Scikit Learn'] |
The robots being readied to enter nuclear no-go zones | The robots being readied to enter nuclear no-go zones
AI has been successfully tested in a real-world, radioactive environment.
by Julianna Photopoulos
Robust, intelligent robots that react to their surroundings are being developed to work in situations that are too dangerous for humans, such as cleaning up Europe’s decades-old radioactive waste or helping during a nuclear emergency.
When Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster struck in 2011 following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, the robots that were deployed to support rescue workers were very basic and largely ineffective, says robotics expert Professor Sven Behnke at the University of Bonn in Germany.
Spurred by this problem, Prof. Behnke and his team developed a robust disaster-response system through a project called CENTAURO. The robot is controlled by a human from a safe distance while various sensors allow it to perceive its environment and relay information back to its operator.
‘The main operator controls the robot through a telepresence suit which measures the motions of the operator’s arms, wrists and fingers and transfers them to the robot,’ said project coordinator Prof. Behnke. A head-mounted display worn by the operator allows them to see in 3D what the robot sees from its own perspective, he adds.
Named Centauro, the 1.5-metre-tall robot weighs 93 kilograms, is made of lightweight metals like aluminum and has 3D-printed plastic skin.
Centaur-like
‘The robot has a centaur-like body plan with four articulated legs ending in steerable wheels,’ said Prof. Behnke. Those four legs make it more stable than bipedal robots. As it is able to rotate at the hip, knee and ankle, Centauro can take on numerous postures and navigate in challenging environments.
Centauro’s upper body has two arms with multi-fingered hands which allow it to lift objects and manipulate tools and doors. Although tele-operated, the robot has some degree of autonomy. For example, if it is told to move to specific locations or grasp an object it will plan and execute the action.
Tele-operated robot Centauro can fulfil tasks such as climbing stairs, navigating obstacles and using power tools. Image Credit — Centauro
Last year, Centauro was tested in real-world, challenging scenarios at the German nuclear disaster-response provider Kerntechnische Hilfsdienst GmbH. It successfully climbed stairs, navigated debris, overcame gaps, unlocked a door, operated valves and power tools, and more, says Prof. Behnke. ‘The CENTAURO disaster-response system provided the high degree of flexibility needed for realistic missions,’ he said.
Prof. Behnke hopes the technology may one day play a crucial role in disaster relief efforts although it isn’t ready to face radiation just yet. However, researchers at the University of Birmingham, UK, are in the process of developing robots that can handle high radiation levels to clean up nuclear waste from the past half century.
Across the European Union, more than 90 nuclear reactors have been permanently shut down while more facilities are set to be decommissioned. Under its 2021–2027 budget, the European Commission has proposed to allocate nearly €1.2 billion towards nuclear safety.
‘There’s nearly five million tonnes of legacy nuclear waste in the UK and cleaning that up is the biggest and most difficult environmental remediation challenge in the whole of Europe,’ said robotics expert Professor Rustam Stolkin who coordinates the RoMaNs project.
Prof. Stolkin and his colleagues are designing autonomous behaviours in robots so that they can sort radioactive waste according to various contamination levels.
‘This can only be done by robots because this waste is too radioactive for humans to go near, even (when) wearing protective suits,’ said Prof. Stolkin.
In 2013, the most recent year for which figures are available, France had the most radioactive waste in the EU with nearly 1.5 million cubic metres, 44% of the bloc’s total. The UK had the second largest amount with more than 1.2 million cubic metres, 38% of the total EU volume.
AI-controlled
To date, robots operating in dangerous environments are controlled entirely by a human, but this one-way approach would be painstakingly slow for grasping and moving huge amounts of materials of unpredictable shapes, sizes and consistencies, says Prof. Stolkin.
‘There’s nearly five million tonnes of legacy nuclear waste in the UK and cleaning that up is the biggest and most difficult environmental remediation challenge in the whole of Europe.’ - Professor Rustam Stolkin, University of Birmingham, UK
To overcome this problem, the team developed an autonomous, vision-guided robot which uses AI to assist the human operator.
Their project partner CEA, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, created a nuclear-resilient robot arm with a hand and fingers, which is controlled by a robotic glove, or haptic exoskeleton, worn by the operator.
‘This now is a bit like a fancy joystick,’ explained Prof. Stolkin. ‘So as you move your arm and your fingers, the slave arm in the radioactive zone moves its arm and its fingers.’
The system uses AI for automatic vision, allowing the robot to know how to detect, recognise and pick up all kinds of objects.
The human operators share control of the robotic arm with the robot through tele-operation and AI, says Prof. Stolkin. For example, the operator can move the arm around and the robot automatically controls the orientation of the hand to make the grasp easier, or the robot, planning to grasp an object, would display its intentions to the human for confirmation.
‘The robot (AI) is doing all the hard work, but the human still feels in charge at some level,’ he said.
Such systems are usually very complex to control, says Prof. Stolkin, however theirs allows operators to simply mouse click on an object that the robot goes to and grasps.
The three-fingered hand exoskeleton developed by CEA captures the operator’s movements to control the slave robot hand. Image Credit — CEA / Stroppa
When the robot arm touches a surface or grasps an object, the operator feels the contact forces through the robotic glove. Giving remote operators situational awareness of what’s going on inside the no-go zone through a virtual sense of touch is extremely useful, says Prof. Stolkin.
For the gloves to work, the robot arm must behave adaptively, responding to the environment they encounter, he says. To achieve this, the CEA team developed adaptive mechanisms in the arm joints that mechanically move just like springs and are more resilient against radiation than delicate electronic parts.
Near future
The RoMaNs team successfully tested a robot arm with the AI control system they developed, in a radioactive environment in 2017, under full nuclear safety and UK national security regulations, at a site in northern England operated by the National Nuclear Laboratory. This was the first time ever an AI-controlled robot was deployed into a real-world, radioactive environment.
Prof. Stolkin had previously imagined that it may take at least another decade to transfer these technologies to the nuclear industry, but says plans are already being made to deploy them at decommissioning sites in the near future.
‘When we proposed this, the idea of AI-controlled robots, it was considered absurd by this industry,’ he said.
The research in this article was funded by the EU. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.
See also
More info
RoMaNS
CENTAURO | https://medium.com/horizon-magazine/the-robots-being-readied-to-enter-nuclear-no-go-zones-45ee9fdb7972 | [] | 2019-01-22 11:02:38.462000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Science', 'Research', 'Technology', 'AI'] |
Special Christmas episodes for your holiday mood | Special Christmas episodes of your favourite series
I am clearly sure that in spite of remaining quarantine conditions you have already started your preparing for Christmas. But where can we find the inspiration? Everyone would agree that it’s hard to stay in that holiday mood but the old good movies could help us. So, here is the list of some special Xmas episodes of your favorite series.
Big Bang Theory
The show originally centered on five characters living in Pasadena, California: Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper, both physicists at Caltech, who share an apartment; Penny, a waitress and aspiring actress who lives across the hall; and Leonard and Sheldon’s similarly geeky and socially awkward friends and co-workers, aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Raj Koothrappali. Over time, supporting characters were promoted to starring roles, including neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler, microbiologist Bernadette Rostenkowski, experimental physicist Leslie Winkle, and comic book store owner Stuart Bloom.
Season 2, episode 11, “The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis”
Season 6, episode 11, “The Santa Simulation”
Season 7, episode 11, “The Cooper Extraction”
Friends
Rachel Green, a sheltered but friendly woman, flees her wedding day and wealthy yet unfulfilling life and finds childhood friend Monica Geller, a tightly wound but caring chef. After Rachel becomes a waitress at West Village coffee house Central Perk, she moves into Monica’s apartment above Central Perk and joins Monica’s group of single friends in their mid-20s: previous roommate Phoebe Buffay, an eccentric, innocent masseuse; neighbor Joey Tribbiani, a dim-witted yet loyal struggling actor and womanizer; Joey’s roommate Chandler Bing, a sarcastic, self-deprecating IT manager; and Monica’s older brother and Chandler’s college roommate Ross Geller, a sweet-natured but insecure paleontologist.
Season 1, episode 10, “The One with the Monkey”
Season 3, episode 10, “The One Where Rachel Quits”
Season 4 episode 10, ”The One with the Girl from Poughkeepsie”
Season 6, episode 10, “The One Where Ross Got High”
Season 7, episode 10, “The One with the Holiday Armadillo”
Black mirror
Somewhere in the middle of the snowy desert is a lonely outpost. Matt and Joe have been working together for 5 years, but they don’t talk. For the Christmas dinner, the conversation is tied between them, and they share with each other three strange stories from their lives and not only.
Season 2, episode 4, “White Christmas”
Sherlock
Thomas Ricoletti asked well known Sherlock Holmes for help to solve his case. He saw his wife in the old wedding dress and was very surprised, and soon found out that she had killed herself a few hours before that meeting. Holmes, Watson and their friends had to show their best skills in battle with otherworldly powers to find out the truth about the bride.
Season 4, episode 0, “The Abominable bride”
The Simpsons
At school where Simpsons children are studying there is a Christmas party. Homer and Marge, sitting in the Hall, look at the performances of children. Lisa Simpson in mask, handed two burning sticks, performed dance of Santa Claus of Southern seas. School choir sings Christmas songs, but Bart changes words deliberately, and it is kicked out of the scene.
Season 1, episode 1, “Simpsons roasting on an open fire”
Glee
Glee celebrates Christmas and faces the dilemma, when it is possible to perform at two events a day. Irish student Rory Flanagan misses the House and meets Sam Evans who is also far away from his family.
Season 3, episode 9, “Extraordinary Merry Christmas”
Futurama
Skiing makes Fry to remember about Christmas and about the XX century. To distract him from these thoughts, his friends decide to celebrate Christmas as it was accepted in 3000.
Season 2, episode 8, “Xmas story”
The X-Files
On Christmas eve, Mulder and Scully find themselves locked in a house with two ghosts who are determined to prove that you can be very lonely during the holidays.
Season 6, episode 6, “How the Ghosts stole Christmas”
Doctor Who
Amy and Rory are on their honeymoon in a spaceship which is falling on an unknown planet, and the Doctor has only one hour to save them. The doctor meets Kazran, who has the ability to control the sky. Kazran refuses to help. Then the Doctor decides to travel into Kazran’s past to make him kinder.
Season 6, episode 0, “A Christmas carol” | https://medium.com/@sherlon-n/special-christmas-episodes-for-your-holiday-mood-eed42c71c155 | ['Anastasia Sherlon'] | 2020-12-09 06:28:00.567000+00:00 | ['Series', 'Christmas', 'Holidays', 'Film'] |
エコノミストがデータの可視化を使って伝えるストーリーの裏を探る | CEO / Founder at Exploratory(https://exploratory.io/). Having fun analyzing interesting data and learning something new everyday.
Follow | https://medium.com/%E6%9C%AA%E6%9D%A5%E3%81%AE%E4%BB%95%E4%BA%8B/%E3%83%87%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E3%81%AE%E5%8F%AF%E8%A6%96%E5%8C%96%E3%81%8C%E3%81%86%E3%81%BE%E3%81%8F%E4%BC%9D%E3%81%88%E3%82%8B%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E8%A3%8F%E5%81%B4-56bdababda3b | ['Kan Nishida'] | 2018-09-25 22:44:02.232000+00:00 | ['Storytelling', 'Poverty', 'Data Visualization'] |
Change Flutter app theme according to the system theme mode | As usual I won’t make a fancy app, and will only focus on the implementation of the feature. What we want to archive in this article is, when the user changes the OS theme the app will listen and then change the theme according it, and the result will be like the image bellow.
App
The first thing you need to do is change the first widget in the tree to StatefulWidget because some part of the code will be in the init function. And after that you need to observe the event when the user changes the OS theme, and for that you will extend the WidgetsBidingObserver on you widget.
StatefulWidget
Now let’s use the ValueNotifier as the tool to control the state management and trigger the event to the widget tree and change the brightness.
ValueNotifier
Next step is register the widget in the WidgetsBinding observer to listen to the change theme event and initialise the app brightness according the OS brightness on the initState function. Then you need to implement the didChangePlatformBrightness function because every time this change theme event happen this function will be trigged and you need to update the value according the OS.
WidgetsBinding
Last but not least, you need to put your MaterialApp widget inside a ValueListenableBuilder in order to listen the change on the state management and reflect the update on the widget tree. | https://medium.com/@thiagoevoa/change-flutter-app-theme-according-to-the-system-theme-mode-c4a63d05128f | ['Thiago Evoá'] | 2021-07-05 12:03:05.203000+00:00 | ['Flutter', 'Dart'] |
World’s first AI robot “Sophia”( wow) | World's first AI robot "Sophia"
Sophia, Hansen Robotics' most advanced human-robot, personalizes our dreams for the future of AI. As a unique… | https://medium.com/@ushansankalpa95/worlds-first-ai-robot-sophia-wow-a0ecf4f063ec | ['Ushan Sankalpa'] | 2020-12-04 08:01:08.263000+00:00 | ['First Robotics', 'Robots', 'AI', 'Science', 'Technology'] |
AYS Daily Digest 10/09/21: A visit to the Austrian border police — “doing what they are told” at the initial point of chain pushbacks | LEBANON
It’s been two years that Lebanon has been in a devastating economic crisis (an economic crisis that the World Bank has called one of the top 10 most severe crises globally since the 19th century), and 13 months since the explosions of unclear origin took place in Beirut’s main port, reaching and destroying big parts of the country and it’s connection to global trade. These 13 months have been marked by a missing cabinet as the former one withdrew shortly after the explosion and could reform legally — thus accepted by all three religious decision-makers — just now.
13 months with only a minimally working government in emergency status means 13 months of not tackling structural problems. The majority of the population is living below the poverty line, food prize stay high, fuel is nearly impossible to get and even medicine is now getting scarce. Electricity is available for one hour per day. Furthermore, employment and salaries have both declined which leads to citizens leaving the country for good, including doctors — the basic needs can less and less be met.
Lebanon has taken in the most refugees in comparison to it’s own population worldwide, and it is estimated that 40 percent of the overall population are refugees. More than a third of those are minors — while in 2020, 89% of Syrian refugee families lived below the extreme poverty line. The majority is lacking legal status, which is heightening risks of exploitation and abuse and restricting refugees’ access to work, education, and healthcare. Many of the people live in temporary shelters in harsh weather conditions of hot summers and cold, wet winters.
This collapsing country and all it’s people have been waiting for a new government for over a year, unrealized due to political and religious games of power. Now, under prime minister Nadschib Mikati, a new cabinet has formed — consisting mainly of the old elite sadly infamous for corruption and embezzling money. Also, consisting of 23 men and 1 woman in total. Though the disappointment in the population is deep and hope can only be kept until official elections in may 2022, a positive turn in the first days:
In 2019, the authorities in Beirut began forcibly returning some Syrian refugees but halted this in 2020 due to border closures linked to the pandemic; now this would have happened again to 6 Syrian men, but as a “welcome statement” the General Security Office of the new found government declared the men to be safe to stay in Lebanon. What that will mean for internal asylum politics has to be seen. We are awaiting news about the cooperation between Cyprus and Lebanon, which has so far resulted in pushbacks by the Cypriot state forces and a following expulsion from Lebanon. Find out more on the case and Amnesty International’s pressure on Lebanon as well as other countries to continuously suspend expulsion to Syria, where returnees are threatened with torture, sexual abuse and worse.
Lebanon will hardly see any changes in internal struggles in the close future. Western countries have been halting aid for as long as there hasn’t been a control on corruption, so there are few possibilites for people on the move to get support.
AFGHANISTAN
Human Rights Watch urging Japanese government to protect Afghans with ties with Japan
Japan’s government should urgently protect Afghan civilians who are at risk under the new Taliban authorities, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
The Japanese government, which has not even offered help to all Afghans with past ties to Japan, should urgently scale up its protection and support to Afghans at risk. Japan should also offer to relocate and resettle at-risk Afghans in numbers commensurate with the crisis. Japan’s long involvement in Afghanistan and its leadership role as a donor underscores its responsibility to help Afghans now fleeing for their lives. — Kanae Doi, Japan director at Human Rights Watch
So far, the Japanese government has not announced any plans to facilitate family reunion or pledges for resettlement, HRW reports.
At the same time, there have been many testimonies on incidents of violence towards protesters and journalists. The most recent media covered incident concerned two reporters present at the Panjshir protests, who were being arrested and beaten until losing consciousness.
In just two days this week, the Taliban detained and later released at least 14 journalists covering protests in Kabul, with at least six of these journalists subject to violence during their arrests or detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported.
UNHCR has reportedly urged the Taliban to “put aside the use of force against protesters and journalists who are covering protests in Afghanistan in recent weeks”. The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warn over a sharp increase in violence against journalists and reporters in Afghanistan and says in the past two days dozens of violence cases against journalists have been recorded by RSF. Find a recorded discussion (in Persian) of Afghan News channel TOLO News on the subject here. Also one of TOLO News journalists had briefly been detained, had been prevented from filming earlier this week and had his camera confiscated.
LIBYA
Drone strike hits illegal boat-building factory
An illegal factory in Sabratha dedicated for building boats to transfer migrants has been targeted by two drone strikes. According to local sources the drones which targeted the industrial district did not result in any casualties, but a huge explosion was heard throughout the city. No party has yet claimed responsibility for these two strikes, which occurred on Sunday, Libya Observer reported.
SEA
Geo Barents Rescue Vessel back to sea | https://medium.com/are-you-syrious/ays-daily-digest-10-09-21-a-visit-to-the-austrian-border-police-doing-what-they-are-told-at-d61f88d8b2e5 | ['Are You Syrious'] | 2021-09-11 16:04:28.151000+00:00 | ['Austria', 'Digest', 'Europe', 'Refugees', 'Lebanon'] |
A Future Without Me | A Future Without Me
The day dawned the usual and would have gone on to be the same; listless and dull. She woke up to an empty bedside and an empty room. She wondered if her heart would become empty of all emotions soon too. Her existence made no difference, she felt. The same routine every day, get up and wait for another day to end. How she wished she had someone to talk to, someone who would care, someone she could cry her heart out to. But, alas, this was as bad as wishful thinking. Even a piece of furniture or a wall decoration is noticed when the time comes for cleaning or getting replaced. She didn’t have that much either.
She was a nonentity, a curse and an unwanted existence.
Becoming a widow in this country closes all windows. She had long since accepted her fate and had now even started to believe what others said. Maybe it was her bad luck that brought on his death. Why else would someone like him die? Who would wish for the death of a person who just by his name brought on smiles? The condolences had slowly stopped coming and gradually the memories would fade too and so would his entire identity. But she would remember. She would remember until her last breath. Because even in his death he had left behind a future for her. A dark one, but a future nonetheless.
Photo by Katsiaryna Endruszkiewicz on Unsplash
But, that day, the routine broke. She never knew a simple knock on the door would bring up such curiosity. Even her feet had forgotten the path as they had not ventured out since the day the news of his death came in. As she walked to answer the door, another knock came up, louder and more persistent; as if the person wanted nothing more than to see her. She wondered who would be so impatient to meet her. Nobody wanted anything to do with her, leave apart coming to her house.
As she opened the door, a long ago memory stirred up, awakening all her senses, making her happy and sad at the same time. How she used to run from the kitchen, calling out to her mother in law that she was getting the door, and with a twinkle in her eye she would throw the door and even her arms wide open to let him in.
A stranger, dressed in all black stood outside. Before she could say or ask anything he walked past her straight into the house and made himself comfortable on the rocking chair. It boiled her blood to see another man on his seat! How dare he! Who does he think he is! But she controlled it and just gave him the cold eye.
He looked around once, his eyes weren’t missing anything from the kitchen to the floor and even the ceiling. Finally, they came to rest on her and she did not like it even one bit. She was about to speak when he said, “Namaste, bhabhiji. I am Mohan, Kishore’s friend. I am sure he might have told you about me”. Oh! So this is Mohan. She knew him quite well, thanks to Kishore’s endless rant and anecdotes about his and Mohan’s days together. They had been school friends and had even worked together for a while before Mohan moved to the city. She remembered Kishore telling her that Mohan was working with some big company now. But, why was he here today? What did he want? These questions ran through her mind as he continued, “Bhabhiji, I have come all this way and you are not even offering water. Kishore would not have appreciated it.”
So he knows about his death, she guessed. Sighing, she walked to the kitchen and filled up water in a glass all the while thinking about why Mohan was here and praying he would leave soon. It would only add to her ill repute if he stayed more. She put the glass on the table next to him and stood away from him. He drank it all in one go and started to take out some papers from a briefcase. She kept looking at the door to make sure nobody passed by or saw what was going on inside the house. Her attention diverted when he said, “Bhabhiji, I know how tough it is for you. The villagers and even your in-laws must be giving you a hard time. I’m sure they even hold you responsible for what happened. But I have something that might help you in these bad times.”
Tears had already started welling up in her eyes as he continued, “Kishore and I were more than just friends. We were like brothers and even after I moved, we stayed in touch. I know how happy you made him. He constantly worried about what would happen if someday something like this would happen. That’s why he trusted me with these.” He handed her some papers but it just confused her more.
He chuckled and went on to explain, “Sorry, my mistake. Bhabhiji, these are property papers. Of this house as well as the land that Kishore owned. He has left it all to you. Also, he has given me strict instructions as to what, how and how much needs to be done.” She looked at him with even more questions in her eyes.
Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash
So, he went on to, “Nobody and I mean no one; neither his brothers and sisters nor anyone from his extended family can claim any of this property without your written consent. That written consent too cannot go forward without my supervision and guidance. He has told me to make available at least twenty workers, all females, to help you with the agriculture and well care of the fields. If these are not enough, I am to provide more money, manpower and whatever you require and provide it to you without question.”
She was speechless by this time and could only ask, “But I don’t have any money!” to which he replied with a twinkle in his eye, “Bhabhiji, what do you think he was toiling away so many years and leaving you alone so many hours of the day? He was well aware of what would happen if he passed away. He has left behind enough money so that you don’t have to worry for at least 10 more years. By then, I’m pretty sure you will earn enough through these fields yourself.”
She was still trying to digest all this when he said, “Don’t worry about how you will manage. I have already hired enough labourers to help you.” With that, he went out and motioned to her to follow. As she gazed outside, she saw at least 20 women working in the field across the house. He looked behind to see if she was watching and smiled warmly as he saw some hope in her eyes.
He remembered the last words Kishore had said to him, “Yaar! If I die before Suhasini, I don’t want her to live the life my mother was forced into. That’s why I trust you to take care of everything. Also, I want you to make sure each woman gets what she deserves so hire only widowed women to help her. Their futures will become hopeful too. And even Suhasini will have people around whom she can relate to.”
That day, he saw a better tomorrow, for the nation, for the women of the country. Today, she felt glad he was helping create that better tomorrow.
As Suhasini looked on, she realised how lucky she was. Even in his death, Kishore was looking after her. She had been right, he had left behind a future for her indeed. But not a dark one! Things were about to change for her, as well as for the women folk of the country, even if it was bit by bit or in this case, crop by crop.
Photo by Amanda Frank on Unsplash
Note: This story was originally published on Naked Truth | https://medium.com/illumination/a-future-without-me-cc06ee505dfe | ['A Rustic Mind', 'Manali Desai'] | 2020-12-24 03:58:49.046000+00:00 | ['Hope', 'Short Story', 'Alone', 'Fiction', 'Stories'] |
The new economy built on blockchain | Crypto and blockchain is the new blood flow for borderless economy
2020 is a special year, a very memorable year for almost everyone on planet earth. Covid-19 changed the way people interact, work, socialize in a dramatic way. Although digital transformation has been a force in many areas for quite a while, this year it is quite a massive force. BTC price this year broke its record set in early 2018, making it all-time high. Defi made a massive growth. The world of crypto just became mainstream.
“We are building an ecosystem of peer to peer economies for everyone. It is entirely borderless and at one’s fingertips”
At T-REX.exchange we are making massive steps toward expanding horizontally and vertically the eco-system built on the blockchain network. This is built on its successful 18-month pilot operation in Vietnam in which massive continuous improvements to the platform were made to improve user experience and ease of use.
T-REX’s next phase will enable users worldwide to easily participate in the new blockchain-based economy, making peer to peer transaction of services and goods become borderless and at one’s fingertips. Based on the ever-increasing popularity of blockchain technology, the platform will be able to touch the unbanked population — a huge untapped market and will be able to connect them to the world-wide economy.
Approximately 2 billion people globally are unbanked and that represents a huge market and workforce.
“Our service will enable people with just a smartphone to join in a big community where they are able to trade, exchange goods and services securely as we provide a easy to use workflow tightly integrated into an escrow model payment system built on the blockchain network” says Mr. Yoshitake Yamamoto, Chief Strategy Officer of T-REX. “We are building an ecosystem of peer to peer economies for everyone. It is entirely borderless and at one’s fingertips”
We are rolling out hundreds of payment methods and processes that will aim to enable its users to join this evolution and improve their well being. For starters, trading of popular gift cards will be introduced, with an automated and by-progress payment release workflow which will reduce dramatically time spent and disputes on doing transactions. Goods, second-handed goods and services will also be introduced in a short while. We are making our platform accessible and reliable for people everywhere to participate, create and exchange the internet of value. Escrow payment using crypto will be the center of this evolution. Unlike many others, T-REX is all about making crypto being closer to people and make their life better.
“We are making massive steps toward our vision when we first establish the company which is to bring wealth and prosperity to everyone, especially the unbanked population in the world” says Mr. Chau Vu, founder and CEO of T-REX Global. “Approximately 2 billion people globally are unbanked and that represents a huge market and workforce.” “We are excited with the platform and believe it will bring massive improvement to everyone’s life. As long as you have a smartphone with internet connection, you are welcome to join and make good income” says Dong Nguyen — Co-founder of T-REX.
Visit us at www.t-rex.exchange and join the evolution. | https://medium.com/@t-rex/the-new-economy-built-on-blockchain-ebec0421539b | ['T-Rex Exchange'] | 2020-12-01 10:17:37.411000+00:00 | ['P2p Payments', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Bitcoin', 'Gift Cards'] |
Clean energy technology is taking cues from sunflower spirals, schooling fish and other natural phenomena | Clean energy technology is taking cues from sunflower spirals, schooling fish and other natural phenomena
By observing how plants, animals and even mud behave, renewable energy innovators are uncovering new ideas for improving efficiency and output
Photo © iStockphoto.com/Mlenny
By Shweta Narayan for Ensia | @ensiamedia |
When we think about renewable energy, we think of rolling fields with windmills or industrial rooftops covered in silicon solar panels designed by human engineers in high-tech labs. As engineers work to make energy systems more efficient and affordable, some are finding inspiration in nature.
Organisms and natural systems have had some 3.8 billion years to evolve. Because energy is the currency of life, in the process they have come up with energy-efficient ways to function. From more productive wind turbines to strategic solar arrays, there’s a lot we can learn from nature about improving energy production and use.
For example, scientists at Cornell studying the movements insect wings make as the insects hover found that the wingtips trace out figure-eight patterns, minimizing power consumption. Such energy-saving kinematics could help improve the efficiency of miniature unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) used for surveillance.
The idea of imitating nature to design machines is not new. Leonardo da Vinci’s ornithopter was inspired by the flapping wings of birds, although it never actually took flight. From bridges and buildings to water management and food distribution, other examples of biomimicry abound in today’s world.
Now, as renewable energy grows in popularity, scientists and engineers are looking to nature for insights into designing wind, marine and solar energy devices in a way that increases efficiency and reduces environmental impact.
Solar Spirals
In July 2016, a solar-powered airplane flying over the desert region of Andalusia in Spain photographed breathtaking images of the Gemasolar concentrated solar power plant. The plant, operated by Torresol Energy, consists of 2,650 heliostats — mirrors that turn to track the motion of the sun, fanning out around, and reflecting sunlight toward, a 150-meter (490-foot)-high tower. The central tower houses molten salts that can store the energy of that light for extended periods of time.
In a fascinating article published in Solar Energy in 2012, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and RWTH Aachen University in Germany reported that the placement of heliostats for a concentrated solar plant like Gemasolar could be optimized by mimicking the spiral arrangement of florets in a sunflower. This pattern, called Fermat’s spiral, occurs commonly in the arrangement of leaves on stems and florets in flowers.
The spiral arrangements of seeds on a sunflower provides a model for optimum arrangement of heliostats in a concentrated solar plant. Photo © iStockphoto.com/undefined_undefined
The researchers found that for a solar plant with a central tower, the efficiency of the heliostats closest to the tower was higher. Hence, arranging them in a Fermat’s spiral pattern would lead to smaller footprints and higher efficiencies for the power plant. The inspiration from sunflowers doesn’t stop there — the researchers also found that angling each heliostat at a “golden angle” of 137.5° with respect to its neighbor would result in less blocking and loss of solar radiation.
Alexander Mitsos, one of the lead researchers on the project, points out that although the biomimetic layout has seen a lot of interest, the Fermat’s spiral pattern has not yet been directly implemented in a commercial concentrated solar power plant. Some CSP plants like the Gemasolar plant do seem to have a spiral pattern. However, “as far as I know, these are not the biomimetic ones,” Mitsos says.
Tapping the Tides
Energy found in waves off the U.S. coast could theoretically supply the equivalent of about 66% of U.S. electricity generation in 2017, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. To tap into the vast potential of the oceans to provide energy, University of Wisconsin computational scientist Jennifer Franck draws inspiration from the flapping flight of insects, birds and bats to design “oscillating hydrofoils” — to extract energy from tides.
Conventional devices for extracting energy from tidal currents rotate. An oscillating hydrofoil resembles an aircraft wing, but with a symmetrical elliptical cross section that allows for energy harvesting as the tide ebbs and flows. The hydrofoil heaves in response to tidal currents to turn the energy of tides into electrical current. Franck compares this pitching and heaving motion to the fluke of a large whale, except that the animal usually uses this motion for propulsion.
What is it about flapping motion that makes it a good source of power? Franck and her collaborators found that heaving at certain frequencies and pitching at certain amplitudes leads to the generation of a large amount of lift force. Not only that, but because the motion mimics natural movements of fish and aquatic mammals, “we think that it is more friendly for the environment,” Franck says.
The team has shown that this device can be scaled up and can also function well in shallow water. It is currently working to determine optimum placement of components.
“My sense is that if we can develop an optimum array configuration of these flapping foil devices, it would generate enough energy per square foot to make it competitive with wind and solar energy,” Franck says.
Inspired by Mud
Reza Alam, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, found his inspiration for reducing the cost of marine energy in a rather unlikely place — mud.
“Mud can take up a huge amount of energy from ocean waves,” says Alam. In the coastal state of Kerala in southwest India, he notes, the rivers bring abundant mud to the shoreline during the monsoons. The mud absorbs energy from waves, calming the water, attracting fish and giving local fisherman a bountiful catch.
“If mud can do such a great job in harnessing energy from ocean waves, why don’t we design something that behaves like mud, and responds to the action of waves passing over it?” he asks.
In a laboratory testing facility, an artificial seafloor “carpet” whose design was inspired by the behavior of mud transforms wave energy into hydraulic pressure. Photo courtesy of the Theoretical and Applied Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at UC Berkeley
Taking inspiration from this phenomenon, Alam and his team designed an artificial seafloor “carpet” that absorbs energy as the mud does, then turns it into useful power. Potential applications include powering offshore aquaculture and seawater desalination.
“In California alone, an average of 35 kilowatts of energy per meter of coastline come towards the coast from the ocean,” Alam says. “This means that every meter of California coast can power seven houses with the device operating at 20% efficiency, which is conservative.”
The team is currently testing different materials and configurations in a wave tank to figure out what works best in different environments, such as rocky or muddy shores. A former graduate student from Alam’s lab, Marcus Lehmann, started a company called CalWave Power Technologies that works on an anchored wave energy technology inspired by the seafloor carpet concept.
Fishy Turbines
At Stanford University, bioengineering professor John Dabiri and colleagues are testing vertical axis wind turbine farms inspired by fish schooling patterns.
Conventional wind farms employ horizontal axis wind turbines, which spin at right angles to the wind much as windmills did on the farms of yesteryear. While individual horizontal axis turbines operate at high efficiencies, the turbines need to be spaced far apart so that the airflow patterns generated by one turbine do not interfere with the performance of neighboring turbines. To tackle this issue, Dabiri’s team turned to vertical-axis wind turbines instead.
Swimming fish create patterns of water movement in their wake that resemble the patterns of airflow generated behind wind turbines. Rather than being inhibited by these flow patterns, neighboring fish actually utilize them to enhance and coordinate their swimming as constructive interference of flows between neighbors minimizes the “drag,” or resistance to airflow. (If you’ve ever drafted a truck while driving or another rider while bicycling, you’ve experienced the phenomenon yourself.)
Dabiri’s team used this fish-schooling pattern to inspire wind farm design for optimal energy harvesting. Rather than following the conventional horizontal-axis approach and spacing turbines far apart, they placed vertical-axis turbines in close proximity.
They found that if neighboring turbines are staggered and rotate in opposite directions, the alteration of wind speed and direction by adjacent turbines can actually be beneficial for collective performance of the wind farm. In fact, the team’s studies at the California Institute of Technology’s Field Laboratory for Optimized Wind Energy (FLOWE) found that the power generated per unit area can be almost 10 times greater at high wind speeds compared with that for modern horizontal axis turbine farms.
Commercialization Challenge
It certainly appears that biomimicry has plenty to offer efforts to improve the efficiency and economics of renewable energy. However, a significant impediment seems to be the slow pace of commercialization.
The reasons for this are complex and interwoven. In the case of marine energy, the lack of consolidated test facilities is a concern for scientists, especially because permits for testing in the ocean are hard to obtain. New technologies are tricky to assess without designated test sites and dedicated funding from the government and industry.
Survivability in harsh environments and environmental impact are also major concerns for any clean energy technology.
“The hardware development is inherently slow and expensive,” says Dabiri. “The idea of using biological inspiration is usually attractive, but the hard work is in developing a technology that can function successfully in the real world for a long time.”
In the case of concentrated solar power and wave energy, the limiting factor appears to be economic.
“The idea of using wave energy to generate electricity is not new, and there are thousands of patents with some brilliant ideas out there — and interestingly, for wave energy devices, most of these ideas work,” says Alam. “But the question is, can you generate power that can compete with fossil fuels?”
The jury is out over how many of these bio-inspired technologies will see the light of day. For the sake of the planet, many hope that at least some of them do.
Editor’s note: Shweta Narayan wrote this story as a participant in the . The mentor for the project was Nate Berg.
UPDATED 08.31.19: The focus of CalWave Power Technologies’ work was corrected.
Originally published at ensia.com on August 29, 2019. | https://ensiamedia.medium.com/clean-energy-technology-is-taking-cues-from-sunflower-spirals-schooling-fish-and-other-natural-cbca941b719d | [] | 2020-01-12 20:16:01.103000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Technology', 'Energy', 'Clean Energy', 'Renewables'] |
Donald Trump Lost — Great. Joe Biden Being the One to Defeat Him is a Hard Pill to Swallow. | So many have fantasized about a 2020 Trump defeat since November 9th, 2016, myself included. Yes, Trump being so uniquely awful, naturally it feels good that it became a reality. I was one of the thousands of folks across the country joining the celebrations of the election result. I went to celebrate in Philadelphia, one city out of many deserving much credit (with a major shoutout to Black and POC grassroots organizers) for awarding us Trump’s demise. I wanted to purely celebrate this particular loss, not this particular win. Would we be out dancing in the streets in a rapidly worsening pandemic had it been Biden/Harris vs. Romney/Ryan and not Biden/Harris vs. Trump/Pence? No. Are most people genuinely inspired or energized by someone like Biden? Unlikely. It’s dangerous to rely on cult of personality alone as a means to progressive change (as Angela Davis taught me, leaderless mass movements > individual messiahs), but even still, Biden is so unbearably mediocre. His entire campaign was premised on his relative personal decency, not on calling for audacious, meaningful change. Why couldn’t it have been both, with a focus on the latter? Because this is who Joe Biden is and has always been. Why is it considered “radical” to demand and fight for something more than this?
United how? Healed how? The emptiness of statements like this from Biden isn’t merely an attempt to not be polemical on Twitter unlike Trump (speaking to his promise of ‘personal decency’), but more so an embodiment of his milquetoast style of governance and policy.
Now he will be whitewashed to death by the Democratic party, white liberals, and corporate news media as some kind of champion of civil rights and economic justice when his 47-year track record in government has been more on the side of corporations, lobbyists, police, and the war machine. Lest we also forget that white male supremacy allows Joe to be this level of mediocre and bad and still be heralded as our savior. Most white liberals who voted for him will go back to sleep for four more years under the assumption that “justice” has been served. Nevermind the sober reality that the majority of white people in the biggest referendum on Donald Trump’s America yet told us once again that actually no, this is exactly who they are. But no matter, the not-a-Nazi won, so all that will vanish now. We are at the brink of being back to the “idyllic” normalcy of barely reigned-in capitalism, continued funding and support for a racist, imperialist military and police force, and corporations flourishing at the people’s expense with occasional slaps on the wrist. Why is it considered “radical” to demand and fight for something more than this?
In this ugly stain of a moment in human history — where an unhinged white supremacist at the helm of an empire attempted to unravel democracy and eventually march people to the death camps — people deserved an alternative far more than kinder words and weak reforms. They deserved far more than someone just vowing to not be that guy. They deserved far more than someone who was gung-ho for the Iraq War which killed millions of Iraqis, authored the 1994 Crime Bill that locked up thousands of Black men for even low-level offenses, “worked across the aisle” with segregationists, sometimes even for their causes, and advocated to cut funding for programs like Social Security and Medicare over the military budget. Even if you believe that bipartisanship is a better approach than being an all-out resistance party, it’s hard to look at Biden’s history in Washington and think he will now fight tenaciously for a multi-racial working class. He just doesn’t have the fight in him to steadfastly defend his supposed ideals, whereas the likes of Bernie Sanders on the left and Mitch McConnell on the right do.
People like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Tom Perez of the DNC don’t understand that it’s all of the above and not a progressive agenda that delivered us Trump, and will deliver someone as dangerous as him — if not more — once again. “Trumpism” as an ideology will live on for generations, and even if it does end up receding into the shadows momentarily, the disgruntlement of those 70 million people won’t just disappear. If Biden understood or cared to understand that, he wouldn’t have crafted and marketed a ‘politics as usual’ platform that got us here, but rather an unprecedented bold agenda that would materially change everyday people’s lives — including Trump supporters’. Watching him give his victory speech, I couldn’t help but feel like we were looking a time frozen in the past, not at a promising, exciting future.
Biden would rather offer less inspiring platitudes than Obama did and assume it to be enough to forge unity, when what he needs to offer (a.k.a. fight vociferously for) is guaranteed healthcare, education, green union-paying jobs, while vastly diminishing the power of corporations, the millionaire and billionaire donor class, lobbyists, and imperialist institutions like the military and police. Looking at his half-a-century-long record, we have reason to doubt he will. He will not wake up in the middle of the night and realize that fighting for increasingly popular populist policies is a reasonable solution on his own. He will need to be pushed, and pushed hard. Those energizing the electorate who will push him — AOC, Ilhan, Rashida, Pramila, Ayanna, Cori (all women of color) and others will be labeled as too woke, too unreasonable, and now, in spite of helping to elect him, costing moderate Democrats’ seats. Unsurprising, yet still sad to see. This isn’t about purity— it’s about demanding and fighting for something far more than (in other words, strongly against) the 40 years of Reagan-era-style neoliberal rule that got us here. The idea isn’t to be negative, it is to be hyper-realistic to ensure we don’t keep making the same mistakes. | https://medium.com/@aparnapriyadarshi/donald-trump-lost-great-joe-biden-being-the-one-to-defeat-him-is-a-hard-pill-to-swallow-5f7b313cf8db | [] | 2021-03-10 05:50:18.267000+00:00 | ['Centrism', 'Democratic Party', 'Joe Biden', 'Neoliberalism', 'Election 2020'] |
Happy new year 2021 wishes for friends and family | If you are searching about happy new year 2021 celebration then you have picked up the right content. Wishing you an advanced HAPPY NEW YEAR 2021 Lets celebrate happy new year 2021 just enter your name and enjoy happy new year 2021 PLEASE share on whatsapp,Pinterest,Facebook,Twitter & Instagram.
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#medium | https://medium.com/@mr-furqan-ahmed34/happy-new-year-2021-wishes-for-friends-and-family-ec45a3db40a1 | ['Mr Shan Ahmed'] | 2020-12-18 13:27:44.408000+00:00 | ['New Year', 'Happy New Year', 'New Year Resolution'] |
The iPhone 12 Pro camera is far behind the Huawei Mate 40 Pro, P40 Pro, Mi 10 Ultra | #iphone12camera
Smartphone camera kitchens have seen significant improvements over the past few years. While Android phones focus on hardware buildup and high megapixel development, iOS focuses on software optimization.
This is why the 12 MP sensor in iPhone can perform better than the 40 MP sensor in Android phones.
iPhone 12 consists of 4 models, namely iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. So, which model is the most popular where the demand is indicated the most?
Analysis from JP Morgan states that the iPhone 12 Pro is currently the most in-demand model on the market, beating the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Is it true that the sensors on the iPhone beat Android phones? DxOMark is one of the most trusted smartphone camera analysts today. They finally released their assessment of the iPhone 12 Pro camera
DxOMark said the iPhone 12 Pro scored 128 points to enter the top 5 of their ranking. This means that the Apple camera is still far behind the Huawei Mate 40 Pro (136 points), Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra (133 points), and Huawei P40 Pro (132 points).
DxoMark’s analysis of the iPhone 12 Pro
For images, the Giz China page says, the iPhone 12 Pro’s score earned 135 points. However, the scores are 66 points and 112 points respectively for zooming and video.
According to DxOMark, Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro achieved a total score of 128 points, four points higher than last year’s iPhone 11 Pro Max. This makes it the best Apple device in the DxOMark database.
The report also stated that the phone got 66 points in the zoom test, slightly lower than the best phone in this category. This is mainly because the phone’s telephoto lens provides only 2x optical magnification.
However, the autofocus system of this device is the best. It can focus quickly and accurately in multiple shots. The preview image also received a very good score, closer to the final photo than many other high-end phones.
Other than that, the iPhone 12 Pro’s exposure is generally good, but the dynamic range is a bit small. This means highlighting and shading will occur in difficult conditions. Color rendering is accurate under indoor lighting, but discoloration may be noticeable in outdoor images.
The camera can retain very fine details. Only when shooting indoors and in low light can there be image noise.
The iPhone 12 Pro’s telephoto lens delivers great image quality at close zoom distances. The zoom performance is not that great but it is still better than the iPhone 11 Pro Max. The ultra-wide angle camera can produce good image effects, only the detail and sharpness of the corners are not enough. There is still room for improvement.
IPhone 12 Pro Video Analysis
In the video section, the performance of this smartphone is better. When HDR is on, the video clip has good exposure and a wide dynamic range. It offers a movie-like effect in high-contrast scenes.
However, the dynamic range of videos is not as good as still images. In scenes with extremely high contrast, the video tone mapping has room for improvement. But the video dynamic range on the iPhone 12 Pro is on par with the best phones in the industry.
Summary
There’s still the iPhone 12 Pro Max which will most likely get a higher score than the Pro model. But we already know that the iPhone 12 Pro Max won’t be number 1.
It’s interesting that the iPhone 12 Pro is in the top 5. Overall photo performance is pretty solid, and in many ways slightly better than last year’s iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Video mode is a highlight of this new model because video uses Dolby Vision HLG technology, and has a wider dynamic range than many competing phones. If you place great importance on remote zoom quality, then the iPhone 12 Pro might not be the first choice. | https://medium.com/@tokosintajuara/the-iphone-12-pro-camera-is-far-behind-the-huawei-mate-40-pro-p40-pro-mi-10-ultra-9d8bf76b1c17 | ['Toko Sinta'] | 2020-12-26 05:31:03.645000+00:00 | ['Huwaeii', 'Smartphones', 'Cameras', 'iPhone'] |
Our inner journey leads us straight to the Northern Lights | I was eight when I saw the Northern Lights spread across the night sky above my house on Princeton Street — speechless as the colors danced above our Illinois trees.
Photo by Matt Houghton on Unsplash
What was this magic?!
“Aurora Borealis.” I think one of my parents said, quickly naming and explaining them, peeling away a little layer of their mystery. I don’t remember much else from that night. Just the stars, the colors, the overwhelmingness of a moment that felt so surreal I’ve sometimes doubted that I ever really saw it at all and at the same time felt like a sacred witness to one of the most miraculous, most gorgeous, phenomenons this world has to offer.
Staring up at them, my mouth agape, I realized how much bigger the world was than little me. Seeing the Northern Lights blew the door to the world wide open. I had been to Canada and the West Coast — trips to visit family — but the purity and holiness that lit up the sky let me know how much larger everything was. Yes, I felt small (who wouldn’t when faced with something so grand as the Northern Lights), but I also felt called.
Called to explore and discover the full depth and breadth of life with all of its immensity and possibility. I felt like it was the Universe or Higher Power saying, “I see you, Deb. This is for you.”
I wanted the rest of my life to feel like that moment. That moment when something greater, more powerful than myself spoke to me. A moment of pure magic and brilliance.
But I couldn’t find that feeling for the longest time.
I suppose there were moments… like when I got lost in my scraps of writing or poetry. Or maybe when I rode in Peter Pan’s pirate ship at Disneyland for the first time. (Or every time… you got me there.) But it wasn’t quite the same. Nothing compared to that night when I was eight.
When the glass shatters because ‘someday’ isn’t guaranteed.
Decades went by as I followed paths laid out for me by other people. And I have to own that I lost myself.
Until October 2008.
I lay on the credit union floor, tummy down and fingers pressed against the rough industrial carpet as the gunman closed the door to our office. I was working as an assistant manager at the time — one more job in a long line of disappointments.
Now it seemed, as I listened to Mr. Bandana closing the door, that “Assistant Branch Manager” would be my final title. I couldn’t see him from the ground, but I imagined him locking the door, stepping back over to me, and putting a bullet into my head.
My life didn’t flash before my eyes. Instead, what I felt was regret.
Regret that I hadn’t lived my life fully, or happily. Regret that I had been full of wishes and desires for ‘someday’ but had done nothing to grab hold of them. I would die in my 20s as a bank teller, thousands of lightyears away from my actual dreams and living a life that wasn’t really mine.
When the door clicked shut and I realized he had left and I would get to live, it changed everything. Not immediately for the better.
PTSD shattered my world and life as I knew it.
It was just like that time when my brother threw a hockey stick at another brother and only succeeded in impaling the living room’s sliding glass door. Surprisingly, it hadn’t shattered the glass in an instant. Instead, it left behind a small hole and a few spidering fracture lines.
Day by day those fracture lines spread and splintered. You could actually hear the glass cracking as the fissures crept toward the edges, filling the entire pane with an intricate web-like pattern. Until finally, the whole thing gave and came crashing down to the carpet in what felt like a million pieces.
This is what trauma and transition can feel like. And it doesn’t matter whether it was caused by our own choices or forced upon us by the choices of others.
A stick gets thrown, our glass is pierced, and at some point (if not addressed) our world will feel like it literally shatters.
For me, that proverbial hockey stick took the shape of the armed robbery. It put a hole in everything I thought I knew about myself, my God, my safety, my relationships, and my world view. Over time, the hole fractured, parts of me splintered off. I felt my insides cracking bit by bit until chsssshhh…everything about me, my life, my belief system came down — cutting as it crashed to my inner “living room floor.”
Ultimately, I landed myself in a hospital ward because I couldn’t keep myself on this planet anymore.
Finding my way back to the Northern Lights.
In that space of white walls and women shaking with trauma, I learned how to pick up every little fractal of glass, inspect it, reposition it, and remake it into something I could call my own.
I learned what to keep, what to reshape, and what to release in order to be the best, most healthy version of myself — a process that still continues to this day.
I learned how to love me, embrace me, defend me, protect me, forgive me, and champion both me and my dreams.
I learned to see the real me — the me who wanted and was deserving of living by her own set of rules.
It wasn’t until I really dove inward to understand my gifts and muchness that the feeling of pure magic and wonder started to return.
Turns out I’d been looking for it in all the wrong places. School. Work. Relationships. Stuff and things.
I’d mistakenly believed that because the Northern Lights had been this external force of creation and intensity, I could only find it through external means. But each one of these was just another roadblock. Another place where someone else was saying what was ‘right’ or ‘enough’ or ‘acceptable’ and how I should behave, show up, perform the duties of (insert role here).
It took the coming undone after the robbery, and this incredible continuous journey of finding my center, to understand that the magic I felt in the Northern Lights as a little girl, was actually INSIDE me.
The magic I’d looked for — and eventually gave up on in adulthood — had already been mine the whole time.
And that magic (once it’s realized and wielded) offers the same expansion and infinity and possibility as the Northern Lights.
Taking the inner journey.
But we must understand that, like the Aurora Borealis, our growth and healing are not a one-and-done event. “Sign up today, be healed tomorrow!” Nope. There will be ebbs and flows. Seasons of intense solar storms intermixed with seasons of “normalcy.” And when the storms hit, it is not because we didn’t do it right or weren’t enough, but because there is simply another layer of ourselves for us to understand and another night of darkness to traverse.
Just last year I was “forced” into neurofeedback — one more therapy to try to untangle the malformed synapses caused by trauma, both old and new. My PTSD was surging beyond my control again, a solar storm of epic proportions. Everything I had worked for ten years to rebuild was starting to come undone and I found myself back at the beginning, trying to keep myself on the planet. This would be my last stand.
In those first few sessions, without being guided, the technician chose a Northern Lights video for my brain training.
For the first time in years I remembered what life could feel like: weightless, no pressure, no stress, no anxiety.
It was like being 8 all over again (but better) with my head tilted toward the sky, soaking in the magic of the Northern Lights, believing they were for me, feeling their magic.
I felt freedom. I felt wonder. I felt hope and possibility.
I felt relief and release.
Again the Universe or Higher Power was sending the clear signal, “I see you, Deb. And I got you.”
The process of putting all my pieces back together has been tender and long and can feel super chaotic and conflicting. There’s excitement because I have had the ability to pick up the pieces and refashion something to my own design. With that excitement, there has been freedom. The freedom to choose. To decide.
And then, there’s been terror. Because now it’s all on me to rebuild without that pre-defined and “perfect” plan, without someone else calling the shots and telling me how to get there, and without any guarantee that what I create will function or thrive.
This means, when we truly make our life our own, we have to take complete and full responsibility for it.
If we mess it up it’s on us. We are the only ones now accountable. Which means we are the only ones who can set us free.
Redefinition and restructuring are scary, but what I know is that when we are standing in our inner power and understand our inner magic and how to wield it, the glass we put back together will be better than it ever was before. And this new glass we’ve designed — in our careful consideration of each piece’s placement — will be our greatest masterpiece.
Not a door or window to keep us safe and separate from the world, or a glass case to keep us locked behind others’ rules and expectations, but a work of art that inspires the world, influences it, and reflects the real us in every shimmering piece.
Reflecting the magic inside you.
Now, it’s my mission to lead others through their own awakenings, helping them build the confidence to live true to themselves, the courage to take the tough stands, and the connections to not just impact the world, but influence it as they claim their magic and create the life and biz of their dreams. It’s the Happily EPIC After beyond the rule books where we get to live in our most authentic expression, freedom, fulfillment, and joy today (not someday). All defined by our own sets of rules and all by discovering our inner magic.
Because following someone else’s ideas of what we should be doing with our lives, what should make us happy, and what will make us successful will only leave us wandering in circles, unhappy and unfulfilled.
Sure…we might have checked all the “right” boxes…but that empty, stuck feeling inside is telling us they weren’t the “right for us” boxes we were looking for.
Fulfillment and freedom don’t come from the outside.
They come from embracing and reclaiming all that incredible truth, magic, power, and brilliance waiting on the inside.
I see it all the time…people holding themselves back, keeping themselves small because they don’t know that inside of them is the same magic and wonder that the universe displays to us every day.
If they’ll just look. If they’ll take the journey.
If they’ll choose the courage to throw away the prescribed rules and narratives given to them, and walk toward the belief and hope that everything they need and desire is already inside them.
Finding your magic is the most powerful journey you’ll ever take.
It’s the inward journey to your Northern Lights. Because all our external expeditions? They are meaningless if we don’t claim our inner source of wonderment and truth. We may have acquired more stuff, more letters after our name, more picture-perfect homes, more checkboxes marked, but if we don’t embrace us, then we are missing out on the most magical experience we can have in this life.
There are Northern Lights inside each of us…waiting beyond the fractured glass of outside rules and expectations.
We just have to find them. | https://medium.com/@sacredrebels/our-inner-journey-leads-us-straight-to-the-northern-lights-8913a2bd0531 | ['Debbie Burns'] | 2020-12-23 17:36:57.670000+00:00 | ['Sacred Rebels', 'Self Improvement', 'Creation Magic', 'Courage', 'Creative Entrepreneur'] |
If just a few dozen people showed up to your free livestream, would anybody buy a ticket to your online concert? | If just a few dozen people showed up to your free livestream, would anybody buy a ticket to your online concert? Show4me Music Interaction Network Aug 7, 2020·3 min read
Whether people are ready, willing or in a position to spend on your music and art has been the discussion for decades if not centuries. The general consensus in the creative community is — if you love doing it, doesn’t mean it’s not work and you should not be compensated.
As an artist, you can charge for your work performing your music live whether it’s online or offline.
And with the COVID-19 pandemic not wrapping up for months now, many musicians and bands have been stranded with much reduced and sometimes completely cut off sources of income from their music.
To a relief of the community, numerous tools to monetize music online are available for musicians and their teams, one of such tools — ticketed online concerts.
As global lockdowns reached the western hemisphere, live shows got cancelled and postponed indefinitely. Musicians started holding online events and shows to help uplift the mood and help raise funds for worthy charitable causes.
We heard the first whispers of tipping probably in April or early May, when the talk of the financial losses the industry faced due to the drastically reduced opportunities to earn new money on gigs, live performances, festivals, parties, events, and the like got louder.
As some of the streams of income dried up, it was time to look for new ones. And ticketed online shows emerged as a temporary but sturdy solution. Musicians got an outlet for work and play, fans got to support their beloved acts and discover new ones, the demand grew.
Now, a number of online platforms offer ticketed concert streaming, and Show4me is one of them. What we hear often from the musicians just arriving to our platform is, but what if no one buys the ticket?
The math is simple, 10 fans buying $10 ticket each equal $100 worth in ticket sales. 20 fans can bring in $200, and so on.
Besides general admission tickets, many musicians on our platform offer a variety of ticket tiers — tickets with merch, meet-and-greets, video shoutouts, pre-party hangouts, interviews, afterparties, etc. The variety is only limited by your imagination (and legislation, as always).
It’s often not the actual size of the fanbase an artist has that defines if their online concert will be profitable/attract enough attendees, it’s event promotion. Only mentioning your upcoming stream once in passing on one of your social media channels is not going to cut it.
You have to tease what’s to come, remind people multiple times, involve fans in the process of planning and preparing the show, make the event the very center of your online communications in the weeks leading up to the concert.
And let’s be real, you also probably need to work on growing your fanbase. While that’s a topic for a separate conversation, we’ve encountered quite a number of great videos (actually, three) that outline exactly what you need to do and how in a succinct and entertaining manner, so head on over to our blog post with the extended version of this post, all the links to the sources you need, and additional advice on the issue. | https://medium.com/@show4me/if-just-a-few-dozen-people-showed-up-to-your-free-livestream-would-anybody-buy-a-ticket-to-your-dc1170d7ec89 | ['Music Interaction Network'] | 2020-08-07 09:58:11.086000+00:00 | ['Live Music', 'Music Business', 'Live Streaming', 'Music Industry', 'Livestream'] |
Premiere: Izza Releases Alluring “Made Up My Mind” | Izza | Photo: Sam Rockman
Alt-pop singer-songwriter Izza introduces the second single, “Made Up My Mind,” from her debut EP.
According to Izza, “The song that was inspired by a past relationship turned into so much more for me, as it also reflects my experience in the music industry. ‘Made Up My Mind’ is about learning that you don’t have to cave into the outside pressures of pretending everything is fine and trying to please others. It will never make you happy. Instead listen to your gut instinct — it will help you make the right decisions!”
Beginning early on, Izza found herself spellbound by music. Growing up immersed in a panoply of musical influences, ranging from Bill Withers to Amy Winehouse to Disclosure, she later crafted her own sound, a delicious fusion of alt-pop tinted by silky R&B savors.
Izza | Photo: Sam Rockman
“Made Up My Mind” opens on a light, platinum-colored guitar, low and passionate. When Izza’s deluxe, redolent voice enters, the tune assumes appraising textures as she narrates the complexities of outside pressures and traveling her own path.
“But I made up my mind / It’s gonna be alright / We been here for too long / And if we put the brakes on … I remember our song / But now it sounds wrong / And I guess that it won’t come back.”
At once airy and fierce, her voice takes on more and more insistence, highlighted by her luscious rise to a crystalline, pristine falsetto. Trembling layers of color waver in the background, infusing the harmonics with low-slung, shimmering surfaces accented by glossy nuances.
Rife with haunting, drifting tonalities, the melody exerts a magnetic pull, underscoring the icing on the sonic cake — Izza’s exquisitely luminous voice under gorgeous lilting control.
Izza has it going on! On “Made Up My Mind,” she dazzles not only with her opulent vocals, but with her gift for chromatic elaboration.
Follow Izza Website | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify | https://medium.com/pop-off/premiere-izza-releases-alluring-made-up-my-mind-746e6d81305c | ['Randall Radic'] | 2020-12-11 11:58:36.916000+00:00 | ['Made Up My Mind', 'Music', 'Izza', 'Alt Pop', 'Premiere'] |
Interviewing the founder of the U Experience | What might it mean to unbundle higher education during a pandemic?
Earlier this month I read about The U Experience in Inside Higher Ed. The U Experience is an experimental startup with the goal of providing an undergraduate residential semester… for students attending different colleges and universities, taking classes online. UE staff are establishing an epidemiological bubble around their students, so that the latter can socialize freely and without masks. The whole thing will take place at a resort in Pottsboro, Texas.
I was fascinated by the idea, not least because I’ve been calling for such a thing for years before the pandemic. It seemed like an idea worth exploring for students who want the residential experience but preferred to take classes online, especially traditional-age undergraduates (18–24). Yet I still wasn’t sure how this would work.
To learn more, I reached out to the UE team. Their founding president, Adam Bragg, agreed to answer my questions by email. Here they are, with my questions scarcely edited.
1. Are you recruiting students enrolled in American colleges and universities, or also those learners taking classes elsewhere?
Any student currently enrolled in a college, university, or higher educational program anywhere in the world may apply for a spot in The U Experience. We currently have thousands of students from hundreds of colleges who have applied.
2. Limiting the student population to a Dunbar number is a fascinating idea from a socialization perspective. It does seem low, however, given that most campuses host several hundred (at the low end) to tens of thousands. Are you planning that students will enjoy a combination social life, in person (at Tanglewood) and online (with classmates and other peers)?
We decided on limiting this first U Experience to 150 students because we feel that it’s the right number as far as keeping everyone safe and engaged in the community. We want to offer this to as many students as we can, but we still want it to be a personal experience for those who participate. We may decide to increase that number for future semesters, but right now we’re limiting our class to 150 students. While some college campuses typically have thousands of students in their community, most interactions happen within small social circles. I’m sure students will be maintaining relationships with their friends and college classmates while they are at The U Experience and our feeling is that those interactions can only enhance their experience.
3. Is the reality tv show going to happen? If so, how many students will be able to participate?
Right now, it would be premature to talk about any details regarding a potential TV show.
4. What academic criteria will you use in selecting your first 150 students?
Our goal is to create a community that will provide students with social, academic and personal growth opportunities. Just like traditional colleges and universities, in order to have an environment that brings value to the community, we are hand selecting participants. There are several factors that we are considering during the student selection process. Students applying to join The U Experience begin by making students profiles in our virtual community where they get the chance to indicate who they feel would most like to see on campus. To ensure a diverse and inclusive community, our staff will be evaluating applicants on their individual strengths and how they fit into the class. Applicants have the opportunity to introduce themselves with a bio to give insight into their goals and aspirations. Our staff will take all these factors into consideration to select those students who we believe will best contribute to a stimulating, creative, productive and diverse community.
5. What criteria will you use to determine if this first semester is a success?
Operationally, we will do a complete review of each aspect of the semester from guest speakers and program elements to safety protocols and food service. We will review every element of the semester with our staff to identify what worked and what presented challenges. We will also do a post-semester survey with each of the 150 students to get their insight and opinions on the experience. Our top priority is to keep our students safe, healthy, and happy, and beyond that the ultimate test of our first semester success will be the amount of student interest in our Fall 2021 program. If we’re successful in broadcasting our message and students are raving about this spring being the best semester of their lives, we’ll consider our mission a success.
6. If it is a success, what would your next steps be — offering additional U Experiences at other locations, for example? Do you think the U Experience could work after the pandemic is controlled? That is, would you consider hosting such a UE for students talking classes online in general, beyond COVID’s constraints?
Our mission is to unbundle the college experience so students can choose to pursue less expensive educational options like online learning without having to compromise on the social aspect or miss out on the college experience. Online learning has been growing in popularity over the past decade, with the rise of MOOCs (massive open online courses), and colleges have invested billions of dollars in building their online teaching infrastructure. We expect online learning to continue growing in popularity over the coming years, long after COVID. As we grow with time and offer a greater number of campuses each semester, we’ll also be able to provide different types of community experiences that students can pick and choose from.
Some thoughts and responses:
I’m fascinated by their global ambition. The U Experience sounds like a very American experience, with its emphasis on a rich, residential, undergrad time. We know this appeals to some folks from other nations, based on the success (pre-Trump, pre-COVID) American colleges and universities have enjoyed in recruiting global students. Perhaps UE can recruit the largest number from European and African nations, where the time zone differences for live sessions are most workable.
The part about students socializing online during the selection process is interesting. It’s different from the undergraduate application process. Instead, it sounds like an audition of sorts or a Greek house rush in its competitive and performance nature. Or, since UE founders are from Princeton, that campus’ eating clubs. Unlike those processes, this one will be entirely virtual.
The 150-student scale is interesting beyond the Dunbar number aspect, which I think is smart. From a sustainability level, UE needs to make this work for a very very small group of students. It’s smaller than starting up a college, for example. Given the roughly 17 million undergrads in the US, this is a micro-experiment. If we look globally, there are up to 200 million students to approach. Put another way, UE has an enormous pool to select from.
I think the overall picture is very attractive. First, it offers a sense of normalcy beyond the pandemic. As Colleen Flaherty writes, “there are people willing to pay for a sense of normalcy.” The chance to have a residential experience without masks in a resort setting is obviously appealing. Second, the competitive social aspect appeals to some people (again, cf the Greek system). UE has a good shot at making this work.
Obviously, the biggest risk is a COVID-19 breakout. Safety from it is the UE’s foundational premise. Other safety risks are also present, as they are in every residential undergraduate setting: injury, assault, stress, etc. The UE will have to manage this semester with assiduous care.
That need will be heightened to the extend that the spring 2021 garners media attention. I would expect some of the students to be active in social media, documenting their experience. Buzzfeed reports that at least one Instagram influencer has been admitted. More traditional media may also follow, which is why I asked Bragg about reality tv show rumors. Such attention will magnify any issues that arise, but can also build publicity for following semesters.
Returning to my earlier point, a successful spring term for the U Experience could inspire more such projects. Bragg was clear in our conversation about wanting to expand. I can imagine other enterprises launching to try capturing this emerging market. Startups could vie with established academic institutions. Perhaps a large state system like SUNY would consider setting one up in-house.
What do you think of The U Experience?
My thanks to Adam Bragg for taking the time to generously answer my questions.
Meta note: blogging will be light for the next week or so. I’ve been ordered to take some time off.
(cross-posted to my blog) | https://medium.com/@bryanalexander/interviewing-the-founder-of-the-u-experience-a91f24209747 | ['Bryan Alexander'] | 2020-12-24 17:39:31.228000+00:00 | ['University', 'Covid 19', 'Higher Education', 'College', 'Pandemic'] |
Why are people turning away from traditional travel guides? | Travel guides are in a bit of a crisis. Printed guidebook sales have been declining for years and making content available digitally doesn’t seem to have helped much. Given that so much information is now available for free online and that extreme segmentation made possible through social media has produced many more niche markets, many people are now asking about the future of the travel guide, printed or otherwise.
Complaints about Lonely Planet, the world’s largest guidebook creating company are almost as ubiquitous as the guides themselves. Critics complain that guides are increasingly poorly researched, are quickly rendered out of date, create legions of ‘Lonely Planet Zombies’ and reflect the opinions of just one reviewer. Similar complaints exist for other travel guides.
In contrast, the internet provides huge amounts of free content, which is kept up to date by other travellers as well as businesses themselves. Content is often linked to services, so it’s possible to both find a hotel and book it all on the same website. Recommendations are crowd-sourced through sites like Trip Advisor, making them more trustworthy and preventing companies from compromising on quality while still riding the coattails of a Lonely Planet recommendation.
Most people want trusted, up-to-date content but are increasingly unwilling to pay for it. While there are flaws in online travel content — systems which can be played and irritations such as slow website speeds, poor design or a multitude of adverts — printed content is often not deemed superior enough to warrant a price tag.
Yet, guidebooks still persist. Some observers say it’s too early to declare the death of the printed guidebook. Others say that travel guides will persist but in a different format.
“Professionally created guides will always have a place in the traveler’s toolkit, but they aren’t going to be limited to paper any more and the next generation of guidebook brands will need to make the business work sooner rather than later.” — JASON CLAMPET, SKIFT
So what will the guidebook of the future look like? People still look for travel inspiration and itineraries. The #travelgram bubble is bursting, and interested travellers are moving away from stunning images and moving back to well-written, information rich content. While we will probably never go back to the days of finding hotel recommendations in a book, there is still a role for the travel guide for people who value travel and enjoy the experience of planning travel. There is still a role for a travel guide for people who want quality, curated content and want to avoid adverts and pop-ups demanding they sign up for a newsletter. There is still a role for a travel guide for people who want just a little more from travel than free content. | https://medium.com/@deliberatetravel/why-are-people-turning-away-from-traditional-travel-guides-c43618b03ee0 | [] | 2020-02-21 14:35:25.291000+00:00 | ['Travel Writing', 'Travel', 'Travel Trends', 'Content Creation', 'Lonely Planet'] |
Coach Education – the tail of two futures | Coach Education – the tail of two futures
Working with Sport Scotland is always a pleasure and the challenge Derek O’Riordan (and team) set myself (and Steve McQuaid/Andy Grant) always grows me (us)…. This session was no different…
In this session Sport Scotland were clear, they were looking for a level of disruption, within the context of offering their ‘Coaching Network’ the freedom to think beyond what they currently knew to be coach education… delegates were charged with this opener…
“How often do we step back and think about the role we play as a network in developing coaching practice? Imagine having the time and space to think about what coaching could be within your environment, what it could look like in the future and what your role is within that?”
42 people now sat in front of me wondering what was about to happen…. And I didn’t really tell them, other than the above quote no outcome was shared. It had been agreed that ambiguity may well be of value in this space. Having some level of ‘unknown’ we knew would make some people quite uncomfortable and this was something they were going to have to manage. Creating ‘feeling’ within your delivery can be a valuable asset. Even if it does mean you are uneasy as a learner.
“how often are the learners we work with made to feel uneasy by our delivery because we know where its going but they don’t. Its valuable that we get to feel this same level of discomfort form time to time in order for us to calibrate our future work”
Poking the bear…
In my family we have a concept known as ‘poking the bear’ – now this is when you go and disturb a situation that is happily going along without your interference – there is often no reason to ‘Poke the bear’ but for some reason we do and BANG we break things and a fall out occurs… why did we poke the bear…. we should have have left well alone.
However today was a day to ‘Poke the Bear’ so I showed people this excerpt from an article, damming coaching education, for all its good intentions, it wasn’t working when seen through the eyes of this author…. (yes I knew today I was less likely to make friends….)
“Expensive, Inflexible, Overly Technical with Little REAL Impact – HOW DARE YOU!!!!”
Just a contemplation – could this be the case for learning in other contexts, I’m talking schools, colleges, work place learning etc…
Possible Future – the people rule
Scene setting – Imagine if coaches no longer came to you for their learning needs. Consider what you provide and think are they able to get this elsewhere for less, or for free, with and from their own communities (their ‘trusted peers’).
The story – as a society we have stopped trusting institutions. To paraphrase Rachel Botsman (pictured below along with some of her key slides depicting this story) we have lost our desire to trust in ‘the establishment’. Due to things like the ‘Volkswagen Emissions Scandal’, ‘News International Phone Hacking Scandal’ and ‘Tax Evasion’ by larger companies (and some individuals) we have lost our trust in places like banks, newspapers, insurance companies, lawyers etc.
The people we were supposed to go to for safe advice or guidance or help have abused our investment in them and this is now having a wider knock on effect to other industries. As a National Governing Body of Sport or a guiding partner origination you are one of these said institutions where trust may well have begun to erode…. | https://medium.com/@CoachDeveloper/coach-education-the-tail-of-two-futures-9bd30fd2fddb | ['Kurt Ewald Lindley'] | 2020-02-06 10:16:45.294000+00:00 | ['Sports Coaching', 'Education', 'Technology', 'Professional Development', 'Learning And Development'] |
Great Writers are Great Readers First | I accidentally added Mindy Kaling-style jokes to my trade war article and it made it better.
Photo by Tbel Abuseridze on Unsplash
I have been listening to Mindy Kaling’s book, Why Not Me? for the last few days. I had no idea she was so funny (sorry Mindy). It’s awesome. In the middle of reading the book, I started writing an article about the Cabinet-level trade meetings between the United States and China. The article was filled with jokes. It’s not a very funny topic. We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, industries completely turned upside down, and decades of international diplomacy totally disregarded. I know I want to make these traditionally stuffy topics more interesting, but my first draft went overboard.
Through instant messenger, I sent the “funny” introduction to my husband. He liked it. Then I sent him the third paragraph. I used the terms “trade war”, “global meltdown”, and “piña coladas” in the same sentence. He neither found my joke funny nor did he think it was appropriate. I was sad and at the time, I couldn’t see that he was right. I just muttered to myself that maybe once in a while he could laugh at my jokes.
During our conversation, I realized that these jokes must be coming from Mindy. No, she wasn’t writing my article on the trade war. Rather, I was internalizing her style and incorporating it into my writing. I’m sure if she wrote a satire about the situation it would be funny, much like the witty humor in CBS’ Madam Secretary. Not like a newspaper article with a few bad puns in it.
My goal isn’t to be funny. I’m an economist that loves talking about international trade; my goal is to make the topic more approachable. Maybe throwing in a joke or two will help. But making a joke of the topic will not.
I kept writing, becoming engrossed in the topic. Slowly, my voice started to creep back out. If you aren’t funny, it’s difficult to write 500+ words on international relations that are comical. By the end, Michelle was back. During the editing process, I revised the first few paragraphs and took out most of the jokes, but kept the intro and a funny(ish) title.
Positive influences
Writers say that being an avid reader makes one a better writer. In general, I read and write a lot of non-fiction. My favorite books are written by journalists. They are clear and concise. They are not overly flowery but still manage to keep the audience engaged.
Great writers have diversity and depth. That depth comes from reading diverse types of literature, poetry, short stories, etc. Seeing how other authors manipulate words is a great way to improve my writing.
I’ve absorbed people’s styles before. It was obvious when I binge-watched Sex and the City after I had foot surgery. After a few weeks, I could hear myself talking like Carrie Bradshaw. Her cadence and sentence structure are so unique and I could hear myself copying it. I liked the show, but I have no interest in talking like Carrie. It just happened.
It happened quickly and subconsciously, like a chameleon. I blended into my new surroundings, and then when I walked away my true coloring comes back. Testing out these new writing styles is a powerful tool.
A Mindy technique, not a joke
Mindy Kaling is constantly nestling stories inside of her stories and her readers don’t get lost. I’m impressed, to say the least. Many writers can’t write two connected sentences without losing their audience. Successfully, switching between stories is no simple task! Here is the pattern I’ve discerned:
Make a point. Start to elaborate. Get distracted by another story. Finish the new story. Circles back and finish the original story.
This 5-step plan won’t work in my economics articles, but it’s still extremely helpful to me. My topics are long, complicated, and often filled with jargon. Helping a reader through that mess and not losing them is powerful. This is something that I am actively trying to improve and Mindy has offered guidance.
Still me
My goal is not to become Mindy or my favorite journalist. I just want to be less stiff. My previous writing assignments were very academic. Now I want to be more conversational, more approachable, and less distant. Part of my education is coming from looking at how successful authors in this space write.
Then I start writing and see what comes out. I try new things. I trust my editing process. I know that if anything is too over-the-top, fake, or forced it will get removed later. So, I write just like I dance when no one is watching… without fear.
There is a lot of trial and error. But slowly and with a lot of practice, my writing is becoming less academic. There still aren’t too many jokes, that’s not me. What is working best is pretending like I am having a conversation with someone. I am explaining this complicated topic to them. I want them to understand and be interested. I imagine the conversation. It’s very different than preaching from a lectern.
How are you trying to grow as a writer? Who are your biggest influences?
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Smedian publication
Join our Facebook Group. Write for us. Share your stories on ManyStories.com to reach more readers. | https://medium.com/writers-guild/great-writers-are-great-readers-first-1dfec0a7e2ef | ['Michelle Klieger'] | 2019-02-06 04:25:55.229000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Success', 'Books', 'Writing', 'Improvement'] |
Yin Yoga Poses — Sequence For Release Stress And Tension - Yoga for Beginners | Namaste and welcome.
I’m Jess.
Today I’ll be guiding you through Yin Yoga for stress and tension release in practice. Typically in these yoga sessions, we tend to hold each position for around two to five minutes.
What that’s going to do is really get into the deeper layers like your connective tissues, your fascists, tendons, ligaments, all this kind of stuff.
That’s going to promote flexibility in both your mind and body. As humans, we also tend to store a lot of emotions in our bodies.
So by staying in these positions longer, we can really get into the deep layers for that deep release.
9 benefits of Yin Yoga.
1- Calms and balances the mind and body.
2- Reduces stress and anxiety.
3- Increases circulation.
4- Improves flexibility.
5- Improves Sleep.
6- Releases fascia and improves joint mobility.
7- Promotes Self-Love.
8- Balances the internal organs and improves the flow of chi or prana.
9- Encourages mindfulness and meditation. | https://medium.com/@yogapowerhouse/yin-yoga-poses-sequence-for-release-stress-and-tension-yoga-for-beginners-8a869dd5f669 | ['Yoga Powerhouse'] | 2020-12-25 17:08:47.241000+00:00 | ['Yoga', 'Yoga Poses', 'Yoga For Beginners', 'Yin Yoga', 'Yoga Benefits'] |
A Recap of the 2020 NBA Finals | The Top Performers:
LeBron James:
29.8 points, 11.8 rebounds, 8.5 assists, 1.2 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game
What more can be said?
In year 17, at 35-years old, while spending over 90 days in an isolated bubble, LeBron James achieved yet another amazing feat that only adds to his legacy.
There were times where he showed his age: against Denver in the Conference Finals and in Game 3 of these 2020 NBA Finals, he sometimes played tentative due to exhaustion and a lack of burst. Yet, when it mattered the most, it was him who made the crucial plays that won the Lakers the title.
In Game 2, it was LeBron who busted the zone defense over and over, making the defense that once froze him in 2011 look hapless. In Game 4, after another poor first half, with only 8 points and 5 turnovers, James turned in another classic, scoring 20 points in the second half to reinvigorate his team (including some timely, contested three-pointers over great Miami Heat defenders).
Game 5 was almost to good to be true. 40 points, 13 rebounds, 7 assists, and a Finals career-high 6 three-pointers. James nearly left it all out on the floor in Game 5, and while he came up short, it was truly one of the better games of his career.
While Game 6 turned into more of a formality than anything else, it was James’ defense that set the tone for L.A. with him taking the matchup of guarding Jimmy Butler from the beginning of the game.
All in all, this wasn’t the best individual postseason of LeBron’s career, nor the crowning accomplishment of his Finals victories, but it still, due to all the extenuating circumstances and his extraordinary level of at age 35, was simply an amazing feat by an all-time great.
Jimmy Butler
26.2 points, 8.3 rebounds, 9.8 assists, 2.2 steals, and 0.8 blocks
Jimmy Butler proved a lot in these playoffs. His play was LeBron-esque in these Finals, as he was his teams top playmaker, defender, scorer, and everything in-between.
It wasn’t always clear whether or not Butler could be a championship-level team’s #1 option, yet Butler, for two games in these Finals, produced at a historic level, and he was good for the remaining four games.
He had an almost inhumane task: outproduce the combination of Anthony Davis and LeBron James while taking on the other team’s top perimeter options, AND make plays for the rest of the team.
Butler’s offensive game isn’t always pretty: a combination of hard-nosed drives, baiting defenders into fouls, pull-up mid-range jumpers, and a shaky three point shot. But, it says something about him that, on a night when James had 40 points and made 6 three-pointers, the prevailing team was the Heat, who leaned on Butler to isolate against mismatches and draw fouls against his defenders over and over again.
It is not surprise that by Game 6, Butler was gassed and appeared to have nothing left to give, but he gained a new level of respect and admiration almost unanimously in the sports world.
Anthony Davis
25.0 points, 10.7 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.3 steals, and 2.0 blocks
Through two games of these NBA Finals, it appeared that Anthony Davis would be Finals MVP. Even before Bam Adebayo went out with an injury, Davis’ length and athleticism simply proved to be too much to handle for an undersized Miami Heat team.
That changed in Games 3 and 4, when the Heat doubled Davis in the post and relentlessly fronted him whenever he sought the ball. The result was that Davis only averaged 18.5 points in Games 3–4 after averaging 33 in the first two games.
Game 5 was a strange Game for Davis, whose numbers (28/12/3/3/3) didn’t reflect the fact that he was limping for most of the game. He battled through a heel contusion, a twisted ankle, and likely some bruises due to the contact he was taking in the paint.
Defense, however was a whole other story.
AD controlled the paint in this series, undermining Jimmy Butler’s penchant to make plays off the dribble. In Game 4, after Butler torched L.A. for 40 points, it was Davis who took the challenge of guarding Butler, and he held him to a relatively low total of 22 points. In Game 6, the deciding game of the series, the Lakers moved Davis off of Butler and onto Bam Adebayo, which was an extremely effective move because Davis at center stopped Butler and Bam Adebayo from exploiting L.A. in pick-and-rolls.
Davis didn’t garner a single vote for Finals MVP, interestingly enough, even though he his a key three-pointer in the dying moments of Game 4. But his performance this season made him one of the all-time great second options, comparable to the “1A-1B” pairings that the Lakers have seen over the years. | https://medium.com/basketball-university/a-recap-of-the-2020-nba-finals-dab41cdcb919 | ['Spencer Young'] | 2020-10-12 23:14:43.711000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'LeBron James', 'NBA Playoffs', 'Los Angeles Lakers', 'NBA'] |
5 Top Trends in eCommerce Industry in 2021 | Over the past couple of years, the eCommerce industry has been able to record remarkable growth in all areas of the world. This is clearly evident with sales from retail eCommerce amounting to $3.5 trillion in worldwide revenue, with revenue projected to reach almost $5 trillion in 2021. These figures highlight just how the eCommerce industry has been successful worldwide. This remarkable growth has been enticing sellers all over to create their online stores in a bid to sell as well. This is why development for eCommerce services have been rising.
Additionally, if you intend to either design an eCommerce site or looking to create an online store, then you are bound to be interested in the latest trends in the eCommerce industry. Given that 2021 is almost here, there have been a few development trends that have been rolling out already. So in order to stay ahead of the competition in 2021, here are the top 5 trends in the eCommerce industry.
Voice Commerce
According to statistics, the number of smart speaker users are bound to rise by almost 20% in 2021. This is quite telling that smart speakers are bound to increase in popularity. It also provides hints on how the use of voice commerce all over the world is expected to grow. This innovative shopping method is set to become a trend in the coming year, and thanks to smart speakers, customers can gain access to their online shopping and vendors can decrease the barriers between their goods and their customers. This means that for vendors looking to develop an eCommerce store in the future, voice commerce has to be part of their site development strategy.
There are quite a few ways an eCommerce site can be prepared for voice search:
Make sure a simplified flow to purchase products via voice search
Optimized content for voice queries
Include new skills on Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant
Offer voice-based browsing on website or app
Social Commerce
Social commerce is another important eCommerce trend that is expected to hit the industry in 2021. Vendors looking to get the maximum benefit from their sites can integrate social commerce into their strategy. For one, customers are beginning to have integrated experiences thanks to social media networks providing them with opportunities to get the very best deals. This is also coupled with the increased prevalence of ads on social media networks, which causes individuals to be more conveniently informed about available products.
2021 is expected to see social commerce become one of the most integral market trends in the eCommerce industry bound to wholly transform the way business is currently done in the industry. It is for this reason that the integration of social media is an important step in ensuring the creation of successful eCommerce sites.
Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality
In today’s world, quite a number of people on the planet are at least acquainted with Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies. The way these technologies have evolved has played a pivotal role in the revolution of numerous industries. VR/AR technology offers quite a lot of benefits to the eCommerce industry. A current negative associated with shopping online is the fact that individuals are unable to view the products properly before purchase. VR and AR technologies can work as a conduit to help eradicate the hurdles currently faced by customers when shopping online.
Thanks to AR technology, customers are able to visualize their chosen products in the real world, thereby enabling them to ascertain if a product meets their preferences and demands. Conversely, virtual reality helps to bring the world that we know into the virtual world, thereby providing a unique experience. Thanks to VR technology, online stores can seamlessly offer an in-store experience to customers, thereby providing much improved detailing to enable customers make an informed decision. The use of VR and AR can be a wonderful trend for the eCommerce industry which is sure to continue into 2021.
Omnichannel Selling
This process is bound to become increasingly important for eCommerce businesses as shopping in today’s world is not bound to a singular channel. Thankfully, people are able to purchase products and services from various online platforms. This is why multichannel selling is one of the most preferred methods of selling in eCommerce. This is an integral trend that has to be considered in any eCommerce development strategy. There are quite a number of ways in which an omnichannel experience can be enhanced:
The mobile site can be optimized and investments can be made in a PWA
Providing a bespoke customer experience
Utilizing tools such as SAP connect cloud to create a bespoke experience
Should you be considering Business to Business eCommerce development, you might want to utilize omni channel selling.
eCommerce for AI
Artificial Intelligence has been used in eCommerce for intelligent goods recommendations. Additionally, technology has over the years become better thanks to the creation of improved algorithms. Not only is this supposed to be a major eCommerce development trend in the new year. Thanks to the use of this technology, eCommerce stores are able to create intelligent product recommendations whilst enhancing the user experience of your customer. Artificial Intelligence can aid eCommerce stores to simply analyze trends, in conjunction with sales channels, as well as buyer behavior which can help you ascertain the very best price, place and time to list your product. This can help boost marketing and sales efforts of the business.
Venderian is the most effective e-commerce channel as it is able to combine the overall benefits of these new trends to develop a truly innovative multi-vendor marketplace platform which ensures that vendors and customers are able to interact in a more efficient manner that leaves both people happy.
Venderian, since its inception, has been one of the fastest-growing multi-vendor marketplace platforms in the world. While it is still relatively new in the marketplace world, it has shown a vendor and customer-centric focus, enabling users to create a brand association with it, whilst providing confidence to its buyers. Venderian enables its users to create their unique storefront to sell their products. What this means is that vendors can create stores inside the main Venderian website, providing them with increased brand presence. | https://medium.com/@venderian/5-top-trends-in-ecommerce-industry-in-2021-5f9cabfcfc7b | ['Venderian Online Marketplace'] | 2020-12-24 18:42:20.172000+00:00 | ['Multi Vendor Marketplace', 'Ecommecer', 'Online Shopping', 'Online Marketplace', 'Venderian'] |
DreamTeam Token Sale Audit Completed | June 12, 2018 — DreamTeam, the world’s first infrastructure platform and payment gateway for esports and gaming, has successfully completed its Token Sale Phase #2 Audit.
We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the Token Sale. We were able to attract $10M+ (6 646 ETH, 412 BTC) in investment from thousands of esports enthusiasts and crypto investors.
As for the in-depth Audit, the following results were achieved:
Total Tokens to be issued: 55 191 260
Total Tokens contributed: 33 114 756 (including bonuses)
Bonus Tokens: 5 851 149
Rejected transactions: 86
Number of transactions: 2443
Funds raised: $10 106 035 (6 646 ETH, 412 BTC)
Token Symbol: DREAM
In the coming weeks, Token contributors will be able to boost their profiles and vacancies using DreamTeam Tokens. Additionally, players who have found or created a team will be able to use the highly anticipated practice game feature. DreamTeam’s updates and upcoming features will continue to connect esports making the DreamTeam Token the center of the esports economy.
P.S. The Token Generation Event is happening soon! All the DreamTeam Contributors will be notified on how to get their Tokens.
About DreamTeam:
DreamTeam — infrastructure platform and payment gateway for esports and gaming.
DreamTeam is the ultimate teambuilding and skill-growing platform that solves problems for hundreds of millions of gamers who want to build, grow, manage and monetize their teams. And with the unlocking of blockchain and smart contract technologies, DreamTeam is building a one-of-a-kind payment gateway for players, teams, tournaments and sponsors.
Stay in touch: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn |BitcoinTalk.org | https://medium.com/dreamteam-gg/dreamteam-token-sale-audit-completed-66b2cb60b864 | [] | 2018-08-09 10:02:46.812000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Smart Contracts', 'Investing', 'Token Sale'] |
Inner Machinations: Entry_023. | Inner Machinations: Entry_023.
Today was the start of the week, but it already feels like a lot has happened. External news: two people were killed by a policeman and his daughter. I say in emphasis that his daughter was part of pulling the gun’s trigger, because the daughter played a large role inside of this current event. She’s not innocent. She should be at fault. She is on the wrong side of things. And we should not try to justify that she’s just a ‘minor’.
The father (a policeman) pulled the trigger out of the heat of the moment, sure. But the flames were fanned by his daughter. There’s video; there’s proof. People cannot deny this. The daughter can literally be seen aggravating her father into pulling his gun’s trigger, not only by shouting at the old lady, but also dragging a woman by the hair moments prior to the common video that circulated in social media. She not only added to the problem, she was the cause to the effect.
I haven’t been paying attention to crime or political news as of late, only because I know it’s only gonna be toxic for my mental health and whatever. But this new issue bothered me, because of the way the child acted in the situation. The father (a policeman) isn’t really what concerns me about the situation. It’s the fact that the daughter never even flinched when she heard and saw her own father taking his gun out and shooting an old woman and a man right in front of her. She yelled at an old woman, and sure, the old woman yelled back at her in retort. But irregardless of what happened prior to these events — it’s something about the other family causing a lot of noise due to a custom made water/alcohol rocket; a ‘boga’, as they call it, or whatever. and also being drunk when it happened — the daughter should have known better than to yell at the elderly. And she yelled at them in English, a second language! We’re Filipinos, and to be able to know how to speak in English is a sign of privilege. It means that you have been taught, that you have been able to learn a different language; the universal language, for crying out loud. This child, by the book, is considered smart. So to use it in such a way like this is really what tips me off with the whole situation.
Looking at it in the grand scheme of things, what did our national hero believe in? ‘The children are our future’. Right? Right. So to know that and believe that, and then suddenly see something as insubordinate as this, you gotta ask yourself: “If the children are our future, what future are we actually talking about here?”.
It’s was something to think about, and now it’s something to be afraid of. Not saying that we can’t escape a dystopian version of ‘the children are our future’, but if we allow the children to do these kinds of things and get away with it, then we won’t be able to escape it in the future. Because we are constantly making it lead up to that. | https://medium.com/@elmohidalgo/inner-machinations-entry-023-c0a1ca943235 | ['Elmo Hidalgo'] | 2020-12-25 09:24:30.939000+00:00 | ['Games', 'Journaling', 'Life', 'Pokemon', 'Productivity'] |
DIY Security: 4 Camera Systems Compared | Many insurance companies will offer discount on home insurance with camera monitored security systems and/or monitored fire detection systems. USAA offered me $7 off per month for home security and additional $4 off for fire. This discount will vary depending on your policy and location. I purchased 4 different camera systems to compare. All these systems have straight forward setup that don’t require a professional (though it’s good to be comfortable with smartphone apps or have someone around that is). A common feature was the ability to detect people or vehicles that come into frame and alert you via your smartphone device (android or iphone). Most of the cameras allow you sign up for a remote monitoring service, but this isn’t required if you’d just like to self monitor from your phone.
Wyze
Quick setup, easy to use app. The mounting system uses either screw mount or a magnetic system. Very small and discreet. Very affordable full monitoring system. This was my favorite system. Can add memory card to save full recordings.
Pro: Response, very cheap monitoring
Con: General motion detection a bit sensitive
$30 for Cam v3 (wired, no hub needed)
$40 Wyze Cam Outdoor (battery powered, requires hub)
$10 Hub (handles upto 4 cameras)
$75/year for monitoring which includes hardware listed below FOR FREE
Wyze Sense Hub Wyze Sense Keypad Wyze Sense Entry Sensors x2 Wyze Sense Motion Sensor
Arlo
This system only comes as self monitored. Arlo doesn’t offered a monitoring service like the two others. With the Ultra 2 camera, they claim 4k video quality. This camera also requires a hub to work and you need to plug the hub directly into a router. The hub needs to be fairly close to the camera to work well, ideally within 20 ft. Setup was fairly easy, took less than 5 minutes or so. Mounting was also very easy and the camera attaches to the mount with a very convenient magnetic system.
Video quality is very good in terms of contrast and exposure, but it does not seem that it’s truly 4k. Easy to setup motion detection zones and switch between various wide angle options. Responds quickly to motion and alerts are immediate.
Pro: Fast alerts, good interface
Con: no monitoring
$299.99 Camera
$149.99 Hub
Blue by ADT
Getting the mounting plate of of the base of this camera was a pain. It required about 10 minutes of working at it with the back of a spoon. One the plate was off, it was fairly easy to mount. Setting up an account and and connecting the device took less than 5 minutes. Once it was set up, it was easy to set motion detect zones for recording. The camera quality was decent at best (claims 1080p resolution). One major issue was connecting to the live stream from the camera on the mobile app. When you press play, it goes into “video buffering” mode and hangs there until it finally times out. The router is about 15ft away, so no reason connectivity should be an issue. When I check the Wifi setting, it shows full bars and the wifi speed test hits 60 Mbps.
Pro: well known company
Con: slow alerts, poor mounting system
$199 camera
$19.99/month monitoring
SimpliSafe
The first order got lost with fedex. The second shipment I found out that that camera is not intended for exterior use so I disqualified this choice.
$99.00 Camera
$15/month for basic or $25/month for advanced | https://medium.com/@neufuture/diy-security-4-camera-systems-compared-d132179a2c27 | ['Michael Zick Doherty'] | 2021-04-26 20:09:34.186000+00:00 | ['Security Camera', 'Home Security', 'Review', 'Home Monitoring'] |
Why You Should Never Mix Fentanyl and Alcohol | Talk about making a bad situation worse. It’s widely known that mixing alcohol with any sort of medication — even harmless over-the-counter cough medications — can cause harmful adverse effects. When alcohol is mixed with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that already has a deadly reputation on its own, it’s a combination that gets lethal fast. The interaction of these two drugs can cause dangerous slowing of the heart and respiratory systems leading to coma and possibly death. Scary stuff right? To fully understand why mixing fentanyl and alcohol is so dangerous, we’ll be taking a closer look into how each substance affects the body individually and how those side effects compound on one another when present in the system at the same time.
Fentanyl Overview
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid analgesic that, like most other opioids, is used to help manage severe or chronic pain. It’s commonly used post-surgery, for individuals who already have a tolerance to other kinds of opioids. It’s 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more than heroin — a Schedule I drug. Its unrivaled potency is one of the reasons why fentanyl is one of the most addictive opioids in existence. This drug is available in a number of forms including lozenges, patches, and nasal sprays in addition to the usual pill or intravenous liquid.
There are a growing number of fentanyl analogs and derivatives made in clandestine manufacturing facilities. This illicit version is often even stronger than the medical-versions, and are therefore that much more dangerous. One of the biggest risks recreational drug users face is the increasing commonality of fentanyl being used to lace other drugs like cocaine and marijuana to unknowing users.
How Fentanyl Affects the Body
Fentanyl works as your typical opioid would, preventing pain messages from reaching the brain by occupying mu-receptors. Once occupied, these receptors cause increased levels of dopamine output which can lead to feelings of euphoria along with pain relief. Fentanyl also affects the central nervous system which can cause other side effects such as:
Lowered consciousness: sedation and drowsiness are common, but often ironically accompanied by restlessness, difficulty falling asleep, or full-on insomnia.
Cognitive impairment: basic motor functions and decision making-can be severely affected. This can also result in auditory, visual, or tactile hallucinations, delirium, or nightmares.
Neurological damage: A major factor in the development of tolerance. Damage to neurons and receptors can cause a myriad of physiological effects on the body such as muscle spasms and increased pain sensitivity.
Slowing of autonomic functions: Respiratory and gastrointestinal systems are disrupted to cause slowed breathing and digestional issues
How Alcohol Affects the Body
Alcohol is a depressant that mirrors several of fentanyl’s effects on the brain and central nervous system along with a host of side effects that are all its own. While fentanyl primarily disrupts the dopamine transmitter, alcohol also interferes with GABA, serotonin, and glutamate circuits. This causes impairment of motor skills, cognition, impulse control, and mood regulation, in addition to slowed breathing, heart function, digestion.
The Effects of Fentanyl and Alcohol
It is primarily this overlap in side effects that makes the combination of fentanyl and alcohol so dangerous. They both have a significant impact on the central nervous system, the effects of which are amplified when both substances are present in the body at the same time.
Low blood pressure and cardiac distress
Severely impaired memory or memory loss
Drowsiness or unconsciousness
Dangerously slow breathing
Hypoxia (which can lead to coma or death)
In addition to these dangerous physicological and psycoholgical effects, combining alcohol with another drug greatly increases the likelihood of developing an addiction and of incurring severe withdrawal symptoms.
Polysubstance Drug Abuse Dangerous — Get Help Now
Regularly using multiple drugs at once is known as polysubstance abuse. Besides exponentially increasing the risk factors of each individual drug, the side effects can compound, which makes them difficult to treat. The extent of dual sources of neurological damage often means that the chance of relapse is significantly higher.
In these instances, the use of medical detox treatments are recommended. During withdrawal, your body is shedding the effects of multiple drugs in a system at one time which can cause unexpected symptoms that require medical intervention. If you or a loved one find yourself addicted to multiple drugs at the same time, contact us today so that we can help you safely manage dual withdrawal symptoms. | https://medium.com/@amethystrecovery/why-you-should-never-mix-fentanyl-and-alcohol-9d2a3527b945 | ['Amethyst Recovery Center'] | 2021-03-05 16:01:25.123000+00:00 | ['Drug Abuse', 'Fentanyl', 'Alcohol'] |
Take This Chain (2016) | Take this CHAIN
Now
Dirty
Disgusting
Bloody fucking good for nothing chain linked to a buzzsaw cutting up the carcass of our broken dreams
Take it from me
This chain holds links worn down and then dressed up by cowardly few
Who thirst and growl for money
They kill the shine and luster of a chain who once connected all of us
Now the links fall
piece by piece
Ideology separating the truth into pieces
A piece becoming a way of life
First
our history takes a fall
Becoming
His story of the murder genocide and famine fertilizing the skyscrapers
centers for mass deprivation
Built on the ashes of the books of the first nation philosophers
Ambushing the spirit of a generation growing to be amazing
500 years turned to a victory parade for a present left in dismay
Next falls society
Cooperation
Coopted for competition
The cooperative competition of merchants grown to corporations
Killers grown to presidents
Colonizers grown to bureaucrats
Cooperation: the key to a survival without authority wanders in the cracks of this link the cracks inherent in our power to break a machine hell bent on destroying us
Education
another link
crushing the spirit of creativity
Leaving plain buildings and illusions to spell the name of a makeshift surplus
The link is painted coarsely to conceal a life suffocated by lies
The prisons
another few links
The chains around our wrists twinkle in the eyes of a capitalist gone mad
Floating in the sky of law and order
The chains drip blood, tears
And vibrate with killer intensity
The factories
Another link moving constantly
Never ceasing
The money flows
And bones crunch through the gears of a cannibalistic machine
The link which you find yourself emulated in
The first world
Ripped from the chain by the capitalists and put in a case for us all to see.
You sit in this first world and have a second to say things are ok
When there is someone in this world right now who can’t help but spend a single second saying things are not ok
When somewhere on this planet there is someone who can’t even breath
Who every second can only imagine the sunshine
How?
How can you take another breath?
you’re so selfish
Not guilty
But absurdly inept
Inspire
Inspire yourself to give a fuck
We are not responsible for this mess but we are responsible for not being responsible
This link double sided as the rest hides the suffering behind society’s spectacle
Right now!
Oh my fucking god
Right now!
There is somebody begging for the pain to stop
Screaming for mercy!
Will it ever come? Can it come?
It will come from us?
It will come from us not accepting?
Not just looking at the 1st world link in the chain which lies
The other links more so in a state of pure nauseating power
Are only seen in separation
Take this chain in total
Feel its bumps
Cry in its elegies
Bleed from its jagged edges
Another tear falls from my left eye It tastes like salt and delight
Why do I love this feeling!?
To suffer and cry
Why does it feel so good?
Why can I make love to this feeling?
My pants are literally wet with cum
I rise with every metaphor and every hit to the back of my head
I love this soo much
I can’t be anything except a volcano erupting into the old world
Transforming burning magma into lava shooting the intensity of a vengence unforgotten
Colliding
And collapsing
All the evil into its bubbling exuberant red glow
Magmanamous
A foundation for elation
I cannot stop
I will not rest in chains
The old world will crumble
I am a demon giving rise to insurrectionary drama
To kick off the final spectacle for the denial of the spectacle
History repeats itself
This time a comedy
Lets laugh at the relics of the world old
And the world new
the funnest of them all
Life for the sake of living
Loving because it feels good
The world for you and for us | https://medium.com/@joelle.media.2020/take-this-chain-bc7edaefba00 | ['Joelle Hibral'] | 2021-02-09 16:37:15.193000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Activism', 'Anti Capitalist', 'Politics', 'Poetry'] |
Should You Pick up Calls From Toxic People at Christmas? | Should You Pick up Calls From Toxic People at Christmas?
This could be Jeanine by Francesca Zama on Pexels
Yesterday my good friend Jeanine phoned to wish me a fantastic time at Christmas. I luckily missed her call and took special extra care not to ring back, going as far as deleting the missed call from my history. As much as that red-colored reminder can be useful at times, it’s also a free ticket for GuiltLand, a journey that I’m not willing to take.
Today, she tried again. I saw the call but found the strength to mute the ringtone. And since I’m in a Christmas spirit, I did a little “Let it ring, let it ring, and ring” dance. In the style of Boyz II Men on their album Christmas interpretations, to be precise.
Jeanine is one of the recurrent dramatis personae in my life’s play. I wish she had left at the end of the first act, as promised. But Jeanine is a bit of an off-Broadway actress, and she decided to stick around for some more lines and screen time.
True enough, that’s my life’s play, and I should be the one to decide who gets to be on stage and when. Maybe I did a poor job as a stage director so far. Maybe Jeanine deserved to get some more lines if only to teach me a lesson. And maybe she still deserved some more for me to understand the said lesson.
But now, I’m good.
When it comes to picking-up calls from toxic people at Christmas, my answer is a strong no-no. | https://medium.com/blueinsight/should-you-pick-up-calls-from-toxic-people-at-christmas-8e38dcf9d4a0 | ['Smillew Rahcuef'] | 2020-12-26 05:20:32.365000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Blue Insights', 'Self Love', 'Relationships', 'Toxic Relationships'] |
The Expanse - S5 ~ E4 - "Season 5 Episode 4" > Full - Watch | ⭐ Watch The Expanse Season 5 Episode 4 Full Episode, The Expanse Season 5 Episode 4 Full Watch Free, The Expanse Episode 4,The Expanse AMAZON Prime, The Expanse Eps. 4,The Expanse ENG Sub, The Expanse Season 5, The Expanse Series 5,The Expanse Episode 4, The Expanse Season 5 Episode 4, The Expanse Full Streaming, The Expanse Download HD, The Expanse All Subtitle, Watch The Expanse Season 5 Episode 4 Full Episodes
Stream all of Sky Sports Main Event, Sky Sports EFL Cup, Sky Sports Football, Sky Ultra HD together with even more from Warner Bros., DC, Studio Ghibli, and more. Start your HBO Max free trial and get instant access on your favorite devices. Commercial Free. Exclusive Originals. Critically Acclaimed Docs. Emmy® Award-Winning Shows.
Film, also called movie, motion picture or moving picture, is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound, and more rarely, other sensory stimulations.[4] The word “cinema”, short for cinematography, is ofAMAZON Prime used to refer to filmmaking and the film The Expanse, and to the art form that is the result of it.
❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream refers to the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, rather than the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies specifically to telecommunications networks, as most of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio CDs). There are challenges with streaming conAMAZON Primet on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the conAMAZON Primet. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain conAMAZON Primet.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet conAMAZON Primet in real-time much as live television broadcasts conAMAZON Primet over the airwaves via a television signal. Live internet streaming requires a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the conAMAZON Primet, a media publisher, and a conAMAZON Primet delivery network to distribute and deliver the conAMAZON Primet. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the conAMAZON Primet before watching or lisAMAZON Primeing to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to start playing digital video or digital audio conAMAZON Primet before the entire file has been transmitted. The term “streaming media” can apply to media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are all considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONAMAZON PrimeT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[4][4][4][4][4] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is inAMAZON Primeded to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[4][4][4] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is ofAMAZON Prime shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][4][5][5][5] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[5]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not exAMAZON Primed beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsisAMAZON Primet.[5]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 5 to 4 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[4] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[5]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[4] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exAMAZON Primesible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[4] Credit is exAMAZON Primeded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘The Expanse’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ Between China, U.S.
AMAZON Prime’s live-action “The Expanse” was supposed to be a huge win for under-represented groups in Hollywood. The $4 million-budgeted film is among the most expensive ever directed by a woman, and it features an all-Asian cast — a first for productions of such scale.
Despite well-inAMAZON Primetioned ambitions, however, the film has exposed the difficulties of representation in a world of complex geopolitics. AMAZON Prime primarily cast Asian rather than Asian American stars in lead roles to appeal to Chinese consumers, yet Chinese viewers rejected the movie as inauthentic and American. Then, politics ensnared the production as stars Liu Yifei, who plays The Expanse, and Donnie Yen professed support for Hong Kong police during the brutal crackdown on protesters in 544. Later, AMAZON Prime issued “special thanks” in the credits to government bodies in China’s Xinjiang region that are directly involved in perpetrating major human rights abuses against the minority Uighur population.
“The Expanse” inadverAMAZON Primetly reveals why it’s so difficult to create multicultural conAMAZON Primet with global appeal in 2020. It highlights the vast disconnect between Asian Americans in Hollywood and Chinese nationals in China, as well as the exAMAZON Primet to which Hollywood fails to acknowledge the difference between their aesthetics, tastes and politics. It also underscores the limits of the American conversation on representation in a global world.
In conversations with seThe Expansel Asian-American creatives, Variety found that many feel caught between fighting against underrepresentation in Hollywood and being accidentally complicit in China’s authoritarian politics, with no easy answers for how to deal with the moral questions “The Expanse” poses.
“When do we care about representation versus fundamental civil rights? This is not a simple question,” says Bing Chen, co-founder of Gold House, a collective that mobilizes the Asian American community to help diverse films, including “The Expanse,” achieve opening weekend box office success via its #GoldOpen movement. “An impossible duality faces us. We absolutely acknowledge the terrible and unacceptable nature of what’s going on over there [in China] politically, but we also understand what’s at stake on the The Expanse side.”
The film leaves the Asian American community at “the intersection of choosing between surface-level representation — faces that look like ours — versus values and other cultural nuances that don’t reflect ours,” says Lulu Wang, director of “The Farewell.”
In a business in which past box office success determines what future projects are bankrolled, those with their eyes squarely on the prize of increasing opportunities for Asian Americans say they feel a responsibility to support “The Expanse” no matter what. That support is ofAMAZON Prime very personal amid the The Expanse’s close-knit community of Asian Americans, where people don’t want to tear down the hard work of peers and The Expanse.
Others say they wouldn’t have given AMAZON Prime their $5 if they’d known about the controversial end credits.
“‘The Expanse’ is actually the first film where the Asian American community is really split,” says sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, who examines racism in Hollywood. “For people who are more global and consume more global news, maybe they’re thinking, ‘We shouldn’t sell our soul in order to get affirmation from Hollywood.’ But we have this scarcity mentality.
“I felt like I couldn’t completely lambast ‘The Expanse’ because I personally felt solidarity with the Asian American actors,” Yuen continues. “I wanted to see them do well. But at what cost?”
This scarcity mentality is particularly acute for Asian American actors, who find roles few and far between. Lulu Wang notes that many “have built their career on a film like ‘The Expanse’ and other crossovers, because they might not speak the native language — Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Hindi — to actually do a role overseas, but there’s no role being writAMAZON Prime for them in America.”
Certainly, the actors in “The Expanse,” who have seen major career breakthroughs tainted by the film’s political backlash, feel this acutely. “You have to understand the tough position that we are in here as the cast, and that AMAZON Prime is in too,” says actor Chen Tang, who plays The Expanse’s army buddy Yao.
There’s not much he can do except keep trying to nail the roles he lands in hopes of paving the way for others. “The more I can do great work, the more likely there’s going to be somebody like me [for kids to look at and say], ‘Maybe someday that could be me.’”
Part of the problem is that what’s happening in China feels very distant to Americans. “The Chinese-speaking market is impenetrable to people in the West; they don’t know what’s going on or what those people are saying,” says Daniel York Loh of British East Asians and South East Asians in Theatre and Screen (BEATS), a U.K. nonprofit seeking greater on-screen Asian representation.
York Loh offers a provocative comparison to illustrate the West’s milquetoast reaction to “The Expanse” principal Liu’s pro-police comments. “The equivalent would be, say, someone like Emma Roberts going, ‘Yeah, the cops in Portland should beat those protesters.’ That would be huge — there’d be no getting around that.”
Some of the disconnect is understandable: With information overload at home, it’s hard to muster the energy to care about faraway problems. But part of it is a broader failure to grasp the real lack of overlap between issues that matter to the mainland’s majority Han Chinese versus minority Chinese Americans. They may look similar, but they have been shaped in diametrically different political and social contexts.
“China’s nationalist pride is very different from the Asian American pride, which is one of overcoming racism and inequality. It’s hard for Chinese to relate to that,” Yuen says.
Beijing-born Wang points out she ofAMAZON Prime has more in common with first-generation Muslim Americans, Jamaican Americans or other immigrants than with Chinese nationals who’ve always lived in China and never left.
If the “The Expanse” debacle has taught us anything, in a world where we’re still too quick to equate “American” with “white,” it’s that “we definitely have to separate out the Asian American perspective from the Asian one,” says Wang. “We have to separate race, nationality and culture. We have to talk about these things separately. True representation is about capturing specificities.”
She ran up against the The Expanse’s inability to make these distinctions while creating “The Farewell.” Americans felt it was a Chinese film because of its subtitles, Chinese cast and location, while Chinese producers considered it an American film because it wasn’t fully Chinese. The endeavor to simply tell a personal family story became a “political fight to claim a space that doesn’t yet exist.”
In the search for authentic storytelling, “the key is to lean into the in-betweenness,” she said. “More and more, people won’t fit into these neat boxes, so in-betweenness is exactly what we need.”
However, it may prove harder for Chinese Americans to carve out a space for their “in-betweenness” than for other minority groups, given China’s growing economic clout.
Notes author and writer-producer Charles Yu, whose latest novel about Asian representation in Hollywood, “Interior Chinatown,” is a National Book Award finalist, “As Asian Americans continue on what I feel is a little bit of an island over here, the world is changing over in Asia; in some ways the center of gravity is shifting over there and away from here, economically and culturally.”
With the Chinese film market set to surpass the US as the world’s largest this year, the question thus arises: “Will the cumulative impact of Asian American audiences be such a small drop in the bucket compared to the China market that it’ll just be overwhelmed, in terms of what gets made or financed?”
As with “The Expanse,” more parochial, American conversations on race will inevitably run up against other global issues as U.S. studios continue to target China. Some say Asian American creators should be prepared to meet the challenge by broadening their outlook.
“Most people in this The Expanse think, ‘I’d love for there to be Hollywood-China co-productions if it meant a job for me. I believe in free speech, and censorship is terrible, but it’s not my battle. I just want to get my pilot sold,’” says actor-producer Brian Yang (“Hawaii Five-0,” “Linsanity”), who’s worked for more than a decade between the two countries. “But the world’s getting smaller. Streamers make shows for the world now. For anyone that works in this business, it would behoove them to study and understand the challenges that are happening in and [among] other countries.”
Gold House’s Chen agrees. “We need to speak even more thoughtfully and try to understand how the world does not function as it does in our zip code,” he says. “We still have so much soft power coming from the U.S. What we say matters. This is not the problem and burden any of us as Asian Americans asked for, but this is on us, unfortunately. We just have to fight harder. And every step we take, we’re going to be right and we’re going to be wrong.”
☆ ALL ABOUT THE SERIES ☆
is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[4] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exAMAZON Primesible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[4] Credit is exAMAZON Primeded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘Hausen’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ Between China, U.S. | https://medium.com/the-expanse-2020-s5-e4-on-amazon-prime/the-expanse-s5-e4-series-5-episode-4-full-watch-5bd4f5467d0c | ['Sofia Hanson'] | 2020-12-23 00:27:44.690000+00:00 | ['Drama', 'Mystery'] |
The coming crisis for churches | I’m a part of a few clergy groups on social networking sites. They exist as a much needed resource and a place for clergy to speak plainly with each other. Some folks offer humor. Some tell stories of awesome things that happen in their congregations and how they saw God at work — those are pretty great! And for some, these are places they can receive pastoral care and a listening ear from other clergy — also very needed.
Since the pandemic started, it is has been difficult to read some of the posts, but I read them anyway.
We’re about to hit a triple crisis in the church. The first crisis is churches closing because they can’t or won’t adapt or don’t have the resources to make it through the pandemic.
The second crisis is one that has been building for some time before the pandemic hit — a slew of clergy retirements. This will leave many churches wondering what to do, and many churches finding themselves without a dedicated pastor.
The third crisis is clergy burnout. The pandemic is hitting clergy pretty hard. None of us were trained for this. And the pandemic, combined with such a polarized society, is causing long term trauma. And in many cases, clergy are feeling the effects. And many are just burnt out, or done with dealing with it all.
I feel for these colleagues. And I don’t have any ill thoughts about clergy that call it a day. Each clergy person has to discern what God is calling them to or from. It’s not easy.
In some cases, the stories I have read can leave a person with their jaw dropped. Except they aren’t all that uncommon unfortunately. Especially if you read many stories on these sites over a long period of time.
For many of the clergy that are burning out, the pandemic is just more gasoline on a raging fire. They were in calls that were in toxic cultures to begin with. I’m not talking about difficult calls or even unhealthy one. Toxic calls.
These include meetings about clergy where the clergy person is not invited and decisions are made about them and they are informed about them after the fact. These include people who should be described as abusive because that’s the best description there is. These include so many other variations of the same thing — often multiple layers of such things.
Often the stories include abusive congregants with unrealistic expectations and doing some pretty unacceptable behaviors towards the clergy person. Battles over compensation. Manipulation. Passive Aggressive cultures. Etc.
Now, before I go any further, let me say this — I feel blessed because regardless of how difficult a day I may have, the congregation I serve is a blessing. It’s not perfect of course, but I don’t know of a congregation that is frankly. And I’m far from a perfect pastor. But all in all, we in ministry together and that is a beautiful thing.
But the question remains, what does the church look like by 2025? Or even 2022, after this pandemic has probably subsided (although who knows anymore).
I’m willing to bet that it doesn’t look like it does today. The reality is that there will be churches that close and pastors that either retire or leave their calls. And then what?
I think this is also an immense gift and opportunity for the church to rethink what a congregation is and how it operates. Here’s what I think — the idea of hybrid church will expand. I’m saying beyond the idea of digital/in-person. What if hybrid meant taking a group of churches and linking them together — to share resources, staff, facility, technology, etc. What if the idea of congregation changes as well. Can you imaging having something like an anchor church that is linked to a few other “congregations?” Maybe three congregations are ones with buildings. Maybe one of those buildings gets converted for other ministry use between the congregations? What if one of the congregations is solely online? What if one of those congregations is a house church? What is some kind of social ministry became attached to this as well? They would expand the idea of community, that’s for sure.
I think it is helpful for the church to tap into something it hasn’t done very well in recent times — imagination. That hasn’t always been the case though. Jesus had imagination — he talked about the Kingdom of God all the time. It’s an abstract idea that Jesus took and put words and ideas to, along with action, and he put some skin on it and made it tangible. And the church grew and expanded, thanks to imagination and faith.
Faith is imaginative. It has to be. Faith is declaring what the future will look like and bringing the present into that future. That takes imagination.
A crisis is coming church. We have some choices to make in response. Do we huddle in and brace ourselves for the worst? Or do we go all in on faith, risking it all? Or do we choose something else? Let’s use our imagination that God gave us and answer the call that God has for us. We have been given a gift in this moment. Let’s embrace it. | https://medium.com/@pastormatthewbest/the-coming-crisis-for-churches-341f05c927ab | ['Pastor Matthew Best'] | 2020-12-11 13:36:11.997000+00:00 | ['Pastor', 'Christianity', 'Crisis', 'Church', 'Clergy'] |
Detecting Programming Languages From Code Snippets | Data Preprocessing
First step in building the machine learning model is to encode the textual data in the code snippets, and converting them into numerical format.
Below image shows the different preprocessing stages for the code snippets.
Basic Feature Engineering
In this step, basic text-related features are generated from the code snippets, which are listed below.
i. Number of words
ii. Number of unique words
iii. Number of characters
iv. Number of punctuations
v. Number of numerics
vi. Number of hashtags (#)
vii. Number of @
viii. Number of $
2. TF-IDF Vectorization
TF-IDF is a statistical measure that evaluates how relevant a word is to a document in a collection of documents. This is done by multiplying two metrics:
i. Term Frequency (TF): how many times a word appears in a document. ii. Inverse Document Frequency (IDF): how common or rare a word is in the entire document set. The closer it is to 0, the more common a word is.
TF-IDF helps in extracting keywords from the code snippets, which is useful in identifying individual programming languages.
Sklearn Python library provides a ready-to-use implementation for TF-IDF, as shown in below image:
3. Sentence Transformers
Sentence embedding techniques represent entire sentences and their semantic information as vectors. This helps the machine in understanding the context, intention, and other nuances in the entire text.
Some popular sentence embedding techniques are Universal Sentence Encoder, BERT, Roberta, Doc2Vec, etc.
“sentence-transformers” is a ready-to-use Python library, to implement BERT and Roberta sentence embeddings.
4. Min-Max Scaler
The final step in data preprocessing is to normalize the encoded numerical data, to bring all the data points to a common scale. This helps in speeding up the machine learning model training. | https://medium.com/swlh/detecting-programming-languages-from-code-snippets-d758589bddb0 | ['Tapas Das'] | 2020-12-14 16:14:22.551000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Resnet', 'Web Scraping', 'Sentence Embedding'] |
Legacy | I’ve been thinking about legacy.
But not one I want to fabricate.
One I want to create and then let people make up their mind.
It’s important to recognise that people will see you differently to how you want to be seen.
This is just how it is.
But we can change and evolve.
That’s important too. | https://medium.com/@dnaqvi/legacy-c7703d58bbbc | ['Danial Naqvi'] | 2020-12-02 22:59:10.401000+00:00 | ['Evolution', 'Change', 'Difference', 'Legacy', 'Creativity'] |
Using Application Load Balancers to Handle Multiple Domain Redirects | I hope everyone has been following safety measures and staying inside to be healthy. The time bygone and the present have been unfamiliar in long stretches, forcing us all to find ways to peck our mind in different areas.
Since you are here, let me share a problem where I applied a similar idea.
In my time helping develop high-performance infrastructure and services at DLT Labs™, I’ve learned a lot about the role of load balancers while making them scalable.
One of the cloud providers we work with is Amazon Web Services, and today I thought I’d talk a little about what they call an Application Load Balancer (ALB), and what is needed to set one up.
Amidst all ongoing activities, one day my team witnessed a bottleneck caused by a requirement for multiple domains to be redirected to a single domain. On looking out for possible solutions, I came across a few. Naturally, as solutions go, they presented certain limitations too.
Magically, an Application Load Balancer can help provide a one-stop solution to clearly sweep-off this problem. Thereafter, you can go and explore more to take advantage of its different use cases in various areas. Now, let’s get familiar with the problem, related approach, and its solution.
#The problem
Here is some context before diving right into the solution:
For example, let's say there are three domains: “testprac1.example.com”, “testprac2.example.com”, and “testprac3.example.com” and all these domains are required to serve HTTP/HTTPS requests.
Requests of any either nature — HTTP or HTTPS for each of the domains above, must be involuted into the same request — i.e., a request to “testprac2.example.com” should be redirected to “testprac1.example.com”. Likewise, a request to “testprac3.example.com” should be redirected to “testprac1.example.com”.
In case you are hosting static data, Amazon S3 and Amazon Route53 would come into the picture, or you can create several domains for each record to be served.
This isn’t the simplest solution, as it isn’t what we call a feels-right-sort-of-solution!
Undoubtedly, I too felt the same, and ultimately found a gem of a source. What I found, I am going to put all of that for you in the following solution.
The solution
What we are going to use here, is a ‘Layer 7 load balancer’. Layer 7 is a term for the application layer, where the human-computer interaction happens, from the widely-used OSI model of computer systems.
This will allow us to dictate a set of rules. These rules can make it either redirect or forward the incoming request(s) to the corresponding destination(s) using a mapping form of mechanism.
We will use ALB which provides the capability to redirect requests from one domain to the newer domain that we intend to serve. | https://medium.com/swlh/using-application-load-balancers-to-handle-multiple-domain-redirects-8e5077be3b28 | ['Dlt Labs'] | 2020-12-09 02:59:58.047000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'AWS', 'Dltlabs', 'DevOps', 'Programming'] |
Investing as a Millennials in Indonesia (Part 2) | The vanilla guy that survived decades of uncertainty. In Indonesia, they are highly regulated by OJK and IDX. I recommends people to try investing in mutual funds firsr before stocks because it is easier to diversify. However, some people believe that trading stocks is way cooler. Maybe because they get some sense of ownership in a company.
Platform that I tried and my key takeaways:
TRIMA : Stocks and Mutual Fund, simple UI, daily curated trading ideas and news Bibit : Mutual Fund, Virtual Account payment, simple robo-adviser IPOT : Stocks and Mutual Fund, sophisticated feature, comprehensive dataset Ajaib : Stocks and Mutual Fund, interesting UI, push notificatiom for price alert Bareksa : Mutual Fund, large number of products, services for corporate clients
Personally, Trima, Bibit and IPOT are my weapon of choice. I do my equity transaction through TRIMA and IPOT. For Mutual Funds, I invest using IPOT and Bibit. It’s better to start focusing on one platform though, to minimize the effort of monitoring your asset. But I really enjoyed the experience and unique features between those three.
Based on the what I heard, significant numbers of retail investor do transaction through Mirae Asset. I believe there is no online registration available from them at the momen though. You could also buy Mutual Funds from Banks such as BCA, CIMB, and many more. The downside are they usually offer limited number of products and sometimes they only sell to their priority clients. | https://medium.com/@aktiva/investing-as-a-millenials-in-indonesia-part-2-c031e4940545 | ['Paulus Reinhard Jonathan'] | 2020-12-23 09:00:48.521000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Finance', 'Investing', 'Indonesia', 'Millennials'] |
“An Evening With… The Zombies” LIVE! at the GRAMMY Museum Experience Prudential Center | Opening up the conversation by asking the pair what it was like to inducted into the Hall of Fame 50 years to the day when the group’s song “Time of the Season” topped the charts, Zombie lead vocalist Colin Blunstone replies, “When we were nominated four out of five times in the last few years and not inducted, we thought we would never make it, so it was a fabulous feeling when we were inducted!”
Blunstone’s bandmate, songwriter/keyboardist Rod Argent, agrees adding, “We are one of the few vintage bands that still gets excited by continuing to create — and because we do still create new material, we’ve been taken more seriously in the last five years.”
When asked what the induction ceremony — which took place on March 29, 2019 at Brooklyn, NY’s Barclays Center — was like, Blunstone simply replies, “Dreamlike.”
Continuing, “The good and great of the music business were all there; it was almost overwhelming,” Blunstone explains, “We were playing to 17,000 people and being televised — now, we’re a gigging band; we play all the time — but for something like that, it was an incredibly exciting evening.”
Remarks Argent, “Sometimes, it’s difficult to believe that other musicians like what you’re doing, but that was special because your peer group voted for you.”
When Conklin adds, “It was well-deserved — and a long time coming,” the audience enthusiastically applauds.
Conklin asks the pair about their latest album — their excellent 2015 effort, Still Got That Hunger, inquiring about what the recording process was like.
Recalls Blunstone, “With this album, we had to tell our producer that we wanted to go back to the way we recorded in the ‘60s,” before Argent discloses, “We had to convince him.”
“There was no click track,” explains Blunstone. “We played live and we sang live — the only thing we added later were the vocal harmonies.”
“We wanted to do a live recording and thought we would only be replacing the solos,” notes Argent, “but we didn’t have to — we just did some touching up. We loved the feeling of everyone ‘locking on’ to what everyone else was doing — and we had a ball doing it.”
Acknowledges Blunstone, “I like the energy when everyone is performing together. It really focuses your mind,” before Argent notes, “I feel the records we made in the ’60s had a much better structure. You had to make things absolutely right until you found something that really worked.”
Conklin also asks Argent and Blunstone about the origins of their band, The Zombies, a group which they created in 1962 when they were both still teenagers.
Recalls Argent, “When I was in school, I heard my cousin, Jim Rodford’s, band and I knew I needed to get into a band. Soon after, I wandered into a classroom and I heard a guy playing folk music on a guitar, and I asked him if he wanted to be in a band. I also listened to a group of drummers in the marching band and asked the one who kept the best time if he wanted to be in a band. Lastly, I asked my friend who just finished building his own bass if he’d like to be in a band, and he agreed, asking if his friend who played guitar could join, too. Within two weeks, we all met, and that was the band that gelled; we entered a competition and even beat my cousin Jim’s band and ended up getting a recording contract.” | https://medium.com/spotlight-central/an-evening-with-the-zombies-live-at-the-grammy-museum-experience-prudential-center-23c214a4603 | ['Spotlight Central'] | 2019-09-09 12:41:43.995000+00:00 | ['New Jersey', 'Grammy Awards', 'Rock And Roll', 'Interview', 'Music'] |
Deploy A Reactjs App Using GitHub Pages | A Step By Step Guide for beginner’s to Deploy Reactjs App using Github Pages
In this Blog, You will Learn
What is Github Pages?
Deploy Reactjs App on GitHub Pages.
What is Github Pages?
GitHub Pages is a static site hosting service that takes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files straight from a repository on GitHub, optionally runs the files through a build process, and publishes a website.
Deploy Reactjs App on GitHub Pages
For Deploying a Reactjs App we will following some steps which are provided below
Step 0(optional if you have no Reactjs Project)
First we will create a React.js Project using following command in our terminal and my project name is gitpages
npx create-react-app gitpages
Step 1
Move to root directory of your react.js project in my case it was D:\React\gitpages>
Step 2
Create a repo at github for our reactjs app for this we will follow some following
First open your github account than at top right corner select + sign as shown
after this select new repository option
now we will write our project name at repository name box as I write my project name MuhammadZainTariq.github.io for my use and keep it public
after click create repository button
Hurry our repository is created.Now upload all files in our repo using following Commands
git init
git add README.md
git commit -m "first commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/{username}/{reponame}.git
git push -u origin main
Step 3
Now we will install GitHub pages package using following command
npm install --save gh-pages
Step 4
Now we will add some properties in our package.json file we will first add a property homepage syntax for publishing in a
“homepage”: “https:// {username} .github.io",
If you skip it, your app will not deploy correctly here username is your github account username and after it we will add two scripts in our existing scripts we will add following scripts in our scripts
Github user page
Step 5.
Now we will deploy our project using following commands
npm run deploy
Hurry we have successfully deployed our reactjs project on github pages as shown in figure below.
Conclusion
we learned how to deploy our reactjs project on Github pages
if you like this than Follow me for more Blogs .Connect with me at | https://medium.com/@mzaintariq/deploy-a-reactjs-app-using-github-pages-9359ce7c4c0e | ['Muhammad Zain Tariq'] | 2020-12-23 19:28:52.184000+00:00 | ['Deployment', 'Github', 'Reactjs Deployment', 'Github Pages'] |
Stay ahead in the business race with online marketing services | Online marketing is a key strategy for businesses today to achieve success. SynapseInteractive, a provider of online marketing services in the USA and other parts of the world, helps you to gain online visibility across the leading search engines, increase the website traffic, and convert your visitors into customers.
We offer a complete range of internet marketing solutions, i.e. search engine optimization (SEO), social media optimization (SMO), pay per click (PPC), SEO copywriting, brand reputation management, SEO consultancy and much more.
Hire our online promotion experts for your digital marketing requirements in the UK or elsewhere in the world.
Follow us on Instagram: SynapseInteractive Online Marketing Services
Learn more: Online Marketing Services PPT or Online Marketing Services Video | https://medium.com/synapse-interactive/stay-ahead-in-the-business-race-with-online-marketing-services-9367f57c1670 | ['Sajiv Kumar'] | 2018-05-31 09:21:37.012000+00:00 | ['Online Marketing Agency', 'Online Marketing Company', 'Synapseinteractive', 'Online Promotion Experts', 'Online Marketing Services'] |
BootstrapVue — Text Area Customization and Time Picker | Photo by Daniel Klein on Unsplash
To make good looking Vue apps, we need to style our components.
To make our lives easier, we can use components with styles built-in.
In this article, we’ll look at how to customize a text area and add a time picker.
v-model Modifiers
The lazy , trim , number modifiers for v-model aren’t supported with the b-form-textarea component.
However, there are trim , number , and lazy props can be used to replace those modifiers.
Debounce
We can add the debounce prop to delay the input value binding to the state.
For instance, we can write:
<template>
<div id="app">
<b-form-textarea v-model="text" placeholder="Enter text" debounce="500" ></b-form-textarea>
<p>{{text}}</p>
</div>
</template> <script>
export default {
name: "App",
data() {
return {
text: ""
};
}
};
</script>
Then we delay the input value binding by 500 ms.
Autofocus
The autofocus prop can be added to the b-form-textarea to make it focus when the component loads or reactive in a keep-alive component.
Timepicker
We can use the b-form-timepicker component to add a time picker.
For instance, we can write:
<template>
<div id="app">
<b-form-timepicker v-model="value" locale="en"></b-form-timepicker>
<div>Value: {{ value }}</div>
</div>
</template> <script>
export default {
name: "App",
data() {
return {
value: ""
};
}
};
</script>
Then we can pick the time from the displayed input box.
The locale prop lets us change the locale.
value has the selected value, which is bound to the inputted value with v-model .
Disabled or Read Only States
We can add the disabled prop to remove all interactivity on the b-form-timepicker component.
readonly disables selecting a time, but will keep the component interactive.
We can write:
<b-form-timepicker v-model="value" disabled></b-form-timepicker>
or:
<b-form-timepicker v-model="value" readonly></b-form-timepicker>
to change both.
Validation States
Like other input comments, we can display the validation state with it.
For instance, we can write:
<template>
<div id="app">
<b-form-timepicker v-model="value" :state="!!value"></b-form-timepicker>
<div>Value: {{ value }}</div>
</div>
</template> <script>
export default {
name: "App",
data() {
return {
value: ""
};
}
};
</script>
We set the state prop to the value of value converted to a boolean.
Then we’ll see a red box if the time isn’t selected.
Otherwise, we see a green box.
Setting Seconds
We can set the seconds by adding the show-seconds prop.
For instance, we can write:
<template>
<div id="app">
<b-form-timepicker v-model="value" show-seconds></b-form-timepicker>
<div>Value: {{ value }}</div>
</div>
</template> <script>
export default {
name: "App",
data() {
return {
value: ""
};
}
};
</script>
Now we see the seconds box and we can set the seconds.
Sizing
We can add the size prop to change the size of the time picker sizing.
For example, we can write:
<template>
<div id="app">
<b-form-timepicker v-model="value" size="sm"></b-form-timepicker>
<div>Value: {{ value }}</div>
</div>
</template> <script>
export default {
name: "App",
data() {
return {
value: ""
};
}
};
</script>
to shrink the time picker’s size.
We can also change the value to 'lg' to make it larger than the default.
Optional Controls
We can add optional controls to the time picker with a few props.
For instance, we can add the now-button to let users pick the current time.
reset-button displays a reset button to let users reset the time.
For example, we can write:
<template>
<div id="app">
<b-form-timepicker v-model="value" now-button reset-button></b-form-timepicker>
<div>Value: {{ value }}</div>
</div>
</template> <script>
export default {
name: "App",
data() {
return {
value: ""
};
}
};
</script>
Then we can see the buttons on the time picker.
Button Only Mode
The button-only prop lets us change the time picker to button-only mode.
For example, we can write:
<template>
<div id="app">
<b-input-group class="mb-3">
<b-form-input v-model="value" type="text" placeholder="Select time"></b-form-input>
<b-input-group-append>
<b-form-timepicker v-model="value" right button-only></b-form-timepicker>
</b-input-group-append>
</b-input-group>
<div>Value: {{ value }}</div>
</div>
</template> <script>
export default {
name: "App",
data() {
return {
value: ""
};
}
};
</script>
Then we have an input box with the time displayed.
But we can’t click it to show the time picker.
The button on the right of the input box lets us select the time.
We need the right prop so that the right edge of the date picker will be aligned to the right side of the button.
Photo by Mike Benna on Unsplash
Conclusion
We can add denounce to a text area.
Also, we can add a time picker to let us add a time picker control and customize it. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/bootstrapvue-text-area-customization-and-time-picker-bd68e535fb5b | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-06-28 18:42:50.600000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript'] |
How to Lead a Successful Digital Transformation, IoT Applications in Weighing, Loading, and Marine Animal Tracking, and The Basics of MQTT Security | How to Lead a Successful Digital Transformation, IoT Applications in Weighing, Loading, and Marine Animal Tracking, and The Basics of MQTT Security
The best podcast episodes and articles from this week, curated by the IoT For All Team.
Our Latest Podcast Episode
E031 | How to Effectively Handle the Digital Transformation Journey
Sean Parham, Corporate VP of Product Management at ABB Ability, explains the short term changes companies are making to handle their digital transformation journeys effectively. He also discusses how the biggest changes throughout that transformation aren’t found in the technology but enabled by it. Listen Now.
This Week’s Best Reads
IoT Applications in Weighing and Loading
While flashier tech grabs the headlines, the humble scale’s own digital evolution could be cause for revolution across a number of industries, from private and military logistics to construction to transportation. Weigh scales are keeping pace with modern advances in technology in order to facilitate faster, more efficient, and seamless weighing operations.
The 3 Basic Concepts of MQTT Security
As IoT devices continue to proliferate, security becomes a major concern. When designing the network security for an IoT device, there are three basic concepts to keep in mind: identity, authentication and authorization. This article dives into security best practices and considerations when using the popular MQTT (MQ Telemetry Transport) messaging protocol.
IoT Applications in Aquatic Animal Tracking
Tracking marine animals can be extremely tricky, in part because GPS signals don’t can’t be transmitted and received well from underwater devices. Researchers and conservationists are now using IoT-like technologies — e.g. acoustic relays, mobile transceivers, light-based geolocators — to track our marine friends more accurately.
Five Things We’re Reading
1—RCR Wireless: Chinese vendor ZTE has already deployed tens of thousands of 5G base stations for Chinese carriers China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.
2—MIT Tech Review: Researchers developed a system that could detect and respond to a cardiac arrest by analyzing your breathing with ML over an Alexa speaker.
3—RCR Wireless: Thread Group released its latest specification, which focuses on improving battery performance and enabling large-scale smart building projects.
4—Smart Cities Dive: Swedish researchers developed an optical nano-sensor that detects low levels of air pollution. It’s small enough to be mounted on streetlights.
5—Fierce Wireless: Alaska’s largest Telecoms operator, GCI, selected Ericsson to deploy 5G infrastructure starting in Anchorage but with plans for energy sector use cases.
BRACE YOURSELF…
… IoT For All isn’t just a top Medium publication!
Our main site, IoTForAll.com, is filled with even more awesome content, plus lots of exclusive articles, white papers and eBooks that we don’t share on Medium.
And if you want to get our content the second it’s posted, follow our social channels! | https://medium.com/iotforall/how-to-lead-a-successful-digital-transformation-iot-applications-in-weighing-loading-and-marine-7a5dd5952c08 | ['Michael Wedd'] | 2019-06-21 21:25:39.999000+00:00 | ['Internet of Things', 'Tech', 'IoT', 'Technology', 'Data Science'] |
Elrond Democratize Masternodes | This is not an investing advice, I’m holding tokens of Elrond and run some nodes, remember to Do Your Own Research before you invest in any project.
I want to summarize my vision of what is happening in the Blockchain industry around how the projects define his business model, how it’s affecting the centralization in governance/ownership and why Elrond project get my attention in the current crypto panorama. I structured this article in 3 sections as I understand had been evolution stages in the way of design blockchain projects.
Blockchain Stage 1: PoW
From 2009 to 2017 the more common approach to decentralize blockchains was Proof of Work. His preliminary idea was that a group of miners will be owners and benefactors of the Blockchain.
The problem begins when it comes to really professional space, with huge players and companies competing to mine more Bitcoins, Litecoins or Ethereum. The miners need expensive computing hardware and a lot of resources.
As the projects gets older, the hashrate goes up and some of them had hard forks as a manner of recovery the essential idea of decentralize this coins/blockchains.
As an example, projects like Litecoin fork, at the beginning was more democratic as it was really easy to mine it. Now you have few companies that domain completely the Litecoin Mining Space. You have the same example for Bitcoin Cash.
Finally what we have is that most of the big blockchains PoW has ended in few hands, and finally is not so democratic system as it was thinked initially.
Today there’re few new PoW projects that try to democratize this, a good example is Ravencoin, you can mine with home Nvidia Graphic Cards. But again his business model makes that as more competition there’s more professional players.
In this model, as much traction has a project, less decentralized it ends up.
Blockchain Stage 2: PoS
From around 2017, some engineers and thinkers begin to draw a new system that spend less energy, require less resources and is more democratic: Proof of Stake.
In this approach, in the blockchain there are nodes and/or masternodes. Simplifying, a node is a machine with a huge stake of tokens, that helps validating transactions. In the whiteboard the idea was fine, it seems more democratic that PoW of course.
The problem again comes with the barriers to have a masternode. Some of the projects like Ontology need huge amount of stake and a slow process to have a masternode. Another example more flexible is Dash, but again you need like 100k USD to have one node of Dash.
Sometimes projects like Cardano, that I like a lot, try to decentralize as much as posible, but the barrier to have a node is clearly technical. In Cardano is really easy to end completely lost into deep technical websites.
Some of this ideas at the end aren’t so democratic and hasn’t a network so decentralized.
Blockchain Stage 3: PoS truly accesible
At this point, we’re seeing some new projects that truly believe in a business model where you need less investment to have a node. And with good educational process to make it accesible to people not so experts in tech.
One of them is Elrond, that only need 2.5M tokens and a consumer computer to have a node and participate on the earnings of the blockchain. In this moment it’s about 2000 usd to have one, like 50 times less than Dash.
They have created a Documentation site to help everyone to understand how it works. With really useful tutorials to start your node. As example: How to install an Elrond node (Windows, Mac or Linux)
The project has amazing community and the team behind it is the kind of team every crypto project must have. The project has lot of technical improvements and they use SPoS, Secure Proof of Stake, really interesting.
I expect to see more projects like Elrond, for now there’s really few projects that are truly decentralized on investors, nodes and voting power.
More info: www.elrond.com | https://medium.com/@josefcoap/elrond-democratize-masternodes-2122c82c2b3f | ['Jose F. Aznar'] | 2020-03-30 14:26:17.362000+00:00 | ['Elrond', 'Blockchain', 'Masternodes', 'Proof Of Stake'] |
12 days of autistic Christmas | 12 days of autistic Christmas
On the 12th day of Christmas autism gave to me…
12 unplanned tangents
11 research sessions
10 fingers stimming
9 calls unanswered
8 projects started
7 special interests
6 events avoided
5 epiphanies
4 mental blanks
3 samefoods
2 verbal stims
And my favorite song on replay | https://medium.com/@ruth.banning/12-days-of-autistic-christmas-3a2c8a202df | ['Ruth Banning'] | 2020-12-25 04:53:02.830000+00:00 | ['Autism', 'Christmas', 'Actuallyautistic'] |
DISCOVERING THE LAGOS MAKERS’ COMMUNITY | DISCOVERING THE LAGOS MAKERS’ COMMUNITY
Hi there, I’m Osas and this is my first blog. I was an intern at Made Culture, a design consultancy that is equipping Africans with context-specific tools that enable them to work smarter and live better. Prior to this internship, I was a freelance graphic designer and photographer, and I also created packaging boxes for a perfuming company based in Lagos. Upon joining Made Culture, my first project was focused on the Makers Community in Nigeria which I was unknowingly a part of.
I was privileged to participate in a series of three meetups for makers in Lagos which was recently concluded. The program was themed “The Ecosystem Meet-Up Series”, and was facilitated by Made Culture in collaboration with Co-Creation Hub and GIZ, MakeIT-Africa.
The first meetup took place at the Co-creation Hub in Yaba where I heard about the makers’ community for the first time and, met a bunch of manufacturers, product designers, architects, and other creative practitioners at the workshop. Initially, I was nervous, until I participated in the first group exercise which was an ice breaker. I realized the effectiveness of this methodology utilized by Made Culture in getting people to open up which made me able to share my opinion more freely.
Image 1. Cross-section of the Ice Breaker exercise.
Technologies like the CNC machine, laser cutters, and 3D printers have paved the way for more innovative methods of designing and manufacturing products. I was particularly inspired by Tosin Oshinowo and Funfere Koroye’s presentations. Tosin is an architect and the founder of Ile-Ila, a conservative furniture company, and Funfere is a product designer, whose products are designed specifically to solve problems in Africa.
Image 2. OMI Water Filter designed by Funfere Koroye.
The 2nd meetup which took place at the GE Lagos Garage in Victoria Island, it was a combination of the GE Lagos Garage tour and a crash course on design thinking. The host for the workshop was Demilade Adesiyan, an Associate Program Manager at GE Lagos Garage. I learned that Form, Function, Aesthetics and Manufacturing ability of a product are the four major pillars of product design. I saw a shoe mold that was carved out of wood with a CNC machine. I also saw a CNC machine, a laser cutter and 3D printers which is my favorite. I witnessed the machine print in action. The tour of GE Lagos Garage is my best excursion so far.
Image 3. 3D printers Image 4. CNC machine
Image 5. Wooden shoe mold.
Image 6. CNC machine created in GE garage
The principal director of Made Culture, Malaika Toyo, facilitated the second phase of meetup 2 and she gave a crash course on design thinking process. I learned that the process for human-centered design thinking is to first “empathize” — it is important to understand how the users’ really feel, the next step is to “define” the users’ needs. The third step is “ideate” — brainstorming and developing many ideas, followed by the “prototype” and finally “testing” the proposed solutions again and again in order to develop sustainable design-led solutions. I was engaged in a human-centered design thinking exercise, we were grouped in pairs and it concluded with us designing what we deduced as the ideal wallet for our partners.
Image 7 & 8. Scenes from meetup 2
The third and final meetup was integral to the Ecosystem meetup series. Understanding the human-centered design thinking process and using this process to develop ideas is very good, however, these ideas won’t fund themselves, right? So it equally is important for product designers, service providers and entrepreneurs to be able to pitch their ideas properly. I learned that a good pitch is concise, the elements of a well-developed pitch includes a “real problem” the ideas solve, a target audience, a solution to the identified problem, how it works, its market opportunity and its traction. The Executive Secretary of Lagos State Employment Trust Funds (LSETF) Mr. Akin Oyebode and the Group Head, Micro Enterprises of BOI Mrs. Uloma Ike spoke to us on how business owners and entrepreneurs can acquire financial assistance from the government and the Bank of Industry. Demilade represented GE Lagos Garage at the meetup and spoke about the incubation programs conducted by their organization. I have attached all useful links at the bottom of this page.
Image 9 & 10. Prototypes displayed at meetup 3.
I would like to wrap up with a quote from Damilola Teidi, Director of Incubation, Cc Hub. “A healthy mentor-mentee relationship is essential for personal development and the general growth of the community”. It’s been a very insightful experience learning about the makers’ community and the human-centered design process. I have found a mentor in my boss and the founder of Made Culture, Malaika Toyo. She is hardworking and charismatic, she is a good teacher and very fun to be around. Working for Made Culture has helped me on my path to self-discovery.
For mentorship and incubation programs visit:
gelagosgarage.com
lagosinnovate.com or lsetf.ng
vc4a.com/mentors
Find out more about Made Culture!
W: www.madeculture.co
IG:@madeculture_co
T: @madeculture_co | https://medium.com/@osasedogun4/discovering-the-lagos-makers-community-d07108e2cfb4 | ['Edogun Osas'] | 2020-10-14 04:07:43.859000+00:00 | ['3D Printing', 'Makers', 'Creative', 'Design Thinking', 'Design Thinking Culture'] |
THE ECONOMICS OF VACC AND THE WAY FORWARD! | Token pairs may differ from those in screenshot
Many of you been waiting eagerly for the launch of our new staking Pools from the testnet on to the mainnet. We expect this to happen within a few days give or take, we are working very hard behind the scenes. I apologize for the delay folks but all this testing and work, it is being done for you guys so we can deliver the perfect product for the perfect community! We here at CORD are inspired by the Japanese system called “Kaizen” which means continuous improvement and that is the mindset we have when we work on the pools and various other staking products in the works, fixing every little problem along the road before we launch.
Lets speak tokenomics…
As mentioned in the previous medium article, the total supply of our new reward token VACC will be LESS than (see below) 1.9 million tokens, initially printed all at once, and once only. There will be no mint keys so supply stays limited and people have incentive to hold their VACC. 12.6% only of the VACC supply will be allocated one time as DEV funds, and the remaining VACC will be locked in a multisig wallet on inception. Our ratio which we believe is the ideal ratio between CORD:VACC is 1:100, so every CORD represents 100 VACC only. This ratio will give us an upper hand over various other staking platforms which have far larger ratios like 1:500 or 1:1000, for which maintaining value in the pairing token is harder.
What happens to the remaining supply?
We will be releasing more VACC from the multisig wallet into circulating supply on a weekly (or 4-weekly) basis, and each time we release, the amount released will decrease according to a predictable function. This is to keep the inflation level of VACC lower and lower over time, just like it is with Bitcoin, except our inflation rate will drop weekly. It will take roughly 4 years or 200 weeks to have all the VACC circulating in the supply. Eventual max total supply of VACC considering the random burn mechanism (described below) will fall between 1.672 million and 1.9 million.
What happens if the ratio gets too weak e.g., CORD:VACC 1:200?
If the value of VACC slips too low relative to CORD we will be burning a random number of VACC somewhere between 0 to 15% of the weekly release amount, resulting in a permanently reduced total supply, and causing VACC to become more and more scarce. See above charts for an illustration of this mechanic at play.
What happens if the ratio gets too strong e.g., CORD:VACC 1:50?
If the value of VACC rises too high relative to CORD we will be buying back CORD from the open market using a random number of VACC somewhere between 0 to 15% of the weekly release amount, which will temporarily result in a greater circulating supply of VACC. Therefore we maintain the 1:100 ratio of CORD:VACC.
Why are we so determined to keep the CORD:VACC ratio at 1:100?
Well it’s simple, it is because we do not want investors who are staking on our platform to suffer from impermanent loss. Keeping the CORD:VACC ratio PEGGED to 1:100 will allow investors in the CORD/VACC LP liquidity pairing to avoid impermanent loss. You have seen in various other projects which have not focused on stabilizing these ratios that liquidity providers can lose a substantial amount due to impermanent loss. Not with CORD/VACC.
We are in for the long run that is why our:
Highest yield pool will be CORD/VACC LP -> VACC
Our buyback and burn mechanism will enable and protect VACC and CORD/VACC LP investors for the long run
Neither CORD nor VACC have a “mint function”
Liquidity of CORD is locked which can be verified on UniCrypt
What gives VACC value?
As we discussed earlier CORD itself will be giving VACC value with an impressive ratio of 1:100. To sustain this ratio, we will be using the active buy back and burn mechanism discussed earlier. However, we will also be giving the VACC token even greater utility than just a reward token; in the future, there will be a tiered VACC hodler’s bonus (extra reward multipliers just for hodling, without the need to “spend” your deflationary VACC) for all our DeFi pools including partner pools, and further out other usecases may emerge such as governance token over charitable donations, and more.
What gives CORD value?
CORD is an autonomous community driven organization that is currently working on providing investors the opportunity to earn dividends via staking on our very own DeFi platform (to launch on mainnet within a few days). We also aim to (and have a proven track record of) create partnerships with as many platforms as we can, which will result in ever greater utility for the CORD token. We envision that going forward, the holders of CORD can stake the token through various different platforms, beyond our own DeFi Pools about to launch. For example, we currently have a great understanding with Coval (Circuits of Value), and we will be creating more partner pools with them in the future as well as many more.
On top of all that, we have a very unique idea to help the rugged tokens or basically unfortunate projects that have died out; more details on that in the coming mediums, stay tuned!
Future announcements dropping soon, be patient folks we are working very hard to put things together. We expect our new DeFi platform to launch on mainnet within a few days and are working incredibly hard behind the scenes to make that happen. But if you do not trust the project it’s simple, don’t buy it. If you are a skeptical investor don’t buy in at this early stage, buy it later! | https://medium.com/@cordfinance/the-economics-of-vaccine-and-the-way-forward-cfc516e55219 | [] | 2021-04-09 23:35:51.304000+00:00 | ['Cord', 'Yield Farming', 'Finance', 'Defi', 'Partnerships'] |
How do I give feedback on small stuff? | Two things: accusation audit and a reflection stance.
An accusation audit comes from Never Split the Difference. Basically, you beat the other person to the punch and claim all the negative things they could or that you worry they might say about your position. Definitely read the linked article and come up with your own approach, but I like the idea of framing feedback I am worried is too small or nit-picky with:
“I expect this will come off as nit-picky or too small to bring up”
With an accusation audit out of the way, we move on to a Reflection Stance. Rather than assigning blame with “the way you acted was bad and you should stop”, you hit them with “It is important to me that I be transparent with you about what came to mind in our last meeting when you said XYZ” followed with… you know… what came to mind. Did you feel condescended upon? Did you feel awkward or cringe? Were you fearful of the way the company looked after? Notice how none of these assign blame, but RATHER reflect your honest state of mind at the time. | https://medium.com/@bioshazard/how-do-i-give-feedback-on-small-stuff-67b1f4598812 | ['Joe Still'] | 2020-11-16 18:56:13.768000+00:00 | ['Honesty', 'Feedback', 'Values And Ethics', 'Transparency', 'Feedback Culture'] |
St. Paul’s Chapel | These photos were taken on a single day utilizing both a wide angle lens and a standard zoom lens. Some of the exterior photos were taken just after sunrise to avoid traffic and roadwork obstructions, while the interior photos were taken swiftly right after 10am opening time to minimize the capturing of staff, contractors, and other visitors. The Chapel of Remembrance was not featured as it is temporarily being used for storage. Acknowledgment and gratitude go to the Parish of Trinity Church Wall Street for sharing this photo-essay via Twitter and Facebook. | https://medium.com/the-photographic-muslim/st-pauls-chapel-4a406b89e58e | ['Haytham Ad-Din', 'The Photographic Muslim'] | 2020-01-04 05:16:29.767000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Religion', 'Photography', 'History', 'Episcopal Church'] |
Amplifying Your Voice in Tech | Amplifying Your Voice in Tech
How writing and speaking can help your career
Growing up, my parents and teachers taught me that all I needed to do was work hard and I would be duly rewarded with good grades, fancy university degrees, and a promising career. After five-plus years of working in tech, I’ve learned that diligence and care alone are often not enough to accelerate my career. While I obviously still prioritize excelling within my teams, I’ve also started taking concrete measures to build a reputation for myself outside of my company — in short, developing a personal brand (as much as I loathe the term).
Screaming into the abyss about my professional accomplishments.
“Why bother building a personal brand?”
Job opportunities : The first and most obvious benefit of having a strong external reputation is access to better job opportunities than the ones spamming your LinkedIn inbox right now. Let’s say you are angling for a job that’s a stretch goal, whether because you don’t quite have the years of experience the company is asking for, or perhaps you haven’t yet led a team — a good personal brand can help you make up the gap between what your resume shows and what the company desires.
: The first and most obvious benefit of having a strong external reputation is access to better job opportunities than the ones spamming your LinkedIn inbox right now. Let’s say you are angling for a job that’s a stretch goal, whether because you don’t quite have the years of experience the company is asking for, or perhaps you haven’t yet led a team — a good personal brand can help you make up the gap between what your resume shows and what the company desires. Promotion and compensation: I used to work in a company of over 13,000 people, with over 70 people in Product alone. Hardly anyone outside of my team and my direct manager knew whether or not I was doing a good job. If you’re dealing with a similar situation, then a strong personal brand can help you sway performance review committees, giving them more favorable data points to consider beyond a few generic-sounding 360 feedback forms.
Don’t let yourself end up in this situation.
Hiring a strong team: As you advance in your career, you’re probably spending a lot more time on hiring a great team than on finding the next best job. The most promising candidates you interview will have a wealth of employment options to choose between. If you have a highly active Twitter account or Youtube videos of yourself speaking at conferences, that could just be the thing that convinces your ninja-rockstar-unicorn candidate to climb on board.
“Cool, so how do I go about building a personal brand?”
The tech industry has created a bevy of tools to help us interact with each other, whether we want to do it in-person or online, in 280 characters or 2,800 words. Here are a few ways you can get started on crafting a reputation outside your company:
Mentor introductions : Don’t be shy about grabbing time with leaders in your company in order to get to know them better and learn about how they got to where they are today. Once you’ve established a working mentor-mentee relationship, ask them to introduce you to people in their network who are experts in areas that you want to learn more about. While people might ignore a random inbound message on LinkedIn, they’re less likely to turn down an introduction from someone they know.
: Don’t be shy about grabbing time with leaders in your company in order to get to know them better and learn about how they got to where they are today. Once you’ve established a working mentor-mentee relationship, ask them to introduce you to people in their network who are experts in areas that you want to learn more about. While people might ignore a random inbound message on LinkedIn, they’re less likely to turn down an introduction from someone they know. Social media : Unless you’re planning to become an Instagram influencer, I would stick to professionally focused Facebook/Slack groups, Twitter threads, Quora, LinkedIn, Hacker News, and Medium. Each social media outlet has its own quirks, so check out the power users from each channel and study what some of the most successful posts have in common.
: Unless you’re planning to become an Instagram influencer, I would stick to professionally focused Facebook/Slack groups, Twitter threads, Quora, LinkedIn, Hacker News, and Medium. Each social media outlet has its own quirks, so check out the power users from each channel and study what some of the most successful posts have in common. Events : Attending conferences, meetups, and networking sessions can be a good way to initially expand your network, but don’t stop at simply getting to know other participants. Set a goal for yourself to start speaking at conferences (even if it’s just a 5-minute lightning talks) by establishing yourself as an expert on a certain topic.
: Attending conferences, meetups, and networking sessions can be a good way to initially expand your network, but don’t stop at simply getting to know other participants. Set a goal for yourself to start speaking at conferences (even if it’s just a 5-minute lightning talks) by establishing yourself as an expert on a certain topic. Open Source Projects: This is less applicable for me as a product manager, but for engineers, a major way to meet engineers outside of your current company is to contribute to an open source project. Check out this extremely comprehensive guide to getting started with open source here.
Whichever route you select, make sure it fits your personality and strengths, otherwise you’ll just burn yourself out. For example, I consider myself a shy extrovert; I love spending time with friends, but go clammy at the thought of walking up to a random stranger at a networking event. For me, Medium has been an invaluable way to amplify my voice in tech (so meta). I find that the long-form text format allows me to fully express my thoughts in a way that Twitter doesn’t, and the closest thing to trolls I encounter are grumpy commenters who disagree with me on product development processes.
Me when I sat down to write my first Medium post
“Ok I’m sold, but I have no idea what to write about…”
A lot of folks I’ve talked to have expressed this sentiment or its close cousin, “But everything I want to write about has already been said.” Don’t worry about the latter. Even if the topic is more tired than a Barkleys Marathons runner at the end of the second loop, you can find a way to put your own spin on it. Here are a few potential ideas for blog posts:
Best practices or tips on what’s worked for you in your field (e.g. “5 workflow efficiency tools all PMs should use”)
Case studies of problems you’ve faced at work (e.g. “How we successfully migrated from MongoDB to Postgres in two months”)
New technologies in your industry (e.g. “Applications of AR in audio content”)
Life skills they don’t teach you in school (e.g. “How to file taxes if you exercised your equity options”)
Here at Aaptiv, we encourage our teammates to not only produce great work, but also to share their insights and learnings with the broader tech community. From our engineering team (“Ingesting Musical Content at Scale Using DDEX”) all the way up to our CEO (“How I learned to stop worrying and love working capital”), we use Medium as a way to recruit great talent, and to help each other build strong personal brands. In our biweekly sprint retrospectives, we reflect on our learnings; then we figure out if there’s any way to turn those learnings into a written piece.
Our blog (like our company) is still small, but growing quickly — we actively try to maintain a 1-post per month schedule, and we budget time for Medium posts in our sprint planning. In short, prioritizing your team’s professional development doesn’t just mean teaching them to improve their skills. You should also give them the tools and opportunities to build their own personal brands — that could make the difference in helping them succeed in tech. | https://medium.com/aaptiv-engineering/amplifying-your-voice-in-tech-4146d7736fab | ['Lisa Zhu'] | 2018-03-28 20:44:15.212000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Social Media', 'Personal Branding', 'Career Advice', 'Tech'] |
A Russian Master’s Class in Great Power Competition | By Jennifer Cafarella, NSI Visiting Fellow
Losing Great Power Competition could be less dramatic than it seems. While U.S. military planners rightly warn of the consequences of Russian and Chinese technological innovation, the U.S. is as if not more at risk of experiencing strategic defeat through a series of incremental losses. U.S. adversaries are already racking up small victories that could amount to strategic upheaval as technology continues to transform warfare. Russia’s quiet expansion of basing and leverage in the Middle East since 2015 is an example of a game-changing accomplishment that remains wholly overlooked in Washington. U.S. policymakers continue to assume that Russia, despite its assault on Europe and U.S. democracy, is a potential partner in the Middle East. Putin is both reinforcing this framing while exploiting it for all it is worth. In doing so, he is teaching a master’s class in Great Power Competition.
Russia’s establishment of permanent military infrastructure in the Middle East in 2015 established a beachhead that the United States failed to recognize as a strategic threat. Russia acquired leases to operate Syria’s Hmeimim airbase and Tartous naval base in return for military support to Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s faltering regime. U.S. policy assumed Russia would remain focused on Syria. Instead, Putin leveraged his role in Syria to accomplish multiple strategic outcomes: driving a wedge within NATO, transforming the Russian military, super-charging Russian weapon sales, positioning Russia as a diplomatic heavyweight, and creating a launch pad for further expansion into Africa.
Russia is now transforming its Black Sea Fleet from possessing a regional power projection capability to a global one. In late 2020, Russia gained access to a naval base in Sudan that will provide a second logistics hub, allowing Russia to reduce its reliance on Syria. Russia is meanwhile expanding the Tartous facility into a multipurpose naval base, which will include a floating dock by 2022. Public statements by senior Russian military commanders indicate Putin’s vision is for the Black Sea Fleet to operate through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf east towards the Indian Ocean and south towards Madagascar. The potential leverage this expanded presence would provide Russia would significantly increase the strategic pressure Putin can place on NATO.
Russia’s greatest success may be shifting U.S. policy discourse away from confronting Russia’s power plays in the Middle East and North Africa. The same Russian disinformation networks that are attempting to paralyze the United States through internal division are also shaping regional narratives to build support for Russia’s expansion among U.S. partners as the United States pulls back. Russia is also directly shaping U.S. policy by capably wielding its leverage. Russian-backed narratives that inflate the risks of a major U.S.-Russia confrontation continue to cause policymakers to turn a blind eye to Russia’s growing escalation against U.S. forces in eastern Syria. Russia has also funneled the United States into negotiations over humanitarian access to a single border crossing instead of larger strategic outcomes.
Russia is using its free rein to prepare for future air and ground operations. After five years of tough fighting, Russia is expanding at least one runway and building a new “medical treatment and rehabilitation centre” at the Hmeimim airbase that will enable greater casualty evacuation. Russia may be preparing for future combat operations in Syria or Libya, where Russian private military companies have seized an airfield and fortified an enduring presence. Finally, Russia has established a robust presence at a second air base in northeast Syria, including rotary wing capabilities and military police. Russia is using the base to gain leverage over Turkey and pressure U.S. forces supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The future wars the Defense Department seeks to deter will become more likely if the United States continues to cede leverage and strategic positioning to our adversaries. In a similar example in the Indo-Pacific theater, Adm. Phil Davidson, the outgoing U.S. theater commander had pushed hard for funding for near-term capabilities needed to seize the initiative and restore deterrence against a Chinese escalation against Taiwan in the next 6 years. However, the Biden Administration’s budget declines to fund this requirement. The administration must ensure that its preparation for future war recognizes the pathways to conflict within the current environment — and mitigates them.
Jennifer Cafarella is the inaugural National Security Fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and an NSI Visiting Fellow. | https://thescif.org/a-russian-masters-class-in-great-power-competition-9cbe6e30eafe | ['Mason Nsi'] | 2021-06-21 16:17:11.116000+00:00 | ['Nato', 'Syria', 'Russia', 'Featured Analysis', 'Disinformation'] |
About Me — Mark Farrar. Expatriate Brit — Entrepreneur, Writer… | Hi! My name is Mark Farrar, and welcome to my About Me page!
I’ll be talking a bit about my personal background and history, my interests, and, of course, my writing.
Childhood
I was born in the United Kingdom, where I was an only child. (I was also an only grandchild and only nephew, which meant I was spoiled rotten.)
I went to a small, local, private day school until I was seven, and then attended one of the country’s less well-known boarding schools, about 25 miles away from home, which I left at 17, having completed my A and S Level exams.
Photo courtesy of Chongsparks on Flickr
Early Adult Life
After leaving school, I declined the option to go to university and ended up working for my father for three years — as a yeast merchant. It was not my desire to continue the business he started, but it was a job I fell into when another one fell through at the last minute.
After that, in 1979, I decided to go into information technology, or data processing as it was called back then, with a large insurance company. In 1986, I moved to a household-name bank, where I remained until 2005.
During my years in IT, I worked as a programmer, systems analyst, data analyst, and strategist.
Mid-Life Onward
In 2005, I moved to the USA — for love. I’d just ended a 24-year marriage that had turned sour (actually, positively acidic), and met a lady online who was based in the USA.
My wife and I started and ran several online businesses, some of which worked, and some of which didn’t.
These businesses still required my IT skills, building bespoke websites for ourselves, some using WordPress but some from scratch, as well as writing business articles, doing customer service (for a year or two, we even offered 24 x 7 phone support, which was as exhausting as it sounds), and more.
My Twilight Years
In 2018, my second wife died, suddenly and unexpectedly, just before Christmas, an event that brought home how fragile life is and how quickly your world can change. We went to bed one night, and the next day, only I woke up.
Photos by author
I now live with my three dogs, Cassie, Mini, and Cruz respectively, in rural Arizona. My late wife bought this 20-acre property (with no neighbours) in 2003 because she valued her privacy and because she was not the sort to need or want the company of other people.
And I am the same — primarily a strong introvert, bordering on reclusive. For example, I’ve been into the nearest town, which is about 12 miles away, once since 2013, and that was only because of an emergency I could not resolve online.
Self-isolation and social distancing were our choice long before the coronavirus scare made them a thing.
My Writing
Since my second wife and I met online (not via a dating site but by a mutual interest in working from home), to help strengthen our growing bond, I started writing her a love poem each day.
This tradition continued for the nine months we were dating, and then for another year or two after I moved to the USA and we were married.
These poems were typically short, from 8–20 lines, and most of them were acrostic in nature — because I love playing with words.
After that, I had long had a desire to write a novel featuring a magic square, another interest of mine stemming from my years as an amateur magician. It’s not the greatest novel in the world — although it’s probably not the worst either — but at least I completed all 400+ pages of Ring Of Daggers.
I wanted to write more novels, but our businesses got in the way, which is why I turned to flash fiction instead, those being shorter and easier, in some ways, to write. I have now published about 35 of these stories on Kindle under the series title Twisted Flash Fiction, although you can find newer stories right here on Medium. These are mainly 500-word stories, with a handful of 2,500-word ones too -all with a twist at the end. The twist component was inspired by Roald Dahl’s short stories, which I first read in my teens at school.
I also wrote a handful of erotica — novellas, for the most part — and a few children’s books under different pseudonyms.
Sadly, the time to do that also became a luxury, which is how I transitioned from short stories and poetry to haiku, which is my current love.
I have published several books of haiku, with themes such as love, Christmas, and mothers. I also write and publish at least one haiku per day on Medium in a publication I created called 17 Onji, as well as on other sites online.
Most of the writing I have done over the past two years has been for my main business site, Self Help Nirvana, where you will also find a few autobiographical-style articles amongst the hundreds of self-help ones.
It’s only during the past month or two that I’ve really started to think more about writing on Medium.
To that end, I have created another publication called Mark’s Meandering Musings, where I write about some of my travel experiences from my younger days, when I was based in the UK.
Other Interests
My other interests include:
magic (of the conjuring variety)
mnemonics
crosswords (preferably cryptic, which I enjoy both composing and solving)
puzzles
and, of course, reading.
I used to be, with my first wife, an arctophile too, once having a collection of over 600 teddy bears and other soft toys, but those days are far behind me now.
As an interesting aside to my interest in and use of mnemonics, it’s worth pointing out that I, like an estimated 3% of people, suffer from aphantasia. This condition, which was only officially recognized within the past decade, means that I cannot create mental images — my mind’s eye is effectively blind.
Most of the people I know of who are aphants, as they are often called, have suffered from this for as long as they can remember. However, it can also happen as a result of medical events, including strokes and surgery.
Since mnemonics usually requires the creation of mental images to help you remember things, then having aphantasia makes this far more difficult than it does for “normal” people — although it is possible to make it work.
My Goals
My ultimate goal during my twilight years is to close down most of my other online businesses, so that I can focus more on writing. That would include my self-help site, here on Medium, and hopefully a few more books on a variety of topics, because, like many writers, I have far more ideas on my list than I could ever hope to complete.
Beyond writing, I want to move to another country. Not back to the UK, but somewhere the weather is more clement all year around — 75–80 degrees would be about right, without the threat of earthquakes and hurricanes.
This will depend, of course, on my health and finances, and I won’t consider doing this until my three dogs are no longer with me because I don’t want to inflict the stress of international travel (e.g. flights, quarantine) on them.
Who knows, I might find somewhere — a small cottage on the beach in the Caribbean, perhaps — where I am truly inspired to do my best writing ever. | https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-mark-farrar-e748130b74e | ['Mark Farrar'] | 2021-02-23 20:19:43.415000+00:00 | ['Writer', 'Introduction', 'About Me', 'Entrepreneur', 'Dog Lover'] |
Mobile money in Mogadishu: a new way of strengthening food security | Mobile money in Mogadishu: a new way of strengthening food security WFP_Africa Follow Dec 23 · 3 min read
A woman checks her mobile money balance on her phone. Photo: WFP/Arete
“Receiving mobile money… allows me to purchase what I want from every shop, and I can pay school fees, water and electricity bills while I am at home,” says 49-year old Amina Ismail Omar, sitting outside her home in the Somali capital of Mogadishu to watch her children as they play. “[It] has also reduced the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“One of the main advantages of this service is that I can transfer money and it is secure,” adds 28-year old Shamsa Shanow Ahmed, resting beneath the shade of a tree with four of her six children. “I am the only one who knows my pin number.”
Amina and Shamsa are some of the first people in Somalia to receive assistance from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) using mobile money, meaning that funds can be sent to their phones electronically without them needing to collect physical cash or vouchers.
Like many women in Somalia, both Amina and Shamsa have lost their husbands, forced to flee their homes with their children — there is extensive internal displacement in the country, driven by conflict or by natural crises such as floods or droughts — and are struggling to secure the basic necessities for living.
“We have been facing several challenges like lack of food and lack of clean water, and my children have no access to education,” says Amina. “One of the most serious challenges is lack of health care.”
WFP Somalia works to support millions of vulnerable people, like Amina and Shamsa, through interventions such as general food assistance (through either cash or in-kind food), home-grown cash-based school feeding, and social safety nets implemented on behalf of national or local government.
With the support of donors like the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, WFP has been increasingly using cash to deliver assistance where possible, in Somalia and around the world. Compared to the traditional delivery of in-kind food items, cash gives beneficiaries more choice while also providing an important stimulus for local markets. In 2020, WFP Somalia has been further building on the cash assistance model by piloting the use of mobile money.
Mobile money has important advantages for WFP beneficiaries. They no longer need to travel to receive their cash, minimizing security concerns and hugely reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission. They don’t need to travel to spend their entitlements, either; mobile money has also been integrated with WFP’s e-Shop digital marketplace, connecting beneficiaries directly with local food suppliers so that they can choose food to buy with their WFP assistance and have it delivered directly to them.
Mobile money also helps ensure that the right assistance reaches the right people and can increase financial inclusion for women. WFP is now working to further expand its use of mobile money, as long as the necessary funding can be secured.
Somalia is an ideal environment to use the technology to help strengthen food security because it is already an essential part of the country’s economy. Mobile money is used for everything from saving money to paying bills; it accounts for a greater value of transactions than cash; and, according to the World Bank, is now used by 73 percent of the overall population.
All of this has already made mobile money a favoured delivery option for people like Amina and Shamsa. “This service helped us a lot,” smiles Amina. “We would like to request WFP to continue this kind of support.” | https://medium.com/world-food-programme-insight/mobile-money-in-mogadishu-a-new-way-of-strengthening-food-security-866f5ad5ab17 | [] | 2020-12-23 04:27:06.873000+00:00 | ['Somalia', 'Mobile Money', 'Women Empowerment', 'Food Security'] |
Your commitment to self care is your most important job. | The commitment to self care must be a daily job. You would not blow off your work day and make excuses not to go, therefore, you can not blow off your commitment to yourself.
This idea was sparked after having a conversation with a friend of mine. She is a spin instructor, in addition to her regular 9–5 job. We were together on a Friday night and she said she had to be at work to teach spin at 8:30 the next morning. And my thought was her job is to exercise. She can’t decide not to go because she doesn’t feel like it, there are students who are counting on her, who specifically wake up early on a Saturday morning just to take spin class with her.
Exercise is something that I have never had a great love for. It is an aspect of my life that I do because I know my body needs it, it keeps me in shape, in less physical pain and allows me to enjoy yummy food without calorie counting(too much). Let me state this again, I actually do not like exercising. It is not something I feel compelled to do, most of the time my body does not crave it. Usually, if given a reason to miss my regular work out days I will easily let working out fall to the side for another activity, commitment or appointment somewhere.
I have been exercising regularly, a minimum of 3 times per week, at my gym for 15 years. So on the outside it looks like I am committed to myself and I suppose, in a sense, I am. Have there been weeks where getting to the gym has not happened at all? Yes. Have there been months at a time where I was not able to work out due to an injury and wound up in physical therapy instead? Yes. Have there been vacations when I did not make working out a daily priority? Yes. As I said I am good at finding reasons not to exercise and I am sure many of you can relate.
This conversation with my friend sparked a different perspective. This perspective is that my commitment to my self care must be made daily. I must renew it each day. A daily commitment to myself to exercise, as if I had to get up each day and go to my job to exercise because people are counting on me to be there. The person counting on me is me. And is one thing about my personality that you should know is that when I give someone else my word I stick to it. If I can stick to my word for someone else, I asked myself, aren’t I important enough to stick to my word for me?
Yes, I can honor my word to myself. I can make a commitment to myself. Then how do I approach this commitment to make it achievable. I do not want to sabotage myself and set myself up to fail. That only leads to a lot of negative self talk, I told you so’s, etc.
I decided to begin a silent experiment with myself that very evening when I spoke with my friend. I will share it with you and I invite you to do the experiment too. This experiment is about making a daily commitment to yourself for your own self care. For me it is exercise, for you it may be something else like; good food choices, meditation, journaling, practicing a craft, reading something up lifting. You get to pick.
Here is the catch. When you make the commitment it is decided on daily and only for the next day. Break it down. Your commitment to your own self care is the job you need to do for you. It is a daily practice.
If I say I will exercise every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next year I am bound to miss one of those days. When I do, I will view it as letting myself down and that can cause a spiral of letting go of the commitment all together because once we “screw” it up we have to start again and many of us don’t. It is like the New Year’s Eve resolution that lasts a week, month or even two. And we say, “I tried.” Try is a kill word to yourself. The deeper mind hears the word try and says to itself, “I don’t have to.” In hypnosis one of the laws of the deeper mind is the harder you try the more you can’t. You say, “I tried to get up early but I hit snooze 4 times and did not get up early, but I tried.” I say you did not try, you gave yourself an out by saying try. Try is a failure word to our deeper mind. It tells the deeper mind that you really don’t mean it, it really does not have to happen, you can actually skip it and fool yourself that you made an effort. Instead, we must use different words in our self talk vocabulary. Words and statements like; I will, I am going to, the effort I am putting into this is, my intention for the day is, my commitment to myself is, it is important to me to accomplish this task. Can you see how the energy and meaning of words and statements like these are different from, I’ll try?
Here are the daily commitment steps, and they are really very simple. Step 1: Remember this is a daily practice.
Step 2: Everyday you pick what that self-care activity will be, for the next day only. It may be
the same thing each day or it may be something new.
Step 3: Everyday you pick the time for the next day that you will do your own self care.
Step 4: Say it out loud to yourself. When we do this we are stating our intention out loud not
only to our self but to the universe. We are then using more of our senses. Speaking
it lets us hear it. Everything we say has a vibration and we feel it. Saying it out loud to
yourself, or someone else, makes it real. When it is real we are less likely to blow it off.
Step 5: When you wake up the next day keep the commitment you made to yourself the day
before, at at the time you set, do it!. It is your job.
Step 6: Once you follow through and keep that commitment, thank yourself for for doing it, for
following through. Feel proud.
Step 7: Pick tomorrow’s commitment.
Life changes daily, if we are firm and inflexible we are bound to not take care of the self. That is why when you decide day to day about your commitment to yourself you set up a scenario where you can succeed. When we then follow through with the commitment we feel good. We tell our inner self that she/he is worthy, important and loved. It is your daily job to take good care of you physically, emotionally and spiritually. No one else can do this for you. Make it happen, you can do it, one day at a time you can accomplish anything. | https://janetphilbin.medium.com/your-commitment-to-self-care-is-your-most-important-job-cb188e0a1e4c | ['Janet Philbin'] | 2019-01-09 15:17:28.526000+00:00 | ['Hypnotherapy', 'Self Care', 'Overcoming Obstacles', 'Commitment', 'Hypnosis'] |
One Key to Increase Audience Interest in Your Story | One Key to Story Success
A (Missing) Memorable Moment
“Dude, you’re going to die if you keep this up!”
I was watching Dave in a storytelling workshop. He’d already presented his story and was being debriefed. The facilitators were asking questions about a specific scene when he said, “Yeah, at one point my doctor told me, “Dude, you’re going to die if you keep this up!”
The workshops facilitators immediately stopped him and said, “Whoa! What? Say that again!”
More than a little surprised, Dave, repeated the phrase, “My doctor said, “Dude, you’re going to die if you keep this up!”
The facilitators said, “Dude! Where was THAT in the story? That’s what’s missing. We need to hear that moment when you’re told your life is on the line.”
A Common, but Costly, Storytelling Mistake
Up until that moment, he’d struggled to convey the seriousness of a scene in which he was told he needed to change his lifestyle, or he would die a premature death.
He did what many storytellers do — provide a lot of facts in his back story about what led him to that point:
He was overweight and inactive
He’d experienced an incident of paralyzing chest pains in a hotel room
He’d ignored the pain and attended a work conference
He felt sick again on the drive home
He visited his friend, a doctor, who gave him a lengthy explanation of his condition
He eventually was admitted to the hospital, lucky to be alive
To be fair, this was the first draft of Dave’s story. He was in what we call the ‘messy’ stage of his story.
In the debrief, he casually threw out the line “My doctor said, “Dude, you’re going to die if you keep this up!”
It was THE moment missing from the story.
This is not uncommon in the coaching sessions I’m involved in. Nearly every time, I or one of my colleagues stop the meeting and ask, “Where was THAT in the story?”
Two Key Lessons From This Experience
One. The key to meaningful stories is memorable moments. We tend to overlook or not understand the significance of specific incidents in our lives.
These are crucial because they generate the most emotion in your story. If he experiences several months or years in the past, your feelings may be less intense about it, therefore, you dismiss its importance.
This is why it’s vital to have other people listen to your narrative. They will help you understand why specific moments are powerful to your story.
Two. You and I are too close to our own material to see its value. We lived the experience, so we tend to disregard its significance.
The workshop facilitators immediately saw the value in the statement from Dave’s doctor and encouraged him to include it.
When writing their stories, most people tend to over-explain because they don’t understand which parts are most valuable. They feel the need to give every detail of the backstory so the audience understands every aspect of the situation.
It’s a good strategy for writing a novel, but it’s deadly for speakers. Audiences want just enough detail to understand the situation and no more. This is the approach used in the movie industry.
As has been repeated by many in the industry, “Hollywood tells stories of real life, with the boring parts taken out.”
Bonus Idea
Key moments can shorten the story, yet heighten the impact.
When Dave finally understood the strength of the one sentence from his doctor, he inserted it into the story. He practiced the delivery a few times and it became one of the key moments of his talk.
He described sitting in the doctor's office, waiting for him to walk in. He paused for a few seconds. He then said, “My doctor, who is a long-time friend, didn’t bother to sit down. He didn’t waste any time. He said, “Dude, you’re going to die if you keep this up!”
Dave then paused to let the audience see his facial expression of disbelief, the impact the doctor’s words had on him. The silence, and his expression, allowed the audience to feel the significance on the moment.
It was far more powerful than the minute-plus explanation of the first version.
The typical speaker gives a ‘report,’ “My doctor told me he was concerned. He said my blood pressure was 190/110 and that my heart rate was 92 per minute. He was also concerned about my triglyceride count, and we discussed these readings in context with the information from previous visits.”
Aren’t you simply riveted by that information?
Some key thoughts to consider:
Are all of the facts true?
Yes.
Are they important to the story?
Yes, they underscore the serious nature of the health problem.
Are they vital to the audience?
NO!
What does the audience need to know?
“Dude, you’re gonna die!”
THAT is where the emotions; connection is made.
It’s more dramatic, and your point is made. All in just a few words
As you craft your story, don’t overlook simple, powerful incidents which capture the essence of a situation and heighten the tension.
Create the moments audiences will long remember, and you’ll create a deeper emotional connection with them.
New and Experienced Speakers: Jump Start 2022 on Getting Paid to Speak What You’re Worth
Ever see a speaker whom you knew was getting paid and thought…
“I’m at least that good.”
You could be 100% right. But…
…what did that person do to be the one who was booked?
My friend and mentor, World Champion Speaker Darren LaCroix, CSP, will answer that question and many others to help you be the speaker getting paid.
Darren is facilitating a 30-day challenge that will help you discover insider secrets to either transitioning from free to paid speaking or increasing your current fee to a higher one which represents your true value.
To discover more about this opportunity to attract paid speaking engagements in 2022, CLICK HERE.
P.S. The Early Bird price of $97 for this 30-day challenge is available until 11:59 pm Friday, December 31.
P.S.S. Before you commit, be sure to use your discount code, Mike25, to receive an additional 25% discount off the Early Bird price.
Darren has had a significant impact on my career and he can help you save months or years of trial and error learning and help you begin getting paid what you’re worth for your expertise and wisdom. | https://medium.com/@speakingcpr/one-key-to-increase-audience-interest-in-your-story-c18fa837ccf7 | ['Michael Davis'] | 2021-12-28 17:22:09.941000+00:00 | ['Public Speaking', 'Professional Speaking', 'Présentation'] |
Best & Most Nutritious Foods In The World | What is the top Nutritious Foods?
There are only a few Nutritious Food you can eat in a single day to improve nutrients. It is wise to prepare and use your calorie budget active. One bestie way to do this is to consume the foods that carry the most significant quantity and type of nutrients.
You should also avoid overweight, making foods or low on energy foods. The several nutrient-dense foods are:
Salmon
Salmon or other fatty types of fish include the highest amount of Omega-3s. Omega-3 fatty acids are necessary for the optimal use of our bodies. It links them to improved health and a lower risk of multiple chronic diseases.
and a lower risk of multiple chronic diseases. Studies prove that people who eat more fatty fish regularly have a lower risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, and a plethora of common diseases. Salmon, the fatty fish, is overloaded with minerals, vitamins, protein, and beneficial fatty acids.
Kale
Amongst all healthy greens, kale is the king. It is immensely filled with vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, and various bioactive compounds.
Kale is one of the most nutritious vegetables that you can eat with large quantities of minerals, vitamins, and other cancer-fighting compounds.
Seaweed
Seaweed is even more Nutritious Food from the land. It is unusually high in minerals like calcium, iron, magnesium, and Manganese. It is also overloaded with various bioactive compounds like phycocyanins and carotenoids.
from the land. It is unusually high in minerals like calcium, iron, magnesium, and Manganese. It is also overloaded with various bioactive compounds like phycocyanins and carotenoids. The vegetables from the sea are most highly Nutritious Foods but rarely consumed in Western parts of the world. Seawood is high in iodine, which is essential for optimal thyroid function.
Garlic
Garlic is a fantastic ingredient. It is high in copper, potassium, vitamins C, B6 and B1, calcium, selenium, and Manganese. It also includes various cancer-fighting properties. Studies state that people who eat a lot of garlic have a lower risk of numerous common cancers.
Garlic is both tasty and very healthy. It is a highly Nutritious Food, and its bioactive compounds have best known for disease-fighting properties.
Shellfish
Out of all the wonderfully nutritious organisms found in the sea, shellfish are the most Nutritious Foods of all. Generally utilized types of shellfish include clams, oysters, and many others. Sadly, people unusually consume them.
Shellfish are among these most Nutritious Foods in existence. Shellfish are among the Best nutritious found in the sea. They are very high in nutrients like Vitamin Zinc and B12.
Avocados
Also known as an alligator pear or butter fruit, Eating a diet that includes a lot of fruits and vegetables of all kinds of long associated with a reduced risk of many lifestyles related health conditions.
Many studies have found that a mostly plant-based diet plan that includes foods such as avocados can help to reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and overall mortality while promoting a healthy complexion and hair, increased energy, and total lower weight.
It also contains small amounts of magnesium, manganese, copper, iron, zinc, phosphorus, and vitamins A, B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin) and B3 (niacin).
Broccoli
We know broccoli to be a healthful and delicious vegetable which is expensive in dozens of nutrients. They say it to pack the nutritional punch of any herb.
When we think about green vegetables to include in our diet, broccoli is one of the most favorite veggies to come to our mind.
We can categorize broccoli as an excellent green plant. Broccoli is a nutritional powerhouse overload with fiber, minerals, and vitamins, antioxidants
Beans
Beans and legumes are the fruits or seeds of a family of plants called Fabaceae. They are usually eaten around the world and are a superb source of fiber and B vitamins.
They are also a suitable replacement for meat as a source of vegetarian protein.
Beans and vegetables have several health benefits, including decreasing cholesterol, reducing blood sugar levels, and increasing healthy gut bacteria.
Here are nine of the healthiest beans and legumes you can eat, and why they are right for you.
Blueberries
When we talk about the nutritional value of fruits, blueberries are in an alliance of their own.
They are overload with powerful antioxidant elements, like anthocyanins and different phytochemicals.
Blueberries are very high Nutritious Food compared to other most fruits and are overload with healthy antioxidants.
Egg Yolks
Egg yolks are overload with minerals, vitamins, and many powerful nutrients.
They are high in Lutein and zeaxanthin, antioxidants that defend your eyes and decrease the risk of eye diseases like waterfalls and macular degeneration.
Eggs are also overload by choline, a mind nutrient that approximately 90% of people are not making enough.
The Bottom Line
If you want many nutrients without many calories, the most apparent strategy is to take dietary supplements. However, supplements can hardly follow a healthy diet.
A more reliable way to get all the nutrients you need is to fill your meals with nutrient-dense Nutritious Foods. Nutrient-dense foods are rich in nutrients relevant to their calorie content.
These include much healthy Nutritious Food such as whole fruits, vegetables, seafood, eggs, cocoa, and liver. Start adding the above foods to your daily diet to get their benefits. | https://medium.com/@alldaygenericblog/best-most-nutritious-foods-in-the-world-6688d378d201 | ['Health Information'] | 2019-09-14 09:18:28.069000+00:00 | ['Healthcare', 'Health Information', 'Best Nutrition Food', 'Nutrition', 'Health Foods'] |
Halloween in the Workplace: How to Protect Your Rights | Halloween at work can be a tricky and difficult time. Employers will often throw parties to celebrate this festive, spooky time of year, thinking that it can help with morale and team building. But Halloween in the workplace is unique from other company events in that it can set the stage for sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace, among other violations of employee rights.
It is important to be informed about what can happen to maintain Halloween work safety. This does not mean you cannot participate in the festivities, but it does serve as a call to attention about what can happen and what to look out for when parties get out of hand. Know your rights and stay protected.
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS REGARDING SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT HALLOWEEN PARTIES
The atmosphere of Halloween at work can be a lot of fun — but that fun can go too far and sometimes lead to sexual harassment. When the time comes for the party, people dress up in all types of costumes — from sexy to scary to silly, and everything in between. Coworkers or bosses may feel emboldened to do things they should not do whether or not the party has an open bar or even just a bowl of fruit punch.
Women are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment at Halloween parties, but men can get harassed too. Here are a couple of scenarios that could violate your employee rights and amount to sexual harassment in the workplace.
Scenario #1:
A female employee comes to a workplace Halloween party dressed up as Catwoman in a tight, black, costume. She is enjoying herself and talking to two coworkers while eating a few snacks. Her direct supervisor comes over to join the conversation and pushes his way between her and the person next to her. After several minutes of glaring at her in the costume, he reaches behind her and rubs her backside without her permission and says while he is laughing, “What is Catwoman going to do now?”
This is a blatant violation of her workplace rights and should never be tolerated. Unsolicited and unwanted behavior of a sexual nature during Halloween at work is covered under Title VII employment discrimination claims. If something of this nature has happened to you, you may have a case.
Scenario #2:
A male employee comes to a workplace Halloween party dressed up as Superman with the full costume, including tight spandex. He has several cocktails and is sitting by himself, smiling, looking around the room. His manager comes over and sits by him, leering at him and making him uncomfortable. She says to him, “I want to see what is under that costume. If you don’t show me, I’m not going to give you that bonus you’re expecting.”
This is also a blatant violation of workplace rights and can create an intimidating, hostile work environment. If the manager follows up with her threat or if he goes to human resources and complains and then gets fired — that could also constitute workplace retaliation. Workplace retaliation is not only illegal, but it can also cause lasting damage to an employee’s career. If any of the above situations sound familiar (or something similar), you should consult with an employee rights attorney. We offer free, confidential consultations to help you determine the best legal decisions moving forward.
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS REGARDING DISCRIMINATION AT HALLOWEEN PARTIES
Discrimination in the workplace is another area of employee rights that people should be aware of at Halloween parties. There are several types of discrimination, from racial discrimination to religious discrimination that may occur during Halloween in the workplace, which is also unacceptable and should never be tolerated. Here are two scenarios that serve as examples for you to be aware of your rights:
Scenario #1:
A Caucasian male employee comes to the party dressed up as a rapper and has placed very dark makeup on his face. This is offensive and makes several African-American co-workers present very uncomfortable and upset. A situation like this can create a hostile work environment and can amount to workplace discrimination.
Scenario #2:
A Caucasian male employee comes to the Halloween party dressed up as Hitler in full uniform and performing the “Heil, Hitler” salute. This is offensive and makes several Jewish co-workers present very uncomfortable and upset. This, along with any other hate group affiliated figure such as a member of the KKK, should never be tolerated at Halloween in the workplace. It can create a hostile work environment and can also amount to workplace discrimination.
A FOCUS ON HALLOWEEN WORK SAFETY FROM WENZEL FENTON CABASSA, P.A.
At Wenzel Fenton Cabassa, P.A., we are here to inform you and protect you when it comes to employee rights and Halloween work safety. Halloween should be a fun time for all, but it can quickly get out of hand, and your workplace rights can be violated.
The scenarios above cover several instances of what could happen that may amount to sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace. Either of these could also lead to workplace retaliation for those who attempt to report the actions to human resources or other company officials. Our employment lawyers place a focus on Halloween work safety and are here for you when it comes to violations of your rights during Halloween.
If you have been the subject of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation in the workplace, we would like to speak with you. We fight hard for worker’s rights across all types of employment law, including racial, age, religious, pregnancy, sex and gender, and disability discrimination as well as retaliation or harassment.
Contact Wenzel Fenton Cabassa, P.A., to set up a free, confidential consultation. We are experienced, expert employment lawyers that work hard each day to hold those accountable for egregious behavior.
With offices across Florida in Tampa, Orlando, Miami, Sarasota, St. Petersburg, and Jacksonville, we have helped thousands of workers just like you hold people accountable for their unlawful behavior and get the justice they deserve. | https://medium.com/@wfclaw/halloween-in-the-workplace-how-to-protect-your-rights-11a64ce11a68 | ['Matthew Fenton'] | 2019-10-17 18:25:39.530000+00:00 | ['Sexual Harassment', 'Hostile Workplace', 'Hostile Work Environment', 'Workplace Discrimination'] |
Graph Databases, Neo4j, and Py2neo for the Absolute Beginner | Are you interested in graph theory and NoSQL database design? Graph databases may offer you the tools that you need. Whether it comes to pattern matching, recommender systems, fraud detection, social media, or more, graph databases are a great option. Neo4j is the most popular open-source graph database management system available to the public. In the following article, we’ll discuss graphs, relational databases, neo4j, and py2neo for the beginners. If you’ve taken an introductory python course [CSC 111 at Smith College], you’ve got all the tools you need to get started.
So what is a graph?
If you’ve taken discrete math [MTH 153 at Smith College], a lot of this will be familiar to you already. Imagine that you are the owner of three dogs named Rex, Fido, and Spot. If you want to visually show out the relationship between your dogs, you could first draw out everyone as bubbles on a sheet of paper. You, Rex, Fido, and Spot would each be a bubble on the paper. However, you want to show more than just those bubbles. You want to represent your relationships with your dogs. You can draw out those relationships as lines in between those bubbles. For example, you can have lines which point from any of the dogs to you, representing the “Pet Of” relationship. So if a line were drawn from Rex to you, it would show “Rex has the ‘Pet Of’ relationship with You”, which means that Rex is your pet. Lines can be directed or not. If they’re directed, the relationship goes one way, like the “Pet Of” relationship, but if they’re not directed, the relationship goes both ways, like, for example the “Loves” relationship between one of your pets and you.
You, Rex, Fido, and Spot
This image above is a very basic graph. You are your dogs are each nodes, entities which are stored in the database. The relationships between you and your pets are called edges. A graph is any structure made up of a series of nodes which may be connected by edges. They’re an incredibly useful structure in computer science. The internet, for example, can be considered a graph, with different web pages as nodes and hyperlinks between them as edges. The first algorithm behind Google search ranking worked by constructing a graph of the internet and then weighting different pages based on how many hyperlinks went to them. If you’ve ever wondered how Facebook suggests people you may know, one of the key parts of this algorithm is a graph. It adds everyone to a massive graph and suggests people based on your friends’ connections. Graphs have many applications, so there are many tools out there for using them.
A graph database management system is any tool which takes this kind of structure and plunks it into the computer. They also provide a query language to quickly search for information in it. The database itself is all of that info plunked on the computer. neo4j is a graph database management system (hereafter abbreviated to GDBMS), and the one we’re talking about in this tutorial.
How does this compare to relational databases?
If you’re coming to this article, you likely have some experience in relational database design. If not or if you’ve forgotten most of it, a quick refresher — relational databases are databases designed using relations, tables of information which look like Excel sheets. The names for your columns are called your schema, and for every row of your “Excel” sheet, you must have something in each column, even if it’s just a null. Different columns are attributes. For example, if you had a person named “Alice” in your relation, her name and her age would each be an attribute, meaning it would be a column on the table. In order to query this table for information, you can use “Standard Query Language”, often abbreviated to “SQL.” SQL is a query language, not a programming language, but it is incredibly robust and gives one the ability to search across multiple tables and for specific attributes. If you’re familiar with sets, relational database tables are each sets, and we use operations like the Cartesian product or set complement in order to work with multiple tables. Where graph databases are formed off graphs, relational databases are formed off of sets. There are many other concepts, from Boyce-Codd Normal Form to the basics of set theory, that I recommend you explore but that we won’t be covering in this tutorial.
Graph databases bear some similarities to relational databases, but are also incredibly different. One doesn’t need to adhere to a schema when using a graph database and they do not depend on set theory. They’re also much better at modeling relationships. With relational databases, a relationship between two items takes slightly more math to model than it does with a graph database. With many relationships and millions of data points, this extra computational cost exceeds a reasonable amount. Graph databases require significantly less math to model those same relationships.
Installing neo4j
Installing neo4j is fairly simple, but just in case, we’ll go over the process. Go to this page, click download, and fill out the form that it asks for. It’ll give you a key after this page. Copy and paste that key somewhere or leave this page open and then download neo4j. Once you’ve downloaded it, open it up to get the installation wizard and then you’ll be asked for the activation key. Just paste that back in and you’re ready to start using neo4j!
Using neo4j
This screen should be similar to what you see. In my projects section, I have two different projects, but you’ll see just one called “My Project.” I’m going to be working in a project called “Example Project” throughout the course of this tutorial. Now, it’s time to get started on the more interesting stuff. In order to make your first graph, all you have to do is click the “Add Graph” button. Choose to make a local graph. You’ll then be prompted to name the graph and to provide a password. I made the graph’s name “Graph” and the password “password” since we won’t be working with any particularly sensitive information.
Your screen should now look like this
Click the start button in order to get the database running. The graph box should then look like this.
From there, click the manage button. It will lead you to the management menu, where you should see a button that says browser. Press that button and it will open up a new window which should look like this.
This is where you can experiment with neo4j, write in code, and check visualizations. It’s an incredibly useful tool. You can type in commands in that top box, next to the dollar sign. I highly recommend the tutorial series that it recommends. Those are very helpful.
Creating a Graph
Now, we want to go through the process of making a graph. Let’s say that we have a group of friends named Alice, Bob, and Cam. Each of them will be a node connected by edges in our graph. The first thing we need to do is make nodes for each of them. We’ll start with Alice. The syntax for creating a node in neo4j goes as follows:
CREATE (n:label {property:”Value”})
If you want to have multiple labels or properties, you can do so like this:
CREATE (n:label:label2:label3 {property1:”Value1”, property2:”Value2, property3:”Value3”})
So, if we’re interested in adding Alice first, we can create a node for her using the following syntax:
CREATE (n:person {name:”Alice”})
We can do the same thing for Bob and Cam. A quick tip for neo4j is that if you want to see all of the nodes in your graph, you can enter the following into the command line:
MATCH (n) RETURN (n)
Doing this and pressing enter, we can see Alice, Bob, and Cam as nodes. Neo4j provides tools for graph visualization, which we will be using throughout this guide. This graph is of the three friends. If you wish to close it, go to the top right corner of the box and press the x. Otherwise, you can pan around the screen, drag the nodes, and even go into full screen to explore the graph. This gets more interesting with more elements and with relationships.
Each friend is a node in this graph
Of course, this isn’t a very good graph because none of our nodes are connected to one another. We can rectify that right now by creating relationships. Let’s say that even though both Alice and Bob are friends with Cam, they’re best friends with one another. How would one model this relationship? Neo4j provides the tools to model it. Just like we can have nodes with labels and properties, we can have relationships between two nodes with labels and properties. The syntax is as follows:
MATCH (a:person), (b:person) WHERE a.name=”Alice” and b.name =”Bob” CREATE (a)-[r:FRIEND {type:”best”}]->(b) return r
This creates a best friend relationship between Alice and Bob. R is the variable representing the relationship between Alice and Bob, and similar to nodes, it has the label “FRIEND” and the properties within the curly brackets. We can make similar relationships between Alice and Cam or Bob and Cam while omitting the brackets with “type:’best’” in them in order to make normal friendships. An interesting thing to note about this relationship is that it is a directed one, from Alice to Bob, which is why there is an arrow pointing at the variable b. This process is useful, but a bit tedious, which is why we’ll go over doing it in py2neo later on.
Cypher
So far we’ve created nodes and we’ve created relationships, but we haven’t explored the language we’re using to do so. Cypher is an open-source graph query language used for neo4j, among other graph applications. It has many similarities to SQL, but the syntax is slightly different and the underlying mechanics are very different. Instead of querying across relations, we query across graphs. This means the mechanics must be much different.
Let’s say that we have our friend graph and we want to return the name of every single one of our friends. Saying something along the lines of the following will return every node in the graph:
MATCH (n) RETURN n
However, this gives us too much information. To get just their names, we can say the following:
MATCH (n) RETURN n.name
This is a pretty simple query to make in neo4j, but it’s a good one to start out learning the syntax. If you’re familiar with SQL, this equivalent to “SELECT name FROM graph;” If not, this is still pretty simple. By saying MATCH n, we take the variable n, and since we have nothing narrowing it down, n represents every element in the entire graph. RETURN n.name gives us back the name for n, and since n is every node, that means we get the name of everything in our graph.
If you want to delete everything from your graph instead, you can say the following:
MATCH (n) DETACH DELETE n
Now, if you’re looking to query a specific node, a new line is added to your query. Let’s say that we’re only looking to return the node for Alice in this graph. We can do as follows:
MATCH (a) WHERE a.name = “Alice” RETURN a
If you’re familiar with SQL, this where clause is almost exactly the same as it is in SQL, except for the fact that you use a variable. Where you would have previously said “SELECT * FROM graph WHERE name=”Alice””, you now must choose a variable to represent what you’re searching for.
There are many more complex ways to query in Cypher, for which I recommend you check out the following tutorials. Otherwise, the information above will cover basic searches across a graph database.
Py2neo
Cypher is a great language, but I’m personally a big fan of python, especially for automating the process of creating nodes and relationships. In order to do this, I use py2neo, a python package which works with neo4j. You can install it with just the command “pip install py2neo” from the command line. From there, open up your preferred python editor (I will be using python’s built in editor IDLE for simplicity’s sake), and we can get started! The most important thing to start is to have neo4j open and the graph that you want to use running.
The bolt port is circled in red
Go to the manage page for your graph (the one where you can open up your browser) in order to continue. Once you have it open, you’ll be able to see this screen. Note down the bolt port of your graph. We’ll be using this to access the graph from python. It’s also helpful to open the browser at this point, if you don’t already have it open. While we’ll be working primarily in python, seeing neo4j’s graph visualizations is only possible if you are using the browser. Now, open up a new python file and name it whatever you want. Next, we’re going to start importing things into our program.
These are the first three lines
Make a main function for your code. Now, the first thing to do is link to our neo4j graph. Since you have the bolt port ready, let’s start by connecting like so:
Put in bolt://localhost:(the bolt port you have listed on your manage screen) as an argument for graph and we can now begin creating nodes and relationships. Say that we want to model our original graph. There’s you and your dogs Rex, Fido, and Spot. For the sake of this graph, we’ll say that your name is Alex. We want to have four different nodes then. Rex, Fido, Spot, and Alex. We also want two different kinds of nodes: human and dog. We’ll start by doing this in a more simple manner. First, we can start by instantiating the nodes. The syntax for doing so is as follows.
Variable_name=Node(“Label in quotes”,property1=”value for property1")
So if we want to put you and your dogs into our database, we can write out the following.
Alex = Node(“Person”,name=”Alex”)
Rex = Node(“Dog”,name=”Rex”)
Fido=Node(“Dog”,name=”Fido”)
Spot=Node(“Dog”,name=”Spot”)
However, this just creates the nodes and doesn’t put them into the database. We want to actually push them into our database. We can do that using the following code:
We can use graph.create(variable_name) to put the node into the graph itself. Now, we want to draw out the relationships between all of the nodes. We can do this by similarly creating a relationship. The syntax for a relationship is as follows.
Relationship(node1, “TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP”,node2)
So if we wanted to say that Alex loves Rex, we could say the following.
Relationship(Alex,”LOVES”, Rex)
We can put that straight into the graph.create() code to get the following.
graph.create(Relationship(Alex,”Loves”,Rex))
This code puts the relationship into our graph. This code down below results in the following visualization:
The code
Resulting visualization
As you can see, neo4j is a great tool of working with graphs and py2neo makes it even simpler to use. You can combine the python code above with any variety of different packages or tools to get an even more robust graph. There are also many more tools in py2neo that we haven’t explored. The documentation covers many more utilities, tools, and variations of ideas that we’ve previously explored. Good luck using neo4j! | https://medium.com/smith-hcv/graph-databases-neo4j-and-py2neo-for-the-absolute-beginner-8989498ebe43 | ['Ananda Montoly'] | 2020-01-14 19:59:12.499000+00:00 | ['Neo4j', 'Python', 'Graph Database', 'Research', 'Data Visualization'] |
What You Need to Know About Tapjoy & GDPR | What You Need to Know About Tapjoy & GDPR
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect on May 25, and Tapjoy is ready for it.
We take privacy very seriously and we support consumers’ rights to control their personal data. As such, we believe that GDPR is an important step for the entire digital ecosystem, and we want to help all of our advertising and developer partners make sure they’re in compliance with GDPR requirements as well.
We are accepting the role of “controller” status with respect to personal data passed to us through our SDK for monetization purposes and “processor” status for personal data provided to us by advertisers and publishers for other purposes. We will be updating our Privacy Policy as well as our Terms & Conditions to provide additional transparency and clarity, and we are completing self-certification to Privacy Shield.
Privacy, trust, and consumer empowerment are among Tapjoy’s core values. If you have any questions regarding GDPR or what you need to do to comply, please contact us at [email protected]. | https://medium.com/tapjoy/important-update-tapjoy-gdpr-716de2fcf420 | [] | 2018-05-04 18:05:30.461000+00:00 | ['Privacy'] |
DCA Blog Series 2 we Build your presentation website for just 150 EUR | DCA Blog Series 2 we Build your presentation website for just 150 EUR DigitalCenturyAssets Jun 17·2 min read
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In this environment you need to have the right strategy to rise above your competition and find your perfect marketing mix and position yourself in a visible spot. You might do everything perfect, maybe you have created a diamond like product or service in the real world but without the right strategy online, the right website and the right steps to implement in your online presence using all the tools there are out there in terms of advertising and social media, the clients might miss you out.
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Together we will find the right strategy for your online project | https://medium.com/@digitalcenturyassets/dca-blog-series-2-we-build-your-presentation-website-for-just-150-eur-cf2eacbbb89a | [] | 2021-06-17 17:23:30.451000+00:00 | ['Web Marketing', 'Website Design', 'Build Your Website', 'Web Development', 'Website'] |
Legal Tech Entrepreneurs: Figure this Out and the Rest is Easy | I consider myself a forward thinking person. After all, my passion is learning about and speaking to people about new and revolutionary ideas. I have chosen to work in multiple early stage visionary companies that succeeded in getting entire industries to change.
Yet, as a lawyer, I struggle mightily with changing the way I do legal work. Let me give you a sad but true example. My legal department is constantly faced with having to do more with less. In order to keep up with the pace of business, we have to become more lean and productive and to achieve this without more resources to support us.
There is this saying that you cannot improve what you cannot measure. So, we started a program to track and measure our work. And this required everyone to move from using standard email for projects to sending communications out from a project management tool (or at least sending emails to that tool so it can track them to our legal projects).
Sounds simple enough and requires a very small change in workflow. The productivity benefits of making this small change are clear and significant. I get full visibility into everything we are working on.
We save time by having all the work and communication related to a project in one place. The tool connects not just our legal staff but our business teams . . . breaking down more silos in the process which in turn increases the speed we can do business. And no more needing to deal with searching and finding documents and emails later for an old project.
I am not an old school lawyer; I have not spent years of my career in the law firm billable hour world; and I love technology. Plus, I am the General Counsel of this department so a key performance objective of my job is achieving these productivity optimizing goals.
YET, I am guilty of consistently going back to the old way with full knowledge that if I did not make this change, my department’s productivity efforts would be at risk.
I give you this example to show you the biggest obstacle for any legal tech company and that is getting lawyers to adopt a new way of working: ADOPTION.
I have heard many pitches from legal tech entrepreneurs. Many do an amazing job painting the current pain of their lawyer customer and nail the story of how their product will solve this problem and make the lawyer’s life better.
But what most legal tech entrepreneurs fail to address is helping or better yet showing lawyers HOW to move from their current way to a new way. We may be convinced of the post change benefits and may even crave the work life it promises us.
But, change is really hard for lawyers — really, really hard.
Focus on this more than anything else and baby steps are best- adoption help is not exciting and is not innovative.
ADOPTION: If you figure this out for your legal customer, the rest will be easier. And, if you do not figure this out, your business will die. | https://medium.com/lawyers-with-wings/legal-tech-entrepreneurs-figure-this-out-and-the-rest-is-easy-4228c5e7d39d | ['Amyli Mcdaniel'] | 2019-06-17 23:37:38.352000+00:00 | ['Legaltech', 'Law', 'Legal Innovation', 'Lawyers'] |
Give it a SPIN! | Charts are wonderful — they generate information out of myriad little details, unlock insights out of a seemingly unrelated tonnage of data, and to a great extent help uncover the iceberg that’s hidden beneath the cresting water. In my view, data visualization is an interesting blend of art & science that generates engagement and drives further exploration of any given topic.
As a self-professed data visualization geek, charts have always fascinated me as a great tool for communicating insights. The ground level fundamentals are obvious by now — each chart is different, and they are most effective when used in the purpose for which they were intended. But on top of it, I have always found playing with a chart and tweaking an existing graphic could be so much fun. One of such things that I find extremely interesting to do? Spinning a chart. Here’s what I mean.
Spin it by 180 degrees
Below is a line chart that represents number of average footfalls in the local metro stations of one of the major metropolis in the world.
Chart 1: Average daily footfalls trend
You’d be able to easily identify that there’s a significantly large rush on the weekdays during both AM & PM working hours-time. On weekends, the rush is typically more prominent during the middle of the day. Also, notice that the peak weekend rush is only, at most, half of the peak weekday rush.
But now I’ll rotate this same graph by 180 degrees, and with some adjustments on the X-axis, I get the version below:
Chart 2.1: Chart 1 rotated by 180 degrees
As compared to chart 1, the peaks here are either during mid-day or during the night when trains are not operational (in other words, the inverse of the original).
Say I change the y-axis here to “Available Space in the Station” (denoted by Space in the chart). Don’t worry about the actual unit of space; the intent is only to understand the appropriate pattern.
Chart 2.2: Average Daily Available Space Index
The first graph helped us easily visualize when are the busiest times on the Metro. However, for an Operations worker, who’s looking to utilize station space (perhaps as a source of revenue generation) or primarily wants to understand empty capacity, this is a much more direct depiction compared to Chart 1. And this will be true for any attribute that has an inverse relationship with footfalls / busy-ness. For example, it could be measuring “availability of vacant seats in train” (assuming train frequency doesn’t drop significantly during the day). So, for a person traveling with large luggage or an elderly for whom comfort is more important than actual travel time, this graph gives them a far more direct answer as to when are easier times for them to travel.
Chart 1, though, is absolutely the right answer if a decision has to be made for things that are in positive relation with footfall, such as how many ticket counters should be active at what time, what quantity of security personnel need to be deployed & when to better manage oncoming crowds or so on.
This is but one simple example from a specific area, but more generally, for two KPIs or metrics that are opposing in nature, a rotation by 180 degrees on one will almost always help to communicate the inverse message of the other.
Spin it by 90 degrees
Let’s look at this graph below:
Chart 3: Profit % by Products
This is great if we are looking say at a direct metric like Profitability for different products (A1, A2…A6 in the above) for a given period of time (the exact numbers are again hypothetical and not important). Very easily, it becomes clear which product is riding up north vis-à-vis which product is sliding down south. A1 and A6 seem to be driving lots of profit, while A5 may be worth revisiting for this hypothetical business!
But once again, I just can’t help myself rotating this chart. This time, however, I am going to rotate it by only 90 degrees.
Chart 4: Forecast Deviation across Products
The same Chart 3 would now look like lefthand side image in the graphic above, to which I am going to do some adjustments so that it becomes a better presentation as depicted in the righthand size image above.
For Chart 4, rather than representing it as Profit %, consider a new use case — there’s an inventory management system in place, which has a forecast to predict what should be the inventory level for each product. To ensure that the forecast is as close as reality, typically, operations staff would want to monitor the difference between actual and predicted levels on an ongoing basis. The larger the difference, the larger the need to fine-tune the model. And this is such an important function since whether it is under-stocking (Actual Demand greater than Forecast) or over-stocking (Actual Demand less than Forecast), both situations are either significant revenue lost or cost to organization, if the deviation is above a tolerable threshold.
In this case, if Chart 3 (un-rotated version) was used — a positive Y-axis would have indicated over-stock situations while negative Y-axis would have indicated under stock situations. See below:
Typically in a chart like that, cognitively we are so attuned to perceive a negative y-value as bad and positive y-value as good, so there’s a good chance many users may get misled attributing under-stocking to be a problem area but not over-stocking, when in reality, large deviations are most likely equally bad, regardless of direction. Precisely these are such situations when a rotated chart as in Chart 4 will come in handy. Users looking at this chart are more likely to not get biased and would tend to understand the interpretation of the bars for themselves in order to draw an appropriate conclusion.
So while Chart 3 was good for metrics where order of directions matter (i.e. one of a positive/negative axis value is actually an exclusively a good-bad situation), Chart 4 is better for metrics where neither direction is disproportionately important, case in point being bi-directional deviation from the center.
Long story short: what message you’re trying to send with your chart matters. Whenever you are creating a graph from scratch, you need to think about what that chart is going to convey, which type of chart should be selected, what would be the axes, layout, labels, etc. And if you are already following these fundamental best practices, the graphs you create will start speaking clearly to your audience. And while you are doing this, there’s no harm in giving your chart a spin — who knows, something that was confounding your audience may suddenly nail it 90 degrees later! Or you get to see something that you didn’t even think of when you started!
Saurabh Singhal is a Data Visualization & Analytics specialist who takes pride in delivering business value by generating data based insights. He is passionate about data, number crunching & everything around that. In another universe, “Data & Numbers” would have been his most sophisticated & closest ally. It would be a character whose alien musings may get unfathomable at times but would always be engrossing & enriching! | https://medium.com/nightingale/give-it-a-spin-40f2f7574627 | ['Saurabh Singhal'] | 2020-04-29 13:01:01.091000+00:00 | ['Storytelling', 'Insight Data Science', 'Analytics', 'Insights', 'Visualization'] |
Building a performant real-time web app with Ember Fastboot and Phoenix (Part 4) | Building a performant real-time web app with Ember Fastboot and Phoenix (Part 4)
Logging in to our API & ember-simple-auth
Congrats on getting this far. Give yourself a high five 🙌! We are now going to get authentication working. You’ll want to create a user account in your dev environment using your newly-working authentication stuff.
Begin by installing another addon (will require stopping and then restarting ember-cli)
ember install ember-simple-auth@simplabs/ember-simple-auth#fastboot
A little about this addon:
ember-simple-auth is a very lightweight library for authentication and authorization. Make sure to take a look at the latest instructions for use with Fastboot.
Session store
By default, ember-simple-auth uses localstorage to keep track of user credentials. This won’t work for us, because localstorage is not passed along with requests, and we need Fastboot to receive our credentials in order to render the app in an authenticated (or not authenticated) state — whatever is appropriate. The good news is that there’s something else that we can use: cookies!
We’ll customize ember-simple-auth’s session store by creating a new file ./app/session-stores/application.js
app/session-stores/application.js
You’ll need to stop ember-cli and restart it to pick up on this change.
Authenticator
Another one of the important objects involved with ember-simple-auth is the authenticator. The authenticator is responsible for the particulars of retrieving a credential from some credential provider (our API). We’ll implement ours by creating a new file ./app/authenticators/peepchat.js
app/authenticators/peepchat.js
You could make your authenticator do just about anything, but in this case we’re getting a lot of functionality for free by building around the OAuth2 password grant standard. We just need to customize the API endpoint a little, which as you can see is not difficult.
Authorizer
The authorizer concept in ember-simple-auth deals with taking the data obtained by an Authenticator, and using it in order to communicate with a secured resource (i.e., our API). We’ll use an Authorizer that comes with ember-simple-auth, and we won’t need to alter it at all.
Create a new file ./app/authorizers/oauth2.js
app/authorizers/oauth2.js
We’ll also want to integrate this authorizer with our ember-data adapter (./app/adapters/application.js), so that it passes credentials along automatically. Import the DataAdapterMixin, mix it into the adapter, and specify our authorizer via the authorizer attribute. Here’s what your adapter should look like now:
app/adapters/application.js
Thinking about Routes
An effective mental model to use for Ember’s routing layer is a hierarchy of routes. A given “path” of routes is active at any given time, and transitions in routing state constitute a pivot within the route tree. For example, let’s say we start with a URL /app
app.index route is active
and then click on a link that takes us to /auth/register, this will entail a pivot on the application route route.
auth.register route is active
In our case, this particular routing hierarchy is useful for another reason. We want to guard particular sections of our app from being accessed in various authentication states.
Here’s what we’re aiming for
The app route will check to see if users are logged in, and kick them out to auth.login if they’re not
route will check to see if users are logged in, and kick them out to if they’re not The auth route will check to see if users are logged OUT, and kick them out to app.index if they’re logged in
route will check to see if users are logged OUT, and kick them out to if they’re logged in The application route will handle our logout action, because we may have more than one section of the app that deals with authenticated users
route will handle our logout action, because we may have more than one section of the app that deals with authenticated users the login route will handle our doLogin action (it already does)
route will handle our doLogin action (it already does) the register route will handle our doRegister action (it already does)
route will handle our doRegister action (it already does) visiting the top-level domain where our app is hosted should result in a choice for the user to either register or start chatting
once the user logs in, they should find themselves at a placeholder screen, identifying the current user (using the /user/current API endpoint we built in part 2 of this series) and giving the user an opportunity to logout
Let’s start by generating a few of the missing route objects for ourselves. It’s important to understand that some of these routes already existed (i.e., the application route always exists), but were not explicitly defined within the source code for our app. In the even that Ember‘s resolver doesn’t find a specific javascript module representing an object like a route, the framework will use an instance of a basic object instead.
Head on over to your terminal and run
ember g route application
This should result in a few new files being created. First head over to ./app/routes/application.js and mixin ember-simple-auth’s ApplicationRouteMixin. This mixin already injects the session service (also an ember-simple-auth concept) onto the route, so we can quickly and easily implement the logout action as well.
app/routes/application.js
You’ll need to make a small update to this route’s unit test as well, since we have a dependency on the existence of the session service. Just add the session service to the “needs” array, to bring that object into the container when this route is tested.
tests/unit/routes/application-test.js
Next, let’s set up the basics for our “logged in” experience. Generate two routes using ember-cli
ember g route app
The app route should just check to see if the user is authenticated, and if they’re not, kick them out to the auth.login route (the login screen). Implement this in ./app/routes/app.js
app/routes/app.js
Let’s generate an auth route (this is one of those that already existed implicitly behind the scenes) with ember-cli
ember g route auth
and implement some similar logic as we did in app — just flipping the condition, and using app.index as the route to send users to in the event that they’re already authenticated.
app/routes/auth.js
Home
We want people who arrive to this app via the top-level to have a clue as to how to proceed, and in the ember world, this means the index route. Generate an explicit index route by running
ember g route index
and open up app/templates/index.hbs
app/templates/index.hbs
When you start up your app and visit http://localhost:4200 it should look something like this:
Visiting the root domain of our app
The logged in experience
Finally, let’s do something with the page users land on once they finish successfully logging in. Create a component called user-info
ember g component user-info
This is going to be a very simple component, that allows us to render information about the currently logged in user, in a very flexible way.
app/components/user-info.js
app/templates/components/user-info.hbs
There’s no property currentUser on the session service yet, but we’ll put it there in a moment.
Generate an index child route of the app route (remember, the app route is the top-most parent of our logged-in experience)
ember g route app/index
Open up ./app/templates/app/index.hbs and set it up to render a card component, welcoming the user and showing their email address
app/templates/app/index.hbs
Think of the “block” (inside part, between the open and close tag) of the user-info component as a callback function. Because we’ve passed an argument to the {{yield}} helper within this component’s template, the “block” as being called with this argument. This allows us to make private component data available to the outside world in controlled way — a very important part of good component composability patterns.
Configuring ember-simple-auth
Open up your environment configuration (./config/environment.js) and add a new section for ember-simple-auth in your ENV declaration
‘ember-simple-auth’: {
authenticationRoute: ‘auth.login’,
routeIfAlreadyAuthenticated: ‘app.index’,
routeAfterAuthentication: ‘app.index’
}
In completeness, it should now look like this
We’ve got two things left, and then we’re all set with ember-simple-auth
Logging in
Open up your ./app/routes/auth/login.js route so we can update the doLogin action. What we want to do is use the session service to obtain and store authentication credentials, based on the username and password that have been entered at the time the action is fired. Here’s what I ended up with:
app/routes/auth/login.js
What about session.currentUser?
In our logged-in experience, our user-info component depends on the existence of a currentUser property on the session service. We need to ensure that whenever the user gets to this app.index route — or probably more generally, the app route and any child route, this property is available for use.
A good place to put this would be the app route’s afterModel hook. The model hook would work as well, but I don’t necessarily want to make this data available in templates (and that’s really what the model hook is for!).
Note that we’ll be making an asynchronous request, but let’s avoid using jQuery due to it not being available in Fastboot for performance reasons. We’ll use a fetch polyfill instead. Go to your terminal and install the ember-network addon
ember install ember-network
Here’s my new app route (./app/routes/app.js)
app/routes/app.js
You’ll have to make one tiny little change to your API. Guardian (on the phoenix side) will need you to specify the “Realm” of your authentication token. In our case, this is “Bearer”. Make this small change in your ./web/router.ex and you should be good to go.
(API) web/router.ex
Now is a great time to open up a PR and merge your work into master once your tests pass. If you’d like to compare your code to mine, here’s my merge commit for all the code for Part 4, so far
And the commits for my small fixes, having to do with the “Bearer” token realm
Toast
Delicious global notifications
Material design calls messages that pop up from the bottom of the screen “toasts”
Although our login, registration and logout all work, we don’t yet do a great job giving feedback to users about success and/or failure. To fix this, we’ll make use of another great ember addon by Lauren Elizabeth Tan called ember-cli-flash, and we’ll wrap it with more Materialize style goodness. Install it using ember-cli, per usual
ember install ember-cli-flash
And while you’re at it, create two new components
x-toasts for the notification center
for the notification center x-toast for an individual notification
Put the x-toasts component in your app/templates/application.hbs
app/templates/application.hbs
We need to do one interesting thing in the x-toasts component: reverse the order of the array of messages. This is because, while ember-cli-flash assumes the newest message should be on the top of the queue, we want it to be on the bottom of the queue (since they come up from the bottom)
app/components/x-toasts.js
app/templates/components/x-toasts.hbs
The toast component is a little more interesting for two reasons
we want to prevent memory leaks, so we need to ensure that we clean up data associated with the flash message if the component is destroyed
We need to add a class to the component very shortly after it is inserted into the DOM, so we can use a CSS animation as the component spawns
The “exiting” property is already built in to ember-cli-flash, we just need to bind it to a class via classNameBindings.
app/components/x-toast.js
app/templates/components/x-toast.hbs
You’ll also want to add some styles to your ./app/styles/app.scss to make the messages look pretty
app/styles/app.scss
And customize some ember-cli-flash configuration options so that, by default:
the “exiting” property is added to each flash message 5000ms after it is spawned
after it is spawned 375ms later the flash message is removed from the DOM
To set this up, add the following to your ENV declaration in ./config/environment.js
flashMessageDefaults: {
timeout: 3000,
extendedTimeout: 375
}
The last thing we need to do is actually use these messages for our three user interactions: register, login and logout
Register
Using ember-cli-flash is quite easy. Basically you inject the flashMessages service onto an object, and then call a method on it in order to generate a message. Everything else is taken care of by the addon
For example, in our application route..
app/routes/application.js
Typically we’d want to handle error scenarios, but in this case there’s not much that can go wrong since we’re erasing a cookie that ember-simple-auth created for us.
Login
However, there are plenty of things that can go wrong with a login. Here are the outcomes I’d like to focus on and handle
Successful login
Attempted login, but was not successful
All other API errors
Basically, it would be good to have a specific error in the event that our API returns a 401 (Unauthorized) error, and a generic error for everything else. Here’s what I ended up with in my auth.login route
app/routes/auth/login.js
Notice that the check I’m making for 401 errors takes into account that the API may be returning more than one error message — I’m checking for any error that has a 401 status code in the array.
Register
Registration can go wrong as well, but we’ll just handle generic success and failure cases. Head over to your ./app/routes/auth/register.js, inject the flashMessages service, and use it in handlers for success and failure scenarios of the save() operation.
app/routes/auth/register.js
Great job! We’re done with notifications for now. Start your app up, and try some login and registration attempts. You should see messages popping up on the screen: red for errors, dark grey for others. | https://medium.com/peep-stack/building-a-performant-real-time-web-app-with-ember-fastboot-and-phoenix-part-4-93118e278c68 | ['Mike North'] | 2016-08-22 01:34:19.135000+00:00 | ['Elixir', 'JavaScript', 'Ember'] |
About Me — JesuOboh Precious Akhaine | My Profession, Goal, and Purpose.
I am a doctor in training, will soon round up medical school come next year and it has been my passion to contribute positively immensely to the world of medicine and surgery to see the world becoming a healthy place.
The pain and suffering in the world today, especially among persons without affordable quality healthcare, is highly alarming and deeply saddening considering the developing countries in Africa.
One of such areas amongst many I would like to see myself exploring and bringing a permanent solution is ‘Oncology’ — a branch of medical science concerned with tumours or cancers.
The rise of cancer and people dying from it must be brought to a halt. I am a researcher with in-depth hunger for knowledge. I am currently a member of the Collaborative Initiative Training Institute (CITI) for Research of West Africa, where I have put in a lot of work with some of my Professors in trying to discover a Lassa Fever Vaccine and to know if people in West Africa will be willing to accept the Vaccine if need be once discovered. And this has helped to build teamwork and enhance my people-communication skills.
I sincerely desire to bridge the gap in the health sector between the poor and rich. It hurts me a lot to see people come to the hospital with an emergency but yet may not afford treatment due to poor income or no insurance cover. This is driven by passion for emergency medicine & surgery with a collaborative view of balancing the equation such that everyone as long as human will have equal opportunity to be treated fairly.
During the course of the COVID-19 lockdown, I was privileged to take part in online training for the emergency management of the pandemic. It was indeed exciting to know that this pandemic and its effect can easily be placed under control.
One most important aspect of life I consider of great importance is motivating and inspiring upcoming young minds to believe they can aspire to become whatever they want to be that will benefit the world at large. This has been a great pleasure when seeing people achieving even beyond their dreams for — “an act of kindness, support and love will always spark the heart of another.”
Conclusion
I’ll conclude by saying "my name is JesuOboh Precious Akhaine and I am opened to opportunities and corrections for I am still a Work in progress with a sincere desire to heal my world."
Thanks for reading! (Smiles). | https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-jesuoboh-precious-akhaine-438c4e3282c2 | ['Akhaine Jesuoboh Precious'] | 2021-03-13 21:27:50.058000+00:00 | ['Life', 'About Me', 'Biography', 'Inspirational', 'Personal Development'] |
ALL-IN-ONE MARKETING AND SALES CRM — Engagebay.com | An affordable HubSpot alternate for small and medium businesses.
Market your efficient the world’s best organizations
With our far-reaching set of Marketing instruments, including Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Email Template Builder, Landing Page Builder, Lead Generation devices, Social Suite and more, your showcasing group can take things to the following level.
POPULAR MARKETING FEATURES
Email Marketing Marketing Automation Lead Generation tools Landing Pages
Construct Lasting Customer Relationships
Along with a full stack of software for marketing, sales, and customer service, EngageBay also offers a completely free CRM at its core. While they’re powerful when used individually, they are at their best when used together.
POPULAR FEATURES
Contact ManagementDeal PipelineTasksAppointment SchedulingLive Chat
Sell like the masters
With our comprehensive arrangement of Sales apparatuses, for example, Contact Management, Email Tracking, Telephony, Appointment Scheduling, Project Management, Gamification and more, watch your business group close those arrangements and develop income.
POPULAR SALES AUTOMATION FEATURES
TelephonyMultiple Deal PipelinesSales AutomationEmail Sequences
Give amazing help to your clients
With our consistent pile of Service instruments, for example, Ticketing, Helpdesk, Customer Feedback Forms, Knowledge Base, Canned Responses and the sky is the limit from there, your help group would now be able to interface better and resolve quicker, to hold your clients for a lifetime.
POPULAR TICKETING FEATURES
Multiple Ticketing GroupsTicket ViewsMacrosHelp Desk Automation
Integrate with your favorite tools
EngageBay connects to the instruments you utilize each day. Because of our incorporation with Zapier, moving data between applications is as basic as point and snap.
Boundless clients free until the end of time
With great programming sponsored by a devoted help group, make all aspects of your showcasing, deals and helpdesk increasingly powerful. | https://medium.com/@harpreetsingh_42437/all-in-one-marketing-and-sales-crm-engagebay-com-c452edbe594a | ['Harpreet Singh'] | 2020-02-20 12:49:18.355000+00:00 | ['Livechat', 'Emailmarketing', 'CRM'] |
Beating the Odds | Photo by Riho Kroll on Unsplash
There are days where I feel crappy.
Things don’t go right. People annoy me. I get red lights when I’m trying to get somewhere in a hurry.
But.
There are other days where I feel so dang grateful.
Like today.
What the heck? How did I get so lucky?
I scored big time with my wife and three kids. That’s beyond lucky. But even on the smaller things I hit the jackpot.
I’m alive. I was born. They say the odds of each of us being born are 400 Trillion to one. It’s mind boggling that any of us are here.
Someone would be here, obviously.
But us. Me. You.
400 Trillion to one that You got to be here. Remember that whenever you feel unlucky…
Four. With 14 zeros behind it. To 1.
Crazy.
I have family and friends. Some I’ve known for decades. Some I’ve known only a short time. Some I communicate with regularly. And some I communicate with sporadically after long stretches of time.
And guess what? All those people? 400 trillion to 1 that they would be who they are, too.
Those are some mighty odds flying around us every day.
Congratulations. You’re luckier than you think! | https://medium.com/@peter_77246/beating-the-odds-baf79131c355 | ['Peter Gruner'] | 2021-12-17 03:41:38.547000+00:00 | ['Winning', 'Gambling', 'Luck', 'Lottery', 'Fear Of Shipping'] |
Victoria | Victoria, I’d love to call you my friend, but the sun simply looks odd today. Who are you? You tend to ask yourself, without much clue on the path to an answer.
Vicky, they call you, sometimes Vic. And as I see you, I know it’s been one of those days for you. Utterly lonely. No one to talk to, no one to see. Victoria, today you’ve managed to kill tons of time; most of it, to be precise. And you’re no child anymore, you are very well aware of the fact that you, Victoria, are lonely and that you don’t like it.
Today you didn’t leave your house. Not for work, and for leisure. You’re afraid for, who would you go out with, anyways? Solitude is perhaps a bit more bearable when you know you’re the only one aware of it. Not easy to be lonely, but to be perceived as such? Not ever.
You wrote a letter to a guy you like, Vic, but you will never send it. “Perhaps a telegram”, you think, knowing you will never actually write it. You know his eyes pretty well at this point, it must be admitted, and you’ve refined your description of it by now. Words deeply thought and so felt, but so unseen.
You cry alone Victoria, and live by commissions; those commissions other people pay up by placing responsibilities onto you and expecting your existence. Your mom, your brother, your sister, not a single reason should be for them to think of you, you think and hold your death to no exception. The rope is under the bed, Thomas needs your reports every Wednesday at three, after all.
One thing that makes this a bit more complex, Vic, is that it has always been like this. There are moments in which the conversational logistics of some mundane interactions compel you into laughing with someone fooling you to think they might be your friends. Still, deep down, Vic, you know none of them would kick a stone for the sake of you. Not your peers, not the postman, not your mother.
On these kinds of days, you often like to indulge in a glass of wine. Your new position allows you these kinds of privileges. It used to be low-quality rum, but despite the wine getting palpably more expensive, no difference is made to the roughness of swallowing a liquor alone on your bathroom floor.
You think a lot, and you do so over the same things often. You become fixated and neurotic on the commonplace. This week it was about this boy. You wanted to talk to him, yeah. You know him from your commute, which has given you plenty of opportunities to talk to him, yet this has only translated to multiple opportunities to uncomfortably wonder about talking to him and stressing over the idea of him and, maybe, both of you. No need to talk to him for you, maybe. You don’t know and you don’t need to, specially or he ought not to be the last one, not by a long shot.
You think of going quietly, but you have realized that living is even more silent in your case. | https://medium.com/all-the-lonely-people/victoria-b90e04cab556 | ['Felipe Acosta'] | 2019-09-08 05:02:57.452000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Life', 'Sadness', 'Love', 'Loneliness'] |
Fountain House Community | 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/psychwardgreetingcards/fountain-house-3866d299cb0 | [] | 2021-03-20 20:01:40.306000+00:00 | ['Mental Illness', 'Mental Health Awareness', 'Mental Illness Awareness', 'Mental Health', 'Peer To Peer'] |
The Metric All Podcasters Should Be Talking About | Time and attention are the most scarce and valued resources for anyone making content.
If you’re looking for a metric to determine if your podcast is successful, that metric should be able to answer this question: do people voluntarily spend their time and attention on my show? And if so, how much?
Downloads (in isolation) are not the best way to answer that question.
And yet, most of the conversation about measuring success in podcasting is about the size of the audience. Lots of downloads = success. Not so many downloads = not so much success.
The Problem With Downloads
Downloads, though, are not always the most strategic measure of success.
For example, there are great shows built specifically for small, niche audiences, so they won’t have large download numbers. For those shows, however, a small number of the exact right people who love your show and spend lots of time listening is a huge success. Downloads are not the best way to measure this success.
Another example. You might have an AMAZING show, but you have an ineffective marketing plan and no one knows that your amazing show exists. In this case, do download counts measure the full picture of success for this show? No. They primarily highlight a marketing challenge.
So how else can we think about success in these scenarios?
Enter… Average Consumption
Since Apple Podcasts debuted the Average Consumption metric in their Analytics suite in December of 2017, podcasters have been able to measure how much time and attention listeners are giving to their podcasts. (Spotify and Stitcher have had this functionality for a while, too. Spotify calls it Episode Performance and Stitcher calls it Average Completion Rate.)
Average Consumption percentages are an amazing way to measure the quality of content. And yet it is rare to hear podcasters, or the podcast industry, touting Average Consumption as a marker of success.
I’d like to make a case for two reasons why podcasters should be talking about Average Consumption a lot more often and a lot more loudly. The first is for measuring editorial quality and audience engagement. The second is to champion the unique strengths of audio compared to other media.
THE Metric For Editorial Quality & Engagement
Whether you’re a podcast creator or an advertiser, Average Consumption is an amazing metric for determining whether an individual episode is valued by listeners.
I’m going to use examples from shows that we produce with our clients, simply because we have access to this data and have permission to share it. We also want to get the industry more comfortable sharing Average Consumption, so we’re going to show you ours first :-)
This is the Printers episode of Dell Technologies’ Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson podcast. It’s got an insanely great Average Consumption of 98% and an average listen per device of 26 minutes. This is about as close as it gets to editorial perfection! | https://blog.pacific-content.com/the-metric-all-podcasters-should-be-talking-about-3e103c87155f | ['Steve Pratt'] | 2021-05-03 14:32:38.753000+00:00 | ['Metrics', 'Podcast', 'Audio', 'Podcasting'] |
The Future of Digital Marketing | What lies at the cutting edge of digital marketing?
Where is it now & where is it headed?
That’s a burning topic that most marketers wonder about.
So without any further ado, let’s dive in.
1. Marketing AI & Machine learning tools:
A whole army of complex AI & machine learning tools is being built.
Recently a college student used GPT-3 to write a blog and ended up at the top of Hacker News.[source]
Generic content writing & content curation will be replaced by Smart AI & machine learning tools. Tools like articleforge are already rocking the market.
Non-original content writers & content curators may see a huge slump in demand.
2. Marketing Automation:
All repeatable processes in marketing will be automated by efficient tools.
All tasks in marketing that have some sort of pattern or predictability will be automated.
Imagine an SEO tool that scans your entire website, gives you intelligent recommendations, identifies internal linking opportunities & content clusters, suggests semantic words to include in the content & then starts to A/B test different meta titles to improve the CTR, all of that with just one single click! Such tools are already being developed & many are already available to the masses.
3. Use of Data Science & Analytics:
We all know it, data is the new oil. Future marketers will collect data from each & every part of their funnel & use it to make smarter decisions, understand more about the target audience, build better products, leverage better channels, reach more people, improve conversion rate & enhance targeting. While collecting a lot of data is important, analyzing that data & extracting critical insights carries much more significance. Skills & subjects like data science, business analytics, data mining, web-scraping & big data will play a crucial role.
Remember, the best of the best marketers have a T-shaped skill-set.
4. Growth Engineering:
Growth engineering is an amalgamation of tech & creative marketing.
It requires product skills, tech skills & marketing skills. (with a pinch of creativity & imagination)
Gone are the days of one-time marketing funnels, it’s the flywheels that drive real growth.
In order to retain users & build habit-forming sticky products, one must understand the fundamentals of product management & product innovation.
Creative viral marketing & growth hacking plays a vital role in optimizing the growth engine & reducing acquisition costs.
Tech skills enable the marketer to automate the processes that may take weeks or even months of effort if done manually. I recommend the growth hacking book 2 for learning more about growth hacking & growth engineering.
Notice that all 4 points above have at least some involvement of tech.
Smart tech & tools will revolutionize the marketing world forever.
Are we there yet?
Not quite, but we’ll be there in the coming 2–3 years.
Innovation of 3 years in tech space is the same as innovation of 30 years in other industries.
What can you do about it?
1) Up-Skill:
Embrace new skills & develop a T-shaped skill-set. A vast amount of cross-domain knowledge & experience helps you see the bigger picture, work more efficiently, generate better ideas, plan more effectively, extract better insights & take much better strategic decisions.
2) Leverage:
Tools & technology can be a great leverage.
Imagine a human being fighting a bionic cyborg. Can that human beat that cyborg?
It’s not possible without leverage.
Humans can think better, but code can execute & scale better.
Code can get 100x done in less time & that too without any inconsistency, failure, fatigue, or mistakes. Leveraging smart tools is one of the smartest things one can do to improve output, both qualitatively & quantitatively. BrowseBetter is one such free tool that can improve your throughput & work efficiency up to 3 times. It’s a personal productivity super tool that transforms your web browsing experience into so much more. | https://medium.com/@dhanur2/the-future-of-digital-marketing-59a118e01b09 | ['Dhanur Sehgal'] | 2020-12-08 07:53:16.843000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Innovation', 'Marketing', 'Productivity', 'Growth Hacking'] |
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