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Behind the animations at Hack the North | Written by: Kelvin Zhang
At Hack the North, animations are a fundamental part of our brand and the first thing people see when they land on our site. A nice animation can make your brand stand out from the crowd and leave a lasting impression. As such, we put a lot of thought into animating and optimizing our assets! In this blog post, we’re going to dive a bit deeper into how we work with animations at Hack the North and give you ideas on how you can incorporate them into your site to give it that extra ✨ sparkle ✨
Our landing page animations from 2018–2021
Table of Contents
Types of Animation Formats
Over the years, many animation formats have been released, each with its pros and cons. We spent a lot of time testing out different formats and wanted to share our findings to help you decide on what you should use for your use case.
On our landing page, we had the following requirements:
Complexity: many of our animations are very complicated (like rotating helicopter blades) and would be near impossible to make using CSS
many of our animations are very complicated (like rotating helicopter blades) and would be near impossible to make using CSS Transparency : we need to support transparency since, in most cases, we want to be able to overlay our assets on top of a non-solid background
: we need to support transparency since, in most cases, we want to be able to overlay our assets on top of a non-solid background Small file size: we want our assets to load as fast as possible
we want our assets to load as fast as possible Vectorized: our animated assets need to scale to every screen size
our animated assets need to scale to every screen size Ease of handoff: our frontend team shouldn’t need to animate everything manually; not only is it time-consuming, but we want to shift that burden to the design team in case changes need to be made
With these in mind, let’s take a look at what options we have:
GIF
GIFs are the most common type of animation on the web — and for good reason. They can animate almost anything, have transparency, and can support 60 FPS playback. That being said, they don’t quite meet our needs because:
transparency significantly increases the file size of a GIF stretching GIFs to accommodate all screen sizes is a problem (raster format) GIFs only support 1-bit transparency, which means that a pixel is either transparent or not. This can lead to jagged edges, like here
A fun fact is that GIFs weren’t actually intended for animation! It initially started as a standard image format and animation was later tacked on. Since it’s a series of frames, it’s not very efficient with file size since inter-frame compression isn’t possible. This means that the GIF needs to store all the information for each frame, even if the contents between the two frames are very similar.
Video
Videos are another form of animation that can be used for longer animations, with more control over quality (and sound)! Videos do support inter-frame compression and, in many cases, are actually smaller than GIFs!
Comparing .gif and .mp4 sizes for the same animation. MP4s are 91% smaller!
That being said, videos are harder to render on the frontend side of things. They also don’t support transparency.
APNG
APNGs are a relatively new file format that allows you to animate PNGs. This allows for higher quality images than GIFs due to 24-bit colour and 8-bit transparency. However, due to being very similar to GIF, this format shares the same pitfalls: our initial 3-second animation would be 17.5 MB, which is way too large.
CSS Animations
Instead of exporting each frame in full, what if we just had a bunch of images and some code telling us precisely when and how to move each image around?
CSS animations accomplish this, and we use a fair bit of them on our sites. That being said, it’s hard to build complex animations using CSS since you’re restricted to CSS properties, and it’s hard to orchestrate multiple animations at once.
This brings us to…
SVG + JSON
Instead of CSS, we can use JSON to describe how we want to animate our assets. The benefit here is that you can export .json directly from After Effects! This means that, as a frontend developer, you no longer need to build out the animation yourself by guessing and checking. Your design team will also love you for this since they can make the changes on their end without needing to ping you. We can use Lottie to render JSON animations on the front end.
This format has the benefit of transparency, vector scalability, and small file sizes! Just what we were looking for 😄
Exporting the Animation
Now let’s using SVG and JSON to try and render a simple loading animation, which we used on our 2020 site:
If you want to follow along, you can download the After Effects File here.
In After Effects, you can use the Bodymovin plugin to export your timeline to a JSON file. After installing Bodymovin, this can be done through Window > Extensions > Bodymovin.
This should give you the following json file: data.json
Rendering the Animation
Using the json file from above, we can render it in React using the react-lottie-player library. If you’re not using React, you can check out these alternative libraries:
CodeSandbox Link
It’s as simple as that! We just rendered a buttery-smooth animation on your site with < 20 lines of code! If you play around with resizing the window, you’ll notice that it scales seamlessly to fit any viewport. Not only that, but the final size is only 63 kB! Compare this to a GIF with transparency, which would be 450 kB. That’s 86% smaller! 🔥
Optimizations
Canvas Rendering
If you look inside the DOM for our current animation, you’ll see something like this:
With every frame, the DOM updates the SVG properties. Since this is a simple SVG, it won’t cause any issues, but with more complex animations, many updates to the DOM every few milliseconds can be very resource-intensive. An alternative that you can use is to render to a <canvas> element instead.
This can be done by switching our renderer over to canvas, which will now stay constant as our animation runs!
Lazy-Loading Animations
Lazy-loading is the idea of having a temporary placeholder when your animation is loading so that when users land on your page for the first time, they don’t have to wait a couple of seconds to see the asset. With json files, our animations shouldn’t be too large, but if you do have an animation larger than a few hundred KB, it might be worth exploring lazy-loading in your animations. For this, you’ll take a static .svg or .png image to load in while the animation JSON is loading.
We can then dynamically render the placeholder or animation depending on whether the JSON is loaded or not:
CodeSandbox Link
dotLottie
dotLottie is a new format introduced by LottieFiles, the largest repository of Lottie files on the web. This new format ends with .lottie instead of .json and has the added benefit of being able to package multiple animations into a single file. It also uses an alternate compression method that makes your animation files considerably smaller! | https://medium.com/@hackthenorth/behind-the-animations-at-hack-the-north-bf9d41e23bd3 | ['Hack The North'] | 2021-08-07 20:51:18.969000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Website Development', 'Animation', 'Website Design', 'Front End Development'] |
The Youth Futsal Club model: a way forward for youth soccer in America | American soccer is and always has been a disappointment. Let’s deal right away with the male chauvinism of this statement. How can that be true, given the US women’s national team has won the World Cup more than any other nation? That’s an achievement deserving of the highest praise, especially given the well-known deficiencies of soccer training in this country. Nonetheless, there have only been 9 women’s World Cups, compared to 21 for men, and there is a general consensus that as the international competition catches up, the women’s record is likely to resemble the men’s. The men’s team has qualified for only half of these and has never won.
But more telling than even our international rankings, the American style of soccer is just plain ugly. Soccer is called “the beautiful game” because real soccer is composed of an endless series of graceful, unimaginable displays of ball manipulation, so subtle they go unnoticed by the untrained eye. The comparison to American basketball is apt, if only more elusive in soccer because your average player doesn’t look like a super-athlete. Sure, Michael Jordan or Lebron James can defy gravity, but look at those guys! Seeing the beauty of Pele, Maradonna, the first and second Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Iniesta, or Messi move out of impossible positions and through a wall of defenders requires an insider’s eye. You can watch an entire match of the US national team and never see anything close. Some have compared America’s professional league, the MLS, to third- or fourth-tier leagues in Europe. That’s generous. That’s not to say you can’t win games playing ugly soccer. The US has pulled off some stunning upsets, but even then, they don’t look good doing it, and we know it won’t continue.
Skills are everything
The aim of what we’re calling a community futsal club is to train kids to play the beautiful game, locally and affordably. Yes, we certainly think this will lead to winning futbol, but it starts with a singular focus on style, and the foundation of style is technique — that is skills-training. You can count on one hand the number of highly skilled players the US has produced. And we’ve never produced a player like those mentioned above. Why not? The problem starts with our failings at the youth-development level. Futsal is the version of soccer played indoors on a small hard court with a smaller, heavier ball. And it holds the greatest promise for addressing the American problem because it is the proven program for developing individual skills.
A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled detailing what is wrong with our youth systems. Most of it is right. I know this as a casual player who started playing in urban parks with my older brother from a young age and progressed into competitive travel programs and as a parent of two (soon to be three!) aspiring players. Too much competition at early ages burns out many kids; pay-to-play winnows down the talent pool, a system whereby parents pay up to thousands of dollars per year for training kids as young as 8-year-olds; long-distance travel strains family resources, both financial and emotional; and though it’s less frequently mentioned, the potential of lawsuits leads to entirely counter-productive training rules, such as precluding mixed-age games even during practices and coaches not being allowed to scrimmage with the young players (this is an actual AYSO rule). But all of this describes what’s wrong with our current system, not how to build one that works.
Just Let Them Play
There’s been an alternative to the conventional, overly formal, anxiety-provoking, and competitive approach. Whereas travel and academy programs are built on scheduled bi-weekly practices, strong team identities buttressed by every-weekend league games and intense tournament schedules with promises of bright futures (leading to dreams that will end up broken), another voice has been around for a long time and has more recently started to gain traction. This is the “game-is-the-teacher” approach. This seemingly simple idea actually has profound complexities. Its strength is the countless examples of top players learning to play by, well, just playing.
I trained 3–4 hours a week at Ajax when I was little but played 3–4 hours every day on the street. So where do you think I learnt football?
— Johann Cruyff
The game-as-teacher approach suggests that the best way to train kids is to simply let them play. At its highest level, futbol happens when the eleven players from one side “pinball” the ball back-and-forth, moving freely down the field, finding or creating spaces among the defending team in an almost spontaneous flow. Futbol, unlike basketball, its closest American counterpart, doesn’t have a series of elaborate set-plays. Tactics in professional futbol are comparatively simple. The game is much looser than other sports, the action less practiced. Plays emerge in real time as the players find openings, move quickly, receive the ball, and then create more openings. What is easily missed in this seemingly unscripted development of a play is the rarest of skills required of every single player on the field. A slightly botched trap, or off-speed pass, a run made just too soon or too late and the entire remarkable grace of the assault collapses. Watch 5 minutes of any EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga or Ligue 1 game and compare it to an MLS game and you’ll recognize this instantly.
For those who lament the negative effects of too much coaching and structure for young kids, just letting them play has the lure of a panacea. The problem with this approach, like all cultural translations, is the ease with which it can be distorted. The game can be a teacher only when the players are relatively highly skilled. In most instances in youth development soccer in the US, we insist on so-called balanced play, and we worry about older kids hurting younger kids, so we end up with allowing a bunch of unskilled 6-, 7-, or 8 -year-olds whacking and chasing the ball around the pitch. You can do this until the chickens come home, and those kids won’t learn to play futbol. The game can teach only when almost all the players on the field trap, move, and pass consistently — i.e., when they are all skilled. Until then, no learning takes place by just playing any more than an instrument can be learned without prior technical instruction.
Casual play is the way
Footskills, like any technical skills, develop through repetition only. There’s no shortcut. And maybe because futbol requires control with a part of the body that gets so little practice in everyday life, footskills might require even more repetitive training than the technical prowess required in other sports. In short, really developing skills, to the level needed to play competitive soccer, beautiful soccer, requires lots and lots of solo practice. In a typical 11v11 game each player is estimated to touch the ball about 20 times, for just seconds each time. In even well structured team practices it isn’t much better. A far more efficient way for kids to develop footskills is to create more casual opportunities for play.
The internationally renowned youth coach, Tom Byer, has developed an entire program focused on at-home training. There are several compelling reasons to explore this. First, kids can play any time — in fact, they can play all the time. Second, a great way to develop ball manipulation with all parts of the foot is to move a ball slowly around the living room furniture. Grabbing a sibling to play keep-away in a tight hallway is essentially as good as it gets. The home, Byer finds, is also ideal because it is a safe space. There kids can explore and be creative without the ridicule they often experience when botching a play on their team.
I don’t believe skill was, or ever will be, the result of coaches. It is a result of a love affair between the child and the ball.
— Roy Maurice Keane (named by Pele to the list of 100 greatest living players)
The next step in skills development can be supported in the move toward small-sided games. Rather than insisting kids play 11-a-side professional style soccer on a regulation-sized pitch, where they barely touch the ball, having them play 5-a-side on a tight pitch forces more touches and more quick decision-making. At Rondout Community Futsal Club (RCFC), based in High Falls, NY, we’ve taken this a step further by switching to futsal for training. Developed in the 1930s in Uruguay to keep playing going year-round, futsal is very much like 5-a-side indoor soccer, except the “field” is a hard court, and the ball is smaller and heavier. The weight of the ball means you need to use more foot and leg strength to maneuver it effectively and thereby build these critical muscles. The hard court makes the ball move very fast, thereby demanding quicker decision-making and quicker bodily movements to shake your defender. Brazilians, like Pele, started playing futsal in the 1940s. Many believe it is why they are known for their extraordinary number of next-level technical players. When British soccer player, Simon Clifford, discovered futsal, he was sure he needed to bring it home. He now has a dozen futsal schools around the world, proving the game can be imported to different cultural settings.
When kids training in futsal move onto a soccer pitch and use a bigger, lighter ball, their advantage is overwhelming. They’re already used to making fast decisions and now they have far more time and space to think, to see the openings. We’re going all-in on futsal.
The Rondout Valley, NY
This place has a lot going for it to try out this experiment. Though a small community it is rich in soccer tradition. Our town recreation program, Rondout Soccer Club, has been running strong as a fully volunteer organization for over 50 years. Affiliated since 1994 with the largest American youth soccer organization, AYSO, RSC has programs for children as young as 3 and draws nearly 200 kids into soccer programming for three seasons of play every year. We have a local travel program, Ulster Futbol Club, offering more competitive opportunities for local kids without having to leave the area and at a comparatively modest cost. UFC currently offers two competitive, co-ed teams and runs an incredible two-week soccer summer camp at the Soyuzivka Ukrainian Heritage Center in Kerhonkson, NY. Slightly older teens can play for the Rondout Rovers, a team that has grown up together with the same coach, a local resident and regular player himself. One doesn’t have to travel far to find larger clubs, such as the Kingston Area Soccer League, where close to 800 local kids can progress from recreation to travel programs without leaving the club. And there are more examples in neighboring towns like Saugerties, New Paltz, and Ellenville. Marbletown also boasts a phenomenal adult pickup league, with close to 30 men and women playing twice a week, all year round. Highly skilled young players meet seasoned veterans of the game for spirited matchups with players switching sides week-to-week and a welcoming community spirit. As soon as the children of these players reach the age and skill-level to play (some as young as 10), they are welcomed into the games.
But perhaps most compelling is the advent of the newest addition to the area, our very own semi-professional men’s team, the Kingston Stockade, launched in 2016. Stockade FC has made it possible to glimpse instances of the beautiful game in our own backyard. Club chairman, Dennis Crowley and technical director, Dan Hoffay, see Stockade as a vehicle for inspiring young athletes and building a community of support for the highest-level soccer. Doubt it? Search for Stockade online and you’ll find numerous blog posts and longer pieces they’ve authored, laying out their ambitions for soccer in the Hudson Valley. Their club offers affordable ticket prices ($40 for the season) and free clinics for kids throughout the year. There may have never been a better time to be a young, aspiring player in our area.
Supporting Youth Soccer
So, how do we make it possible for more young people to take advantage of all these opportunities? And how do we build a system of training that produces talent? Paying exorbitant prices for training by premier coaches is not the way. And let’s be clear, I’m not just talking about academy programs. Charging $300 for a two-week clinic doesn’t sound like a lot to some, but it effectively bars the opportunity for most. Take it from me, as someone who’s invested the time and resources in the best of these they aren’t worth it.
Soccer is a game of the people. Don’t take that as a trite statement masking populist pride. Soccer talent flourishes only when the masses are playing. A player is only as good as her competition. Remember what we said earlier about developing skills? It won’t happen from a single training session, no matter the coach, or even from all the sessions you can afford. Skills that can lead to playing at the professional level — and yes, your child can get there — come from playing the game more than any scheduled series of practices can possibly provide. They come from playing day-in and day-out, for hours on end. Most children don’t have this kind of dedication for any program. But they will absolutely put in the needed time, when they experience what they’re doing as playing, with a small “p.” If you had to pay for this no one could ever afford it.
To challenge the cost of athletic training programs for kids is not the same as saying it should all be free. There is a place for professional training, and professional coaches need to be compensated. Where does this money come from? Our youth futsal club, RCFC, calls it the “adults-pay-so-kids-can-play” model. Very simply, the adults in the community who love soccer, need to realize their responsibility in solving this crisis. First, they need to start playing with the kids. It’s just that simple. Not in clubs that limit how they play, but in casual ways, where the young players can see real skills firsthand. They’ll watch, then they’ll mimic, and soon they’ll be blowing by you with the moves they picked up and made better because they’re younger, faster and hungrier. And because their creativity is at its peak because they are “just playing” while yours resembles a forlorn memory. You don’t need to be a trained coach to impart this invaluable lesson to the next generation. And second, the adults who love the game need to contribute financially. Don’t think of it so much as paying for other people’s kids to play; rather, think of it as paying to support the game you love. If you want to see great soccer in your community, if you want to see the beautiful game live in your backyard, it’s time to stop pointing out what’s wrong with soccer training and take these simple and fun steps to fix it. | https://medium.com/@jedbtuck/the-youth-futsal-club-model-a-way-forward-for-youth-soccer-in-america-a6408f31ed4a | ['Jed Tucker'] | 2020-12-20 00:46:07.982000+00:00 | ['Youth Sports', 'Futsal', 'Marbletown', 'Soccer', 'America'] |
Explore and Visualize a Dataset with Python | Let’s start exploring:
Overall conversion rate development:
Conversion rate development over time
It certainly seems like things went downhill in early 2017. After checking with the chief sales officer, it turns out that a competitor entered the market around that time. That’s good to know, but nothing we can do here now.
We use an underscore _ as a temporary variable. I would typically do that for disposable variables that I am not going to use again later on. We used pd.DateTimeIndex on order_leads.Date and set the result as the index, this allows us to use pd.Grouped(freq='D') to group our data by day. Alternatively, you could change frequency to W, M, Q or Y (for week, month, quarter, or year) We calculate the mean of “Converted” for every day, which is going to give us the conversion rate for orders on that day. We used .rolling(60) with .mean() to get the 60 days rolling average. We then format the yticklables such that they show a percentage sign.
Conversion rate across sales reps:
It looks like there is quite some variability across sales reps. Let’s investigate this a little bit more.
Not much new here in terms of functionalities being used. But note how we use sns.distplot to plot the data to the axis.
If we recall the sales_team data, we remember that not all sales reps have the same number of accounts, this could certainly have an impact! Let’s check.
Distributions of conversion rates by number of assigned accounts
We can see that the conversion rate numbers seem to be decreasing inversely proportional to the number of accounts assigned to a sales rep. Those decreasing conversion rates make sense. After all, the more accounts a rep has, the less time he can spend on each one.
Here we first create a helper function that will map the vertical line into each subplot and annotate the line with the mean and standard deviation of the data. We then set some seaborn plotting defaults, like larger font_scale and whitegrid as style.
Effect of meals:
sample meals data
It looks like we’ve got a date and time for the meals, let’s take a quick look at the time distribution:
out:
07:00:00 5536
08:00:00 5613
09:00:00 5473
12:00:00 5614
13:00:00 5412
14:00:00 5633
20:00:00 5528
21:00:00 5534
22:00:00 5647
It looks like we can summarize those:
Note how we are using pd.cut here to assign categories to our numeric data, which makes sense because after all, it probably does not matter if a breakfast starts at 8 o’clock or 9 o’clock.
Additionally, note how we use .dt.hour, we can only do this because we converted invoices['Date of Meal'] to datetime before. .dt is a so-called accessor, there are three of those cat, str, dt . If your data has the correct type, you can use those accessors and their methods for straightforward manipulation (computationally efficient and concise).
invoices['Participants'] , unfortunately, is a string we have to convert that first into legitimate JSON so that we can extract the number of participants.
Now let’s combine the data. To do this, we first left-join all invoices by Company Id on order_leads. Merging the data, however, leads to all meals joined to all orders. Also ancient meals to more recent orders. To mitigate that we calculate the time difference between meal and order and only consider meals that were five days around the order.
There are still some orders that have multiple meals assigned to them. This can happen when there were two orders around the same time and also two meals. Then both meals would get assigned to both order leads. To remove those duplicates, we only keep the meal closest to that order.
part of the combined data frame
I created a plot bar function that already includes some styling. The plotting via the function makes visual inspection much faster. We are going to use it in a second.
Impact of type of meal:
Wow! That is quite a significant difference in conversion rates between orders that had a meal associated with them and the ones without meals. It looks like lunch has a slightly lower conversion rate than dinner or breakfast, though.
Impact of timing (i.e., did meal happen before or after the order lead):
A negative number for 'Days of meal before order' means that the meal took place after the order lead came in. We can see that there seems to be a positive effect on conversion rate if the meal happens before the order lead comes in. It looks like the prior knowledge of the order is giving our sales reps an advantage here.
Combining it all:
We’ll use a heatmap to visualize multiple dimensions of the data at the same time now. For this lets first create a helper function.
Then we apply some final data wrangling to additionally consider meal price in relation to order value and bucket our lead times into Before Order, Around Order, After Order instead of days from negative four to positive four because that would be somewhat busy to interpret.
Running the following snippet will then produce a multi-dimensional heatmap.
Heatmap to visualize four dimensions in one graphic
The heatmap is certainly pretty, although a little hard to read at first. So let’s go over it. The chart summarizes the effect of 4 different dimensions:
Timing of the meal: After Order, Around Order, Before Order (outer rows)
Type of meal: breakfast, dinner, lunch (outer columns)
Meal Price / Order Values: Least Expensive, Less Expensive, Proportional, More Expensive, Most Expensive (inner rows)
Number Participants: 1,2,3,4,5 (inner columns)
It certainly seems like the colors are darker/higher towards the bottom part of the chart, which indicates that | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-explore-and-visualize-a-dataset-with-python-7da5024900ef | ['Fabian Bosler'] | 2019-08-31 18:42:42.145000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Analytics', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization', 'Python'] |
Masks in ‘merica | It takes under two hours for us to drive north to my high school campus. There are some years we don’t visit at all, but since the onset of the pandemic, my kids and I have journeyed there a handful of times. I confiscate their phones for the car ride (gasp!) because my mom shared how much she cherished taking me to and from Culver — having my undivided attention and an uninterrupted opportunity to converse. It’s so true, especially now. That, alone, is reason enough to make the trip.
During our most recent day spent wandering around the grounds, I took a lingering moment to read and commit to memory the eight values and virtues written in circular form on the ground of Leadership Plaza, just inside Logansport Gate: truth, wisdom, duty, courage, moderation, honor, service, and justice. As I have watched our country and my Facebook feed become more divisive, my anxiety has heightened and my insomnia has become a more regular companion. So, I have whirled these concepts around in my head in an attempt to center myself.
TRUTH. As of today, there are more than 1.26M confirmed cases of CoVID-19 in the United States. Our nation alone has lost more than 75,000 souls to this virus. We are not all on the front lines, in hospital emergency rooms and working with patients in intensive care, but those who are plea for the rest of us to accept their accounts as truth. They are eyewitnesses, and theirs is potent testimony. They are not touting hypotheses or theories; they are sharing objective and verifiable observations.
TRUTH encourages WISDOM, the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight. What is the present situation? We correctly rely on the aforementioned truth to describe it objectively and completely. The novel coronavirus continues to spread throughout the world. No one is immune. Age, gender, and chronic conditions increase risk. What is the ideal future outcome? I can’t imagine anyone would disagree that we hope to prevent as much infection and possible, ultimately eradicating the disease. This is where wisdom comes in strong. Do we have a choice? Absolutely. I tell my kids often that life can most basically be reduced to choices. We are tasked with considering all of our possible choices hundreds of times per day, most frequently without realizing it, making those that are most likely to result in our desired outcome. It is undisputed that even simple cloth face masks slow the spread of this virus and help those who may have this virus, but are asymptomatic, from transmitting it. So why, then, has the directive to wear masks in public become so controversial? People naturally rebel when they’re told what to do. However, the United States has a rich history of adherence to laws created to protect people. Do we storm the statehouse steps to protest proposed bills to fine people caught smoking in a vehicle with children? No, although being told what one can and cannot do in one’s private vehicle is distressing. We know secondhand smoke causes numerous documented health problems, and we want to safeguard our little ones from asthma, respiratory infections, and SIDS, so we don’t smoke when we’re transporting kids. See the analogy?
TRUTH encourages WISDOM, which leads to DUTY. We know the truth. We know it is wisest to don a face mask in public (right now, not necessarily forever). We have a duty to ourselves and each other to make the wisest choice, every time we leave our homes. The early Roman philosopher Cicero suggested duty is the result of being human, and the result of one’s particular place in life. There will be less acrimony if we acknowledge that our current circumstances dictate the duty to make truth-based, wise decisions — not a particular political party or a sector of scaredy-cats.
TRUTH encourages WISDOM, which leads to DUTY, which requires COURAGE. My daughter has been busy sewing face masks, and believe me when I tell you it takes my (heavily-tattooed US Navy veteran) husband quite a bit of courage to ask at the deli counter for a pound of oven-roasted turkey while sporting pleated limes or Eiffel Towers. He doesn’t look weak when he covers his mouth and nose with soccer balls and various images from the Galactic Empire, and neither do you.
TRUTH encourages WISDOM, which leads to DUTY, which requires COURAGE, which is not something we should exercise in MODERATION. We know exactly where moderation is useful. We remind ourselves to eat, drink, and exercise in moderation. We urge our children to indulge in screen time in moderation. At Culver, moderation is one of the cardinal virtues to suggest its students should not become consumed by one interest or activity. Fortunately, we can lead balanced lifestyles while being courageous all. the. time.
TRUTH encourages WISDOM, which leads to DUTY, which requires COURAGE, which is not something we should exercise in MODERATION, in an effort to HONOR the fragility of life. We honor our bodies by moving, drinking enough water, eating nutritious foods, taking action to reduce stress, avoiding things that are dangerous, and seeking proper medical care when warranted. Christians are guided by 1 Corinthians 6:20. Judaism is a corporeal religion, wherein our bodies are not our property, but G*d’s. Likewise, in Islam, the body and the soul are gifts from G*d, the ownership of human beings of their bodies described as a stewardship. It is true the coronavirus is spread from person-to-person, between people in close contact with one another, through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or even talks. It is true these droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby, or possibly be inhaled into the lungs. It is true a portion of those infected show no symptoms at all. Can we honor how precious life is? We’re not indestructible. Here today, gone tomorrow. Perhaps that silly-looking mask can push our tomorrows further out into the future.
TRUTH encourages WISDOM, which leads to DUTY, which requires COURAGE, which is not something we should exercise in MODERATION, in an effort to HONOR the fragility of life, in SERVICE to ourselves and our neighbors. Serving ourselves and others brings us into an abundance mindset. It allows us to express gratitude. Gratitude begets grace, generosity, and happiness, and don’t we need all of that during these unprecedented times?
TRUTH, WISOM, DUTY, COURAGE, MODERATION, HONOR, and SERVICE. That leaves JUSTICE, upholding that which is good. … and justice for all… Metallica, amiright?
The ultimate in vanity
Exploiting their supremacy
I can’t believe the things you say
I can’t believe
I can’t believe the price we pay
Nothing can save us
Justice is lost
Justice is raped
Justice is gone
Pulling your strings
Justice is done
Seeking no truth
Winning is all
Find it so grim
To my fellow Americans wreaking havoc for having been asked, politely, to wear face masks in public,
Please stop being vain. You look terrific with elastic looped behind your ears.
Please stop exploiting your supremacy. You know as well as I do that arming yourselves and shouting into the faces of state police officers is inappropriate, and that our family members, friends, and coworkers who don’t look like you would have been gassed for doing so.
I can’t believe the things you say — that your rights and freedoms are being taken away.
I wish the price we have paid, are paying, and will pay weren’t so dear. 1.26M confirmed cases. 75,000+ dead.
I beg you to seek truth, always. TRUTH encourages WISDOM, which leads to DUTY, which requires COURAGE, which is not something we should exercise in MODERATION, in an effort to HONOR the fragility of life, in SERVICE to ourselves and our neighbors.
Love,
Sarah | https://medium.com/@sburrow/masks-in-merica-984a1eb284b7 | [] | 2020-05-07 15:25:05.943000+00:00 | ['Masks', 'Justice', 'Coronavirus', 'Duty', 'Contagiousdisease'] |
The Decline of the Original Hedge Fund Strategy | Today, “hedge fund” is a very broad term that covers a myriad of different fund strategies. Long/short, macro, market neutral, and event-driven are a few of the many fund strategies that are now lumped into the hedge fund umbrella.
The first hedge fund is widely regarded to have been started by Alfred Winslow Jones in 1949. Jones purchased stocks that he expected to increase in value (going long) and sold borrowed shares of stocks expected to decrease in value (going short). This long/short strategy attempts to maximize upside on long positions while limiting downside through short positions. This strategy of reducing downside risk is known as hedging, hence the term “hedge fund”.
Hedge funds remained an obscure alternative investment option until 1966 when Fortune magazine published an article highlighting hedge fund returns and their outperformance over mutual funds. This led to the opening of numerous new hedge funds, and by 1968, there were 140 operating investment partnerships that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission considered as hedge funds.
Over the next two decades, the hedge fund industry went through a series of booms and busts. Hedge funds began looking to other strategies and taking on more debt to leverage their investments. High leverage led to large losses and fund closures in the bear markets of 1969–1970 and 1973–1974. However, as a whole, the industry remained relatively quiet until the 1980s.
In 1986, Institutional Investor published an article about the Tiger Fund, run by Julian Robertson, which had a compounded annual return of 43% between 1980 and 1986. The hedge fund industry had once again attracted attention as now-famous hedge fund managers like Robertson and George Soros impressed high-net-worth investors and institutional investors with their outstanding returns. Throughout the rest of the 1980s and the 1990s, the hedge fund industry grew as traditional money managers transitioned into the hedge fund industry to make a name for themselves and for riches. According to data from Hedge Fund Research, from 1990 to 2001, the industry’s assets under management grew from $38.9 billion to $536.9 billion, even despite the bear markets of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which led to the closure of many prominent hedge funds, such as Robertson’s Tiger Fund.
After the 1980s, the term “hedge fund” lost some of its meaning as some so-called “hedge funds” stopped being hedged. According to the University of Amsterdam researcher Jan Fichtner’s 2013 article, “The Rise of Hedge Funds: A Story of Inequality”, macroeconomic analysis showed that hedge funds like the Tiger Fund took “massive and purely directional bets without implementing any specific hedging strategy.” Today, there are many unhedged “hedge funds” in the industry. These funds would be more appropriately called speculation funds than hedge funds.
During the 1990s and 2000s, a variety of different hedge fund strategies became more popular among fund managers and investors. Through the Tiger Fund, Julian Robertson pioneered the “global macro” strategy, which involves making investment decisions based on the interpretation of global macroeconomic trends. According to data from Hedge Fund Research, the global macro strategy made up over 60% of hedge fund investments during the early 1990s. A recent case of global macro investment activity by hedge funds was during Brexit when some macro hedge funds bet on the devaluation of the pound.
Another notable hedge fund strategy somewhat similar to the long/short model is the market-neutral approach. Due to the historical tendency of the overall stock market to go up in the long term, long/short funds traditionally run with a net long bias, having significantly more capital in long positions than short positions. Market-neutral funds are different as they carry no bias and have approximately equal long and short positions. Their goal is to deliver returns uncorrelated with the market — profiting in both upward and downward markets.
After the growth of the hedge fund industry, there are now thousands of different funds and there are many different hedge fund strategies and variations of strategies. However, as the overall industry has been growing, the original long/short strategy has been in decline by some metrics.
As per data from BarclayHedge, in 2000, the assets under management of long/short funds represented 16.4% of all assets under management (AUM) in the hedge fund industry (excluding funds of funds). In 2019, that figure was 6.1%. While the AUM of long/short funds did grow during those two decades, it only grew approximately 450%, which was greatly outpaced by the overall industry’s growth of about 1200%.
Lackluster returns may be a cause of the long/short model’s decline. Of course, there are still some long/short funds killing it with their returns. However, the average long/short fund is just not what it used to be. With increased competition due to the growth of the industry, it has become harder for the average long/short fund to find profitable investment opportunities. Especially with the rise of index investing, long/short funds are not so attractive as investors could have made higher returns by buying cheaply-managed index funds than with the average long/short fund. From 2010 to 2019, the S&P 500 total return index had an annualized return of approximately 13.6%, while the HFRI Equity Hedge Index (HFRI EHI) had an annualized return of approximately 4.7%. Over the ten years, this led the S&P 500 total return index to net a cumulative return of 257% versus the HFRI EHI’s 58%.
For three consecutive years, since 2017, long/short hedge funds have seen net outflows of assets. Also, 2019 marked the fifth consecutive year in which the overall hedge fund industry had seen more fund closures than launches. According to Hedge Fund Research, over 4000 hedge funds had closed during these five years. With larger funds usually surviving, this has led to capital in the industry becoming increasingly concentrated within mid to large-sized funds.
While it is impossible to know for certain what will happen to the long/short model — perhaps the closure of underperforming long/short funds will lead to better performance in the future by the average fund — but considering recent industry data and trends, the near-term outlook looks bleak for long/short hedge funds. | https://medium.com/discourse/the-decline-of-the-original-hedge-fund-strategy-d8168744887e | ['Kyle Tang'] | 2020-07-24 23:42:15.643000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Economy', 'Finance', 'Investing', 'Hedge Funds'] |
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence | Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Breaking down the various buzz words in the field
Image by Getty Images
Artificial Intelligence(AI) is changing our world today and has entered every domain from healthcare to engineering and telecommunications. It has completely changed the way we live. Before starting with AI it is really important to know what AI is and what are its elements. In this article, you will get to know about AI and its key elements like Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision and much more.
AI is the creation of software the imitates human behaviors and capabilities
AI softwares try to mimic human behavior and can essentially perform tasks that a human being can.AI is used to power search engines, online shopping recommendations, digital assistance and much more. The possibilities that AI provides are endless from detecting tumors to developing solutions for climate change, you will find it everywhere.
Some of the key elements of AI include:
Machine Learning
Machine Learning is the foundation of AI in which you essentially teach the machine to make predictions based on your dataset. You split up your dataset into training and test sets and use the training dataset to train( or teach in simpler terms) your model to draw out conclusions with the provided data.
Let’s have a look at a really interesting real-life implementation of machine learning that you wouldn’t have thought of. Machine Learning is used by an Australian agricultural technology-based project named “The Yield” that used it to make local predictions about light, wind and rain and helps the farmers there decide the correct time for sowing, irrigation and harvesting in turn leading to better production of their crop. Never thought this could be done with AI? Now you must be curious to know how all this is done.
Let’s understand this with the help of a flower dataset.
Suppose you collect flower samples, label them and make a dataset with the name of the flower and its features like shape, size, color, etc. This is your dataset. Now you divide the dataset into 2 parts( not necessarily equal)- training and testing data. Train the model with your training data. How is this done? The data is processed using an algorithm that finds relations between the flower name and other features. This model can later be used to identify the flower name based on its features. After training the data you can test the accuracy of your model with the testing dataset and use the model for further predictions.
Computer Vision
Computer Vision, as the name suggests allows the computer to interpret the world visually using images, videos, cameras. It enables the computer to understand and perform automated tasks that a human can do. Let’s look at the capabilities of computer vision in a little detail.
Image Classification
Image classification means training a machine learning model to classify images based on their contents. A very simple example of image classification could be to classify images based on whether it is of a bird, cat or dog.
Object Detection
Training a machine learning model to classify individual objects within an image and identify their location with a bounding box like identifying the location of a bird in a picture
Image by Papers With Code
Semantic Segmentation
An advanced machine learning technique in which individual pixels are classified according to the object to which they belong like overlaying or masking the images. This image shows an example of semantic segmentation in which different objects are overlayed with different colors.
Face Detection
A specialized form of object detection that locates human faces in an image. The face unlock in your smartphone is probably the best example of this. Another interesting example of face detection is its use to identify a person’s age and emotional state.
Image Analysis
Extracting information from images using and providing tags and captions based on the information is what image analysis is all about like “A dog on a beach” could be used to describe the image below using image analysis.
Photo by kilarov zaneit on Unsplash
Optical Character Recognition
It is a technique used to detect and read text in images and is widely used in reading scanned documents.
Anomaly Detection
The capability to automatically detect errors, unexpected and unusual events in the system like identifying unusual transactions for your bank account. Think of a system that can identify a possible machine failure and warn you ahead of time. Sounds great! Doesn’t it?
Natural Language Processing
Ever wondered how the voice assistant on your smartphone is able to recognize your voice and do the required job for you? Yes, Natural Language Processing or NLP is the answer! Natural language processing is the capability of our computer to identify the language(written and spoken) and accordingly respond to it. It can be used to determine the tone of a message, translate texts and much more apart from recognizing our speech and performing appropriate actions.
Conversational AI
Conversational AI is the capability of the computer to engage in a conversation with you. Chatbots are the best example of conversational AI where bots participate in a conversation with humans. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/introduction-to-artificial-intelligence-b74c1d0fbce4 | [] | 2020-10-02 16:12:02.823000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Computer Science', 'Programming'] |
Kript Connected Exchanges: Kraken | You can add your Kraken account to Kript app and take advantage of managing your crypto portfolio in a safe and easy-to-use manner
Kraken overview
24 hour volume: ~$143 million
Number of trading pairs: 73
Fiat support: deposits, withdrawals, trading
Verification: required to use funding methods or start trading
Markets: BTC, ETH, USD, EUR, CAD, JPY, GBP
Additional features: margin trading, OTC trading
Order types: Market Order; Limit Order; Stop Loss; Take Profit; Settle Position; Combined Order Types
Supported countries: global, except for some countries due to regulatory prohibitions
Website: kraken.com
Kraken is known as one of the oldest and largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Up to date it is the world leader in terms of BTC/EUR pair trading volume. Kraken offers a high level of flexibility for exchanging currency on spot or trading currency pairs on leverage. It was founded in 2011 in San Francisco. The exchange is ranked 20th by daily trading volume which is about 143 million USD up to date.
Kraken supports 18 digital currencies and 5 fiat currencies — US dollars, British pounds, Euro, Japanese yen and Canadian dollars. It also enables margin trading for 16 cryptocurrency pairs with up to 5x leverage.
👉 Complete list of trading pairs
👉 Trading pairs available for margin trading
Main features
✔ leading exchange by BTC/EUR trading volume
✔ support of 5 fiat currencies
✔ margin trading and short selling
✔ advanced order types
✔ high level of security
Fees and limits
Deposits: There are no fees for most digital assets, but some carry a deposit fee or a deposit address setup fee. Fiat currency deposit fees start from zero and vary due to the currency and deposit method.
Withdrawals: Dynamic fees that vary between currencies and do not depend on withdrawal amount (e.g. 0,0005 BTC, 0,005 ETH, etc.). Fiat currency withdrawal fees start from €0,09 and vary due to the currency and deposit method. There are 4 verification tiers with different deposit and withdrawal limits from $2 500 to $200 000.
Trading: Taker fee varies from zero to 0,08% and Maker fee varies from zero to 0,36% depending on the trade pair and volume.
Margin borrow limits: vary based on the currency and current verification tier, e.g. 1 000 USD for Tier 1 and 500 000 USD for Tier 4.
Communication: twitter, github, linkedin
KRIPT and Kraken integration
Integration between Kript and Kraken enables advanced opportunities for crypto investors providing them with all they need for efficient trading. This integration enabled Kript users to get access to more cryptocurrency pairs and Kraken users to benefit from a wide range of useful functions available via Kript application.
Kript tools:
✔ Android and iOS app for trading
✔ High level of security
✔ Convenient interface
✔ ICO list with detailed information about the projects
✔ Coins description
✔ Order book
✔ Cryptocurrency market news
✔ Access to portfolios
Kraken available options in Kript app:
✔ Balance (only current)
✔ Holdings
✔ Order history
✔ Pending orders
✔ Transaction history
✔ QR code scanner for exchange connection
In order to take advantage of the advanced features for efficient trading:
1) download Kript app from Google Play or App Store;
2) create a new API key;
3) connect your Kraken account to Kript app. | https://medium.com/kriptapp/kript-connected-exchanges-kraken-a06c784bab40 | ['Kript Team'] | 2018-12-04 04:04:06.077000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Kript', 'Bitcoin', 'Kraken', 'Exchange'] |
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Trump Lost | It’s beginning to look a lot like TRUMP LOST
Everywhere but here:
There’s a list of the GOP, willing as they could be,
To sacrifice what morals they held dear
It’s beginning to look a lot like TRUMP LOST
Every court case shows
That substantiated facts aren’t the only thing he lacks,
like litigious pros (for example)
Press releases galore at a landscaper’s store
Makes it clear — they’ve all lost their mind
Drunken rage and attack by a “star witness” hack
That’s the best of the “proof” you could find?
And none of your base could win a case, despite them all combined
It’s beginning to look a lot like TRUMP LOST
Though truth comes with a price
“The Democrats stole the vote! Recount! Or I’ll demote!”
Well, pardon, sir, we’ve counted. Sometimes twice (or three times)
It’s beginning to look a lot like TRUMP LOST
Still, the lies he spews
‘Cause the thing he’ll most lament? Being too irrelevant,
Even for FOX news
There’s a flurry of tweets, accusations of “Cheats!”
All designed to embolden his coup,
But he can’t overthrow, no indeed he must go,
Take your family and scram, sir! — Adieu!
And kindly pack your COVID and your little Sharpies, too.
It’s beginning to look a lot like TRUMP LOST
Though he won’t concede
But regardless that he’s pissed, that malignant narcissist
Will be wished godspeed
Looks like Christmas — indeed. | https://medium.com/muddyum/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-trump-lost-976b53ac4921 | ['Pamela A Meyers'] | 2020-12-14 03:07:58.831000+00:00 | ['Coup', 'Trump', 'Political Satire', 'Election 2020', 'Christmas'] |
Review: The Halo Effect…and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers by Phil Rosenzweig | If people are constantly told that they are unique, why isn’t the same being done with businesses? Whilst we all appreciate the passion and ambition of entrepreneurs and business people being brought to different markets, the challenge that appears to underpin this entire situation is being able to withstand the incessant criticism from the observers. This doesn’t mean people who enter this space should be ignorant or negligent, but there is definitely no test that anyone can take that determines if they have what it takes to weather the storm. And for the most part, past success or experience (business or personal) is indicative of predicting these outcomes…so why are ‘business’ students (encompassing finance, economics, commerce, etc) being brainwashed with historic lessons and market commentary that are being disproved on a regular basis?
For those of us who have limited business experience (in the real world), The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig, provides a great insight into the character traits that lead to ‘successful’ and ‘unsuccessful’ companies. The Halo Effect is not intended to serve as a ‘manual’ that should be followed, but instead holds the form of an essay where the thesis (in summary) states that both managers and academics are “deluded” by common fallacies which suggest success can be attained in a particular way. And for the most part, I do find the Author’s position very logical.
The book is structured in twelve parts/chapters which each deal with theoretical and practical aspects of business and research that readers are taught to accept throughout their education. However, what is particularly interesting about The Halo Effect is that it takes an international and intergenerational approach to explain how and why businesses can withstand the test of time and market conditions. But, as it is soon revealed, there is no ‘secret sauce’. The reason why some businesses have been more successful than others is because they didn’t subscribe to the intimidating tactics of business analysts, the media, or ‘competition’. This is ironic because people like to hear of the stories of high performance told in an ideal manner, and as a consequence, very few people are going to associate anything bad to do with the organisation…and this position is argued very convincingly throughout.
Unfortunately for most of you, the Author’s level critical research will be too sobering to accept. In his skeptical eyes, business managers are very hypocritical of their position and ‘talk’, and to back this up he relies on a plethora of case studies. Whether it be Cisco, Lego, General Electric, or ABB, the lesson to take away from history is that something will always go wrong, and that short term losses are necessary for long term success. Amongst these highly detailed business examinations, the Author intertwines some common myths/delusions that executive management world continue to hold onto such as correlation and causality (Delusion 2), single explanations (Delusion 3), and lasting success (Delusion 6).
For those that are looking to be challenged, I highly recommend reading The Halo Effect. The Author’s ability to string together his arguments and empirical evidence is a refreshing format that makes the reader stumble upon a few lines that makes him/her think — ‘Yeah, that makes sense’ or ‘How come no one ever talks about this?’. As a teacher himself, the Author is very much hopeful that the next generation of executive leaders and managers can see past the Delusions and decades-old teachings that have been ingrained into their business beliefs. This is definitely a book that has earned my acknowledgement as thought provoking, and against the backdrop of the Author’s 25 years of experience in the corporate and academic spaces lends serious credibility to his discussion. | https://medium.com/@jamesc.content/review-the-halo-effect-and-the-eight-other-business-delusions-that-deceive-managers-by-phil-90205a98f403 | ['James Chee'] | 2019-06-17 02:31:02.743000+00:00 | ['Business Management', 'Business Books', 'Book Review', 'Delusions', 'Critical Thinking'] |
永遠在沈睡的老爸 | 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/%E9%80%99%E6%AE%B5%E8%B7%AF-%E6%88%91%E8%88%87%E4%B9%83%E6%A3%AE-%E8%B3%8A%E7%B1%B3%E4%BB%A5%E5%8F%8A%E8%90%AC%E4%BA%8B%E8%90%AC%E7%89%A9/%E6%B0%B8%E9%81%A0%E5%9C%A8%E6%B2%88%E7%9D%A1%E7%9A%84%E8%80%81%E7%88%B8-ba50a33275a5 | ['Aileen Wu'] | 2020-12-21 07:45:11.239000+00:00 | ['插畫', '繪本', '育兒', 'Illustration'] |
Cyberpunk 2077 and the ‘Best Immersive Sim’ Experience | Although Cyberpunk 2077 was announced nearly 8 years ago, the hype around the game and what it represents has reached an all time high. CD Projekt the developer of hit 2015 action role-playing game The Witcher 3 will be trying to outdo themselves, and just about every single player RPG. Even with the recent delays to the games release, the importance of delivering an experience with truly open ended gameplay and story is possibly the most precious and sought after idea for gamers and developers.
For those that don’t know what an immersive sim is, it is a type of game that puts players’ choice at the forefront of the experience and delivers on that through emergent and open-ended gameplay situations, coupled of course with story and characters that react to your choices in a believable world (simulation). It is often thought that through the achievement of a perfect immersive sim, players will become fully invested and absorbed into their new believed self and world.
With past immersive sim games, the story and gameplay choices, or even upgrades were always somewhat disconnected. Take one of the early entries in the genre, Thief, or even Oblivion or Skyrim, you can have gameplay variety in customization, and even include emergent gameplay systems. However, the story and missions were always the same for the most part.
Now even though the game is releasing on consoles and PC, and not VR, this does not discredit it as an immersive sim. But I do presume one day CD Projekt will release a VR mode. But that is secondary to providing what could be one of the biggest traditional game releases to date.
You see Cyberpunk is not just a game it is an entire genre of science fiction dystopias. Something that a lot of people especially in 2020 want to explore and escape to, because in Night City, you can make sense of it all. The capitalists, criminals, celebrities, and street rats all can exist in this future of body modification, customization and crime. But don’t make me tell you about the game, you can watch the trailer.
With a star like Keanu Reeves in the cast, and CD Projekt’s track record, it’s hard not to have high hopes for the game, especially after what was probably 8+ years of development. As a developer, I am definitely looking forward to what Cyberpunk 2077 has in store for it’s players. | https://joshuabgad.medium.com/cyberpunk-2077-to-deliver-one-of-the-best-immersive-sim-experiences-7e8420fca70d | ['Joshua Gad'] | 2020-12-08 09:27:22.759000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Rpg', 'Simulation', 'Cyberpunk', 'Game Development'] |
Five Outsourcing Vendor Selection Criteria To Choose The Best One | Many times firms outsource their work to decrease cost or increase labor efficiency without really taking the opportunity to choose the seller. And that is the significant problem that finishes in labor failure or cost overrun. The first thing that you will need to begin with doing appropriate research. You would not pay a visit to a store and only purchase a washing machine.
Apparently, originally, you’d do just a lot of research, evaluate the purchase price and characteristics supplied by numerous brands, you may also evaluate testimonials and durability.
Likewise while picking out a group enhancement seller you will have to do some research, locate their support and price provided, assess for the inspection and work experience. Then choose an outsourcing firm which you locate promising.
To make this simple for you below are the five vendor selection criteria to take into account while appointing an outsourcing firm:
1 ) In compliance with your job’s technical necessity
The very first thing you have to do for the right vendor selection would be to consider your job’s requirements. You want to filter out the outsourcing firm concerning the grounds of the. For example, say you may require custom program improvement constructed then hunt for your outsourcing company that specializes in software creation instead of the outsourcing firm focusing on blockchain.
Tech and application development is a vast problem but you need people with experience in a specific facet. For that reason, it’s ideal to filter out of the listing of sellers with your needs. Even more, you can select to get a team enhancement seller according to your specialized necessity. Staff augmentation is rather enjoying an outsourcing approach utilized to staff a job to fulfill company objectives. A model includes assessing the current employees and then deciding which further skills are required.
2. According to pricing
Think about that the pricing of different vendors Now you have got a list of sellers that are acceptable to utilize, you should begin with a glimpse at the cost supplied by every one of these. But remember you should not only choose a business with the cheapest cost. Consider the quality also. You are able to discover an unimaginably affordable outsourcing firm. But do not be surprised when their job quality might be unimaginably cheap. In my experience, it is definitely better to pick out a mid-priced degree outsourcing firm. They are very likely to provide exceptional service at a sensible price.
3. In accord with experience
Among the significant vendor selection criteria is your previous work experience in the business. It is so much simpler to operate collectively compared to your company with no experience in a job like yours. Consequently, you also will have to check when they have the very important technology infrastructure set up. Should they’ve beyond infrastructure and experience setup then you need to contact or reach out to the firms with whom they worked and request review and feedback. They could let you know about them. And in line with this, you could choose whether they’re worthy or not.
4. In accordance with the team’s credibility
Elect for the company whose staff might also be commendable sufficient to finish your job in time. Many times business focuses on the expertise and trustworthiness of the outsourcing firm and completely forgets about the group members of the business. The staff members of this outsourcing firm ought to be both experienced and comfortable with their particular occupation. You would like to discuss your job together and get their input on your own requirement. This makes it possible to choose if they know your needs.
5. In accordance with communicating
Another substantial vendor selection standards are their communication capacity. You’re all set to ascertain their communication capacity dependent on the interaction you’ve had together. How about the job culture? Think about the difference? Well, consider this variable and also their management skills to eventually choose an outsourcing supplier.
If you are looking for someone to make your business better by understanding your business requirement and providing a custom system or technical solution and partnership. Wolfmatrix is the perfect gateway for you which provides quality service within the budget and estimated time, irrespective of the complexity of the project’s requirement. | https://medium.com/@jodanmarketer/five-outsourcing-vendor-selection-criteria-to-choose-the-best-one-78833382f91e | [] | 2020-12-31 05:58:40.050000+00:00 | ['Apps', 'Web', 'Mobile App Development', 'Mobile'] |
I Am Just a Doll | Look at me.
I was born and bred to be a doll,
a dolled-up-dolly on the arm
of money.
A perfect human candy cane.
My brain devoted solely
to wanton male entrapment schemes.
Guaranteeing the security of
my future cash flow.
To those shoppers out there
bargain hunting and
buying my deception because I
am excellent at conniving to do
what you expect of me.
Beauty does what
beauty is, you mistakenly believe.
Making some of you
programmed misogynists,
consciously or not
fostering this primary role
for women.
Since your expectations allow me
to sell you a bill of goods,
I can exterminate color and diversity
from a famous garden.
Oh no, some of you sing,
that travesty couldn’t possibly be a message
about inclusion no more,
if embracement ever was.
Nor do some believe my raking and tilling was
a statement about an immediate future
where variety and compassion is
excised and plowed under
in service to wealth, nepotism and
a perpetual regime of privilege.
Decreed by scratching
a line in the newly sculpted grass
using a felt marker to
divide those in and those out.
Stark and monochromatic
is the warp-speed version of
this world’s future, currently being
peddled by snakes riding oily bicycles.
So you might as well
wave bye-bye to a place
where you loved living, people.
Remember when I visited
children in cages
wearing a jacket declaring
I don’t care, do you?
Many convinced themselves I
took it out of my closet
mistakenly.
I would not be capable, they agreed,
the pretty thing I am,
of choosing to slip my arms in that garment
to stick my disdain,
slap it like a sopping wet chamois
in your face.
I can freely promote divisiveness,
secure that you will believe the noise
screeching: whoops, she didn’t mean
to wear it or say it.
The role some have ascribed to me and my ilk
blinds judgement. Allowing
us, the nuclear and
extended family battalion
to hide in the privacy of
our newly gold leaf plastered
living room, laughing
at the subservience, the gullibility
offered up to us by deluded worshippers.
Soon it won’t matter
when we invite the cameras
to show us feasting in splendor,
gnawing any remaining meat
from a pile of devoters’
expendable bones.
© Suzanne V. Tanner, 2020. All Rights Reserved.
I think you all, at this point, might enjoy some lighthearted relief. Please read this clever and hilarious poem by my friend, Manasi Diwakar recently posted in The Bad Influence. Maybe she will send you the recipe! She already has my request.
Thanks again for your time, my dear reading and writing friends.
If you would like to be in email touch: [email protected] | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/i-am-just-a-doll-ab6e38bda164 | ['Suzanne V. Tanner'] | 2020-08-26 02:54:12.802000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Politics', 'Future', 'Poetry', 'The Bad Influence'] |
*The USA has entered the chat* | s, in the classical context, “people who are consumed o…The term really means, in the classical context, “people who are consumed only with self-interest.” And to the Greeks, the progenitors of democracy, nobody — nobody was more dangerous than an idiot. | https://medium.com/@aprilhouse/the-usa-has-entered-the-chat-d96c4c9601dc | ['April House'] | 2020-11-23 13:48:14.461000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', '2020', 'Mondaythoughts', 'Inequality'] |
Deploy Plotly Dash app with Dash DAQ components on AWS cloud | To share a Dash app, you need to “deploy” your Dash app to a server. The guide below works for Dash application with and without Dash DAQ components. We’ll deploy app on AWS in easiest way.
Dash “Hello, World!”
Let’s create new directory (e.g. medium ). Create new application.py file with code below:
Note: Line app.scripts.config.serve_locally = True is required for Dash DAQ components.
Python dependencies
Navigate to project directory (e.g. medium )and create new requirements.txt file with code below:
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an easy-to-use service for deploying and scaling web applications and services developed with Python.
Install the Elastic Beanstalk Command Line Interface (EB CLI):
$ sudo pip install awsebcli
If you want install EB CLI on Amazon Linux, use instruction below:
$ sudo yum update $ sudo yum install git
$ sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
$ sudo yum install libffi-devel openssl-devel $ git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-elastic-beanstalk-cli-setup.git
$ ./aws-elastic-beanstalk-cli-setup/scripts/bundled_installer $ echo 'export PATH="/home/ec2-user/.ebcli-virtual-env/executables:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile && source ~/.bash_profile $ rm -rf aws-elastic-beanstalk-cli-setup
Initiate EB
Navigate to project directory (e.g. medium )and initializes your directory with the EB CLI:
$ eb init
Select a default region (e.g. eu-west-1 ). Enter application name (e.g. medium ).
It appears you are using Python. Is this correct?
(Y/n):
Enter Y .
Select Python version (e.g. Python 3.6 ).
Do you want to set up SSH for your instances?
(Y/n):
Enter n .
Deploy Dash app
Create a new environment:
$ eb create
Enter environment name (e.g. medium-dev ). Enter DNS CNAME prefix (e.g. medium-dev ). Select a load balancer type (e.g. application ).
Open the application URL in a browser:
$ eb open
Update Dash app
Let’s update Dash app. Change:
html.H1('Hello, World!')
line to:
html.H1('Hello, Medium!')
Deploy new source code to the environment:
$ eb deploy
Open the application URL in a browser:
$ eb open
Delete Dash app from AWS cloud
Terminate the environment: | https://medium.com/@korniichuk/dash-on-aws-44a0f50a030a | ['Ruslan Korniichuk'] | 2019-05-16 18:22:22.080000+00:00 | ['Plotly', 'Deployment', 'Dashboard', 'AWS', 'Python'] |
How portfolio management works at Tokenbox.io (explained) | Whether you’re a professional trader, or a trader who wants to substantially pump skills, or an investor looking for transparent and profitable projects and strategies, Tokenbox portfolio has every solution to fit your needs. Check our precise instruction on how to open the box of benefits!
Come to our side… we have cookies for traders
Well, not exactly cookies, but delicious, ready made box solutions for traders of any professional level, as well as a super convenient and easy to use dashboard. Tokenbox has created a safe and flexible ecosystem for trading and managing digital assets.
Getting started
The registration and portfolio creation has never been easier. To get started and create your new Portfolio, click the Assets tab on your Tokenbox dashboard. Then click the Portfolio tab — here you are! First, give your portfolio a nice name and pick a logo of your choice.
It takes a couple of clicks to set a name for the portfolio and an abbreviation for a token. Keep in mind — you won’t be able to edit these afterwards.
Select a reference currency, in which your portfolio will be calculated.
Commission fees are extremely important when it comes to trading, as they indicate profit and returns. Tokenbox portfolio constructor allows to set fees, both entry and exit, from 1% to 10%, to benefit your trading strategy. An Entry fee indicates a commission that you get when someone buys your tokens. While an Exit Fee is charged when your tokens are sold. These fees are collected automatically and deposited directly to your Tokenbox Wallet, so need to get lost in numerous fees calculations or excel tables!
Tick the box — but also make sure to ACTUALLY read the Terms of Tokenbox Portfolio Service. We know that you usually skip reading, but these are really not that long.
Congrats! You’re all set and good to go. Now it’s time to make your Portfolio work. To make an initial investment and form a starting token price, click Initiate tokens on the Portfolio page and choose an account to transfer your funds from. Based on the amount of your first investment, the starting price of your token is set.
After you start trading, the value of the token will depend on the efficiency of your portfolio management.
We recommend that you make the first purchase so that the value of 1 token is at least 1 USD or 0.01 ETH.
Happy trading!
More great features
The Wallet is very important for safe trading, and Tokenbox development team has taken good care of it. The Wallet allows to instantly buy tokens, sell them, exchange them, and safely store digital assets, without having to allocate them on a third party wallet. Your portfolio tokens are stored in your Wallet or in your Trading Account from which you bought them.
Apart from the Wallet and easy to use yet sophisticated portfolio management service, Tokenbox generally sets a whole “cookie party” which you wouldn’t want to leave: a Trading Terminal, and an option of having multiple Trading Accounts for different trading strategies.
Buying and selling tokens
If you’d like to invest in a project and buy new tokens you can easily check a token performance — sorted by week, by month, or check the all time efficiency.
Check a project’s strategy — make sure it’s good enough! — and buy tokens.
Now, if you need to sell tokens, you can do it from both trading accounts, and from your wallet. Option two — sell them right on the Marketplace.
Trading Terminal
The Trading Terminal allows to manage assets in a Portfolio in the most convenient way.
Click the Trading Terminal button, and activate an account to process trades. Now you can exchange assets in your own Portfolio — for example, ETH and BTC.
Exits
A good manager always controls Portfolio performance.
Now let’s have a quick look at what you should do once a token holder decides to EXIT — or sell your tokens. To check if there are any exit requests — just go to the Exit tab.
Once you receive a request, you have 20 hours to rebalance your portfolio and reimburse the funds. Click Process Now, otherwise Tokenbox will do it for you — automatically.
Payment for sold tokens goes directly to the trading account, or Wallet, from which the tokens were sold.Transparent strategies for investors
Finding and following a successful trading strategy can be quite challenging these days. Daily trading routine can be hard to track, but Tokenbox has a good solution for investors and passive traders.
All statistics of portfolios performance is completely transparent and comfortably rated.
Just choose a portfolio that you like and follow a trader who impressed you. Or buy a fraction of this trader’s portfolio and — check the previous chapter! — let the trader earn great returns for you.
Tokenbox has already taken care of the rest: the platform is 100% safe and secure, and even investor’s funds that a trader is using are safe and can’t be withdrawn by him by default. Investing in other people’s great work is now as easy as opening a cookie jar. A big, beautiful, clear, transparent jar.
TBX for all, on us
Last, but not the least — Tokenbox supports traders and offers great loyalty rewards based on TBX tokens usage.
Platform’s own TBX token is a “digital license” for the service operation. In order to activate a public portfolio, a trader needs to maintain at least 1% of TBX in Wallet.
Therefore, TBX holding gives a lucrative 50% discount for any trading commission.
Told you, cookies are great.
Launch your portfolio now
Tutorial: How portfolio management works at Tokenbox.io
If you have any questions, feel free to join us on our social pages or message us at [email protected]. Thank you for your trust and loyalty to the project!
️
Stay tuned for more updates! | https://medium.com/tokenbox/how-portfolio-management-works-at-tokenbox-io-explained-fafae01e5e61 | [] | 2020-07-20 15:40:09.600000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Tokenbox', 'Tbxnews', 'Trading'] |
App Trimming in .NET 5: Reduce Your App Sizes Dramatically | One of the main difference from .NET Framework and .NET Core is that .NET Core supports self-contained deployment; everything is bundled together, including runtime and app. That brings easy deployment, but there is draw-back: Increasing application size because the runtime is included too.
Imagine you have a small desktop or web application, but the deployment size is like 200MB, that doesn’t sound good, right?
In .NET Core 3, to resolve this issue, the .NET team introduced a tool that finds unused assemblies to remove them from final deployment. In .NET 5 they went one step forward; not only can it remove un-used assemblies but also removes unused code in assemblies by opening assemblies and removing the types and members that are not used by the application
There is one big catch; trimming uses static analyzing to find unused members, assemblies, etc. For example, using reflection to work with methods or load assemblies, the trimmer does not know if those types are needed, so it just throws them away.
App Trimming is a nice feature from .NET and I’m really thrilled to use it in different examples in this article. | https://itnext.io/app-trimming-in-net-5-reduce-your-app-sizes-dramatically-39891e2bedc1 | ['Ali Bahraminezhad'] | 2020-09-21 08:41:00.220000+00:00 | ['Dotnet 5', 'Dotnet', 'Dotnet Core', 'Deployment'] |
Fast-Direct Optical Collision Avoidance System Based on FLIR Image Sequences | Fast-Direct Optical Collision Avoidance System Based on FLIR Image Sequences
In this white paper, a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) video surveillance system is presented for collision avoidance of moving ships to bridge piers. An image pre-processing algorithm is proposed to reduce clutter background by multi-scale fractal analysis, in which the blanket method is used for fractal feature computation. Then, the moving ship detection algorithm is developed from image differentials of the fractal feature in the region of surveillance between regularly interval frames. When the moving ships are detected in region of surveillance, the device for safety alert is triggered. Experimental results have shown that the approach is feasible and effec- tive. It has achieved real-time and reliable alert to avoid collisions of moving ships to bridge piers. Dr Daric Erminote Dec 25, 2020·9 min read
11.1 Introduction
The fact that more and more ships are built while their size becomes bigger and bigger is introducing the high risk of collision between bridge and ship in inland waterways. Incidences of ship-bridge collision mainly cause six types of results, i.e. damage of bridge, people casualty, damage of ship and goods, economical loss, social loss and environmental loss. A large amount of statistical analysis indicates that one of main reasons resulting in ship-bridge collision is the execrable natural environment such as poorly visible conditions, floods, etc. [1, 2].
Mainly, there are two existing strategies to avoid bridge-ship collision at present [3, 4]. One is a passive strategy in which fixed islands or safeguard surroundings are built around bridge piers. The shortages of the passive method are: it could not avoid ship damage from a collision; the costs are normally high; and it becomes less effective with constant increase of ship size. The other is an active strategy that uses radar or video images to monitor moving ships by measuring their course for collision estimation. Compared with the passive method, the active method avoids damage of both bridge and ship and its costs are low. However radar is difficult to detect course changes immediately due to its low short-term accuracy, and the high noise level makes radar sometimes hardly detect any objects from a clutter background. Sensors for visible light do not work well under poorly illu- minated conditions such as fog, mist and night. In contrast, infrared sensors are capable of adapting weather and light changes during a day. Moreover, the FLIR images overcome the problems that radar has, i.e. they have high short-term angle accuracy.
In design, the first consideration of the FLIR surveillance system is its robust- ness for detecting moving ships. The main difficulties are: (1) low thermal contrast between the detected object and its surroundings; (2) relatively low signal to noise ratio (SNR) under the weak thermal contrast; and (3) insufficient geometric, spatial distribution and statistical information for small targets [5].
Motion detection in a surveillance video sequence captured by a fixed camera can be achieved by many existing algorithms, e.g. frame difference, background estima- tion, optical flow method, and statistical learning method [6]. The most common method is the frame difference method for the reason that it has a great detec- tion speed and low computation cost. However the detection accuracy by using this method is strongly affected by background lighting variation between frames. The most complex algorithm is the optical flow method, by which the computa- tion cost is high. The statistical learning method needs training samples which may not be available in most cases, and its computation cost is also relatively high. The background estimation method is extremely sensitive to the changes of the lighting condition in which the background is established.
In the FLIR surveillance video sequence used for moving ship detection, a back- ground normally consists of various information, such as sky, the surface of river, water waves, large floating objects (non-detected objects) in a flooding season, etc. In many cases, ships and background in FLIR images are visually merged together. It is very difficult to detect the targets (moving ships) using normal methods mentioned above.
The new FLIR video surveillance system for bridge-ship collision avoidance is proposed in Section 11.2. Section 11.3 presents the novel infrared image pre- processing algorithm using multi-scale fractal analysis based on the blanket method. The moving ship detection algorithm in the region of surveillance is also developed in Section 11.3. Section 11.4 demonstrates the experimental results with detailed discussion and analysis. Finally, conclusions and future work are presented in Section 11.5.
11.2 The FLIR Video Surveillance System
In the system, a pan-tilt is fixed on bridge pier, and FLIR camera is installed on the pan-tilt. The visual region of FLIR i.e. the region of surveillance, can be adjusted by the pan-tilt, and is configured according to real conditions. The FLIR camera links to a personal computer (PC) through a frame grabber. When images are captured, the image processing program in PC’s memory is used to detect the moving ships. When the moving ships are detected in the region of surveillance, the device for safety alert is started. The ship driver could be alarmed if necessary, and he/she would take maneuvers to avoid ship-bridge collision. The flowchart of the system and sketch map of installation is depicted in Fig. 11.1.
Large amount of experiments carried out in the Yangtse River have proved that the minimum pre-warning distance between bridge pier and ship to avoid collision is 500 m in inland waterway, and the valid distance for moving ship detection is from 800 to 2,000m when the uncooled infrared FPA (focal plane arrays) ther- mal imaging camera is used. Therefore, this type of camera is suitable for the application. The camera resolution is 320 240 pixels. There are three ways designed to trigger the pre-warning signal, i.e. automatically broadcast the pre- recorded voice through very high frequency (VHF), automatically broadcast the pre-recorded voice through loudspeaker, and automatically turn on the assistant lighting system.
Fig. 11.1 Flowchart of the system framework and sketch of installation
11.3 The Detection Algorithm for Moving Ships
In order to detect moving ships in an FLIR image from complicated background along the inland waterway, a novel detection algorithm is developed. It consists of four main stages: extracting the region of interest, i.e. the region of surveillance (ROS); calculating the multi-scale fractal feature; generating the binary image based on the fractal feature; detecting moving ships by a frame difference method. The algorithm is schematically demonstrated in Fig. 11.2.
11.3.1 Extracting the ROS
The ROS is defined based on various conditions in real parts of the inland waterway. Consequently, the ROS appears as a part of region in the original image. The image analysis and processing is focused on this region only. This excludes unwanted regions to reduce computation cost in further processing.
11.3.2 Calculating the Multi-scale Fractal Feature
In practice, ships in FLIR images are treated as man-made objects in contrast to natural background. A fractal model can well describe complex surface structure characteristics for natural objects, but not for man-made objects [7, 8]. To some extent, fractal features of natural background keep relatively stable, but fractal fea- tures of man-made objects behave obviously variety. Therefore, the fluctuation of fractal features distinguishes natural and man-made objects with the variation of scale. The multi-scale fractal feature is proposed to reduce interference of natural background and enhance the intensity of ships.
Many researchers [9, 10] adopted Mandelbrot’s idea and extended it to surface area calculation. For a grey image surface, the fractal dimension can be estimated as in Eq. (11.1).
Fig. 11.2 The detection algorithm
11.3.3 Segmenting the Fractal Feature Image
C (x, y) provides sufficient information to discriminate natural background and ships. The simplest OSTU segmentation method [11] is used to segment the C (x, y) image. In the resulting binary image, pixel value 255 represents ships and other man-made objects.
11.3.4 Detecting Moving Ships
In the process of moving ship detection, a difference between two binary images generated from segmentation of C (x, y) is used. A group of pixels with non-zero values represent the difference. Based on the fact that the FLIR camera is fixed on a bridge pier, the process is summarized as follows.
11.4 Experimental Results and Discussion
The testing experiments were carried out an FLIR camera was mounted on a bridge pier. A Celeron1.5 Ghz PC was connected with the camera through a frame grabber, the frame size was 320 240, and the frame rate was 30 fps. The parameter settings in the algorithm were, the frame interval as ten frames, the value of threshold (th) as 5, the value of N set as 2, and the value of “max as 4. A group of testing results is demonstrated in Fig. 11.3. The average processing time for each step in the algorithm is shown in Table 11.1.
Observations have indicated that the speed of moving ships is from 20 to 30 km/h. The ROS defines the distance between moving ships and bridge pier as 800 — 2,000 m. Therefore the time during which a ship driver takes action to avoid collision to a bridge pier after altered is between 96 and 360 s. From Table 11.1, it is clearly shown that the FLIR surveillance system takes about one s to complete a process, due to the value N set as 2 or 3. It is satisfactory to the application with a real-time manner.
Comparative experiments were also carried out for system performance analysis in terms of reliability and effectiveness. The frame difference method was imple- mented to be compared with the proposed method. FLIR frames were carefully selected for this comparison. Weather conditions and time of a day were taken into account when 400 frames with 286 moving ships involved were chosen as the testing set. Two parameters were introduced as the criterion for the performance, i.e. false alarm ratio (FAR) and missed alarm ratio (MAR). The comparative results are shown in Table 11.2. Some typical experimental results are demonstrated in Fig. 11.4.
From the results in Table 11.2, it can be seen that the proposed method for bridge- ship collision avoidance is superior to the frame difference method in the criterion of both false alarm ratio and missed alarm ratio. From the results of the testing set and Fig. 11.4, the system is capable of adapting weather and light changes during a day.
It is worth to mention that while the FLIR system is mounted on bridge deck, the performance of surveillance system is impaired by vibration caused by moving vehicles on the bridge. Therefore, the FLIR system is mounted on a bridge pier in practice.
11.5 Conclusion
This paper presented a novel FLIR video surveillance system for bridge-ship col- lision avoidance by using the multi-scale fractal feature, by which moving ships have successfully been separated from the complex background in inland waterway images. The proposed algorithm for moving ship detection has achieved the real- time performance within the ROS in FLIR video sequences. Experimental results have proved that the developed FLIR video surveillance system is efficient in detect- ing moving ships to alert possible bridge-ship collisions. Its wide adaptability and | https://medium.com/@daric-erminote/nanotechnology-engineering-direct-optical-collision-avoidance-system-based-on-flir-image-sequences-34efb367f81c | ['Dr Daric Erminote'] | 2020-12-25 08:05:54.908000+00:00 | ['Electrical Engineering', 'Robotics', 'Nanotechnology', 'Video Surveillance', 'Defense And Security'] |
Interview: Justin Ahn, Co-founder of Quid.li | Quidli is a protocol designed to enable equity transfers over a decentralized network; this s erves a gateway for companies and talent to connect through fast and flexible equity-as-compensation. With tokenization of ownership equity, companies can increase liquidity to distribute in exchange for labor at any level or duration in a click. With an array of applications built on top of Quidli to add more features and control distribution, stakeholders can simply focus on their jobs with potential future rewards securely in hand. Quidli creates incentives for people to take risks so they can contribute to the projects that truly inspire them.
OCC: Would you agree with e-Commerce Giant Alibaba’s Jack Ma that said “Blockchain Is Not a Bubble, Bitcoin Is”?
Justin Ahn: From my perspective, the stronger core technology is Blockchain. I think it’s reasonable for anyone to assume that it is the more long-lasting part of the boom that’s happening right now. The technology does have its use cases, and you’re seeing more and more people finding appropriate use cases and fits to use it. For sure, that’s an indicator that Blockchain is the thing that’s here to stay. Regarding Bitcoin, it’s more appropriate to ask about cryptocurrency.
Out of all cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is by far the market leader. Whether or not it will stay forever, we can’t possibly know. But if I were to choose between Blockchain and Bitcoin, I would say that Blockchain is the technology that’s here to stay. We see private Blockchains that are becoming more and more used by big corporations. IBM was first, and now we’re looking at Amazon and Salesforce trying to jump on the trend.
OCC: Why does the United States hate the crypto world so much?
Justin Ahn: I don’t think it’s fair to say that they hate cryptocurrency. In fact, I think that the US government is being quite open about their process. The unfortunate misstep here was that they were quite negative in the beginning of this open process. It’s creating this big controversy that the US — a general tech and innovation leader — is suddenly extremely negative about a potentially huge tech trend.
To be fair, I think the US is evolving. Today, there’s significantly less negativativity around cryptocurrencies than it was a couple of months ago. At the beginning of this year, everyone was like “Wow, we gotta get out of the US if we’re gonna do a cryptocurrency or Blockchain-based startup.” I think it’s impossible to completely divorce the two. If you look at the majority of major cryptocurrency-involved startups, they’re still led largely by American founders. But at the same time, in the interest of the long game everyone needs to find a regulatory solution at the state level.
If we’re looking at Europe, there’s a lot of positive talk happening right now. But the only countries that have taken action are Switzerland and Germany. Despite the overall positiveness towards crypto, no one else has set up frameworks. It is an opportunity for other countries to jump on this before the US. Once the US does make a decision, I think it’s gonna be hard to not be in line with everything that’s happening. Fortunately or unfortunately, the US will probably have to play a big part in what’s going to happen moving forward for cryptocurrency.
OCC: Do you think the US will finally adapt to the crypto scene and accept that Blockchain technology is here to stay? Companies like J.P Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley seem pretty interested in it.
Justin Ahn: From a bank’s perspective, I can understand why they take so long to adapt, given that cryptocurrency is slowly becoming an exchangeable trading product. Despite how negative the press has made the banking system look like, I understand why a major bank doesn’t want to adopt a very risky product immediately. Even today, if you go online, the real hardcore fans are kind of like conspiracy theorists. They think that the banks want to steal all the money of the average person and give it to the one 1% wealthy; and that they’re meant to generate profit for their high net worth individuals.
To be fair, if you come from a small, underdeveloped country, there’s even more distrust of the banking systems. Honestly, in countries like the US or in Western European countries, even though you hate the bank there’s still nobody else to trust. They’re not the best, but at the same time what are you going to do except put your money under a mattress somewhere?
For better or worse, we still need the banks and we still need fiat. For them to break through the crypto space, it would be a huge signal to the market that there is some legitimacy. It’s not just a bunch of conspiracy theorists speculating on global collapse. It will be a game changer now that these big players are coming in, both for Blockchain and for crypto.
OCC: Assuming that in the end, US accepts ICOs and cryptocurrencies, what do you think will happen on Wall Street? What about with all the startup founders on Silicon Valley?
Justin Ahn: To be honest, I come from a corporate background, so I might be a little biased here. Banking is a huge industry. It’s not just trading; there’s a lot of different moving parts to banking, even though the general public looks at the banking system mainly as an investment medium. There’s investment banking, retail, institutional banking — a lot of moving parts are involved. The people that we associate with the “Wolf of Wall Street” are mostly the traders. These are the guys with the dollar signs in their eyes.
It’s still far from mainstream. Now that these institutional players are coming in, it’s gonna become more mainstream. But in terms of what will happen with Wall Street and Silicon Valley, I think it’s a bit premature to say that this is the end of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. I think we’ll see a lot more smart people trying to find work in this space. Just like with Silicon Valley after the big dotcom boom in the 90s when the idea was to finish school and get a job at a bank or consulting firm, today we’re looking at a huge shift over to the tech industry. I’ve read about the way banks are losing great talent to companies like Google, Uber, Facebook; which I think is true.
When I finished college back in 2007, I was still trying to get a job at a consulting firm or investment bank. But then the tech trend happened. When I finished my MBA in 2014, more people were interested to work for Google and Facebook. Even for smart people, it’s kind of like following on the trend — what’s safe and what gives you a lot of money. There’s potential and once we’ll see a stabilisation in Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, there will be a talent shift. To be honest, I’m part of that first group chasing after that goal.
OCC: What do you think will happen in the digital marketing and advertising space, now that Facebook and Google have banned ads related to ICOs and Blockchain?
Justin Ahn: It’s kind of like a double-edged sword. One the one hand, it’s great that there’s more momentum and a lot of activity. But on the other hand, it has brought a lot of distrust, misinformation, and scams. It’s weird to take a position, although I do like the fact that there’s more legitimacy coming through regulation and better rules around the area. At the same time, it’s a little sad.
The best analogy I like to use is that of PayPal. Back then, there was no regulation for PayPal. The same thing is happening recently with guys like Revolut. There was no regulatory pressure, so they built the technology and it works. Now people want it, so now they’re reverse-engineering the regulation to make it legal. The same thing is happening with a lot of Blockchain-based applications. First, let’s make something that works first and that people want. In the case of banking, given the high fees by banks, exchanging and transferring huge amounts of money via crypto comes with significantly lower fees and in most cases it takes less than a few hours compared to days and weeks by traditional players.
Overall, in the digital space, people tend to go to the paid channels by default; which is good because there’s an initial growth that you can get through paid channels. But if you work in digital marketing and you have enough experience in the field, you become aware that sooner or later it’s gonna come to an end. We call it “the law of shitty click-throughs.”
There’s a rightful image of scammers, but at the same time it’s a lot of work. It’s truly impressive to see the amount of effort people put in to make money. Having said that, I’m a big believer in not just exploiting paid channels alone. It sucks that Facebook, Mailchimp, and Google Adwords don’t want to have anything to do with crypto. But at the same time — and I’m not just talking about crypto — it should teach any person working in the online digital marketing space that you shouldn’t just focus on the paid channels.
Drew Houston from Dropbox did a presentation back in 2010 that still stays with me. He emphasised that it’s really about the product at the end of the day and the virality of your product, not just about viral marketing but how viral your product can become. If you have a strong community of believers, that’s your best tool. Everything else is secondary. You can used paid channels to get that initial kick. But if your vision is not there and if you’re not engaging with your community, it’s not sustainable. It’s all about getting true believers on board. When these people start to use your product, and they really believe in it, that’s gonna help with word of mouth and virality.
OCC: What went well so far for you and your business? What advice would you give to people looking to break through the crypto space?
Justin Ahn: Sure. We’re still pretty early stage. We took some time to study and understand the key elements other ICOs have done. The crazy thing is, everything in this space is changing every day. A best practice one day can become totally irrelevant the next day. Having said that, we’re gonna go for an ICO. I am aware that we’re still in uncharted waters. Even though people keep saying that last year was the golden year for ICOs with a total valuation of $7 billion, we’re halfway through 2018 and we’ve already reached $9 billion.
And once you enter this space, everyone will try to sell you all kinds of services, from marketing to Blockchain development and everything in between. One thing we’ve done well with our product is — we’re kind of our first use case. We’re building a future work product. It’s about building companies by splitting equity. In our case, we’ve started using tokens instead of equity. Every day, we’re rewriting our ownership structure: who owns equity in the company based on the contributions they do, and will equal to tokens if we’re gonna achieve a successful ICO. That’s what we will reward all of our contributors. I think that the coolest thing is that we have now a team of 15 that are 100% working on a token basis. To me, that’s surreal. In 5 months, we’ve put a team of 15 people together and we have the burn rate of a startup with one person.
We’re only spending money on the things we need to spend money on. Everyone on board, whether they’re actually contributing or they’re part of our growth community, our goal is to hit them with that message first. I think that’s something we’ve done really well, building our community. And communicating this has helped us attract our first batch of future customers.
Justin is a co-founder at Quidli, the blockchain protocol to split equity and trade it for labor. He has led business and product development at technology companies in Europe and Asia. Most notably, he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Rocket Internet where he built procurement in the launch of ZALORA Vietnam; and was an M&A analyst at KPMG Advisory in Seoul, South Korea. Justin also holds an MBA from HEC Paris.
For more blockchain news and debate, connect with us on Telegram: https://t.me/occurrency | https://medium.com/occurrency/interview-justin-ahn-co-founder-of-quid-li-964fac16b605 | ['Georgiana Ghiciuc'] | 2018-06-26 08:03:30.213000+00:00 | ['Blockchain News', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Interview', 'Bitcoin News', 'Bitcoin'] |
A better way to API | I believe we have a problem with APIs.
Not in principle, nothing wrong with the idea of application programming interfaces. They are helpful to make a front-end talking to the back-end, and get systems interacting in a useful way. Nor do I have any problems with public APIs intended for the end-user. I can check where my train is on the go because I have an app that can invoke an API published by Transport for London, and Open Banking makes my life admin slightly easier. Admittedly, API technologies of today are also better than they used to be.
My grudge is towards the use of APIs in business transactions, and especially relatively recent obsession with the use of Web technologies for that. When I talk about business transactions, I mean an automated and technology-enabled equivalent of completing an order form, raising a service request, signing a cheque, proposing contract amendment —anything that has a real world effect, contractual implications, and, more often than not, a monetary cost. Systems integration in an indispensable part of an inter-organizational process automation, and, it always happens via an API of some sort, regardless of whether the underlying technology is REST over HTTP or an FTP server. If anything can be certain in our increasingly interconnected world, is that it is only going to get more interconnected and require more integrations to be designed and built.
In this post I am touching upon a spectrum of problems that have been making implementation of APIs for business transaction problematic and very expensive. I will also touch upon most common practices used to alleviate the pain. Finally, I am sharing hope that some recent technology advances — specifically, distributed ledgers — could make some of the issues finally go away.
First, what do I know? Throughout my 20+ years career in software engineering I have been building systems integrations of all kinds, and seen fads come and go. I authored a fair number of CSV file formats, XML schemas, IDLs, WSDLs, Swaggers, ProtoBuffs, AVROs, and GraphQLs. I also wrote and debugged plenty of code talking to AT modems, FTP servers, SQL databases, IBM MQ Series middleware, JMS libraries, and HTTP endpoints. I have battle scars and nightmares. At some point, because of an error in API implementation that escaped testing, I managed to wipe out passwords for millions of online customer accounts of a major retail brand. At a different time, because I incorrectly implemented my own spec, I made tens of thousands of product license keys incompatible with a license server. These are fascinating stories which I will leave for another time, but it feels I have seen enough to warrant strongly held views.
Speaking in pure functional terms, executing a transaction over an API isn’t a rocket science. You send a request, get a response, and that’s it. However, in a real business-to-business interaction, because of the real world effects, an inordinate amount of effort — perhaps 95-99% — is applied to make sure that in all eventualities the things stay under control for all parties involved. And that is what makes business-to-business integrations expensive.
Broadly speaking, what makes business transactions over an API a hard work is the need to maximise the chances of all involved parties agreeing about the facts. Often because of intermittent technology issues — but also occasionally due to a spec misinterpretation, an implementation error, a third-party blunder, a natural disaster, or a malicious action— there could be a disagreement. In bilateral integrations it takes one of three forms:
You are certain you made a transaction with your counterparty, but they deny knowing anything about it. You counterparty insists they made a transaction with you, but you don’t know anything about it. Neither you nor your counterparty are aware of a transaction, but the transaction actually happened and there is a real world change affecting others (these most commonly occur when you try to ‘smartly’ recover from one of the first two).
Worth noting that if a business process involves more than two parties — and most do — the number of scenarios when things go wrong, as well as the probability of an occurrence, raise exponentially. Another point worth making is that it’s irrelevant whether a durable record of transaction exists somewhere in logs when one of above failures happen. The record would aid a recovery for sure, but does not do anything with the fact that there is a problem that needs resolution.
Speaking of which, the gold standard of an error resolution — people from both sides getting involved — is prohibitively expensive for most integration scenarios which were deemed important enough to justify investment in an automation in the first instance. If you fail in 0.1% of cases, an inter-organizational human intervention is likely to take at least an hour to run its course, which means that a million transactions will likely to take a thousand hours to investigate and recover from errors. That is if you leave aside the real world effects, and their legal, reputational, and monetary implications.
Over years, a lot of engineering ingenuity went into thinking about the failure modes and designing solutions around them. The overarching goal was to decrease the percentage of failures that require an intervention and thus reduce the ongoing cost of an integration, so, in practice, probabilities of a failure necessitating an investigation are lower than 0.1%. Covering emerged best practices in detail is out of scope for this post, but I simply mention a few most effective ones:
Request idempotency. Many technology failures are transient in nature and tend to resolve themselves over time. An ability to send the same request repeatedly without a risk of double-counting helps to automatically recover in a good number of failure scenarios. Compensating transactions. When a failure is of a well-known type and has limited consequences, it might be easier to simply send a reverse instruction to restore status quo after the failure. (cancel an earlier order, refund a payment, reverse a change). Needless to say, compensating transactions are transactions still, and all the same failure modes apply. Transaction reconciliation. Exchanging records of transactions that both parties believe they undertook with each other using different means with the intention to find any unexpected ones.
None of these methods is a silver bullet, and, besides, they are solution patterns, rather than reusable building blocks. For example, you cannot download a library that takes care of reconciliations for your API. Applying patterns correctly requires qualified engineering effort (read: cost and risk of errors) to assess suitability and adapt to unique integration task at hand.
When APIs for business transactions use Web technologies — mainly that’s using DNS protocol and X.500 certificates as an identity layer, HTTP over the public Internet for transport, and JSON as a payload format — it adds another layer of misery. Designed mainly for human-driven interaction with an aid of a web browser, the technology stack lacks built-in support for asynchronous delivery, receipt acknowledgements, durable records, rich payload schemas, and simply have too many moving parts that could be misconfigured and go wrong or exploited by a bad actor. Have you ever clicked ‘Accept risk and continue’ when seeing an expired SSL certificate warning? How many teams actually audit the list of trusted CA roots on their outbound integrations?
In my slightly controversial view, as far as business transactions are concerned, AMQP almost always gives a more elegant solution compared to HTTP. In fact, any well thought-through RESTful API for business transactions ends up with a lot of asynchronous communication features like correlation identifiers and polling for long running operations, which are unnatural for HTTP and, in the absence of a message-oriented protocol, are cumbersome to implement. Pushing it even further, in my view, two of the most hugely successful protocol stacks for high-value business transactions — SWIFT (banking) and FIX (securities trading) — are practically anti-Web because of the use of private networking and, in case of FIX, binary encodings. Neither is without problems, don’t get me wrong on this.
And I have not even begun talking about the pains of changing a published API once it has live consumers who you have a contractual relationship with. It is not uncommon to give counterparties notice years in advance about a change that potentially breaks compatibility. In a world where product teams are compelled to make daily releases into production, the need to maintain all those layers of backward compatibility does not come cheap.
All these deficiencies could be accounted and compensated for, and in some cases the benefits outweigh the costs, but the fundamental reality of a business-to-business APIs remains: they are very expensive to build and use, because they need a lot of engineering effort to be efficiently designed, safely implemented, and reliably maintained. As a consequence, perhaps only the top 1% of all real world inter-organizational business processes that could be automated, actually get automated. This must be one of factors contributing to the productivity paradox of recent decades, whereby despite all the advanced technology, economic output per hour worked has not been increasing — presumably because a lot of people are stuck in menial operational roles that cannot be profitably automated with the present-day technologies, or, in fact, were automated badly and carrying operational overhead.
We need a bigger boat.
This is why I am excited about the potential of distributed ledger technologies in many areas. Perhaps it’s not surprising given my background that I have spent time reflecting on what it means for automating business processes. My firm conclusion is that that eventually distributed ledgers will become a dominant paradigm for implementing APIs for business transactions, and that it will allow considerably more inter-organizational business processes to be automated in a cost-effective way.
When making such a bold claim I have to hastily clarify that I do not mean any of the current public permissionless blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Even though they technically are distributed ledgers, they aim at solving very different set of problems. They may have a profound impact on how we go about our everyday business over a long term, but in the narrow sense of automating business transactions between organizations they are not a good fit. No, I am specifically talking about permissioned platforms such as Hyberledger Fabric, R3 Corda, ConsenSys Quorum, and Tendermint Core which allow a group of organisations to form a private network with controlled admittance, strong privacy, and a well-defined legal and governance framework. I don’t think we are necessarily going to be building on these specific platforms in future — they will come and go — but the features make such a compelling case that it’s hard not to get curious about them.
In it’s most basic definition, a distributed (or shared) ledger is an append-only immutable record of state that is replicated, shared, and synchronised across several nodes in a peer-to-peer network without a central authority. In other words, there cannot be a record committed to a distributed ledger that is reflected differently by different nodes. This ‘you know I known you see what I see’ principle goes long way to eliminate a broad range of failures that integration engineers used to grapple with in any business transaction.
What makes distributed ledgers such a compelling option for designing APIs of the future? In broad terms, there are two major features deserving careful consideration.
Firstly, any distributed ledger platform comes with a protocol stack that covers the basics of inter-organizational communication, but also ventures much further into what traditionally is in the application domain: transaction atomicity and validation, business rules enforcement, record-keeping, etc. For an application developer any additional feature that the underlying protocol provides means one less thing to worry about, and distributed ledgers come with a lot of plumbing. Moreover, not only the stack is ‘thick’, it is also highly cohesive, which makes it more effective (end-to-end principle), evolvable (less need for coordination across layers), and secure (fewer independently operating layers reducing the number of attack vectors). Designed for Byzantine fault-tolerance, distributed ledgers hit the sweet spot by preventing the same very issues that plague most business transaction API designs and implementations: the potential to disagree about facts.
Further, unlike best practices of API design I referred to above, which require a skilful interpretation in each individual case, distributed ledgers are actual software implementing the features in a reusable manner. To be specific:
Idempotency is a fundamental feature of any distributed ledger protocol, (although in an upside-down way better known as the ‘double-spend problem’). If a transaction is accepted by a distributed ledger, it cannot possibly be double-counted.
Compensating transactions are not required to overcome communication faults, because there are either identical copies of a record across all nodes of the network, or it is not in any of the nodes.
Transaction reconciliation is built into the ledger itself, where every party has a local record of every historical transaction they were involved in, which is guaranteed to be identical to any other party’s record, and, in fact, carries their counterparties’ digital signatures proving their authenticity. Parties may still have consistency issues between the ledger node and other internal systems of record, but it’s a lesser problem by at least an order of magnitude.
The other principally important feature is that distributed ledgers are inherently multi-party. This is arguably their most important characteristic as far as business integration is concerned. Unlike most APIs in use today, especially those based on Web technologies, there could be any number of entities involved in a transaction via a distributed ledger, and they are all guaranteed to see the facts identically. Different ledger architectures have different privacy models (e.g. network-, channel-, or transaction-level privacy), but as long as it is correctly chosen for a given business process, it will take care of the data synchronization and information protection needs out of the box.
I said above that in an inter-organizational business process both the probability of a failure and the number of different failure scenarios increases exponentially with number of parties involved. The truth is that we live in a world where the majority of practically useful (and valuable) business transactions, when considered in their entirety from start to finish, involve at least four players: two transacting entities (to establish what the transaction is about) and two banks (for the money need to change hands). Whilst most APIs are bilateral, there are, in fact, four different bilateral relationships that need to be addressed. To put simply, they go somewhere along the following lines:
a) Actual transactional interaction between party A and party B, which gives raise to a financial obligation from A to B, carried over a specific business-to-business API,
b) A instructing its bank to make a transfer to the account of B in their bank according to the invoice, probably via a SWIFT message,
c) B receiving an assurance that A’s money are safely in B’s account, again probably via a SWIFT message, and finally
d) both banks settle mutual obligations using some sort of interbank facility, such as RTGS or BACS.
A lot of things could go wrong here, and the fact that these interactions follow different lifecycles does not help to reduce complexity. As a result, small armies of operational personnel are employed by all participants, which adds a lot of drag and stifles innovation by making changes hard and risky. And this is just a simple B2B trade. Business ecosystem of securities markets, especially when conducted internationally, involves at least a dozen different types of organizations, but it’s not too far from other industries with complex supply chains and information flows.
Distributed ledger in theory allows all parties to be privy to the same set of facts related to a transaction, which makes it possible to contemplate drastic simplification of the integration landscapes, reducing the cost and risk for everyone involved. Because of complexities inherent in it, it is no wonder that financial services industry seems to be trying so hard to bring in the innovation driven by this technology, but pretty much anyone stands to gain from it eventually.
Building a business-to-business API on top of a distributed ledger protocol — once you unlearn the old habits of the engineering mind — is a liberating experience. Granted, the technology is still new. There are still many ways to do something wrong, and not many textbooks around. It is also not a silver bullet, it’s just a technology. Moreover, many people, when you mention distributed ledger, give you a blank stare and mumble something about Bitcoin. Nevertheless, I am convinced this is all going to get easier going forward, and many engineers and their business stakeholders will see the benefits of the new technology. Let’s embrace distributed ledgers as a legitimate way to build APIs for business transactions, give it a fair appraisal, and do the right thing for our clients. | https://medium.com/think-emerging/a-better-way-to-api-dc545a2f130b | ['Igor Lobanov'] | 2020-12-17 11:44:31.140000+00:00 | ['Software Architecture', 'Distributed Ledgers', 'Integration Architecture', 'Enterprise Architecture', 'API'] |
Forager is a Capitalism Simulator Without Consequence | Forager is a Capitalism Simulator Without Consequence
Is Capitalism a Skill? What happens when you level up?
At it’s core, Forager is simple: you gather resources, use those resources to make better resources, then use those better resources to make even better resources. You start with a small plot of land, then use coins to buy new plots. New plots increase the amount of land you have access to, which means more space to place structures, more ground for random resources to spawn from, and sometimes something else. But I’m not here to spoil those little surprises for you if you choose to play Forager. I’m here to tell you that when I set out playing Forager I was genuinely surprised by the game’s excellent design, especially within the inventory system. I thought it was so smart, I figured I’d write about it.
This excellent design seemed to come from HopFrog taking player feedback and incorporating it into the game’s updates, of which the last major one was in July. However, the more I played the more uncomfortable I started feeling. Some of the excellent design crumbles a bit as you continue and becomes just good design. Still good, but not quite excellent. That, combined with not enjoying the puzzles, exploration, or combat much after the first couple hours seemed to explain my discomfort, and I relented. However, I continued playing because the grind was enjoyable and addictive. As I continued playing though, I found the true source of my discomfort while perusing the skill table: capitalism.
Gaining entrepreneurship experience at my unpaid internship
Is Capitalism a Skill?
In several Civilization games, capitalism is something akin to a skill. In Civilization V it gives you “+1 Local Happiness from every Mint, Bank, and Stock Exchange.” In Civilization VI, capitalism gives you “widespread awe among your diplomatic contacts.” I find both of these effects silly. After the Great Recession of 2008, thinking that capitalism and banks cause happiness is ridiculous. It would be more accurate if it reduced the chance of other capitalistic countries from going to war with you, and increased your chance to attempt to coup another country, but I’m not a Civilization dev so who am I to say whether capitalism makes people happy.
Maybe the use of the words “capitalism” and “colonization” as skills is satirical in Forager. I thought this might be the case, but I can’t find much evidence to support it. The only push-back that I’ve encountered thus far is a druid who complains about someone destroying nature too much. They tell you, “The natural resources are being exploited by little jerks with pickaxes.” This could point to satire or irony sure, but as the only source of it thus far in the game I’m finding it hard to believe. Besides, the druid won’t stop you as you destroy the natural resources on the island repeatedly. No, they’ll complain but won’t act. There isn’t any reason for the player to stop mining and chopping trees. You need the resources to expand, after all.
You could argue that this is reminiscent of contemporary US politics, since quite recently the Supreme Court voted to allow a pipeline to be built underneath the Appalachian Trial, having two liberals join the conservatives, including Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Or even politicians profiteering off the Iraq War because of arms companies giving them money so they passed bills for them.
My power plant helps my factories work faster, while my offshore drilling rig is a bit slower. All in the name of progress!
As you progress in the game, you unlock more and more industrial structures. You start off with structures like a forge to smelt ore, and an anvil that you can use to make a sword. Then you’ll get to factories, power plants, and offshore drills. Yes. Offshore drills. You feed the offshore drill a bunch of bottles and, after a wait, it gives you bottled oil in return. The same tiny bottles you use to catch bugs or store milk from a cow in-game. This interpretation of the offshore drill feels very “uwu exploitation of the earth’s resources is adorable in this smol little bottle hehe” and in 2019/20 it makes me feel tired.
There is no accountability in Forager for exploiting the land. By design, natural resources repeatedly spawn on the map so you aren’t ever stripping the land of resources. The druid’s concerns seem valid, but are actually unfounded because of how the game world operates: it is fact that resources will respawn; it is fact that you will never have an oil spill occur because of your offshore drill; it is a fact that your factories will never induce a global warming-like event. This made me start considering how the game uncritically uses terms like capitalism and how this complacency might affect the player. Although, because of how the game world operates, maybe this article is unfounded. We’re this deep though, so let’s dig a bit deeper.
Colonization
You can colonize for pennies at the beginning
Colonization is also a skill in Forager. In Forager colonization makes plots of land cheaper and easier to buy, allowing you to expand at a faster rate. Let us consider one real-world instance of colonization: Europeans colonizing America. According to Business Insider, “Between 1492 and 1600, 90% of the indigenous populations in the Americas had died. That means about 55 million people perished,” and Forager equates that to buying plots of land. For what it’s worth, the plots of land do increase in price the further away from the starting area you get. Although, any metaphor derived out of that seems pointless in comparison to the triviality Forager considers colonization with: just another fact of expansion.
Colonization, just like capitalism, is also free of consequence in Forager. The game even has buffs that makes it easier to “colonize” new plots of lands by reducing their prices temporarily. There are no indigenous villages being pillaged, no peoples being raped or killed, or leaders being forced to bend the knee in the hope they and their people aren’t murdered.
When you don’t consider the complacency with which Forager treats capitalism and colonization, Forager is a fun game. It made me feel impervious to the consequences of capitalism, and made me realize that the only way I’ll ever feel like a billionaire is through video games.
This is especially surprising because of how open HopFrog is with how tough Forager was to create. There are dev blog posts about changing the design of secrets and puzzles because they “sucked” in the demo. There is also a comic in-game about how he had to move back home and his mother invested her life savings into Forager, “barely knowing what a videogame even was.” Maybe, if we had a shorter work week and were paid more in general we could use that time to create art like Forager without worrying about income. We could more easily work on projects that truly brought us and others joy.
In the end, Forager’s uncritical takes on capitalism and colonization made me feel tired. It made me consider how much capitalist propaganda is built into videogames simply because so many people don’t realize that a better world is possible. The game does keep me coming back and grinding though, and maybe, when we consider what “grinding” under capitalism is like, there is a lesson about capitalism in the game after all. | https://medium.com/vistas-mag/forager-is-a-capitalism-simulator-without-consequence-cf8145f8ca | [] | 2020-09-07 21:34:54.987000+00:00 | ['Propoganda', 'Gaming', 'Games Crit', 'Games Writing', 'Videogames'] |
How to Prevent Neck and Back Pain When Carrying a Bucket Seat | Do you have a baby? Bucket seats get heavy to carry quickly and you want to prevent neck and back pain don’t you? If you’re carrying a bucket car seat like most people have been for decades, it won’t be long before you start having some form of neck and back pain. And most people don’t think of the consequences of carrying the bucket seat the way it has been carried forever.
When your baby is only 6, 7, or 8 pounds, it’s not really a big deal to lift, pull, slide, and swing that bucket around. But when your baby becomes more than twice that weight, you’re going to start to wonder why your carrying shoulder hurts, why your elbow is always sore, and why your wrist and hand cramp all the time. And how have you carried a weight like this in an awkward position? Almost never, and now you’re doing it ALL DAY LONG, EVERY DAY!
In this video, Dr. Bajor shows you the proper and ‘cool’ way to carry that bucket seat that minimizes stress on your spine and makes even the heaviest baby a breeze to carry around!
Watch, learn, and share! 95% of people do not know this carrying technique but this is the way to go!
Please feel free to visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/accesswellness! Dr. Jacqueline Boyd and Paul Bajor are the only husband and wife chiropractic team in Airdrie, Alberta. Their practice, Access Chiropractic and Wellness, is located at #120, 52 Gateway Drive NE in the north of Airdrie. They have been in practice in Airdrie since 2004 and in practice since 2001. They have two kids named Liam and Julia and have a large family based practice. They have a vested interest in keeping Airdrie and surrounding communities healthy because Airdrie is also their home.
Drs. Jacqueline Boyd and Paul Bajor are also both registered and active members of the ICPA (International Chiropractic Pediatric Association).
www.accesschiropractic.net
#airdriechiropractor #airdriechiropractors #accesschiropractic #airdriemoms #airdriedads #airdriealberta #backpain | https://medium.com/@pbajor2001/how-to-prevent-neck-and-back-pain-when-carrying-a-bucket-seat-c32f7fd9b03b | ['Paul Bajor'] | 2020-03-17 22:42:17.623000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Chiropractic Calgary', 'Car Seat', 'Back Pain Treatment', 'Back Pain'] |
Financial Literacy Is Important Because 2 Out Of 3 Americans Can’t Pass A Literacy Test | Learn How To Make Your Children More Aware | The number one problem in today’s generation and the economy is the lack of financial literacy — Alan Greenspan, Former Chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States.
For better or worse, money touches all the areas of life. Financial literacy is crucial because it equips us with the knowledge and skills that we need to manage money effectively. Lack of financial literacy and not having the skills to manage personal finances cost a high amount to Americans in the year 2019. NFEC conducted a research in the year 2019 to estimate how much Americans lost during the year due to lack of financial knowledge and poor money management habits.
A total of 2,506 people participated in the survey between 31st December 2019 and 3rd January 2020. Six different age groups were interviewed in the survey, which asked a single question from the participants — “During the past year (2019), how much money do you think you lost because you lacked knowledge about personal finances?”
If we generalize the results to represent the then population of 240 million adults, lack of financial literacy cost Americans a total of more than $307 billion in 2019. That is surely a whopping number.
Financial literacy is as imperative as earning money. Financial literacy power individuals to manage money with confidence, effectively allocate the earnings to the goals and limit the debt sensibly. In this blog, we’ll be covering the importance of financial literacy and how to teach money management skills to your children?
Let’s start with the basics -
What is Financial Literacy?
Financial Literacy is the confluence of financial, credit and debt management and the knowledge that is quintessential to make financially sound decisions — these decisions are integral to our everyday lives. Financial literacy impacts the daily issues an average family makes while managing their expenses, investing in a home, funding in their children’s education and ensuring an income at retirement.
According to the United States Treasury’s Financial Literacy and Education Commission, financial literacy is “the ability to use knowledge and skills to manage financial resources effectively for a lifetime of financial wellbeing.” Lack of financial management knowledge makes it hard to make major financial decisions like opening the right kind of savings account, investing, planning for retirement and paying off debts from student loans or credit cards.
Why is Financial Literacy Important?
Financial literacy helps you manage money with complete confidence, which means effectively allocating the earned money to the goals and limiting the debt.
In the year 2016, Bank of America conducted a study which included participants between the age of 18–26. Here are the findings of the study:
Only 16% of the millennials were optimistic about their financial future. 24% were not too optimistic about their financial future. 54% were somewhat optimistic when it comes to the financial future. 6% were not at all optimistic about their financial future.
The study showed that we are missing extremely valuable opportunities to teach the skills that will help the young generation become financially responsible citizens.
In the same year, Fortune published an article which stated that 2 out of 3 Americans can’t pass a financial literacy test. Vince Shorb, CEO of the National Financial Educators in California, US, while promoting financial literacy, asked 1,100 young adults between age 18–24 what high-school-level course they want to be a part of their curriculum. Over 50% of students asked to include “money management.”
Lack of financial literacy among the coming generations not only affect the economy of the nation but also leads to mental health issues like anxiety. In a report published by Bank of America in partnership with USA Today, author Andrew Pepler describes how the financial state of millennials determines their happiness and wellbeing in other areas of life. The survey published in 2015 portrays the cyclical nature of financial stress. Millennials who worry about their finances, at the later stage become worried about other areas of their lives.
The report shows the rising of anxiety amongst millennials due to lack of financial literacy and highlights the stress caused due to lack of money to manage the student loan, cost of living and for the wedding. Thus, financial literacy is not a thing of adults, like various other values, this should be inculcated in children from a young age itself. From the moment of birth, a child starts developing behavioural habits. Building financial literacy for children involves taking proactive steps to mold positive behaviours around money handling that counteract marketing and other social influences.
Here are expert perspectives on why financial literacy is important?
Paul Goebel, Director, Student Money Management Center at the University of North Texas
Cherry Dale, Director of Financial Education, Virginia Credit Union
“Financial literacy, for me, is the most personal debt I have…between my wife and I we paid off $110,000 of debt in five years, because we just learned how to organize our finances in such a way that allowed us to do that. You know, we don’t make a ton of money, but by learning the process and learning what you can do to better organize your life through financial literacy, you can accomplish things a heck of a lot faster and more efficiently.”
Phil Schuman, Director, MoneySmarts Program at Indiana University
Latoya Goree, Director, Office of Financial Literacy at UMKC
Travis Cook, Education Specialist, Utah State Board of Education
What are the Basic Financial Literacy Skills?
There are so many choices when it comes to how to safeguard and invest in your money. Although teaching Financial Literacy Skills can be overwhelming, financial literacy begins with basic skills which should be taught to children at the young age itself. In the book, The Art of Allowance, author John Lanza has identified following three core money-smart skills that kids can begin learning at early stage:
Distinguishing between needs and wants
Setting and saving for goals
Making smart money choices
These basic skills provide the foundation for financial literacy skills. Every family has a different approach to develop the financial understanding among children. It is important for parents to understand that when we learn from our experiences and embrace our financial mistakes, we craft a useful program for our children. Many parents have also found that during the process of teaching their children, they also learned a lot about themselves and made adjustments on how they used to manage money.
When you equip your children with basic financial literacy skills, you will make your teenagers traveling towards adulthood with increased responsibility of handling their own financial responsibilities.
5 Financial Literacy Skills to Teach your Children
Financial literacy starts by teaching the following lessons to your children:
Sensible and responsible financial decisions start by being able to differentiate what is necessary to have and what is nice to have. Families spend their money first on essential needs like food, shelter and healthcare. Meanwhile, spending money on nice-to-have purchases such as toys and vacations is a priority after essential needs are met.
Older children and teenagers can further refine the difference between needs and wants. For instance, smartphones in today’s internet-driven world can be considered as a need, however desiring iPhone11 is a luxury. Likewise, home is a necessity, however, having a personal bathroom falls into the category of want.
Children, whether from poor or average households or wealthy families, need to know that money is finite, which means money used in purchasing one item won’t be available to purchase the other item. An easy way to teach this is to make children participate in everyday choices.
For instance, you can take them for grocery shopping and let them decide between two items, such as nutrition-rich milk powder (need) and cookies (want), and tell them that you don’t have enough budget to buy both.
According to Adrienne Penta, executive director of the Center for Women and Wealth, one of the foundational financial lessons is to make your child understand how to make a purchase. Practicing delayed gratification helps children make savings for necessary expenses in adulthood like college.
Parents can help children practise delayed gratification by not purchasing every item they request. Parents can solidify this even more by not making impulse purchases themselves and explaining to children while shopping that they are not purchasing something because they don’t need this at the moment. When it comes to children making their own purchases, parents should ask questions like “Is it necessary to have it now or can you have it later?”
Most of the lessons children need to learn to become financially literate relates to the behavior and value, and not to the technical aspects of how money works. However, credit is an exception here.
Children should be taught that credit means borrowing from others and this comes with a cost. Children should also know that credit can be a valuable tool. According to Dave Ramsey, personal finance expert and American Radio Host, credit can lead to overspending and significant interest expenses. However, credit is not bad as long as it is used responsibly and this is what you need to teach your children — using credit to their advantage.
Teaching credit to young kids can be intricate as it is an abstract topic, however, teenagers can grasp the concepts and can use online debt calculators to see how interest adds up into loan.
By the time your kid is a teenager, you should provide them with savings examples by setting them up with a simple bank account. This takes money management to the next level and will prepare them for managing a much heftier account as they grow old.
By the time they join their college they will be equipped with the importance of savings. And by the time they head off to the university to accomplish their dreams, they will more likely have a savvy sensibility about managing their expenses.
One of the hard parts of giving children the control over money is that they are sure to commit mistakes, which might make you lose some of your hard-earned bucks. But, it is not important to rescue them from every mistake, they should have the liberty of making their own decisions. By learning from their mistakes, they will grow into adults who can manage their money as well.
The Bottom Line
As 7th century Muslim sage Ali ibn Abi Talib promoted, “There is no greater wealth than knowledge, and no greater poverty than ignorance.” Knowledge of managing the finances can not keep children off the debts, but with savings for emergencies.
We hope this article helped you in understanding the importance of financial literacy and why it is important to equip the coming generation with knowledge of money management. Comment your views and share with us further advice or tips on how to help children become financially literate. | https://medium.com/@thetrulywealthyservice/financial-literacy-is-important-because-2-out-of-3-americans-cant-pass-a-literacy-test-learn-f12974d8fa89 | ['The Truly Wealthy'] | 2020-12-17 16:45:45.154000+00:00 | ['Financial Literacy', 'Financial Planning', 'Money Management', 'Financial', 'Financial Literacy Tips'] |
New types of content will increase video consumption on non-TV devices | New types of video content (e.g. virtual reality, interactive sports, smart home footage), advancements in non-TV device video technology, and the introduction of new screen-based devices (e.g. smart displays, VR headsets) provides consumers with more flexibility and enables them to increasingly use non-TV devices for content consumption.
The confluence of high-powered computing, graphics cards, battery-efficiency, and higher-resolution/larger screens has made video performance and functionality across devices (i.e., from mobile through TV) relatively similar. Furthermore, the actual delivery (through Wi-Fi or data) of content is now tailored to most types of device and video players, optimizing video performance. This results in high-quality video becoming a commodity across screens (i.e., no longer exclusive to TVs). New device form factors have also been introduced, increasing the pool of screens available; in Ovum’s Digital Consumer Insights 2018: Media and Entertainment survey, 5% of respondents cited their ownership in a new segment: “Smart display with a digital assistant.”
Figure 1: Respondent ownership of screen-based devices*
Source: Ovum’s Digital Consumer Insights 2018. n=6,211 across Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, the UK, and the US. *Respondents were not asked about PC/laptop ownership.
Video content is becoming increasingly diverse, and not always best suited for TV viewing. Furthermore, new screen-based devices are providing better, more contextual ways to consume all types of video content, both old and new. Consumers may find camera-enabled smart displays like Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub Max the ideal device to consume room-specific content (e.g. cooking videos in the kitchen), to make video calls, or check in on security webcam footage. Computers, tablets, or smartphones are already heavily used for shorter-form content (e.g. YouTube), but can also provide better, more individualized experiences in the era of interactive long-form content (e.g. Netflix’s Bandersnatch, sports). The 4% of virtual reality (VR) headset owners surveyed will find their device a viable TV alternative to consume certain types of sports content (e.g. NBA in VR).
With the commoditization of video quality across devices, consumers can give more weight to device criteria like convenience (such as portability) or software as non-TV devices (e.g. smartphones) often have better interactive capabilities. Furthermore, consumers can place a larger emphasis on the context of the content consumption experience, such as whether it’s a shared or individual experience; for example, a VR user may prefer gaming via the VR headset when alone, but prefer using a games console when in company. Some parents prefer that the family engage in a shared content experience (e.g., children’s games available on the Amazon Echo Show) rather than individualized smartphone gaming.
While TVs will remain the most important screen for home entertainment for the foreseeable future, non-TV devices will often be better suited to consume evolving and new types of content. As non-TV devices continue to provide high-quality video on big-enough screens, they will take a bigger share of the consumer content viewership pie. | https://medium.com/@r.kaul.94/new-types-of-content-will-increase-video-consumption-on-non-tv-devices-a36e91318b1d | ['Rishi Kaul'] | 2019-07-26 13:01:01.297000+00:00 | ['Google', 'Smart Home', 'Virtual Reality', 'Smart Tv', 'Amazon'] |
Planning Beautiful Breakfasts for Breaking Your Fast in Style | Planning Beautiful Breakfasts for Breaking Your Fast in Style
Using the Meal Planner Form for breakfast
Photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash
Breakfast can be the most insignificant meal. Or the most important. It’s totally up to you, different each day. I think this is the most difficult meal to plan ahead because of – Who knows how you’ll feel in the morning a week ahead of time?
Sometimes you’re full from the day before and don’t want anything for hours, other times you’re starving. Sometimes you want something simple or some specific thing you dreamed about in the night.
This morning I wanted a meatloaf sandwich. We had hot meatloaf and potatoes and gravy last night and I knew there was meatloaf and bread available. A little catsup, salt and pepper. We split one sandwich with our coffee and felt satisfied. Sometimes we have more time, and want more of a celebratory meal.
But, planning has advantages, too. If you want Shakshuka (a Arabic dish of eggs poached in a spicy sauce of tomatoes and peppers) for breakfast, you need a recipe and all the ingredients if you want to make it at 7 am. My thought is to plan but be flexible. Then, if you have the ingredients but aren’t in the mood, you can save them for tomorrow, or perhaps for lunch.
So I still say, plan your meals. Sometimes in the morning, you don’t want to have to make any decisions. You can simply look on the list and get out the stuff without much dithering about what to eat. That works a lot of the time.
The Meal Planner up to now
This is the fourth in a series of articles about using a meal planning form I created. The first an introduction to the scheme, then a story about planning dinners, then one about lunches, this one is on breakfast.
The first thing to do on the form is answer five questions:
What do you have in refrigerator, pantry or garden that needs using? What do you have in the freezer that should be used up! What time constraints, meals away from home or guests for dinner are on your schedule this week? What dietary restrictions do you (or anyone you’re planning for) have this week? What do you feel like eating or cooking this week? Are there any special foods you’d like to eat, have been craving? Any recipes you’ve wanted to try?
Then fill in any days when you will be eating elsewhere, working late and have limited time for cooking, have a guest with a special diet, etc. Assuming you already have seven dinners and lunches planned, fill in any days you can use something from those meals to add to breakfast (Fish cakes with eggs, ham or steak with eggs, leftover fried rice, millet patties, potatoes and greens, or any leftover you like to eat for breakfast that you have already in the refrigerator from a former meal)
Breakfast plans
Of course, if you want, you could start your planning with breakfast, since that’s the first thing you cook in the day. Might give you a different perspective.
Think about what you usually eat for breakfast. Maybe you have oatmeal every day but Sunday when you have pancakes or waffles. Okay, not much to plan there.
But, if that sounds too boring, why not alternate days of your usual breakfast with something different that could provide a different set of nutrients. Also variation is more satisfying to your curious taste buds.
There are all kinds of possibilities:
Protein bowls with a formula like greens, beans, rice, poached egg, hot sauce
Toast with almond butter, or avocado and an egg, or tomato and smoked salmon
Fish with a potato or millet cake.
Pancakes, or waffles or French Toast, plain or with all sorts of additions
Saute of vegetables- sweet potato, onion, garlic, broccoli, mushrooms with or without eggs scrambled into it.
Then of course there are eggs: scrambled, soft boiled, jammy, hard boiled, fried, poached and omelets with all manner of additions. From plain cheese to multiple cheeses, vegetables and meat additions. With fried potatoes and peppers and onions. With creamed chipped beef.
If I have a few Chinese dumplings left from a meal I like to save them to serve with fried rice and pocket eggs. These are fried eggs, whites folded over to seal like a dumpling, with a vinegar and soy sauce mixture tossed over them at the end.
I also like to have tiny fish cakes with eggs, or potato cakes left from mashed potatoes. Sausages of course, and ham and bacon, occasionally, but still make appearances.
Many things in our house become “that would be good with an egg for breakfast”.
And sometimes, I long for my childhood favorite for breakfast-leftover spaghetti.
So really, breakfasts needn’t be dull at all.
I haven’t even scratched the surface of possibilities. I have neglected most of the stuff that requires using flour because I’m personally avoiding those things but sometimes they make the list for me and you can certainly plan on them also.
Cream biscuits, lemon ginger scones, blueberry muffins, corn pancakes in summer, banana fritters with applesauce, rice pudding with cream. Coffee cake, bread pudding, apple crisp with ice cream. I could go on and on.
So, lets go to the Meal Planner Form I am using this week.
I planned my dinners and lunches already so that helped fill in this morning’s meal- a meatloaf sandwich.
Sunday we planned to have company for breakfast, and to serve “Clam Fritters” which is a favorite of our company and us and we just happened to have some clams. We also offered ham and eggs with them. And a bowl of clementines.
Monday- Using up ham from Sunday, Don had a egg, ham and cheese sandwich, I had a fried egg and piece of ham
Tuesday- I planned a protein bowl for this meal but instead we split a meatloaf and catsup sandwich. Ate some meatloaf I had defrosted from the freezer hot with gravy and potatoes for dinner last night. Thought about a meatloaf and catsup sandwich all night.
Wednesday- skipping breakfast, ate late and too much after election shenanigans
Thursday- a protein bowl: raw spinach, lentil and onion patties, yogurt, optional poached egg, and hot sauce
Friday- “That would be good with an egg”: Leftover piece of salmon, a fried egg, toast. (too lazy to make hollandaise but that would have gone nicely with this)
Saturday-Scrambled eggs with the rest of the ham and some scallions.
Meal planner stories
My system for planning meals
Planning Dinners
Planning Lunches
A fancy breakfast for our anniversary prepared by friends
Photos courtesy of the author
If you want to receive updates about recipes, stories and more, sign up below. I haven’t figured out how to send free stuff to my email list yet, but I’m working on it. Don’t forget to validate your email after signup. And for heavens sake, get me out of your junk folder. Join the fun:
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Jean Anne Feldeisen is a writer, cook. and cookbook reader. She writes about cooking, food, books and aging well. Jean has been reading and writing poetry since age 5. The memoir Dear Milly is her first book. She is seventy plus years old and just getting started. | https://medium.com/jeans-in-the-kitchen/planning-beautiful-breakfasts-for-breaking-your-fast-in-style-7916cebc58e6 | ['Jean Anne Feldeisen'] | 2020-11-05 10:29:08.154000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Breakfast', 'Cooking', 'Food', 'Meal Planning'] |
Decentralized Unmanaged Organization | They define a decentralized organization as the one where decisions are made low by level managers. But in case of unmanaged decentralized organizations decisions are made by no managers but an algorithm realized in a programming code. So, the meaning of being unmanaged in this case is that the organization is not managed by a human or other decision making third party.
To summarize the above, the Decentralized Unmanaged Organization it is an organization which is managed by some programmed algorithm, solely.
Maybe later we will see Organizations managed by AI hosted in a blockchain..:) But today, technology has come at least to the point that we have the ability to embed programmable code in a blockchain which is Turing complete.
Despite this, a huge number of truly decentralized projects have not yet been particularly observed.
The main problem seems to me that people have not yet figured out how to make money on it. And the second largest problem is that a truly decentralized project must have decentralized marketing.
I will take the first timid steps in the development of the ideas of completely decentralized organizations on the basis of SMRT16 project.
Stay tuned for a repository of the project and new posts on this blog! | https://medium.com/@maximvasilkov/decentralized-unmanaged-organization-8089a67b9337 | ['Maxim Vasilkov'] | 2020-05-27 20:19:41.106000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'Defi'] |
Rosetta Blackoc Casket | GODS “ Good One Die Slow” ANCESTORY
..AOK.. Ring of TesTo “ Its a Hawaiian Culture”
PLEASE CHOOSE WISELY
OLD ELDER ..only if he knew.
- Amor ORA Knight- age unknown the barking
AOK on it as to its “RING OF TESTO”
“Catch ya on the BaySide’’Coco doodle .
.Surfs getting Cold .Jiji shall guard you for dare line .
( a lite flame , yay good luck on that :hampers the sidekick ).ask a lava !~.
“Time Zone blizt on 4th if you don’t down
3slaps on blue and double tap on 21 .”
:.Casino War Estate well known for winning and Pun within a Gar shi plater .: WHY MY WHOLE ESTATE IS RIDING ON YOU … MAY I TOUCH OR NO?.
Thru Hard time in the industry of Hooni Hawaii of a value of a structure hot warm wealth of pocket cash flow dipping from the core works of a Master Mind , Do dear to play with thee devils Deck you been warn . The Demons charges a fee to play with the tainted soul asking for a free ride towards luxury as a high ranking Sicco maple tree , sweet loyal is not free . Lite a lamp bar and watch the devil soul come to life as the cold drift ness of a bare back coco-nut shell comes to a shortage within the primes sweet juice of nectar to the hardness of a Pineapple . Care to Dare a Dare Devil . not a lot of souls tend to master this Technique to gain respect in the complex field of Advertise Cards of the Soul . Gasol the movement . you might be in heat .. is lady luck on its side . Would rubbing a belly of a wicked or crump on its corner fly? Misted by a delighted Gust of Tri - clonal flex of Luck . Try to taboo a pair of snack eyes Jacko. Well Guess what the Rumors Are true … you must be very very quite as you walk into the forest .. you might see and feel things an non believer would dare to walk towards into around the tick of the deck of the push and smash of the turtles harden shells . KAhumi Hahumi MAhu MAuhi . imuhak uham imuhah . can any one tell me what this means ? maybe i have to solve this puzzle . hi muah k…… oh look i solve one the indigo child said .. as a summon , they Earth God said Choice with Heart and have a New pair of undies .” ji ji” . You might Cha cha a Bungi a person .” Hang Time Dude” … hmmm in that mettles the howl of a … i should ask someone else ? , the god were laughing so hard . the volcano shots fire of a cute laughter .. please once again .. Choice wisely . why did my parents name me ji ji .. : is that your final answer? jiji sudden cough and saids : shake heads nooo… we can only afford as much as you can only imput and outcome your own destiny Child . i give you 24 hoots please come back here by SunDance . jiji saids softly hmm AOK is the brand structure name i want to be branded by and summon an new order policy which one re fames by I as a new owner of a Hawaiian Garden Casino Owner and it must bring this Island Royalty Loyal and Respect : Spiritually Emotionally and Physically for the runs of 100 years Dock and i must win 80 percent of the time remaining . JIJI then reply DUDE ? HOW ?!!! i am a crave statue standing around .. who would guide me to this type pie chart . i shall call this the pie chart of wheel of “Devils Creed”
“Fortune of the summits Casino Resort”. THEN I SHALL GRANT YOU THIS BUT FIRST YOU MUST FIND ME A PERSON THAT SHALL FORECAST THIS FOLK TALE Towards my Hawaiian Creational Food Industry as it fresh as it does every breathe taking steps as we volcano Canoe itself and stand Still and Listen for social calling . LET ME CALL OUT “ SPAMMISUBBI ART CRAVING MASTER” since my mastery fine arts was planted many many years ago in the markings of thee current as today as we see light to guide souls back home as a welcome arms to bares comfort to a person to an embodiment of what family is NOW. MAHI MAHI . this i shall take this mission to truly at my kings Hart .JIJI shall master this lux of Master Art . LETS START COOKING FROM BOTTOM GROUNDS TO FIND SOMEONE HUMBLE .
…….Mission Still Pending ……..
First Stage testimony : pick a male or a female ?
With a humble soul ,but not afraid what Dry Dirt is.
with settlement and rewards . I SHALL .. please Don’t Leave .
Second stage testimony : find a animal or sub-tile or tilt it ? CHOOSE A ANIMAL so that you can enhance your true calling . I Call UPON THE HORNEST OF THE DOUBLE BLADE HORN TUSKET . A “HOGGI”one of the most HEAVIEST Emperor Granite Boar there is at this PRIME , this summon is truly an bliss meaning .. you either die rich or your sluggish mule calling its one true form , you care sores an STRONG AS ONE SUMMITS . IF YOU DO NOT MASK ITS the TRUE RECOILS its tail bone FLATS as to a fucking banana pile of damp lite bamboo Jit . may i fuse a Capi energy to play its own and Catch a Breeze on the lovely Coast Line . Jl .Jl or ff .ff … so your telling me all in or a bluff?
……..YES …… TILT HOLDEN FOLK TALES
Long LIVE thee .. - HOGGI MAHI MAHI-
sounds like a signature plate already ?
only a AX would understand . your conclusion pickers my Rim of Passion . — ANCESTORY . AS SUMMON ..AOK .. | https://medium.com/@samsonwang-7433/rosetta-blackoc-casket-c8de1c0537a5 | ['Samson Wang', 'Wun Tao', 'Wts . Bossybugotti'] | 2021-07-06 09:34:48.208000+00:00 | ['Pride', 'Holidays', 'Pirates', 'Casino', 'Hawaiian'] |
Exploiting the differences between model training and prediction. | Exploiting the differences between model training and prediction.
The code accompanying this post can be found here.
In recent months we have helped many companies deploy their AI / ML models in various environments. We have contributed to model deployment in Healthcare, and, in the last few months, we have helped several companies move trained models to different types of IoT devices. Particularly in the latter case, requirements are often strict: both the number of compute cycles and the available memory are often limited.
In this post I clarify how we make sure that models trained using standard ML libraries such as PyTorch, Scikit-learn, and Tensorflow can be deployed efficiently on various edge devices. To make things tangible, we will examine the training and deployment of a simple logistic regression model. However, most of what we discuss here transfers directly to more complex models.
Model training
To illustrate the differences between model training and deployment, let’s start by simulating some data. The code below generates 1000 observations according to the following simple model:
(A simple logistic regression model used as the DGP for this example)
import numpy as np
np.random.seed(66) # Set seed for replication # Simulate Data Generating Process
n = 1000 # 1000 observations
x1 = np.random.uniform(-2,2,n) # x_1 & x_2 between -2 and 2
x2 = np.random.uniform(-2,2,n)
p = 1 / (1 + np.exp( -1*(.75 + 1.5*x1 - .5*x2) )) # Implement DGP y = np.random.binomial(1, p, n) # Draw outcomes # Create dataset and print first few lines:
data = np.column_stack((x1,x2,y))
print(data[:10])
After generating the data, we can focus on fitting a model. We simply use sklearn ’s LogisticRegression() function to do so:
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
mod = LogisticRegression().fit(data[:,[0,1]], np.ravel(data[:,[2]]))
A closer look
It this point it is useful to pauze and briefly consider what is happening under the hood. Logistic regression models, as is true for many other interesting ML models, are trained iteratively. To train the model, sklearn (or any other package providing similar functionality) will have to implement several functions:
Some sort of score function indicating the fit of the model. This might be an error function, or a maximum likelihood function. A function which updates the parameters of the fitted model from one iteration to the next.
The training process will effectively use both functions repeatedly: Initially, the parameters of the model are randomly instantiated. Next, the score of the model is checked. If the score is deemed insufficient (often because it has improved compared to the previous iteration), the model parameters are updated and the process is repeated.
Even for this simple model, sklearn took several passes through the dataset. The following code gives the number of iterations (seven for this choice of seed):
# Print the number of iterations
print(f'The number of iterations is: {mod.n_iter_}.')
Thus, to train a model we need access to the data, several utility functions, and we need multiple iterations / passes through the dataset. In general, this training process is computationally demanding which explains why for complex models we resort to parallel computations and GPU or NPU acceleration to carry it out in a reasonable time. Luckily, however, when training models, the fairly complex logic required to do so is abstracted away by the various ML libraries we use.
Generating predictions
Compare this with generating predictions from an already fitted model (often called inferences, but I find the latter term confusing as its use in statistics is different, so I am sticking to predictions). By the time the model is fitted, effectively all we need to generate predictions in this case is the logistic regression function — the same mathematical function we used to generate data in our example above — and the three parameters of the fitted model. These are easy to retrieve:
b = np.concatenate((mod.intercept_, mod.coef_.flatten()))
print(b)
and the parameters end up being relatively close to the values we used for data generation: [0.84576563 1.39541631 -0.47393112] .
Furthermore, in most deployment situations, we often end up evaluating the model with only a single input: in this case, a numeric vector of length two. So really, if we want to deploy a model we don’t need the fitting functions, we don’t need the data, we don’t need the iterations. To generate predictions, we merely need a simple and efficient implementation of the mathematical function involved.
Exploiting the differences between training and prediction for (edge) deployment
“So what?” you may ask. Why should you care about the nitty-gritty details involved in training and prediction when modern model training tools abstract away all these details? Well, because by the time you would like your models to be efficiently deployed, for example when you need them to run fast on small devices, you better exploit the differences described above.
For the sake of argument, contrast the following two methods of model deployment (i.e., putting the trained model into production such that you can use its predictions):
Docker container deployment of sklearn as a REST service: This approach is simple and often used: we start up a docker image containing the python stack and the tools used for training: in the case of the example logistic regression model above, sklearn . Next, we create a REST endpoint that consumes the fitted model’s mod.predict() function to generate results. Scailable WebAssembly Deployment: More recent, but not at all harder, is converting the fitted model to WebAssembly (using a service like the one offered by Scailable), and deploying the .WASM binary containing only the logic needed for prediction in a minimal WebAssembly runtime. The (automatically generated) binary will contain only the necessary logistic function (in this case) and the estimated parameters. The binary might be deployed on a server (and thus similarly consumed through REST calls), but, using the various runtimes available, it could also run on pretty much any edge device.
Clearly, the first deployment process is close to “what we know” as data scientists. It is nice to work directly with the tools we are used to. In many respects, it works: we can generate predictions using calls to the REST endpoint. The second solution is further away from our standard practice, and it is useless for model training (i.e., there are no “WebAssembly packages to train models…”, if that sentence even meant anything at all). However, we still think it should be preferred: the second setup exploits the differences between training and prediction to make model deployment better in several respects:
Memory footprint: The first of the two options above will need at least 75Mb for the container (and getting the container to be that small takes a lot of engineering, it is more common to have containers that approach 1Gb in size). In this case the stored model itself is small (~2Kb), and thus the container comprises the largest chunk of the memory footprint of the deployment (note this might not be true for, e.g., large neural networks). Conversely, the WebAssembly runtime can be brought down to less than 64 Kb . The WebAssembly binary itself is admittedly larger than the stored sklearn model (~50kb), but it now contains all that is necessary to generate predictions. Thus, while the first deployment option takes at least 75Mb, the second takes less than .1Mb. Magnitudes smaller.
The first of the two options above will need at least 75Mb for the container (and getting the container to be that small takes a lot of engineering, it is more common to have containers that approach 1Gb in size). In this case the stored model itself is small (~2Kb), and thus the container comprises the largest chunk of the memory footprint of the deployment (note this might not be true for, e.g., large neural networks). Conversely, the WebAssembly runtime can be brought down to less than 64 . The WebAssembly binary itself is admittedly larger than the stored model (~50kb), but it now contains all that is necessary to generate predictions. Thus, while the first deployment option takes at least 75Mb, the second takes less than .1Mb. Magnitudes smaller. Speed: Consuming a REST endpoint running in a Docker container which is firing up all the stuff needed for training does not compare favourably in terms of execution time when compared to efficient WebAssembly deployment. Here are some speed comparisons for various models, but, needless to say, exploiting the differences between training and prediction and solely putting the bare necessities for prediction into production increases the speed by which these predictions are generated by an order of magnitude.
So, smaller memory footprints and quicker execution. That’s nice for several reasons; for one because we might like to contribute to the Paris Agreement and thus deploy models efficiently without wasting energy each time we generate predictions. But, a small footprint and quick execution are also appealing because this is exactly what we need when putting model into production on the Edge: Good luck deploying your Docker container on (e.g.,) a ESP32 MCU board. With WebAssembly this was a piece of cake.
Disclaimer
It’s good to note my own involvement here: I am a professor of Data Science at the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science and one of the cofounders of Scailable. Thus, no doubt, I have a vested interest in Scailable; I have an interest in making it grow such that we can finally bring AI to production and deliver on its promises. The opinions expressed here are my own. | https://towardsdatascience.com/exploiting-the-differences-between-model-training-and-prediction-40f087e52923 | ['Maurits Kaptein'] | 2020-10-21 12:15:54.141000+00:00 | ['Webassembly', 'Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Scikit Learn', 'Edge Computing'] |
Blockchain and the Insufferable Millennial | I went to the Crypto Funding Summit in Los Angeles on January 24, 2018, and while it was sparsely attended, there were a lot of good speakers and a number of interesting vendors exhibiting and giving their ICO pitch.
I was there representing one of the professional big name publications that I write for (I’m not going to put the name, because I’m going to get a bit controversial here) and I made it a point to talk to each vendor at the event to find out what they were doing, hear about their use case, play a little devils advocate to get them to justify their utility and reason for doing this. I had wonderful conversations with all the companies, great people, some of the ideas made a lot of sense, a few were going to totally crash and burn in my opinion. There were about 5 companies there that had something to do with medical information in one way or another. One of them was the last company I talked to, and I’m not going to post their name, because I don’t want to give them any free promotion, but the young man and woman in their booth were the absolute worst people I have ever encountered at any kind of trade show in decades of going to trade shows across sporting goods, music and technology.
These two people appeared to be in their early to mid 20’s and dressed with plenty of flair. I didn’t get their names, so I’ll refer to them in this conversation re-enactment as Douchebag Millennial Male (DMM) and Fawning Millennial Female (FMF):
SG: Hi, I’m with ****** Magazine, tell me about what you’re doing here.
DMM: Putting medical records on the blockchain.
SG: Cool, so give me some details, do you have partnerships already? How do the records get on there? Do I, as a patient explicitly do it, or give permission to my provider to do it or they do it without me knowing?
DMM: Yes.
SG: Yes what?
DMM: To all of it.
SG: Ok, can you give me some details? Walk me through it.
DMM: With our system, you can get to your medical records anywhere in the world at any time.
SG: Ok, nice, but that wasn’t really an answer to my questions. Why is there a need for your token?
DMM: To get instant access to your personal records at any time.
SG: Ok, so I’m a regular Joe and I want to get to my medical records. Are you saying that I have to install your mobile app, open a crypto exchange account, take pictures of my ID and send that to them and wait to get validated, then get my bank account connected to the exchange, send my money in, buy your token, get some sort of wallet integration, and then I can get my medical records?
DMM: Yes, it sounds very simple to me.
SG: Are you being serious right now?
DMM: For sophisticated millennials, this is trivial, we all already live like this.
SG: Let me give you a little advice, your style of delivery isn’t particularly pleasant and is going to alienate people.
DMM: That’s your opinion.
FMF: Yea, that’s just your opinion.
SG: You realize that if even a small number of companies are successful at all these tokens out of the number that are trying, it will require the average person to walk around with thousands of different cryptocurrencies to perform their daily tasks?
DMM: No, that won’t happen and it doesn’t matter to us.
SG: <laughs a lot> Ok guys, I’m gonna just leave you out of my article because you are so unpleasant and you are making me play 20 questions to find out any details and you have been very insulting. <starts to walk away after leaving materials on their table>
FMF: <yells at my departing back> OH YEA? WELL, THE CREAM ALWAYS RISES TO THE TOP!!!
SG: <laughs even harder>
The rest of the conference was overall very interesting and enjoyable. Tip to millennials, this is not a winning strategy. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/blockchain-and-the-insufferable-millennial-9c454f8e8962 | ['Shawn Gordon'] | 2018-11-29 02:40:33.068000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Insufferable Millennial', 'Blockchain Startup'] |
Steinway: Instrumental Royalty Comes from Queens | For more than a century and a half, Steinway & Sons has handcrafted singular pianos in New York City, and the Queens factory remains a place where 19th-century methods mix with 21st-century technology and fine craftsmanship is still passed along generations.
By Bradley Bambarger <2011>
“They don’t make them like they used to.” That has been the refrain about countless things as technology and economics move life and its accoutrements along inexorably. But it cannot be said about Steinway pianos. While most pianos today are mass-produced out of expedience, Steinways are still handcrafted to age-old standards in just two factories: the original in New York, the younger sibling in Hamburg. The process, with 19th-century methods commingling with 21st-century technology, feels almost as organic as the trees that make up some 85 percent of these instruments.
Master pianist Martha Argerich has said that a Steinway can have a “strange magic,” this percussion instrument so engineered that it can yield the illusion of legato, of singing. That elusive quality is why a Steinway was the instrument of choice for Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein, as it is today for Argerich, Lang Lang and so many other top pianists. The American source of this alchemy is located in the Astoria section of Queens, an old urban area that was mostly farmland when the facility was first laid out in 1870, with the East River nearby to float logs downstream to Steinway’s lumberyard.
The Queens facility — first used as sawmill and foundry in the 1870s, then as Steinway’s lone New York production house starting in 1956 — is a heady sensory experience. There is the strong, forest scent of various types of fine wood left to season in hot, humid rooms, as well as the more pungent smell of the glue that binds some of that wood together and the paint that coats a finished instrument. Then there is the shearing sound of wood being cut, the almost-musical thrum of wire being strung, and the pings of repeated strikes on keyboards as pianos get last-minute tweaks in the Selection Room.
As you trod the well-worn factory floors, there comes a sensation beyond smells and sounds: an overwhelming sense of tradition. Ron Losby, president of Steinway & Sons Americas (and a pianist himself), says that the first time he toured the Queens factory on joining the company in 1987, “it was like voices from the past were speaking to me, voices of great craftsmen, the greatest pianists.” It isn’t just history, though; even in parlous economic times, the Queens factory remains alive with a craftsmanship that has been handed down and perfected over generations.
Steinway & Sons hasn’t been owned by a member of the Steinway family — originally the Steinwegs, mid-19th-century immigrants from Germany — since 1972, and it has passed through several corporate proprietors since. (Full disclosure: The current parent firm, Steinway Musical Instruments, is also owner of this magazine.) But Steinway still likes to bill itself as a family company, and it has the ring of truth because there are technicians in Queens who are brothers working together, fathers who have passed skills to sons. There are half-century veterans of the place still on the job, with their pride in the work treasured like an heirloom. Losby says: “When we have our old-timers dinners every fall, the room is full.”
The 2007 documentary film Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037 by Ben Niles featured technicians in the New York factory as a rainbow of characters. There are immigrant craftsmen (and women) from Croatia and Haiti, reflecting the new sources of immigration to Queens in recent decades. Yet the accents often heard as technicians banter on the shop floor are those of born-and-bred New Yorkers, whatever their ethnic roots. Dennis Schweit played in the factory’s lumberyard as an Astoria kid; now he’s a Grand Finisher, one of the technicians who makes the ultra-fine adjustments that ensure a piano’s hammers line up accurately with the strings.
It takes a year to create a Steinway grand, which is made up of 12,000 component parts. The soul of the instruments isn’t just in the hard-rock maple from the Pacific Northwest that goes into making the rim or the Sitka spruce from Alaska used for the soundboard; the factory’s atmosphere is part of the piano, Losby insists: “Environment matters, especially when making a handcrafted product. There’s no way to prove this, but if we took all the materials, equipment and even the workers from this factory and moved them to a new facility, I’m sure the instruments made there would sound different, maybe a little more sterile. And that would not be good for the piano, for artists, for music, for the brand.”
More than 580,000 Steinways have been built over the years. The facility restores old pianos to their original specifications, and one old instrument being worked on just before Christmas was number 113,881, meaning the instrument had originally rolled off the line around 1904. There are other amazing bits of history on the factory floor, including an original hand-operated, cast-iron 1870s veneer cutter kept on hand as an evocative curio — a beautiful piece of machinery that now shaves off veneer samples as souvenirs for visitors. The good old days weren’t always so good, of course; the factory is a far safer place to work now, including modern methods for capturing paint to keep workers from breathing in particles (something especially dangerous with the lead paint of the past).
Rim Benders and Tone Regulators
Steinway has registered some 130 patents, more than any other piano builder. The company is always experimenting with new methods and materials at the factory, but rarely is the recipe changed. Losby says: “Ninety-nine percent of the research-and-development experiments aren’t used, like the rubber hammers we tried, but the 1 percent that end up being taken on board make the instrument better.”
Some key processes date back to the 19th century. Steinway pioneered the seamless, continuous-bent rim, and the rim-bending technique invented by the company in 1878 is done virtually the same way today. Eighteen hard-rock maple layers, each 20-feet long, are used for a piano rim; the layers are coated with glue, stacked, then fused into a single, 350-pound form of wood. A team of five rim-benders (for a nine-foot model D concert grand) bend the wood on a rim-bending press, the massive, piano-shaped vises custom built by Steinway. The process is a tricky race as the team has less than 20 minutes to shape the rim before the glue begins to dry, with the work demanding not only strength but finesse.
Yet some elements of Steinway’s piano-building were only perfected well into the 20th century, such as the fitting of an instrument’s soundboard to its rim. This used to be done visually, but several decades ago, the factory moved to a laser-guided method that enables a more exact fit, resulting in a more powerful piano sound. But anything that has to do with touch and tone remains crafted by human hands. Losby says, “Our Tone Regulators are as much artists as the musicians who play the instruments.”
The Tone Regulation Department is where a Steinway goes from being a machine to a musical instrument. Here, each of the 88 keys is adjusted by hand for evenness of tone; the felt-covered hammers are made either harder (by putting lacquer-like solution on the felt — if the note has to be brightened a bit) or softer (using a needle to open up the felt). Mark Dillon, foreman of the department, has worked for Steinway for 30 years, working his way through the factory before coming to tone regulation/voicing. “The right tone has a bell-like quality,” he says. “You don’t just hear it with your ear — you feel it in your body.”
In the Queens factory, the hammers are made in-house; in Hamburg, they are purchased from subcontractors. According to Dillon, the tonal range of a Hamburg Steinway is “a bit more precise than a New York Steinway, but also a bit narrower. The New York pianos are probably more versatile, so they’re good for rock, jazz or classical music, and they can be tailored a bit more. I think there’s a good sibling rivalry between New York and Hamburg. It’s competitive, but we exchange ideas.”
Variations between materials and methods in New York vs. Hamburg Steinways have been minimized over the years. But along with the different hammers they use, the two factories still do some aesthetic things differently — square arms and a standard satin/matte finish for New York models, round arms and high gloss for Hamburg. Sonically, some experts don’t hear much of a difference these days. To longtime Steinway-affiliated artist Emanuel Ax, a classical pianist who plays top halls on both sides of the Atlantic, the musical differences between New York and Hamburg models have more to do with the “mysterious” personalities of individual instruments than where they are made.
Two Steinway pianos made by the same workers to the same specifications using the same materials and tools in the same temperature and humidity “could end up being like salt and pepper,” Losby says. “One could be extrovert and symphonic, one almost shy and intimate. That is the thing about a handcrafted product; each is going to be different.”
Anthony Gilroy, Steinway’s director of marketing & communications, referring to factory technician and Selection Room maven Dirk Dickten, says, “He knows these instruments inside and out, and he can say to you, `This is the best piano in this room.’ But I’ve seen an artist come in and reject that instrument right off, falling in love with a different one. The way a piano sounds and feels is very subjective, and every player’s tastes and needs are different.”
Valuing “Arcane Mastery”
Steinway pianos are the instrument of choice for 98 percent of the world’s concert artists, according to the company. It is the luxury brand among pianos, undoubtedly (with a model B listing for $84,900 and a model D $133,800), and such products tend to take particular hits during economic downturns. In 2009, sales of Steinway grand pianos in the U.S. fell sharply, leading to wage freezes and layoffs of ultimately about 115 workers at the Queens factory. There were 288 workers at the factory as of January 2011, with 2010 output half of the past 10-year average, at about 1,000 grand pianos and 300 uprights.
According to Losby, the company resists cutting back on the quality of its materials or the factory’s hand-tooled processes, as maintaining the Steinway standard remains paramount. “Piano brands like Mason & Hamlin ceased to be great because they started cutting corners on the specifications and materials to reduce costs,” he says, “and you can see what happened to Baldwin when they moved their factory.”
Jura Margulis, professor of piano at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and a Steinway artist for 20 years, could scarcely value the time-honored Steinway method more. He came to the Queens factory in spring 2010 to choose 24 uprights, six model M “medium” grands, 10 seven-foot B models (the most popular of Steinway’s grands) and one concert D for his school — a $1.5 million purchase Margulis calls “transformative.” He went through about 25 pianos to select the 10 B models.
“Like children,” Margulis says, “Steinway pianos are each unique, and when they are new, they are like babies. It’s not only about what they sound like at first — it’s about their potential for growth, the development in their sound. They play in, they grow.”
Margulis is an aficionado of piano-building, fascinated by the physics of the instrument. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, he was raised in Freiburg, Germany, and came to the U.S. in 1994 as a student of Leon Fleisher. Margulis’s father and his father were concert pianists, with a Steinway always in the house. He often practiced in a piano workshop as a youngster, growing to love the smell.
When Margulis toured the Queens factory recently, it only reinforced his conviction that these instruments and the way they are made should be treasured. “Just think about the way things have changed over the decades,” he muses, having just taken his hand off the keyboard of a new Steinway model B in his Fayetteville studio. “Even the toothbrush is different now than it was 20 years ago. But these pianos are almost unchanged from 100 years ago — they were almost perfect machines even then. You realize in the factory that the making of a Steinway piano is this arcane mastery — just like the playing of the instrument.”
(Originally published in 2011 in the spring issue of Listen magazine.) | https://medium.com/@bradleybambarger/steinway-instrumental-royalty-comes-from-queens-68a830cf3208 | ['Bradley Bambarger'] | 2020-12-08 18:03:26.149000+00:00 | ['New York City', 'Music History', 'Craftsmanship', 'Piano', 'Steinway'] |
The Girl With Grey Eyes [Miniature] | The Girl With Grey Eyes [Miniature]
Hope is immortal in children
Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash
The clock is ticking while she’s sitting. Tense but unmoved, she quietly observes the black needle’s dance on the wall. The senile windows’ greying frames cannot detain the sounds of the world any longer, but the girl is too far away to hear anything anyway. Just the ticking of the clock rhyming with the beat of her heart. Now that’s a shot that does not need to be captured inside a camera film. It still won’t ever change… The girl is frozen while the clock is not. Mercilessly, with threatening arrogance it hits the frightened black lines squeezed to the edges of the clock.
There is a kind of elegance in the girl’s slow, almost unnoticeable breathing. She knows deep down that he won’t come, she knows he left them for good, but she’s still waiting. Hope is immortal in children. So what if he hasn’t come yesterday or the day before that or the day before that? He will come today. He will. It’s a true wonder how much energy the empty space between the clock and the girl’s heart can hold. Come, look from here. Do you see it? Do you see how the sunlight transforms her teardrops on the floor into a colorful rainbow? | https://medium.com/blueinsight/the-girl-with-grey-eyes-miniature-7782069261f9 | ['Ana Mikatadze'] | 2020-08-13 13:31:21.311000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Blue Insights', 'Fiction', 'Life', 'Children'] |
SPA with cookie authentication in Asp.net Core | Asp.net core is a great framework for web applications, and a big improvement in architecture design in comparison to the Asp.net MVC. But when I started to work with it, I quickly realized that it’s very opinionated about the way some things should be. These opinions are also reflected on the many tutorials and blog posts about the framework.
If you want to do things a bit differently, you’re kind of out of luck getting help. One of those opinions, even though not explicit, is to use Authorization header token authentication, such as JWT for Single Page Applications (SPA). I personally had a hard time finding a tutorial or documentation that described how to do a SPA with cookie authentication in Asp.net core.
I won’t dive into the debate whether this is a good idea or not, there are many blog posts and videos about this discussion already. What I’ll do in this article is to present how I was able to implement cookie authentication in SPA using Asp.net core SPA template, and the gotchas I found along the way. It’s also a great opportunity to hack a little bit and see how some internal parts of the framework works.
The Design:
When I started to develop software, authentication and authorization were always a big topic of discussion. The main point is that there is not a one size fit all solution, and the strategy hangs on the requirements of the application.
The design I’ll present in this article is particular to this application and doesn’t mean it’s the best or a silver bullet solution.
There are a couple of ways to go about this. One is to scrap everything and do your own middlewares and filters, and do all this code. Another is to try to use what the framework offers as much as possible, customizing only the relevant parts. I’m taking the later approach.
The concept is quite simple, when the user authenticates, I create a JWT token and send it as “Http Only” cookie, so XSS scripts cannot capture it.
I’ll not present how to create the claims and generate the JWT cookie since there are many tutorials about it online. The main point is that the JWT is being returned as a “Http Only” cookie and not for the client application to control directly.
For the authentication scheme we use the cookie authentication instead of the standard JWT authentication.
And now is the part where Asp.net core has an opinion on it. I didn’t find a ready to use solution to decode the JWT in a cookie, only the default that decodes it in the header. So I created a custom middleware that all it does is to check if the JWT is still valid and fills the HttpContext User (ClaimsPrincipal) with the data in the JWT.
CSRF Protection:
As expected with this authentication cookie approach, it brings the Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) threat. And that’s where another gotcha is in Asp.net core framework. The CSRF protection has 2 elements. A “Http Only” cookie with the CSRF token that stays for the session, and a request token that must be sent together on the request, either in the form body, or in a header. When using the MVC approach, it’s easier to just put the token as a hidden field in the form, but in SPA, normally the POST requests are sent in json format so the CSRF request token must be provided in the header.
The gotcha here is, that the CSRF request token is calculated taking into consideration the CSRF cookie and the claims in the HttpContext User ClaimsPrincipal. If any claim is different for the CSRF request token, it won’t work. This is one of the reasons we remove the “iat”, “exp” and “nbf” from the claims when setting the ClaimsPrincipal, because if we refresh (not covered in this article) the token, we don’t have to re generate the CSRF request token, or have it fail in the current request.
So in a SPA everytime the user authenticates a new request token must be passed back to the client via a cookie that is not “Http Only”, so the client can access it and put on the header. When the user logs out, the CSRF request to the anonymous user must be sent back to the client as well. We can see this in the logout listing below.
As we can see in the middleware code, when the JWT token expires, we send back a CSRF request token for the anonymous user (as with the logout action), so the client can work again with the login endpoint and so on.
CSRF for unsecure actions:
Everything works fine now, but there is one scenario that this approach may generate an unexpected error. If the user is authenticated, and makes a POST for an action that doesn’t require authentication, and the token is expired. That request will fail because the token sent is for a certain user (specific set of claims), and now the anonymous user is the one in the ClaimsPrincipal. Note that because the middleware updates the cookie when the JWT token expires, the next request will work.
But is that the only way to get around it? Well, there are others. One is not to require CSRF protection to this endpoint anyway. In your application design, any insecure action should not make any changes that will use the user authentication. That being done, there is no gain for someone to trick your user with a CSRF malicious page, because they can do it themselves.
And this is a big question in general whether to use CSRF for any action that doesn’t require authentication. The login page for instance, wouldn’t necessarily need CSRF since the user is not authenticated anyway.
But in my approach I do use CSRF in unsecure actions just to be on the safe side, especially on the login page. So in order to have the CSRF token when the user loads your SPA, you also need a middleware to send this request token, as shown in the listing below.
This middleware should seat just before the app.UseSpa() middleware, because the the request passes through the previous middlewares, it’s because it didn’t match any file or action, so this UseSpa middleware will send your Index.html with the SPA code to be loaded to the user. The JWT Cookie middleware should be used where you would normally use the Asp.net core default authentication middleware.
Conclusions:
As we can see, it’s not a whole lot of code to make it work. But researching the information and putting it together took longer than I thought, specially in the part that says that the CSRF request token is checked based on the claims set in the HttpContext User.
What is presented here is not the complete solution of course, but the building blocks for someone who wants to create a custom authentication solution in Asp.net core. | https://medium.com/@marcos.deaguiar/spa-with-cookie-authentication-in-asp-net-core-c7ba6d9f8ebe | ['Marcos De Aguiar'] | 2020-05-20 18:41:17.652000+00:00 | ['Dotnet Core', 'Web Security', 'Jwt Token', 'Aspnetcore', 'Authentication'] |
Perk Up Your Patio! | Patios can become a wonderful day-time and evening room when the temperature is right. Patios also offer a welcome point to your home. We have a few tips so you can get your patio space to perk up!
Get the Air Moving
Installing a ceiling fan on your patio can instantly make it a more comfortable spot during the warm DC months. A ceiling fan will drop the temperature by 10 degrees, and the cool breeze can make a muggy July day turn into a perfect one. Be sure to choose a ceiling fan with a light so that you have an excellent overhead light source.
Find a handyman on Zaarly!
Blend Your Landscape and Your Patio
A walkway that suddenly ends often will feel like it doesn’t belong. Try blending your landscape gradually up to your patio. Adding plants, stones, brick that move into the patio design will give you a flawless look. Blending will also provide the illusion of a much larger space.
Find a landscaper on Zaarly!
Variety is Key
Use contrasting colors for patio furniture and accents to create a visually exciting space. Think about ways you can separate different areas on your patio — plants, large stones, and bricks can make your space feel more substantial and create more function.
Green Space
Vertical gardens can be the perfect way to add green to your home without the work of a lawn-garden. Using a trellis wall is easy, softens the edges and with your splash of green offers an exciting look to your outdoor space.
Zaarly is the only place you will find service providers who are proud to be held accountable. Find the right service provider for your home project today! | https://medium.com/zaarly/perk-up-your-patio-1c6440c577d3 | [] | 2018-06-29 19:24:15.199000+00:00 | ['Interior Design', 'Zaarly', 'Home Improvement', 'Patios', 'Kansas City'] |
This Quiz Will Tell You Exactly What Type of Writer You Are | We are not all the same.
Writers are people, of course. And people come in all varieties. We all have different goals, different interests, different needs. We all have different struggles and different strengths.
When I write about writing, I’m trying to create a blog post that will appeal to the broadest audience. I can’t write just to you. I need you to dig a little and find yourself in the advice, so that you can apply it in a helpful way.
That can be difficult to do, if you struggle with knowing exactly what kind of writer you are.
I’ve Identified Five Writer Archetypes
Just five. Every writer I know falls into one of them — and then there are intersections. Those five archetypes combine in a wide variety of ways.
Here are the archetypes:
Hesitater. Let’s start here. A hesitater is someone who has one foot on the gas and the other on the break. They are learners. They are perfectionists. They want to get everything just right, and that keeps them from getting started. They struggle to get started with a new project, but are excellent students and are open to new ideas. No one is just a Hesitater. When they take their foot off the break, they slip into one of the other archetypes, even though they will always be a Hesitater, too.
Skipper. A Skipper is a writer whose happy place is having an assignment. Skippers often are journalists or work for publications. They can struggle with coming up with ideas for what to write, when they don’t have an assignment and they are usually very good with discipline and finishing what they start. Like Hesitaters, they are never just Skippers. Skippers will always have a strong suit in one of the following three archetypes. They write for the paycheck.
Spiller. A Spiller is a confessional writer. These inward-facing writers excel at storytelling. Their writing often is very cathartic and healing — for the writer and the reader. They tend to niche easily, writing deeply on the same handful of topics. Spillers sometimes struggle with remembering to invite their readers into their story. They are exceptionally good at being authentic and vulnerable. They write for themselves.
Teacher. A Teacher is a writer who, not surprisingly, writes to teach. This writer is inundated by ideas — their own and other people’s. They are outward-facing writers who would most likely not do their work if they didn’t have readers. Teachers are great with starts, but struggle to finish. They write for their readers.
Artist. Artists are writers who have a top-level goal of creating beautiful work. They tend to have a single idea at a time and work on it with single-mindedness until it’s complete. They tend to be good with having a smaller number of readers, as long as those readers appreciate their art. Artists struggle with writer’s block more often than other writers, but they are dedicated to learning their craft. They write for their muse.
Most writers have a top-level archetype and a secondary that informs and refines it.
Let’s Figure Out Your Archetype
Choose one answer for each question. Don’t overthink it. (Here’s a printable version of this quiz.)
1. For whom do you write?
A. I’m not sure yet.
B. Whoever pays me.
C. Myself.
D. My readers.
E. My muse.
2. How prolific are you?
A. I write, but no one has ever seen my work. I will share it as soon as I’m ready.
B. Highly. I write as often as my employer requires me to.
C. As prolific as I want to be. I write when I have a story to tell.
D. I tend to write a lot, because I’m excited about my ideas.
E. Not particularly prolific. I often focus on one project for a very long time.
3. How do your ideas show up?
A. As another thing to learn about.
B. They are assigned to me.
C. My ideas come to me as I move through life, they are closely tied to my actual experiences.
D. In a constant barrage, from all sides.
E. One at a time.
4. How important is earning a living as a writer to you?
A. It’s important, but the whole concept is overwhelming.
B. Highly important. (Even the most important thing.)
C. Important. If I could earn a living as a storyteller, that would be so amazing.
D. Important. If I could earn a living connecting with my tribe, that would be so amazing.
E. The last thing on my list of what’s important about being a writer.
5. Why do you write?
A. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I love being immersed in the culture of writers.
B. Because I love creative work.
C. For healing.
D. To teach.
E. For the art of it.
6. Which book do you wish you’d written?
A. The last book I read is almost always my new favorite. I wish I’d written them all!
B. I’d love to ghostwrite a novel for my favorite celebrity.
C. A memoir.
D. Something that is a universal favorite, like The Chronicles of Narnia or a highly-impacting creative non-fiction book.
E. Any National Book Award winner.
7. How much detail do you put into your writing?
A. I haven’t written much yet, but I’m drawn to one of the answers below.
B. As much as is expected by my editor.
C. Tons of detail — most of it very personal.
D. Some, but I’m more interested in clearly sharing ideas.
E. All of the detail — this is my happy place.
8. How much of yourself do you put into your writing?
A. I’m not sure yet. I haven’t started writing.
B. None at all.
C. My writing is almost always about myself. It is possible that people who know me are uncomfortable reading my work.
D. I have to remind myself to put myself in my stories. Sometimes people say my writing is too dry or academic.
E. It depends on the story — sometimes a lot, sometimes none at all — but my writing is always in my voice. People often say they would know my work anywhere.
9. Which of these is your biggest strength?
A. Research.
B. Switching gears between topics.
C. Storytelling.
D. Sharing ideas.
E. The artistic craft of writing.
10. Which of these is your biggest weakness?
A. Insecurity.
B. My writing is sometimes generic or boring.
C. Audience building.
D. Finishing what I start.
E. Perfectionism.
11. My favorite thing about being a writer is . . .
A. Being part of a writing community.
B. Earning a living doing something I love.
C. Processing my life via my art.
D. Building a tribe around my niche.
E. Creating something beautiful.
12. I feel like I’m successful when . . .
A. I start a project.
B. Someone pays me for my work.
C. People are talking about my story.
D. When someone has learned something from me.
E. My muse and inner editor are both satisfied.
Results
If your answers are mostly A: You’re probably a Hesitater.
If your answers are mostly B: You’re probably a Skipper.
If your answers are mostly C: You’re probably a Spiller.
If your answers are mostly D: You’re probably a Teacher.
If your answers are mostly E: You’re probably an Artist.
Pay attention to your second most popular answers — or if there was a second answer you were drawn to on several questions. That is most likely your secondary archetype.
If you don’t have a clear secondary, particularly if most of your answers were A, consider taking the test again, choosing your second-best answer.
Now What?
Lean into your archetype. It will help you both be a happier writer and overcome the things that you struggle with. Once you know what kind of writer you are, you can build systems to support you.
If you’re a Hesitater, know that you’re always going to have to combat your natural tendency to find reasons not to write. Your perfectionism will get in the way. You need a system to help you get over the hump between not-writing and writing. Tiny goals and a writing accountability partner — another writer who will hold you to your goals — are a good start.
If you’re a Skipper, then you can stop feeling guilty for not wanting to do work that you’re not paid for. Lean into your business skills and build a writing career that pays the bills. You need a system to help you find those jobs and treat your work like the business that it is. Self-imposed deadlines will help.
If you’re a Spiller, then you can stop trying to write listicles and how-to posts. They aren’t your thing. Your authenticity is your shining light. You need a system for remembering to invite your reader into your work. Start by creating an avatar for your ideal reader — an invented reader that you’re writing for.
If you’re a Teacher, then you can stop trying to write highly personal essays that don’t feel natural to you. That’s not your strong suit. You are an idea person and sharing those ideas is where you blossom as a writer. You need a system for capturing those ideas and sticking with one long enough to finish it. Try keeping an idea notebook and rewarding yourself for finishing one project by allowing yourself to explore another.
If you’re an Artist, then you can stop feeling like you have to be anything else. You have goals that go beyond how many copies you sell or readers you have. You are really good at sticking with an interesting idea until it’s finished, with such single-mindedness that it can seem like you’ll never have another one again. You need a system for combating writer’s block. Start with a teeny, tiny goal. Write for ten minutes a day, even when your muse isn’t cooperating. | https://medium.com/the-write-brain/this-quiz-will-tell-you-exactly-what-type-of-writer-you-are-831b6679fa6c | ['Shaunta Grimes'] | 2020-06-17 19:30:33.608000+00:00 | ['Freelancing', 'Productivity', 'Creativity', 'Blogging', 'Writing'] |
How To Harness Failure Like JK Rowling | Talent is 10% Inspiration and 90% Perspiration
Now, we marvel at JK Rowling’s creative prowess. The magnitude of her imagination to create a world so real and captivating as to inspire a lucrative franchise. And to think it all started with an idea.
Yes, JK Rowling had the inspiration to write when she wasn’t actively seeking the story; her muse gifted the idea to her. Yet, she spent five years building on that idea.
Her creation of the make-believe world of magic was painstakingly planned. From visualizing every character to assigning them personalities, to establishing the wizarding world, JK Rowling made sure that she understood every element of her story.
Believe in yourself and others will too
JK Rowling admitted she felt insecure about other areas in her life, but her belief in telling a story was solid. It was that belief that kept her pushing.
In her Iconic interview with Oprah, JK Rowling admitted she never predicted the success of her book. She believed in her story, and that was enough to stay the course.
Her belief must have strengthened with the effort she put into developing the story. She was so vested that she rewrote the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 15 times!
It is that same belief that kept her seeking new publishers after each rejection.
As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
Dare to dream, but always remain present
JK Rowling lived in the present. She wasn’t living the best of life, yet she channeled her energy into something productive. She didn’t use her power of imagination to escape reality; she worked with it to create magic.
This advice worked itself into the Harry Potter books: “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” (Dumbledore to Harry — Book 1)
Work with failure by being Open-minded
It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to the greatest success. — JK Rowling
Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Hanh, describes the beginner’s mind as the deepest intention or desire one might have. It is the willingness to start afresh without presumption. The desire to learn with an open mind and approach things as a beginner would- with eagerness and vigor. JK Rowling overcame the fear of failure by writing with her beginner’s mind.
“I was the biggest failure I knew,” said JK Rowling, “had I succeeded in any other area, I might never have found the determination to do so in the one area I believed I truly belonged.”
She listened to her heart and continued to work with her head. Because she believed in writing and had wanted to do it all her life, she wasn’t afraid to do it, even if it meant not getting anything out of it.
Write, write and write
When Ngugi wa Thiong’o was asked the secret of writing, he replied, “Write, write, write and write again, and you will get it right.”
JK Rowling reiterated this secret when she said, “Resign yourself to writing rubbish, you’ve got to write it out of your system and sooner or later, you’ll hit what is your genre… writing is not a career for people who are easily discouraged.”
Even gold goes through a furnace to become.
Write with a giving spirit
JK Rowling didn’t write for what she could get, she wrote to give.
Here is an excerpt from her speech:
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice, if you choose to identify, not only with the powerful but with the powerless, if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change.
The End justifies the Means
Since almost doesn’t kill a bird, the process only matters when the results are favorable.
If JK Rowling had stopped with the fifth publisher, no one would accuse her of not trying. However, if after twenty years, she tweets, “I once wrote a book about a young boy who got admission to wizarding school.” No one would care, because people are only interested in results. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-to-harness-failure-like-jk-rowling-7fec75cf6014 | ['Deborah Oyegue'] | 2020-11-12 14:36:34.125000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Lessons Learned', 'Writers On Writing', 'Advice', 'Writing'] |
⚡️⚡️The Binance hack and the OneExBit solution for your API key security ⚡️⚡️ ⚡️⚡️ ⚡️⚡️ ⚡️⚡️ | If you’ve been following crypto news, then you probably know that Binance has been hacked and that the hackers made it off with $40 million. What is really worrying is not simply the fact that such a major exchange was hacked but that API trading keys were used to do it. Exchange users are led to believe that since their API keys cannot be used to withdraw funds, nobody can steal their money, but it is not so.
In the case of Binance, hackers used phishing to steal 2FA credentials and API keys, after which they used a simple but clever strategy to bypass the limitation on withdrawal. They took possession of the trading bots belonging to the users whose keys they stole and programmed those bots to first exchange all their assets for BTC and then start buying a specific coin (Viacoin). This created some hype, and then, when its price grew 70 times in a matter of minutes, they sold everything. It was a classic pump-and-dump.
🔐This scheme became possible because users often do not take proper care of their API keys and enter them on phishing sites that imitate the real exchange terminal. However, there is also a second part to this issue: hackers are able to use stolen keys on any other machine exactly because they are stored online somewhere.
🔒We have realized that it’s a serious issue when we first started working on the OneExBit trading terminal. Any such terminal requires API keys to work: in order to integrate an exchange account into the terminal, a user needs to copy the keys provided by the specific exchange. If the keys become permanently attached to the terminal user’s account, then they can be used on any other computer by a hacker.
🔒The solution we chose was elegant and simple: we do not store our users’ API keys in our system. At all, ever. All the API keys you use to integrate your exchange accounts into the OneExBit terminal are stored exclusively on your local machine. Even if a hacker gets hold of your login credentials or even manages to bypass the 2FA, they will not get access to any of your exchange accounts and funds, because they would need to physically enter your API keys on their machine. It’s that simple.
Of course, this also means that you will need to re-enter all your keys if you change your computer. But we believe that it’s a small price to pay for the high level of security that OneExBit offers.
In our upcoming posts, we will explore other issues faced by exchange terminal users and look at how OneExBit resolves these issues.
Stay tuned 🙌 | https://medium.com/@smmonex/%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8Fthe-binance-hack-and-the-oneexbit-solution-for-your-api-key-security-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-393f95141bb2 | [] | 2019-05-09 21:18:49.266000+00:00 | ['Binance', 'Solutions', 'API', 'Security', 'Hacks'] |
Awesome essay! | Awesome essay! Any people can assume the mantel of “exceptionalism” when they have vast resources to exploit and an edge in the destructive technology required to subjugate or exterminate those who “stand in the way” of that exceptionalism. From the start exceptionalism has been a myth — window dressing that provided some cover for genocide of the indigenous people of North America, the enslavement of millions of Africans, the rape of the natural resources of an entire continent. But the title sticks….to this day it proves itself as cover for continued systemic racism, economic inequality and self destructive environmental degradation.
As for Trump and his “shithole” comment — thank you for pointing out the extreme irony. | https://medium.com/@stephenchamberlin/awesome-essay-3760a9aad468 | ['Stephen Chamberlin'] | 2020-12-16 04:30:37.751000+00:00 | ['Racism', 'Global Warming', 'Race', 'Democracy', 'Irony'] |
Beginner Shopify Experience: Quick starter guide to customizing themes, adding products, and making a sale. | In October of this year, I was hired to help a client to create a Shopify platform for his comic and collectibles business. I had no idea what I was doing. Yet, he figured that my knowledge in web design and marketing would help us along the way. A rigorous process getting started from scratch, but we made it through. I figured I would create a quick guide to get the ball rolling for those of you new to the world of e-commerce. Hopefully once you learn the basics, you will be able to begin planning your marketing and e-commerce strategy and perhaps delegate tasks such as adding inventory to employees. If you follow this guideline you should be able to have a basic store created and make your first sale on your own store in a day. This depends on how much time you spend in the beginning customizing your theme. I suggest making mild customization in the beginning and focusing on making it through this guide for now.
Note: You must have already purchased a Shopify membership to accept payments and fulfill the process below.
Customize Theme
Getting started was the hardest part of the whole process. I had to learn how to use the platform all at once to make sure that the store fit the business’s style and goals. If you have no web design or developing experience this will be tough. If you do, you will know how the platform works in a matter of minutes since you will understand its usability from using other platforms. If you have no experience in this area, check out this video on how to customize your theme page. Don’t stress over this area too much in the beginning. You will have to come back anyways and touch it up anyhow.
Getting Ready to Sell
First thing you have to do before you sell is add inventory. If you do not have inventory, I suggest taking a picture from google images of a toy and creating a sample to get the process down. Once you have the image, watch this video to learn how to add the product. Create fictitious pricing and add it to your list.
Making Your First Sale
Now that you have a product to sell, you are almost ready to make your first sale. At this point, you will need to have your transit number for the account you wish to deposit money into and your account number. You will need this info to complete the form shown in this video. Once you have been accepted by Shopify to receive payment, you can now make your first purchase as a customer on your own website.
View your store and find your one product you have added. From there, all you must do is follow the checkout process already implemented in your theme. Congratulations! You have made a sale. Now let’s refund your money.
Refund Your sale
To refund your sale, watch this short video on how to refund. The refund should be almost instant. Make sure that you also remember to refund the shipping charge as well. To confirm that you have done so, the value to be refunded on the right side of the screen should match the one on your credit card statement.
I hope that you have a good sense of the basic navigation of Shopify and that I have dulled the overwhelming frustration on where to start. This guide should kick start how you will plan to add your inventory from your brick and mortar store as well as the types of items you will sell. Now, time to dive in deeper and think about shipping methods and costs, as well as marketing your store. Best of luck on your future e-commerce ventures!
For more information on marketing practices or to contact me, please visit www.highmarkmarketing.com | https://medium.com/@kordybanl/beginner-shopify-experience-what-to-expect-when-starting-out-b7d19b7ab9a6 | ['Leroy Kordyban'] | 2020-12-21 20:41:48.269000+00:00 | ['Guides And Tutorials', 'Online Store', 'E Commerce Website Design', 'Make Money Online', 'Shopify'] |
Hate Almost-Crimes and the Rise of Inter-Nationalism | Instagram, November 2017
Without a doubt, the expression of hate has become more fashionable. Today, it is legitimized by authoritative figures and should-be role models in statements, promoted in campaign slogans, and strategically funneled out through headlines, sound bites, and expertly organized meme blasts — all calculated moves meant to secure their standing in society. Hate is being displayed—many would say normalized—in ways that haven’t been seen for decades.
Dare I say expressing hate is…trendy? As a researcher whose work frequently overlaps with the subject, sometimes these acts of hate — crimes, almost-crimes, or non-crimes — can be traced to specific origins, and made clear that hate campaigns and targets have been coordinated. In these scenarios, it’s easier to assign blame for the consequences, a result that comes with its own unique set of challenges. More often, however, hateful acts surface more randomly.
Infinity War
Through shared feelings, hate is a chaos force multipler. In its wake, we see the rapid fragmentation of social institutions, established communities, and the dissolution of coherent discourse. Hate sidelines what should be social progress, partitioning it into never-ending clusters of conflict and what I like to call outrage porn.
If hate were part of physics, it would be pure entropy creeping into our civic and political processes, rendering them unstable and untrustworthy. This entropic effect helps form the ill-logical basis for many hate acts: catalyzing feelings — namely the perceived loss of control that nudges individuals and groups to take matters into their own hands — to fix the perceived ills in their world on their own terms.
How do you fight the spread of chaos?
We must expand our defintion of what hate actually represents: First and foremost, as I’ve argued here, hate is a feeling — a condition. These feelings precede actions, and we must further recognize that only a tiny fraction of hate-related acts can be categorized as crimes. And if we wait until these acts become crimes, it’s already too late.
While hate has an ideological basis, these ideologies all involve sets of shared values, embedded within specific cultural and social contexts. It’s no wonder, then, that “random” acts of hate seem to increase in frequency and intensity as established cultural and social norms undergo change.
Third, as the diffusion of hate is inter-nationalist by nature, it’s not confined to race (e.g., “white nationalists”) or class, nor is it exclusive to the “online” or “offline” realms. Like in how we curb foreign terrorism, we need to create broad sets of obstacles and clear disincentives that make the recruitment of hate-related ideologies harder and extremist group affiliations less accessible.
We can’t make hate disappear, but we can dramatically slow down the entrepreneurial path of radicalization. Literacy and educational initiatives are fine, but these require extraordinary cooperation and consensus about funding and outcome goals. We can slow the spread of hate through laws, but laws require considerable forethought, not to mention hawkish enforcement and oversight.
Most importantly, fighting hate demands unprecedented cooperation — between business, government, and public sectors, and across agencies, regimes, and countries. Smart policymaking, international cooperation, and proactive private sector buy-in — in this case sustained technological and personnel investment from American technology companies with supervision from government and state agencies is the necessary first step towards reigning this chaos in. Not the least because hate thrives in environments that lack well-defined rules.
I’ll also double down on making the less popular case that media attention, occasionally bordering on obsession, reporting on hate incidents — including horrific acts of racial and ethnic violence and domestic terrorism—only helps to amplify the theater of hate propaganda, promoting opportunistic recruitment into extremist ideas and cultural xenophobia.
Hate Almost-Crimes
The tragedy in Christchurch, New Zealand illustrates again that in dealing with hate, we face an existential global problem. The events that follow in hate’s wake will never be limited to criminal acts and publicized events in North America, Europe, and Asia. Thus the response by the New Zealand government, and the skillful handling of the massacre by the country’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern should offer policymakers an example of best practices in responding to hate—particularly as a framework in reducing the residual publicity that the event aftermaths receive.
American policymakers should not limit their initial approach to investigating, and presumably, attempting to regulate the spread of hate to acts that can be officially categorized as crimes. Because it makes playing the whack-a-mole game that much harder.
Approaching the fight against hate as a condition rather than acts that “cross the line” into definitive criminality means it is larger in scope. But it also means that the real battle is much better defined. I see this as another prerequisite to combatting the full extent of the problem. The polarization gateway into crimes — in many cases targeted sectarian violence — almost always involves a series of almost-crimes, and before that, a slippery slope of publicly expressed, mutually reinforced feelings.
While it’s fair to stigmatize “AI” — meaning algorithms and machine learning — as a contributing factor, we need sharp criticism of reckless media reporting on hate—whether crimes, almost-crimes, or non-crimes. When journalists and news outlets treat acts of hate like the news-of-the-day, as scholars danah boyd, Whitney Phillips, and others have pointed out, they provide the underlying ideologies with the legitimacy and social status they crave. In my view, this has the direct effect of turning cultural extremism into popular culture.
Mitigating the havoc that hate will continue to wreak on our society means taking away the provocative glamour and oppositional outrage its proponents gain with minimal effort through adversarial media attention. This strategy has less to do with censorship, a response which I have personally found to result in even more publicity, but through smarter news coverage and editorial decisions. For tech companies, it means curbing free promotion, monetized or otherwise.
All of this requires coming to stark terms with the notion that hate—and hate-related acts—are are not about crimes, or even nationalism, but rather are part of a condition that leads people and groups down a path towards unacceptable behaviors. By expanding the definition of hate in the ways I’ve discussed here, American policymakers can move forward with more effective long-term strategies to inhibit its global spread. | https://d1gi.medium.com/hate-almost-crimes-and-the-rise-of-inter-nationalism-45fb0a752adb | ['Jonathan Albright'] | 2019-04-08 16:41:39.393000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Tech', 'Terrorism', 'Hate', 'Nationalism'] |
ELK Stack — Elasticsearch. Welcome to the first article of a… | Photo by Asa Rodger on Unsplash
Introduction
Welcome to the first article of a series covering the Elasticsearch engine and based on the Elasticsearch Answers: The Complete Guide to Elasticsearch course.
First of all, let’s see what ELK is. It stands for Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana and is a set of open source tools for data ingestion, enrichment, storage, analysis, and visualization. In particular:
Elasticsearch is a distributed, open source search and analytics engine for all types of data, including textual, numerical, geospatial, structured, and unstructured;
is a distributed, open source search and analytics engine for all types of data, including textual, numerical, geospatial, structured, and unstructured; Logstash is a server-side data processing pipeline that acquires data from multiple sources simultaneously, transforms it and sends it to Elasticsearch;
is a server-side data processing pipeline that acquires data from multiple sources simultaneously, transforms it and sends it to Elasticsearch; Kibana is a data visualization and management tool for Elasticsearch which also acts as the user interface for monitoring, managing, and securing an Elastic Stack cluster.
The Elastic Stack is the next evolution of the ELK Stack and is composed by Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, Beats (data-shippers that collect data and send it to Elasticsearch and Logstash) and X-Pack (package of features that add functionality to Elasticsearch and Kibana). This tool falls within the Big Data area as it satisfies the three main characteristics required for this definition: volume, variety and speed.
In the next sections we will explore the Elasticsearch architecture and look at its main features. Please note we will refer to the 7.8.1 version for both Elasticsearch and Kibana which was released on July 27, 2020.
Elasticsearch architecture
Launching Elasticsearch means starting a node. Indeed, a node is an Elasticsearch instance containing data. It is possible to launch as many nodes as necessary to store the data and each of them will contain a part of the data itself. Please note that nodes refer to the Elasticsearch instance and not the machine, thus in a production environment it is good practice to let the nodes be different machines.
A collection of linked nodes which together contain all the data is called a cluster. One cluster is usually enough, but if we have more clusters we can do cross-cluster searches even if they are independent of each other. When a node is created, it can join an existing cluster or automatically create a new one.
Data are stored in units called documents which correspond to the rows of a relational database. Each document contains the fields we specify and that correspond to RDBMS columns. They are in json format and have some metadata fields added by Elasticsearch. Documents with similar characteristics are grouped in indices.
Inspect the cluster
For a full guide to Elasticsearch installation, visit the Download Elasticsearch page.
Once Elasticsearch is installed and launched, we can use the Kibana Dev Tools to query it via https requests. Since these are https requests, it is clearly possible to make them also from a browser or through any supported client. Let’s try some simple example requests.
GET _cluster/health is used to check the cluster status. The answer will look like the following:
{
"cluster_name" : "elasticsearch",
"status" : "yellow",
"timed_out" : false,
"number_of_nodes" : 2,
"number_of_data_nodes" : 2,
"active_primary_shards" : 14,
"active_shards" : 21,
"relocating_shards" : 0,
"initializing_shards" : 0,
"unassigned_shards" : 7,
"delayed_unassigned_shards" : 0,
"number_of_pending_tasks" : 0,
"number_of_in_flight_fetch" : 0,
"task_max_waiting_in_queue_millis" : 0,
"active_shards_percent_as_number" : 75.0
}
We can retrieve all the active nodes using GET _cat/nodes?v where “?v” means a nice header will be shown with the result. Running this request we will get the following:
GET _cat/indices?v retrieves all the indices available in the cluster:
Elasticsearch properties
In this section we will look at some properties that Elasticsearch has.
Sharding and scalability
The first Elasticsearch property is to be always available and to scale with our needs since it is distributed by nature. Adding nodes to a cluster results in increasing capacity and Elasticsearch automatically distributes data and query load across all of the available nodes. The more nodes, the merrier.
How does this work? Elasticsearch divides indices into separate chunks called shards. This operation is at index level since we may have different numbers of documents in each index. The advantages of sharding are the following:
we can archive more documents,
it allows putting large indexes in the nodes,
it grants better performances because of query parallelization on an index.
By default each index has only one shard, but we can change this setting when creating the index. However, we must be careful not to use too many shards with respect to the index size, otherwise we would get an over-sharding situation. It is possible to change the number of shards for an index even when it has already been created as well. The shards number choice depends on the index size i.e. on how many documents the index will contain. Each shard can contain a maximum of 2 billion documents. In general, one shard is enough for a few hundred documents, while two are needed for millions of documents.
Replication
It is used to survive a failure, such as a failing node hard drive. Replication is supported and active by default. It is configured at index level and creates copies of the shards contained in the index. The term replicas indicates the replicas of a shard. A shard is called a primary shard when it has been replicated one or more times. The set given by a primary shard and all its replicas is the replication group.
As seen in the previous section, when we get all the indices using the “GET _cat/indices” request, there is a “pri” column. It indicates which are the primary shards. When creating the index, we can specify how many replicas per shard we want or leave it to the default value which is 1.
Replicas are never saved on the same node as their primary shard, so that in the event of failure, data can be recovered through replicas on other nodes.
Usually one or two replicas per shard are sufficient, but this value depends on the data. It is indeed necessary to ask ourselves the following questions: can we recover the data easily? Is it okay if data is not available while we restore them?
Snapshot
It is a backup method. We can do it at index or cluster-wide level, but it doesn’t make sure we save all the data since, unlike replicas, snapshots are not live.
Another situation in which it is better to use replicas is if we needed to query many times and we got only one node leading us to poor performances because of this bottleneck. In this case, we may increase the replicas number without increasing the nodes number. Queries are executed at the same time on the replicas and therefore we can ask several requests, one on the primary shard and the other on the replicas.
Nodes and roles
The standard method to insert nodes is the following. We need to download Elasticsearch for each node we want in the cluster and update each config file in order to specify the node name and, if we are not using the default cluster, the cluster name. By running the .bat files for each node, the cluster nodes will be activated.
All nodes can fill one or more roles. For a full documentation about it, please visit Node | Elasticsearch Reference [7.10]. Let’s now take a look at the most important roles a node can fulfill.
A master-eligible node can be elected as the master node, which controls the cluster and is responsible for cluster-level actions, such as creating and deleting indexes, keeping track of nodes and allocating shards to nodes. For large clusters it is important to choose a master since it makes the cluster stable. A complete explanation of the master election process can be found at Voting configurations | Elasticsearch Reference [7.10].
node can be elected as the master node, which controls the cluster and is responsible for cluster-level actions, such as creating and deleting indexes, keeping track of nodes and allocating shards to nodes. For large clusters it is important to choose a master since it makes the cluster stable. A complete explanation of the master election process can be found at Voting configurations | Elasticsearch Reference [7.10]. A data node takes care of the storage of cluster data and executes data-related queries, related both to search and modification.
node takes care of the storage of cluster data and executes data-related queries, related both to search and modification. An ingest node executes acquisition pipelines, i.e. a series of steps called processors through which documents are indexed.
node executes acquisition pipelines, i.e. a series of steps called processors through which documents are indexed. A machine learning node is capable of responding to requests from the Machine Learning API.
node is capable of responding to requests from the Machine Learning API. A node can be a coordination one if all the other roles are disabled for it. It will deal with the internal distribution of queries and will be responsible for request processing by managing the delegation of the necessary work. Such a node is useful only for large clusters.
one if all the other roles are disabled for it. It will deal with the internal distribution of queries and will be responsible for request processing by managing the delegation of the necessary work. Such a node is useful only for large clusters. A voting-only node participates in the election of the master but cannot be elected. It is rarely used, mainly with large clusters.
Active node roles can be seen by executing the “GET _cat / nodes” request. Looking at the result of this request in the second section, we can see that both nodes have “dilmrt” as roles. Each letter stands for a role:
d = data,
i = ingest,
l = machine learning,
m = master-eligible,
r = remote cluster client,
t = transform.
Conclusion
In this article we covered the basic structure of Elasticsearch in order to have a decent understanding of what clusters, nodes, indices and documents are about. We also explained sharding and replication which is what enables Elasticsearch to scale and guarantee high availability, and briefly discussed snapshots.
The next step is to go through in detail how to manage indexes and documents. In particular, in our second article about Elastics we will explain how to create, delete and modify them using the Kibana Dev Tools. | https://medium.com/betacom/elk-stack-elasticsearch-5bfbfebccb7f | ['Eleonora Fontana'] | 2020-11-23 11:21:11.809000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Elasticsearch', 'Data Analytics', 'Data Analysis', 'Search Engines'] |
Aloe Vera Ghee By Earthomaya — An Innovative Product With Its Benefits | We all have heard and know the various benefits of Aloe vera, but have you heard of its Ghee? Yes, I am talking here about “Aloe vera Ghee.” It was a new term for me too when I first learned about the brand Earthomaya, which is producing Aloe Vera Ghee. The Aloe Vera Ghee is produced by an innovative process when Desi Cow A2 Ghee is infused with whole Aloe vera leaflets (including green part and gel).
I discovered it from a friend who shares its excellent benefits, and I thought to give it a try once. Furthermore, after using it for more than a month now, I could not stop sharing its excellent benefits and review on the product. So, let us get to know more about the product. However, we should first know about Earthomaya & Why & How it infuses Aloe vera in Ghee?
About Earthomaya
Earthomaya is a Rajasthan brand that develops one-of-a-kind products by combining old Ayurvedic principles with cutting-edge technology to get “the most out of it,” which nourishes and improves human health.
People at Earthomaya believes that the earth has supernatural healing power. Fssai and NABL approved labs have tested their products for all Nutritional facts, Additives & Preservatives and are found to be completely Additives & Preservatives Free.
No Preservatives
It does not contain any added Flavor
No Coloring agent and also gluten-free.
Why & How it is infusing Aloe vera in Ghee?
Earthomaya utilises Ghee as a carrier because, according to Ayurveda, using Ghee as a carrier boosts the nutritional effect of herbs and directly influences bodily tissue due to the increased bioavailability of Ghee. People at Earthomaya infuses Desi Cow A2 Ghee with the entire Aloe vera leaflet (including the green section and gel) using an innovative process.
Understanding this whole process took them two years of rigorous study into extracting the active component and qualities of the whole Aloe vera leaflet in Ghee.
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About Aloe Vera & Its Benefits
The benefits of Aloe vera are nothing new; it is well-known for its several advantages. It contains a wide range of therapeutic properties that can help with various diseases. Aloe vera is Sita (cool) in potency, Tikta (bitter) in flavour, and Bhedan (laxative) in nature. We also know about Aloe vera’s antibacterial, antiviral, and antiseptic properties.
Some Benefits Of Aloe Vera
It aids in the improvement of liver function.
It aids in the relief of burning feelings and other skin issues.
Aloe vera is also beneficial to the eyes when used regularly.
It aids in improving immunity, which aids in the body’s ability to fight infection. This is because it has a Rasayana (rejuvenating) effect.
Aloe vera can also help with worm infestation and Vata-Pitta-Kapha equilibrium.
Managing numerous skin disorders such as acne and pimples is one of the most efficient uses of Aloe vera gel.
Aloe vera can also be used to treat dandruff and hair loss.
Because of its laxative properties, aloe vera juice helps to relieve constipation when consumed orally.
Aloe vera juice is also utilised for weight loss and diabetic management.
About Aloe Vera Ghee & Its Ingredients
Aloe Vera Ghee is India’s first product of its kind. It is made using an innovative process that utilises the best of the whole aloe vera. The product has been thoroughly tested in the lab and has been shown to give results and provide many health benefits.
Aloe Vera Ghee is made of Only Two Ingredients:
Earthomaya claims that it uses hand-churned cultured cow ghee derived from desi cow milk, and all of the ingredients are 100 per cent organic.
Moreover, it does not contain any kind of aloe vera extract or powder; instead, it retains a whole fresh aloe vera leaflet grown organically and on desert soil native to the plant, which increases the presence of active ingredients. Click here to know Why Should You Opt For A2 Milk In Comparison To The A1 Milk Type?
Nutritional Facts of Aloe Vera Ghee
Beta carotene
It has 16 types of fatty acids, whereas cow ghee contains only 13 fatty acids.
Zero Trans Fat
Aloin content (an active ingredient of Aloe vera)
Benefits of Aloe vera Ghee
Aloe vera’s antiviral, antibacterial and antiseptic properties benefit skin allergy, rashes, and skin itching. Aids in the treatment of diabetes and relieves constipation and stomach gas. Aloe vera boosts collagen formation and bone remodelling in the body, which helps with joint pain and osteoporosis. Thus, it helps relieve joint pain, knee discomfort, and cervical pain. It contains beta carotene and vitamin A, which help to improve vision. Boost Your Immunity and Brain Power It contains anti-ageing properties and is beneficial to the skin. The Aloe Vera Ghee Helps with Diabetes. It also aids in the treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Aloe-emodin has been shown to lower the risk of breast cancer. Aloe-emodin has been shown to improve the Central Nervous System, which aids in the treatment of amnesia. Due to the presence of aloe-emodin, it aids in breathing and lung illnesses and fights cigarette smoke particles in the lungs by boosting cytokines.
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How Presence of Aloe Content Makes It An Excellent Product
Aloe-emodin has been shown to lower the risk of breast cancer. It aids in the treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver. Aloe-emodin is said to improve the Central Nervous System, which aids in treating amnesia. Due to the presence of aloe-emodin, it aids in breathing and lung illnesses and fights cigarette smoke particles in the lungs by increasing cytokines.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What Distinguishes Aloe Vera Ghee From Other Aloe Vera Products?
Anthraquinone glycosides (Aloin A, Aloin B, Aloe-Emodin, etc.) are a primary active element in Aloe vera; however, these are absent from 95% of the market’s Aloe vera products. For example, juice only contains Aloe vera gel, which is 98.5 per cent water, and the remaining gel is primarily sterilised and processed at a high temperature, which can damage the active elements of Aloe vera gel.
How to Consume It?
Warm a small amount of Aloe Vera Ghee, about 1–2 tablespoons, and eat it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. You can also consume it as part of a regular meal.
However, the best method to take it is as a supplement, so try consuming it when you are not dining or having any meals.
Restrictions on Using Aloe vera Ghee
Though the product is natural and does not show any side effects, it is still advisable for Pregnant and lactating women to consult their doctors before starting any herbal supplements. Also, click here to know the Fi ve Indoor Plants That Are Good For Your Health.
Why Use Aloe Vera Ghee?
Why Not? is a well-known medicinal plant that people have been using for thousands of years. Furthermore, Desi Cow Ghee has numerous health benefits like; Boosts immunity, Aids in bone health, Improving digestion, etc. So, when you can benefit from two incredible products in one single pack, why not choose it then? Moreover, looking at the benefits above, it is worth spending your money on.
Some Customer Testimonials
“A very healthy, rejuvenating and refreshing alternative towards my allopathic capsules. One spoon empty stomach in the morning, I feel very energetic and cured my fatigue pain in knees and shoulder.” “I was suffering from acidity issue for a long time, and I was taking a medicine daily, but after using this, I have relief, and I believe Ayurvedic products because they don’t have any side effects.” “My mom was suffering from joint pain, we consulted so many doctors, but nothing was working, and finally, my friend suggested this product and seriously it works wonders.” “On behalf of my mamaji, he had a problem with wheat flour. But now, after taking this aloe vera ghee, he can eat wheat flour. Thanks to aloeveera ghee.”
Click Here To Buy
Facts & Final Words
Conclusively, Earthomaya Aloe Vera Ghee is one of India’s best and only products you must consider buying once to get its health benefits. The Ghee is manufactured from specific Aloe vera species. Furthermore, only fresh Aloe vera is used.
Earthomaya ghee is produced from Aloe vera leaflets, which means that it contains the entire leaflet rather than just the gel. The Ghee is not made with aloe vera extract or powder. Earthomaya makes desi cow ghee in tiny batches to keep it fresh and sanitary.
We would love to hear about your experiences using this incredible Ghee from Earthomaya. So, go ahead, buy it and acquire its miracles. | https://medium.com/@earthomaya/aloe-vera-ghee-by-earthomaya-an-innovative-product-with-its-benefits-9a17ea4d5f8b | [] | 2021-12-20 07:31:37.280000+00:00 | ['Pain', 'Aloevera', 'Ghee', 'Diabetes', 'Cervical'] |
Repurposed Infosec Comic #9: “Consultants”. | Also, if you tire of your crappy consultants, please consider hiring a good one . Be prepared for results however.
The San Francisco Examiner, (San Francisco, California), 24 Dec 1894
Like this story? Want to see others like it? Check out more technology/cyber security influenced articles in Infoseconds. Check out other publications around Historical News or Internet Archaeology(True Crime). | https://medium.com/infoseconds/repurposed-infosec-comic-9-consultants-9f42914101b3 | [] | 2020-12-19 05:55:49.036000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Cybersecurity', 'Cyber Security Awareness', 'Infosec', 'Security'] |
Pop Culture Mondays/7.6.21 | LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO BO BURNHAM:
It is possible you have NO idea who this man is. Not the face nor the name. Then again it is possible you are vaguely aware of his name and his existence. And if you have a TikTokker IN the family you may have heard his name but likely at very least heard a part of one of his songs. According to Wikipedia, Bo is an “American comedian, musician, actor, film director, screenwriter, and poet.” I mean this gives me an identity crisis like NO one’s business because like I don’t even think I can say I am even ONE ANYTHING let alone 6 somethings. OK, fine I can say I share being an AMERICAN with him and that’s that. But the kid IS talented and he grew up on the Internets as he was born in 1990 and he started his career on the YouTube racking up HUNDREDS of millions of views. In case you are unsure, that’s a lot of views. He actually wrote and directed the film Eighth Grade (wow I have not typed the word “eighth” in a long time and I am not going to lie…that took a FUCK TON of tries…but I digress…) and I really loved aka was shook by that film.
WELL, ENTRÉ COVID and lockdown and what better forum for CONTENT is there for a writer/director/actor/musician/poet/comedian? SO voila…he has a Netflix special called INSIDE with Bo Burnham and it is weird and wild and poignant and traumatizing and hilarious all at once. I have read a lot of OTHER people writing about it and they do a much better job so I have linked to those stories at the bottom but in the meantime you come here for VIDEOS so videos I shall give you. Here is the trailer:
OK before I get to more of Bo…humor me as I go down a little musical theatre journey. I was a theatre kid…every play I could be in I would be in it but as many were musicals and I had little actual singing talent, but I can speak sing REALLY well, SO I learned that the narrator role was the KEY role in many ways. You were the STORY TELLER. You set the tone. You are the MC like PT Barnum…some GREAT “narrator” roles include:
JOEL GREY/CABARET:
OR the incredible André De Shields as Hermes in “Hadestown” (OMG HE IS AMAZE):
And speaking of PT Barnum…if you have NOT watched The Greatest Showman (BIG SCREEN TV, LOUD AS FUCK SPEAKERS) then you must do nothing else this week than this, we have Hugh Jackman, PCM GOD, as PT BARNUM himself:
SO I digress (and there are many more examples) but the point is, my feeling is Bo is sort of a modern-day take on this…and even mimics the sound in his hit song from his solo show (shot entirely by himself in his apartment during lockdown) AND it is a truly genius and correct take on the INTERNET. I assure you, watch this, Bo as the narrator of the Internet:
HOW GOOD IS THIS? It’s baffling how good it is. And terrifying. It is not joyful but it feels good but then bad. Here are some others:
AND FOR ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY is this the funniest yet truest take ever… “White Woman’s Instagram” for which I am particularly guilty of especially the posts of dead parents like look I can be honest, this speaks to me and I am actually the worst. HALF OF YOU, my darling readers, ARE GUILTY of this. Don’t ever stop:
OK ok last clip but if you have a TikTokker you have heard this “sound” so now you get context and truly there are some amaze references in here:
Sorry I lied but this was important AND FRANKLY, this should be the new theme song of Kara Swisher’s and Scott Galloway’s PIVOT podcast don’t you think?
Must read articles on our Bo: | https://medium.com/popculturemondays/pop-culture-mondays-7-6-21-32114357b5e5 | ['Brooke Hammerling'] | 2021-07-06 17:44:15.831000+00:00 | ['Tiktok', 'Fire', 'Bo Burnham', 'Pop Culture', 'Zuckerberg'] |
Revival of an introvert | If you are going through the same circumstances as me, this article is for you.
I am a nerd. That’s what everyone called me during my bachelor's degree. Back then, I was going to school, and that’s it. You can say that my full-time job was “a student.” I was also an introvert who wasn’t “fun.” I was constantly faced with harassment, discrimination, or even bullying from my teachers or peers.
That pressure is precisely what made me sometimes hate what I was doing. I think we can all relate to the traditional studying pattern of just going to school, and that is it.
According to a study in the United States, 96% of students in university are involved in extracurricular activities. The other 4% just went to school, and that’s it. The Tunisian case is the opposite of that. I belonged to the majority of Tunisian students that were not engaged in extracurricular activities. How many of you were introverted until you were involved in extracurricular activities?
Watch this if you want to learn more about AIESEC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3cHVnfK0ZQ&ab_channel=Youth%27More
What changed for me was when I started my master’s degree, I joined AIESEC. I joined because the old me wasn’t someone that I liked, and I wanted that change. I mean, we all want to experience life and see new things these days! What I loved is what others learned at school. I learned all that and more in AIESEC, an international organization that works on developing leadership in youth.
My AIESEC family
It taught me more than what I studied in school. I started this journey by learning new skills like how to write an email. I know you’re thinking: this is a basic task. But it was through these emails or sometimes calls; I got the chance to network with important people from Tunisia or internationals. They had a huge impact on me. They taught me new things about their culture, and most importantly, they shared their knowledge and experience.
Also, I learned how to be polyvalent by learning marketing strategies, designing skills, or improving my writing skills. I loved most the ability to lead a team and impact their experience in life, even if it was a small impact.
That is why I encourage people not to stick to what they do in school. In some cases, that can only bring them down and not explore their potential, seeing that in universities, we are subjected to limited knowledge. Also, as I said, it is better to learn through experience since it’s more enriching, and we learn more through them.
So for every student out there, I say: Let’s escape our everyday lives and embark on a new journey together. And most importantly, share your experiences. | https://medium.com/@khechinisarah/revival-of-an-introvert-574f498633e0 | ['Sarah Khechini'] | 2021-08-27 15:56:35.013000+00:00 | ['Aiesec', 'Students', 'Change', 'Introvert', 'Experience'] |
Top Amazon Finds of 2020! | Top Amazon Finds of 2020!
I was looking through the Amazon purchases that I have made in 2020, and I decided to make a list of my top Amazon finds this year.
1) Air Fryer
At first, I was sceptical about this, but after watching so many cooking videos showing the various things that can be cooked in an air fryer, I decided to give it a try. It has been the best purchase I made in 2020. I can cook almost anything in it. Since it is much smaller than an oven, the heat stays in a small space and cooks the food so quickly. The food comes out delicious every time. If you are contemplating buying one, you should go for it, you will not regret it.
The one I purchased is from a brand called Innsky and I highly recommend it. You can find it in this link:
2) Neck Massager
Over the past few weeks, my neck and shoulder muscles have been very tense, and I desperately needed a massage, but all the massage places were closed where I live due to COVID-19. I was looking online and I came across this neck and shoulder massager, so I decided to give it a try after reading so many good reviews. The massager relived so much of my neck and shoulder muscle tension and I highly recommend it.
The one I purchased is from a brand called Renpho, but there are so many different brands selling pretty much the same massager. You can find the one I purchased in this link:
3) Humidifier
Every year during winter season, my skin gets very dry due to the heater in my house. This year, I finally decided to get a humidifier to solve this problem. I have been keeping it on in my living room and bedroom all day and night, and it helped me tremendously. My skin is less dry and I am able to breather better at night.
The one I purchased is from a brand called Homasy, and I highly recommend it. It has a very sleek / modern design and it doubles as a night light! You can find it in this link:
4) Monitor
Like many people, I started working from home in March 2020 due to the pandemic. I decided to buy a second screen to be able to work more efficiently. It has been a great purchase which allowed me to work from home as if I was at the office. Given that it is now December and I am still working from home, this was one of the best purchases I have made this year.
The one I purchased was from the brand ASUS and it’s a 32 inch screen with a very affordable price. You can find it in this link:
5) Wireless Bluetooth Headphones
When the pandemic started, I decided to take more walks around my house given that all the gyms were closed and I had more time on my hands given that I didn’t need to commute to work anymore. I needed a pair of headphones to listen to music while exercising, but I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on name brand headphones. I found a pair of headphones with great reviews on Amazon and they were very affordable. It has been a great purchase!
The one I purchased is from a brand called PowerLocus, and you can find it in this link: | https://medium.com/@clarapromos/top-amazon-finds-of-2020-6db835dc77 | ['Clara F.'] | 2020-12-21 02:21:59.631000+00:00 | ['Amazon', 'Shopping', 'Food', 'Gadgets', 'Technology'] |
Covid-19 impact: Preterm Birth and PROM Testing Market Size To Reach $1.3 Billion By 2025 | Preterm Birth and PROM Testing Market Growth & Trends
The global preterm birth and prom testing market size is expected to reach USD 1.3 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., exhibiting a CAGR of 1.8% during the forecast period. Rising incidence of preterm births, increasing geographical reach by market players, high demand for effective diagnosis of preterm births, and advanced drug delivery devices are expected to drive the market.
Every year, approximately 15 million babies around the world are born before the 37th week of pregnancy and this number is expected to increase further. Around 1 million children die each year due to complications caused by preterm births. Premature Rupture of Membranes (PROM) causes about 4.5 million preterm births each year, worldwide. Globally, preterm birth is among the most frequent causes of death among neonates within the first month of life.
Increasing average age of pregnant women (>35 years of age) has led to an increase in the risk of heath conditions such as high blood pressure and reduced blood flow to the placenta. These issues risk the health of both mother and unborn child and often result in preterm births or neonatal deaths. Even though traditional methods such as Nitrazine and Ferning test make it possible to obtain a negative predictive value (NPV), they have extremely poor positive predictive values for spontaneous deliver. The approval of PartaSure (Parsagen Diagnostics, Inc. and Qiagen) in April 2018 and other improved diagnostic test kits has introduced a highly efficacious yet cost-effective options for PROM testing in symptomatic patients.
Request a free sample copy or view report summary:
www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/preterm-birth-prom-testing-market/request/rs1
Preterm Birth and PROM Testing Market Report Highlights | https://medium.com/healthcare-market-research/covid-19-impact-preterm-birth-and-prom-testing-market-size-to-reach-1-3-billion-by-2025-57cbd7392787 | ['Rajesh Varma'] | 2020-08-07 13:00:19.233000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Covid 19 Crisis', 'Preterm Birth', 'Medical', 'Medical Devices'] |
The Personalities You Need to Build Great Teams | The Personalities You Need to Build Great Teams
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
To build a team requires members who have different personalities. If team members consist only of members with driving personalities, then the team will experience internal conflict because everyone feels the most right.
Therefore, a leader must be able to analyze the employee’s personality to find out the strengths and weaknesses. This personality is needed to position employees according to their expertise. That move is a way to build the ideal team.
I worked at the hospital for 9 years, where I often found the team’s performance was not optimal. This is evidenced by not achieving work targets. It makes me think that leaders cannot position employees in the right fields.
Company careers depend on teamwork.
The team works best if its members have complementary roles. There are four personalities of team members that are needed to make the ideal team. This is the composition:
Movers
Followers /Yes man
Opponents
Bystanders
In a company, all members must be involved to carry out roles and responsibilities. After forming four compositions for the ideal team, the task of the members is to understand the weaknesses of colleagues and make strengths as weapons to achieve goals. These two abilities are the keys for a company to be successful. Here are four personalities needed to build the ideal team. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/personality-you-need-to-build-great-teams-cd89460a848a | ['Fendy Dc'] | 2020-12-14 03:30:20.371000+00:00 | ['Teamwork', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Work', 'Life Lessons', 'Team'] |
Self-Driving cars really are the panacea to many of our cities’ woes. | A million lives saved per year
While it is true that cars have never been safer and the number of accidents per mile driven is way down from the height in 1980: 1.12 versus 3.36 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, it is still the case that over 35,000 people died in car crashes in 2015 alone. [source] And this is only for the U.S. If you consider the worldwide loss of life in auto accidents, the number soars to more than 1.3 million each year.
The computer driving your car will be better equipped than you at handling a wide array of hazards and dangers.
Not only can autonomous cars anticipate conditions far better and react more quickly than any human, there will be many ways in which the cars on the road will communicate with each other in ways we have only imagined. This will allow for decisions, both at the micro-level — in the car and at the macro-level — on the street or even citywide, that save lives.
That brings us to the next greatest improvement…
The end of traffic
There won’t be mirrors in cars of the future.
That same orchestration that will allow your vehicle to avoid that pothole, construction zone, or accident will also end traffic. They will be able to speed up and slow down in unison as well as predict patterns based on past data and observation. Your robot car will remember not to take 5th Street through the park on the 3rd Thursday of the month when the bikers take over all lanes.
Sure, that’s when all cars are automated, but that is many years away. What effect can a single self-driving vehicle have on traffic? Turns out, it can still be quite large. A new study out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggests that the addition of just a small number of autonomous cars can ease the congestion on our roads.
It’s interesting that these improvements can occur even with a single vehicle in a flow of 20 other cars. And it’s also worth noting that the level of autonomy required to have this effect isn’t the kind that Waymo, Uber, and others are seeking to build — it’s more akin to the adaptive cruise control already featured in many higher-end cars. So while we might have to wait a little longer for all of autonomy’s effects to be felt, its ability to reduce traffic congestion could be here rather sooner than we anticipated. [MIT Technology Review]
Not only will traffic be reduced or nearly eliminated, speeds can increase safely and people can get to their destinations faster. In the future, there may not be set speed limits, but instead fluid guidelines based upon traffic, road, and weather conditions.
Reclaiming our time
While our time in the vehicle will likely be reduced per the traffic mitigation topics above, the time we do spend in cars will be transformed. No longer will we have to sit forward and pay attention, crane our necks, and get stressed out. We will get this time back, and we can do with it anything we want. Want to work on your laptop, talk on the phone, play games, or read? You aren’t thinking big enough. Plus, as a recent article from The Atlantic City Lab, points out:
Less than 5 percent of survey respondents claimed they’d even attempt to get any work done.
People may not always work in their cars in the future, but they will be dressed monochromatically.
How about sleeping? Having lunch? Catching up on that Netflix series? Playing Pandemic with three friends Having a wine and cheese tasting event on the way to the theater? Doing something else on the way to the theater?There are going to be whole new industries formed around furnishing and decking out our vehicles once there is no need for a steering wheel and other controls, instrumentation, even windshields.
A cleaner earth
It almost goes without saying (but shouldn’t) that a huge advantage to getting more cars off the road is a huge reduction in emissions. That will only be good for the air we breathe, our cities, and the Earth as a whole. | https://medium.com/alttext/self-driving-cars-really-are-the-panacea-to-many-of-our-cities-woes-b9d2bae4c55f | ['Ben Edwards'] | 2017-10-24 00:35:32.288000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Self Driving Cars', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Technology', 'Tech'] |
Unwrapped | free stock photos
Our bodies craved
each other all night
in fires warmth
and candles light
Your longing eyes
how they invite
the only gift I want to give
the only gift you want to receive
I unwrap
layer by layer
as your beauty’s
peeled free
the only gift you want to give
the only gift I want to receive
bare skin adorned
with new perfume
Of Meadowsweet
and desert bloom
though nothing near as sweet
as your unfolding petals meet
my lips
tongue Stirring
round and round
Your taste
swallowed down:
Of subtle fruit
imbibing wine
drink you in
nectar
Divine!
Savor. Every. Drop.
I pause and hold
your legs —
spasms
as you beg
for me
to meet you
eye to eye
GUSH and dripping
down my chin
you pull me up
and pull me in
feeling and filling you
deeply with
the only gift I want to give
the only gift you want to receive
As Our bodies pulse
against the night
through fires warmth
and candles light
Your longing eyes
how they invite:
the only gift I want to give.
You are the only gift I want to receive. | https://medium.com/sensual-enchantment/unwrapped-d072a4e917d6 | ['Fleur Sauvage'] | 2020-12-27 14:21:02.937000+00:00 | ['Sex', 'Erotica', 'Sensuality', 'Love', 'Poetry'] |
Sekiro: Shadows Die a Thousand Times | It’s the Dark Souls of FromSoftware games!
Sekiro, the one-armed wolf shinobi.
FromSoftware, Inc.’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is certainly one of the hottest games released in 2019 so far, if not the hottest. To no surprise, its announcement and release have generated a large amount of hype as a lot of people have been looking forward to the company’s new original IP after the president Hidetaka Miyazaki claimed that there would be no more Dark Souls games, the critically acclaimed series the company’s well-known for. Now that the title’s released and taking the gaming world by storm, does it live up to the hype? How difficult is it? In my humble opinion, it definitely deserves the hype, and at the same time it is likely among the most difficult games I have ever experienced (in a largely good way).
The game’s premise can be a bit confusing, which isn’t really a surprise to any veterans of FromSoftware’s games, but Sekiro takes place in feudal Japan, during the Sengoku period, around the 15/16th century. You control a shinobi (ninja) called Wolf, or Sekiro, and your job is to rescue a boy who has the power of immortality stored in his blood from people who wish to seize that power for their own. That’s not actually all to the story; there’s more but I don’t want to tread in spoiler territory so I’ll just leave it at that. A lot of the enemies you encounter are generally reminiscent of what one would expect from the time period, though the game actually features a lot of fantasy elements (not surprising considering the premise), and you’ll actually fight a lot of non-humans as you progress through the game. But at the end of the day, the game is very similar to the Dark Souls predecessors in that you don’t actually need to care about the story if you don’t want to; you’re free to just go through the level murdering almost every single entity until you reach the boss, then murder the boss as well without ever bothering to know their backstory.
How is Sekiro from a technical/display perspective? In my opinion, the game looks fantastic. The details are nice, the animations are super fluid, and I’m a fan of the medieval Japanese aesthetic. The game runs fine as well and getting 60 FPS isn’t much of an issue; I did have frame drops in a few places but a recent Nvidia driver more or less resolved those problems. Also, considering I played the PC edition, the PC port was actually really satisfactory, which isn’t really something I can say about the Souls games (though 3 was passable). I also found the UI for the most part straightforward and easy to use/understand, with my only gripe being a minor issue with how prosthetic upgrades are equipped; it sort of makes sense due to some of the prosthetic upgrades having different functions from the original but I personally think they could have streamlined the earlier upgrades better. The controller/keyboard customization is also really generous, and you’re able to map most, if not all of the controls in a way that can fit you the best. I played the game using an Xbox controller, though I’d imagine the mouse/keyboard experience wouldn’t be too shabby (I played the Souls games with mouse/keyboard).
Like any other famous FromSoftware title, Sekiro’s meat and potatoes lies in its game-play (and difficulty), and Sekiro’s game-play is absolutely tight. The combat is extremely smooth, and you as the player have a ton of control over Wolf’s movement and attacks. Traversing around the map via jumping, dashing, and grappling are all very fluid and there are few awkward animations, if any. Combat revolves around two important mechanics: posture and vitality. Attacking and damaging an enemy reduces their health and builds up their posture, and your goal is to either max out their posture bar or deplete their vitality bar (whichever one comes first) while preventing the same from happening to you, and then finish them off with a stylish execution, called a “death blow.” For veterans of the Souls games, there are a few important differences. One, there’s no stamina, so the player can attack and dodge without limit. Two, the emphasis on posture and the changes to dodge mechanics makes defense very different. Dodging in Sekiro has very few invincibility frames, so it’s a lot more difficult to evade attacks that you would normally roll through in the Souls games. Instead, focus is shifted on blocking and deflecting (perfect blocking, a.k.a blocking an attack the precise moment it would land). Blocking prevents most damage in the game, with the caveat that your own posture bar builds up, and if your posture bar fills up, you’ll get guard-broken which leaves you open to counter-attack for a short moment. However, if you learn the proper attack timings and deflect, your posture will never break, and you actually build up the enemy’s posture as well. Knowing when to be aggressive and attack, as well as learning enemy patterns to master deflections is absolutely key to getting through the game, and mastering the system really makes combat feel rewarding.
Another excellent game-play feature is the incorporation of stealth and assassinations, which makes sense since Wolf is a shinobi. Fighting multiple enemies at once in Sekiro is super difficult, so you make up for that by using your wits and the environment to avoid detection and thin out enemy numbers so that way you engage in open combat as rarely as possible. Most bosses and mini-bosses in the game require two death blows to properly finish off, and knowing how to use stealth can make a lot of very difficult fights more manageable, as you can use a stealth attack to instantly remove a mini-boss’s health bar (actual boss fights unfortunately won’t really give you the opportunity to erase their first health bar most of the time). This makes sense; after all you play as a shinobi, not a samurai, and your only goal is to get the job done, whatever it takes, honor be damned. The stealth mechanic is also really enhanced by Sekiro’s brilliant level design, as each area gives you multiple ways to approach the situation from angles the enemy won’t expect.
Sekiro also handles character progression in a fairly unique way. Killing enemies gives Wolf money (sen) and experience, and enough experience gives you a skill point, which can be invested in various skill trees. Most of the skills give you more abilities and options to defeat your enemies. However, one interesting thing is that you can’t actually increase Wolf’s base stats like health, posture, and attack power without obtaining the right items (prayer beads for health/posture and memories for attack). Prayer beads are generally dropped by mini-bosses, and memories are dropped by actual bosses. That means if you want to up your stats and stay alive longer or hit harder, you need to actually defeat the big enemies first. Wolf’s progression also comes in the form of his shinobi prosthetic left arm, and as you go through the game you’ll find more tools to be used at your disposal, and with upgrade materials found/dropped you can make those tools even stronger. The different prosthetic tools are all super cool, ranging from standard shuriken to a hat you can wear to block enemy attacks. Wolf also gets access to special techniques known as combat arts (performed by pressing the block and attack buttons simultaneously), and much like prosthetics, combat arts give you an additional option to take on your foes outside of your standard sword attacks. The brilliance behind the prosthetics and combat arts is that the game does not force you to use them; you can beat the entire game without using any of those tools, but knowing how and when to use certain arts/prosthetics will reduce the difficulty of most encounters in the game significantly.
Mikiri counter, a badass move that lets you intercept a thrust attack by stepping on the enemy’s weapon.
So just how difficult is Sekiro? In my opinion, it’s probably the hardest FromSoftware game I’ve played, for two big reasons. First, it’s completely single player; there are no multiplayer elements involved at all. In the Souls games, you can cooperate with other players or NPC’s to assist you through the level and even on boss fights. You can’t in Sekiro; every encounter is completely decided by you alone. Second, in the Souls games, any particularly challenging boss can be made easier by simply grinding souls and dumping them into levels to up your character stats. Being one-shot by a boss? Level up a few times and drop a few points into health so that no longer happens. But due to how improving base stats work in Sekiro, you can’t do that anymore, and you’re forced to actually beat the fights before you can actually improve your stats. Sure, you can acquire more skills via experience grinding, but skill points won’t make you hit harder or tank more hits. Sekiro’s boss fights are generally very well done (with one personal exception) and defeating each one really feels rewarding due to the effort required behind each victory. However, despite those difficulty changes it is easier than the Souls games in some aspects. For one, you’re not limited by stamina, your animations are generally a lot quicker, deflect windows are somewhat generous, and you can actually cancel attacks into a block, whereas most actions you perform in Souls are all commitments you need to make so you’re more vulnerable to punishes if you screw up. Also the Souls games don’t give you an option to stealth and instant-kill enemies while they’re unaware. My general opinion would be that Sekiro has a much higher skill floor than the Souls games with its steeper learning curve, but it becomes easier than the Souls games once you actually get a grasp on the fundamentals behind its combat system (assuming you don’t summon in the Souls games), which basically revolves around calculated aggression and mastering deflects.
I’ve seen controversial articles talking about how this game needs an “easy mode” or how it disrespects its players due to its difficulty, etc., and honestly after playing through the entire game and achieving the “true” ending, I disagree. With the exception of one boss that feels like it should be in Souls rather than this game due to how its mechanics function, Sekiro’s bosses generally adhere to the FromSoftware formula. Yes, you will likely get your ass handed to you the first few times you attempt each boss fight, but if you’re a Souls veteran you’ll know that death is to be expected. However, the game also expects you to learn from each death and understand your mistakes, and to slowly master each boss’s set of moves, and if you do that, you will eventually triumph. Blindly rushing into each fight expecting to button mash and win without paying attention to what the enemy does at all will only get you killed, and will continue to get you killed until you actually decide to consciously play the game. Another thing to note is that the game also encourages you to fully take advantage of your load-out and skills, and a lot of bosses in this game often have very exploitable weaknesses to certain prosthetic tools or other items, so each fight is not just a case of learning how the boss works but also learning how to master your own tool kit. Sekiro’s difficulty is great because it forces the player to play with awareness and be mindful of their own approaches and mistakes, and yields great rewards once the player does so.
Moving on from the game-play, Sekiro’s narrative is pretty interesting. For one, it’s actually more explicit/straightforward than the Souls games, and rather surprisingly there’s a lot more exposition and dialogue (also your character actually speaks). However, it still follows the classic Souls formula of prioritizing the world building, and you can figure out a lot more about the game’s universe through exploration and picking up hints and clues here and there as well as talking to NPC’s. It also conveys very similar themes to the Souls games as well; the obsession with immortality and fear of death is prominent in Sekiro, just like how the Souls games deal with the fear of change and death. The important characters are all very intriguing and on average are more interesting than most characters in the Souls games, and overall I personally enjoyed Sekiro’s story more than the Souls games. That said, mind-blowing storytelling isn’t something FromSoftware does and I wouldn’t exactly call it a storytelling masterpiece, but it is surprisingly good and honestly the majority of players who play these games aren’t really expecting one anyways.
I don’t have too many problems with the game, but there are a few minor issues. One is an inherent consequence of a design choice, and that’s the replayability. Compared to the Souls games, the incentive to replay Sekiro isn’t nearly as high, due to your inability to create different characters with different play-styles and the lack of multiplayer. Sure, you can mess around with different prosthetic tools and explore different skill trees (and I strongly encourage this in the NG+ play-throughs), but at the end of the day you’ll always be Wolf with a katana. After you’ve acquired all the skills, upgrades, and have unlocked all the various story endings, there really isn’t much left to do. In Souls, players create new characters and can use them to fight other players online, which gives the games a very long playing life-span that isn’t there with Sekiro. There’s probably a good reason why FromSoftware avoided dealing with online activity altogether for this game, but one can dream. Final issue would be with the mini-bosses, and that a lot of them are just re-hashes of the same few fights. On one hand, it’s boring, but on the other hand once you learn the few templates beating them should be relatively easy. At least the few mini-boss templates are all interesting and have challenging move-sets, so they’re still fun to fight even if you end up fighting the same mini-boss a bunch of times. And as far as the actual bosses go, there is some boss re-use, but the few re-used bosses spice things up to change the encounter and they’re excellent fights anyways so I don’t mind. I think almost all of the main boss fights are excellently designed and I think Sekiro has the most consistently good boss line-up of all the Souls games so far (excluding Bloodborne as I haven’t played that).
Overall, Sekiro is a masterpiece, and for all the hype leading up to the game’s release, FromSoftware certainly delivered. If you enjoyed Dark Souls, you’ll certainly feel at home with Sekiro (provided you actually take the time to adapt to the game’s different play style).
Rating: Definitely worth getting at retail price, easily a must-buy if you like FromSoftware. Not to mention this game won Game of the Year at the Game Awards show. | https://edmond-wu0895.medium.com/sekiro-shadows-die-a-thousand-times-ed69e44cf997 | ['Edmond Wu'] | 2020-07-12 20:32:27.846000+00:00 | ['Sekiro', 'Review', 'Entertainment', 'Gaming'] |
When The House is on Fire, Stay off The Toilet (A Cautionary Christmas Eve Tale of My Youth) | North East Texas was full of snow oddly enough. Snow falls in East Texas once every other year or so. Snow falls in large quantities every other 10 to 20 years or so. This was one of those heavy snow years. I don’t remember the snow falling so it must have fell past my bedtime and I awoke to a winter wonderland. Snow was everywhere the eye could gander. Resting high on fence-posts and billowing up where the hot sun had scorched only a month prior. This was right before Christmas but what I asked Santa for had already arrived. I hurriedly busied myself following my older brother and older cousin around getting the benefit of their teenage and early 20’s ingenuity. This consisted of building a giant snowman and turning the bottom of a ping pong table into a sleigh.
Quickly, my pestering turned to using my seven year old weight as ballast for the sleigh. I zoomed around as they pushed with instructions to launch snowballs at Kevin’s girlfriend Ruth and others gathered by the fence. Then I was told the horse “dranking-pond” was frozen well enough for me to stand on. Now, this seemed reasonable since dad had to take an axe to the frozen bathtub so our horses Prissy and Mandy could get a drink, but that was only a foot of water. Of course familial peer pressure mixed with encouragement gently nudged my moon-booted feet forward. With intense trepidation I unsurely tested the edge of the ice. God must have given me some sort of intense ice to water ratio intuition because although my cousin was standing on top of the ping pong sled jumping up and down upon the ice, fear still gripped me. Sensing this, my brother Chad, must have seen on opportunity to teach me a lesson on confronting my fear. Before I had the chance to react he and fear seized me with an uncontrollable grip and launched me onto the ice.
My bony knees acted as the perfect ice breaker. I was thigh high into the water as Kevin and Chad stared in amazement and fear of my Father’s retribution then laughed a surprised laugh with a worrisome finish. My velour tracksuit that grandma had given the Christmas before was doing a fine job of sucking up half the pond as I crawled to the snowy bank and quickly made my way to the confines of the drafty house.
Our 100 year old two story house was not up to the challenge of handling this rare deep freeze. It was a picturesque house complete with a barn, horses and a rumored overnight stay by one Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens. Unfortunately stories from small town historians and fine ambience can’t get ones backside toasty on a freezing season such as this. The limited heat was provided by two roaring fireplaces and one powerful wood burning stove. The problem with this old and lovely house was that it had high ceilings so the heat escaped quickly to the nether regions and left our bones frigid and bodies huddling. This is when I found the joy and unique challenge of peeing on a frozen toilet bowl and how to survive a night sleeping under a very static electric blanket. The fear of electrocution increases greatly when ones imagination is stimulated with static shocks here and there.
The wood-burning stove was the main source of heat and it was being feed a healthy diet of horse drawn firewood that was ping-pong sledded in from our back wooded acre. This stove saved our lives that Christmas and almost doomed us as well. It was always burning and belching white smoke across the neighborhood of our Blossom, Texas homestead. After the chilling experience of playing with the big boys, I decided that I’d go back and play with my old friend who was never too kind or too harsh, myself. This meant my imagination could run wild and it quickly ran itself to playing with the snow around the leaking septic tank. I found that the warm brownish liquid was great at forming the ice and creating fun snow channels. It was a real blessing for me that the pipe running into the septic had frozen and broke thereby allowing me limitless options for my creativity and germs to run rampant.
This was turning out to be the best winter ever of my young life as I enjoyed the poo water and then went inside to contaminate others and share hot chocolate. Their joy from almost freezing me to death would soon turn to suffering and the circle of life which is the plumbing system would continue to haunt them and surprise me. We were invited to the pastor’s Christmas Eve party which was only a mile away. I asked Mom if we could have the horses pull the ping pong sled but she said the station wagon would have to suffice. We had an alcohol-free fruit punch fueled evening as Kevin stayed home to keep fueling the stove. We returned later all hyper with sugar and thoughts of M&M’s dancing in our heads to find Kevin excitedly greeting us at the door saying something about a strange smell etc etc etc who cares? I had to go to the loo. I ran up to the second floor landing where the bathroom was located, adjacent to my room, and quickly got down to business. Now I don’t recall doing much reading whilst sans trousers at such a young age but to be honest, I like to take my time. Many people in life talk about the “hurry up and wait mentality” as a horrendously negative thing. Now in regards to horrendously negative interstate traffic I concur. Where buffoons with oversized vehicles and egos cut you off to only be sitting in traffic two minutes later right next to you. Neanderthals.
Now there is a lot of drama and who hasn’t had a lot of embarrassment attempting to “hurry-up” to the toilet but once there, I find the waiting to be rather relaxing. As I was mulling over the apple cider and tasty things I’d tasted that Christmas Eve I was starting to relax as I heard some very unrelaxing sounds coming from my room. Dad, Kevin, and maybe Mom and others were having a heated discussion growing more and more animated about the heated wallpaper in that room. Apparently there was something of a burning smell… a thinness to the wall…. “Smoke”… “hot….Really hot!!!… footsteps… thud…. Thwack…. What in the world was going on out there? Rip…. “It’s open, they just wallpapered over it…” Now more ripping noise filled the air as footsteps were creaking old wooden boards left and right as I tried my best to decipher these coded noises. I heard Mom saying something about taking little sister Marianne to the safety of downstairs as more noises erupted along with my brain. I couldn’t figure out what was going on but I was hoping if sweet little Marianne was being rescued I would be next. Surly they would come for me soon.
Then, bam! the door opened up and there stood every boy’s hero, Dad. He was there to whisk me to safety. I knew he wouldn’t forget little ole me especially when my pants were acting as shackles around my ankles. Yet he didn’t seem to notice me as he hurriedly filled a cup of water. Well I suppose getting a drink would be smart before having to carry me down the long flight of stairs to safety since I was a little heavy now and he probably needed to stay hydrated and all… What!!!, Thirsty at a time like this when everyone else seemed to be running for the hills. Now I could smell the smoke and even hear more running and scurrying around as he left with his cup of water and politely closed the door. He was gone. No bathroom this side of the Mississippi had ever heard the clatter of such intense dispensing of toilet paper on this holy and smokey Christmas Eve. All through the house all creatures were stirring and most likely the mice were well on their way to the warm protection of the hay in the fire free barn. I completed the paperwork in record time as commotion and stronger traces of smoke filled the air. By no means at all was this what I wanted for Christmas. I couldn’t see how the house burning down while I was in such a vulnerable position would somehow bring a Hot Wheels racetrack under the tree. Maybe Santa was running out of ideas on how to make Christmas exciting. This is what I get for wishing for a Fireman’s hat too. Thankfully, I wasn’t much of a hand-washer at the time so I was down the stairs as fast as my thin little legs could take me as the clatter and yelling seemed to subside. All that fear and commotion for nothing.
It turned out that an ember was trapped in the flue that went up through the house and a previous owner had just wallpapered over the hole. This is not a good technique for covering up a stove pipe hole on the second floor, but in this case it saved our house. If dad hadn’t been able to rip the wallpaper and pour water down the stove pipe the fire and heat would’ve escalated and most likely burned the house down in seconds.
In dangerous situations like this they say it’s all about God’s timing or nature’s calling in this case. It was humorous timing for me also to be caught with my pants down as well. There would be many more instances of shorn pants humor to follow throughout my life. Just remember gang, when your family is ignoring you in an emergency they might actually be saving your life. Once the commotion subsided, I went outside and resumed my warm septic water playing time, relieved with the thought that any problems that arose, even around Christmas, my Father would be there to fetch a cup of water for my benefit. That’s always good to know. My your glasses be full of Cheer this year as well as full of fire quenching water. | https://medium.com/@daveramseyish/when-the-house-is-on-fire-stay-off-the-toilet-a-cautionary-christmas-eve-tale-of-my-youth-a6221078d818 | ['Dave Ramsey'] | 2020-12-23 19:54:35.720000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Wood Burning Stove', 'Humor', 'Texas', 'Fire'] |
Husband Wife Problem Solution In India | The relation of husband wife is very pretty. without marriage life is said to be incomplete. Husband wife relation is depends on the trust, faith and love. After sometime of marriage couples start facing issues in their married life. At that time they seek for husband wife problem solution. This is one of the best remedy to deal with the problems of married life. For more information you can get in touch with our astrologer subhash shastri all the problems will be disappear and soon happiness will arrive in your married relationship in india. | https://medium.com/@pihu147741/husband-wife-problem-solution-in-india-3cb31eb0fd9b | [] | 2020-12-21 18:13:29.980000+00:00 | ['Astrology', 'Love', 'Couples'] |
How to use Soar’s FREE satellite imagery feeds (inc. video tutorial) | Soar is gaining lots of popularity as a global super-map of drone imagery, but the platform also gives users access to powerful satellite data feeds for spatial exploration!
Soar is building a dynamic super-map of the world that changes every time new content is added. By positioning itself as the world’s leading resource for all maps and imagery, Soar allows web and mobile users to search up-to-date satellite imagery, high-resolution aerial feeds, and content collected by drone pilots. Have you explored Soar’s dynamic satellite imagery data feeds yet?
WATCH — How to access FREE satellite imagery on the Official Soar YouTube Channel:
In order to assist users with realising the potential of the satellite imagery available to them on Soar, this article will describe how to search, view and download data from our Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 feeds.
We’ll start with a welcome to Soar for our first-time users! Below you can see the landing page where we will begin the dive into Soar’s satellite feeds. Click on the Satellite tab highlighted below and navigate around the base map layer to find an area of interest.
Here you can see an area of the Bahamas I have navigated to on Soar’s base-map layer (Google Maps).
Once you have navigated to your own area of interest on Soar, we can begin the process (TIP: Stuck for ideas? Try a quick Google search for the latest environmental events, or follow our news account FoundOnSoar on Twitter):
Step 1: Click on the button labelled ‘Draw area of interest’ shown on the Satellite tab down the left of the page (see image above).
Step 2: Use the cursor to draw a box over the area (“AOI”) you wish to load satellite imagery. Note: As this type of data results in very large files, there is an upper limit to the size of the AOI box drawn. If you get an error, try boxing a smaller area on the map.
Step 3: Soar will load the available satellite feeds for your chosen area. You can narrow the search for particular dates as well as satellite type by clicking on the headings shown above the feed (see below). There are two state-of-the-art satellites available to select from — Landsat-8 (NASA) and Sentinel-2 (ESA), with a number of satellite band combinations allowing users to visualise different environmental features.
Satellite imagery feed shown on the left for an AOI over The Bahamas. The feed can be narrowed by satellite type and date range at the headings above Search Results.
N OTE: We will be producing a separate blog solely dedicated to explaining the types of Satellite feeds available on Soar, and their uses for various different applications, soon!
Step 4: Once you have selected a satellite image from the feed, two blue buttons will appear to the right side of your selected image. These allow you to download or share the satellite data, respectively. Click on the download button to begin the download process.
Step 5: A pop-up window will appear with a list of metrics regarding the satellite AOI you wish to download (see below). This includes a user-selected option shown in the drop-down for ‘Image Quality’. Select an appropriate option (see below) and click download to save the imagery to your computer.
Download window for satellite imagery including all image metadata and a choice of resolution options.
NOTE: The choice of image quality will depend both on the purpose you intend to use the imagery for, as well as the size of the AOI drawn. Lower quality imagery will have lower resolution, meaning that each pixel covers a larger area of the Earth’s surface. The lowest available option on Soar is 50m²/pixel, while the best available resolution is currently 10m²/pixel. High resolution imagery of 10m²/pixel is well-suited for spatial analysis using GIS software, whilst sharing satellite imagery on social media only requires 20m²/pixel resolution or less. If your selected satellite imagery AOI is too large (>2000km²), it will not be possible to download the image at high resolution.
Now that you have downloaded the satellite data to your computer in GeoTIFF format, you are free to load this into any commercial/open-source GIS software at your disposal. That’s right, up-to-date satellite data for any area in the world at your fingertips, available completely FREE from Soar!
The data can be loaded into programs such as QGIS (Free), ArcGIS or Global Mapper which will enable you to analyse and explore the data in great detail. For example, you can load successive data for the same area, isolating localised changes in various features over time. Or you can use up to date satellite data (even from yesterday) as a base layer in your GIS program for field mapping exercises.
If you are a Mappt user, it is certainly possible to bring satellite data from Soar in and take advantage of Mappt’s powerful offline mapping tools. To do this, we recommend following this blog on how to convert GeoTIFFs to ECW/JP2 imagery suitable for loading into Mappt. | https://medium.com/soar-earth/how-to-use-soars-free-satellite-imagery-feeds-287e97b292aa | [] | 2019-10-22 03:40:23.193000+00:00 | ['Mapping', 'Mappt', 'Soar', 'Satellite Technology', 'GIS'] |
Should I write? Do you wanna know what’s going on in my head? | Should I write? Do you wanna know what’s going on in my head?
It’s in black and white, it’s like half the whole world is dead.
Would you understand? It’s just us, you and me
What’s the plan? What’s it gon be?
I want to show you, but I don’t want to mess up your mind
I wish you knew, I want to put you first and watch you from behind
It’s like music, beautiful sounds with a good story.
It’s like listening to the cry of the angels singing holy holy holy
This feeling is… is priceless! | https://medium.com/@botdidy/should-i-write-do-you-wanna-know-whats-going-on-in-my-head-8dfb01702568 | [] | 2020-12-23 12:54:09.809000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Erotica', 'Romance', 'Writing', 'Poetry'] |
Storing Cloud-Ready Geoscience Data with TileDB | Storing Cloud-Ready Geoscience Data with TileDB
Representing thousands of NetCDF files in a single logical dataset
The Helicopter View
Not enough time to read the whole blog post? Here’s a quick summary:
TileDB offers some great functionality which could be very powerful if applied to earth system science. We are actively collaborating with the TileDB Team to make TileDB functionality available alongside existing earth system science tooling, which we think could be a game-changer for storing and interacting with earth system science datasets.
Introduction
Data volumes in computational data science are increasing. This is as true in earth system science as in other disciplines. For the Met Office this means about 14TB per day of operational (that is, weather and climate forecast) data being produced by the Met Office supercomputer, with some estimates putting daily research data volumes at 8x that.
All this data needs to be stored somewhere, found and accessed by people who wish to use it in their own research and, more pertinently for this blog post, also stored somehow. Typically the ‘how’ of storing earth system data has been a variety of formats, with a slight preference towards NetCDF files. Often a single logical dataset is represented with hundreds or even thousands of discrete files. Reading and working with these files can introduce a significant code and mental overhead that is a blocker to getting on with using the contents of these files in earth system research.
In this blog post I will detail some recent exploratory work we’ve been doing in the Informatics Lab with TileDB, a reasonably new and cloud-ready approach for storing large volumes of data.
About TileDB
TileDB is a new, open-source storage engine for chunked, compressed nD arrays. It is similar to Zarr as it introduces a cloud-native, parallel engine for dense arrays, and is an alternative to HDF5. Over and above the features offered by Zarr, TileDB also supports sparse arrays, offers multiple language APIs — it is built in C / C++, and provides efficient wrappers for Python, R, Java and Go — implements time traveling (more on this later), and integrates with many popular tools (Spark, dask, PrestoDB, MariaDB, GDAL and PDAL). TileDB can store data on multiple cloud backends, including AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage.
TileDB and Earth System Science Data
We can use TileDB to store earth system science data, providing some exciting new possibilities for earth system sciences. In the Lab we are interested in using TileDB to store very large earth system science datasets. These may be composed of thousands or tens of thousands of individual files, or be composed of fewer, much larger files on the order of tens of terabytes of data. We are exploring using TileDB to represent all this data, however it is formed, in a single logical TileDB array. One thing we in the Lab are excited about with TileDB is that it offers a genuine solution for doing just this.
In order to completely store the contents of NetCDF files in any storage engine (TileDB, Zarr, or something else), you effectively need to be able to store three things: nD arrays of data, key-value pairs of arbitrary array metadata, and label arrays for the axes of the nD arrays. With TileDB you can store nD arrays with arbitrary metadata, but there is currently no native support for labelled array axes, although this is on the TileDB roadmap.
TileDB does not currently integrate with Iris and xarray, common libraries for interacting with earth system science data in Python. These libraries provide lots of useful functionality when interacting with earth system science data, which we’d like to make use of for TileDB arrays too. On account of this, we have written an adaptor that bridges the gaps between earth system data, TileDB arrays and high-level libraries like Iris and Xarray.
Technical Implementation
We’ve seen two areas where there’s a need for an interoperability library that connects TileDB to an existing Python ecosystem: for making the link between TileDB arrays and analysis libraries such as Iris and xarray, and for writing TileDB arrays containing extra metadata that’s specific to earth system science data.
We wrote a Python package to allow us to create TileDB arrays from NetCDF files and interact with these arrays using Iris and Xarray. The package provides three primary functions:
A data model for NetCDF files as loaded using the netcdf4-python library, which classifies NetCDF variables as describing data arrays, coordinate arrays, or other metadata.
for NetCDF files as loaded using the netcdf4-python library, which classifies NetCDF variables as describing data arrays, coordinate arrays, or other metadata. A writer to convert NetCDF files represented using the data model (data and metadata) to TileDB arrays.
to convert NetCDF files represented using the data model (data and metadata) to TileDB arrays. A reader to load TileDB arrays (data and metadata) into high-level libraries like Iris and xarray.
This package is available on GitHub. Writing it was needed to bridge the gap between the existing, metadata-rich file formats such as NetCDF and high-level libraries such as Iris, and the TileDB array specification. With it, we’ve been able to create TileDB arrays comprised of data and metadata from thousands of individual NetCDF files, and load these into Iris as a single Iris cube object:
This is one big Iris cube.
This is a really exciting result, as it is the biggest Iris cube that we have created in the Informatics Lab to date! It shows that TileDB can be used to store data plus metadata from NetCDF files that’s representable as a single Iris cube. As we’ve recently blogged about elsewhere, it’s possible to make such an Iris cube directly from the input NetCDF files, but the cognitive burden is much higher than simply being able to load a single TileDB array directly as a single Iris cube.
Going further, we can leverage dask and functionality available in Iris to perform operations on such cubes that are backed by TileDB arrays, such as extracting a single latitude/longitude grid point, or performing a statistical collapse across all time points.
TileDB’s Unique Capabilities
Our exploration of TileDB has led to us finding a lot of interesting functionality in TileDB that we can make use of when storing earth system data in TileDB arrays. Let’s take a look at some of these in a bit more detail.
“Infinite” Domain
All data within a TileDB array must be contained within the array’s domain — the labelled, nD space that describes the limits of the array. One or more axes of the domain can be made effectively infinite in length, however, meaning that near unlimited appends of data to that axis become practicable. One good use-case for this is storing data from a very long time period in a single array.
You may think that an infinite domain could make indexing a very expensive operation. Fortunately TileDB includes clever indexing, and the concept of a non-empty domain — the extent of the indices of your array that have actually been written — to make sure this isn’t a hefty overhead.
Time Travel
The contents of each write to a TileDB array are stored in a fragment, but successive writes do not overwrite previous writes. Instead each write fragment is time-stamped and kept. On read, the TileDB API returns data that matches the read keys from the most recent fragment by default.
The fact that older fragments are retained, however, means that you can explore the array from times in its history, or time travel through the array. Another way of looking at this is that TileDB implements a form of data version control.
Of course, storing all this historical array data requires storage space, and can make read operations slow as multiple fragments may need to be accessed. TileDB has a consolidation algorithm that takes the most recent write to each cell within the array and makes it available in just a single fragment, which reduces the read overhead.
Time Travel and Met Office Model Data
Data from Met Office forecast models have two time dimensions. Each model is executed on a certain cadence (a new model run kicks off every three hours, for example), and each model run forecasts a certain time period into the future (one model run may forecast only 48hr ahead while the next model run may forecast out to a whole week, for example).
The time at which a model run is kicked off is its forecast reference time, and the offset in time between the model run’s forecast reference time and each given timestep in the model run is that timestep’s forecast period. From these two values a single standard time coordinate can be calculated by adding the forecast period value at each timestep in the model run to the model run’s forecast reference time, but the extra forecast period and forecast reference time metadata are also retained.
Storing and comprehending this data makes for an interesting challenge! We’re excited to apply TileDB’s time travel functionality to this challenge. For example, we could use the time travel axis to store all model data at a given forecast reference time; that is, all the data from a single model run.
Fancy Array Functionality
TileDB includes some array functionality that’s unique to TileDB. TileDB arrays can have both be multiple attributes and variable-length attributes. Let’s take a look at each of these in turn:
multiple attributes: a single TileDB array can store multiple attributes in the same array. In TileDB terminology, an attribute is a named nD array of data, equivalent to a phenomenon in Iris terminology, or a NetCDF data variable.
a single TileDB array can store multiple attributes in the same array. In TileDB terminology, an attribute is a named nD array of data, equivalent to a phenomenon in Iris terminology, or a NetCDF data variable. variable-length attributes: in addition, a single cell in a TileDB array can hold multiple data values in a list, not limited by type. More information on this is available in the TileDB developer documentation.
Both of these effectively equate to increased array dimensionality. This functionality might also provide new ways of storing existing earth system science data. For example, you could use either of these examples of TileDB fancy array functionality to store x-wind and y-wind — either as multiple attributes of the same array, or as multiple elements in the same cell of a single xy-wind array.
Virtual Datasets
This is not directly a piece of TileDB functionality, but something that could come as an extension on account of the fancy array functionality that TileDB does provide. We just saw how you could, for example, store both x-wind and y-wind in the same array, but you could also extend this to create virtual datasets from the multiple-attribute array containing x-wind and y-wind.
Wind speed and direction are commonly derived from x-wind and y-wind so we could create virtual datasets of wind speed and direction, based on the multiple-attribute x-wind and y-wind. These virtual datasets would contain no actual data, just the knowledge of how to index the underlying array to get x-wind and y-wind data at a given point, and the mathematical operations needed to turn these points from x-wind and y-wind into wind speed and direction.
Language Support
As mentioned earlier, TileDB also supports a number of different languages, not just Python. While written in C++, it has bindings to provide a TileDB API in C, Python, R, Java and Go as well. So TileDB’s cross-language interoperability is very good, and means that any earth system science data (for example, from NetCDF files) stored in a TileDB array is immediately accessible in multiple languages.
This is, incidentally, a nice step away from common Informatics Lab thinking on data provision and data pipelines. This has unintentionally become quite Python-centric, assisted by the fact that a lot of data science now takes place quite exclusively in Python, with many high quality data science tools provided as Python libraries. Making the data available in a format that’s accessible in multiple languages is a good first step on the way to making a whole data pipeline that’s multi-language, and not so Python-first.
Next Steps
Comparing with other Formats
In the Informatics Lab we are exploring the best ways to store large volumes of earth system science data in a cloud-ready format. We feel that TileDB represents a strong candidate for doing this, but we are also experimenting with Zarr, and with NetCDF — the current de facto file format for earth system science data.
One of the aims of this work, then, is to compare TileDB to these other formats, particularly for storing large volumes of logically structured earth system data on the cloud. For example, we’re interested in exploring:
How does TileDB compare to Zarr in terms of speed and scale when reading and writing data?
How much of a reduction in cognitive load is there from using earth system science data stored in TileDB or Zarr over multiple NetCDF files, particularly when we can continue to use Iris and xarray to interact with this TileDB and Zarr data?
We hope we’ll be able to answer these questions as we continue with the next steps in this investigation (see below). We’ll share our findings in upcoming blog posts. So far, though, we’ve successfully converted large volumes of data from NetCDF to TileDB. We can perform experiments on these TileDB arrays that will help us answer these questions and others.
Timing Benchmarks
One of the main aims of the broader Informatics Lab project that this work is a part of is benchmarking the performance of different cloud data storage formats. We are particularly interested in comparing TileDB to Zarr, but also to NetCDF. Some of the benchmarks we’ll run target common earth system science data analysis operations, which can be challenging with very large volumes of data. These include calculating point means and rolling window calculations over a long time period.
Cloud Support
The Lab has an ongoing partnership with Microsoft Azure, so all our experiments with TileDB have been run on Azure. Initially we were using FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) to connect TileDB to Azure blob stores, but we have been trialling the recent dev release of TileDB that includes a direct interface to Azure blob, which we have found to be a great improvement over using FUSE.
The direct interface shows much better performance for both reads and writes to the TileDB array on blob, which is as we would expect. We have also found that a few odd errors when trying to distribute reads and writes using dask have also been solved, which we hoped would be the case. The sort of errors we were seeing were typical of parallelising something: a key that exists not being found when running in parallel, file lock errors and similar. It seems that having FUSE as an intermediate between the Python runtime and the TileDB array stored on Azure blob was making the operation not thread-safe, so we’re very pleased to have this solved by using TileDB’s direct Azure blob interface.
Technical Implementation
There are a number of improvements that could be made to the Lab’s Python library that allows interoperability between TileDB, NetCDF and Iris / xarray. For example, not all NetCDF metadata is being preserved by this library when writing from NetCDF to TileDB. Instead, only essential metadata (data values, name and units for the data values, and dimension-describing coordinates) are being preserved. This can be improved by passing more metadata out of the data model and into the TileDB array when it is written.
We are also working closely with the TileDB team on the technical side. We are working together to provision labelled axes in the core of TileDB. This will add to the functionality offered by TileDB, and the Lab’s Python Library can make use of it rather than providing its own opinionated approach for storing labelled axes in TileDB. We are also working on providing integrations for TileDB with Iris and xarray.
In Summary
We have successfully used TileDB to store the contents — data and metadata — of hundreds of discrete NetCDF files in a single logical TileDB array. We have been able to interact with the data stored in this array directly. We have also been able to interact with this data using Iris and xarray, meaning we can take advantage of the rich data exploration APIs provided by these libraries. This means we have also proven the concept of extending the functionality of Iris and xarray to support a new data storage format.
There’s still more work to do — for example, the Python interoperability library we’ve written as part of this work is missing some useful features. What we’re really interested in doing now is using the data we’ve successfully stored in TileDB and exploring how it is to work with, and how fast we can run operations common to earth system science data analysis on this data stored in TileDB. We’re also excited to continue to collaborate with the TileDB team on future enhancements to TileDB. | https://medium.com/informatics-lab/storing-cloud-ready-geoscience-data-with-tiledb-34d454c33055 | ['Peter Killick'] | 2020-04-06 08:43:04.971000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Cloud Computing'] |
Why do you need to learn to code? | For example, once a group of software engineers in Boston during a snowstorm realized they could use coding to make the city safe. They discovered a problem that firefighters were wasting time trying to find fire hydrants buried in the snow. The software engineers then created a program that identified the location of every fire hydrant in the city. Then they created a website called Adopt-a-Hydrant. Now, on the website, residents of Boston can volunteer to shovel out a nearby hydrant when it snows, improving the neighborhood’s safety in the event of a fire.
Isn’t it exciting enough?
You should be a math genius…
I guess, the biggest misconception around coding is that you need to be a math genius. There are many areas where math skills are not required. You’ll usually do just fine with basic algebra unless you work on special projects which require sophisticated algorithms and advanced math. Instead, it would be really important for every programmer to have good problem-solving skills, logic, and a lot of patience.
Do you think your computer is smart?
The computer cannot do anything without instructions. It isn’t smart but can execute instructions carefully, very fast, and without getting bored. For instance: given the task of adding up all numbers from 1 to 1 million, a human probably wouldn’t make it past 100 without making some mistake and getting bored with it. A computer happily performs this task in a couple of milliseconds. So, coding is a way to give detailed instructions to the computer, telling it what to do. | https://medium.com/@codemyjourney/why-do-you-need-to-learn-to-code-c2d62bd140a0 | [] | 2021-09-08 19:52:46.001000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Why Programming', 'Coding', 'Computer Science Student', 'Codingbootcamp'] |
Who cares about the design language | So here’s the thing. Google updated its Google+ app, and it comes with a huge redesign exercise on it.
In case you don’t know him, Luke Wroblewski is a designer at Google. He’s been around for a while, commenting stuff about user experience and visual design. He wrote a lot about the Polar app — which I love by the way— and wrote the first article I ever read about the hamburger menu not working well for engagement in mobile apps nor webs.
The point is, Luke knows a thing or two about UX and UI design and he’s been involved in the Google+ redesign. That looks like this:
Credits to Luke Wroblewski.
This new app looks absolutely beautiful. I mean, look at all that color and rich imagery. And I believe I’ll never be tired of using specific color palettes for contextual elements that surround an image.
And the new Google+ app uses a bottom navigation bar, and suddenly the internet went like ‘that’s not so Material Design’.
Arturo Toledo is another designer I’ll use here as a reference. He’s been working with Microsoft for a few years, and his response to this was…
Who cares about the design language.
He claimed that our focus as designers should be on the principles. To make something useful and to design a delightful experience regardless of the platform we’re designing to. That there’s nothing wrong with a navbar down there.
I can’t argue with Arturo. I believe he’s right about this. Maybe not in all cases, but I feel he’s mostly right.
But I do have a few concerns about this navigation pattern though. And it’s because this is an official Google application, so designers and developers out there probably are going to reproduce this kind of navigation more than once.
You got me at ‘navbar’
I do love navbars. And tabbars. And everything that’s not a chaotic hamburger throw-it-all-there-in-the-drawer-and-see-how-it-fits main application menu. It makes things more discoverable, and it makes the app easier to understand without having to think and read that much. I mean, options are just there. Just a quick glance and now you know about everything the app has to offer to you. If you have any doubts, you just tap on the first tab and if you don’t find what you’re looking for then tap on the second one. And continue that way until you’re out of tabs. That’s it.
But then you introduce another main navigation pattern, that is the drawer menu itself. And now we have two main navigation paths. Or three, if we count the top tab-bar.
Credits to Luke Wroblewski. Again.
Ok, tabs in the top bar might not be a main navigation path, but they count as chrome. They count as more options, more space used for navigation. Good luck to you, 4-or-less inches screen people.
In theory everything has sense. You have supportive nav for user profile stuff, a global nav between sections and a contextual nav for the filters. But it makes me think. I can’t use this app without reading and taking a second to think where I’m going every time I want to go elsewhere.
I’ll give it a quick try here. How about moving the hambuger menu to the last item in the bottom navbar? — like a ‘more’ tab — and then moving the Notifications icon to the top bar, right next to the search icon. That should simplify the main navigation, just like Facebook does in its app. Then to reduce chrome you could make a dropdown menu out of the section title in that top bar to put the filters on it, just like Google Calendar makes to open the calendar control. If you don’t want to hide these filters you could A/B Test another idea. Maybe using an slider at the top of the page, just before the real content starts, like in the app market.
Where am I?
If I’m a new user of this app and I skip the onboard tutorial — and you can bet I will — I don’t even know what differences are between collections and communities. I mean, I could try to understand what they are, but it makes me think. They look almost the same and there are names of people everywhere and I can’t even see an interesting post until I’ve been playing around with the app for a while. I get lost in the many options you provide.
This might not be a problem of the design team but the product itself. Just think about it this way:
Twitter: There are people to follow to read their tweets.
Facebook: Mostly the same as Twitter but you can write larger posts.
Instagram: I follow people to see their photos. Oh and I can chat with them.
Google+: There’s people to follow and you can read their posts. Oh and you also have communities to follow and collections to follow that you really don’t know where they come from. And you can write posts and create communities and invite people and set up collections that have more visual impact than the posts feed itself.
Google+ looks beautiful, but making every content as visually heavy as the main section makes nothing look really important.
Be careful with bottom bars in Android
As designer Josh Clark pointed out, the options in the navbar are dangerously close to the Quit button — as he calls the Home button in Android. Collections is just a 2mm mistap from the user shutting down the app, or going back to the previous screen when they dind’t want to.
I always have this in mind when I design for Android. The solution might be moving these options to the top bar, but there are some issues about long words in other languages here. UX Launchpad talks about the tradeoffs of this solution on this post.
But getting back to Josh Clark, he pointed this out and Luke answered…
Theory vs. practice.
Here’s the tweet anyway.
If we assume Luke made a few tests — and I do believe he has — and he’s right, then we don’t need to move the bottom navbar anywhere. And that’s good. Yay.
Google+ is a great underrated product
This is all. Despite all these concerns I have about this redesign it’s still a product that I’d love to use more. Unfortunatelly it hasn’t found its place among the mainstream users. And that’s the biggest problem this social network has.
Maybe Google is working on this. Maybe they have big plans for Google+ that we don’t see because we don’t know what’s ahead in the product roadmap. Let’s just hope they keep improving this product and they prove that it’s useful for everyone. | https://uxdesign.cc/who-cares-about-the-design-language-daa3a99dacc1 | ['Paco Soria'] | 2015-12-04 18:51:57.989000+00:00 | ['Google', 'UX', 'Design'] |
Daddy’s Good Girl | Baby is sweeter than sugar
sometimes she’s good, sometimes she’s bad, but she’s always His Girl.
Mmm baby, you are looking sweet. Take off your shirt. I love your tiny nipples. Give Daddy a taste.
Mm, that’s right Baby Girl, sweeter than sugar. And if I get rough, you’ll cream in your panties.
I love the way you moan when I bite your sensitive skin.
Spreading your legs before I asked? So eager, so naughty. And so fucking wet, you soaked right through your underwear.
Lay back so I can remove them. That’s Daddy’s good girl. Your pussy sucks my fingers in, squeezing so tight.
Your clit is hiding from me though. Maybe it doesn’t want to play.
It does? I like when you beg for my tongue. How bad do you want me Baby?
Good girl! I’ll have a taste if you want me so bad.
. . .
Make you come? Not yet. Only good girls get to come and you need to please me first.
I love fucking your mouth. And the sweet sound of you swallowing my whole damn cock. So good.
. . .
Keep going, keep — no — stop. Wait. Wrap your pussy around me.
Ah yes, just like that Baby. Ride me now, slow and steady. Good girl.
Where’s that spot? The one that makes your legs shake. Right there, good. Don’t come until I do. I know I’m mean but now I will punish you.
I know your close. Better fuck me faster. Oh, Baby you’re shaking. Don’t stop, make me come too. Don’t worry about it. Just make me. Oh fuck, yes, you have the sweetest pussy.
Get your vibrator. Your favorite one. You were so eager earlier. I found a new sexy story to read you.
Let’s see how many times you come while I read. And after… | https://medium.com/asrais-purple-prose/daddys-good-girl-7f2e3bfd8894 | ['Asrai Devin'] | 2020-02-03 14:11:01.241000+00:00 | ['Erotica', 'Fiction', 'Short Story', 'Sex', 'Daddys Baby Girl'] |
Linear Regression. Introduce Spark ML and how to use it to… | In the first part of the series we will focus on the very basics of Spark ML. We will cover the necessary steps to create a regression model to predict housing prices. More complicated Spark ML features and functions are to be published in future posts of the series.
Before going further let us start with some definitions.
Definitions
Apache Spark
Apache Spark is an open-source cluster-computing framework. Originally developed at the University of California, Berkeley’s AMPLab, the Spark codebase was later donated to the Apache Software Foundation, which has maintained it since. Spark provides an interface for programming entire clusters with implicit data parallelism and fault tolerance.
Spark ML
Apache Spark ML is the machine learning library consisting of common learning algorithms and utilities, including classification, regression, clustering, collaborative filtering, dimensionality reduction, and underlying optimization primitives.
Why Spark ML?
Moving to the Big Data Era requires heavy iterative computations on very big datasets. Standard implementations of machine learning algorithms require very powerful machines to be able to run. Depending on high-end machines is not advantageous due to their high price and improper costs of scaling up. The idea of using distributed computing engines is to distribute the calculations to multiple low-end machines (commodity hardware) instead of a single high-end one. This definitely speeds up the learning phase and allows us to create better models.
Software Requirements
In order to follow up with this tutorial you have to install the following:
Python
Apache Spark
findspark library
Numpy
Jupyter
Apache Spark
Installing Apache Spark is so simple. You just have to download the package from the official website.
To test your implementation:
uncompress the file go to bin directory run the following command
% ./pyspark --version
The output should look like the following:
Testing Apache Spark version
findspark Library
To make reaching Apache Spark easier, we will use findspark. It is a very simple library that automatically sets up the development environment to import Apache Spark library.
To install findspark, run the following in your shell:
% pip install findspark
Numpy
Numpy is a famous numeric computation library in Python. Spark ML uses it internally for its computations.
Install it with the following command:
% pip install numpy
Jupyter
The Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text. Uses include: data cleaning and transformation, numerical simulation, statistical modeling, data visualization, machine learning, and much more.
To install Jupyter:
% pip install jupyter
Problem Definition
The first problem in this series is Regression. We are going to train a model to predict the famous Boston Housing dataset (download from here).
This dataset contains information collected by the U.S Census Service concerning housing in the area of Boston Mass. It was obtained from the StatLib archive, and has been used extensively throughout the literature to benchmark algorithms.
The dataset is small in size with only 506 cases. It contains 14 features described as follows:
CRIM: per capita crime rate by town ZN: proportion of residential land zoned for lots over 25,000 sq.ft. INDUS: proportion of non-retail business acres per town. CHAS: Charles River dummy variable (1 if tract bounds river; 0 otherwise) NOX: nitric oxides concentration (parts per 10 million) RM: average number of rooms per dwelling AGE: proportion of owner-occupied units built prior to 1940 DIS: weighted distances to five Boston employment centres RAD: index of accessibility to radial highways TAX: full-value property-tax rate per $10,000 PTRATIO: pupil-teacher ratio by town B: 1000(Bk — 0.63)² where Bk is the proportion of blacks by town LSTAT: % lower status of the population MEDV: Median value of owner-occupied homes in $1000's
The goal is to use the 13 features to predict the value of MEDV (which represents the housing price).
It is time to get your hands dirty. Let us jump into Spark and Spark .
Implementation
Setting Up Apache Spark
To get your development environment ready lunch Jupyter and create a new notebook.
% jupyter notebook
We start by importing the findspark library and initializing it by passing in the path to Apache Spark folder.
import findspark
findspark.init('/opt/spark')
Every Spark application requires a SparkSession.
To create a SparkSession we write:
from pyspark.sql import SparkSession
spark = SparkSession.builder.getOrCreate()
Loading the Data
data = spark.read.csv('./boston_housing.csv', header=True, inferSchema=True)
header=True signals that the first line contains the header
inferSchema=True enables automatic detection of the underlying data schema
To display the data:
data.show()
Top 20 rows of the data
Setting up the Features
Now for the fun part… Spark ML’s algorithms expect the data to be represented in two columns: Features and Labels. Features is an array of data points of all the features to be used for prediction. Labels contain the output label for each data point.
In our example, the features are the columns from 1 → 13, the labels is the MEDV column that contains the price.
The goal is to predict the label from the features.
Creating a features array is straight forward. You just have to import the VectorAssembler class and pass in a list of the feature column names.
feature_columns = data.columns[:-1] # here we omit the final column from pyspark.ml.feature import VectorAssembler assembler = VectorAssembler(inputCols=feature_columns,outputCol="features")
outputCol=”features” defines the name of the output vector that combines all the values
Now we use the assembler to create the features column:
data_2 = assembler.transform(data)
That is it! If you print the values of data_2 you will notice a new column named “features” that contains all the values combined in one list:
data_2.show()
Data after VectorAssembler
Train\Test Split
As in any machine learning work flow, we split the data into train and test set. Here we split it to 70% training examples and 30% testing examples.
train, test = data_2.randomSplit([0.7, 0.3])
Training the Machine Learning Algorithm
We move to another interesting part, let us train a simple LinearRegression model on our data. First, we import the necessary class.
from pyspark.ml.regression import LinearRegression
Next we define the algorithm variable. We need to specify the name of the features column and the labels column.
algo = LinearRegression(featuresCol="features", labelCol="medv")
Time for training… We call the fit method to start training our model on the train set.
model = algo.fit(train)
Voila! You have trained your first model using Spark ML!
Evaluating Model Performance
Completing the training phase is not enough. We have to calculate how good our model is. Luckily the model object has an evaluate method:
evaluation_summary = model.evaluate(test)
Use the evaluation_summary object to access a vast amount of metrics:
evaluation_summary.meanAbsoluteError
# Output: 3.39
evaluation_summary.rootMeanSquaredError
# Output: 5.16
evaluation_summary.r2
# Output: 0.58
Well, not bad for a simple model.
Predicting Values
To predict outputs for unlabeled data you call model.transform function while passing your DataFrame.
For example, let us predict values from the test set:
predictions = model.transform(test)
predictions is a DataFrame that contains: the original columns, the features column and predictions column generated by the model.
predictions.select(predictions.columns[13:]).show() # here I am filtering out some columns just for the figure to fit
Predictions
Full Code
Full Code
Final Thoughts
It was a long article I know, but I hope it was worth your time. We introduced Apache Spark and its amazing ML library. We used Spark ML on a regression problem to predict housing prices. Next I will cover more features with other use-cases. Stay tuned…
If you enjoyed this article, I would appreciate it if you hit the clap button 👏 so it could be spread to others. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, email me directly or find me on LinkedIn. | https://towardsdatascience.com/apache-spark-mllib-tutorial-ec6f1cb336a9 | ['Ali Masri'] | 2020-03-08 17:07:34.336000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Linear Regression', 'Sparkml', 'Big Data', 'Apache Spark'] |
Infinite universes, the meaning of life and Rick and Morty | “Nobody belongs anywhere, nobody exists on purpose, everyone’s going to die. Come watch TV?” The philosophy of Rick and Morty. By Swéta Rana
“Anything with less than eight limbs is considered disabled here.”
If you’ve never watched Rick and Morty, buy now. I’m serious. It’s not a vague suggestion. It’s an imperative. Open a new tab, search for it, and order it right now.
Hey, what are you doing? You shouldn’t be reading this sentence right here! You should be buying Rick and Morty!
My friend pestered me similarly for over a year before she finally got me to watch it (sheer apathy on my part). And boy, I’m so glad she did. Rick and Morty is many things: an animation, a comedy, an AdultSwim production, a magnificent force of sheer genius… It’s not your average cartoon.
Rick, a hyper-intelligent scientist, and his nervous grandson Morty, are both voiced by co-creator Justin Roiland. The former regularly drags the latter along on his adventures. This set up, à la Futurama, means crazy stuff can happen courtesy of ‘science’ — think spaceships, inter-dimensional hijinks, aliens, fantasy worlds and time travel. And of the many scientists out there, Rick is of the booze-swillin’, swear-spoutin’, powder-snortin’, orgy-havin’ variety. This cartoon certainly ain’t for kids.
Co-creators Roiland and Dan Harmon and have extensive comedic experience, and many of the show’s hilarious jokes were entirely improvised. But the humour isn’t the only reason I love Rick and Morty. The thing that really does it for me is the philosophical speculations. Wait, please, don’t stop reading! I’ll explain.
Rick and Morty extensively explores the common philosophical and scientific theory of parallel universes. In brief: if there is no limit to space or time, then space-time must start repeating itself, because matter can only be arranged in a finite number of ways. If there are an endless number of possible worlds, then anything that can happen has already happened.
When Rick accidentally turns all humans on Earth into mutated aliens, he uses a device to transport himself and Morty to another universe. In this universe, humankind is perfectly safe — and Rick and Morty have just died in a freak accident. ‘Our’ Rick is nonchalant about stepping into this universe and continuing life as before, but the immediate and existential horror that Morty experiences as he buries his own corpse is palpable and utterly chilling. Maybe his life doesn’t matter at all — a second, third or billionth Morty could just step right in to take his place.
Overwhelming? Yes. Cynical. Yes. But Rick and Morty doesn’t intend to depress or alarm its audience. It acknowledges the randomness, uncertainty and meaninglessness of the universe — but it also asserts that the universe’s meaning doesn’t have to matter, that it’s the meaning you make yourself that counts.
Rick is a jaded man bordering on total misanthropy, but his deep affection for Morty redeems him. He doesn’t feel the need to find an innate meaning in the universe, because he has parties and experiments and friends.
As for Morty, in one episode he summarises his worldview very succinctly: “Nobody belongs anywhere, nobody exists on purpose, everyone’s going to die. Come watch TV?”
We live in a time of great uncertainty. A deluge of information bombards us daily; sometimes it feels like our world is collapsing around us. Maybe it is. Perhaps it’s collapsed before? Rick and Morty’s suggested response: try not to worry about what you can’t change. Right now we’re in this universe, and that’s all we need to focus on. Do something that makes you feel good. Hang out with the people you love. Go on a heroic adventure. Have a party, or read a book. Maybe watch a new TV show. I personally recommend Rick and Morty. | https://medium.com/abstract-magazine/infinite-universes-the-meaning-of-life-and-rick-and-morty-b46e906a3f4e | ['Abstract Magazine'] | 2015-12-11 10:54:11.988000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Television', 'Rick And Morty'] |
An Ode to the Warrior Woman Within | There is a part of me that has laid dormant all of my life. Rare glimpses of her revealed in fragments throughout my past but there was never enough to sustain a prolongated stay. This year, she has emerged — fully — burst out of a buried cave, shy and hesitant but full of rage, curiosity, power. She is wild, but not savage, her hair unkempt, but not unclean. Her skin is taut and tawny, treated by the wonderments of a natural world — soil, streams and sun. Her body is bare, as are her feet. She examines me — dressed in athleisure and primped in so-called style — with a smirk on her face, as if I’m the strange one, the one out of place. She is shy, but not insecure. Hesitant, but not uncertain. Full of rage, but not violent. Curious, but not desperate. Powerful, but not hungry.
She carries no shame, not anywhere on her body, not around the brimming black bush of hair in her pubic region, nor around her trunk-like thighs and stalwart calves. Her shyness and hesitation come from the fact that despite all of her power and strength, she has never been able to thwart me, her central commander, and with each attempt, has been banished back into her cave with tighter constraints and more rigid restrictions. But this time, she’s wised up. Rather than muscling through, she’s learned to use her mind — the same weapon which has kept the central commander in power for decades — to devise a strategy to not only make herself known, but to make herself indispensable to me. To win someone over, you must first learn to speak their language. So she does.
Within this wild woman who has no name remain many parts unknown, but the parts slowly revealed have proven precious. Within her lies what seems to be an unlimited reservoir of fuel and energy to sustain an entire operation for months, years, perhaps decades. So. Much. Untapped. Potential. And yet, if mismanaged or misconducted, if executed without surgical precision, she runs the risk of setting off a nuclear disaster that would make Chernobyl look like child’s play. This wild woman is the activist, the feminist, the warrior, the anarchist, the rebel. She is nature’s crusader, the underdog’s biggest champion, and she is full of fucking rage at what we’ve done to the world. Her power is birthed out of this rage, this deep sense of injustice. She is incensed by her other parts — her sisters and brothers — who continue to live day-by-day as though everything were safe and sane, because she can see the truth more clearly than the lot of them.
You’re all fucking hypocrites, insane, she thinks to herself. And she’s right. She’s right.
She has aligned herself alongside her commander, but thinks me a coward, a puppet, in many ways, a traitor, yet she knows she needs me, because the outside world is not ready for her, for her rage, for this wild woman full of wild feeling. No, they will not understand, they are not ready to understand. She will have to work slowly, smartly, converting them one by one until a tipping point is reached, until the mass reaches a point when the sheer weight of it will propel them forward.
I say to this wild woman, Welcome, I’m glad you’ve burst out of your cave. I’ve been waiting to meet you all of my life. | https://medium.com/sumofourparts/an-ode-to-the-warrior-woman-306d9bef82e3 | ['Renee Chen'] | 2020-04-30 03:52:24.105000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement', 'Self', 'Feminism', 'Creative Writing'] |
High-Flying Helicopter Cop Brought Down To Ground After Killing Lover | High-Flying Helicopter Cop Brought Down To Ground After Killing Lover
Former PC Timothy Brehmer — Image — Dorset Police
The Dorset Constabulary Police Officer, Timothy Brehmer, was 41-years-old when he got into an argument with his long-term lover. It was about 3 pm on May 9th, 2020. Claire Parry, had been looking through his phone, purportedly looking for messages from another woman who she thought Brehmer was sleeping with (and she was right — there were others). She was taking the opportunity to text “I’m cheating on you from Brehmer’s phone to his wife, Martha, who was a detective officer in the same force as her husband.
Police Constable Brehmer and Nurse Claire Parry sat in his Citroen C1 car, in the car park of a pub, the Horns Inn at West Parley, Dorset. Brehmer had told his wife that he was going out to buy steak for a barbeque dinner they were planning, but he was secretly going to meet his lover.
When Brehmer found out that Mrs Parry had sent that message, they struggled, and in the tussle, he killed her. Brehmer had choked her to death. Before the Police and Ambulance arrived on the scene, Brehmer stabbed himself several times in the arm. He later claimed that Mrs Parry had stabbed him.
In Court, the jury accepted that Brehmer had killed Mrs Parry but that he had not intended to do so. They found him guilty of manslaughter but not guilty of murder.
Who is Tim Brehmer?
Brehmer was born in Zimbabwe but grew up with his mother and her husband in Hampshire, the next county to Dorset. Brehmer started work as a Police Officer in 2003, where he began as a beat officer. Brehmer was assigned to the Traffic Division until a work injury meant he was unable to drive police cars. His senior officer had more recently posted Brehmer to the National Police Air Service, where he worked on helicopters as an observer and assisting in navigation.
Brehmer, his wife and their nine-year-old son lived in a village called Hordle, situated in the New Forest, a national park. The New Forest was created as a hunting place by English King William in the eleventh century. Newspaper reports said his wife Martha had not seen or spoken to her husband since the afternoon in May 2020, when he left the house supposedly to buy steaks for dinner.
Brehmer admitted manslaughter but denied murder. Former colleagues of Brehmer have expressed surprise at his conviction for manslaughter rather than murder. The picture they paint is of a confident, cocky individual, known to be a sexual predator and with a reputation for pursuing vulnerable women working in the emergency services.
The Court heard he had had at least three extra-marital affairs. Colleagues who knew him well said that he could ‘turn on the charm’. Former colleagues said the smooth-talking officer, who was married to a detective in the same force, told each woman “you are the only one for me” and sent song lyrics and sexualised messages to ‘suck them in’.
Andrew Parry, husband of the victim in this case and himself a serving Police Officer, did not believe the account Brehmer gave in Court, saying that Brehmer was a well-practised liar with years of experience. Mr Parry described Brehmer as a ‘womaniser’.
The victim’s husband said that he thought that Brehmer claiming to have been stabbed by Mrs Parry, stopped his wife getting medical attention earlier. He thought earlier intervention might have saved her life. As it was, the ambulance crew spent some time examining Brehmer before they looked at Mrs Parry.
Mr Parry said: “I am incredibly disappointed at the verdict of this trial. I believe Brehmer’s account of that day to be inconsistent and untruthful.
“As the murder trial heard, he conducted a factory reset on his mobile telephone which has hindered the police investigation and leaves us with an incomplete picture of events on that day.
“I feel we will never truly know exactly what happened.
“What we do know is that Brehmer used such force against Claire that she suffered fractures to her neck, lost consciousness, went into cardiac arrest and eventually died.
“Having used that amount of force, he has failed to render any assistance to her, which could have saved her life. As a trained police officer, he would have had the ability to do this.
“Instead, he chose to tell lies from the moment he was discovered by witnesses, stating that Claire had stabbed him.
“He has since admitted that this was a lie and that he inflicted those injuries on himself.”
Mr Parry is left to bring up the couple’s six-year-old and eight-year-old children alone. Mrs Parry was a nurse practitioner at a medical centre in Bournemouth, Dorset.
Although the Court heard that Brehmer had used enough force to fracture Claire Parry’s neck in three places, jurors in Salisbury Crown Court decided he had not intended to kill her. Sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison, the judge told him he would have to serve two-thirds of his sentence before he could apply for parole. This tariff will include time served in remand whilst awaiting trial.
The Chief Constable dismissed Brehmer without notice from Dorset Police following a disciplinary hearing.
The trial — a woman scorned
Brehmer told the Court that he was angry with Mrs Parry. She had confronted him about his previous affairs. He was trying to push her out of the car, but Clare Parry was refusing to go. He said she was in a ‘push-up’ position and he was behind her. He said his arms went around her and he said he must have got his arm in the ‘wrong’ place against her neck and used too much force.
Brehmer was in tears as he said to the jury: “I absolutely did not want to kill her or cause serious bodily harm. I didn’t intend to kill her.”
Mrs Parry died the following day in the hospital. The pathologist told the Court she had a catastrophic brain injury.
Andrew Parry, her Dorset Police detective husband, had discovered her relationship with Brehmer. Initially suspicious, he had hidden their daughters’ phone in Mrs Parry’s car and then used tracking software to see where Mrs Parry drove the vehicle. Eventually, Mr Parry had confronted his wife about his suspicions, and she had admitted sleeping with Brehmer. Also, the Parrys had attended couples counselling, Mr Parry had accepted that his marriage was over.
In his evidence, Brehmer told the Court: “Never for one second did I ever intend to hurt her, we’d been seeing each other on and off for 11 years, I can’t say that I loved her, but I definitely cared for her.”
Salisbury Crown Court heard Brehmer had at least three affairs outside of his 14-year marriage.
Another former lover (and also another officer from the force), Detective Constable Kate Rhodes, described Brehmer to the Court as a ‘man whore’.
DC Rhodes told the jury she ‘quickly fell in love with him’ after they met at work in 2011 but that she finished the relationship once she discovered he was married. Senior officers took no action about Brehmer’s affair with DC Rhodes and others. Despite colleagues knowing he was chasing women, colleagues and superiors regarded him as efficient and generally viewed him favourably, which perhaps gave him some protection.
Years later, in 2016, Brehmer contacted her again, calling her a ‘dirty bitch’ and proposing that they meet for sex. Ms Rhodes, who was on holiday with her boyfriend when these messages came through, said that his approach to her had made her feel like a piece of meat. She did not meet up with him.
For 11 years, Brehmer and Mrs Parry had been communicating with each other secretly. They had slept together as often as twice a week and had been together for sex only days before Brehmer was to kill her.
Mrs Parry was unhappy that there was another woman in Brehmer’s life — other than her and his wife. Claire Parry was looking for a way to punish Brehmer, and she decided both to expose his infidelity to his wife and to also expose Brehmer to HMRC (the British IRS) because he was earning a second income and not declaring it for tax.
Mrs Parry set up a false social media profile and used it to reach out to Kate Rhodes, the only other lover of Brehmer about whom she was aware. They concluded that there were most likely other women Police officers or other women from the emergency services that Brehmer had been or was seeing. Clair Parry told Kate Rhodes that she was planning Mr Brehmer’s downfall and said “hell hath no fury (like a woman scorned)”.
Brehmer said in Court that Mrs Parry had been threatening to tell his wife about the affair and he knew that her marriage was breaking down.
On this particular day, he left the house on this supposed mission to get steaks but drove to the car park of the Horns Inn when he met Clare Parry. He said he really wanted to dissuade her from telling his wife about them sleeping together and disrupting the pleasant ‘little bubble’ they had.
Just after 3 pm that Saturday afternoon, she got into Brehmer’s Citroen C1 car and the pair began arguing, with Mrs Parry asking for his phone so she could look through his social media apps and see who else he had contacted.
After sending the message to his wife, he said she had refused to leave his vehicle. He tried robustly to force her out. So forceful was he that he had broken a bone in her neck. A passer-by found her. Her upper body was hanging out of the car, the lower part still in it — one of her legs trapped behind the gear shift.
Passers-by saw a shoeless Brehmer walking around the pub car park or sat sobbing, covered in his blood. He said Mrs Parry had stabbed him and he asked for help.
Brehmer said he was severely depressed and also that he planned to take his own life.
He told Police officers who attended that Mrs Parry had stabbed him, although he was later to change his story on that. He also said that he had killed Mrs Parry, but that he had no intention of doing so and it was just an accident.
What did the judge say at the trial?
The judge said he did not believe Brehmer’s evidence that he had not realised Claire Parry was dying. Further, the judge must base his sentencing on Brehmer’s loss of self-control. The judge said he thought the application by Brehmer of significant force to Mrs Parry’s next must have been deliberate, causing the severe neck injuries that the pathologist described.
The judge said that Brehmer was a trained Police officer and character witnesses had told the Court how we would help people, but there was no evidence that he had tried to help Claire Parry. Brehmer must have known from his experience that Mrs Parry was not breathing.
The judge continued, to Brehmer: “In evidence, you said you did not realise she was poorly. I consider that you appreciated that she was much worse than that.
There was a significant mental and physical suffering caused to the deceased who must have appreciated that her life was being taken from her and who, on the evidence of the bruising to her body, must have fought hard against you, if only for a short while.”
References and further reading | https://medium.com/the-true-crime-edition/high-flying-helicopter-cop-brought-down-to-ground-after-killing-lover-201157c9ac38 | ['Andy Killoran'] | 2020-12-17 11:47:00.718000+00:00 | ['Crime', 'Extra Marital Affair', 'Police', 'True Crime', 'Manslaughter'] |
Whatever Happened To Dinma? | Let me tell you how it all begins.
First, we arrive innocent. Our daywear and uniforms are ironed and folded into neat, scented boxes. Our heads are closely shaved. Our skin is soft and supple, and our eyes are aglow with a pristine, wide eyed naiveté. Some of us still wet the bed.
We roll out boxes across the dirt and granite till we get to the dorms smelling deeply of disinfectant and GBC air freshener. Everything appears neat but our senses are heightened at this deception. There is a thick web of something sordid underneath, a bramble of thorns behind the strange smiles bestowed on us. We see it in the urine soaked bed relegated to the farthest end of the dormitory, the mass of hurriedly shoved clothes spilling out of a weary cupboard, the hesitance with which we hand our boxes over to those too eager to help us unpack.
At the pavilion, the separation is a gory affair. I’m talking tears and snot and blood from scraped knees that comes from trashing too wildly. Some of us cling to our mothers so tightly that leaving feels like the premature yanking of an umbilical cord from a hapless fetus, while some look on with an unperturbed, stoic expression. Some of us are glad to be away from the violence of our homes, the adventurous are thrilled at the prospects of a new environment, a chance to leave the boring stillness of normal.
The last two categories have a higher chance of survival than the rest of us.
On this first night, we are slightly apprehensive. Some are excited. On this night, we are bathed and scrubbed clean by some superiors who feel their maternal instincts kick when they set their eyes on our smallness, on our sad, confused faces. They brush our hair and dab cologne on our skin. Then they comb through our bags, select the prettiest night wears and don it on us.
The sifting of the char begins.
We are told to line up. There is talcum powder spread all over out necks and chests. Our teeth are clean, oversize pajamas hangs awkwardly on our forms and everything smells of newness. This is not to say we are all naïve. Some of us know. They come prepared. Their silk nightwear clings to their prepubescent bodies, their perfumes are stronger than ours and they are eager to be noticed. They did not apply powder all over their bodies the way we did and now we are made to look like sacrifices marinated in Moju powder. They laugh easily at the jokes thrown at us. They own the JJC term like a second skin, the rest of us buckle underneath its weight.
“Welcome.” A voice says. It belonged to a tall, dark girl with broad hips and a characteristic walk. Her day wear is cut several inches above the knee and it appears brazen to our unsullied eyes. We can see the way her thighs slap when she walks but we pretend not to notice. Instead, we stare at our feet and bite our fingers.
She instructs one of us to drag out a small cupboard and she sits on it to regard us closely. She holds a headless mop stick and taps it on the ground in a slow threatening way. The silence is thick here but outside, we can still here the rumble of boxes rolled on the cement veranda and the voices of senior students who have come to sneak a peak at the JJC students.
She should be 16, but on that wooden pedestal, she seemed like a god. A Nordic priestess destined to preponderate over us with mop sticks and condescending glances.
“My name is Senior Dinma, and there are two basic facts about me.”
She swept her eyes over us in the pin drop silence.
“I don’t tolerate dirt, and I don’t tolerate stubbornness. Abide by these rules and the ones on your prospectus and we will not have problems. Anyone in senior secondary with vertical stripes on their day wear, you refer to them as 'Senior’. Anyone with horizontal stripes are in junior secondary. A class or two above you. So you will refer to them as Sister This or Sister That. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Senior.” We chorused. Some voices were demure, some overly enthusiastic.
“If you know you wet the bed, step aside.”
There was a murmur among us as the tallest of us stepped out. She hung her head in shame. The first day wasn’t going too well for her.
“Biggie! So you dey piss for bed too?” Senior Dinma sneered and people laughed. Some amongst us were bold enough to giggle. I shuddered, remembering something I had learnt on Encarta kids about predators and preys. The preys had to stick together to survive. Already, we were disintegrating. I marked it down. (Lesson 1: You are alone.)
Senior Dinma took the 'bedwetters’ to a corner. They had a special area designated for them in the dormitory. It was a humiliating exercise but no one wanted to be caught unaware with a bed wetting bunkmate. It was worse when they got the top bunk as urine could slip past the iron strings and onto your sleeping form. Or your open mouth. Either way, you got baptized by pee.
She came back to find us still standing in line but uneasy on our feet. Some girls had began to strike up small conversations but I remained silent.
“So it seems the school admitted an entire set of chatter boxes, eh?” Senior Dinma inquired. No one had seen her walk in. A hush descended on the line that had now become a semi circle. She reclaimed her wooden cupboard throne and continued to observe us. We squirmed.
“Oyibo, come here.” She said to a girl at the edge of the line, whom we had not really noticed.
Her skin was lighter than the rest of us and there was a small mop of curls atop her head. It made us run our hands across our scraped scalps and curse silently at our coffee coloured skin. The girl stepped forward and we all tried not to gasped. She had green eyes.
“Oyibo, come and stand beside me.” Senior Dinma instructed. For the first time, with a smile. There was a slight glint in her eyes as she said this. A prize had been claimed, a stake had been laid. “You will be my bunk mate and my school daughter from now henceforth, okay? What’s your name?”
“Comfort.” The girl whispered and Senior Dinma beamed at the foreign lilt of her accent. She had acquiesced to Senior Dinma’s request without even knowing what it involved. It was a trap, and to say no would be an aberration, a threat to Senor Dinma’s authoritarian mien. We had heard stories, and some of us even envied Comfort for her new found luck. Surely, she would be shielded from Mass punishments and labour. She would be pampered by this Senior Dinma whom everyone seemed to respect. And dread. It was only the beginning.
A throng of seniors swarm into our dormitory now. They fawn over us and soon some of us have been picked as bunkmates and school daughters. Different criteria are used for this period; the length of your lashes, the brightness of your eyes, the vulnerability in your bones as they wrap their hands around your wrist. The more superficial your looks, the greater your chances of being swept up, daughtered, protected. Except of course your parents had cornered a senor at the gate and bribed them to take care of you. Why did they do this – throw us to a pack of wolves and try to win over one with favours and monetary gifts? If it was so bad, why did they let us go at all?
The ones who came prepared were taken, of course. The seniors fell in love with their fearlessness, their sharp tongues, their eagerness to belong. Deep down, we all knew everyone wanted Comfort. But Senior Dinma had been swift.
This is what happens before we begin to shrink like turned grapes. Before ink spills into the pockets of our day wears and the soles of our feet blacken from the sun scorched earth we till, before our back begins to grow scars.
We shed off our innocence methodically. The next term, we slip a packet of prohibited bubble gum past the scrutiny of the house mistresses. The term after that, we remove two layers of sugar cubes to hide a can of sardine at the bottom of the packet. Next, we dump our Moby Dicks and Nani Boys for Harlequin, Blaze, and Mills and Boons whose provocative paperbacks we conceal with newspapers and brown stencil sheets. Our skin is no longer supple and we have ditched clean shaven heads for a stylish haircut with a moderate amount of hair.
Next, we pretend not to listen in the dark as a bunk rocks under the weight of two; in rhythm with repressed moans. The SAY NO TO LESBIANISM signboard situated beside the tuck-shop flashes through our minds eye, but we say nothing. We learn to swallow our tongues and slip through the cracks of consciousness in silence. We read, and we watch and watch.
***
Senior Dinma led an almost mythical existence. There were so many stories about her, particularly her propensity to do evil. There was a tale of how she had once punished a girl in Topaz house by wrapping her hand around an ice cube which she held till it melted. We couldn’t imagine the extent of the pain, but we did hear that the girl had her hand numb and paralyzed for a couple of days. We heard that she had once single handedly carried out an abortion in the hostel with the bent hook of an iron hanger. They said she had bled and bled for days, but well, we hadn’t witnessed it, so we did not believe.
They said she changed school daughters as often as she changed the kito sandals she wore with her daywear, which was frequent, and that afterwards, those girls never recovered themselves. We never questioned what she did to them or what became of them. We hadn’t witnessed it, so we did not believe.
She had large doleful eyes, a large nose where beads of perspiration liked to gather on its bridge, with small lips which she liked to upturn at the right corner, even when she wasn’t sneering. She made a slight part on her hair every morning and opted for ankle socks while we drew ours religiously to our knees. She was a member of the Band Girls and she beat the base drum. The school band was straightforward, no misnomers, no double entendres. There were no bassoons, clarinets, violins, cellos, or oboes; it was simply what it was, a group of girls hitting drums. Band girls were cool because most of them were tomboys. They wore bandanas across their foreheads without repercussions. The walked with a swagger and did not tuck in their t-shirts, they made up beats from popular songs that excited us, and they had the privilege of wearing mufti during inter-house sports; sneakers, matching trousers and collared shirts. It was the mark of coolness because our uniforms by then had become drab and common place. We had begun to hate it.
But Senior Dinma was different. She did not fly her shirt or tie bandanas around her head or neck in imitation cowboy style. We knew she was special because the male National Youth Service Corpers liked to punish her or send her to their office which was the Basic Technology lab by the east end of the school, behind the SS1 block that was made of bare bricks and zinc. It was a covert, lonely place. We saw the way their eyes lingered on her bossoms, the way they pretended to hate her and pick faults so that she could get punished or sent to the lab. Perhaps this was an avenue to channel their disgusts for themselves or squash their budding desire for a minor. Either way, we pretended like we never saw the victorious smirk on her lips, the sashay, and the few open buttons on the ruffled shirt of her uniform when she emerged from the labs. Among her mates, she had a reputation for being a flirt with the male teachers, a slut, a whoremonger, a dybbuk. We did not care, and we did not believe it.
She was kind to us. She made us cups of Horlicks from her own provision, let us sleep on her bed when we fell sick, cradled us when we were struck by nightmares, whispered love into our ears when we threw homesick tantrums. She was so good that when we eventually began to taste the appetizers of her torment, we felt like we deserved it.
The first time it happened, it was because our house came last during the Saturday hostel inspections. As soon as the results were announced, she barged into the hostel in a fit of rage, locked the doors and told us to ignore the sound of the Bell for lunch. We were mobilized to the centre of the square piece of land outside the dormitory. It was bordered by ixoras and frangipanis but smelled of stale urine. People relived themselves there at night when the toilets seemed to ominous to visit. We watched as the other students trudged to the dining hall. Hunger gnawed at our stomachs because we only had the dining food to rely on – we were the JJCs who had finished their provisions within the first week of school.
She instructed everyone – except Comfort, who was miraculously absent from the hostel while this went down – to lie face up on the floor reeking of urine and ridden with algae. We were to lie there, facing the harsh sun with our eyes wide open and our hands clasped over our chest.
During the midterm break, Mmachi returned with an array of eye drops and ointments. She said when she told her parents what Senior Dinma had done, they had shrugged and told her it was all part of the training. To toughen you, to make you less susceptible to the adversities of life. That was the way with our parents. They would say, “We went through it, why can’t you? Look how I turned out today. It made me a better person. If I can survive, you can too.”
The only thing they cold see was the superficial; our scrawny, darkened complexions. They would feed us and send us back to school, robust, proud at the wonders their good nutrition could work. But they do not address the numbness of our psyche, the somnolent violence winding it’s* way through our veins. There was only the quiet reassurance that one day, we would get to the senior class and become emboldened with the power to bully, just as we had been bullied.
Meanwhile, Comfort was shrinking. She was still adored. Seniors called her to their classes which was a territory not ordinarily traversed. She was summoned there so they could listen to her yet undiluted accent and touch the soft curls on her hair. We were jealous of her. Of her daintiness, her propensity to survive without relying on the watery meals served by the school. She snubbed us in turn, walking with those several classes above her while purely ignoring her academics.
I was quiet, almost mousy and inconsequential. I was smart enough to avoid being bullied, yet small enough to fit into spaces where I existed primarily to watch events unfold.
There was a shroud of victimhood that seemed to hang over her. Her hair had begun to lack lustre, and she wasn’t as confident as she was when she first came in. I had begun to hate her since the day I tried to strike up a conversation with her at the steps leading to the Catholic Church. I had asked her, sweetly, to adjust blue satin scarf on my head so it would look like hers. She had styled hers uniquely into a flat piece that opened up into whorl like pattern on her forehead. She regarded me with a withering look that was amplified by the snaky green of her eyes, and hissed. Snappishness and a disregard for female chumminess was perhaps, a thing of the elite, but I couldn’t let it go.
I felt a budding resentment towards her, but since that day, I could not stop being obsessed. I made sure I was the last to leave the classroom. I skipped lunch often because everyone would be at the dining hall and I would have the chance to break into her locker and sift through her things. I had a letch to smell them, touch them, feel the pages of her Basic Science textbooks where her fingers had lingered. She had a diary but it was all written in shorthand. Every single word. I envied her ability to be so cryptic. When the bell for night prep went off, I ran back to the hostel so I could fill her buckets up with water while I fetched mine, quickly and quietly before a queue formed at the mouth of the tap. It was always chaotic. Sometimes I wonder if she knew that these small acts of service were performed by me, if she questioned where they came from at all. Did she know that I hated and loved her? That those two emotions which fiercely juxtaposed resided comfortably within me and often intermingled?
Everyday, I watched as she became smaller, diminishing into a mollusk.
Senior Dinma had begun inflicting irrational punishments on her, and there were rumors that she was bound to be dumped. She stopped paying attention in class, her day wear began to look dirty and rumpled, her sandals were often coated in dust that contrasted with her milky complexion. She often looked helpless and lost, making an endless circuit around the hostel because she was too frightened to go in. I noticed her pinched face, her weary expression, the way our gales of laughter seemed to bounce around her, never penetrating, never letting a beam of happiness slip into her dullness of her eyes. In addition, her grades began to drop drastically.
It took one night to find out why.
I had been listening in the dark to the sound of crickets and the footstep of the security men who patrolled the hostels when I heard a muffled scream. It was quick, uneasy to decipher. I heard it come from Senior Dinma’s corner. It was followed by a whispered threat; “Suck it, or I break your knuckles.”
There was silence after that. It was interrupted by a dispassionate slurping sound. Then the bunk began to creak, slowly but steadily. I could hear someone breathing deeply, I could hear comfort sobbing quietly. Surely, I wasn’t the only one awake and bearing witness to another’s trauma. Surely, someone else had to be awake. There is a big sign board condemning lesbianism beside the tuck-shop, but where was the condemnation against normalized abuse? I was paralyzed by an overwhelming fear.
After a while, the bunk ceased to creak. Comfort emerged, quaking, blathering quietly and shaking. I watched her pull out a small empty bucket from under the bunk and brush her teeth vigorously, spitting volumes of viscous phlegm into it. When she looked up, she caught my eyes and in that instant, I knew I was complicit. Comfort climbed into her bed and slept off. As though she had silently transferred her burdens to me, I did not sleep a wink.
***
It happened two weeks to the inter-house sports, on a February that still held the last vestiges of the harmattan winds. The nights were still cold, and harsh. It was the same week Angela had her upper incisor knocked out with a discus during practice. It was a terrible accident because her best friend, Kosi had not known she was standing behind her when she swung, aiming to gather momentum for a throw, oblivious to the presence of Angela standing behind her. I remember the fierce red blood mixing with the green grasses on the field, on Kosi’s shirt, on the steps leading to the dispensary. We should have known that was a precedent for things to come.
It was on a Friday night. Prep was usually unserious, and noisy. As usual, I snuck past the class monitor and ran to the hostel so I could fill up my buckets long before people began milling to the taps. I walked into the hostel and that was when I heard someone gasping for breath in the dark.
It was Senior Dinma. She was having what seemed to be an asthmatic attack. Her lungs were in a protest and it was evident in the way she struggled and tried to reach for the inhaler that was few inches away from her. Standing over her writhing form with folded hands and a grin was Comfort. She made no move to help.
Comfort looked at me as I came upon the scene. Once again, our eyes made contact just as it had on that night I witnessed her body being violated. It was one out of many. I did nothing and now she was making eye contact again, daring me to do anything this time. II couldn’t move. Instead, I watched as she kicked the inhaler farther away from Senior Dinma’s reach.
There is violence in us all. The one we try to rein in and channel through a slightly modest vein, but which rears its ugly head every now and then. We see it in the surge of excitement we feel at a riot, the frisson a violent video game gives. We should like to kill, to squash, crouch behind a shrub with a spear with hearts thrumming wildly to the beat of drums, to build a thing and destroy it. This feeling is tucked in, over ridden by common sense, Bach, Chopin, prescribed etiquettes. But like a huge feet unable to withstand the pain of being shoved into a small shoe, my violence spilled out of the edges like a soufflé. Possessed by a certain righteous rage, I dropped my school bag and grabbed a pillow which I placed over senior Dinma’s head. She was already dying anyway, I only helped to quicken its finality.
Comfort and I never said a word to each other. Not even on the assembly ground where the announcement was made and everyone shuddered. Not when we both left the hostel and she ran to the dining hall, dramatically screaming that she had found her darling bunk mate and school mother dead. Not when the whole school was silent and the bells that ordered our daily existence seemed to ring with a grave timbre. We were all questioned by the police but it was done perfunctorily. We were little girls, what did we know about murder? They all knew what killed senior Dinma and even the principal spoke about not on the assembly ground. Dinma would have gotten help with an inhaler if she attended night prep like the rest of the school. In other words, death was what you got for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
***
The administrative block is painted blue and yellow. The sides of the buildings are fringed with well manicured lawns. My heart drums wildly against my rib cages, but for some reason, I smile and smile.
The topography here is askew. Sometimes it is hilly, other times the earth descends into a gaping valley with a maneuver that is completely unprecedented. There are stories that the school was once a grave yard and that at night, the field becomes a river where the marine species come out to display their lustrous shiny scales. I shrug. There is no boarding school that does not have tales of animistic origins. The mind of the adolescent is wonderfully imaginative.
The corridors in the buildings are empty, devoid of students. No one ever loitered around here anyway. The bureaucratic aura was as feral as Flintstones. I cautiously pick my way into the principal’s office, taking care to make sure that my shoes do not click clack and echo around the corridors. There was a sanctimonious silence about it that weighed oppressively on my shoulders.
I greet the secretary.
My greeting is frenetic. I genuflect too low and sweep my hands across my buttock so thoroughly that I suspect any modicum of crease has been vanquished. A lone fan whirls on the ceiling. Stacks of books and old files are on her desk. She seemed to be transferring the content of the files into a computer.
“Yes?” She asked without looking up from the computer. She punches the keys a bit too hardly and I fight the urge to tell her a soft punch would do. This was not the time to be dramatic. And me? I’ve never been one to draw attention to myself.
“I have information on Senior Dinma’s death.”
She looked up then. Her mouth formed an uncertain ‘O’. She jammed it shut but I could see the uneasiness in her eyes.
“Give me a minute.” She disappeared into the principal’s office shielded by a thick door. It was easy. I had two options – report Comfort and implicate myself as someone who was complicit to her abuse, or exonerate her and claim I was the one who placed a pillow over her head as she suffocated..
The secretary came out in less than a minute and ushered me in with a strange fervour. Suddenly, I mattered. TheThe principal was on her feet in the plush, air conditioned office. She seemed smaller. During assemblies, standing on the podium with our school logo boldly carved into the wall behind her, she seemed imposing as she admonished and reprimanded. Now, she was like a frail old woman with a stringent bun, wire rimmed glasses and an anxious expression.
“Sit, girl. How do you do?”
I nodded.
“Please tell me what you know.” She urged.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and began to speak. | https://medium.com/@erereony/whatever-happened-to-dinma-d2f80ef47f75 | ['Erere Onyeugbo'] | 2020-12-22 06:27:36+00:00 | ['Boarding School', 'Fiction', 'Children', 'Murder'] |
December 2nd… | December 2nd by Lemi
So this is it! December the 2nd!
Honestly I want this year to end. It’s been really hard, for other people much more.
Let’s hope next one is better. Wish you all the best! | https://medium.com/@lemicartoons/december-2nd-39ff56c2a15c | ['Lemi Cartoons Official'] | 2020-12-02 16:32:59.964000+00:00 | ['New York City', 'Design', 'December', 'Christmas', 'Cartoon'] |
About Eureka Gear | Eureka Gear recommends the best sports, fitness, health, outdoor and travel gear at www.eurekagear.com.
We are passionate about promoting sports, fitness, the outdoors, adventure and travel, by making it quick and easy for our readers to find the best gear.
Eureka Gear is just starting its journey. Take the first steps with us.
Gear Guides
Eureka Gear might be new, but we already have gear guides on:
We also have many more gear guides, and list the best Amazon Prime Day discounts, Black Friday sales and Cyber Monday deals each year.
Follow Eureka Gear
We’d love to hear how Eureka Gear helped you experience a #eurekamoment. | https://medium.com/@eurekagear/about-eureka-gear-26f152a8107f | ['Eureka Gear'] | 2020-12-15 04:14:35.126000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Gear Review', 'Fitness Equipment', 'Fitness', 'Outdoors'] |
What Experts Are Saying About Digital Marketing Institute in Delhi | SKILLHAI: The Institute of Skill Development, is prime and optimal/optimally magician to get digital marketing course classes at Delhi/NCR & over India. This class allows you to be effective at catching a great package like a fresher. What’s more, it will improve your talent if you are an operating pro and supply you with many chances to behave as a freelancer later in this digital marketing course.
In late years demand for digital-marketing has risen by 50 per cent, leading to the promoting marketplace. On the Web promoting takes place now in receiving top quality contributes to instant earnings. Undoubtedly this makes it compulsory for Company Providers, Pros, and livelihood novices to master digital-marketing classes. Digital-marketing tasks would be the absolute most in-demand jobs inside the promotion sections of almost any firm throughout the world. Further, the best digital marketing institute in Delhi, advertising & Branding is essential to start-ups and ought to be launched at first Phase.
SKILLHAI — The Institute of Skill Development, Digital Marketing Institute in Delhi. Digital-marketing is an online advertising and advertising and advertising of services and products through Digital gizmos linked to the Web. Digital-marketing is performed through distinct Online channels like Social-media, Website Community, What’s App, SMS, Email Advertising and Advertising and Banners advertisements. Digital-marketing tendencies have altered the manner of company round the Earth; promotion isn’t the same since it’s used to take place sooner. Everything happens on the Web now sport its sports, social, leisure, pictures or even shopping. An extensive viewer is an internet, hence the ideal spot for entrepreneurs to aim would be Internet advertising and advertising and advertising stations.
Digital advertising is among the most useful options to get great livelihood. With an abundance of chances while inside the area and good wages, it truly is the most opportune moment to combine with digital advertising and advertising and advertising program. Nowadays, it has grown into crucial for organizations to own a robust internet presence as well as. Therefore, they require support from electronic advertising and advertising and advertising businesses to boost their internet existence. Thus might there be tons of chances for everyone who wants to produce their livelihood inside this area. If you’re in Delhi, you will uncover very best institutes such as SKILLHAI — The Institute of ability progress that provides electronic marketing and advertising Course at Delhi.
Digital promotion may promote goods using electronic stations like internet search engines like google, sociable networking, email, and blogs. An electronic digital marketer will be engaged in forcing new awareness, prospecting, and many other online tasks that aid a company in earning a lot of additional earnings. Digital promotion leads to least 20%percent of lead earnings of an organization participating in advertising and advertising and advertising its services and products digitally. Therefore it is the Most Suitable moment to combine. | https://medium.com/@skillhai/what-experts-are-saying-about-digital-marketing-institute-in-delhi-e287593bfa0 | [] | 2020-12-26 08:45:23.029000+00:00 | ['Email Marketing', 'SEO', 'Seo Services', 'Digital Marketing', 'Google Adwords'] |
Best Machine Translation Services in 2021 | Whether you exchange messages with friends who speak different languages, shop online on international websites, or just need to translate the content for research purposes, the chances are, that in one way or another, you used machine translations at some point. In many cases, these tools are doing their jobs automatically, enabling you to communicate across borders by using foreign languages with confidence.
As we live in an interconnected world, the need for translation has increased exponentially. In the last 10 years, the global language services market has seen rapid growth, virtually doubling in size. In 2019, it was evaluated at $49.6 billion and it’s forecasting to reach $56.18 billion by the end of 2021.
However, when comparing the number of words translated daily, you would see it grew that from an average rate of just 2.000 words almost fifty years ago to 10.000 words today. This increase is a result of using an extensive range of machine translation software and special tools that are available nowadays. Algorithms and artificial intelligence help to continuously improve machine translation and process quickly large volumes of text.
But the main question is:
Can Artificial Intelligence replace completely human translation?
Well, the answer is neither simple nor easy. When the text is simple and clear, machine translation services can replace human linguists and provide good translations immediately. But for the complex texts, translation of sensitive data, business communication, and other professional translations, artificial intelligence translation tools are not a good enough alternative to specialized human translators.
But as many people rely on translation tools, let’s take a closer look at several machine translation services, their benefits, and limitations. This way, you can decide which translation software fits better to your needs, when you should consider professional translation made by a specialized human translator and when you can rely just on the AI. | https://medium.com/sandvox/the-best-machine-translation-services-in-2021-all-you-need-to-know-6407a32fb60b | ['Sandvox Solutions Llc'] | 2021-12-20 09:01:19.030000+00:00 | ['Translation', 'Machine Translation', 'Localization', 'Business', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Solving the new HTTPS requirements in Flutter | Solving the new HTTPS requirements in Flutter
The new beta includes some unexpected surprises
Photo by Florian Berger on Unsplash
Since this morning, after updating my Flutter beta install, it has been refusing to load any resources from HTTP with this error:
Unhandled error Bad
state: Insecure HTTP is not allowed by platform
If you’re here because you’ve been furiously Googling a fix, and you don’t care why it’s broken, and you just want it fixed, here’s what you can do:
Navigate to your project Go to yourapp\android\app\src\debug\AndroidManifest.xml Add this line
<application android:usesCleartextTraffic="true">
</application>
4. Build your debug app and deploy it to your device of choice. It should work now.
Why is this happening?
Since a change in dart_sdk last month, outbound connections are checked to see if they are permitted to occur in plaintext HTTP. The commit that includes this change can be seen here. To be precise, this is the particular lines that are causing us grief:
The check that is failing for us, is the check for isInsecureConnectionAllowed . The API documentation for how that function works is here, but basically, it allows localhost connections but not the 10.0.2.2 connection that your Android Emulator uses to connect to your local computer. The only way this is permitted is if your application specifically requests to use cleartext HTTP connections. When we update the debug AndroidManifest.xml , our debug builds are specifically allowed to use plaintext traffic, but our release builds have the same HTTPS requirement.
If you ask me, cleartext HTTP should be fine in debug settings, but should obviously fail in release. The only reason why I think this is because it is very difficult to install SSL CA root certificates on an Android Emulator and use HTTPS in development, and the benefit is that your local traffic is encrypted. This should only ever be fake data, so transmitting this over HTTP locally isn’t that big a deal (to me anyway, your thoughts may differ).
If there are steps for iOS on how to resolve this I will update this article. Until then, happy Fluttering! | https://medium.com/flutter-community/solving-the-new-https-requirements-in-flutter-7abe240fbf23 | ['Lew C'] | 2020-10-22 10:03:27.616000+00:00 | ['Flutter', 'Software Development', 'Android', 'Https', 'Software Engineering'] |
Children of a Narcissistic Parent Suffer Long-Term Psychological Consequences | It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I began to give concerted thought to what was wrong with my mom. She had always been depressed, sure, but her behavior over the years went so far beyond what a depressive disorder would sufficiently explain.
And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve gone in search of an explanation — a diagnosis and corresponding label that I could attach to her. Not that she would ever go get a diagnosis herself, but some part of me has thought that if I could settle on one, some weight would somehow be lifted.
Some of the tendencies my mom displays are, well, narcissistic, and so looking at Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) makes sense.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
According to the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, someone with NPD displays “[a] pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:”
“Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).” “Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.” “Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).” “Requires excessive admiration.” “Has a sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations) “Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends).” “Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.” “Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.” “Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.”
Numbers 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 all sound like my mom, although, I need to emphasize the wording of number 7. She can be empathetic, but she very frequently, as it says, is “unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.”
Confusion and Contradictions for Children of Narcissists
Growing up with a narcissistic parent is difficult and inherently confusing according to psychotherapist Amy Launder, whose article on the subject I found to be a shockingly accurate representation of my experiences both as a child and now as an adult.
Contributing to the confusion the child of a narcissist experiences are the alternating giving and rescinding of affection, unpredictability in terms of the parent’s emotional state, and a lack of separation between the identities of parent and child.
Later on, the adult children of narcissists are likely to confuse love and control, be unclear on boundaries, and have distorted perceptions of their value and their abilities.
One of the biggest things the child of a narcissistic parent will take away from their upbringing is the belief that they are “not enough.”
I’ve certainly seen this to greater and lesser extents within myself and my mother's other children, along with all of the other factors listed above.
However, a damagingly narcissistic parent doesn’t necessarily look or act like a movie villain. Many times, they play the good guy, and sometimes, they even can be the good guy, particularly when interests align.
My mother is a smart, creative, and charismatic person, and she’ll charm the pants off you when she’s at her best. As a child, it felt good being at the center of her attention, and I loved it when it felt as though she and I were a team.
Launder notes that “[n]arcissists aren’t always cruel. They can very often be kind, but this kindness almost always comes with conditions.”
These conditions are often that the child be exactly what the parent wants them to be, and this is an anxiety that the children of narcissists bear from a very young age.
“Generally, narcissistic parents are possessively close to their young children. Their children are seen as an extension of themselves, and become a source of self-esteem for the parent; “look at how perfect my children are, didn’t I do a good job!” The children become a means to gain attention from others.” — Amy Launder
My mom basked in the praise that her children received. She knew that we were the best dancers, the best actors, the best whatever-the-case-might-have-been, and she was thrilled to relay to use and others how she’d heard just this sort of feedback from someone else.
There are even things my brothers and I did or accomplished many years ago — things that received a lot of attention and praise from the parents of our peers or our teachers and coaches — that my mom holds as important and relevant some twenty years later.
Launders notes that when you fit the mold that your narcissistic parent has prescribed for you, then you can expect praise, attention, and expressions of affection.
It’s when you don’t fit that mold that you experience more of the overt unkindness and lack of empathy from the narcissistic parent.
I remember coming back from a summer camp when I was about sixteen, excited about my new friends and the ability to connect with them online. I was also wearing more makeup and doing more swearing than I’d done before.
None of this was acceptable to my mom, and she told me very clearly that she didn’t like the version of me that had returned that fall.
To have a stable life with a narcissistic parent requires meeting their expectations. Don’t rock the boat; it isn’t fun.
“Asserting [the child’s] own feelings or thoughts can lead to problems with the parent that might include anger, tears, or punishment. Through this, the child learns that their feelings and thoughts are unimportant, invalid, and inconsequential, and will often stifle their own feelings in order to keep the peace at home.” — Amy Launder
Differences in opinion were the first source of trouble with my mom when I was small. They were, and to this day are, completely unacceptable, and will result in huffiness from her in the very least.
There was a middle time in my youth when I disagreed with my mom very rarely. I sort of merged with her and took on many of her opinions, likes, and dislikes as my own. Still today, I’m entangling some of those — even small things like whether I really prefer white lights on the Christmas tree, or if I only think I do because that’s what she liked best.
In my teens, I had an increasingly difficult time agreeing with her or feeling happy with her decisions. Still, her happiness was of the utmost importance, if for no other reason than that it made my own life less difficult.
Stepping out of line, even unintentionally, would result in my mom’s yelling and tears and my ongoing feelings of guilt. I had to shut down my own feelings to a certain extent to make it through my last few years with her before I escaped to school on the other side of the continent.
But the one “mistake” could never avoid making was to speak up when I felt she was treating my brothers unfairly. This always resulted in a tidal wave of intensely-expressed feelings on her part followed by punitive pouting.
“Narcissists have trouble handling anything that is perceived as a criticism or penetrates this image that they have cultivated of themselves. When this happens they can become angry, belittle others, have difficulty regulating their emotions, and experience covert feelings of shame, vulnerability, and humiliation.” — Amy Launder
Impact on Decision-Making
Narcissists tend to believe that they are always right, and thus if their child does something that does not align with those beliefs, then the child is doing something wrong. (The same applies to anyone else — it’s the narcissist’s way or the highway.)
If the child is rarely allowed to make their own decisions or is punished for making the “wrong” ones, then it should be no surprise that later, adult children of narcissistic parents have trouble with decision-making.
This was once a major problem in my life. My partner will attest that I have gone so far as to cry over an extensive sundae menu because there were too many options and I didn’t know what to choose. On that occasion, I made him choose for me.
In addition to trouble with indecision, the child, as they grow up, may develop a form of internalized gaslighting that causes them to doubt their feelings, memories, skills, and judgment. Imposter syndrome in the face of success is also very common in these now-adult children.
The Parentified Child
Launders points out that the child of the narcissist will often become a “parentified child.” That is, they will have spent so much of their lives feeling responsible for and taking care of their parents’ feelings, that they will go on to “grow up organizing their life around the happiness of others.”
I wish that wasn’t true of me, but it is. I have an extraordinarily hard time not considering others first and putting their needs above my own. I will go far out of my way to make sure that people are taken care of.
Is some part of that kindness? Of course. But is it also a habit created out of self-preservation? Yes.
It’s been noted that the children of narcissists may be extra tuned into the feelings of those around them and may also be less able to protect themselves from those emotions.
I, at least, am hypersensitive to how others are feeling. I see it, I feel it, and I’ll obsess over it. Usually, I’ll feel a deep need to fix whatever is wrong.
Impact on Love and Attachment
I’ve written previously that I have an insecure attachment style, which Launder notes are typical of the children of narcissists. Because love, as the child learns it, is conditional, the child can never be certain that the love they find later on in life is truly safe.
Ironically, the children of narcissistic parents are high in love and loyalty. They often have difficulty stepping back from the narcissistic parent or creating appropriate boundaries.
It’s taken years for me to step back from my mother, and even though I’m now far from her sphere of influence, it isn’t hard to get sucked back in, particularly in those moments when it feels like we’re on the same side again as we so often were when I was a child.
Even today, I still feel guilty when I know I’ve upset her, even when I know that I’ve done the right thing or when I know she’s been manipulative.
I’ve been aware that she’s been going through a tough time this past year, but I’ve kept my distance for my own emotional health. To engage always ends in some sort of heartbreak.
While I believe that most of her struggles are self-created, I still feel sad. She is, after all, my mom (regardless of the fact that she once sent a letter of abdication).
I used to think my relationship with my mom could possibly change when I got older. I thought the distance would help the relationship. I’ve realized, of course, that I was wrong.
My younger brother still hopes for reconciliation with her — some sort of closure. Even though part of him knows it’s useless, he continues to feel this deep need for his mother to accept him or at least acknowledge the hurt she’s caused.
I get it. It would be nice. But that’s just not how this cookie crumbles.
The Path Forward
Several studies have suggested that adult children of narcissists experience ongoing mental health issues. One study concluded, among other things, that “[t]he total indirect effect of maternal narcissism (via rearing scales) was significant both on depression…and on anxiety…”
Another study which included interviews indicated that “perceived parental narcissism can have a significant impact on adult children’s understanding of their self-esteem in adulthood,” with “parental lack of empathy, grandiosity, tendency to exploit others, and critical or patronizing behaviors” as having the largest impact on “development of a self-concept or identity, essential components of self-esteem.”
Despite experiences of improved self-esteem, nearly all participants…believed they were suffering, and would continue to suffer, from the effects of their parent’s narcissistic traits. Many described needing external support or validation from others to feel competent or worthy, and some reported feeling as if their entire sense of self was based on how “successful” they felt in terms of their physical appearance, social life, or educational or career achievements. — Brittany N. Bach
In my life, having to fight through perceived failure, exploring more of the world, experiencing success in unexpected areas, and getting to see myself through the eyes of others whom I like and respect, have all made a difference when it comes to my self-esteem as an adult.
In terms of dealing with all the effects of a narcissistic parent, Launders believes that there are opportunities to move forward and begin to heal. Recognition and self-education, recounting of experiences, and identifying trauma with the help of a counselor can all be beneficial.
These adults will need to grieve, perhaps go through developmental milestones they may have missed, and come to understand and accept that the narcissistic parent will not change.
My brothers and I are all at different points in this process, but I hope that in time, we’ll all be able to let go of the need for approval, see ourselves as we really are, get through that lingering sadness, and go on to live happy, authentic, and unentangled lives. | https://medium.com/preoccupy-negative-thoughts/children-of-a-narcissistic-parent-suffer-long-term-psychological-consequences-52142a9dd56a | ['Elan Cassandra'] | 2020-12-11 16:04:01.118000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Mental Health', 'Narcissism', 'Psychology', 'Childhood'] |
Who’s Really Getting Played in McDonald’s Monopoly | How McDonald’s has transformed a family-friendly game into a gamified enterprise.
With the prospect of becoming tens of thousands of dollars richer all by purchasing a Big Mac, it’s no wonder McDonald’s Monopoly attracts a (Mc)flurry of participants.
While the traditional Monopoly board game may evoke frustrating memories of paying rent on Mayfair and getting stuck in jail, McDonald’s has successfully integrated this sentimental experience into tasty transactions of burgers and fries.
As identified by Professor Gerda Reith, through the use of new mobile technologies and gamification, the home of the Big Mac has intensified the notion of consumerism by encouraging hungry participants to consume products from the ubiquitous golden arches via a variety of platforms. Undoubtedly, McDonald’s Monopoly is a perfect example of games and gaming technologies transcending their traditional boundaries, but are we really lovin’ it?
While the expansion of gaming technology is fundamentally embedded in the techno-economic systems of late capitalism, I believe McDonald’s Monopoly has exceeded the boundaries of their social contract as a globalized food enterprise by exploiting a traditional family-centric game into a gamified, gambling commercial campaign.
Gaming, but not as we know it.
As defined by author Alan Chorney, gamification asserts that the mechanics typically characteristic of video gaming environments can be harnessed and transposed to non-gaming contexts. Informed by video game design patterns, such techniques are implemented with the aim of enhancing user engagement and driving customer retention.
While gaming has historically been viewed as a distinct, interpersonal interaction, Professor Joshua Daniel-Wariya argues that modern media technologies are uniquely positioned to facilitate play as they offer endless repeatability and hyper-customization. Furthermore, media scholar Frans Mayra notes this rise of gamification by large corporations has effectively generated new, addictive digital environments, seamlessly blurring the lines between traditional consumption patterns and novel activities.
McDonald’s has effectively merged the best of both worlds — ‘old world’ nostalgia and ‘new world’ digital gamification mechanics — to graft classic Monopoly game design elements onto a commercialized context, accessed through ubiquitous digital mobile platforms. As posited by author Henry Jenkins, this form of marketing convergence has allowed McDonald's to insinuate itself across its customers’ digital platforms successfully capturing dispersed consumption habits.
Rolling the dice at every bite.
In their analysis of what they describe as the ‘new frontier’ of mobile gaming, Cesar Albarres Torres and Gerard Goggin argue that the 24/7 availability of gamified mobile apps has allowed commodified consumption practices to become increasingly ubiquitous and intensive. Through using mobile communications as a key aspect of McDonald’s Monopoly gameplay, McDonald’s has released consumption from the physical confines of their stores and facilitated its spread throughout the daily rhythms of everyday life.
Just when we thought their salty hot fries and creamy choc-fudge sundaes were delectable enough, the lure of having a 1-in-5 chance of winning a variety of prizes (from Macca’s goodies to a seven-night European holiday) has effectively eroded the distinctions between ‘social gaming’ and ‘chance gambling’. Analyst Amy Jokim notes the redeemable prizes, collectable pieces and the lure of winning reflect guileful gaming mechanics used to create a more fun, compelling and addictive experience.
The result? Dubbed an environment of ‘continuous control’ by author Gilles Deleuze, this utilization of gamification has stimulated desire and encouraged play for underage participants that would be banned from traditional gambling platforms. While commandeering a traditional family-friendly game and turning it into a commercial ‘digital game of chance’ enterprise is not unlawful, the spend-eat-your-way-to-a-prize format arguably oversteps the moral boundaries of seemingly family-friendly ‘play’, particularly where many of the players are children under 18.
It’s all fun and games…until you’re stuck in jail.
Scholar James Ash, in his book The Interface Envelope, identifies that capturing consumer attention through a variety of psychological gamification techniques is central to the modern monetization of audiences. And while I agree that new media technologies represent a powerful and effective conduit for play, I believe there is a boundary for corporations when creating economic value in traditionally non-commercial contexts.
Put simply, when ‘value’ is created through the repeated consumption of Big Macs and implicit promotion of gambling masked as a nostalgic experience, players are pacified in a mechanical, mediatized world where an equal exchange between consumer and producer is non-existent.
The amalgam of family memories and addictive gaming techniques with the lure of chance rewards may be a smart, novel marketing campaign for McDonald’s to continually engage customers across a variety of platforms. However, I believe this campaign crosses the blurred line from responsible marketing to unhealthy exploitation of the customer.
McDonald’s, I’m not lovin’ it. | https://medium.com/the-public-ear/whos-really-getting-played-in-mcdonald-s-monopoly-117b5cc4897f | ['Jane Bartley'] | 2019-10-30 07:29:02.310000+00:00 | ['McDonalds', 'Monopoly', 'Gamification', 'Gambling'] |
Build and Train U-Net from scratch using Tensorflow2.0 | I, as a Machine Learning Engineer, have always tried to understand the published research papers and it has always been hard to understand those papers and even harder to replicate the results.
One such paper is U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation. I have seen quite a few implementations of U-Net, but they all do not implement the exact architecture explained in the paper.
During the implementation of the code and the article, I did refer to the tutorial provided by TensorFlow, which also implements a modified version of the model.
Later, I came across a youtube video from Abhishek Thakur that shows step by step implementation of the U-Net model. He uses PyTorch for it, I myself have not used PyTorch a lot, so I thought of creating the U-Net using TensorFlow.
U-Net model
The model looks in the shape of a U and so the name has been derived from it.
There are two main parts of the U-Net mode, one part is contracting path which is the left side of the model and the other is expansive path which is the right side of the model.
The contracting path consists of repeatedly applying two convolutional layers (3x3 — unpadded). The convolutional layer is followed by Relu and maxpooling (2x2) with stride 2. [2]
The expansive path consists of up-convolutions(2x2) also known as convolutionTranspose for upsampling. The up-convolutions reduces the feature map by half. Later the result is concatenated with its counterpart from the contracting path after cropping. Similar to the contracting path the layer Relu is followed after two consecutive convolutional layers. [Reference]
Do not bother if the model is not clear from the above explanation. I will go through each step along with the code.
Let us concentrate on the contracting and the expansive path separately.
The Contracting Path
The contracting path looks like below. The image is from the official U-Net paper. I have just isolated the contracting path for a better explanation.
The different arrows represent different layers and operations.
Contracting Path — U-Net [2]
Different Arrows [2]
For the contracting part we need convolutional layer (3x3) and maxpool (2x2) layer. You can also see from the image that two convolutional layers are together. The number written above the line is the number that represents the number of filters . The number written at the side of the line represents the size of the image at that particular moment.
So consider the below example form the U-Net architecture, where 64 represents the filter size to be used in the convolutional layer and (572x572) (570x570)(568,568) represents the image size. Here the paper explains the output image size after each layer. This makes it very easy to implement.
First part [2]
So for the above image, the implemented layers will look something like this.
# In the original paper the network consisted of only one channel.
inputs = layers.Input(shape=(572, 572, 1))
# first part of the U - contracting part
c0 = layers.Conv2D(64, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(inputs)
c1 = layers.Conv2D(64, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c0)
I hope the above example code gives you an idea, let's take another example and try to implement the code for it.
Second part[2]
c2 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c1)
c3 = layers.Conv2D(128, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c2)
c4 = layers.Conv2D(128, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c3) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c5 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c4)
Here we have two maxpool (2x2) ; one before the two convolutional layers and one after. The complete Contracting part will look like this below:
# declaring the input layer
# In the original paper the network consisted of only one channel.
inputs = layers.Input(shape=(572, 572, 3))
# first part of the U - contracting part
c0 = layers.Conv2D(64, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(inputs)
c1 = layers.Conv2D(64, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c0) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c2 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c1)
c3 = layers.Conv2D(128, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c2)
c4 = layers.Conv2D(128, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c3) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c5 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c4)
c6 = layers.Conv2D(256, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c5)
c7 = layers.Conv2D(256, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c6) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c8 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c7)
c9 = layers.Conv2D(512, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c8)
c10 = layers.Conv2D(512, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c9) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c11 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c10)
c12 = layers.Conv2D(1024, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c11)
c13 = layers.Conv2D(1024, activation='relu', kernel_size=3, padding='valid')(c12)
Expansive Part
Now we will implement the expansive part of the model. The expansive part also needs the contracting part. The outputs from the convolutional layers from the contracting part are cropped and then concatenated with the expansive part. We will look at the expansive part step by step.
First part [2]
You can see that here we have to use up-convolution. The up-convolution has 512 filters, the other 512 filters come from the contracting part.
# We will now start the second part of the U - expansive part
t01 = layers.Conv2DTranspose(512, kernel_size=2, strides=(2, 2), activation='relu')(c13)
Concatenation of contracting part [2]
We will have to get the output of the layer c10 and we have to crop the image from (64x64) to (56x56) so that it can be concatenated with the expansive part.
crop01 = layers.Cropping2D(cropping=(4, 4))(c10)
concat01 = layers.concatenate([t01, crop01], axis=-1)
Once concatenated we have to add two convolutional layers each with 512 filters.
c14 = layers.Conv2D(512, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(concat01)
c15 = layers.Conv2D(512, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c14)
We will be repeating until we achieve the following architecture.
U-Net Architecture [2]
The complete model is as below along with the visualization of the model.
# declaring the input layer
# In the original paper the network consisted of only one channel.
inputs = layers.Input(shape=(572, 572, 1))
# first part of the U - contracting part
c0 = layers.Conv2D(64, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(inputs)
c1 = layers.Conv2D(64, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c0) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c2 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c1)
c3 = layers.Conv2D(128, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c2)
c4 = layers.Conv2D(128, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c3) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c5 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c4)
c6 = layers.Conv2D(256, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c5)
c7 = layers.Conv2D(256, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c6) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c8 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c7)
c9 = layers.Conv2D(512, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c8)
c10 = layers.Conv2D(512, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c9) # This layer for concatenating in the expansive part
c11 = layers.MaxPool2D(pool_size=(2, 2), strides=(2, 2), padding='valid')(c10)
c12 = layers.Conv2D(1024, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c11)
c13 = layers.Conv2D(1024, activation='relu', kernel_size=3, padding='valid')(c12)
# We will now start the second part of the U - expansive part
t01 = layers.Conv2DTranspose(512, kernel_size=2, strides=(2, 2), activation='relu')(c13)
crop01 = layers.Cropping2D(cropping=(4, 4))(c10)
concat01 = layers.concatenate([t01, crop01], axis=-1)
c14 = layers.Conv2D(512, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(concat01)
c15 = layers.Conv2D(512, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c14)
t02 = layers.Conv2DTranspose(256, kernel_size=2, strides=(2, 2), activation='relu')(c15)
crop02 = layers.Cropping2D(cropping=(16, 16))(c7)
concat02 = layers.concatenate([t02, crop02], axis=-1)
c16 = layers.Conv2D(256, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(concat02)
c17 = layers.Conv2D(256, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c16)
t03 = layers.Conv2DTranspose(128, kernel_size=2, strides=(2, 2), activation='relu')(c17)
crop03 = layers.Cropping2D(cropping=(40, 40))(c4)
concat03 = layers.concatenate([t03, crop03], axis=-1)
c18 = layers.Conv2D(128, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(concat03)
c19 = layers.Conv2D(128, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c18)
t04 = layers.Conv2DTranspose(64, kernel_size=2, strides=(2, 2), activation='relu')(c19)
crop04 = layers.Cropping2D(cropping=(88, 88))(c1)
concat04 = layers.concatenate([t04, crop04], axis=-1)
c20 = layers.Conv2D(64, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(concat04)
c21 = layers.Conv2D(64, activation='relu', kernel_size=3)(c20)
outputs = layers.Conv2D(2, kernel_size=1)(c21)
model = tf.keras.Model(inputs=inputs, outputs=outputs, name="u-netmodel")
Visualize Model Architecture
Another important aspect of the model is to understand the input filters and output filters. Consider you have a grayscale image, then the input filter will have the channel 1 and 3 in terms of RGB image. The output channel depends on the image_mask. If you are classifying each image pixel in three different classes then the output layer will consist of 3 channels.
It is now time for a practical example. For this purpose, I have used the Tensorflow tutorial on Image segmentation and used the parts that I needed for the demonstration, why to invent another wheel?
Practical Example
We will be looking at the oxford_iiit_pet dataset. The dataset is RGB with (128x128) image size. The first thing that might come to your mind is that the U-Net expects the input image to be (572,572)as well as it expects to have grayscale images. Yes, you are right and we can handle it in different ways, the way I have handled it is as follows.
First I changed my input layer to handle RGB images.
inputs = layers.Input(shape=(572, 572, 3))
Secondly, I will have to resize the images to (572x572) from (128x128). This can be achieved using the API resize_with_pad . The input mask needs to be resized as well.
input_image = tf.image.resize_with_pad(datapoint['image'], 572, 572)
input_mask = tf.image.resize_with_pad(datapoint['segmentation_mask'], 388, 388)
Lastly, we will have to change our output layer to handle the three-channel output that the input_mask has. There are three possible output pixels for this particular dataset (1,2,3), but because we padded the input_mask, we will have 4 channels.
# This is based on our dataset. The output channels are 3, think of it as each pixel will be classified
# into three classes, but I have written 4 here, as I do padding with 0, so we end up have four classes.
outputs = layers.Conv2D(4, kernel_size=1)(c21)
You can find the complete code in the GitHub. The preparation of the dataset and the training part is available on the above-mentioned repository.
The code guides you step by step on how to train a U-Net model from scratch on the oxford_iiit_pet dataset. I have tried to make the tutorial as scalable and as replaceable to other datasets as possible. As I know you would like to apply the U-Net to some other problem.
Kindly, give me feedback on how did you like this tutorial and if you will like to know more details on the training part of the tutorial.
Happy reading!
References:
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1loyDCoGbE&t=2111s
[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.04597.pdf
[3] https://www.tensorflow.org/tutorials/images/segmentation | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/training-u-net-from-scratch-using-tensorflow2-0-fad541e2eaf1 | ['Prateek Bhatt'] | 2020-07-12 11:10:49.566000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'TensorFlow', 'Data Science', 'Image Segmentation', 'Unet'] |
How to set up a blog | (Sorry for the late update, this post took me a while to write because I had to do research myself)
Yesterday, as I was working on my blog, I realized that I had forgotten something crucial: Before teaching you how to come up with ideas, I should first show you how to set up a blog.
Setting up a blog is ridiculously easy nowadays, and it only takes a few minutes. I’ll be showing you how to set one up using three different sites: WordPress, Blogger(or Blogspot), and Medium.
Table of Contents:
1. WordPress
To set up a WordPress blog, first, you need to head over to wordpress.com and create an account. If you already have a WordPress account because you follow a blog, you can log in. If you don’t have one, click on ‘Create a new account’ and enter your email and password, and then check your mail for a verification link.
Create an account or log in to WordPress
After that, you need to click on ‘My Site’ in the top left of the page, and then click ‘Create Site’.
Create your WordPress site
Think of a good name for your site (don’t worry, you can change it later if you want.
Name your blog
After that, you can choose your domain. You can stick with the free version (yourblogsite.wordpress.com), or opt for a paid plan with a custom domain.
Choose a domain for your WordPress blog.
After that, choose one of the 25 layouts for your blog (you can customize them later). Then, choose your fonts.
Choose a layout for your blog
Once that is over, you can choose all the features you think you’ll need, and WordPress will recommend a plan for you, but if you wish, you can stick with the free plan, which has limited options.
Once you choose your plan, your site starts generating, and you can start customizing it (changing titles, images, etc.). When you want to add a post, just click on the WordPress logo on the top left, go to the dashboard and create a blog post. | https://medium.com/@loggerscabin/how-to-set-up-a-blog-10d0e2ea9244 | ["Logger'S Cabin"] | 2021-06-02 05:12:25.475000+00:00 | ['WordPress', 'Blogger', 'Blogging', 'How To', 'Médium'] |
What’s new in Xcode 11.4? | Xcode 11.4 includes SDKs for iOS 13.4, iPadOS 13.4, tvOS 13.4, watchOS 6.2, and macOS Catalina 10.15.4. Xcode 11.4 supports on-device debugging for iOS 8 and later, tvOS 9 and later, and watchOS 2 and later. Xcode 11.4 requires a Mac running macOS Catalina 10.15.2 or later.
General
Xcode 11.4 supports building and distributing macOS apps as a universal purchase. To distribute your macOS app as a universal purchase, specify the same bundle identifier as your iOS app in the Xcode template assistant when creating a new project. If you have an existing project, edit its bundle identifier in the Project Editor.
Universal purchase is enabled by default for new Mac Catalyst apps created in Xcode 11.4. When you create a new Mac Catalyst app, it will use the same bundle identifier as your iOS app.
Automatic signing in Xcode 11.4 supports building Mac Catalyst apps with a custom bundle identifier. You can edit the bundle identifier of your app using the Signing & Capabilities tab in the Project Editor. If you choose to build your Mac Catalyst app with a custom bundle identifier that does not match your iOS app, you will not be able to distribute the app as a universal purchase.
Build System
Build settings have a new evaluation operator, default , which you can use to specify the default value of a build setting if it evaluates to empty in the context of the evaluation. For example:
$(SETTING:default=something)
If $(SETTING) is empty, this expression evaluates to 'something'. The default value may itself be an expression that contains build setting evaluations.
is empty, this expression evaluates to 'something'. The default value may itself be an expression that contains build setting evaluations. Building codeless kernel extensions with the new build system now requires you to set the GENERATE_KERNEL_MODULE_INFO_FILE build setting to NO .
Debugging
The view debugger now presents layout guides ( UILayoutGuide , NSLayoutGuide ) and their referencing constraints.
, ) and their referencing constraints. View debugging supports showing layers using the Show Layers menu item in the Editor menu.
The exception reason now surfaces as an editor annotation. You can inspect the Exception object in Variables View and find the backtrace of the original uncaught exception, if any, in the Debug Navigator.
You can now use the Terminal for standard I/O, instead of Xcode’s Console. Make this choice using the Scheme Editor’s Options tab.
Interface Builder
Added dynamic system gray colors to inspector color pickers.
Removed inspector support for configuring NSTableColumn header cell fonts to match the API. You can configure header cell fonts by subclassing NSTableHeaderCell and overriding the font property in code.
Metal
The Metal Frame Debugger now supports iOS and tvOS simulators.
Organizer
The Crashes Organizer now shows crash logs for universal purchase macOS apps.
Previews
You can now copy, cut, paste, duplicate, and delete views directly within the Xcode Previews canvas.
Selecting a SwiftUI preview in code now highlights the corresponding preview in the canvas, and vice versa.
Xcode Previews now supports previewing iPad applications brought to the Mac.
Simulator
Dragging and dropping an SSL certificate (CER or PEM file) will now install the certificate into the simulated device’s trusted root store.
simctl supports a keychain subcommand. This command can add certificates to the trusted root store or the keychain. It can also reset the keychain, deleting all saved items. For example, to install "my-selfsigned.cer" to the trusted root store:
$ xcrun simctl keychain <device> add-root-cert my-selfsigned.cer
Adding a certificate to the trusted root store causes TLS / SSL connections to trust the certificate
/ connections to trust the certificate simctl now supports modifying privacy permissions. You can modify privacy permissions to create known states for testing purposes. For example, to allow an example app to access the photo library without any prompts:
$ xcrun simctl privacy <device> grant photos com.example.app
Always test your application after resetting permissions to ensure you have the correct usage description keys in your Info.plist and you are properly requesting and handling different authorization states. See xcrun simctl help privacy for more information.
and you are properly requesting and handling different authorization states. See for more information. Simulator supports toggling appearance for iOS simulators (13.0 and later). From within the app select Debug > Toggle Appearance. From the command line use the simctl ui subcommand, e.g. to set dark appearance:
$ xcrun simctl ui <device> appearance dark
Simulator now has a menu item and keyboard shortcut to bring up the app switcher in iOS Simulators.
simctl status_bar now allows changing the operator (carrier) name.
now allows changing the operator (carrier) name. Simulator now has a menu item to trigger screenshots in iOS simulators. This saves a screenshot to the simulated device’s camera roll. The existing screenshot feature has been renamed “Save Screen” for clarity and continues to save the device’s framebuffer to your Mac’s desktop by default. Hold Option when saving the screen to change the default location.
tvOS simulators no longer capture the TouchBar as if it were a Siri Remote paired with your Mac.
Simulator supports simulating remote push notifications, including background content fetch notifications. In Simulator, drag and drop an APNs file onto the target simulator. The file must be a JSON file with a valid Apple Push Notification Service payload, including the “aps” key. It must also contain a top-level “Simulator Target Bundle” with a string value that matches the target application’s bundle identifier. simctl also supports sending simulated push notifications. If the file contains "Simulator Target Bundle" the bundle identifier is not required, otherwise you must provide it as an argument:
$ xcrun simctl push <device> com.example.my-app ExamplePush.apns
Simulator has a new UI that streamlines working with simulated devices. Simulated device windows have a standard title bar, with buttons for common tasks. App-level settings are now available in the Preferences window.
Source Control
Improved stability of core source control functionality, and reduced memory footprint related issues.
Split functionality of “Fetch and Refresh Status” menu item into two separate menu items to separate fetching and refreshing status.
Explore, Learn and Share!
Happy Coding 🙂 | https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/whats-new-in-xcode-11-4-28fe05c0fe2d | ['Ashish Kakkad'] | 2020-03-02 12:44:27.525000+00:00 | ['Mobile App Development', 'Mobile', 'iOS App Development', 'iOS', 'Xcode'] |
The Masked Singer UK < "Season 2 :: Episode 1" > FULL~EPISODE | ⭐ Watch The Masked Singer UK Season 2 Episode 1 Full Episode, The Masked Singer UK Season 2 Episode 1 Full Watch Free, The Masked Singer UK Episode 1,The Masked Singer UK ITV, The Masked Singer UK Eps. 1,The Masked Singer UK ENG Sub, The Masked Singer UK Season 2, The Masked Singer UK Series 2,The Masked Singer UK Episode 1, The Masked Singer UK Season 2 Episode 1, The Masked Singer UK Full Streaming, The Masked Singer UK Download HD, The Masked Singer UK All Subtitle, Watch The Masked Singer UK Season 2 Episode 1 Full Episodes
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.[1] The word “cinema”, short for cinematography, is ofITV used to refer to filmmaking and the film The Masked Singer UK, 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 conITVt on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the conITVt. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain conITVt.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet conITVt in real-time much as live television broadcasts conITVt 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 conITVt, a media publisher, and a conITVt delivery network to distribute and deliver the conITVt. 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 conITVt before watching or lisITVing to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to start playing digital video or digital audio conITVt 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 CONITVT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[1][1][1][1][1] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is inITVded to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[1][1][1] 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 ofITV 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][1][2][2][2] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[2]
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 exITVd 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 inconsisITVt.[2]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 2 to 1 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[1] 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.[2]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[1] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exITVsible 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.[1] Credit is exITVded by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
‘The Masked Singer UK’ Challenges Asian Americans in Hollywood to Overcome ‘Impossible Duality’ ITVween China, U.S.
ITV’s live-action “The Masked Singer UK” was supposed to be a huge win for under-represented groups in Hollywood. The $1 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-inITVtioned ambitions, however, the film has exposed the difficulties of representation in a world of complex geopolitics. ITV 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 Masked Singer UK, and Donnie Yen professed support for Hong Kong police during the brutal crackdown on protesters in 211. Later, ITV 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 Masked Singer UK” inadverITVtly reveals why it’s so difficult to create multicultural conITVt with global appeal in 2020. It highlights the vast disconnect ITVween Asian Americans in Hollywood and Chinese nationals in China, as well as the exITVt to which Hollywood fails to acknowledge the difference ITVween their aesthetics, tastes and politics. It also underscores the limits of the American conversation on representation in a global world.
In conversations with seThe Masked Singer UKl Asian-American creatives, Variety found that many feel caught ITVween 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 Masked Singer UK” 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 Masked Singer UK,” 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 Masked Singer UK side.”
The film leaves the Asian American community at “the intersection of choosing ITVween 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 Masked Singer UK” no matter what. That support is ofITV very personal amid the The Masked Singer UK’s close-knit community of Asian Americans, where people don’t want to tear down the hard work of peers and The Masked Singer UK.
Others say they wouldn’t have given ITV their $2 if they’d known about the controversial end credits.
“‘The Masked Singer UK’ 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 Masked Singer UK’ 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 ITVween. Lulu Wang notes that many “have built their career on a film like ‘The Masked Singer UK’ 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 writITV for them in America.”
Certainly, the actors in “The Masked Singer UK,” 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 ITV is in too,” says actor Chen Tang, who plays The Masked Singer UK’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 Masked Singer UK” 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 ITVween 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 ofITV 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 Masked Singer UK” 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 Masked Singer UK’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-ITVweenness,” she said. “More and more, people won’t fit into these neat boxes, so in-ITVweenness is exactly what we need.”
However, it may prove harder for Chinese Americans to carve out a space for their “in-ITVweenness” 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 Masked Singer UK,” 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 Masked Singer UK by broadening their outlook.
“Most people in this The Masked Singer UK 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 ITVween 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 Masked Singer UKs 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.[1] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and exITVsible 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.[1] Credit is exITVded 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’ ITVween China, U.S. | https://medium.com/the-masked-singer-uk-series-2-episode-1-4khd/watch-%E1%B4%B4%E1%B4%B0-s2-e1-the-masked-singer-uk-series-2-episode-1-full-episode-ab0b2e86bf3d | ['Natasha Hayes'] | 2020-12-25 19:40:12.418000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Lifestyle', 'Coronavirus', 'TV Series'] |
How Performance Management System Transform With Technology | “Management with Technology is a powerful combination to revolutionize the performance of your organization.”
In today’s story, I highlighted the modern way of recruitment and how technology transforms the Performance Management System of organizations. Also, what are the latest Technological trends adopting by the managers to ease the process of recruitment?
The uprising of the Digital era revolutionized the organization’s performance. To improve the performance or create effective Human Resource Management in organizations almost all companies and industries are adopting the latest trends of Technology. Last few years of the technological era, Machine Learning and AI were the effectual mechanisms for the operations of the sales and organization’s performance sectors only. However, the latest research shows how HR has integrated with the latest technology with operation management, data analytics, talent acquisition, and development of the overall results of HR in organizations.
The latest Technological trends are smooth the way for Human Resource Management towards their goals and milestones of organizations. For example, learning and communication through Social Networks, employment engagement through virtual methods, or mobile learning management systems, the gamification process for recruiting and analysis of prospective employees skills and development are the on-going trends in today’s trends.
Technology is vast same as the Performance management vision for an organization. Technology not only modernizes the structure of organizations but can provide a wide in-depth, and more insightful mission, up-to-date trends adopted by managers, and every individual of organizations have now become a more tactful well-acknowledged, and quick decision-maker.
The virtual world of today facilitates the Human Resource Managers to optimize manpower performance. When a broader and diverse background of prospective candidates becomes the part of organizations Technology helps to make the process evaluation of recruitment transparent. The whole process initiates when recruitment takes place with unique designed job recruitment portals that ease the recruiters to track and evaluate the resumes of the potentially interested candidates and develop ease the tedious manual tasks. Technology involvement in Human Resource Industry is a blessing for all employees and prospective employees. Gamification is now a day’s prevail at the performance management and facilitates the recruiter to choose the right candidate for the right job.
After the whole process of recruitment, Technology plays a very vital role in the internal world of organization operation. For example updating and tracking the payroll, attendance system, and salary management through various flexible software have become trending and accessible in the market. Overall, Technology persuasiveness in Performance Management System in Human Resource creates the ease to work effectively and time-managing for better policy development. Moreover, Technology restructured and transforms the organization’s conventional method in an innovative way that can leads to a better human resource team for the Performance Management System.
Cloud Software for Human Resource Management (HRM)
It is a well-versed and user-friendly way to improve performance management with accurate and error-less work. Using software provides the best benefit that less paperwork required. As paperwork sometimes becomes iterative and tedious. Now HR manager can assess data of the organization accurately and in real-time. Security and Privacy of employees are crucial, and that ease the overall process of the organization’s data.
Employee self-service & Manager Self-Service
Adopting this system that improves the overall service, reduction of labor cost, secure the overall activities, and handling routine transactions among employees, managers, and prospective candidates.
Blockchain in HRM
This innovative technology reshaped the whole Human Resource Management in Organization. It is quoted by many researchers that “By 2023, blockchain will support the global movement and tracking of $2 trillion of goods and services annually”. Blockchain has full capability to record, store, and secure data of employees and the organization’s mass information, which is the core need of Human Resource Management.
“Blockchain technology will be integrated directly into the HR function through a multitude of use cases — lending transparency and trust”. — Mercer Editorial Staff
People analytics in HR
People Analytics is also referred to as the HR analytics and workforce analytics that helps to collect, amalgamate, and transforming of Organizational and HR concerning data into pragmatic insights that efficiently improve the overall performance.
Real-time performance management System
In Human Resource Management, this latest trend that followed by almost every organization that creates the most engaging employees through virtual means, and produces effective real-time feedback. This helps to save money and time for the overall organization’s process. | https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/how-performance-management-system-transform-with-technology-4a17242f0a6b | ['U.F.M Techie'] | 2020-11-07 16:42:29.651000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Blockchain', 'Productivity', 'Business', 'Tech'] |
The New Covid-19 Strain in Britain, Explained | The New Covid-19 Strain in Britain, Explained
A mutated strain of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in the South-East of the UK is worrying scientists and politicians alike. Here’s why.
Image by PIRO4D from Pixabay
December 14th, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock was on his feet in the House of Commons, delivering some sobering news about the ongoing pandemic: the virus had mutated, and the mutated strain was thought to be spreading faster, driving the rise in cases in London and the South-East. London and many parts of the South-East were to be upgraded to Tier 3 restrictions, with all restaurants, pubs, and bars all closed.
He explained that he was first briefed on the new strain on Friday, December 11th, and was given more information over the weekend between then and his announcement in the House of Commons.
But then, late on the following Friday, December 18th, NERVTAG, the expert committee responsible for identifying and analysing new and emerging respiratory virus threats, delivered their findings to the government, and the report was bleak: the virus was between 65% and 75% more transmissible than the other Sars-CoV-2 variants, and had become the dominant strain in the capital by the end of the November month-long lockdown.
The government acted swiftly, for once at least, agreeing on Saturday morning and announcing in the evening that London and all parts of the South East previously upgraded to Tier 3 would now be upgraded to a new Tier 4 of restrictions, which is very similar to the November lockdown restrictions. They also announced that in these areas, the “Christmas bubbles” plan would be abandoned entirely, with no households allowed to mix indoor at any time, and that the bubbles in the rest of the country would be limited to 3 households for just the 25th itself, not for the 5 day period initially planned and announced on December 2nd, when the lockdown ended.
Much about this mutated strain, which has been memorably named VUI-202012/01, is not yet known. There is no known effect on the efficacy of the various vaccines, nor on the severity of the illnesses which those infected suffer on average, though it is thought that the variant causes an increased viral load, thereby making the infected more infectious. The settled view of epidemiologists and virologists is that higher viral loads worsen the illness, but that has to be confirmed with this new variant before we can be sure of that.
NERVTAG will reconvene again, following further analysis of the possible complications regarding severity, vaccine efficacy, transmissibility, and testing efficacy (both lateral flow and PCR), to advise the government in more detail about the situation and the possible responses to it.
The response will almost certainly involve drastic measures not seen since the severe and lengthy first lockdown from March through to June, such as partially shutting schools, potentially stopping students returning to universities physically, and a full national lockdown until late February or March, to give time for the vaccines to be distributed to the priority list drawn up in late November.
But there are much wider political questions that have to be answered here, both domestic and international.
Firstly, there has been concern and consternation about the UK government’s handling of this, though much of that has been misplaced. It has emerged that scientists knew of this mutation in September, and so many people have asked why we couldn’t have acted much sooner. But this is a misunderstanding of the situation — not helped by the media’s epidemiological illiteracy — as viruses mutate all the time, but it often takes a long time for any significant effects to be known. Epidemiologically or medically significant variations are rare. And, as I explained, the Health Secretary only became aware of this 2 days before introducing new restrictions, and 8 days before the further restrictions.
However, that is not to totally exonerate the government. Some have correctly pointed out that virus mutations don’t occur if there is no virus, and so many proponents of the suppression strategy, used by New Zealand to great effect both epidemiologically and economically, have used this to further their conviction, which is increasingly being vindicated, that the first lockdown was eased too soon, and that all countries, including the UK, should’ve attempted to eliminate the virus and then prevent re-entry — and, as an island, the UK would’ve had a particular advantage in this regard.
There is also an interesting point about the public health response to make here: the November lockdown appears to have driven forward the dominance of the new strain, as it brought down the R rate of the original variant to below 1, meaning its levels declined in the population, while the new variant’s R rate stayed above 1, leading to a curious pattern, unexplained at the time, of increased transmission in some affected cities such as Milton Keynes.
That is not to say that lockdowns are bad, but more that this particular lockdown suffered from bad luck. The government will now hope that the effective lockdown imposed on the hubs for the new variant will be enough to get the R down, though that seems unlikely.
And if there are still remaining questions about why it took the scientists from the obvious continued upward trend in some areas during the lockdown to December 11th to brief the Health Secretary, that delay can be explained by the combination of the natural incubation period of the virus, the short delay in information caused by the need for testing, and the additional delay caused by the need for sequencing the genetic material of the virus samples from which arose a positive PCR test, to reveal which of the variants each was. As soon as scientists had the worrying data on this at their disposal, the Health Secretary was immediately briefed.
And what does all this mean for the international community and ties with the UK?
In short, chaos. Most European nations have now temporarily shut borders with Britain, including France, which has imposed a 48-hour ban on travel from Britain, except for some limited cargo arrivals. The UK government today held a COBRA meeting, a forum for emergencies, on the possible effects of the new variant and travel bans on food supply.
It is probable, though, that the new variant is already in many other countries, given the timescales we are dealing with: the variant became prevalent enough to make international spread probable in October, and skyrocketed in November and December, with the period between the 2nd and 14th of December likely seeing significant outward international travel from the UK, and particularly from the capital, which is the main hub for the new variant.
France will probably acquiesce upon realising this, but the world is naturally worrying about the spread of this new strain. The sensible move for other countries to make is not to try to prevent the variant entering, because it already has done, but to suppress the new variant with test, trace, and isolate systems, aggressively using backwards tracing methods to find the first few infections before tracing forward. The lesson from the dichotomous levels of success between East Asia and the West is that early testing and tracing of a newly-entered virus is the only effective way of preventing the need for hefty restrictions. That remains the case with this mutated strain.
As for the public health message, it remains the same, but with greater importance and renewed purpose attached:
Wear a mask. Stay at home. Wash your hands. Practise physical distancing. And, if you have symptoms, or you are contacted by contact tracers, get a test and self-isolate yourself. | https://medium.com/discourse/the-new-covid-19-strain-in-britain-explained-f449d532e85f | ['Dave Olsen'] | 2020-12-22 03:49:55.162000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'UK', 'Coronavirus', 'Politics', 'Covid 19'] |
Planning a Project on Web Scraping | There is a way to conduct your projects online without getting blocked.
You can submit a detailed project much better than your peers including all the insightful information needed to make your project ranked the highest quality-wise.
The reason why we are telling you this is because even if you go online right at this moment, you will get information for your project, but not all of the information will be as useful as you think.
This is taking place because of the rise in strictness to view any online content.
As the image explains, this is the percentage of successful attacks as the year’s increase and due to this, the online content providers or owners have made it difficult to access the content.
We understand that your purpose to capture the right content is to cater and make your project more insightful which is the main reason why you need to retain your attention longer in this article.
Interesting Read : How web scraping can help in Automobiles?
We have something that can help you capture insightful data for your project without any risk of you being caught or being monitored as suspicious.
MEANING OF WEB SCRAPING
Web scraping is the process of extracting information from a source or website which contains valuable information and scraping all of that and saving it in your system in the format you would like to view it in such as CSV file and much more.
Previously, if a company needed to extract information from a website, they would opt for the method of copy-pasting. But the drawback here was when it comes to large data the copy-pasting would consume a lot of time to conduct the action and when you copy-paste big data the website slows down alerting the owner of suspicious activity.
But with web scraping, this isn’t the case. In just a few minutes you can easily extract information without slowing down the website which is why it has grown to be popular. To conduct web scraping activities is convenient, all you need to is:
1 . Select the website/source you want to scrape
2. Choose the data which you needs scraping
Run the web scraping code Save it all in your system
So let’s’ learn better how the use of web scraping can enhance your project planning.
IMPORTANCE OF WEB SCRAPING
1. SCRAPES RELEVANT DATA FROM THE CROWD
There are tens and thousands of data available online but not all that data is relevant to help your business grow. As a brand you know what is required for your brand’s enrichment and hence with web scraping, extracting only that portion of essential data that can help brands succeed faster in their lead capture activities.
Let’s understand this with an example:
If you want to scrape data from your competitor’s websites, web scraping makes that happen without the competitor’s website slowing down or having any risk of any brand conducting this action to be detected.
2. QUICKER IMPROVISATION OF BRAND’S SOLUTIONS
A brand can enhance its solution when it has the right data which exhibits the requirements needed to improvise the solution. Web scraping provides accurate data because all the data being driven is from sources that have been following it or from platforms where prospects have mentioned their opinion on their expectations about a particular product.
All of this contributes a valuable data collection to brands which can help them to improvise their solution better. Since brands have an analysis of what their prospects are expecting, it becomes easier to adapt to the modifications and also plan out the next possible changes before the new trend hits.
3. RETAINS BRAND SUCCESS
A brand success can only be retained when a band continues to serve the needs of all its prospects even with each changing trend. But how can that happen when the trends have no time of their arrival?
With the data collected, brand’s can have an idea, it might not be the exact prediction but a simple analysis of how their solution will be looked upon a few years from now. Not only that aspect, but brands can also have an analysis of how their prospects will look at a product.
Interesting Read : How web scraping can benefit the real estate industry?
Let’s understand this with an example:
Maybe the current product offered by a brand is great,it has all the features and the prices are great, with web scraping you can get data which will help you analyze what more prospects are looking for. For instance maybe they want few features to be automated or they want a specific feature and so on.
Web scraping ensures that you get the data that can help you still cater to the prospect’s needs no matter the changes and still retain the success crown for longer.
4. OUTSELL COMPETITORS
The harsh truth is if you want to be successful, outselling your competitors can win you over some brownie points. With web scraping, you can easily scrape any information which will most likely help your brand to hover in front of your competitors. It could be their pricing strategies, their prospect reviews and any other information which will most likely help in catering to your very own prospect needs.
The market is growing and changing all the time when it comes to conducting activities which can pull your brand closer to assisting their needs better, web scraping is an ideal tool for that action to take place.
While web scraping can help you to capture the insightful data, conducting this process for long can put a risk for you online. It can block your IP and put a stop to your work. It is advised that to avoid this from happening, using a reliable proxy server assistance can help secure your web scraping actions better.
5. CONDUCTING EFFECTIVE RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
For you to create a better project it would be better if you had the right information in hand.
Let’s understand this with an example:
Many brands today invest their revenue in conducting multiple pieces of research with the help of CTO’s or data scientists who can help to use data to retrieve insightful results that could matter to a brand. But when data itself is so minimal how can the right predictions or the right accuracy be implemented in such an action?
Proxy servers ensure that every data being retrieved is of added value. Whether it is a competitor’s website, social media or any other source which is limited or restricted, the proxy server ensures that when you use it to conduct any online data retrieval activity you are able to access all of it. When the insightful data is in your hand, it becomes easier to create a solution that will impact the way your brand will perform in the near future.
6. COLLECTS RECOMMENDATIONS, REVIEWS, AND FEEDBACKS
How can you create a better project?
When they are able to sell what exactly their prospects expect from them.
Let’s understand this with an example:
For a brand, the most important factor which matters in the creation of an effective solution is the needs of the prospects. With the changing market, trends change as well as the choices of prospects, and imagine if you were able to retrieve all the advice, reviews and feedbacks of prospects towards a product, wouldn’t you be able to sell much better?
WHY THE BLEND OF PROXY SERVERS WITH WEB SCRAPING IS BETTER FOR YOUR ONLINE ACTIONS?
A proxy server is a solution that helps you a brand to access any kind of information from any source without the fear of their identity being hidden. For instance, say you want to access information from your competitors in order to understand what their particular strategies are. The first step you would do is to send a request to view their website.
Instead of the request reaching their website, the proxy server will receive it first. The proxy server will change your IP address and then send the request. Once your competitors approve of the request sent, you can then access their information.
The reason why proxy servers change your IP address is that this address can give away your current location.
Interesting Read : How can web scraping help in efficient growth hacking?
Let’s understand this with an example:
Now your competitors have only limited their data access on their website to certain users. If you are not a part of those set users, chances are you would either have the request denied or be blocked. The way they find out is through the IP address you hold.
What a proxy server does is it hides your IP address and showcases another IP address so when your competitors receive it, they will think that you are a part of their users and give you access. When this action is being conducted, proxy servers ensure that nowhere at any point will your identity be revealed. | https://medium.com/@limeproxies/planning-a-project-on-web-scraping-10b0f83eb31a | [] | 2020-12-15 09:01:53.729000+00:00 | ['Web Scraping', 'Web Security', 'Web Development', 'Proxy Server', 'Proxy'] |
How Blockchain Technology Can Change Our Lives? | Technology has always changed human lives in many ways. In ancient times, some fundamental innovations could help humans fight with dangers that the natural world persistently gave rise to them. For example, imagine the time that humans started to use military equipment. For sure that equipment was simple, but during time they went through the procedure of evolution and development. Blockchain technology is the kind of innovation that has commenced a shift from the traditional approach of discovering nature’s potentials to a more noble one.
Blockchain Technology Is a Decentralized Ledger That Distributes the Information Throughout All Possible Nodes.
Simply put, Blockchain technology is a decentralized ledger that distributes the information throughout all possible nodes. But this definition might be rather technical and hard to grasp. We better think about how traditional banking works in order to have a deeper knowledge of how Blockchain works primarily in modern finance.
Traditionally said, banks are centralized establishments that store a huge amount of private information. Therefore, banks always have this power to control the way citizens behave specifically when it comes to the financial issues. Banks on the other hand have a kind of monopolized right to issue bonds and other facilities without the permission of account holders. In a broad sense, traditional banking is a concept that prevails injustice. This is not uncommon to say that there are still millions and surprisingly billions of people out there who do not have any access to bank facilities.
When it comes to traditional banking, only few people have their interests secured, but many of them are pushed to the corner or ignored. Blockchain technology has been invented to provide financial inclusion, although it must be said that Blockchain nowadays is employed in many fields such as supply chain, voting mechanisms, real estate processing, personal identity security and so many other fields.
Blockchain Removes Third Party Supervision
In traditional banking, the government authorities or centralized agencies control account holders’ private data and if they please they can modify the policies to gain more profit. But with the advent of Blockchain technology, the power has been delegated to people who are engaged in financial activity. Therefore, all the possible traders in the Blockchain territory can see and confirm the data that are stored constantly in the blocks.
With The Help of Smart Contracts, Everything Becomes Simpler
One of noble features of Blockchain technology is smart contracts. These contracts pave the road for the autonomous implementation of transactions. Therefore, we can expect that with the help of smart contracts not only there would be no need for heavy piles of legal papers, but also a considerable amount of time can be saved instead of spending it on unimportant tasks.
With the help of smart contracts, Blockchain automates the manual and time consuming tasks which traditionally require a substantial amount of work.
Blockchain Implementation in Supply Chain and Its Implication
Foods and goods are produced and distributed in a hugely complex network in which many actors such as producers, distributors, consumers, and transporters play significant roles. In the traditional manual paperwork, there might occur different errors and disparities between institutions which are involved in the process of supply chain.
Blockchain technology can improve the process of distributing goods via providing the trade centers with advanced infrastructure for certifying and tracking the goods. For automatic payments in the supply chain, smart contracts can also be implemented.
Blockchain Technology Can Solve the Election Disputes
Political elections have always ignited disputes among parties, specifically we have witnessed that the losing party avoids to concede the results and try to accuse the other party of rigging votes and stealing the election. Therefore, how would it be possible to provide a comprehensive solution for such occasions? The implementation of Blockchain technology in the process of collecting and counting the votes can significantly protect democracy from the threats that endanger the sovereignty of freedom in the modern world.
Blockchain technology, via providing a secure and decentralized platform, will never allow prefabricated structures nor any party which enjoys the dominance in the system to confiscate the election results as desired.
Conclusion
It has not been a long time since the advent of Blockchain technology, but in this period of a decade long, this technology has been able to change the world as we always used to perceive, but in an entirely different manner. Blockchain technology, although is the fundamental concept of cryptocurrencies, but its application is not limited to just financial issues. We can nowadays trace back the use cases of Blockchain technology in a wide range of areas such as higher education, smart identity confirmation, KYC protocols, and so on. It has been predicted that in near future, all businesses and trade centers be obliged to use some forms of Blockchain technology just to keep themselves adjusted to the dramatic changes of postmodern era. | https://medium.com/@counosplatform/how-blockchain-technology-can-change-our-lives-74ff81a18ce2 | [] | 2020-12-11 18:16:35.973000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Third Party', 'Election 2020'] |
How Is Fundraising Helping The Fight Against Coronavirus | Fundraising help is very much required in the modern era. Standing in the 21st century, it is very important to understand the importance of fundraising. It does not matter whether it is a pandemic situation or not, fundraising campaign can help society in various ways. However, if we consider the current circumstances, we will get to know that the coronavirus pandemic has become a matter of concern. It has affected the lifestyle of people across the globe. Moreover, many people have lost their job due to the global lockdown situation. People affected by this deadly virus are also suffering from the economic burden. Amid this critical situation, non-profit organizations should come forward to help these people.
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion. Richard P. Feynman
Through fundraising help, your organization can bring positive change in society. However, this is a technologically advanced era and therefore, you can start an online fundraising campaign to elevate the fundraising help to a different level.
Fundraising Help Can Mitigate The Impact Of Coronavirus
Well, the problem regarding the coronavirus pandemic is growing day by day. The number of COVID-19 affected people is increasing every day. Amid this critical situation, the fundraisers must do something to keep everything in the good shape. If you are running a non-profit organization, your fundraising help can mitigate the impact of coronavirus. Read more | https://medium.com/@werbylo/how-is-fundraising-helping-the-fight-against-coronavirus-fc78cbf0f6d0 | [] | 2020-12-17 19:43:41.281000+00:00 | ['Charity', 'Donationtrackingsoftware'] |
Essential Parameter Estimation Techniques in Machine Learning, Data Science, and Signal Processing | Essential Parameter Estimation Techniques in Machine Learning, Data Science, and Signal Processing
Photo by Jose Llamas on Unsplash
Parameter estimation plays a vital role in machine learning, statistics, communication system, radar, and many other domains. For example, in a digital communication system, you sometimes need to estimate the parameters of the fading channel, the variance of AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) noise, IQ (in-phase, quadrature) imbalance parameters, frequency offset, etc. In machine learning and statistics, you constantly need to estimate and learn the parameters of the probability distributions. For example, in Bayesian and causal networks, this corresponds to estimating the CPT (conditional probability table) for discrete nodes and the mean and the variance for the continuous nodes.
In this article, I will discuss essential parameter estimation techniques used widely in machine learning, AI, signal processing, and digital communication.
Following is the outline for this article:
Outline
Frequentists vs. Bayesian
Maximum Likelihood (ML) Estimation
Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) Estimation
Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) Estimation
Least Square (LS) Estimation
Bayes Estimator
Properties of the Estimators
Photo by Nature Uninterrupted Photography on Unsplash
Frequentists vs Bayesian Approach
Frequentists and Bayesian are two well-known schools of thought in statistics. They have different approaches on how to define statistical concepts such as probability and how to perform parameter estimation.
Frequentists define probability as a relative frequency of an event in the long run, while Bayesians define probability as a measure of uncertainty and belief for any event.
Furthermore, the frequentists assume the parameter θ in a population is fixed and unknown. They only use data to construct the likelihood function to estimate the unknown parameter. Bayesians, on the other hand, consider the parameter θ to be a random variable with an unknown distribution. They use both the prior probability and data to construct the posterior distribution.
To better understand the difference between these two, consider the well-known Baye’s law:
P(θ) is the prior belief you have about the parameter before collecting (observing) any data, P(X|θ) is the likelihood function (probability of observing the data given the parameter), P(θ|X) is the posterior distribution (belief about the parameter θ after you observe the data), and P(X) is the probability of data.
The Bayesian approach is more computationally intensive than the frequentists approach, thanks to the denominator of the Bayes law. This is because that integral is usually done in high dimensional, and it may not either have a closed-form solution or be very complex to compute. Another problem with the Bayesian approach is the subjective prior (P(θ)) since, in most problems in the real world, one has no idea what would be the best prior belief. However, the Bayesian approach lets you incorporate the prior belief into your model, which could be beneficial if, for example, due to the domain knowledge, you have a good model for the prior probability.
Photo by Ryan Hafey on Unsplash
Maximum Likelihood (ML) Estimation
ML estimation tries to find the estimate of the parameter θ by maximizing the likelihood function.
Assume we have i.i.d random samples x₁,x₂, . . .,xₙ that follow a distribution f(x₁,x₂, . . .,xₙ;θ), which depends on the unknown parameter θ. The goal is to estimate this unknown quantity such that it maximizes the probability of observing this random sample. Following is how you formulate this problem using the maximum likelihood:
Construct the likelihood function L(θ|x) = f(x₁,x₂, . . .,xₙ;θ) Use the property of i.i.d random samples to break the joint PDF to the product of n marginal PDF.
3. Take a logarithm (usually a natural log) to change the product to summation. This does not change the optimal estimator since the logarithm is a monotonic function.
Where LL(θ;x) represents the log-likelihood function.
4. Differentiate the log-likelihood function with respect to θ and set it to zero.
5. The estimator will only be a function of observed data.
Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash
Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) Estimation
MAP estimation tries to find the estimate of the parameter θ by maximizing the posterior distribution. Recall the Bayes law again but this time we are not trying to compute the exact value of posterior. This is important since we do not need to worry about the denominator because it is independent of the parameter. Therefore, all is needed is to maximize the product of likelihood and the prior probability.
Remember, P(X|θ) is the same as the likelihood function. Therefore, the MAP estimate is the same as the ML estimate with the inclusion of the prior probability. Following is how you formulate the problem using the MAP:
Construct the posterior distribution. Use the property of i.i.d random sample to simplify the posterior distribution.
Note: Slight abuse of notation to use letter P for the density function.
3. Take the logarithm (Usually a natural log) to further simplify the above relationship.
4. Differentiate the above equation with respect to θ and set it to zero
Note: MAP and ML estimate is the same if θ follows the uniform distribution. What this means intuitively is that all values of θ have equal weight; therefore, knowing the distribution of θ does not give us any more useful distribution.
Example 1: Consider a communication system that the transmitted signal X ~ N(0,σₓ²) (Gaussian distribution with zero mean and variance of σₓ²). The received signal Y can be modeled as follows:
Where n ~ N(0,σₙ²). We would like to find the MAP and ML estimates for transmitted signal X.
ML Estimation:
Y is a received or observed message. You can think of Y as a noisy version of X. This is a standard problem in the communication system. We never know what message is transmitted. (otherwise, there is no point in designing the receiver, error correction codes, etc.) To find the ML estimate, we need to follow the steps outlined above. First, construct the likelihood function: P(Y|X=x). Then find the log-likelihood expression and then differentiate respect to x and set it to zero.
C₁ denotes the constant terms that do not depend on x (We do not care about them since they are zero after differentiation).
Interpretation: The ML estimate of x is the observed message y. This means under the maximum likelihood estimation, the best estimate for the transmitted signal is the received noisy signal.
MAP Estimation:
First, we need to construct the posterior distribution by multiplying the likelihood and prior together (Remember, the denominator is not important since it is not a function of the parameter).
The maximum value of the posterior occurs when the exponent is minimized. Differentiating respect to x and set it to zero will result in the following:
Interpretation: The MAP estimate of x is linearly proportional to the received signal y. If the variance of signal is infinity (becomes very large), then the normal distribution becomes the uniform distribution, and the MAP and ML estimate becomes the same.
To understand this concept better, let's look at the simulation of the estimated x under ML and MAP as the variance of the transmitted signal is changing while the variance of the noise is constant at σₙ² = 10.
As the above table and figure show as the variance of the signal increases, the Gaussian distribution becomes more similar to a uniform distribution, and ML and MAP estimates become closer to each other. For example, when the signal variance is 10 times noise variance (The red curve) the ML and MAP estimates are almost identical.
Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash
Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) Estimation
MMSE is one of the most well-known estimation techniques used widely in machine learning and signal processing. For example, Kalman and Wiener filters are both examples of MMSE estimation.
In MMSE the objective is to minimize the expected value of residual square, where residual is the difference between the true value and the estimated value. The expected residual square is also known as MSE (Mean Square Error)
Following is a procedure to solve any MMSE estimation:
Define the estimator.
2. Construct the MSE (Expected residual square).
3. Differentiate the MSE with respect to the parameter and set it to zero.
4. Plug the MMSE estimator in part 3 in the MSE expression to find the minimum residual square.
Example 2: For the first example, we would like to find the estimate and the MSE of the random variable X using a constant y.
Interpretation: The best constant estimator of X is the expected value of X (μ). The minimum MSE using the optimal estimator is the variance of X.
Most of the time, we are interested in finding the MMSE estimator after observing some data or evidence. For example, assume we are interested in finding the best estimator for random variable Y after observing random variable X. It can be shown that the MMSE estimator in this case is:
Recall that E[Y|X=x] is a function of x and in general, it is nonlinear and can be very complex. Therefore, in practice, we mainly consider the class of linear MMSE estimators like the following:
To find the optimal a₁, a₂ and the MSE follow steps 1–4 outlined above.
Now there are two equations and two unknowns, which can be solved in many different ways. For example, we can formulate the problem as follows:
Solving the above matrix equation results in the following estimates for the coefficients:
Substituting the optimal coefficients in the E[ϵ²] expression will result in the optimal (minimum) MSE:
Interpretation: If X and Y are independent, then the covariance between them is zero and so is the estimate of a₁ and the problem is changed to estimating a random variable with a constant (a₂). The above results justify this since the estimate of a₂ = E[Y] and E[ϵ²] = var(Y) (Same results as estimating a random variable with a constant). ρ is a correlation coefficient between X and Y and can vary between -1 and 1. If two random variables are strongly correlated (either +1 or -1) then the MSE is zero, which means one variable can perfectly estimate another one.
Orthogonality Principle:
The orthogonality principle states that the estimator and residual are perpendicular to each other.
In the above figure X hat is an estimator of the X and X tilde is the residual. Mathematically this can be represented as follows:
For example, applying the orthogonality principle to the linear MMSE estimator results in:
This is the exact expression as the derivative of MSE with respect to a₁.
Note: The residual is perpendicular to the plane containing the estimator therefore it is perpendicular to every vector in that plane. This is the reason why in the above equation we can replace a₁X + a₂ with X. However it is also valid to use a₁X + a₂ instead of X.
Photo by MIKHAIL VASILYEV on Unsplash
Least Square (LS) Estimation
Least square (LS) estimation is the most common estimation techniques used in communication systems to estimate the channel response, machine learning as a loss or cost function for regression and classification problems, and optimization to find the best line or hyperplane that fits data the best. Regardless of the application, the steps to solve the least square problem are roughly identical. The best way to explain these steps is through an example.
Example 3: Consider you are given a dataset (xₖ, yₖ) k = 1,2, . . . n and you are asked to find the line that best describes the relationship between yₖ and xₖ.
Following are the steps to formulate the least square problem:
Define the model depending on your data. For example, y = ax + b +ϵ where b is the y when x = 0 or the y-intercept, a is the slope, and ϵ (residual) is modeling the random fluctuation and is distributed with mean 0 and variance σ². Formulate the least square problem by minimizing the expected residual square.
But wait a minute this is exactly the problem formulation for the MMSE discussed in detail in the last section.
3. Differentiate the objective function with respect to a and b and set it to zero.
This is the same result as a linear MMSE. Therefore
The above figure shows data and the least square fitted line calculated using the estimates of a and b.
Note: The least-square estimator is a special case of the MMSE (namely the linear MMSE).
Least Square Approximation
Now, what if X is an m-dimensional, Y is an n-dimensional vector. Then A is m by n matrix. The least-square approximation is concerned with finding the best solution for Y = AX. This is an important problem since sometimes Y is not in column space of A and therefore Y =AX does not have a solution which means we are trying to find the solution that minimizes the norm of the difference between Y and AX.
Note: The following relationships hold true:
Recall, the transpose of a scalar quantity is itself and this is the reason why the last relationship is true.
Now to find the optimal X, we need to differentiate J with respect to X and set it to zero.
Note: If the product of A transpose and A is invertible then we expect the estimator to be unique and it is called the least square solution. If the inverse does not exist then we can replace it with the pseudoinverse. The last equation above to get the estimate of X is also known as the normal equation.
Photo by Gilly Stewart on Unsplash
Bayes Estimator
In Bayesian estimation, the parameter θ is modeled as a random variable (Recall Bayesian vs Frequentists section in this article) with a certain probability distribution. The MMSE, LAE (Least Absolute Error), and MAP are all special types of Bayes estimators.
Define the cost or loss function C as a cost of choosing the estimator instead of the true parameter (Think of it as how much you lose if you use the estimator instead of the true parameter). In the Bayes estimation, we minimize the expected loss function given observed data x. This can be defined mathematically as follows:
P(θ|x) is the posterior distribution (Refer to the first section in this article) and can be calculated using the Bayes law.
The procedure to solve the Bayes estimation problems is as follows:
Use the suitable cost function C. After defining the cost function and simplifying the integrand, differentiate the expression, and set it to zero to find the estimator.
The cost function can take many different forms however the most well-known cost functions are the quadratic and the absolute functions. For the rest of this section, we will derive the Bayes estimator for the quadratic, absolute, and 0–1 cost functions.
Quadratic Cost Function
If the cost function is quadratic, C is replaced by a quadratic function and follow the procedure outlined above.
Interpretation: The estimator is the conditional expectation of the parameter given the data or the posterior mean which is the identical result as the MMSE. Therefore the MMSE is the Bayes estimator when the cost function is quadratic.
Absolute Cost Function
In this case, C is replaced by the absolute error function. The estimator is calculated similarly:
Therefore, for the posterior distribution, the integral from -∞ to θ is equal to the integral from ∞ to θ. However, we also know that the integral over the entire domain would be 1 (Maximum value of probability is 1). Therefore:
Interpretation: The best estimator under the absolute error cost function is the median of the posterior distribution. This is what one-half represents in the above equation. The estimator under this cost function is known as LAE (Least Absolute Error) estimators.
Zero-One Cost Function
In this case, C is 1 in some interval and zero otherwise.
Interpretation: Minimizing J is equivalent to maximizing the posterior distribution. Therefore the estimator of 0–1 loss function is the mode of the posterior distribution (The value of θ that maximizes the posterior distribution). This is exactly what MAP estimation does. This means MAP estimator is a Bayes estimator when the cost function is 0–1.
Photo by v2osk on Unsplash
Properties of the Estimators
Estimators possess some properties that distinguish them from each other.
Unbiased Estimator:
An estimator is said to be an unbiased estimator of parameter θ if its expected value is equal to θ. Mathematically this is represented as follows:
The bias of an estimator is defined to be:
Cramer-Rao Bound
it is sometimes referred to as CRLB (Cramer-Rao lower bound) and is the lower bound for a variance of an estimator. The lower is the variance of an estimator the more certain one can be about the range of possible values it can take. CRLB is calculated as follows:
Intuition: Following curves represent the Gaussian density functions with the mean 0 and different variances. As these curves represent the lower the variance is the narrower is the density functions and the higher is the confidence interval, hence the estimate of the parameter is more accurate.
All the above curves have negative curvatures, which means they all have negative slopes at any point on the curve. However, the green curve (σ² = 1) has a much sharper rate of change of the slope compared to the blue and red curves. This is the intuition on why there is a second derivative with respect to θ in the CRLB formulation.
Consistent Estimator
An estimator is said to be consistent if it converges to the true parameter in distribution as the number of samples approaches infinity.
Intuitively consistency implies that the estimator gets more concentrated around the θ as the sample size increases.
Bias-Variance Trade-off
Bias-variance trade-off is one of the most well-known concepts used in machine learning and statistics. The idea is that you can express the MSE as the sum of bias square and the variance.
Therefore for a fixed MSE lowering the bias leads to increasing the variance, hence there is a trade-off between these two quantities.
Minimum Variance Unbiased Estimator
If an estimator is unbiased and has the lowest variance among all other unbiased estimators of θ then it is called MVUE. According to the Bias-Variance trade-off for the MVUE the MSE is equal to the variance of the estimator since the bias is zero.
Example 4: Consider x₁,x₂, . . ., xₙ are n i.i.d random samples drawn from a normal distribution with mean μ and σ² variance. Find the maximum likelihood estimate of μ and verify if the estimator is unbiased, consistent, and satisfies the CRLB?
Follow the steps outline in the ML section:
Therefore the ML estimate of μ is the sample mean. Now we need to compute the bias and CRLB as well as check if the estimator is consistent.
Bias:
Therefore the sample mean is an unbiased estimator.
Consistency:
To check the consistency we need to find the distribution of the sample mean.
Therefore the sample mean is normally distributed with the mean μ and variance of σ² divided by n. Now to check for consistency, we let n goes to infinity which causes the variance to go to zero hence, the sample mean converges to a constant which is μ.
Variance and CRLB:
To find the CRLB proceed as follows:
Compute the log-likelihood. Compute the second derivate of the log-likelihood function with respect to the parameter. Take the expectation of part 2, then invert the result and multiply by -1.
Based on the above maximum likelihood calculation, we already have the result for the first derivative of log-likelihood (Denoted by LL).
Therefore the CRLB and variance are both the same. This means that the sample mean has the lowest variance among all the unbiased estimators of the μ. Since the sample mean is unbiased and achieves the CRLB, then it is MVUE.
MSE:
According to the bias-variance trade-off since the bias is zero then MSE is equal to CRLB (or the variance in this case).
Conclusion
In this article, I discussed the difference between the Bayesian and the Frequentists approaches. I discussed some well-known estimation mechanism used widely in machine learning and signal processing. Furthermore, I examined some important properties of estimators. | https://towardsdatascience.com/essential-parameter-estimation-techniques-in-machine-learning-and-signal-processing-d671c6607aa0 | ['Manie Tadayon'] | 2021-01-07 10:03:47.345000+00:00 | ['Getting Started', 'Bayesian Statistics', 'Editors Pick', 'Machine Learning', 'Signal Processing'] |
There is no Internet Savior: To fix the Internet’s problems, we’ll need to work together | @talks: Solutions to the Social Dilemma — A virtual discussion series
How many extremely knowledgeable and relentlessly creative Internet experts does it take to unscrew a lightbulb?
If that lightbulb is the Internet’s problems — quite a lot.
On December 3rd, we invited three notable figures in the data privacy landscape to join us for a fascinating, even inspiring, discussion about the future of the Internet. Among these were:
Enoch Liang of Andrew Yang’s Data Dividend Project (DDP). A California-based lawyer and entrepreneur, Enoch started the Data Dividend Project with Andrew Yang to help consumers collectively exercise their data rights and bargain with tech companies.
Dr. Jennifer King, Director of Consumer Privacy at the Center for Internet and Society, Stanford Law School. A recognized expert in information privacy, Dr. King examines the public’s understanding and expectations of online privacy and the policy implications of emerging technologies.
Our very own Kevin Nickels, CPO of The @ Company. For Kevin, The @ Company represents the embodiment of a passion that he has been pondering for more than a decade — technology that empowers individuals to control their digital selves. He views this as a vitally important solution needed to address some of society’s most vexing problems.
In this hour-long conversation, we touched upon recently passed policy (California Prop 24), data privacy as a collective action problem, and potential technology solutions. We’ve included some highlights from our conversation below.
There are no 5 easy steps to protect your online privacy
According to Dr. King, articles advertising 5 easy steps to protect your online privacy are missing the point. They perpetuate the false belief that data privacy is a personal issue: If you make a few small tweaks to your lifestyle, then you can reclaim control over your data.
Dr. King maintains that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. In our current Internet, individuals can’t control how they interact online. Unless they want to become “electronic hermits,” the average person must “take it or leave it,” having no choice but to relinquish their right to digital privacy.
Nickels adds, “Security at the enterprise-level today is an illusion of security.” Behind every data security system, there is a human administrator that holds the keys to the database. Who’s to say that this person might not one day decide to exploit everyone’s data for nefarious purposes?
Everyone has to work together
“This problem is broader than all of us individually can tackle,” says Dr. King. “We need to think of other solutions that allow us to collectively wage power and gain control over data.”
Enoch agrees. In his eyes, the solution to the Social Dilemma is multifaceted, much like the four legs of a chair. These four legs include:
1. Consumer awareness
“Step one [to rebuilding the Internet] is realizing that you can’t control something that you don’t know about,” says Dr. King. Many people are unaware of the ways their data is mishandled or at risk. Research shows that most people are discontented when they discover the repercussions of practices like data-driven advertising or social media algorithms.
Documentaries like Netflix’s The Social Dilemma are part of the movement to educate consumers about the impacts of technology. (The documentary has since then garnered criticism about its focus on the “prodigal tech bro,” but the point made on how people’s data is being used to manipulate them is well-taken.)
The Data Dividend Project (DDP), spearheaded by Andrew Yang, also falls within this category. “Its goal,” says Liang, “is to educate consumers as to what’s happening to their data, how much money technology companies are making off of it, what rights they do have. Those individual rights are much more effective if they’re bundled into collective rights and collective action is taken.”
2. Technological solutions: Building a network of trust
In an Internet that conditions people to behave in certain ways without them even realizing it, the question Nickels asked himself was, “‘How do we encourage online behavior that engenders a network of trust, where interactions are based on trust?’”
The answer that he and fellow co-founders Colin Constable and Barbara Tallent landed on was the @protocol. By encouraging everyone to ask for permission before using someone else’s data, the @protocol makes it possible for people to build trust with others online. (Learn more about how this network of trust is built.)
3. Regulation and policy
“Tech gets free reign for 10 or 15 years until some scandals happen and people in Congress start waking up,” says Liang, “but it’s too little, too late. Pandora’s box has already been open for 10 or 15 years.”
4. Enforcement
“Law and regulations are no good on the books if there isn’t any enforcement,” says Liang. One way he sees this being upheld is through DDP, which encourages people to lay claim to their data.
“If you had a Yahoo account, the settlement there was $125 million plus. If you were a resident of Illinois and had a Facebook account, the settlement there was $650 million,” Liang says. “How many of us actually laid claim to that? The average claims rate for a class actions settlement is somewhere in the range of 3–5%. DDP has been trying to help consumers navigate that claims process and help you realize that there is money out there, and you should be laying claims to it.”
The talk gave us a lot to think about, especially regarding the future of the Internet. Sure, the Internet isn’t perfect, but as Internet Optimists we’re daring to believe in a better Internet.
If you weren’t able to attend, no worries! Watch the full Zoom session here.
—
At The @ Company we are technologists, creators, and builders with one thing in common: We love the Internet. You could go so far as to call us Internet optimists.
Though we acknowledge that the Internet has deep flaws, we believe that we can extract all its goodness without sacrificing our privacy, time, and control over our digital identities. We’ve committed ourselves to the creation of a more human Internet where privacy is a fundamental right and everyone owns their own data.
Let’s say goodbye to the fear and paranoia caused by data breaches and unsolicited online surveillance. With the power of the @protocol, we’re resolving these long-standing issues with a spirit of exploration and fun.
Learn more about us here. | https://medium.com/@atsigncompany/there-is-no-internet-savior-to-fix-the-internets-problems-we-ll-need-to-work-together-196c28023ade | ['The'] | 2020-12-24 01:22:05.409000+00:00 | ['Andrew Yang', 'Internet of Things', 'Data Dividend', 'Technology', 'Data Privacy'] |
Binance Clone: Launch A Custom-Built Crypto Exchange Like Binance | Considering the current trend in the market, building a crypto exchange is a good idea. cryptocurrency exchange services are the talks of the town, viewing the profit it is bringing to all the end-users. We are well-known for the world’s popular cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. It allows users to use Binance to perform a multitude of tradings like buying, selling cryptos as well as attending rewards programs, and many things. Many business people are interested to create a crypto exchange like Binance along with add-on features.
Binance Clone
Launching a Crypto Exchange similar to Binance
The crypto exchange platforms are taking over the business world in their own way. They are mostly focused on providing a trading platform with numerous features. In the market, several companies are providing customized Binance clone scripts. As an entrepreneur, you simply have to approach a company that offers you a Binance clone script and customizes it with the features you need, and launch it.
What is a Binance clone?
A Binance clone is a ready-made cryptocurrency exchange solution built with the same features as the Binance. It can be further customized with add-on features and different UI for your target audience.
Premium Features of Binance Clone
Advanced UI/UX Design
100% Customizable
Multi Crypto Wallet Integration
High — Liquidity
IEO Module
Advanced Trading Engine
Staking
Multi-Lingual Support
Multiple Payment Methods
Security Features
The pros on launching a Crypto Exchange like Binance
Increasing customer base
Brand reputation
The high amount of transactions per second
Low trading fees than any other exchange
High market cap and high ROI for the user
Attractive referral programs and affiliate programs
And more
If you are ready to move the path to success, then Osiz is here to support you through every step of Binance Clone development by offering you a ready-made Binance Clone Script. Within one week, you can create and launch your crypto exchange like Binance.
Osiz is expertise in providing cryptocurrency exchange clone scripts and boosted many evolving crypto exchange business owners through their perfect service. We have a pool of skilled and dedicated teams who provide unique solutions to fulfill the business needs and requirements of our clients to kickstart their business in the competitive market. We provide avant-garde Binance clone script-based cryptocurrency exchange solutions for startups and entrepreneurs to launch their cryptocurrency exchange platform in the crypto market.
Our Binance clone script is customized as a readymade crypto exchange script. The client can customize any feature based on their business requirements. At Osiz, we provide a completely customizable & 100% Bug-free Binance clone script with all the updated and advanced features in a specific amount of time.
Why do you still want to wait? Book A Free Binance Clone Script Demo and launch your crypto exchange platform instantly! | https://medium.com/@jaisyfrank/binance-clone-launch-a-custom-built-crypto-exchange-like-binance-de999727b45f | [] | 2021-07-02 13:02:04.235000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Exchange', 'Binance', 'Crypto Trading', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Binance Clone Script'] |
The Weekly Glory | The Weekly Glory
The Weekly Glory brings to you the latest news from your Glorify community, top designs, tips, latest template releases, podcasts, webinars, and much more.
Hi Sikandar Ali, we hope you’ve been enjoying our weekly newsletters. Our goal is to not just be another subscription to bloat up your inbox, but rather a snack packed with value to feed your mind with updates, trends, ideas, strategies, and stories of the ever-changing world of business and entrepreneurship.
Have you made sure that your checkout process, and everything that leads to it, is uber perfect? If you’re running a Holiday Campaign — or any marketing campaign for that matter — you’re probably spending a good sum on paid ads. Don’t let that be in vain.
Check out the reasons for Cart Abandonment in the survey below. Is your business guilty of any of these revenue blockers?
Design Inspiration for this Festive Season
Here’s some design inspiration for your Holiday Campaign!
Are you using the right trigger words in your copy?
A trigger word compels your audience to take action. This includes buying a product, clicking a link, or sharing a post. In an already Ad and Promotion cluttered Social Media realm, trigger words have the power to push your offer to the forefront.
Here are 7 compelling trigger words that you can test out!
1. Free
E.g. Get 6 Free Tips to Improve Your Ad Copy Overnight
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E.g. New Features Just Around the Corner
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E.g. 10 Proven Methods for a Successful Ad Campaign
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E.g. Easy and Effective Strategies to Improve your Product Images
5. Secret
E.g. 3 eCommerce Experts Share their Secrets to Success
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Trending Holiday Templates
Check out 3 of our high highest hitting holiday design templates!
Treat Yourself to a LIFETIME of Glorious Images
Glorify was nominated for the Golden Kitty Award for the best design tool of 2019. Glorify 2.0 won #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt.
People who are using Glorify 2.0 have had amazing things to say. They’re all seeing great success with their online businesses because they have prepared mind-blowing marketing assets. Check out some of their comments:
Here’s just how cool Glorify 2.0 is.
You have an amazing opportunity to grab Glorify for LIFE, at a massively discounted price. You save up to 93% with this deal.
The deal won’t be around for much longer — so grab it before it’s gone!
Get Lifetime Deal! | https://medium.com/@webxeg/the-weekly-glory-bb15f4edf5 | [] | 2020-12-23 17:11:30.742000+00:00 | ['Logo Design', 'Development', 'Graphic Design', 'Ads', 'Offers'] |
Good Parts of JavaScript — Callbacks, Closure, and Modules | Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw on Unsplash
JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. It can do a lot and have some features that are ahead of many other languages.
In this article, we’ll look at ways to define and use callbacks, closures, modules in JavaScript apps.
Callbacks
Functions make dealing with discontinuous events easier.
We can use them to run some code after a fixed amount of time for instance.
Callbacks are functions that are passed into another function and called either synchronously or asynchronously.
An example of a synchronous callback call is the callbacks that we pass into array methods.
For instance, we can write:
const arr = [1, 2, 3].map(a => a ** 3);
The function a => a ** 3 is called synchronously as soon as map is called.
Callbacks can also be asynchronous. Async callbacks aren’t run until the code some amount of time after the function is called.
An example of an asynchronous callback is a callback we pass into the setTimeout function.
For example, we can write:
setTimeout(() => {
console.log('foo');
}, 100)
The code above calls the callback after 100ms.
Async callbacks are used in many places since JavaScript programs run in a single thread, so we run as much code asynchronously as possible to avoid blocking the program thread.
Module
Before JavaScript have modules official, we used to put private code inside closures to avoid exposing to the public.
For instance, we can write:
const module = (() => {
let value = 0;
return {
getValue() {
return value;
}
}
})()
In the code above, we created an IIFE which returns an object.
The object has the getValue method which returns the value of value , which is kept private.
We can’t access value , but we can call getValue() .
However, now that we have modules, we can use them instead.
For instance, we can define one as follows:
module.js
export const foo = 1;
const bar = 2;
export const getBar = () => bar;
index.js
import { getBar } from "./module";
console.log(getBar());
We export foo and getBar in module.js so that we can use them in index.js .
getBar can then be called in index.js .
We kept bar private but we that we can expose them if we want to.
Also, we can the whole one thing in a module as a default export.
For instance, we can write:
module.js
const bar = 2; export default {
getBar: () => bar
};
With default exports, we export one thing and we import it by writing:
import module from "./module";
console.log(module.getBar());
If we import default exports, we don’t put the curly braces.
Cascade
We can chain methods that return this in the method.
For instance, we can write:
const box = {
setHeight(height) {
this.height = height;
return this;
},
setWidth(width) {
this.width = width;
return this;
},
setLength(length) {
this.length = length;
return this;
},
}
Then when we call the methods as follows:
box.setHeight(100).setWidth(200).setLength(150);
We get:
{
"height": 100,
"width": 200,
"length": 150
}
As we can see, if we return this , then we can set update this the way we wish to and return it.
Then we can chain the methods in an object.
This lets us produce interfaces that are expressive.
We can do a little bit in each method and chain all the little actions together.
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Curry
Curry functions allow us to produce a new function by combining a function and an argument.
We can create a curry function to return a function that has some arguments applied and let us apply the remaining arguments by writing the following:
const curry = (fn, ...args) => {
return (...moreArgs) => {
return fn.apply(null, [...args, ...moreArgs]);
};
}
In the code above, we have the curry function, which takes a function fn and some arguments args after it.
Inside it, we return a function that returns fn with all the arguments from both functions applied to it.
This way, we first apply the arguments in args , then we apply the arguments in moreArgs to fn .
Now if we call it as follows:
const add = (a, b, c) => a + b + c; const curried = curry(add, 1);
const result = curried(2, 3);
We first get a function with 1 applied to add in curried .
Then we get the final sum by applying 2 and 3 to curried .
Therefore, result is 6.
Conclusion
Callbacks are frequently used in JavaScript. There can be synchronously or asynchronously called.
We can define modules with official modules or IIFEs that return an object.
Currying functions let us return a function that have arguments partially applied and can apply more arguments later.
JavaScript In Plain English
Enjoyed this article? If so, get more similar content by subscribing to our YouTube channel! | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/good-parts-of-javascript-callbacks-closure-and-modules-932e2e791201 | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-06-08 09:07:09.495000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript'] |
BEST GAME SITES FOR PC USERS | Gaming has become an essential part of our lives. The gaming industry has seen such a spike in recent years that many countries now have their own gaming teams for gaming genres and with gaming enhancing not only our mind but also our reflexes, why wouldn’t anyone want to game in this day and era.
We have compiled a list of top safe sites to download pc games for free (some chargeable).
This website is by far the best place to download PC games hands down. It is hard for some gamers to crack modern-day games but Ocean Of Games makes it much easier with their detailed “How to fix” videos. The games are sectioned as per their genre and range from vintage games to modern triple-A “AAA” games.
Games also download with maximum speed from this site so we do not need to worry about limited download speed here.
This site is for fun small-sized game seekers. It mostly offers games for PC which are around 100MB in size and also has its wide range of games sectioned into specific genres to make your search that much easier. Downloading games are a breeze on this site.
The Triple-A games are getting ridiculously large in size that it can take many days or even weeks to download for games with a slow internet connection. The PC games site mainly offers Triple-A games but with a very high compression rate, meaning, its shrinks down a large file to small sizes so its users can download them quickly and easily.
Probably, the most famous item on the list. Steam, developed by Valve Corporations thirteen years ago, has been providing quality games since its start. Steam is the largest digital distribution platform for video games and has been rivaled by very few. Unlike other websites, Steam offers multilingual features with up to 28 different languages.
The quality of free games is of the highest quality and sometimes also offers premium games for free. If you have some money on you, steam is the best place to purchase.
Just like Steam, Epic Store also offers a wide variety of games one of which is Fortnite and has one of the best-designed websites on the list. The site offers both freemium as well as premium games but the catch here is that it offers a paid game for free every one or two weeks to anyone who has an account with them.
Happy Gaming !!! | https://medium.com/@scovered-me/best-game-sites-for-pc-users-558a73930c8b | [] | 2021-03-29 04:26:29.646000+00:00 | ['PC', 'Gaming', 'Paid', 'Free', 'Pc Gaming'] |
A Mystery | We smile or laugh when we are happy.
We cry when we are sad or lonely.
Usually we know why we smile, laugh, or cry. Usually we are aware of how we feel and why.
Sometimes, though, we feel happy and full of energy for no apparent reason.
Sometimes, we feel like crying for no apparent reason.
Where do these feelings come from?
This afternoon, I was sitting in my chair, feeling very comfortable and at peace, and I took my little Sudoku book and started working on a puzzle. Halfway through the puzzle, I suddenly had this urgent need to cry.
I wasn’t feeling sad when I started the puzzle. Nothing happened to me. The puzzle was fun. I didn’t get any bad news or talk to anyone or do anything that would cause me any sadness.
I don’t know why I felt that way, but I know it wasn’t the first time I felt that way. This had happened before, and based on my various responses to these feelings on the different occasions they had happened, I learned that the best way to react to them is to embrace them… to listen to my body and let the tears flow. I shouldn’t try to reason or be logical about it. If I do, I will get a headache later.
This is a mystery to me. I don’t know why it happens from time to time, but I’ve learned to respect my feelings and my body and give them the proper response.
So I cried for about a minute. Then I got up and washed my face and dried it. Then I sat back down and finished my puzzle, feeling completely fine.
Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/@authornikaparadis/a-mystery-22abdfbd25d9 | ['Nika Paradis'] | 2020-12-27 22:50:47.239000+00:00 | ['Emotions', 'Body', 'Life', 'Self', 'Feelings'] |
Vincennes Review of Books 2019 | 2019 was not my most stellar year of reading, as indicated but not entirely encapsulated by this graph:
The above is quite a simple representation of how I think about my year’s reading, and part of the joy of the Vincennes Review of Books is sharing some of the more demented ways I think about my cultural throughput over a 12 month period. This year, I’d like to introduce you to the Finchy Line. So named for Chris Finch (bloody good rep) of The Office (UK), who famously read a book a week, the Finchy Line measures exactly what you have just guessed; did I read more than, or less than, a book a week in any given year?
In 2019, I came close to, but did not breach, the Finchy Line. Note 2005, when I achieved the elusive Double Finchy at very slightly over two books per week.
Something that kept me from reading this year was that several of the books I did read, I really disliked, and one of them was over 1,000 pages long. That one, by the way, was Peter Ackroyd’s London, this extract of which should indicate something of what I went through:
I know what you are thinking and yes I am aware that it is called the sunk cost fallacy and not the sunk cost awesome decision making process.
The real point here is that I read books I dislike much, much slower than books I like because I have a wide and trusted list of excuses not to read a book I don’t like. Here are some of the big ones I deployed this year:
Train to full to really open a book in the morning Too tired to really concentrate in the evening Just feeling too Catholic to read anything other than The End of the Affair or Brideshead Revisited
Note that the first two of these stop me from reading any books, including ones I might like. Naturally none of these things stop me when I’m reading a book I actually enjoy. Anyway, disliking the book I was reading did cause me to reread The End of the Affair! It’s really so good, if you haven’t read it yet or recently consider this a strong recommendation.
While I’m on the topic of rereads, you might have noticed that I didn’t read anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald this year. Me and Scotty are doing fine, thanks for asking. I did have some interactions with his works as I both listened to a Gatsby audiobook and played the videogame.
There was, this year, a long book that I read and wished was longer; for my money, Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise could have been twice as long. Newsletter subscribers will already know about this, but I’ve always thought of music theory as something closed off to me forever. It took reading Alex Ross’ incredible view of twentieth century classical music to open this amazing world out to me. Immediately after it I did an OU OpenLearn course on music theory, and now I know, amongst other things, which notes are which on both clefs and how to identify time signatures. I learned new things from The Rest is Noise, and it made me want to learn more new things. I hope you read and enjoy it too.
Here are some other books that I recommend, in thematic twos:
Novellas
I talk, almost every Vincennes Review of Books, about how much I love novellas, how they are short and ramp your total for the year while being a fun, zippy read. 2019 is no exception to this rule, here are two novellas that I enjoyed a great deal:
1. Convenience Store Woman — Sayaka Murata
This is a book I’d heard of, and I expect you have too, but I didn’t have any kind of priority assigned to reading it. Then a colleague lent it to me saying “I want to know what you think of this,” and predictably what happened was I loved it. I don’t want to say anything about what it’s about so I don’t spoil it for you, but if you are reading this I’m pretty sure you’ll love it.
2. The Prick — Mazin Saleem
You probably won’t have heard of this, but you will enjoy it at least as much as Convenience Store Woman. This is a story about… not friendship, probably, but it’s a story about the people we hang out with, and why, and how we feel about them. It’s extremely funny and incredibly vivid — I spent half a day trying to work out in which television show I’d seen one of its setpiece scenes. It’s on pre-order on Amazon right now (I am not sure why, obviously I have a copy and have read it), order it now and give future you a fun treat.
Linguistics
1. Because Internet — Gretchen McCulloch
In the past I enjoyed Gretchen McCulloch’s writing on internet linguistics on the toast dot net, and you’ll be pleased to hear that her writing works at book length as well. I got a lot out of the chapter on emojis as gesture, which is supported by data from SwiftKey.
2. Language Unlimited — David Adger
Something that I got out of Gretchen McCulloch’s book was the linguistics behind the general drift towards everything being the best or the worst thing ever. This is something I am very much on my guard against as I write about David Adger’s Language Unlimited, which introduced me to an area of linguistics previously totally unknown to me (syntax) and the most incredible stream of examples that I would either have not known to be possible, or not known how to phrase if I’d known they happened, or just that I plain didn’t understand. It is an astonishing book. The chapter on sign language (including extensive discussion of home sign) is worth the cover price alone. Mind-blowing. The word I am trying not to use is mind-blowing.
Let’s look at my stated aims for 2019 and how I fared against them:
In the same way that I read books about consciousness last year, this year I’d like to read books about what we use stories for. To these ends, I have Maria Konnikova’s The Confidence Game and volume 1 of the 1001 Nights. Let me know if you have more recommendations for this one!
I did not really do this, although I read both of the books mentioned above. I lost enthusiasm for this project as a project some time before I wrote this sentence and it resulted in my absolutely cramming The Arabian Nights Vol 1 in the last six weeks of the year. I was 300ish pages down from Q1 and the sunk cost powerful magic was at work on me. Anyway, the Arabian Nights are fun, and now I can state opinions like “They are drunk all the time in the Arabian Nights!” and “There’s tons of cross-dressing in the Arabian Nights!” and “The Arabian Nights are pretty sexy!” and feel confident in those opinions. On the other hand, this information is readily available also in the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, and maybe a good online primer like Wikipedia. You, too, should feel free to help yourself to these opinions if they prove useful to you. It’s unlikely anyone will ask you to cite examples.
Pepys Diary for 1663 — Pepys had some serious beef with his pals in 1662, how will things develop in 1663!
I did this. Pepys was particularly prolix in 1663, and still beefing with Sir Williams Batten and Penn.
Read the Bible — sticking with the NIV again this year, and as usual, let me know if you want in. It’s always nice to have friends in a reading project.
I did this!
Here are my reading aims for next year:
Easy books Books by, about or relevant to F. Scott Fitzgerald not covered by the above rubric The Bible (as ever, let me know if you want to join me) Pepys’ Diary for 1664
Previously: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2006 | https://medium.com/@vincennes/vincennes-review-of-books-2019-a1b89a96caa7 | ['Alex Mitchell'] | 2020-01-01 14:58:16.268000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Literature', 'Reading', 'Dataviz', 'Review'] |
True peace is built above remaining conflicts | Question from the Internet:
“Is peaceful society without conflict?”
No, true peace doesn’t mean the lack of conflict.
True peace means rising above remaining, even growing conflicts and keeping balance, unity based on more important, higher, collective goals purposes, that can balance out, complement what rejects, separates people from each other.
True peace is a dynamic balance between rejection and attraction.
It is not something we can naturally do, as instinctively we try to suppress, erase conflicts, our idea of peace is based on convincing, silencing each other.
Thus in order to achieve true peace we need a unique educational method that can help us understand and practice what peace above, against remaining, growing conflicts means.
https://youtu.be/JHAzVUR5Ti4 | https://medium.com/@samechphoto/true-peace-is-built-above-remaining-conflicts-9520512211c1 | ['Zsolt Hermann'] | 2020-12-20 22:52:36.495000+00:00 | ['Peace', 'Conflict', 'Education', 'Connection', 'War'] |
The best smart lock for a keyless home | While traditional lock-and-key systems have improved over time, the basic mechanism hasn’t really changed since the first lock was invented more than a thousand years ago: A piece of metal that is just the right shape pushes pins inside a lock into the proper position, allowing the lock mechanism to turn. As a society, it’s been tough to replace a system that has worked reasonably reliably for literally a millennium.
Are smart locks really better?You can thank the hospitality industry for finally pushing locks into the digital age. Hotels learned long ago that keys are easily lost, expensive to replace, and simple to bypass, as thieves can pick locks or simply make copies of a key to allow for unfettered future access. On the flipside, hotel guests have readily accepted key cards (and in some cases, smartphone-based solutions) as the primary means of getting into their room. The electronic solution is just so much simpler. Lost hotel key card? Replacing it is no big deal.
Updated November 20, 2020 to add our Kwikset Halo Touch review. We dig the minimal size Kwikset expects to put on the outside of your door, but we’re disappointed the company didn’t train its shrink ray on the interior hardware. Apart from that complaint, this is a great biometric deadbolt. It’s not as sophisticated as the Level Touch, but it costs a lot less and Kwikset treats Android users just as well as iOS fans.
But the biggest benefit of electronic entry systems is that they are highly configurable. Digital locks can be changed at a moment’s notice (which is why that old hotel key card in your wallet isn’t good for anything), and the property owner can generate a record of when each door was opened. In a more advanced setting, different keys can be generated for the same lock, so a homeowner can tell when each member of the family came in, or when the housekeeper arrived.
Whether you have a teenager who tends to break curfew or merely want to give temporary access to houseguests, service providers, or Airbnbers, smart locks are an incredible upgrade over the old way of doing things. Ready to make the jump to smart lock technology? Here are our top picks of the market at the moment.
[ Further reading: A smart home guide for beginners ]Best smart lock overall Schlage Sense Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $229.00See itThis capable smart lock offers commercial-grade construction and impressive reliability.
The Schlage Sense smart lock may not win any awards for attractiveness—or ease of installation, given the two dense instruction manuals that must be followed—but if you really want to secure your home with a smart lock, and have faith that it’s actually working, this is the product to get.
What if you’ve lost your phone? You can open the lock via an illuminated, smudgeproof numeric keypad or with a physical key. A recent update added the ability to unlock the door with a voice command (you’ll need to speak a PIN code you set up to complete the action). Schlage added the same feature to the similar Schlage Connect.
Runner-up Level Touch Read TechHive's review$329.00MSRP $329.00See iton Level HomeLevel gets external hardware, touch-sensitive opening, and more features in a compelling—but expensive—smart lock system.
The minimalist Level Touch looks as good as it operates and is our highest-rated smart lock. The reason we’ve named it runner-up, versus best-of-the-best in this category, is that it can be remotely controlled only with an iOS device. The Android version of the Level app includes every feature the iOS app does, with that one important exception.
Best retrofit smart lock Level Bolt Read TechHive's review$229.00MSRP $229.00See iton Level HomeLevel’s “invisible” lock lives up to its promise, giving any deadbolt smart features with no change to your exterior hardware.
The August Smart Lock Pro has been deposed. Level Home’s Level Bolt is our new favorite retrofit smart lock, thanks in large measure to its ability to disappear. The smart components of the Bolt hide inside your door, where they replace the interior mechanical elements of your existing deadbolt. You re-attach your existing interior and exterior components, so that your door’s overall aesthetic doesn’t change in the least.
Runner-up August Wi-Fi Smart Lock Read TechHive's reviewSee itAugust adds Wi-Fi while shrinking the overall size of its hardware considerably, making this a better retrofit option than ever.
Weighing the convenience of Wi-Fi versus the visual appeal of the zero footprint that the Bluetooth-only Level Lock offers was tough, but Level Lock won out in the end. Hey, achieving runner-up status in TechHive’s coverage is no easy accomplishment, and if the convenience of Wi-Fi outweighs aesthetics in your mind, then this is the retrofit smart lock to buy.
Best budget smart lock Wyze Lock Read TechHive's review$99.99MSRP $99.99See iton Wyze LabsWyze continues to rule the budget smart home world with this good-enough lock that’s half the price of some competitors.
Wyze Labs has a well-earned reputation for produce bang-for-the-buck smart home products, and its new Wyze Lock deadbolt converter is certainly no exception. Fit this device to your existing deadbolt, plug in the included Wi-Fi bridge, and you’ll convert your dumb deadbolt into a modern smart home device that can be opened with your existing key, and you can’t argue with its less-than-$100 asking price.
Most innovative smart lock Lockly Vision Read TechHive's review$399.99MSRP $399.99See iton Home DepotLockly Vision successfully integrates two complex smart home devices—a deadbolt lock and a video doorbell—into a single, compelling security device.
The Lockly Vision reduces the number of security devices you’ll need to deploy on your porch by combining a powerful smart lock with a great video doorbell. It’s not perfect—its big, bulky, and not very very attractive—but there’s nothing else like it on the market.
What to consider when shoppingHow do you pick a smart lock? (No pun intended.) This is a young and wildly immature space, and many products on the market are still extremely rough around the edges. Even top products can balk when dealing with old or stiff deadbolts, doors that don’t shut well, or environments where non-standard fixtures are in use. The bottom line is that it’s tough to declare that any product is universally perfect for every home. That said, here are some key considerations to take into account to help you narrow down your shopping list.
Bluetooth Special Interest GroupHow smart is it? An important caveat to consider first: Some “smart locks” don’t work with a smartphone app or any smart home networking hubs at all; they’re really just electronic locks that use a code instead of a key to open up. One step up from that, you’ll find Bluetooth-only locks. These work with a smartphone app, but can’t be monitored remotely or via a smart home system. That’s fine if you’re looking to get rid of the keys in your pocket, but less impressive if you want to make your entrance portals a true part of your home network.
Replace or retrofit? You’re forgiven if you don’t want to replace your antique doorknob on your vintage Victorian with a metallic device that looks like it would be more at home keeping people out of a strip mall bank branch. A sizeable number of smart lock products don’t require you to replace all your existing hardware. Instead, they are installed on the inside of the door only, replacing only the interior part of the deadbolt. You can continue to use a standard key from the outside or open the lock via a smartphone app.
SamsungSmart home hub integration If you have an existing hub like the Wink Hub 2, Samsung SmartThings, or an Apple TV, you’ll want to ensure your chosen smart lock is compatible from the start. Many smart locks support Bluetooth, so they work with your phone, but lack the technology needed to connect with your home network. Some Bluetooth locks, like the Yale Assure system and the August Smart Lock, offer a radio module as an add-on to connect to your home network. If you’re using a smart home hub like the Samsung SmartThings or Wink Hub, look for a lock that supports Z-Wave or ZigBee, instead.
Alternate entry means Forgot your phone at the office? How will you get in the house? Physical key? Numeric keypad? Wait for your spouse to arrive? Myriad different approaches are available.
Power backup What do you do if the batteries inside the lock die—and you’re stuck outside? Some locks allow for emergency power to be applied should this happen. Yale’s Real Living locks feature external posts to which you can connect a 9-volt battery, giving you enough juice to get the door open. Other models retain the traditional key cylinder for backup.
Geofencing Bad about manually locking the door when you leave? A geofencing system automatically locks the door when it detects your phone has left the vicinity, and can be set to automatically open up when it finds you’ve come home.
Guest access features Most smart locks let you set up temporary keys for houseguests, which you can delete when they’ve returned home. Smarter systems even let you set time restrictions around when each access code can be used.
Our smart lock reviews Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@dedrick40585545/the-best-smart-lock-for-a-keyless-home-23a4cd665f0f | [] | 2020-12-05 04:30:38.367000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Mobile Accessories', 'Chargers', 'Deals'] |
Set up custom domain with HTTPS and add global cache | Origin Path: Leave it empty if your index.html sits in the root folder of your Bucket. Otherwise, type in the path starting from the root of your Bucket.
Restrict Bucket Access: Set to Yes
Origin Access Identity: Select Create a New Identity and for the Comment type in Identity for s3 demo site. You can later view all origin access identities you have under CloudFront -> Security -> Origin access identity.
Grant Read Permissions on Bucket: Select Yes, Update Bucket Policy. This will automatically update Bucket Policy for you, so that only CloudFront can access your Bucket and no longer the public.
Default Root Object: Set it to index.html
Leave everything the same then click on Create Distribution. We will come back to Distribution Settings later to set custom domain and HTTPS.
You will see your distribution is being created In Progress. When it’s done, the status will change to Deployed. | https://medium.com/@billchenweb/set-up-custom-domain-with-https-and-add-global-cache-7552e95ab305 | ['Bill Chen'] | 2020-12-12 16:29:58.358000+00:00 | ['Cloudfront', 'Deploy Static Websites', 'Route 53', 'Deployments'] |
7 Features Your Mobile App Really Needs | App features are indispensable tools in the development of mobile apps. This is why today we bring you a guide with the 7 most important you can find on Convertify. Hope you enjoy it!
The development of mobile apps is increasing throughout the world. These became indispensable tools for users who want to benefit from things that interest them, and above all, a great tool for business, changing the way they interact with consumers.
There is no doubt that the benefits of creating an app for your business are infinite, but at the time of developing a mobile app, there are some doubts, such as which are the correct features to use in my app.
This is why today we address this topic and seek to help you along the way, telling you what are the 7 must-have app features you need to take into account to include in your app.
The first thing to take into account before selecting the features of a good app is to think about those with which the user would feel comfortable when interacting with the app.
As in all digital businesses, the pace is marked by customers. That is why we must seriously consider promoting strategies that allow us to know the customer more and receive feedback of value from the customer.
Let’s see now what 7 features of mobile application development you have to consider when you create an app, or if you have one and want to increase your connection with users.
1- Push Notifications
Push Notifications are messages that we constantly receive from the different applications we use, and that allows us to be connected to that environment even if we are not using it.
We consider it one of the key features of a successful mobile app, as it allows us to generate a much more personalized relationship with users.
This last is to be able to talk to the user about the things that interest him of our product, make the rate of return much higher and also generate fluid communication.
However, we must be careful when connecting with users through push notifications. This is why we leave you some tips to design them since no user wants to receive unnecessary information and it is something that can affect the reputation of an app.
Here are five tips for good push notifications practice:
Be Short and Concise.
With an intriguing message.
That contains a call-to-action.
Customize the language and time of your audience.
Be selective: Do not fill the user with irrelevant information.
If you want to know more about this feature you can visit our blog post about the best push notification providers on the market, with a guide to set them up in Android and iOS apps.
2- Pull to Refresh
The Pull to Refresh was installed on mobile devices from the beginning of touch screens, generating a culture around which is still present in more and more devices of all kinds. And it really very rare to encounter navigation that does not allow us to perform this action.
This feature consists of offering the user the pleasant experience of recharging the different pages of our app.
It has a lot to do with the design of the user experience, generating a clearer picture of who we are as a brand.
We believe it is a good option that can be adapted to different types of app design.
Another point in favor of this feature is that users want faster and faster responses to requests made to mobile apps through their cell phones. And the ‘Pull to Refresh’ is a great ally to combat that anxiety and let the user know that what he wants is being interpreted.
3- QR Code Scanner
‘An estimated 11 million households scanned a QR code in 2020 in the United States alone.’
The QR code came into the world in an innovative way and fully benefiting users and businesses. It allows people to scan a code through the cameras of their cell phones, accessing websites, or mobile apps in just a second.
Their growth continues to increase year by year, and the optimizations given to these services are getting better and better.
Another interesting fact about QR codes is that they came to replace many of the traditional ways of presenting things (such as curriculum vitae), generating a positive impact on the environment by eliminating the unnecessary use of paper.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, it began to be used more and more in restaurants replacing traditional charts and payments.
This is why we believe that offering users the possibility to access our mobile app and different functionalities through a QR code is a great opportunity that should not be missed.
4- Security
Security is important always and in every area in which our lives pass. In mobile apps, it is not an exception.
The amount of data we collect from users leads us to come up with solutions to make that data traffic more and more secure and efficient, benefiting users primarily and businesses as well.
Today we’re constantly making online payments and providing personal information to businesses. Clearly what we least want is for that data to be public.
Another important point is to protect the data of our code and the internal processes of our business. We don’t want intruders in our space, let alone people with negative intentions who can harm us and our users.
Mobile app security is a measure to secure applications from external threats like malware and other digital frauds that risk critical personal and financial information from hackers.
Mobile app security has become equally important in today’s world. A breach in mobile security can not only give hackers access to the user’s personal life in real-time but also disclose data like their current location, banking information, personal information, and much more.
To learn more about Mobile App Security, check this appsealing guide to secure your app.
5- App Linking and Sharing
This feature consists of offering the user links to our different communication channels such as Instagram, Facebook, etc. Also that these can share information that has served them of our app, generating a branding that can serve us a lot.
Many times we download an app, like it, and see that they have an Instagram page that complements everything we can see in it. Or maybe find a good Instagram page and see that they have an app.
The importance of connecting these processes in the digital world is enormous. It constantly opens up possibilities for us.
This is why we recommend developing all the communication channels in which our potential user is located. This will serve us both in the short and long term and allows us to brand ever wider and more fully, sending good signals to the user and search engines.
6- Rate My App
It probably happened many times that you entered an app and asked if you wanted to rate it in AppStore or Play Store.
That’s what this feature is about, which allows users to evaluate an application to help it better position itself in-app search engines.
If users really feel that your app brings value to them, they won’t have a problem spending a few seconds of their time putting on the five stars.
And maybe the ratings aren’t as positive, but you’ll certainly have written feedback of what the user thinks needs to be changed to make the user experience better.
From this, we can make changes that impact the usability of the same, that leaves users more relaxed and that gets us more downloads in the long term.
This is why we consider that giving the user the opportunity to write a return is useful both for them and for us as business owners.
7- Media Playback
In this seventh and last feature, we are going to speak about an ideal experience that can be offered to the user.
To be able to raise videos, interactive images, and other types of average, they allow the user to interact in a more didactic way with the app and not necessarily with words and long texts that bore it.
The world moves increasingly to audio-visual communication, allowing to show a more personal and nearby image of the mark, communicate complex concepts in words, to possess a more friendly interface and thousands of benefits more.
Doubt not even a second in using this feature, which is going to generate a big change in such a way that they have the users of perceiving the brand.
Other Points to Consider When Creating an App
The importance of knowing what things the user wants is also determined by the ease we provide to communicate with us. An optimal user experience, with a responsive design, is the biggest point in this whole process.
We also recommend keeping things simple, without complicating browsing much and allowing users to find what they need in a quick and easy way.
At Convertify, we offer all these features and more. With affordable pricing and a friendly process, we’re sure we can help you improve your business and start interacting with your consumers more efficiently.
Finally, we want to tell you to try. Try all the time with different features that you think can serve you, that can serve users. Then analyze how they behave in front of these and make improvements. This is the best system you can use to grow your digital business more and more.
If you want to learn more about Mobile Apps Business, eCommerce app features, good examples of mobile apps, marketing, and more, check out Convertify Blog.
Thanks for reading us and if you like it please share it with your people. See you next time! | https://medium.com/convertify/7-features-your-mobile-app-really-needs-742931581f27 | ['Santi Nougues'] | 2020-12-18 20:58:22.434000+00:00 | ['Features', 'Mobile Apps', 'Business', 'Mobile Marketing', 'Mobile App Development'] |
Marketing in Crypto: When brand? | Crystallize Your Positioning
Simply, anyone should be able to detect what is the specie you are. It is quite far for mass adoption if we can’t speak a real understandable language with an average Joe. But first, give yourself an answer — what do you do and why? It is easy to hit someone with a question "Why do you need a blockchain?" and watch them wither in a labyrinth of explanations. If you can’t find an argument WHY and WHAT — leave it. Freeze it, break it, burn it, kill it. No one said it’s easy. If you have this answer, you’re a winner (joke)!
Next step is to envelope your answer in 1–2 sentences. That will be your positioning which should transform into 1 comprehensive sentence, preferably as shorter as possible. That will be your key message, an essence of god's thought and the only thing that should stay in a memory of your victims (sorry, users).
In the market of uncertainty where near possible role is to be an altcoin (sometimes automatically turns out to be shitcoin tagged), find yourself a bigger cause of existence (I mean, for your cryptocurrency project, but don't forget to take care of yourself too).
Hint: Start from communication strategy if you feel lost. Not that I want to mess up the classical flow of strategy creation (business, marketing, communication, digital, then social media…), but this document is a fundamental guide about what you are going to say. Market, competition, audience, trends and problems analysis will be your analysis base. Gather insights. Look where you fit in. Make a value proposition for the end user. Find the right words to deliver it.
Warn: Don't fool people. If you don't fit the market need masking it with the help of cool words, upgrade your initial product idea first.
Power of Identity
All heil beauty comes in the form of identity! Well, we know communication is not only verbal but visual (and can be broadcasted via any other possible medium of informational exchange).
To my surprise, for many identity and branding are the same thing. This is just wrong. Without identity, actually, you can't proceed with branding. But the main confusion comes from another word — rebranding, which is a marketing strategy in which a new brand identity is created. Identity is a part of rebranding and depicts mental and functional associations with the brand. Wrapping up your assets via the creation of more emotional associations is branding. I like to compare the consonance of words "identity" and "entity", because it is really like creating one: giving a name and sound, shape, color, specific patterns and dedicated visual associations.
Filling up an identity brief once took around 5 hours for me. Basically, it is a great refining and detecting gaps tool. After you have an essential message for the audience, try to clearly define the next points (but not limited to):
What are your brand advantages for users? Find up to 3–5.
What exactly distinguishes your brand from the competition? 3–5 characteristics. If it is possible point to the main.
What are your brand values? Find up to 3–5.
Which words are forming your brand tag cloud? Does it sound like you want to look in ones eyes?
Hint: Semiotics is a science. Strive for scientific approach. You better be aware about the general identity creation process, but let this work for professionals to do. Keep yourself disciplined and independent from your inner hype. It’s not about you to like the final result, but the perception of end users. Handy to check it with focus groups.
Warn: Always check what is hidden beyond semiotics and meaning to avoid misunderstandings. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/marketing-in-crypto-when-brand-54317f0eb6a2 | ['Katoshi'] | 2019-02-10 15:33:03.466000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Marketing', 'Crypto Marketing', 'Branding'] |
Adding Google Firebase Authentication to your Flutter app — (Part 2) — Android! | Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash
Previously we added Firebase Authentication capability to our iOS Flutter App, now let’s add it to the Android version.
We’ll be using the same code base from the iOS example, found here:
The steps will be similar to Part 1, so if you need some additional reference, please refer to the iOS article found here https://medium.com/mellowcodelabs/adding-google-firebase-authentication-to-your-flutter-app-ios-7c2fa803adce
Firebase Console
Let’s login to our Firebase Console add an Android app by selecting “Add App” and selecting Android.
The Android Package name should be the same name you selected for the iOS build. In our case it’s com.mellowcodelabs.funflutterauth
Just like the iOS, once you have selected the name and downloaded the Google Services file, just hit next until it’s complete. Those instructions are for native specifically. As always, when referring to the Flutter framework and Firebase Console, use these docs:
Dependencies
Let’s make sure we have the below on our pubspec.yaml file
dependencies:
flutter:
sdk: flutter
# The following adds the Cupertino Icons font to your application.
# Use with the CupertinoIcons class for iOS style icons.
cupertino_icons: ^1.0.0
firebase_core: ^0.4.0+9
firebase_auth: ^0.14.0+5
google_sign_in: ^4.5.6
Auth Service
We need to have an Auth Service that will handle all of our authentication calls for us. This way we can just worry those methods and logic in one file. Multiple widgets will be able to access it.
Implementation
By now you should have
Created an “Android App” in our Firebase Console Followed the docs, downloaded and added the google-services.json file to the appropriate locations Created the Auth Service that houses all of our authentication related methods.
App Initialization
Next up we’re going to ensure our app knows how to handle authentication when the app starts up. This will allow it to check if user has already been authenticated on startup.
These settings will initialization the app properly using the Firebase library but also give us access to authentication functionality and properties from the start, which will be needed in the next step!
Login Fields UI
So now let’s create a simple UI that will:
Check if user is already authenticated. If so, send them to through to the app. If not send them to the Login Screen widget for authentication. Allow users to enter an email and password and either Sign Up or Login
Home Page Widget
Login Screen Widget
Running It!
So as soon as I tried running it, I got this error.
Remember when we gave our app a name while create our App in the Firebase Console? I named my app com.mellowcodelabs.funflutterauth .
The error we get here is because it’s still trying to match up the names, but in our Android settings locally we still have the default name generated by flutter when we create our project locally. So let’s find all instances of (in my case) com.example.flutter_fun_auth and replace it with com.mellowcodelabs.funflutterauth
Take Two!
Alright now you should get something like this. Yay!
Does it Work?
Let’s create a user then follow up to the Authentication section in our Firebase Console.
If it worked, the app will log you in to the boiler plate Flutter counter page and the Authentication table will reflect with your new user
It Didn’t Work?
If it didn’t work, the first thing to check is that you added a SHA-1 key to your App in the Firebase Console. Instructions for that are in the docs. This is what to look for, number 3 in Step 2. Specifically the SHA-1 section!
If you skipped this step while setting up your app it’s ok. Just follow these the docs and you should be good to go:
Once the SHA-1 Key is generated, copy it somewhere then navigate to the Firebase Console, select Android, and scroll down
You should see the below. Click on “Add Fingerprint” and paste the SHA-1 key.
Stop the Flutter runner, and re-run it.
Hope you liked this tutorial! Please don’t hesitate to leave some feedback.
If following the Part 1 and Part 2 of this tutorial didn’t work for you then I would love to hear about it! I’ll provide any help that I can! | https://medium.com/mellow-code-labs/adding-google-firebase-authentication-to-your-flutter-app-part-2-android-2b0a539ea6c9 | ['Vico Melo'] | 2020-12-06 05:53:15.597000+00:00 | ['Dart', 'Flutter', 'Authentication', 'Firebase', 'Android'] |
Data Science Process: Summary | Once you begin studying data science, you will hear something called ‘data science process’. This expression refers to a five stage process that usually data scientists perform when working on a project. In this post I will walk through each of them, describe what is involved and what technologies are normally used.
Screenshot from one of my presentations: logos from Selenium, picture from Pixabay, Plotly logo, Scikit-learn logo
1. Data Acquisition
When you are just studying data science, your data may be already given to you by your instructors. Also, you can find a lot of beautiful datasets on Kaggle.com or Google Dataset Search. In this case data acquisition is pretty simple, just download the dataset and you’re all set to go.
In real life it is a little trickier. To obtain data in a format you need you will probably be using API’s or web scraping and your basic knowledge of HTML in order to obtain everything you need. In one of my earlier posts I described how I obtained the data about beauty products from Sephora.com using Selenium and BeautifulSoup.
Technologies used: HTML, SQL, Selenium, BeautifulSoup.
2. Data Cleaning
Again, if the dataset was already given to you by your instructors, or you got it on one of the websites mentioned above, there’s a good chance that your data is already clean. However, in most cases there will be some cleaning required. You need to handle the missing values (and be smart about it), make sure that all the columns are in correct datatypes (date-time, integers, floats, strings, etc.), all column names don’t contain spaces (especially important if you’re using NLP to perform analysis and modeling). Check out my post Beginner’s guide to data cleaning for more information.
Technologies used: Pandas, NumPy
3. EDA
EDA stands for Exploratory Data Analysis. At this stage of the process you need to get to know your data. What is the shape of the table? How many rows and columns there are? What are the data types (to make sure you cleaned properly)? How the numeric values are distributed? Is there some sort of correlation/multicollinearity? Is there class imbalance if you want to perform classification? You need to answer all these questions and more before you get to the next stage. I would just write down all the questions I have and try to answer them one by one. This stage is also very important if you are about to present the results to a non-technical audience. While exploring your data in a meaningful way, you will create beautiful visualizations. And someone with no background in math and coding will better respond to an interactive 3D map rather than to you saying “My adjusted R² is 0.92!”.
Screenshot from one of my project presentations
Technologies used: Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly (GO and Express)
4. Modeling
This is the most fun part (IMO). After all the preparation you get to create a machine learning/deep learning model that will make some sort of predictions. This can be a simple linear regression, multiple regression, classification, time series, NLP analysis, or a huge computer vision project with image recognition. Describing how each and every one of these works is beyond the scope of this post, but check out my earlier post about how to talk about regression with babies and I’m-really-bad-at-math people.
Technologies used: Scikit-Learn, SciPy, NumPy, Keras, Tensorflow, PyTorch, XGBoost, and many, many more (really depends on what you’re trying to model).
5. Model Interpretation and Applications
The results of your model are probably going to look something like this:
Screenshot of my project: binary classification with XGBoost
What the heck does this all mean? You can’t just go to the investors and marketing department and say something like ‘my validation accuracy achieved 93% after I handled the class imbalance’ or ‘the proportion of the variance for a dependent variable y is explained by independent variables X by R-squared of 0.75’, you will immediately hear back “English, please!”.
The goal of the final stage of the data science process is to learn how to translate back from Math to English. It doesn’t matter how high or low your adjusted R² or validation accuracy is if you can’t explain what it means in real life.
The results of this whole data science process can be wrapped up in a presentation or they can be used to build a useful web application or some other sort of software. You will need basic knowledge of web development to make it happen, but if I built an app in four days, you certainly can too! Here’s a post about how I did it.
Technologies used: Your knowledge of math for data interpretation, Flask and Dash for creating a front-end. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/data-science-process-summary-865abd16183d | ['Anastasia Gorina'] | 2020-08-18 18:00:41.669000+00:00 | ['Beginners Guide', 'Machine Learning', 'Mathematics', 'Data Science'] |
Handwritten Digits Prediction Analysis | A Brief Analysis of the Handwritten digits prediction results.
Photo by Antoine Dautry on Unsplash
Introduction
In this notebook I have performed the analysis of Digits recognition accuracy, the dataset used in this notebook comes inbuilt with the scikit-learn library so it needs not to be downloaded.
Problem Statement
The Digits data set of the scikit-learn library provides numerous data-sets that are useful for testing many problems of data analysis and prediction of the results. Some Scientist claims that it predicts the digit accurately 95% of the times. Perform data Analysis to accept or reject this Hypothesis
Importing Libraries
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
%matplotlib inline
sns.set_style('darkgrid')
matplotlib.rcParams['font.size'] = 14
matplotlib.rcParams['figure.figsize'] = (9, 5)
matplotlib.rcParams['figure.facecolor'] = '#00000000'
Loading Data
from sklearn import datasets
digits = datasets.load_digits()
digits.data array([[ 0., 0., 5., ..., 0., 0., 0.],
[ 0., 0., 0., ..., 10., 0., 0.],
[ 0., 0., 0., ..., 16., 9., 0.],
...,
[ 0., 0., 1., ..., 6., 0., 0.],
[ 0., 0., 2., ..., 12., 0., 0.],
[ 0., 0., 10., ..., 12., 1., 0.]])
Understanding the data
digits.data.shape (1797, 64)
We can see that our dataset has 1797 images and all the images are 8x8 in dimension.
digits.target.shape (1797,)
We have 1797 labels for our target that contains values from 0 to 9.
Let's see some Images and labels
plt.figure(figsize=(15,9))
for index, (image, label) in enumerate(zip(digits.data[0:6], digits.target[0:6])):
plt.subplot(1, 6, index + 1)
plt.imshow(np.reshape(image, (8,8)), cmap='gray')
plt.title(f'Training: {label}')
Splitting Data into Training and Test Sets
Lets split our data so it can be used for training our model and later for testing purpose.
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(digits.data, digits.target, test_size=0.2, random_state=42)
Let’s see our train data a bit.
X_train array([[ 0., 0., 3., ..., 13., 4., 0.],
[ 0., 0., 9., ..., 3., 0., 0.],
[ 0., 0., 0., ..., 6., 0., 0.],
...,
[ 0., 0., 9., ..., 16., 2., 0.],
[ 0., 0., 1., ..., 0., 0., 0.],
[ 0., 0., 1., ..., 1., 0., 0.]]) y_train array([6, 0, 0, ..., 2, 7, 1])
Modelling our dataset
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression # Loading the regressor model = LogisticRegression() # creating instance of regression class model.fit(X_train, y_train) # fitting the model LogisticRegression()
Making individual predictions.
model.predict(X_test[0].reshape(1,-1)) array([6])
Making random digits predictions.
model.predict(X_test[0:6]) array([6, 9, 3, 7, 2, 1]) model.predict(X_test[15:21]) array([2, 3, 7, 8, 8, 4]) model.predict(X_test[45:51]) array([1, 3, 0, 6, 5, 5])
Let’s visualize some of the results of the dataset.
plt.figure(figsize=(15,9))
for index, (image, label) in enumerate(zip(X_test[0:6], y_test[0:6])):
plt.subplot(1, 6, index + 1)
plt.imshow(np.reshape(image, (8,8)), cmap='gray')
plt.title(f'Training: {label}')
plt.figure(figsize=(15,9))
for index, (image, label) in enumerate(zip(X_test[15:20], y_test[15:20])):
plt.subplot(1, 5, index + 1)
plt.imshow(np.reshape(image, (8,8)), cmap='gray')
plt.title(f'Training: {label}')
Making predictions on the entire dataset
predictions = model.predict(X_test)
predictions array([6, 9, 3, 7, 2, 1, 5, 2, 5, 2, 1, 9, 4, 0, 4, 2, 3, 7, 8, 8, 4, 3,
9, 7, 5, 6, 3, 5, 6, 3, 4, 9, 1, 4, 4, 6, 9, 4, 7, 6, 6, 9, 1, 3,
6, 1, 3, 0, 6, 5, 5, 1, 3, 5, 6, 0, 9, 0, 0, 1, 0, 4, 5, 2, 4, 5,
7, 0, 7, 5, 9, 5, 5, 4, 7, 0, 4, 5, 5, 9, 9, 0, 2, 3, 8, 0, 6, 4,
4, 9, 1, 2, 8, 3, 5, 2, 9, 0, 4, 4, 4, 3, 5, 3, 1, 3, 5, 9, 4, 2,
7, 7, 4, 4, 1, 9, 2, 7, 8, 7, 2, 6, 9, 4, 0, 7, 2, 7, 5, 8, 7, 5,
7, 5, 0, 6, 6, 4, 2, 8, 0, 9, 4, 6, 9, 9, 6, 9, 0, 5, 5, 6, 6, 0,
6, 4, 3, 9, 3, 8, 7, 2, 9, 0, 6, 5, 3, 6, 5, 9, 9, 8, 4, 2, 1, 3,
7, 7, 2, 2, 3, 9, 8, 0, 3, 2, 2, 5, 6, 9, 9, 4, 1, 2, 4, 2, 3, 6,
4, 8, 5, 9, 5, 7, 8, 9, 4, 8, 1, 5, 4, 4, 9, 6, 1, 8, 6, 0, 4, 5,
2, 7, 1, 6, 4, 5, 6, 0, 3, 2, 3, 6, 7, 1, 9, 1, 4, 7, 6, 5, 8, 5,
5, 1, 5, 2, 8, 8, 9, 9, 7, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 3, 6, 0, 9, 7,
7, 0, 1, 0, 4, 5, 1, 5, 3, 6, 0, 4, 1, 0, 0, 3, 6, 5, 9, 7, 3, 5,
5, 9, 9, 8, 5, 3, 3, 2, 0, 5, 8, 3, 4, 0, 2, 4, 6, 4, 3, 4, 5, 0,
5, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 1, 7, 0, 1, 5, 2, 1, 2, 8, 7, 0, 6, 4, 8, 8,
5, 1, 8, 4, 5, 8, 7, 9, 8, 6, 0, 6, 2, 0, 7, 9, 8, 9, 5, 2, 7, 7,
1, 8, 7, 4, 3, 8, 3, 5])
Measuring Model Performance
score = model.score(X_test, y_test)
score 0.9694444444444444
Our model has an accuracy of around 97% which is quite good.
Conclusion | https://medium.com/@ajetely/digits-recognition-accuracy-analysis-6efc3668da57 | ['Aditya Jetely'] | 2020-10-13 09:21:43.540000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Numpy', 'Data Analysis', 'Matplotlib', 'Scikit Learn'] |
The best resume template based on my 15 years experience sharing resume advice | Photo courtesy of Unsplash by Brooke Cagle
Over 1 mm people have used our free, powerful Resume Reviewer, and 91% say they found it useful. Our reviewer is based on our 15 years experience of reviewing, writing, and perfecting professionals’ resumes, and we’ve collected even more good feedback and insights in the past year.
I’ve also recently published “Ladders 2018 Resume Guide”, the #1 selling job-hunting book on Amazon.
What makes a good resume? I’ve written this simple 8-minute guide to walk you through the steps. It’ll take you 8 minutes to read, probably an hour or two to do, and provide years of benefit in reducing your resume anxiety.
My recommendations below are for a professional with 10 to 25 years experience. For those with fewer than 10 years, you’re likely better off with a 1-page resume, for those with more than 25 years and at very senior levels, three may sometimes be appropriate. (But seriously, if that’s you, you shouldn’t be relying on your own typing skills to market yourself.)
As with any “do-it-yourself” project, the key to success is to not get in over your head. So the instructions below are a simplified version of my best advice, tailored to be achievable by you on your own. If you’ve got the commitment, moxie, and willpower for “do it yourself”, here goes!….
Resume Goal
First, the goal of your resume is to get you an interview for the job. You may believe your resume has other purposes:
-To showcase your every achievement
-To justify why you’re changing jobs
-To explain why you’ve left so many, or so few, jobs in your career
-To mention when you received promotions, awards, or recognition
-To describe the size of organization or team or budget you had responsibility for
-To land you a job offer without an interview
Trust me, none of those are the goals of your resume. Actually, don’t trust me. Read our research on how long recruiters spend on your resume. The answer is 6 seconds for the first pass.
The goal of your resume is to get you the interview.
You get the interview by persuading 3 layers of HR people that time spent with you will be worth more than time spent with another candidate. I’ll describe below who these 3 layers are — screeners, recruiters, and hiring managers.
You’ll persuade those reviewers by providing quantifiably proven results that you can do the job very well.
Resume length and structure
Your resume will be 2 pages total. (Again, if you have less than 10 years experience: 1 page only.)
Your resume will be composed of a professional summary and a chronological detail of your professional success. You should have your contact information at the head of the resume, and your educational background at the bottom of the resume.
Professional Summary
Your professional summary is a separated list of two or three lines that summarizes your professional ambitions, background, and talents. You’ll include 12 -15 phrases of two or three words each in this section. On your resume, you should begin this section with the three or four job titles you want most, and then intersperse the skills and successes…
Job titles: list 3 to 5 job titles of jobs you would actually accept as your next job. By clearly identifying the title you want next, recruiters and HR people begin seeing you in that role, and that helps give context to a diverse work history.
It does not matter that you have never actually had this job title in the past, but it is important that it is a plausible next step in your professional career. A job search that includes both small and large companies will have a broader range of job titles than one specifically focusing on, say, the Fortune 500.
Examples: VP, Marketing • Director, Marketing • Brand Marketing Leader • CMO
Professional competencies: list 4 to 6 core competencies that you possess that are important to your success in the jobs outlined above. They should be skills you currently possess and should be “level appropriate”. I.e., don’t list competencies that are obvious or would be assumed for your level. If you’re applying for C-suite jobs, listing “time management” or “presentation skills” would be far too junior to mention in your summary.
Examples: Agile Development • Software Architecture • Engineer Recruiting • Technology Innovation
Descriptions of your past success: list 3 to 6 phrases that describe your demonstrated past success. Any type of achievements or attributes for which you have received recognition are appropriate.
Examples: President’s Club • Top-producing Saleswoman • Exceeds Quota • Consultative Selling Expert
Chronological detail of your professional success
In this section you will provide a chronological detail of your professional success, starting with your most recent job first. Notice the word choices here, please. We are detailing your success. We are not listing your past job titles or duties. We are not describing your staff composition or budget size or administrative systems used.
Again, your resume is a marketing document and needs to persuade your reviewers that time spent with you will be worthwhile, so we are going to detail your success.
You’ll have about 30 ~ 40 bullet points across all your current and past positions, and each of these will be a marketing bullet point that will make one persuasive argument on your behalf.
After you list company name, employment dates, and your title for each role, the bullet points will be distributed as follows:
-Your most recent, most important, job gets 8 bullet points.
-Your next job also gets 8 bullet points.
-Your next two jobs get 4 bullet points each.
-Everything else — all of your past jobs together, even if they were your favorite, most nostalgic, most enjoyable times in your life — get just ten bullet points total. Nobody is hiring you today for the job you had a decade ago.
It’s important to note that this distribution is across each job or title, not company. So if you’ve been at the same shop for 20 years, you should be splitting up your 30 bullet points across the different job levels and titles you’ve had.
The basic structure of a marketing bullet point is a success verb and a number.
Every bullet point in your success resume must include a number expressed in dollars, percentages, or a simple, “plain old”, straight-up number.
Importantly, every bullet point in your resume must include a success verb. These are verbs that show success — something got better. So verbs such as increased, decreased, improved, reduced, etc., are what we are looking for. Explicitly forbidden are static verbs — “managed”, “my responsibilities included”, “I was hired to…”, etc. Verbs that merely describe a fact of the matter rather than show you in a heroic light.
Rather than leave you wondering what success verbs might be, I’ll give you a precise list of 24 verbs you can use on your resume. The simplest way to do your resume right is to use these, and only these, verbs.
This seems boring, but it really doesn’t matter. Unless you are applying to be a thesaurus writer, nobody cares how clever your success verbs are. The millions of hours lost each year to professionals like you looking up synonyms for “improved” is a complete waste of time — none of the three layers of reviewers are grading you for verbal facility.
List of Success Verbs
Achieved
Added
Awarded
Changed
Contributed
Decreased
Delivered
Eliminated
Exceeded
Expanded
Gained
Generated
Grew
Improved
Increased
Introduced
Maximized
Minimized
Optimized
Produced
Reduced
Saved
Sold
So your typical 8-bullet point job achievements on your 8-minute resume will read like this:
-Increased x by %
-Decreased x by %
-Improved x by $
-Reduced x by $
-Introduced new x that led to # more….
-Eliminated old x that led to # less…
-Successfully added # new x….
-Achieved the removal of # new x…
“x” can be profits, costs, clients, vendors, products, practice areas, strategies, risk, volatility, etc.
And, of course, it’s important to have a number, dollar, or percentage increase / decrease mentioned in each bullet point. You’ll be surprised at how many you can write using this template, and how this process jogs your memory for all the great stuff you’ve done…
-Increased new customer visits by 17% without increasing ad budget.
-Decreased AWS bill by 42% through improved architecture (vs. 19% industry average).
-Improved revenue per SaaS client by $4,250 through consultative sales training.
-Reduced cost-per-hire by $7,010 through employee referral program
-Introduced 2 new products that led to 2,500,000 increase in MAUs.
-Eliminated old systems that led to a 75 FTE reduction in offshore headcount.
-Successfully added 3 productive warehouses to our nationwide network.
-Achieved the removal of 5,000 external firm billable hours per year by reorganizing internal staffing.
But, you might say, I brought amazing non-quantified value to the organization! I introduced Agile Development, led a huge bond offering, brought innovative logistics strategies to bear, or reorganized our selling methodology.
Yes. I agree those are impressive and important achievements.
But they are only impressive and important to the extent they are quantifiable. New methodologies, exhibiting leadership, or bringing innovation to a company are interesting to your bosses’ bosses only to the extent they improve, quantifiably, the outcome of the company — more users, more revenue, faster turnaround, higher client satisfaction.
Ideally, every bullet point has a number. I’d strongly prefer if you had 100% of your bullets “quantified”. During the past year, I’ve seen a lot of Members struggle with this advice, so let’s say this about numbers in bullet points:
-100% is ideal
-66% is pretty good
-50% of your bullets quantified is minimum
Most everybody is able to achieve at least half of their bullet points mentioning a number or a percentage or a dollar sign, so I’m pretty confident you can get there.
Overall, the above outline is remarkably simple because the job search process, despite all the anxiety and confusion, is remarkably simple. You want to do work similar to the work you’ve done before but at a new place and a new level. To do so, you need to explain to new people what can give them confidence that you will be able to contribute to the new team. The easiest way to do that is to share numerical data that show you have contributed in the past and can, therefore, contribute in the future.
Your audience
Your resume is a marketing document that needs to get past three people to get you your interview:
A junior resume screener who is comparing your resume to a list of skills, titles, or companies that he or she is given by the recruiter. Overly clever resumes or cutesy positioning can really kill you with this person, because they don’t understand the nod and the wink that comes with writing “Chief Bottle Washer” when you really mean “Co-Founder”. For these reviewers, the choice of phrases in the professional summary is especially important.
A recruiter, whether internal or external, who, on average, will give your resume 6 seconds first screening. And then, later, another 2–3 minutes to make sure you’re worth presenting to the client or hiring manager. By giving them easy-to-digest numbers they can share with the client or hiring manager, you make it much easier to present you, rather than a different candidate, for the interview.
The hiring manager who will be interested in finding out “what can this person do for me and my team in the next year or two.” This person will review your resume in more detail. She will be looking for indications that you have previously solved the types of problems this job will have to deal with.
Your goal is to quantifiably prove that you can. Numbers are the most persuasive friends you have in this situation. Every bullet point spent on describing historical circumstances, promotions, or scope of responsibilities is wasted and lost on a hiring manager. They already know what the role does… they need to know if you’ll be any good at it!
Eight minutes to a better resume
By following the above, you’ll be in a much, much better place than with other methods of do-it-yourself resumes. Of course, there’s a lot of nuance that 8 minutes can’t get you, but the above is ⅔ of the way there.
If you want the full story, you can buy the “Ladders 2018 Resume Guide” and visit our detailed Resume Template page at Ladders. | https://medium.com/the-mission/the-best-resume-template-based-on-my-15-years-experience-sharing-resume-advice-9f2a0bb0547 | ['Marc Cenedella'] | 2018-01-27 18:05:21.062000+00:00 | ['Jobs', 'Life Lessons', 'Careers', 'Productivity', 'Resume'] |
International Geneva needs more peace actors. The good news is that they are already here | by Alexandre Munafò. Published 12 December 2020 on GS News.
An aerial view of Geneva and the Palais des Nations taken in June 2020 showing a giant ephemeral landart painting by Swiss French artist Saype entitled “World in Progress” representing two children drawing their ideal world. (KEYSTONE/Valentin Flauraud)
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) officially received the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize via an online ceremony on Thursday, serving as another reminder of the acute widespread poverty in the world and the link between hunger and peace. However, awarding one of the most prestigious world prizes to a UN humanitarian agency in spite of several other UN agencies and programmes having received it in the past is not an obvious choice.
The award raises a more fundamental, and controversial question: How do humanitarian interventions contribute to peace, and should they? While they certainly do respond to urgent and even critical needs, do they in any way lay the groundwork for peace to be sustained in that given context? Peace is inherently political and it must succeed in fostering long-term trust and cohesion between the parties in conflict. This leads to another question. Isn’t it contrary to humanitarian principles to require humanitarian interventions to contribute to peace?
In Geneva, where some of the largest humanitarian agencies are hosted, this question is ever-present. It is behind the famous “nexus” agenda which is a set of reforms allowing humanitarian action to better understand its role in contexts of fragility.
Sudanese refugee man sits on his bike after collecting food from a World Food Program (WFP) food distribution in Yida, South Sudan. The World Food Program won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to combat hunger and food insecurity around the globe. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick, File)
Several thousand kilometres from the Place des Nations, the reality on the ground reminds us of the concrete and complex challenges that this debate entails. While most humanitarian interventions are now taking place in contexts of protracted conflicts humanitarian emergencies, conflict, peace and long-term development needs are intertwined and often inseparable. Recent examples are not lacking and indicate that deep-rooted changes in the way the system operates must take place, from cases of risky program management leading to tensions between communities to the complex Ebola response campaign made difficult by local suspicions and existing conflict dynamics in the DRC.
Aid organisations have already started this operational shift. They are preparing themselves with tools to ensure that “Peace writ large”, can be at the core of their new, updated, “software”. They are keen to understand how their own intervention can enhance the resilience and social cohesion of communities they serve. And they are keen to seize such opportunities more proactively.
The international Geneva environment offers ideal conditions for this transformation to be successful. Its “peace hub” combines a unique set of peace talks tradition alongside renowned actors with wide-ranging expertise from mediation, to security policy to dialogue facilitation. This hub can be a first-choice interlocutor for humanitarian agencies wishing to better contribute to peace.
Of course, peace and humanitarian actors have not waited until today to talk to each other in the corridors of the Palais des Nations, or even to be on the same (virtual!) panels during events. What is new, however, is that this proximity allowed a concrete and innovative model to evolve. The Peace Responsiveness Facility launched this year by Interpeace is such an example. Building on a range of partnerships with agencies such as WHO, FAO and UNICEF, it essentially offers the necessary peace expertise to be nested and nurtured from within these agencies. Through a detailed understanding of the inner incentives and requirements driving a partner organisation’s way of working, the peace responsiveness model eventually contributes to make this “software” update last.
International Geneva’s “peace hub” will no doubt densify further in the years to come. However, it is unlikely that tomorrow’s peace actors will be newly established institutions. They will rather be a wide range of existing organisations with expansive mandates all characterised by their ability to integrate a peace “software” within their own modus operandi. And one of them may very well be the next Nobel Peace Prize, who knows?
Alexandre Munafò is director of Strategic Partnerships and Communications at Interpeace, an international organization for peacebuilding headquartered in Geneva. He is member of the Geneva Diplomatic Club and Chairman of the Board of ASED (Action for the Support to Deprived Children). Alexandre holds an Executive Certificate on Advocacy in International Affairs and a Diploma of Advanced Studies in International Relations from the Graduate Institute. He also holds a BA in Law from the University of Neuchâtel. | https://medium.com/geneva-solutions/international-geneva-needs-more-peace-actors-the-good-news-is-that-they-are-already-here-3003dd566fb7 | ['Gs News'] | 2020-12-21 08:54:50.749000+00:00 | ['Peace', 'Peacebuilding', 'International Geneva', 'World Food Programme', 'International Relations'] |
Why transactional friendships will always fail | So what can we take away from the three forms of friendships?
Well, you can start off by examining the current friendships you have in your life and trying to realise which categories they fall into.
Ask yourself this : is there anyone who you think you can take the friendship to the next level with? If there is, consider the steps you would need to take to start developing a deeper relationship with them as well as what you would need to do to tweak the current dynamics of your friendship.
Then ask yourself again, is there anyone who stunts your growth or stops you from being the best version of yourself? If someone comes to mind, consider enacting a change. Cut them off, or tell yourself not to get any closer to them than you need to be.
Lastly, you should always keep in mind that friendships of virtue don’t come by in a day. To fully have that level of relationship with someone is a lifelong journey of commitment, understanding and infinite patience, but in the end, the results will be so very rewarding.
I think when it comes to friendships, another very very important thing to consider is the stage of life you are at. Personally, as a teen entering adulthood soon, I’ve started to realise that I don’t actually need that many friends, as harsh as it sounds. Over the years, I’ve learnt to be perfectly alright with doing certain things by myself. I can confidently say that I’ve witnessed enough throughout high school — the toxic drama, the popularity chase and social climbers, all of it has only painted the picture clearer for me and I’ve realised that friends come and go.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
It’s inevitable.
While there are a few rare friends that may stay with us throughout the course of our lives, we first need to accept that the person who we currently think means so much to us at this very present moment might not be here anymore in five or maybe ten year’s time. It is crucial that you accept this fact before moving on to thinking more about what we want to get out of our current friendships.
It’s also important to remember that in every new stage of your life, from university to work to (possibly) parenthood, you are bound to meet new people through shared circumstances. Life literally puts you in a room full of people similar to you based on the choices you make. You go to school and befriend your classmates only because of a common reference point, and you’ll most likely form friendships of pleasure, and rarely of virtue.
I think I finally understood this for myself during the Covid-19 pandemic (where everything has been shifted online) and I started to ask myself questions like, “If I didn’t go to school with these people, would I have chosen them as my friends?” or, “If I could pick from the pool of everyone else in the world or country, would I pick these people as my friends?”
Truth to be told, even if you put in your best effort to maintain friendships of pleasure, there is rarely any guarantee that it will last through these major life changes. I honestly have lost contact with most of the people who were once my everything (or at least I though so), and they were people I thought I couldn’t live without back then when I was in middle school.
Sure, naysayers may claim that I just “didn’t try hard enough”, or that I didn’t prioritise my friends, and well, you can see it that way, but just know that even if you put in your utmost effort into maintaining and feeding a friendship with all the care and concern in the world, friendship is a two way effort and can only last forever if it is a friendship of virtue. Ultimately, if things don’t fall into that category and there seems to be no hope of you and your friend’s relationship ever progressing to that stage, then maybe the acceptance of that fact is the best thing you can do for your friendship.
In the end, you must realise that if your friendship is a friendship of virtue, then commitment wouldn’t and shouldn’t even be part of the equation. Both parties in the friendship stand to gain so much valuable insight from each other that your loyalties will almost never falter. Only a high quality friendship, where mutual understanding is established, stands a chance of lasting forever. | https://medium.com/illumination/why-transactional-friendships-will-always-fail-fbb437f09bee | ['Chloe Hill'] | 2020-12-24 05:42:40.397000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Friends', 'Relationships', 'Aristotle', 'Friendship'] |
100 Free SEO tools for your business | 100 Free SEO tools for your business
Here is the list of 100 free SEO tools for your business (not specifically in any order). Here we go…
Google Analytics-Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.
Search Status Firefox Addon — Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank anywhere in your browser
Spyfu — SpyFu exposes the search marketing secret formula of your most successful competitors.
Semrush — Discover how to find profitable keywords, keep tabs on your competition, and bring more SEO traffic with SEMRush.
Ahref — The largest and the freshest index of live links. Index is updated every 15 min. AhrefsSite Explorer is free to try.
XML sitemap Generator — Offers a sitemap generator that creates XML and HTML variants. Free up to a maximum of 500 pages or purchase a script for unlimited use.
Alexa — Alexa provides information about websites including Top Sites, Internet Traffic Stats and Metrics, Related Links, Online Reviews Contact Information and Search analytics.
Google Global -Google Global is a Firefox Extension/Add-On that installs quickly and allows you to easily see what any Google search results look like in outer countries.
Auto Fill Forms -The Autofill feature lets you complete forms with just one click.
Opensiteexplorer.org -Try Open Site Explorer, the new Search Engine for Links from SEOmoz. Perform competitive website research. Explore backlinks, anchor text and more for free.
BacklinkWatch -Backlink Watch greatly helps you to know every bit about your inbound links. It includes anchor text, pagerank, quality of backlinks by finding total outbound links.
Majestic SEO -Link intelligence tools for SEO and Internet PR and Marketing. Site Explorer shows inbound link and site summary data.
Micro Niche Finder — A software that researches on online keywords and finds out keywords that are low in competition in a particular market instantly.
Compete -Drive your search marketing, business development, media planning and competitive strategy with the most powerful data on the planet.
Google Keyword Tool -Enter one keyword or phrase per line to see what related word searches your ad will show on.
Word Tracker -Keyword research software available for download. Keyword search frequency rating and free keyword report generation.
Market Samurai — Discover the best keywords and your competitors weaknesses with our keyword analysis tool.
Keyword Country — All-in-one internet marketing software that helps in SEO, PPC, keywordresearch, Article marketing, Affiliate marketing, link building and more.
SEO-Book keyword Suggestion Tool -Learn which keywords you should be targeting to increase your website rankings, traffic, and profit.
Keyword List Generator by SEOBook -Enter keywords or modifiers in each box. Separate each word or phrase with a comma.
SEO Browser.com — SEO Browser is a fast, efficient, and comprehensive SEO analysis tool that can help you examine and understand the component parts of a Web page.
Broken link checker -Check My Links is a link checker that crawls through your webpage and looks for broken links.
IFTTT — IFTTT, If This Then That, is a service that lets you connect two different applications together based on specific parameters, which you define.
SEO Toolbar — The SEO Toolbar from SEOmoz gives you quick access to many on-page SEO factors, Domain & Page Authority plus a quick nofollow toggle.
Google Webmaster Tools — Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages
Google alerts -Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.
W3c Validator -W3C’s easy-to-use markup validation service, based on SGML and XML parsers.
Snippet Optimization Tool — This tool replicates the appearance of a snippet in Google SERPs, which allows SEOs to optimize a page.
Keyword Density Checker -Check HTTP / HTTPS Header, Whois Lookup and Keyword Density, which is the percentage of occurrence of your keywords to the text in the rest of your webpage.
SEO Spider -The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a small desktop program (PC or Mac).http://de.example.com/uk/ to spider the .de subdomain and UK sub folder etc
WooRank — WooRank is the most popular Website Review and SEO Tool. Run a free Review. Then create a Project to track and optimize your website.
Marketing Grader — Marketing Grader is a free tool that analyzes your website and provides actionable insights to improve your marketing.
Social Mention-Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos and so on.
Shared Count — Track URL shares, likes, tweets, and more.
How Many Shares — Count how many shares a URL has across most social networks, all in one place.
Bitly — Offers URL redirection service with real-time link tracking.
Google URL Shortener — Paste your long URL here: Shorten URL. All goo.gl URLs and click analytics are public and can be accessed by anyone.
CleverStat — Free Monitor for Google — seo web ranking software for Google. Absolutely free!
GsiteCrawler — Generating Google Sitemap files has never been easier using the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler for Windows!
SEOquake — seo toolbar, plugin, seo extension for Mozilla Firefox.
SmartPageRank — Smart PageRank enables webmasters to check their pagerank, monitor the PR of competitor’s backlinks, estimate a value of their site, and more.
Submit Express — Submit Express is an online advertising service founded and run by internet marketer Pierre. You can find so many useful SEO tools here.
SEOBook- SEO for Firefox is a free Firefox extension which adds many search engine optimization data points into Google’s SERPs and Yahoo!’s SERPs on the fly.
SEO Chat — The SEO Tools found in this section were designed to assist you in configuring your website(s) for search engine optimization within the different search engines.
Addthis.com — AddThis is the world’s largest sharing platform. We use big data to help site owners and brands build digital audiences and use data to personalize experiences.
Google Insights — Forward thinking and rooted in data, Think Insights offers you a one-stop shop for consumer trends, marketing insights and industry research.
Prchecker.info — Page Rank Checker is a completely Free tool to check Google PR, page rank of your web site easily.
Craftkeys — The best way to follow popular keywords on any website
Firebug — Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse.
Side-by-Side SEO Comparison Tool — Find all the ways keyword text is used on webpage with this invaluable tool. The Side-by-Side SEO Comparison Tool compares two sites in a side-by-side report.
Robots Text Generator Tool — Generate effective robots.txt files that help ensure Google and other search engines are crawling and indexing your site properly.
Meta Tag Generator Tool — Quickly create new meta tags for your website. This tool will prompt youto generate various meta tags.
Keyword Density Analysis Tool -Enter in a page URL and this free SEO tool will tell you the keyword density of all the phrases on the page
Search Combination Tool — This SEO tool will generate all possible combinations of two separate lists of search phrases. Find new ways to promote your website and reach your audience.
Page Speed Tool -PageSpeed Tools Analyze and optimize your website with PageSpeed tools to implement the web performance best practices.
Social Activity Tool — Look at Facebook interactions and Facebook activity for a URL. This free toolbrings two great Facebook information streams together on one page.
Header Checker Tool — This tools allow you to inspect the HTTP headers that the web server returns when requesting a URL. Works with HTTP and HTTPS URLs.
Google Freebase Tool — Google Refine, a power tool for working with messy data (formerly Freebase).
YSlow — YSlow analyzes web pages and why they’re slow based on Yahoo!’s rules for high performance web sites.
Xenu’s Link Sleuth — Xenu’s Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links.
Link Diagnosis — Easily see backlinks from your competitors. Our LinkDiagnosis tool can show you all the important information about your competitor’s links.
BuiltWith — Web technology information profiler tool. Find out what a website is built with.
Pingdom Tools — Enter a URL to test the load time of that page, analyze it and find bottlenecks.
Google PageSpeed Insights — PageSpeed Insights analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster.
URI Valet — Check Server Headers with the URI Valet.
GTMetrix — Using Page Speed and YSlow, GTmetrix generates scores for your pages and offers actionable … and more.
Bing Webmaster Tools — Getting traffic to your site starts with being listed in the search results shown on Bing.Our tools can help you with this step.
SpyonWeb — With our research tool you can easily disclose websites with the same ip address, google adsense id, google analytics id, yahoo publisher network id and so on.
ScreamingFrog Spider — Small desktop program you can install on your PC or Mac which spiders websites’ links, images, CSS, script and apps from an SEO perspective.
CopyScape — Search for copies of your page on the web.
UberSuggest — Get keyword ideas with Übersuggest the free keyword suggestion tool that makes good use of Google Suggest and other suggest services.
LDA Content Optimizer — This tool determines your LDA relevancy score for a particular URL and keyword.
FollowerWonk — Followerwonk helps you explore and grow your social graph.
BloggerLinkUp — This is a free service that is all about helping YOU, whether you are a blogger or someone who wants to get the attention of bloggers.
MyBlogGuest — Communtiy of guest bloggers.
Google AdPlanner — Refine your online advertising with Google Display Network Ad Planner, a free media planning tool.
SEO Tutor — Boost your business with our SEO tools.
Traffic Travis — Use Traffic Travis for both on and off page analysis as well as spying on your competitors.
SEO SpyGlass- SEO SpyGlass is an extremely powerful competition research tool designed to let you see exactly how your competitors got to the top in Google, Bing or Yahoo! search.
PingDevice- The simplest and most powerful pinging tool on the internet
BrowserShots — Check Browser Compatability.
OnlyWire — Social Media Auto Submission tool.
Flickr Creative Commons — Images for your website or blogs.
iBacklinkPro — You will be able to discover where (specific web page) your competitor’s backlinks are coming from and sort that data by the most important links first.
Google Adwords — No matter what your budget, you can display your ads on Google and our advertising network. Pay only if people click your ads.
Page Comparison -Compare two pages using multiple seo aspects
Duplicate Page Finder — Duplicate Page Finder will help you to make sure you’re not being penalized by search engines for duplicate content.
Reciprocal Link Checker — Your Domain Name. List of URLs where your Reciprocal Links can be found (One on each line).
Keyword Density Checker — It helps you to determine how many times you have used keywords on your site.
Page Analyzer — Free web page analysis service tests page size, composition, and download speed.
SEOlytics.com — SEOlytics offers comprehensive features that make your daily SEO workflow significantly easier and help to boost your business success.
SEO Quake — Show many SEO parameters on the fly.
sheerseo.com — Trusted SEO software. Online. 60 days free trial. Complete automation of SEO including tools for tracking, back links building and much more.
RSS Feed Creator — “RSS Feed Creator” is an RSS feed maker software application, which allows creating, modifying, viewing and publishing RSS feeds and podcasts.
Minify — It combines multiple CSS or Javascript files, removes unnecessary whitespace and comments, and serves them with gzip encoding and optimal client-side cache headers.
The Reaction Engine — Free SEO analysis: just enter a URL and a keyphrase and you’ll get a live report detailing key factors affecting Search Engine Optimisation.
Website Grader — Social Inbox is a simple tool for professionals to more effectively use social sites like twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to find and nurture prospects and leads.
Robot TXT Generator — You can create a free robots.txt file with this resource.
Robot Syntax Checker — Online tool for syntax verification to robots.txt files, provided by Simon Wilkinson.
GoRank Ontology — The goRank ontology lookup tool checks the top 1000 Google results for your keywords by running a related word query.
Have some more tools in mind? Share it here in the comments section.
Searched Keywords : 100 free seo tools, seo tools, business seo tools, seo tools, backlink checker, broken link checker, social media marketing, social media tools, facebook likes, facebook shares, twitter share count, social mentions, meta tag generator, robot txt generator, keyword density checker, google, search engine optimization, free seo tools, seo tools for your website | https://medium.com/seo-tips-tricks/100-free-seo-tools-for-your-business-fb2589d70dbd | ['Bharathi Priya'] | 2017-10-04 09:55:29.196000+00:00 | ['Seo Tools', 'SEO', 'Free Seo Tools'] |
Episode #14: What’s So Great About the Blockchain? | Transcript (41 minutes)
Jay Kang: Hey. You’re still out in Berkeley, huh?
Aaron Lammer: I’m flying out tomorrow. Still in Berkeley. Still lovely here. Still looking at a very nice sunset.
Jay Kang: It’s been about a week since we talked, maybe not actually … It’s been about four days-
Aaron Lammer: No, not even a week
Jay Kang: … since we talked last. How many crypto related or blockchain related t-shirts have you seen walking around the Bay area?
Aaron Lammer: At least a dozen.
Jay Kang: Really?
Aaron Lammer: Actually, I was in the Japantown mall in San Francisco, the Japan Center yesterday, having some ramen with a friend from college and he does not know or care about this topic at all. And I was sheepishly being like, “Oh, yeah, I’m hosting this cryptocurrency podcast,” and I could see someone at the next table ear prick up and wanting to jump in, like he wanted to switch tables with his girlfriend and come to our table.
Jay Kang: Yeah. Let me tell you. That does not happen here in New York and I have seen zero cryptocurrency related t-shirts, except the one I wore a couple days ago, which is the Roger Ver Bcash t-shirt that I sometimes wear to work.
Aaron Lammer: I will say that, in addition to the t-shirts, I feel like there’s been a batch this week of articles by writers that I like outside of the crypto universe writing about cryptocurrencies, which is something I’ve always known was coming, but I’m enjoying people whose voice I otherwise want to hear about different topics weighing in on this topic.
Jay Kang: Yeah. It’s sort of circled over finally to the, I don’t want to use the word pundit because I feel like, at least for me, that’s a pejorative term because I respect these writers too. But I’ll just say that people who think about big things out loud and write very well and you trust whatever their vision of the universe is or whatever they’ve thought through, you trust that, so, yeah, I noticed that as well. Paul Ford, who is somebody I think we’re both a fan of, I think-
Aaron Lammer: I think that Paul Ford encapsulated this moment well. I think he tweeted this out. He was like, “Bloomberg asked me to write something for them.” And he was like, “276 pitches later, blockchain?” and they’re like, “That’s the one we want.” I don’t even know if this is actually enthusiasm on the part of these writers or it’s enthusiasm on the part of their editors, but I’m enjoying them doing the work so I don’t have to. And I was actually hoping that we could maybe use one of those articles that came out this week as a springboard to have the conversation that we’ve been putting off where we try to understand what the blockchain itself is.
Jay Kang: Yeah. Look, we discussed a little bit last week about what we were going to do for the show and one thing that I think that we want to do when we launched a show, which was to give sort of a primer for people, or primer, I don’t know how one explains … I say primer, but, it’s actually [crosstalk 00:05:42]-
Aaron Lammer: Jay, you’re setting all kinds of trends out here.
Jay Kang: … it’s actually right. That’s actually right, a primer for people who don’t know what terms are or trying to get into this crypto space. And I don’t even think that doing an episode to explain blockchain is really something for newbs or for beginners only because I think a lot of people who walk around and think that they know a lot about crypto, they might not really know blockchain either. And I think that, for a long period, included both you and me.
Aaron Lammer: Yeah. I feel like, in a lot of ways, you can wrap your head around some weird alt-currencies and still not really wrap your head around the blockchain. And I don’t totally know that I’ve wrapped my head around it, but I generally gauge questions that normal people ask me as important. The question I’m getting a lot from people I know’s parents, like the grandparents of little kids who are running around at these little kid birthday parties that I’m cursed with now, is this question of “Yeah, but what do you think about that blockchain is the real innovation and this Bitcoin thing is just a fad?” That’s something I’ve heard from a lot of people.
Jay Kang: Let me ask you a question then. Let’s say I meet you at a kid birthday party and I’m like, “Hey, Aaron. I know that you have a Bitcoin podcast. I’ve heard a lot about blockchain. What is blockchain?” What do you say?
Aaron Lammer: Okay. At its basic level, the blockchain is a ledger. Think of a blockchain as, you know when an accountant in a movie in the 1800s takes down that giant leather bound tome and starts dipping their quill and writing on a line, that’s a ledger. And if we’re going to use the Bitcoin blockchain as an example, the Bitcoin blockchain is a ledger of every transaction made ever on the Bitcoin network.
Jay Kang: Let’s pretend that we’re actually doing the role-playing here. You have just said that to me and I think the thing that I would say, I would interrupt you, and I would say, “Wait. There’s a Bitcoin blockchain and there’s another blockchain?”
Aaron Lammer: All of those things are basically like … An Excel spreadsheet would be a pretty good metaphor. It’s a really long Excel spreadsheet that explains every time a transaction has happened that moves coins from one wallet to another wallet.
Jay Kang: Okay. What is the difference between that and what American Express does to keep track of all of my credit card and everyone else who has a credit card? It’s far more people than use Bitcoin. How is that any different than that ledger system?
Aaron Lammer: Well, when you go and use your American Express card, say, to purchase a NBA League Pass, real world example in my case, it creates a bill in your credit account and it sends money from American Express to the people behind NBA League Pass and all of that is stored in, I would say, a fairly similar transaction, but that transaction is stored only on American Express’s servers and I don’t have any access to those servers by design. American Express could make a mistake, etc., I just have to trust that they are correctly keeping tabs on that.
Jay Kang: I think that there’s no two sentence way to explain any of this, right, but Google has tried. And so before we even talk about blockchain, it is important for us to try and define it in some way that people can hold in their head. I don’t think anything that you said is wrong, but I just feel like this is the problem that people always encounter. It’s why people like Venkatesh Rao, who is a writer that we both like, Paul Ford, I think that’s why they’re assigned things, or in Venkatesh’s, takes it upon himself, to write these things that try and use some sort of metaphoric way to explain the blockchain because in itself, it is both a very simple thing to grasp, but it also has so many caveats and, “Well, it’s different in this way,” that it becomes very vague. Here’s Google’s definition. I want you to respond to it.
Aaron Lammer: Yeah. And this is from, just to credit, both of us really enjoyed this Adrianne Jeffries article about the blockchain that was in The Verge, so shout-out to Adrianne Jeffries.
Jay Kang: Okay. Here’s Google’s definition, “Blockchain is a digital ledger in which transactions made in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly.” That’s it.
Aaron Lammer: That sounds about right. I think the part that is really important beyond that, I’m not sure it actually has to be digital, but let’s say that’s splitting hairs, I still think it could be a blockchain if you somehow were able to create a analog blockchain, but the part that’s really tough to wrap your head around is that public, like what public means. Does public just mean it’s on a web page or you can see it or does it mean that there’s some sort of a public consensus about it and that multiple people are hosting it concurrently and validating that there is data integrity across the multiple copies of it?
Jay Kang: Yeah. And, look, the one thing that the Google definition, I think, doesn’t include that I think most people in the Bitcoin community would insist upon is that there’s some sort of cryptographic protection in it, that it uses concepts of computer science cryptology to make sure that it’s secure. The best metaphor I’ve heard is let’s say that you do have that 1800s movie leather bound ledger that the old man takes down and writes in his pen. Imagine if there’s 12 of those or 500 of those or 500,000 of those and every time he wrote in his pen, people who he did not know where they were or who they were, whatever he wrote would also appear in their books through some sort of Harry Potter magic or something like that. That’s kind of the idea.
Aaron Lammer: Yeah. Yeah, it’s almost a little bit like, let’s say, there was a convention of the 1800 accountants every year and everyone kept their own ledger and then we would all get on our horses and come to Vienna and we’d all copy down everything that was in everyone else’s ledger, even transactions that we had actually had no part in, but, but doing so, we would create 500 identical copies of the ledger distributed across all of the other 1800 accountants in the Prussian Empire. And, therefore, if Johann got into some funny business-
Jay Kang: This is borderline racist against Prussians.
Aaron Lammer: It’s actually legal to be racist against the Austrians. If Johann got into some funny business, we’d have 499 other copies that could prove what the true transaction record was. And so, in a lot of ways, the blockchain is not an innovation of Bitcoin. There are blockchains that predate Bitcoin. The novel innovation of Bitcoin is akin to the 1800s accounting convention, it’s how that ledger is distributed publicly and how it keeps itself safe from bad actors in the system and from people who would seek to alter it. And that itself is novel and that’s the system that requires, in the case of Bitcoin, miners who are the people who batch all the transactions together into blocks and those blocks get added to the ledger, so the people who run nodes and mine, I’m going to get to what these mean, to ensure all of those systems are working.
Jay Kang: I’m going to object to one part of your convention metaphor because the innovation or the decentralization of blockchain would mean that you don’t have to go to Vienna, you don’t have to be invited by the convention, you don’t have to wear a lanyard, you don’t have to have a 1800s degree in accounting, you can just be a person who shows up really from your own home and somehow they beam the whatever the ledger is into your ledger, if that makes sense. If there’s a change in it, then it shows up in your ledger. That’s the basic idea of it.
Now here’s a question, I think, that when people are trying to get into blockchain that they generally think of that I want to ask you as well, Aaron, which is, okay, so what’s the big deal? That doesn’t seem mind-blowing in terms of technology. Donald Trump, today, said that we’re going to go to Mars. To have something being, oh, it’s akin to you just emailing out 15 copies to your friends and you all just have it so that one of you can’t change it because you can go back and be like, “Oh, you changed that line obviously because when you sent it, it was this way.” What is so revolutionary about this?
Aaron Lammer: Well, I think that’s a reasonable question, and when people’s parents ask me this question of, “Isn’t blockchain the real innovation?” at a party, I usually say, “I don’t think so.” I think the innovation is Bitcoin. I think that the killer product that’s possible because of this kind of a system is decentralized stateless money. The idea that you can have money but have no central authority, is itself a hugely provocative idea. I’m not sure that any other application of the blockchain that I’ve heard is nearly as provocative.
I’ll give an example, and I don’t mean to say that I don’t think this is a good idea, but something like Civil. We talked to Maria Bustillos. They want to use the blockchain to make sure that articles never disappear from the internet and they have a scheme to use the Ethereum blockchain and use the notes field to put the articles in so if a future Peter Thiel tyrant arises, they can’t erase these articles. I think that’s an admirable goal, but I don’t think it’s nearly as profound as removing a central authority around money. And I think that-
Jay Kang: Okay. But, look, there are tons of tech companies out there that use the internet and not all of them are like Google. There is different applications that can be done and it doesn’t have to be like overthrow the world economy.
Aaron Lammer: No, no. And, to be fair, I think what Civil is doing is great and I’m not sure that decentralizing money is a great idea, but I think it’s a profound idea and the system that was invented in Bitcoin, or not invented, perfected, or probably not perfected either-
Jay Kang: No.
Aaron Lammer: … tried in Bitcoin?
Jay Kang: Exists, it exists. We can say it exists.
Aaron Lammer: This decentralized ledger allowed people to create a currency from thin air that had a game that worked. The game allows for its own integrity. The game that they set forth with miners and nodes and coins has not been cheated on yet. And so I think that in some ways the block-
Jay Kang: Is that true?
Aaron Lammer: Well-
Jay Kang: There are forks. There’s the Ethereum rollback. There’s some other problems.
Aaron Lammer: Oh, sorry, I was only talking about Bitcoin. I think that cryptocurrencies have had lots of problems.
Jay Kang: The context that we need to give here, I think, is that this is still us at this party. I am like annoying dad who doesn’t know that much about crypto who doesn’t want to deal with the morass of children opening presents, so I’ve started a conversation with you. Look, all I’ve heard about is companies like IBM. Even, I think, Facebook’s saying that they want to get into blockchain technology. Overstock’s starting an ICO and the CEO is saying, “Oh, I really believe that blockchain is the disruptive technology of the future.” All of that is, right now, basically what we have is that institution and corporations are basically saying, “We don’t necessarily know what to do with Bitcoin, but blockchain seems promising.” And the problem with that is that there has not been a blockchain product that’s created, other than Bitcoin or maybe Ethereum, that has been compelling or has had any use and this technology has been around almost 10 years.
Aaron Lammer: Yeah. I don’t get that. That’s what I enjoyed about the Adrianne Jeffries article. I also don’t understand what those people are talking about. Do you understand what they’re talking about?
Jay Kang: No. And I think that as you and I have gone through this space, the educational process has been interesting to me because I think it probably reflects the way that a lot of people think about tech or learned about tech in the nineties, which is that you start not knowing anything because you have no idea what … you’re not a coder, you’re not an engineer. And you start to learn and everyone, by the way, is also like a snake oil salesman who is trying to sell you something, so it’s very hard to figure out what’s true. And so I think, as of three or four months ago, you and I were very interested in blockchain technology and what it was and-
Aaron Lammer: Yeah, we definitely thought, hey, maybe we should just buy all these stocks of companies that say they’re going to get involved in blockchain. That seems like a good idea, right?
Jay Kang: Yeah. And in the terms of a linear narrative about American industry, it does make sense that the internet would, at some point, be disrupted by something and that some new technology would come along and that places like Google would have some sort of competition from insurrectionary tech that they didn’t understand. This is the plot of Silicon Valley, the TV show, essentially. But, man, it has been nine years with blockchain technology. The fact that nobody can explain it in two sentences, as we’ve been proving for the past 15 minutes or 20 minutes, the fact that when you do explain it, you’re just like, “Well, look, my credit card works fine,” or “Microsoft Excel works fine. Microsoft Excel is actually a very good system.”
It’s very hard for, I think, a layperson like you or me or even one of these evangelists to really explain … Okay, they can explain what it is. They can use a wonderful metaphor, but when you ask them, okay, well, what industry is it supposed to be in? And then they always say something like, well, all industries, and you’re like that’s not an answer.
Aaron Lammer: Yeah. Let me pause that briefly because I actually want to say I actually do believe in the idea of blockchain coming to influence these other industries. The part that I don’t believe in is in the IBM blockchain or the Overstock.com blockchain or the Ripple blockchain. These are all blockchains that are controlled by a single entity. They’re blockchains where one person controls the ledger, just like in American Express, so they’re really just sort of cryptocurrency wrinkles on the same old, same old. And what I think is provocative or important is the idea that there’s not a central authority.
We talk about this in terms of Bitcoin about messaging. You’re always like, I think rightly, like, “Man, Bitcoin has weird messaging,” and that’s because there’s no central authority. There’s no one behind it. There’s Bitcoin Core, which is kind of behind some of the code level stuff, but there is no IBM in Bitcoin. And I think that that itself is a really interesting, weird place to be that hasn’t really been explored in capitalism yet. And an IBM blockchain, I don’t think has those qualities. I don’t really know what the qualities of an IBM blockchain are, other than maybe needing less resources than other kinds of accounting. I could see maybe there’s some efficiency benefits to it.
Jay Kang: But Microsoft Excel is efficient. American Express-
Aaron Lammer: Not really, if you’re running millions of lines of-
Jay Kang: Compared to the Bitcoin blockchain and making one transaction?
Aaron Lammer: Yeah, okay. Fair, fair. I’ll buy that. I’ll buy that. The whole Bitcoin blockchain is about 145 gigabytes, so it’s something that you could fit a $59 jump drive that you get from CompUSA, if that’s still in business.
Jay Kang: Definitely not.
Aaron Lammer: I think there’s one more part of the blockchain that we haven’t really talked about that I think is really important and is very much what I’m thinking of when we call Bitcoin an elegant system, which is mining. That’s probably the other thing that most people bring up at a party, is “Oh, why? Isn’t it using too much electricity?” What are miners doing when they’re burning all this activity? We know that they are solving these complex cryptographic problems, but what is the point of solving those cryptographic problems?
Jay Kang: Well, they’re adding blocks, right?
Aaron Lammer: Yes.
Jay Kang: Bitcoin-
Aaron Lammer: Yes, which a block is just a bunch of transactions joined together.
Jay Kang: Bitcoin gets released into the blockchain. The blockchain chain gets amended or lengthened through mining. Adrianne Jeffries, who wrote the article, you should read it, it’s on The Verge, she’s very skeptical about blockchain, but one thing that she does say is that in the nine to 10 years that Bitcoin has been around, somehow the blockchain and the mining system has not been corrupted. It hasn’t failed yet. Look, I don’t think we need to explain mining. I understand what the blockchain is in theory. I understand what mining is in theory. I will say that when they are laid bare in this way and they’re explained, they do not seem, in my opinion, other than through the idea of it or the philosophy of it, of a decentralized, deflationary currency, they don’t seem really that special. They don’t seem like technologies that are revolutionary in any sort of way, like Elon Musk just revealed a subway that’s the size of a parking space. That’s-
Aaron Lammer: I disagree with this. I disagree strongly.
Jay Kang: All right, so make a case.
Aaron Lammer: Well, I think that maybe the blockchain by itself is not revolutionary, but the idea of a decentral store of information or value that is kept alive in perpetuity and kept with integrity in perpetuity and is not controlled by any sort of central server, any sort of central state, it presents this new idea. It’s almost like-
Jay Kang: But we already have that. We had that with BitTorrent. We had-
Aaron Lammer: No, that’s not what BitTorrent is.
Jay Kang: We had peer-
Aaron Lammer: BitTorrent is just the method to distribute the information.
Jay Kang: Sure, but we had a peer-to-peer network.
Aaron Lammer: This is the type of information that’s on BitTorrent. The ledger-
Jay Kang: We had a peer-to-peer network that actually was revolutionary in many, many ways that changed industries massively, like the movie industry, the music industry. It was decentralized. It allowed people to share movies and music and books or whatever, back and forth from one another. How is this any different?
Aaron Lammer: It’s different because there is an item, the coin, that was created purely on this blockchain that’s controlled on the blockchain and there is no one behind it. There’s not a company behind it or anything.
Jay Kang: But there’s no company behind BitTorrent either.
Aaron Lammer: But BitTorrent is just taking digital files that already exist elsewhere and could exist on any server and distributing them in a way that evades law enforcement. It’s not creating something new.
Jay Kang: Of course, it is. It created BitTorrent. It created the whole network. That’s what it created.
Aaron Lammer: What does BitTorrent do that you can’t do otherwise except that you can do it and not get caught?
Jay Kang: What does Bitcoin do that you can’t do otherwise, so that you could do it and not get caught? It’s the same thing.
Aaron Lammer: Transfer money. Transfer money that’s not controlled by a state.
Jay Kang: I should say I’m playing devil’s advocate.
Aaron Lammer: No, I misunderstood you. I agree. Without its sidecar, I don’t think blockchain is revolutionary. People are waiting for a revolutionary application of blockchain, I think it’s currency.
Jay Kang: Okay. Then what is the big deal? Why is everyone saying blockchain is the future? Why are companies, like IBM, which obviously are legacy companies, why are they investing in this thing?
Aaron Lammer: Yeah, I think this is fascinating.
Jay Kang: Why is the new mantra, when you … And, literally, if you go to a party and somebody knows a little bit about Bitcoin, but not a lot, the smart guy thing to say, in the same way that it was the smart guy thing to say, “Oh, well, Bernie Sanders can’t win the primary,” that type of received knowledge, I’m not-
Aaron Lammer: Jay, you’re going to get us in trouble.
Jay Kang: No, but that level of, “Oh, well, of course,” this sort of … You have your New York City sort of guy-
Aaron Lammer: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s a good comparison.
Jay Kang: Yeah. What they’ll say is, “I don’t like Bitcoin, but I heard blockchain is cool.” Where did this come from?
Aaron Lammer: I think it makes sense that all these companies, at least on a R&D level, are looking into this. And I think that can explain some of the success of something like Ripple, it’s a sanitized version of the blockchain. And so I think that people are not yet comfortable with the idea of made-up money and Bitcoin and they want to come to the party, but they don’t want to look stupid and they don’t want to embrace a crazy idea, so they want to be down with the future, but not upend the order too much.
When people are saying, “Oh, I don’t think Bitcoin is really going to survive, but I’m sure someone will find a really important application of the blockchain,” or they say that, “Well, Bitcoin is a very primitive attempt,” I really don’t get that. I feel like that’s people who are unwilling to make a big leap, which is fine to me, but if you’re not willing to make the leap of Bitcoin, I don’t know why you would make the leap of blockchain. It’s hard for me to understand how you can think that the blockchain is revolutionary, but be totally disinterested in Bitcoin. Is that something that you can understand?
Jay Kang: No, not really, because I don’t, like I said, the more you learn about blockchain, the less impressive it gets, in my opinion at least. I don’t understand why it’s so revolutionary post-BitTorrent.
Aaron Lammer: I don’t get this BitTorrent thing. I don’t get why … BitTorrent does not do any of the same things really.
Jay Kang: It’s a decentralized way to send things from one person to the other, right?
Aaron Lammer: It’s not really totally decentralized because you’re reading it from someone else’s computer.
Jay Kang: Well, neither is Bitcoin or the blockchain. It’s a peer-to-peer thing. It got around central servers.
Aaron Lammer: But there’s no one being incentivized to broadcast those files in a BitTorrent system. There’s no mining.
Jay Kang: A blockchain without Bitcoin, there’s no incentive either.
Aaron Lammer: Yeah. I agree with that. I think that for the blockchain to work, you have to create a game of it. I think of the blockchain like a bunch of game pieces in a box and you need to create the rules to the game to make it work and to make it fun and to make it sustainable. I agree, BitTorrent is a game that worked by putting a bunch of movies that people wanted onto BitTorrent, the BitTorrent network for those torrents have stayed alive for years. It used piracy to keep itself alive. I guess I think this is the first time that someone’s created a game with the blockchain that has been compelling enough that it’s got 10 years of life so far.
Jay Kang: Yeah, yeah. I agree with you, in general, that blockchain without the Bitcoin, it’s almost like a catchphrase at this point. It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t really know what it means. But let’s move on. We have failed to define blockchain, I would say. The one thing I will say is that I think that we have failed to explain blockchain because there is a gap between the profundity of what you expect from what blockchain is, and this is something that Adrianne, in her piece, alluded to, which is that when you hear it, it seems mysterious and magical and futuristic, and that when you learn about it, you say, “Well, that can’t be it because it has to be more than that.” And, look, the idea of a decentralized ledger that keeps track of a lot of things that is not in the hands of a state, that’s not a tiny thing, but I think that we need to come to the conclusion that that actually is all it is.
And if you feel like that’s a huge idea and that a lot of applications can be built on top of that, then you should believe in blockchain without the Bitcoin. If you feel like maybe this is a solutionism type of thing where perhaps there actually are usable solutions to all these things already, what you are going towards is something where it might not actually just need blockchain chain technology for this, perhaps there’s a nother workaround that isn’t so cumbersome, then you don’t believe in blockchain technology without the Bitcoin. And I would just say that that’s kind of the long and short of it.
Aaron Lammer: Can I punch in there with one idea, which is you asked why is IBM, why are all these people trying to get involved with the blockchain, and I think that there’s a dominant idea in technology that if you want to survive, you need to emulate the upstart little guys, the guys who are trying to eat your lunch. And I would say, if anything, the blockchain is threatening to places like American Express. The blockchain is a threat, not an asset, in my opinion, to American Express, but it doesn’t surprise me that they’re dabbling in it and doing research in it. That’s what you would try to do if you were going to try to not have it take you down.
Most of the companies that I have seen that say that they’re doing experiments with the blockchain, be them the Goldman Sachs of the world, the IBMs, the American Expresses, those are companies that should rightfully be afraid of the very first popular application of the blockchain, Bitcoin. And, if anything, I would think that their real underlying motivation is competitive and it’s to make sure that their version of the blockchain beats the truly decentralized version, which could destroy them.
Jay Kang: I’m actually more cynical than you are about it, which is that I think that, if you think about it, these companies, American Express, IBM, the companies that have come out and been very bullish on blockchain, for example Overstock, these aren’t really industry leaders. I refuse to believe that a place like Google does not have a lab that works on blockchain technology. They don’t announce it. They don’t make ads.
Aaron Lammer: Yeah, yeah. They’re not like, “We have a partnership with Ripple.”
Jay Kang: Yeah, exactly. I think the companies like IBM, American Express and Overstock, that part of their messaging and their marketing right now is built around this idea of the blockchain and that’s part of the reason why there’s so much confusion in the world about what it actually is and it’s sort of a marketing technique for their shareholders, I think, more than anything.
I was actually thinking about it, again, I’m not saying this to slander anyone about IBM, but if we drove up to Poughkeepsie next week and we went to IBM and we went inside and we were like, “Can you please show me the blockchain labs?”, what do think we would see? Do you think that we would actually see something that was futuristic with a bunch of robot arms moving shit around? Or do you think that we might see eight guys in front of their computers who are nominally the blockchain technology group, but that maybe is a marketing ploy for them? Because we’ve seen in the past what any association with blockchain or crypto can do for a company’s share prices. I think that the emphasis on that is a lot of it, it’s messaging and marketing. Do you agree at all with that?
Aaron Lammer: I do. It’s not that I don’t think they’re doing it, I just think that if anyone had a really, really good idea, they wouldn’t tell everyone about it.
Jay Kang: Yeah, exactly, that’s how I feel.
Aaron Lammer: The fact that they’re telling everyone about it makes me think that … I think they’re their bases. These companies try everything. Everyone is trying self-driving cars. Everyone is trying everything that they can try. What will be interesting to me going forward, and something I would want to talk about on this show, is whether these faux chains ultimately make it hard for the true chains to survive. I think we’ve seen investors are just as interested in buying Ripple, which is a centralized chain, as into the Bitcoin chain. And if the only reason people really embrace decentralization is because they think it’s a good investment, I’m not sure it will survive. I think we’re shifting a little bit from the ideology of decentralization to just is decentralization a good investment, and so I think that these people are right. If they can convince people that their chains are better in some way, even though they’re centralized, they will nip this fairly profound idea in the bud.
Jay Kang: Yeah, I would agree with that. I wouldn’t say I totally agree with it, but I agree with it in this sense where, if you think about it from an investment standpoint, you have a new technology that is going to take over the world. You can either buy a cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, with all of its attendant risks, or you can just put it in IBM and say, well, IBM’s blockchain will probably be better than these crazy anarcho-capitalists who keep fighting with each other on Twitter. In that way, from an investment standpoint, I do think that things will get diluted a little bit down the road if blockchain actually is promising.
And it might not be IBM. It might literally be Google that says, “Hey, by the way, we’ve been working on this too. We just didn’t want to tell you guys because we didn’t have to.” Or some new company comes on that has amazing tech that grows with tons of VC funding and suddenly becomes a player in all of this. All those things are open and I think that, from an investment standpoint, it does push back against some of Bitcoin’s dominance in the blockchain area.
Aaron Lammer: Totally agree. An example that I often think of is Western Union. We’ve seen Bitcoin ending up in places like the Philippines because it’s a very low cost remittance-
Jay Kang: Or it was, and it is again. It is again, yeah.
Aaron Lammer: … or was and it sometimes is. And that has interesting cultural implications, that a bunch of people have Bitcoin on their phones who are in the Philippines and who know where that could end up in 10 years. But if Western Union looks at that and say, “Hey, somehow people are using Bitcoin instead of Western Union,” and they create the Western Union blockchain and the Western Union coin and are basically able to offer the same service at the same price, what does that mean for the future of Bitcoin? Can Bitcoin maintain a competitive advantage if people clone all of the features of Bitcoin? And I think that remains to be seen.
Jay Kang: Well, and that’s where we get into, I think, a place where you and I diverge a bit, which is that I think to win that fight, you need to have a better PR than Bitcoin does. And PR is maybe not the right term, but you just need a better, I guess, rallying cry that goes out to people. You need to convince the woman who is a domestic servant, I think is the right word, in Hong Kong who is from the Philippines who wants to send money back to her family and does so every month through remittances or every Sunday that it’s better to use Bitcoin than Western Union for X reason. It doesn’t matter what X reason is. It could be that, “Hey, this might triple in value,” whereas Western Union coin certainly won’t.
It could be like, “Hey, don’t you hate the central banks that are keeping this global income inequity, which is why you’re an OFW and you’re working in this person’s house in the first place.” You could do that messaging and you might be convincing, but you just need something and I just don’t see it right now, which is one of the reasons why … I think there are four main reasons why I’m super bearish on Bitcoin right now, but that really is one of them. I’m just like, well, I don’t know what you tell those people.
Aaron Lammer: Yeah. I think that I’m going to take the other side of this one and say that maybe this is the vibe between us as a journalist and non-journalist-
Jay Kang: You are a journalist, by the way. I always object to you saying you’re not a journalist. You interview people for a product.
Aaron Lammer: … less objective journalist, a fake news journalist, is that I think the best PR is no PR. I feel like the fact that Bitcoin doesn’t have to explain itself and doesn’t have to answer to a board and doesn’t have to show quarterly profits is one of its great strengths. The fact that it’s doing something that corporations usually do and there’s no corporation is … I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s fascinating.
Jay Kang: Yeah. And, look, there’s no good answer because I think you’re right in the sense that if Bitcoin has a centralized messaging, then that’s bad. That’s not good for Bitcoin as a idea or as a currency. I think that the best thing that we could hope for is that the messaging becomes a little less toxic than it is right now and that’s about it. If it was null, then I would be, “Great,” but it definitely is not null right now, which I think is part of the problem in terms of getting some of these people who hopped in on board between October and the first of this year back on board.
Aaron Lammer: Sure, sure. Before we get out of here, you got anything to say about this market?
Jay Kang: No, it’s about the same as when we talked about four days ago, right?
Aaron Lammer: I feel like we got to go on strike here. Until the market goes up or down, we’re not going to talk about the market. You heard it here. Just start buying or selling, do something, give us something to talk about. It’s not investment advice. We don’t talk about the market. We’re just purely intellectuals considering the blockchain.
Jay Kang: Okay. All right. I’ll see you next week.
Aaron Lammer: All right. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 2: This episode of Coin Talk was taped Wednesday, March 14th, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The Bitcoin price index was $8,085.
Thanks to Adrianne Jeffries whose Verge article ‘‘BLOCKCHAIN’ IS MEANINGLESS’ inspired this episode. | https://medium.com/s/cointalk/coin-talk-14-whats-so-great-about-the-blockchain-dedc38e9413b | ['Coin Talk'] | 2018-04-18 01:01:59.906000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Coin Talk', 'Podcast', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
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