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Responding to the Coronavirus: Kith’s top six tips for effective response | We’ve been tracking the spread of the Coronavirus and the cases of COVID-19 around the world and here in the US as we imagine you have. There’s no doubt in our minds of the seriousness of this challenge to individuals, communities, organizations, and countries. We have spent a good bit of time this week and last on the phone with clients as they work through their unique and best approach.
Moreover, we’re conscious that crises like these don’t have edges so there’s no formal declaration of when they start. Nevertheless, we should be clear that we are already in the early stages of this global crisis. Therefore, we should all be taking steps to help prevent the spread of the virus to protect ourselves, our loved ones, our customers and our businesses.
Our colleague Jeff Blaylock has put together these top six areas for consideration to help you plan your response to this threat. Not only are there reminders of what to do from a basic public-health perspective, but we’re also encouraging our friends to think about what they need to do to protect their customers, staff, and businesses as a whole. (Here “ “ means the people you serve, however, you describe them.) And even though it might seem premature, while you’re ramping up your response, you should also think about what getting back to “business as usual” would look like.
Here’s our top six tips.
Offer Assurance
Let your customers and employees know that your top priority is their health and well-being.
Tell them what you are doing to stay on top of this situation and that you are closely monitoring news/updates from local, state and national health authorities. (If you have assigned a special team or leader to manage this challenge consider naming them.)
Share the additional steps you’re taking to protect them (e.g., increased frequency of cleaning/sanitizing public areas, making hand sanitizer available, using video conferencing in lieu of travel, providing work-from-home options).
Be transparent about your decision-making. Tell them what you’re doing and why.
Follow the Experts
Follow government guidelines and any specific advisories for your area
Point your customers to official sources of information about how they can protect themselves and limit the spread of the virus (e.g., Centers for Disease Control’s page on the virus , local and state health authorities.)
Watch the Herd
Keep an eye on what similarly situated organizations are doing. While there is no need to be in lockstep with them, you must be strategic about following a different path than everyone else.
Be prepared to explain why you are doing something different whether that’s a sharper reduction in operations beforehand or going back to “business as usual” earlier than your peers.
Assess HR Policies
Review sick and leave policies, and adjust as necessary, to ensure that employees can stay home if they’re sick or need to care for a family member who is sick.
Provide options for employees to work remotely or from home.
Be Prepared to Shut Down
Be Prepared to Return to Normal
Eventually, you will need to go back to “regularly scheduled programming.” Watch for signs that it’s okay to return to business as usual: government notices or cancelations of advisories, shifts in news coverage toward other topics, or significant drops in new cases.
When you’re going back to normal operations, tell your customers and employees what you’ve done to ensure their continued safety and earn an “all clear” from them.
As a gentle reminder, we’re not doctors or public health experts so always follow the best available advice you’re getting from trusted sources. Nevertheless, we hope that these six considerations will help you prepare your business for what’s to come. Unfortunately, the exact steps will be up to you because each business, each locality and each customer group will be affected differently. That said, the six points above will apply to everyone so these are a great place to start your decision-making.
Remember, this is not a potential threat or a theoretical event: the Coronavirus is spreading around the world today and there are COVID-19 cases in over half the countries of the world .
The numbers infected will have risen substantially between the time we wrote this and when you read it. So please, set aside some time to consider these points with your leadership team and make plans accordingly. This is definitely a time when we’re all in this together. We are planning to share additional insights as this challenge evolves.
Click here to download our infographic tip sheet. | https://medium.com/@bcoletti/responding-to-the-coronavirus-kiths-top-six-tips-for-effective-response-c11145e51584 | ['Bill Coletti'] | 2020-04-01 20:15:43.792000+00:00 | ['Crisis', 'Health', 'Communication', 'Covid 19', 'Leadership'] |
Transmutation | Photo by KS KYUNGon Unsplash
If you were a guru
and I were a wildflower
I would grow quietly next to you
while you meditated under a baobab tree.
Rain, wind, sun and shade
see me swaying at your knee
while you breathe, or forget to breathe
or shift to ease your breath.
I watch the tree’s magic slowly
twine its branches up your spine
its night-blooming flowers falling
freely into your open palms.
When your crown begins to grow roots in the sky
I smile: you
are nearly at the gates now.
And the day your hair unfurls young leaves
I sing you the story of yourself
in words you can finally hear. | https://medium.com/assemblage/transmutation-345308cc94ed | ['Kara B. Imle'] | 2020-07-24 11:00:59.947000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Poetry', 'Nature', 'Love', 'Poems On Medium'] |
A Lesson in PR from the Founder Who Hosted One of the Most “Epic” Launch Parties in History | Image courtesy Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels
I’ll never forget the first time a reporter contacted me asking for an interview. She wasn’t from the New York Times or anything like that. Just a local reporter writing about the region’s increase in successful venture-backed tech startups. Still, it felt like my company had finally “made it.” We were gaining enough traction to be considered part of the region’s “successful startups,” and that seemed like an important milestone.
I met the reporter for coffee, we chatted for the better part of an hour, and we had what felt like a great conversation about the company and its growth. The interview seemed successful, the reporter was very friendly, and I was excited about what she was going to publish.
A couple weeks later, the story came out. It was maybe 800 words (for reference, the article you’re reading right now is more than double that). Somewhere around the halfway point, the article included a 26 word quote from me that I’m certain I never said, it described my company as doing something we didn’t actually do, and it got my title wrong.
It was one of my first experiences with how the press reframes and recontextualizes content in order to tell the stories they want or need to tell. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I understand why it happens, but it can be frustrating, especially when your co-founders, employees, and investors are all asking why you said something you didn’t actually say.
I recently had a conversation with an entrepreneur who helped provide some better perspective on the challenges of getting press to write about you in the ways you want. His name is Craig Kanarick, and his company, Razorfish, hosted what became one of the most infamous parties of the 90s Internet tech scene in New York City.
*Craig’s quotes and story are based on a podcast and interview I conducted with him on October 30, 2020. | https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/a-lesson-in-pr-from-the-founder-who-hosted-one-of-the-most-epic-launch-parties-in-history-f22e1fd1e1b6 | ['Aaron Dinin'] | 2020-12-01 15:02:53.771000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Press', 'Fake News'] |
On Being Alone in Paris and Finding My Way | There is a certain vulnerability that comes with travel that can bring you to your knees.
I’m talking about that cold, stiff breeze of unfamiliarity that settles in once you’ve arrived, looked around and dropped your bag. You don’t know these people. You barely speak their language. You realize you are are far from home.
So I found myself this week alone and forlorn in the most beautiful city in the world.
When I was younger, I could fling open the windows of the dingiest garret in Paris, and feel utterly alive and on fire. This mood would last for the entire visit. But now in my mid-fifties, things are different. Paris brings out my tristesse.
I notice myself ruminating more as I walk the streets. I’ve seen the colorful shirt haberdasher before, and his stack of men’s shirts covered with everything from peppermint candies to taxidermy. And I’ve seen the winsome toddlers, dressed in perfect little biker jackets and powder blue Uggs.
I’ve also seen the look in the French man’s eye as he gazes across the table on a Sunday afternoon at the blonde he’s just climbed out of bed with. His love is both measured and mercurial. Love mixed with just a hint of distraction.
Paris puts me in the mood to feel. Or perhaps, because I’m in Paris, I’m finally free to feel.
I can untie the parcel of woes that follow me through my days, but never get opened for one reason or another. I find I can have a really good cry here. Because now I am a stranger in a strange land, emotions pour through me that I never would expect.
Perhaps this is the point.
In an instant, I miss my partner with a deep stab to the heart. I look at her picture and feel all undone. Who thought this was a good idea, this traveling alone? I mourn my daughter, now dead three years, and I long to sit and eat breakfast with my son. I even miss the squeak in my office chair.
But eventually, because I am a grown up, I rise from my maelstrom and go out the door. I’m decide to do something good for myself, like yoga. I will go find my people, I tell myself determinedly.
Instead, I stumble into a swirl of Sunday afternoon Parisians, all milling about an ancient cobblestoned street lined with fashionable shops. They hobnob in their down jackets and jeans with the air of people at a really good cocktail party. Come join us, they seem to say — Fashion est tres important, n’est-ce pas?
This is what Sunday in Paris is really for, I realize. Or at least it is today.
So I slide right in, and find myself trying on big, soft interesting sweaters and perfect little cotton tops. A woman with searing red hair, leopard leggings and I.M. Pei glasses stops cold in front of me. She rattles off several phrases in French, which I do not follow.
“English?” she says. I nod.
“This one looks tres, tres better … much, much better than the other one.” I look in the mirror. She is right. She holds another garment up appraisingly and looks me up and down. “No, no, no …” she mutters, shaking her head. “Too pale.” She looks genuinely concerned.
In that instant, I return to the bosom of Paris. Just one moment in the radical heart of this place can turn everything around. When I am here, I realize, I do indeed belong here.
I buy my sweater and my perfect little cotton top and head out the door into the afternoon, ready to do business once more.
I have arrived. | https://medium.com/suzanne-falter/on-being-alone-in-paris-and-finding-my-way-ece12419fd55 | ['Suzanne Falter'] | 2016-09-24 15:36:32.787000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Short Story', 'Paris'] |
7 Remarkable Tips of A Perfect Legal Case Study for Law Students | The purpose of legal case studies is to provide theoretical knowledge of how court proceedings actually happen. While working on Law case study examples, you will gain insight into the proper way to present legal cases.
The key element to understand is how a single law can be applied in different ways for different situations. These case studies from time to time had been known to improve the ability of critical thinking and situation analysis. However, there are few challenges students face while handling legal studies. But not to worry because in this article you will find some tricks that will help you improve in a Legal case study.
Here are some tips for you to apply on your legal case studies:
Best Tips to Write A Good Legal Case Study
1. Follow the Guideline Meticulously
Your law teacher expects your case study to follow the correct structure and good format. Here is a general structure for legal case studies:
· Case synopsis
· Objectives
· Case analysis
· Methodology
· Modification
2. Explain the Problem in Detail
Your reader can understand your solution and analysis only after you explain the issue properly. The reader must have a complete idea at the beginning of the situation for which you are trying to bring a solution, be it a Law case study or Ford SWOT analysis.
3. Use Easy to Read Formatting
If you want your case study to look presentable and interesting, make sure you use elements like bullet lists, numberings, sub-headers, images, italicized and bold texts. Nobody will be interested in reading a long paragraph of huge chunk contents. So instead,
4. Add Real Number Estimates
When you are adding facts and figures, include exact numbers. An exact number will help to make the case study informative and knowledgeable for the readers. Instead of giving approx like 100 to 200 or “doubled investment”, try to give the exact numbers.
5. Make A Study Group
You may get stuck somewhere in your case studies, and you end up losing time. One of the significant benefits of having a study group is that they will help you out since they are also preparing for the same. But avoid making the study group to be a gossip session as it will only waste your time.
6. Add Data Analysis to Support Your Conclusion
Choose your data carefully when you plan on adding them on conclusion. Focus only on the relevant data that answers your legal case appropriately.
7. Don’t Hesitate to Ask Help
Nobody will judge if you are confused or stuck at something. Your priority should be to submit an A+ legal case study paper. So to do so, ask your teacher if you find the question difficult to understand. A case study is not an easy task so that you can seek their guidance for your entire case study paper. As an alternative plan, you can also seek online writing service. The expert writers will prepare an A+ case study paper for you and submit before the deadline.
Legal case studies can be a bit struggling when you are attempting alone. Use these tips to write an impeccable legal case study paper.
SUMMARY
Law is constantly evolving, and thus, it can be challenging to handle. You will encounter many reasons to seek help for your law paper again and again. Apply these tips whenever you get stuck in your legal paper to get a good result. | https://medium.com/@martinaroger370/7-remarkable-tips-of-a-perfect-legal-case-study-for-law-students-af9c5196d0f | ['Martina Roger'] | 2019-11-14 08:29:08.726000+00:00 | ['Law', 'Legal', 'Design', 'Casestudy', 'Lawcasestudy'] |
The Duty Which Lies Nearest | Photo by Sergey Merkulov on Unsplash
Hildegarde sensed something moving in the darkness.
In the depths of the ruined castle, the only light came from the orange flame of her torch, its dim glow too weak to fully penetrate the dark. She closed her eyes and heard more clearly the rush of air in the distance, echoing through the dark halls. Whatever was lurking in the shadows of this shattered kingdom must truly be ferocious for her prince to send her on this mission.
Perhaps the same evil presence threatened her own homeland?
At the thought of Prince Gustav, Hildegarde instinctively touched the pendant around her neck. It was a token of honor from the prince for undertaking his dangerous request into the depths of uncertainty to reclaim a lost treasure.
The rush of air grew louder, closer.
Hildegarde drew her sword, tightened her grip.
The rush of air was now so close that Hildegarde felt it across her face. The force of the sudden motion snuffed out the weak flame of her torch. She dropped the extinguished torch, readied her sword with both hands. Then came a voice, dry and croaking and uttering unfamiliar words and — behind her!
She spun around in a practiced ballet of violence, whirling the sword above her head, bringing it down in a heavy two-handed smash at the head of her would-be attacker. The force of her swing would have been enough to knock a fully-armored warrior off-balance. The impact of the blade would have been enough to split bone with ease. But her hands were stayed mid-swing by the voice in the darkness. Its indecipherable words wrapped around her arms like chains and burrowed into her ears like nesting mites.
Frozen in place, Hildegarde struggled to adjust her vision to the darkness. Something in front of her seemed to shine. She squinted to make sense of the sight — a black, inky light that shone in the darkness.
Suddenly there was an explosion of light from her pendant, a shriek of pain, and a black hand recoiling into the darkness.
Her pendant continued to radiate a cool, blue light, and Hildegard’s eyes adjusted to the form before her. A skeletal figure in tattered black robes, its eyes two deep abysses that seemed to pull in light.
It took a measured effort of her will to break contact with the figure’s gaze. “Release me from your evil,” she snarled. “I come on a divine quest to seek the forgotten knowledge of this land and protect my home from the same fate.”
As she spoke, the cloud of the monster’s words in her head began to settle. Her arms began to relax. Had her pendant been a special gift from Prince Gustav to ward against this creature? He obviously entrusted her with this vital quest. She had proven her worth as captain of the royal guard, had spent her youth training to be the best and had succeeded with aplomb. Despite her own accolades as a warrior, it was even more comforting to think that Prince Gustav was concerned for her personal safety. It showed a care that one did not often receive in Hildegarde’s line of work.
On top of that, Prince Gustav had a reputation for being detached and cold, but Hildegarde had long suspected that was simply the burden of leadership. If she could get closer to him and demonstrate her loyalty, she might learn of his true self. This quest, this pendant — it all pointed to something deeper.
The figure’s groans shook Hildegarde from her thoughts of Prince Gustav. Again, the black hand reached out for her pendant, and again the light grew to a blinding flood with an audible sizzle as the hand attempted to grab hold.
“Your evils have no effect, creature.” Hildegarde squared her stance, free from the invisible restraints.
“My prince has bestowed me with a blessed relic to fight off your tainted magic.”
The same dry, croaking voice from before crept from the figure’s lipless mouth. Hildegarde readied her sword and thrust the blade toward the figure’s ashen throat to stop its spell — but this time, it was Hildegarde herself and not the enchanting spell that stayed her hand.
The figure’s words were human, familiar, and pleading. “Return my treasure to me.”
“I see that your magic fails you, lich. So you turn to deception? I have taken nothing from you.” Hildegarde lowered her sword. “I am not a thief come to steal your gold. I seek this kingdom’s sacred texts, said to prevent great destruction.” She looked around the ruined hall. “Leave me to my quest and I will leave you to your treasure.”
The lich’s eyes grew wide, the black glow grabbing Hildegarde’s attention. Before she was aware of the trap, the lich’s spell had her bound again — the resounding echo of its words paralyzing both body and mind.
The figure spoke with steady cadence, “Return…my…treasure…the…pendant…”
Hildegarde struggled to form her thoughts. “The pendant is charmed against your evils, foolish creature. You leave me no choice but to slay you to complete my quest.” Hildegarde’s arm slowly raised her sword, then stopped.
Something was wrong. The lich’s spell had completely taken hold.
“If you will not return the pendant, I will take it from your corpse.”
Photo by Maitreyi Bhatnagar on Unsplash
Hildegarde’s mind tumbled about, caught in the disorientation of the spell. Why was the pendant’s protection not working? What was different? It was still glowing the same faint blue as before. The creature was still reluctant to reach for it, though, after being scorched twice. The pendant still resisted the monster’s touch, but why not the spell? If she couldn’t figure it out, Hildegarde’s mindless shell would rot in the depths of this forsaken castle, bound by the dark spell.
The spell. It was the same spell from before. And the pendant was still working like it did before to fend off the monster’s touch. So what had changed? Hildegarde herself was the only other piece to the puzzle. What had she done before to break the spell? She had been focused on the pendant itself, focused her thoughts on the pendant and on — Prince Gustav. That must be the key to breaking the spell. The pendant only worked to its full extent if you thought of your heart’s desire, if you focused on your loved ones. Hildegarde drove out the creeping darkness with the strongest memories she could think of Prince Gustav.
She thought of her first meeting with the prince, when she was still a recruit at the military academy in the capital. Prince Gustav, back from his latest worldly travels, had visited for a surprise inspection of the new recruits, looking to fill positions for his personal royal guard. Hildegarde did not actually talk with the prince, but he had passed by a sparring match between her and one of the other top contenders, a young man named Roderick. Roderick had caught Hildegarde looking at the prince and punished her distraction by trapping her in a painful hold. She knew the hold well from her practice and had countered by grabbing Roderick’s leg and pulling him off-balance. Prince Gustav applauded her performance, smiling. Even then, even at a distance, he seemed to recognize her drive to succeed, to be the best, to prove her worth.
Focused on that memory of Prince Gustav, the cloud in Hildegarde’s mind again began to settle. She grinned. “Your magic is weak, monster. You shall not stop me.” She needed another memory. A more powerful memory.
Her mind flashed to a royal feast, just after she had been appointed as captain of the prince’s guard. It was Prince Gustav’s coronation, and nobility from many other kingdoms had come to the capital to celebrate the rise of the man who would one day become king. There were even several princesses who hoped to solidify alliances by offers of betrothal from the prince, though none were successful.
At the height of the celebration, Prince Gustav snuck away from the feast to his personal chambers to relax before returning to the busy scene. Hildegarde had followed and posted herself at his door to ensure the prince’s privacy. When he emerged a while later, the prince gave a rare smirk, telling Hildegarde it was customary at large events for the captain of his guard not to let him out of their sight. Even though she knew it had been a night of excessive celebration for the prince, she blushed at the comment. It never came up again between them in the years since, but she thought about that night and that smirk sometimes when she was lonesome or fatigued.
The memory brought an uncommon smile to Hildegarde’s face in the blue glow of the pendant. “Your cause is lost, fiend! I know the weakness of your spell. The love of my Prince Gustav has set me free from your evil.”
Her smile immediately transformed to a grimace. Her body was no more free than it had been when the spell first took hold. As she struggled to break free, the echoes of the lich’s spell again filled Hildegarde’s ears.
The lich turned to her in a display of surprise, its eyes swollen with dark tears. “Prince Gustav has sent you to mock me with his triumph? Has he not taken enough from me? Now he sends his dog to finish his cruelty. Then I will put you down as I would a dog.” The lich wiped dark, glowing tears from its ink-black eyes and howled an incantation that magnified its hold over Hildegarde.
Rather than merely being held in place, she started to feel her limbs pulled apart. The confusion that once scattered her thoughts was now a blinding pain.
“You poor, misguided fool,” whispered the lich. “Your love for Gustav will be your undoing.”
How had she failed? She had wriggled free from the spell once before just as she had countered Roderick’s hold in the sparring match. Why didn’t it work? She had felt the spell lose power when she focused on the prince that day at the academy. What was she missing?
The lich’s words — “Your love for Gustav will be your undoing.” Was it not her focus on Gustav that had broken the spell before? Then what could it have been? The pain of the spell was excruciating. She felt her left arm dislocate at the shoulder. The edges of her vision were going dark. She was going to pass out. And then she was going to die.
There was no one to rescue her. Gustav had sent her alone on this quest because she had proven her worth time and again, and she was going to let him down. Was this what true failure felt like? Being ripped apart and consumed with agony? She had worked so hard to succeed, to protect her home, to uphold her duty. There must be some way to overcome this, she just had to work it out.
Then, the fires in Hildegarde’s mind went out. Her arms collapsed to her sides and she crumpled to her knees.
With a deep, rasping sigh, the lich strode toward Hildegarde’s body to retrieve the pendant. As it leaned down to snatch the pendant, Hildegarde thrust her sword through the lich’s throat.
The lich seemed to smile at Hildegarde’s victory. Its eyes widened before collapsing into complete darkness. Its skeletal body fell toward the ground, disintegrating in the shadows. Something landed with a heavy, hollow thud where its body should have been. For a moment, Hildegarde considered if the lich had let her win. Could it have known she would focus on her devotion to duty instead of her love for the prince? It didn’t matter. She was ready to go home.
Her left arm hung limp at her side. She situated her arm against the cold stone floor and braced herself to force her arm back into socket. But something caught her attention.
Hildegarde looked down in the dim glow of the pendant to see a large, weathered book. The cover was decorated with the same design as the pendant around her neck. Her quest was fulfilled. Her duty done. This must be the sacred text that Prince Gustav had sent her to retrieve. Though its secrets had obviously failed to protect this ruined kingdom from the evil of that lich sorcerer, there might be some detail or clue that could protect her own homeland from a similar evil.
She grabbed the heavy book and tucked it under her right arm. As she tried to stand, she went to steady herself with her left hand and tumbled to the ground, tossing the book across the darkened room.
Hildegarde finally made it to her feet, searching the darkness for her trophy. She found it lying open to a page with an image of a young woman wearing the pendant. Looking closer, Hildegarde realized the book wasn’t a spellbook. It was a royal register, recording the history of the kingdom.
Years ago, a prince from a neighboring kingdom had tried to seduce the princess to steal the secrets of magic from the royal family. She had resisted his advances, knowing his intentions to be impure, and had broken off their engagement. The prince managed to steal the princess’s magical pendant and a single page from the royal spellbook, using it to curse the princess’s father, turning him into an undying magical creature, a lich, fated to destroy everything it loved — family, kingdom, and home.
Hildegarde took the book under her arm and headed for home, duty-bound to protect her own kingdom from the same evil that destroyed this beautiful land. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-duty-which-lies-nearest-2f13c6b5796b | ['Aaron Meacham'] | 2020-10-29 14:31:44.966000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Horror', 'Fiction', 'Fantasy', 'Ghost Story'] |
#EDtoo Interviews: Angela Anderson | Angela Anderson; age 43; resides in Northwood, United Kingdom.
#EDtoo Interviews: Angela Anderson
This article forms part of a series, documenting the experiences of those who have battled chronic dieting/eating disorders. My intention behind these articles is to educate and create awareness about the toxicity of die(t) cult(ure) and the reality of eating disorders — which can easily develop as a result of dieting/weight loss.
This is Angela’s story.
Please could you tell me a little about your history with dieting/ED?
“I had an eating disorder for twenty five years, then I spent two years in quasi-recovery, and now in full recovery for nine and a half months. I see a therapist once a week. At the start of “All In” I was doing pretty well; there have been some stressful things happening, such as my mum getting COVID and going into hospital (she is out and fine now) and my 90 year old nanny who lives by herself. I have been able to connect with family and friends through Zoom, but the constant talk of weight gain of people who are overweight being a higher risk; the praise of weight loss; the hypocrisy of body positivity and then praising weight loss; the fact that World Eating Disorders Day wasn’t mentioned anywhere on TV — even though it has the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses — it just makes me so sad and so mad.
Has isolation during COVID impacted upon your recovery/ED? If so, how?
“I had a couple of weeks where I really struggled. Trying to heal and recover with such bleak hypocritical messages makes it so much harder. Obviously I am at a point where I eat what I want and will never go back to the ED, but I see so much disordered stuff around me. I even heard a man on TV whose wife is a GP talking about how people who are overweight or obese should lose weight rapidly to save themselves from getting COVID and suggesting a diet of 800 calories ?!?! How is this possible in this day and age? He, of course, has written books he is trying to sell.
I feel very sad that people feed off of other people’s weak spots. Money and power seem to be at the root of most of these things.
So living in this safe space where no-one can see the whole of me, my body mainly, you can feel safe but when it comes to getting back out there it is going to be very testing. The ED wants to isolate you and that is how we find ourselves in the pandemic — isolated. I have found that worry about relatives and sadness over what’s happening in the world has made it harder to focus on living my life and the ED tries to distract me from stuff by drawing attention again to my body, but I have the tools to fight it. How much easier it would be to live in a world where we were all given the same opportunities. Now I have had my eyes opened, I see privilege everywhere and I see prejudice everywhere. It has to start with me. This lockdown has made me appreciative for how far I have come but also aware of how far I have to go and how scary it feels to go back into the real world — not because of COVID — but because of how I feel in my new body. How bonkers is that?!”
To what extent do you think money and power plays into diet culture? How can we address our own prejudices around bodies? To what extent is fatphobia responsible for EDs in your opinion?
“I think it is highly ironic that human beings seem to have one thing in common — we want to belong and we think that in order to do that we have to look a certain way. People want power because they think that will bring them happiness; having money is a way to get power, but it won’t bring happiness because that lies within us. Yet we are taught from a young age that our outer shells are the most important thing. Why else would we be bombarded from a young age with so many messages about looks and the importance of staying young and slim and beautiful?
Now it seems more confusing than ever because, on the one hand, we are told we should love our bodies whatever they look like, and on the other hand, we are constantly giving praise and adulation to thin, supposedly “beautiful” people, and we are also condemning fat people constantly. Everywhere on TV and in the media you see people talking about larger people and tying it up with being unfit and unhealthy. It seems to be that overweight is the worst thing you can be. I have also noticed that lately the conversation about eating disorders has got even quieter; World Eating Disorders Day and not a mention of it on TV, Mental Health Awareness Week and not a mention of it, yet there was still talk of obesity and now it’s stretched to people being overweight.
Ninety nine percent of people don’t even know where the BMI scale comes from. Of course, this is so much better for diet culture, they need people to believe they are “unworthy” and “not good enough” to keep their sales going. In the last week I have seen more adverts for Weight Watchers “reimagined” — a while ago they had to change their branding because things seem to be changing, mental health was being talked about more and people were getting upset with having to change their bodies and fail at diets — all it took was this pandemic to set us back, with all the talk of obesity and overweight people being more susceptible to COVID-19, diet culture saw its chance —
Cashing in on people’s fear to make money, and they tell themselves they are “helping people”…
So when it comes to crash diets, we lose the weight now and have a better chance with the virus, and then when the vaccine comes, or when the virus is obliterated, we have to take responsibility for keeping that weight off — which as we know is not possible — and we will feel like failures, but the people who sold us this can say, “Well it is your fault, you are the ones responsible.” It’s disgraceful and really upsetting.
Imagine if we all accepted our bodies. We need to stop seeing people as objects. We need to look at people’s unique qualities. Most of what is wrong with the world is that we like to put labels on things, and put them into groups because it makes us feel safe, but if we could look at people individually and assess them we would do better.
We need to stop praising weight loss.
We need to stop praising what is essentially people’s genetic makeup. Instead, we can praise their choices or their efforts (i.e. ‘I love that dress you’re wearing”, or, “You are so kind”). I mean surely, especially with what’s going on in the world right now, qualities like kindness, and the ability to listen would be much more beneficial things to aspire to than a small waist or long legs.
We should praise our bodies for what they can do, as opposed to how they look (e.g. on TV an Olympian runner should be praised for working hard to get that gold, not for losing weight or looking good).
Fatphobia has come from fear; people wanting to fit in; people wanting to be attractive to find a mate. If we are told from a very young age that fat is “bad” and “unattractive”, then why would we let ourselves be fat? If we were left alone to eat as we wished, and we didn’t receive all these messages about a “good” and “bad” body, about “good” and “bad” foods, we would all be a lot happier; but people need to make money, and people are fearful.
We need the people who are brave to stand up to it. People who have recovered from eating disorders are some of the bravest people I know — to do the opposite of what you have been brainwashed to do for years is a very hard thing to do.
I was told I was “too fat” to wear a dance costume when I was a teenager; I was told this by my dance teacher in front of all the other dancers. I was called “podge” as a child and if I complained about this, I was called a tell-tale and told to ignore it. I was told by an ex-boyfriend that if I went above a size twelve, he would dump me. I was told by a doctor when I was begging for help with an ED, that I would “be okay”. I was told by another doctor I “looked” healthy. People say to other people every day, “You look well”, “You look healthy”; when will they understand that you can’t assess someone’s health by looking at them?
If we weren’t fatphobic, and we accepted different sized bodies, then it would drive eating disorders right down.
There would still be a problem however because people still get ill, and could lose weight through illness, mental or physical, and that will send them into energy deficit — which will bring on an eating disorder in those who are predisposed to it. However, recovering from an eating disorder in a non-fatphobic society would be much easier, and many people wouldn’t get an ED because their weight would stay at their set point — the optimal weight for their body.”
What does recovery from an ED look like? What does one need to do in order to recover?
“Recovery from an ED is different for everyone, but one thing that seems to be true for everyone is that it is messy and very hard. You are having to fight against a world that is talking about weight loss, and a world that holds up thin bodies to be idolised. Triggers are everywhere. It means you have to let go of all the things you used to help you feel safe.
It is somewhat like a person who has been incarcerated — at first the world is a scary place and they are used to rules and regulations. When the rules are gone there is freedom, but before you get to the freedom you have to find a way to live without the rules to guide you.
Recovery means waking up everyday and saying no to all the rules and regulations the ED has put in place. It is fighting hard against all the constant triggers out there. It is doing the very thing you are most scared of and trusting that you will eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is working hard everyday to shut down negative thoughts.
In an ideal world you need help and support — a nutritionist, a therapist, friends and family to stand by you. In reality many people have to do it alone. I had a therapist, and I researched, and I found Tabitha Farrar, whose videos are inspiring and helpful — she was the one person that seemed to give me unconditional permission to eat, no matter what; that is what I needed to hear. I then had to sit myself down — like a child — and force food into my mouth. I often cried through meals. Only after I started eating more through force-feeding did I realise how starving I was, and how exhausted I was.
You have to decide you want to recover, then you have to make a commitment to recover, and to eat to the minimum guidelines and beyond, and to never restrict again. This may seem to some people like an easy thing — a wonderful thing — but to someone whose biggest fear has become eating food, this is like facing your biggest fear everyday. Gradually the anxiety lessens, but you don’t have rest days, and clearly you can’t avoid food!
This is definitely the hardest thing I have ever done, and to do it surrounded by people who don’t get it makes it even harder; which is why it is so important to have a support system, and to find people in support groups who are going through the same thing.
But it is also important to recognise the difference between quasi-recovery and real ‘All In’ recovery. ‘All-in’ recovery is the only thing that makes the ED voice go away. I have no regrets about going ‘All In’, even though I have put on a lot of weight. I am now considered overweight (by the BMI which we know is rubbish), yet my mind is clearer than ever; I am more productive; my relationships are better; and I am all round happier. I struggle still and have bad days — like everyone does — but I can handle them and I no longer punish my body in these moments.”
We need to stop torturing our bodies. You cannot heal from a restrictive eating disorder by restricting.
Can you please explain what “quasi-recovery” and “All In” is for people who are unaware?
“My eating disorder meant that I had many rules around eating — how much I could eat; what I could eat; when I could eat. When I wanted to recover, I went into quasi-recovery where I challenged those behaviours. I tried to eat more different kinds of food, food deemed “bad” by diet culture, food “off limits” in my eating disorder — such as chocolate, desserts or curry.
I found that diet culture gradually made more things “bad”, like potatoes — which meant my foods became more and more limiting. I believed diet culture when it said, “Potatoes make you fat” and fat was to be avoided at all costs. I didn’t understand about food, nutrition and about fat being needed. I ate everything low fat and low calorie, so quasi-recovery was about breaking some rules. I also exercised every day in order to work off calories so I could eat. I tried to exercise less and less. I also tried to eat more. I then realised that I was doing all these things but they were causing me great stress and the ED voice (in my head telling me not to eat this or that because I mustn’t get fat) was really loud.
It felt like I was working hard for not much reward.
“All In” for me was giving in to my body. After breaking the cycle of exercise it seemed clearer to me what I had to do. One day, I sat myself down and I decided enough was enough, so I ate and I ate and my appetite was ferocious! I realised after twenty seven years of massively under-eating, I had a lot of eating to do to catch up to where my body should be. I also felt exhausted and allowed myself to be exhausted. I couldn’t have done any exercise if I had tried, to be honest! So “All In” was following my mental and physical hunger every moment of every day, and also stopping the exercise altogether.
My whole body felt bruised and I couldn’t even shower for the first couple of weeks. It was like everything I had put my body through caught up with me and knocked me out. Every time I thought of food, I ate and I ate a lot. But something within me just knew this was what I needed. Gradually, as time went by, my appetite decreased and I felt able to do things — like having a shower, for example. Gradually I started to feel stronger again . Seeing my body in the mirror was so hard because I gained weight very quickly (I didn’t weigh myself. I knew this due to my clothes). I threw all my sick clothes out!”
What do you think is the best part of rejecting diet culture?
“The best part of rejecting diet culture is being present and feeling free to live your life, to connect with others, to be flexible; if a friend phones and wants a chat, I can chat and enjoy that connection without hinting about when I can workout, or how long till my next meal, or how many calories is in a pea.”
You actually have time to listen and connect with people, and that to me is precious, it’s what life is all about. What’s the point of having an “amazing body” if you don’t have time to connect with people?
And what was the worst part of developing an ED?
“The worst part of developing an ED was the feeling of being alone; of not being normal; of not being understood; of feeling like you are being held captive by a viscous, abusive, unrelenting bully who no one knows about, and no one can see. It is also thinking that the ED is your fault. Once you understand it’s not your fault, it is easier to ask for help.”
What advice would you give to someone who is in pursuit of weight loss?
“I would honestly want to sit down with them and have a long chat explaining the nightmare I have been through; how isolating and lonely it is to have an eating disorder; how it gradually takes away your life from you; how ashamed it makes you feel.
As someone who has spent twenty five years of her life in misery, trying to change her body in order to be happy, I can tell you that the sooner you accept your body, the sooner you will find that happiness you were looking for.
Don’t try to force your body into being something it is not. Be you, be unique. Do your research and learn from other people’s experience. “Follow the science” is something we have heard a lot lately, and that is what I implore you to do.
Look at the evidence — diets don’t work in the long-term. They are a short-term fix, and do nothing for your health. True happiness comes from within.
Are you willing to risk getting a life-threatening eating disorder? Are you willing to lose weight only to gain it back, and more? Are you willing to risk your fertility? Are you willing to ruin your digestive system? Are you willing to be moody, miserable, and sad? Are you willing to risk relationships? Are you willing to devote time and effort to changing your body, when there was nothing wrong with it in the first place? Do you want to be healthy, or do you want to look a certain way? What are your values? Are you looking for someone who is a perfect weight? When you get to the weight you want to get to, what then? Do you think you will find happiness just like that? Are you crazy?” | https://medium.com/@rejectingdietculture/edtoo-interviews-angela-anderson-92fdb308598b | ['Rejecting Die T', 'Cult Ure'] | 2020-06-14 09:31:05.546000+00:00 | ['Interview', 'Body Positive', 'Health', 'Recovery', 'Eating Disorders'] |
Research for Design — Part 5 | In this Research for Design project, I have tried out many different methods to acquire information and to fulfill my expectations and goals. Hanington & Martin’s Universal Methods of Design have been helpful in assisting me in finding methods that are the best fits for my project. Additionally, I also applied research methods - for example, the 50 renderings - that I have learnt from my previous projects to this one. I made a mess map with Kumu, a stakeholder map on Mural, and a lipstick consumption keyword map. The most exciting parts of this project were my communications and interactions with my stakeholders. Those were really interesting experiences; I designed questions, conducted video interviews, and also created face mask renderings based on people’s feedback. All these attempts were very important for me to better understand consumers’ needs and expectations in the market.
So to speak, the part that we shared our 20 renderings with our research participants and asked for their feedback was necessary. After analyzing people’s choices, we found that the most wanted qualities of a face mask were transparency, innovative technology, convenience, and simplicity. Along the process, I also acquired some surprising yet thoughtful responses from people. One participant told me he preferred designs that showed more diversity and inclusion. He raised example how a transparent mask would be much more convenient for deaf people who rely on lip readings. That really got me into thinking that a qualified and successful design should be able to understand and customize individual need.
In this last part of the project, we created two final prototypes of our ideal face masks through different media forms. Since the ultimate purpose of the project is to create a mask that will work for lipstick lover and user, we ended up creating advertisements that are expected to attract consumers’ attentions and market the products.
My partner Houming created a video that is a mix of lipstick and face mask advertisements, imagining a future that face mask becomes a trend, an aesthetic, and a norm as well as a world where lipstick goes well with face covering.
Video made by my project partner, Houming.
Link to the video here👇:
On my end, I have acquired my inspirations from American vintage ads and decided to transform two into a sort of modern pop vintage ad poster. The original posters that I used were J. Howard Miller’s famous Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It!” and a Max Factor lipstick ad (specific date unknown).
Based on the feedback we collected from our participants last week, we designed two new face mask designs that have combined all the desired qualities. I transferred the designs onto the vintage ad and poster and played around with the contents in the original works.
It is really fun to see the collision of old-fashioned-ness and modernity. The vintage poster and ad provide our designs agencies, while at the same time, our designs give these slowly fading artifacts new forms and meanings.
Designs of masks and reinterpretations on vintage ad and poster:
Two new designs of the ideal lipstick-friendly face covering.
The 3-in-1 mask in Rosie the Riveter. | https://medium.com/@padmayyang96/research-for-design-part-5-21ccbeaf7026 | ['Padma Yawen Yang'] | 2021-05-03 23:26:32.466000+00:00 | ['Vintage', 'Design', 'Masks', 'Advertisement', 'Prototype'] |
Soon We’ll All Be Dust | Photo by Billy Huynh on Unsplash
I don’t understand why more people don’t realize soon we’ll all be dust. I mean really, this whole experience we’re having ends with each and every single one of us decomposing or being incinerated. It’s just a matter of time really, and now that we’ve entered into apocalypse territory it could be sooner than later. If you’re lucky it’ll be quick, but more than likely for many of us it will be long and slow as we watch our species and all the others slowly die. But whether our demise is near or far, the result is the same — dust. Dust for you, dust for me, dust for the whole planet when the sun runs out of hydrogen 5 billion years from now.
We’re so easily distracted from this truth. You’d think we could get along better knowing that all of our bones will soon be dust, yet we are so easily angered by one another. We get upset at the barista who’s taking her sweet ass time making our latte because we are late, and she should know we are late because this is New York and everyone is late. How does she not know this? And yet, how do we not know, how do we not feel in our bones that the Earth — the rock we grew from, is merely hurtling through space towards nothing, and that the all encompassing Universe doesn’t give one fuck or two about our latte, or our being late.
We’re all just walking around stressed about everything; the minutes, the hours, the weather, why Henry — that guy who’s an “actor” which really means “bartender” who we met on Tinder isn’t texting us back. And all the while no one is really thinking about how the remains of our body may sit on someone’s fireplace someday. If fireplaces should still exist in the not far off dystopian future we’re heading towards. It’s absurd. Like, instead of being upset at Henry, we could realize in reality he’ll be dead soon. And when we accept this, we can almost kind of forgive him. We can almost kind of sympathize with him, because we’ll be dead, too. Heck, maybe we should just show up at Henry’s “job” and tell him we love him and that we are here for him because our time is running out!
Okay, okay. Maybe we don’t need to be so dramatic about it, but then again maybe we do. Maybe if we understood that each and every single one of us is suffering from the same fate; that we are living creatures who know their own demise, we could better extend our grace and compassion to one another. Maybe if we took the time to truly listen to what the other soon-to-be-bag-of-dust is going through in front of us, we’d better understand why they are the way they are — and that it’s okay. Maybe if we realized that to be alive is both rare and abundant, and ending one moment at a time, we would value it in an entirely different manner.
I cannot be sure, all I know is that I think about my own demise quite often, thus forcing me to think about others’ as well. And in doing this I manage to find something I can share with each and every single one of my fellow humans. That we all live and we all die, and that in between these points there are much more important things than petty arguing, lattes, and fucking strangers from Tinder. And yet, these things are just part of the program as well. Perhaps everything has its weird meaningless little place wedged between what actually matters. Maybe nothing matters, except the things that do, and we get to decide those things. Perhaps to be aware of this is the key. But really, what do I know? I’m just billions of years of evolution like everything else who will soon be dust in the wind, just like you. | https://medium.com/@slamantha-morgan/soon-well-all-be-dust-ce1f7ad80d63 | ['Samantha Morgan'] | 2020-12-02 20:04:46.309000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Existentialism', 'Optimism', 'Nihilism', 'Short Read'] |
What is Dartmoor gravel? | What is Dartmoor gravel?
Living on Dartmoor makes riding a bike so much easier for me. Not in the easy riding perspective, but the simple fact that I ride from my house as I literally live on Dartmoor National Park. But I can also drive only 30 minutes and I am in a very different part of Dartmoor without having to get on a motorway to get here or there.
However, Dartmoor can be very bleak. It has one of the remotest parts of England (based on distance from a road). It has some of the highest rainfall. The highest brewery. The highest and very bleak and inhospitable Dartmoor prison! Ghosts and ghouls galore, or so local people will tell you. But no matter how accurate these “facts”” might be, I can tell you categorically that navigation on Dartmoor can be VERY hard in the wrong weather. And the lovely looking bridleways on your map can turn out to be deep bogs that are virtually unwalkable let alone rideable.
Local knowledge
As you’d expect though, in amongst the mists of doom lurk many mystical gravel tracks, but they take time to find and turn into gravel biking routes. Which is what lockdown allowed me to do. Hunt down the best gravel tracks and create routes you can ride. Admittedly I have used some tarmac to link tracks together, and there are some grades of gravel that some would declare as rocks, but for every walk, push, carry or crash, there’s a prize to be earned.
Maybe an amazing descent. Or solitude. Or ancient history. A babbling brook or a raging river. Dartmoor has it all.
From the 130 mile Dartmoor 130 to the Princetown high routes along old railway lines (now perfect gravel), I have put together a year of lockdown riding into a series of routes that can all be enjoyed, and endured in places, on a gravel bike. They can of course be ridden on a mountain bike, but anything more than a hardtail with 100mm suspension forks would be overkill. There are other routes for MTBers, like The Killer Loop! (not one of mine though)
As I expand this guide I’ll be adding:
Campsites.
Cafes.
Places to stay.
Things to see. | https://medium.com/dartmoor-gravel-bike-guide/what-is-dartmoor-gravel-f582ac4ed16b | ['Peter Gold'] | 2021-03-29 11:13:32.884000+00:00 | ['Dartmoor', 'Gravel Bikes', 'Travel', 'Bikepacking', 'Random'] |
We will have no other choice but to rebuild Human society based on Nature’s template | Question from the Internet:
“How do you expect society, culture, and politics to change over the next decade?”
I expect all the present governing, economic, social structures and ideologies to fall apart and disappear, as they are all built by/for our inherently self-centered, self-serving and subjective nature.
And as such they are incompatible with Nature’s fully integrated, interdependent system which is now forcing us — according to evolution’s relentless direction — to become compatible by achieving integration within global Human society.
So — either through increasing blows, intolerable suffering, or as a result of a unique, purposeful and practical educational method — Human society will transform into a fully integrated, mutually responsible, mutually complementing global network.
We will have no other choice but to rebuild our relationships, environments using Nature’s perfect template.
https://youtu.be/2dzpfbW7YF8 | https://medium.com/@samechphoto/we-will-have-no-other-choice-but-to-rebuild-human-society-based-on-natures-template-b960673ee271 | ['Zsolt Hermann'] | 2020-12-27 21:32:07.767000+00:00 | ['Humanity', 'Nature', 'Education', 'Connection', 'Society'] |
How Swift API Availability Works Internally | Type Refinement Contexts for AST Nodes
Naturally, checking if a symbol you’re calling is available for usage falls into that phase. The compiler does it by building Type Refinement Contexts, which are special structures that can hold any relevant additional information that a scope should have. Currently, this is only used for the very symbol availability we’re interested in.
The process starts when the compiler wants to type-check a statement that contains an availability check. Let’s take this one as an example:
if #available(iOS 14.0, *) { } else { }
At this phase, the purpose of the compiler is to search for any availability conditions and build a proper refinement context if needed. For every condition, the compiler will extract the currently-being-built platform from the condition and attempt to build a range of available version numbers. In this case, the range will simply be minimumTarget...iOS 14 , while the else branch will keep whatever its parent refinement context was unless your condition is checking for something lower than the current context (which would reduce it instead).
The main refinement context allows you to freely use anything up to your app's minimum deployment target, which is why you don't need to bother with these checks when you have a sufficiently high deployment target.
if #available(iOS 14.0, *) {
// Symbol Availability: minimumTarget...iOS 14
} else {
// Symbol Availability: 0...minimumTarget (The default)
}
The fact that it works with ranges makes it possible for it to locate potentially useless checks. If a condition’s range is completely contained by the current context, the compiler will ignore it and display a warning:
When the refinement contexts for each scope are determined, the compiler will associate it with the current statement’s AST node and use it for any future availability checks. The refinement contexts are built like trees (where a context has a pointer to its parent), but they are used as a stack. As the compiler traverses your code, these refinement contexts will get pushed and popped as needed:
While the outer else scope will make no changes to availability, the inner else scope will keep the increased iOS 9 availability, as that was the current refinement context at the time. Here’s a visual example of how this works in practice:
Everything shown here also applies to guard statements, except in that case, the positive availability changes are applied to what's left of the current scope.
guard #available(iOS 14, *) else {
// Symbol Availability: 0...minimumTarget (The default)
return
}
// Symbol Availability: minimumTarget...iOS 14
This process involving refinement contexts is precisely why you can’t use availability conditions outside of statements like this: | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-swift-api-availability-works-internally-a0bd8ebbefcf | ['Bruno Rocha'] | 2020-10-01 16:24:31.596000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Xcode', 'Swift', 'Programming', 'Mobile'] |
Multi-Object tracking is hard, and maintaining privacy while doing it is even harder! | Tracking in Computer Vision is the task of estimating an object’s trajectory throughout an image sequence. To track an individual object, we need to identify the object from one image to another and recognize it among distractors.
There are a number of techniques we can use to remove distractors, such as background subtraction, but we’re primarily interested here in the tracking technique known as tracking by detection. In this paradigm, we first try to detect the object in the image, and then we try to associate the objects we detect in subsequent frames. Distinguishing the target object from distractor objects is then part of an association problem — and this can get complicated! You can think of it like “connecting the dots” — which is exponentially more challenging when there are many dots representing many different objects in the same scene. For example, if we want to track a specific car in a parking lot, it’s not enough just to have a really good car detector; we need to be able to tell apart the car of interest from all the other cars in the image. To do so, we might compute some appearance features that allow us to identify the same car from image to image. Alternatively, we can try to track all the other cars, too — turning the problem into a Multi-Object Tracking task. This approach enables more accurate tracking by detection with weaker appearance models, and it allows us to track every object of a category without choosing a single target a priori.
In these figures, we’re trying to track two red dots, simultaneously detected over 4 consecutive frames (t=1,2,3,4). But with only the position and time of detection as information, there are two different sets of trajectories that are acceptable solutions. The two dots may cross paths while maintaining a straight motion like in the left image, or they may avoid each other turning in opposite directions, like in the image on the right. If we were only interested in tracking one of the two dots, the second one would act as a distractor potentially causing a tracking error.
What are the current approaches?
As a still largely unsolved and active area of research, there’s an extensive literature covering different approaches to multi-object tracking. Since 2014, there has even been a standard benchmark in the field, called the Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) Challenge, which maintains datasets that researchers and individuals can use to benchmark their algorithms. We’ll discuss a few common approaches here and present them in a simplified way, but this is far from an exhaustive list. For more, we suggest the following survey from 2017 by Leal-Taixé Laura et al..
Kalman Filtering and Hungarian algorithm
One of the simplest approaches is to try matching detections between adjacent frames, which can be formulated as an assignment problem. In its simplest form, for each object detected at time t, a matching distance is computed with each object detected at time t+1. The matching distance can be a simple intersection-over-union between bounding boxes, or it could include an appearance model to be more robust. An optimization algorithm called the Hungarian algorithm is then used to find the assignment solution that minimizes the sum of all the matching distances. In addition, since most of the objects we are trying to track are moving, rather than comparing the new detection’s position to the tracks most recent known locations, it works better to use the track position history to predict where the object was going. In order to integrate the different uncertainties from this kinematic model and the noise from the detector, a filtering framework is often used, such as a Kalman Filter or Particle Filter.
A more complex but straightforward extension to this approach is to search for an optimal solution over a higher number of frames. One possible way is to use a hierarchical model. For example, we can compute small tracklets between adjacent frames over short, non-overlapping segments, and then try to match tracklets between consecutive segments. The Hungarian algorithm can be used again if we can come up with a good distance-matching function between tracklets.
Multi Hypothesis
Another possible approach is to maintain, for each original detection as a starting point, a graph of possible trajectories. Detections are represented by nodes in the tree and each path on that tree is a track hypothesis. Two hypotheses that share a detection are in conflict and the problem can then be reformulated as finding an independent set that maximizes a confidence score.
Let’s imagine the simple case above, where two objects are being detected during three consecutive frames. Each node corresponds to a detection, and the nodes are vertically aligned with the frame they have been detected in. An edge between two nodes corresponds to a possible association and the number next to the edge measures the matching distance between detections (lower value means the two detections are more similar). It is common if the dissimilarity between two detections is above a threshold, to consider the association completely impossible. This is why here, there is no edge between nodes E and C. Node D however, could be associated either to B or E in the next frame, and the decision will be made using the matching distance. Therefore, each path on this graph corresponds to a track hypothesis, and here it should be easy to see that the optimal solution is obtained with two tracks: A–>B–>C (ABC) and D–>E–>F (DEF). There is however another acceptable solution: AEF and DBC. However, the track hypothesis DBF prevents any other complete trajectory starting from A, as track hypothesis in order to be compatible, must not share any node, and from node E, we can only go to F.
The figure below is a new graph representing each track hypothesis with a node. There is also an edge between two nodes if the track hypotheses are in conflict, that is, if they share one or more detections. For example, there is an edge between nodes ABC and DBF, as they share the detection B. But, hypotheses ABC and DEF are not linked with an edge, and so they are compatible.
The idea is to list all the independent sets in this graph and this would give us all the possible solutions to our association problem, and there are efficient algorithms in graph theory that allow us to do just that.
Here the independent sets are:
{ABC, DEF}
{AEF, DBC}
We just need to choose now between these two solutions. We can sum all the matching distances in a track hypothesis to get the track hypothesis cost, and sum all the track hypothesis costs in a set to get the sets cost.
{ABC, DEF}
ABC:Cost=0.1+0.1=0.2
DEF:Cost=0.1+0.1=0.2
{ABC, DEF}: Cost=0.2+0.2=0.4
{AEF, DBC}
AEF:Cost=5+0.1=5.1
DBC:Cost=5+0.1=5.1
{AEF, DBC}Cost=5.1+5.1=10.2
{ABC, DEF} with a cost of 0.4 is then retained as the optimal solution.
If you want to know more about Multi-Hypothesis Tracking, a more detailed description of an implementation by Chanho et al, can be read here.
Network flow formulation
The data association problem can also be formulated as a network flow. A unit of flow from the source to the sink represents a track, and the global optimal solution is the flow configuration that minimizes the overall cost. Intuitively, finding the best tracking solution as an association between objects can be seen as solving the K disjoint path on a graph, where nodes are detections and edge weights are the affinity between two detections. This is another one of the well-studied optimization problems in graph theory.
Going back to our previous association problem, we can add imaginary starting and destination points, respectively S and T. We are now looking for the two shortest paths from S to T, that do not share any nodes. Again the solution will be SABCT and SDEFT. Another way to look at it is to imagine the node S as a source that sends a flow through the network. Each edge as a capacity (here it is 1 because we want non overlapping trajectory) and a cost, and solving the association problem becomes equivalent to minimizing the overall cost for a given amount of flow. For instance, here we are trying to send 2 units of flow from the sink (S) to the tank (T). One unit will go through ABC, the other through DEF, for a total cost of 0.4. But we could also have sent the same amount of flow (2) by sending one unit through DBC and another one through AEF, except the cost would be 10.2 and so {SABCT, SDEFT} is retained as the optimal solution.
Again, for a more detailed description of an implementation of Network flow for tracking, you can find an example here by Zhang et al.
Why is this so hard?
Researchers have made some incredible advances in object detection and recognition in the past few years, thanks in large part to the emergence of Deep Learning. Now it’s possible to detect and classify hundreds of different objects in a single image with very high accuracy. But multi-object tracking is still extremely challenging, due to a number of problems:
Occlusions:
In crowded or other complex scene settings, it’s very common that an object of interest would have its trajectory partially occluded, either by an element of the background (fixed environment/scene), like a pole or a tree, or by another object. A multi-object tracking algorithm needs to account for the possibility that an object may disappear and later reappear in an image sequence, to be able to re-associate that object to its prior trajectory. | https://medium.com/numina/multi-object-tracking-is-hard-and-maintaining-privacy-while-doing-it-is-even-harder-c288ccbc9c40 | ['Raphael Viguier'] | 2019-11-08 17:24:11.177000+00:00 | ['Privacy By Design', 'Engineering', 'Tracking', 'Computer Vision', 'Algorithms'] |
Navigating complex prototypes in Figma | Navigating complex prototypes in Figma
When committed to creating detailed prototypes in Figma, things can easily get messy, especially if you have all your frames within the same file. While I was designing a complex web app for managing annual salary reviews, I avoided this problem thanks to user stories.
70% of the design file
User story is a key component of agile software development, because agile puts people first, and a user story puts end users at the center of the conversation. This is why user stories had already had their place in the project documentation as I started prototyping.
The structure is pretty simple and straightforward. I created one prototype flow for each low-level user story. Then, to navigate between the stories, I created a landing page with a list of stories that are linked to individual flows. As the number of flows and users increased, a higher level landing page was added. After we headed for development, some edge cases emerged and to address, I dedicated a section to cover these cases. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/navigating-complex-prototypes-in-figma-d791b65af4d4 | ['Can Aslan'] | 2020-12-21 02:06:15.597000+00:00 | ['UI Design', 'Prototyping', 'UX', 'Figma', 'Resources'] |
Cruising for Culture | Like many who cruise, my first adventure on the seas had two purposes: walking the beaches of a tropical island and partying. That first cruise left me, husband Gary, and our cruise companion Chuck madly, stupidly in love with the sea. For years afterward, cruising for us was more about hauling scuba gear off at each port to explore the depths of the blue than about anything else. We even took our gear on a luxury cruise in the Mediterranean in order to dive there.
It wasn’t until later, on that same Mediterranean cruise, as we stood in awe amid the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Ephesus near the Turkish port of Kusadasi, that we realized that while we had been under water all those years, the cruise industry had quietly morphed into a hybrid of its early, European roots and modern tourism, where exploration of everything the world has to offer IS the culture.
The beginnings
The idea of cruising for pleasure was first initiated in 1822 by the Peninsular & Oriental Company (P&O) carrying highbrow British passengers on cultural excursions to first Portugal and Spain, and eventually as far as Athens and Constantinople. But ocean-going passenger ships were primarily engaged in transportation, not tourism, through that century and half of the next.
Crossing the Atlantic in the late 1800s and early 1900s was arduous for lower class passengers emigrating, primarily from Europe to the Americas. But for upper-class travelers, transportation across the sea came with as much culture as ship designers could burden their ships with in an effort to break up what might otherwise be a dreary voyage for the passengers paying the highest fares. Accommodations and public spaces in the upper decks of ships like Queen Mary and Titanic were adorned with art and populated with entertainers of all variety.
Two world wars and subsequent tightening of immigration laws in the United States forced ocean liners to begin the slow transition to tourism, at first targeting only the wealthy, who expected their journey on the ocean to be a heady cultural experience. It was not until the early 1970s, when Carnival Cruise Line transformed two former ocean liners into its first “Fun Ships,” that pleasure cruising became a reality for the middle-class.
That first, life-changing cruise I took was onboard one of those first fun ships: Carnivale.
Culture re-invented
Though the repurposed ocean liners that began the North American cruise fleet retained some of the grace and culture of the previous century, the companies engaged in this new endeavor envisioned a far more modern experience. As new ships were built with the sole purpose of cruise tourism, ships became more activity-oriented, with art and décor reflecting the popular culture of the time — in other words, lots of glass, shiny metals, and bright colors. Entertainment revolved around flashy Las Vegas-style stage shows and booze. Lots of profit-generating booze.
Five decades later, some of that still holds true, but with a far broader definition of what “popular culture” means to a broader set of passenger demographics. Today’s mega-sized ships might include art auctions, classical music performances, and wine tastings along with belly flop contests at the pool and bingo every afternoon in one of the ship’s bars. A single ship might offer a range of excursions from four-wheeling in the mud to golfing to museum or historical site tours.
Pick your size and style
Mainstream cruise lines (Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Princess, Holland America, Celebrity, and MSC) sail large ships catering to a broad customer base, both in ship design and in cultural offerings.
Smaller niche cruise lines target narrower demographics and often with a narrower cultural focus. Think adults (no children allowed) on educational holidays for Viking and Windstar, outdoorsy adventure types on lines with expedition ships like Silversea, Hurtigruten, Quark, and UnCruise, or European explorers on river cruises like Amawaterways, Avalon, Tauck, and Emerald Waterways.
Pick a theme
Theme cruises drill down even deeper across all classes and sizes of cruise ships, targeting wine lovers, craft beer connoisseurs, art enthusiasts, photographers and lovers of all variety of music.
Musical offerings have expanded over the past two decades to include full-ship, cruise-long music festivals, with themes ranging from classic rock to jazz to country and western. Pick a popular music category and you can probably find a cruise that focuses on it. Big-name performers with cruise concert credits include Alabama, Jon Bon Jovi, Kesha, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Melissa Etheridge, Nelly, and Peter Frampton, amid an ever-growing list. There’s even a Broadway-themed cruise if that’s your thing.
Pick your favorite TV show
Television-flavored cruises include Bravo’s Top Chef at Sea on select Celebrity sailings. Trekkies have Star Trek the Cruise, now in its 25th year. Viking River Cruises gives Downton Abbey fans unique opportunities to experience the show’s shooting locations, including Highclere Castle. Plus, in case you didn’t know it, there’s one cruise ship that is 100% television and movie-themed — Disney Cruise Line.
You can always create your own cruise plan based on your favorite television: Game of Thrones lover? Visit Dubrovnik and Iceland. Crushing on The Crown? A cruise from London that includes stops in Scotland should work nicely. Survivor superfan? Try Fiji, Palau, or the Philippines for starters. The backdrops of Hawaii 5–0 are easy to visit on any Hawaiian cruise. And the list of Alaska-based television shows you can step into from your Alaska cruise is lengthy: Deadliest Catch, Bearing Sea Gold, and Life Below Zero, to name a few.
Choose your spot on the globe
Perhaps the greatest expansion of culture by cruise ship in this decade is the ability to cruise to almost any spot on the globe that is accessible to a body of water, and it doesn’t even need to be a large body of water. Barge cruising features boats that cruise the small waterways of Europe, Africa, and South America, some with no more than 6 or 8 passengers.
The takeaway
Cruising enticed me to the sea where it opened my eyes, first under the waves and then amid the ruins of past civilizations in a way that I could never have imagined. Sure, today you can sit on your couch and virtually visit many of the things I have seen, but I can pretty much guarantee that doing so will not change you. It does not move you physically, nor is it likely to move you emotionally, at least not for more than a moment. Cruising has the ability to put you smack dab in the middle of new places and new experiences shared with new people in your life. And that, my friend, is where culture is. | https://medium.com/the-culture-corner/cruising-for-culture-caa07e5b3498 | ['Melinda Crow'] | 2019-12-22 14:01:01.384000+00:00 | ['Cruising And Destinations', 'Music', 'Travel', 'Television', 'Culture'] |
Unity and Resistance: The Message of Bad Brains | “The punk music of England was informative,” guitarist Dr. Know said in the 2012 documentary Bad Brains: A Band In D.C., “but it was more like, you know, ‘Fuck this, fuck that.’ We wanted to try and give an alternative and unify the people: ‘Yes, we can make a change if we unify people,’ as opposed to just saying, you know, ‘This is screwed up, and that is screwed up, and that’s just the way it is.’ I think that was the difference, initially, in our message: just being positive as opposed to destructive.”
“When we first came out, [punk] was kind of on some vulgar shit,” Jenifer told one interviewer. “We started kicking PMA in our music, and the message was different than the regular punk rock. You know, a punk rocker can write a song about hate — I hate my mom or some shit, you know? We wasn’t on no shit like that. Some kids who wanted to see some regular shit saw us, and every kid’s heart and mind was opened. It’s like you’re just going to see some regular reggae music, and Bob Marley is playing. You might walk away from that and go, ‘Damn, that’s some consciousness in this music.’ When we would play, you’d see, [sings] ‘I got that PMA,’ and there was a whole mode of consciousness that was coming through it.”
PMA comes from Napoleon Hill’s 1937 self-improvement book Think and Grow Rich, which claims “Nothing great was ever achieved without a positive mental attitude.” Hill presented billionaire industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie as a model for how ordinary Americans could use positive thinking to achieve both financial and personal greatness — not by simply visualizing ones’ own success to make it come true, but actually living with what he called a Positive Mental Attitude. HR’s dad gave him a copy of Hill’s book. “And it made sense,” HR said in Bad Brains: A Band In D.C., “to stay positive, not to worry, and it would show how people who refrain from living violently will get a good response.” Part of the message for HR was the importance of having something to believe in. Decades after first reading that book, HR still had a key quote memorized: “Anything the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”
“The philosophy in essence, man,” Earl Hudson said, “was really about God, about the Lord, but it also was a thing where you have to make a plan in life, and you have to visualize this plan. But it was all about keeping a Positive Mental Attitude, you know?”
“What we discovered was PMA was really the Great Spirit,” Jenifer said. (Wax Poetics) “PMA — that was big on us. That would keep us cool in the hood. And then, guess what PMA was? It was Rasta. It’s like an advancement of a concept about making money being pushed into, ‘Okay, now there’s a Black Jesus,’ so to speak — something I can identify with in terms of spirituality.”
When their spirituality and ideology fused with fast music in the early 80s, it became what their live EP called “spirit electricity,” and what Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid called “a kind of spiritual anarchy” that “was literally a religious experience.”
John Joseph, singer of the New York hardcore band Cro-Mags, personally witnessed HR’s religious devotion in Bad Brains’ early days. “He traveled with such a conviction, spiritually,” Joseph said, “to his beliefs, and lived it. He wasn’t just talkin’ shit. He was livin’ it. He was getting up every day and meditating and reading the bible and living the life.” (Finding Joseph I)
Singer Israel Joseph, HR’s brief replacement in Bad Brains, said, “Now what is HR? A prophet, a man who leads people spiritually. He is a shaman.” (Finding Joseph I)
“Just like what Bob [Marley] shows us,” HR said in a 1989 interview, “music is gonna teach the people a lesson.”
Classic Bad Brains song titles like “Rock for Light,” “Coptic Times,” and “Right Brigade” convey a clear sense of cosmic purpose. Many songs like “The Big Takeover” position the band against oppression and fascism, and challenge everything that is so fundamental and flawed about America: racism, classism, materialism, and spiritual vacancy.
On recording of a 1985 show in San Diego, a voice that sounds like Darryl Jenifer’s tells the crowd: “We’re mad because there are still slaves on the planet, so …Just know that if you want.” They tear into “The Big Takeover.”
All throughout this so called nation Prepare yourself for that final quest The world is doomed with its own segregation Just another Nazi test, yeah. The big takeover
In addition to the actual enslavement, possession, and subjugation of Black people, too many of us so-called “free” people remain slaves to our ideas, our wealth, greed, hatred, complacency, and possessions. That capitalistic, materialistic life is a fantasy that HR compared to “living in a movie.” Many lyrics were calls to action, like “At the Movies,” which encouraged listeners to dismantle the fantasies Americans hid themselves inside: “Doesn’t matter what they say, never give in, never give in.”
At Pitchfork Eric Carr described the 1979 song “Pay to Cum” as the band’s “famously anthemic, idealistic tirade against systems of control and the prevention of free expression.”
In “Fearless Vampire Killers,” HR builds his lyrics around Karl Marx’s infamous comparison of capitalism to vampirism. “Capital is dead labor,” Marx wrote, “which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” HR sings:
The bourgeoisie had better watch out for me All throughout this so called nation We don’t want your filthy money We don’t need your innocent bloodshed We just wanna end your world
HR’s indictment of American capitalism and me-me-me culture in “I Against I” still ring too true:
In the quest for the test to fulfill an achievement Everybody’s only in it all for themselves When the fact of the matter is they just don’t care To extend a helping hand to anyone else So tell me why, did you have to lie And try to make me all confused about the U.S.A. When the fact of the matter is you just don’t care To comprehend or understand a single word I say
In addition to being a formidable lyricist, HR was one of the greatest lead singers in the history of rock music. “Nobody sounded like him,” producer Ron St. Germain said in Finding Joseph I. “Nobody moved like him.” Yet his unbelievable stage presence rarely gets mentioned alongside the usual greats like Iggy Pop and Prince. Lithe and aggressive, during the band’s heyday in the 1980s, HR dove off monitors, engaged audiences from the start of the first song, pounded his chest, danced so his head moved at different frequencies than his hips, legs, and hands, as he swung his dreads back and forth. Watch him move at the 7:22-minute mark at this 1987 performance. Or how he ends songs with a backflip. He did that regularly. “HR and Iggy Pop,” said Black Flag’s Henry Rollins, “to me, are the two most charismatic, I-want-to-be-that-dude frontmen I’ve ever seen.”
Along with singing, HR sometimes just spoke his message to the audience between songs, chanting: “Black and white, we come to unite! Black and white, we come to unite!”
Many of us fans received the message. The band tee I’m wearing while typing this has a small PMA patch on it, and I rarely wear band shirts. | https://aarongilbreath.medium.com/unity-and-resistance-the-message-of-bad-brains-bec653612f9a | ['Aaron Gilbreath'] | 2020-06-20 15:09:39.026000+00:00 | ['Revolution', 'Punk Rock', 'Reggae', 'Black', 'Music'] |
Give me a fireplace | Give me a fireplace
To call my home
Give me endless embraces and dreams
Let me sip the sweat of your forever tryings
Standing next to you in the clay
Of our never endings.
Copyright Roxana Ciolca | https://medium.com/@drroxi/give-me-a-fireplace-cfc5bfc63179 | [] | 2021-02-07 22:05:55.574000+00:00 | ['Air', 'Water', 'Earth', 'Neverending', 'Fire'] |
My Home Buying Journey with Toll Brothers | This will be the 5th home I am buying and wanted to share my story as i think this will be the last home.
For now this is a piece of land.
Buying a home is an emotional decision and this time our whole family liked it, below is the home which is in the community
Toll Brothers first started building in The Knolls at Tassajara Hills here in 2017 and we are the last to buy it towards the tail end in 2020 and the builder is moving out soon.
My future home in Dublin, CA
10 Things i learnt my first 2 weeks during contract
Always take your realtor with you in the first appointment and during contract signing Make an appointment before you visit Model homes have so many upgrades that you lose track, nothing including the electric panel is standard Plan to spend no less than 3 hours in the model home and figure out what you would like Eg. Model A, B, C or D Cost of home + 20% upgrades is reasonable estimate Cost per fq ft increases 12–15% year over year (Bay Area, California) Most contracts have language suitable for builder only. Eg. Always arbitrate, use our mediator etc. Deposit is 1000$ to reserve in line and contract is a week apart to pay 5% of purchase price Measuring tape, iphone for pics and measure everything windows, doors etc find an empty book and write questions for — design studio, engineer, project manager, sales office, electrical
These basic Structural upgrades are after Contract signing are another 150K
outdoor living space and deck on second floor Multi Panel stacking doors Solar Panels (mandatory in CA) Shower in lieu of Tub Water Softener loop Flat screen TV wiring + Home Theater wiring Integrated outdoor space heaters Laundry room sink & cabinets Wireless glass break detector Same stud wall wiring
Week 3 & 4
Structural appointment completed and signed an addendum via DocuSign along with 20% of the cost of down payment.
This was my feedback to SunPower
Toll Brothers IT can help their customers by providing updated master Data for contract options since it had many options which don’t exist.
Finally scheduled an appointment with Design center to have an all day appointment in early January.
Week 6 is Design Center Appointment
This is the most fun appointment and the design center consultant was super awesome to work with. There is a method to the madness and it is very organized and in this order | https://medium.com/@tollbrothershome/my-home-buying-story-with-toll-brothers-71bed7218260 | ['Krishna Yalamanchi'] | 2021-01-17 00:35:42.593000+00:00 | ['New Home Builders', 'Tassajara Hills', 'California', 'Dublin', 'Toll Brothers'] |
XinFin to Build a state-of-the-art Blockchain Lab at UC Berkeley | By Coinwire | 2 July 2018
Global open-source Hybrid Blockchain platform XinFin has announced plans of building another Network Protocol Engineering and Business Development Lab at UC Berkeley following its recent establishment of a Research and Development Protocol Lab at Temasek Launchpad, Singapore.
In an effort to pool fresh new talents and set a global approach that would catalyze the development of Hybrid Blockchain protocol, XinFin is setting up a lab in the top public university in the U.S., University of California, Berkeley. Globally regarded as one of the top ten universities in the world, UC Berkeley has produced many of the most eminent forefathers, ranging from Nobel prize winners, scientists, researchers, and global movers and shakers.
Aside from UC Berkeley, XinFin also intends to work with other prestigious universities in Northern California, as the platform aspires to build a diverse developer community in the San Francisco Bay Area. As XinFin takes another step closer towards its final objective of becoming the catalyst that would spur the evolution of Hybrid Blockchain infrastructure, the platform also aims to streamline its network, poising it for mainstream enterprise adoption with the introduction of XDC Virtual Machine, an application developed to be far more efficient for enterprises.
As UC Berkeley Blockchain Developer Alan Lai exclaimed:
“This will be a great opportunity for everyone in the bay area for they will get an opportunity to work with the revolutionary technology called XDC protocol.”
Echoing Lai’s remarks, XinFin Senior Blockchain Developer Kartikeya Bhargava also emphasized:
“It is a great coalition, considering the qualitative talent that UC Berkeley and SF bay area bring on the table, which will immensely contribute to the forthcoming technological developments and global adoption of the XDC protocol and blockchain applications.”
In addition, XinFin will also be collaborating with a number of institutions and enterprises within the area to explore Blockchain use cases that may potentially be suitable for various business areas. As the platform works towards its technology’s frictionless adoption, XinFin also aims to raise awareness vis-à-vis global trading and finance DAPPs, including the decentralized P2P marketplace platform underpinned to its Hybrid Blockchain Network, TradeFinex.
With all these new developments, XinFin hopes to see the platform’s global expansion, as it ceaselessly works to further spread its reach beyond the United States.
As XinFin Consultant and Blockchain Advisor David Freuden noted: | https://medium.com/xinfin/xinfin-to-build-state-of-the-art-blockchain-lab-at-uc-berkeley-9b313242a886 | ['Xinfin Team'] | 2018-10-22 22:22:37.076000+00:00 | ['Xinfin', 'Partnerships', 'Media', 'Blockchain'] |
Treading in Shallow Waters: The Contentious Standard of Proof in International Adjudication | Photo by Mat Reding on Unsplash
Domestic courts across the spectra of common law and civil law municipal legal systems have extensively employed specific fact-finding approaches of what is known as the rules for the admission of evidence. In terms of the evidentiary aspects, the courts at the domestic level tend to invoke burden of proof and standard of proof as appropriate tools for adjudication or fact-finding, and in light of this statement, it is critically essential to exploit and respect the municipal scholarship which forms the backbone for the development of jurisprudence in international adjudication.
To quote an example, the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter ‘ECHR’) has a substantial and cogent system of adopting the fact-finding approach of the domestic courts, and barring a few exceptions, continues to administer disputes with this strategy. Although the disputes brought before the ECHR are dragged in due to the exhaustion of localised remedies, its approach to follow the spirit of the domestic courts’ standard of proof tends to reflect the general practice of international tribunals.
In this regard, it can be analogically derived that international tribunals have often been informed from domestic courts’ stance on the three basic tenets of evidentiary aspects, namely admission of evidence, the burden of proof and standard of proof. For the admission of evidence, international tribunals such as the International Court of Justice (hereinafter ‘ICJ’), International Criminal Court, International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and WTO Disputes Settlements Forum have made it evidently clear that a far-liberal approach is to be undertaken, akin to that of the civil law countries but with a caveat of giving primacy to the written form of evidence over oral evidence.
Contrastingly to this robust and strategised approach of international tribunals in terms of the admission of evidence and paying adequate homage to the general principles of adjudication, the traditional mechanism echoed by the tribunals concerning the standard of proof is notably morbid and a stark anomaly, that further complicates the scheme of evidence. Although an individual ingredient of the scheme of evidence, the standard of proof, is mainly dependent on the burden of proof as the party claiming under the dispute must adhere to the required standards set by the concerned international tribunal. It goes without saying that the standard of proof set by the tribunals is neither certain nor standard, with the majority of tribunals being flexible in nature and spirit. Before delving deeper into the echelons of the standard of proof, it must be briefly conceptualised that the standard of proof differs in context from the common law and civil law systems.
In the former, the test of ‘preponderance of the evidence’ forms the crux for civil law disputes and the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ standard forms the core for criminal law disputes. In addition to this, there are some glaring additions of the ‘clear and convincing’ standard devised by the US, but it is more or less an offshoot of the existing standards. In the latter, there is no organised distinguishable standard for either criminal or civil law disputes.
The usual practice of the courts in such civil law countries is descriptively discussed by Mark Schweizer, who states that;
Standard of proof in civil law nations is always the (full) conviction of the judge, be it a ‘conviction intime’ or a ‘conviction raisonnée’, a reasoned or reasonable conviction (meaning that the judge must justify his or her decision by valid arguments).
Coming back to the moot point, it can be said that despite the fact that there are no exacting standards in international adjudication, international criminal tribunals have been historically inclined towards the rule of ‘ beyond reasonable doubt’ (having a presumption of innocence) given the fact that harsh criminal actions are being discussed in the forum and also because this standard finds a mention in Article 66 of the Rome Statute. In the case of other forums, it has been suggested that at least five different parallel standards may have been laid down, though it would still be a gamble to narrow down the approach of international courts in terms of international adjudication to these specific standards as there might always be other non-referred standards.
The human rights courts have generally followed the criminal tribunals’ application of ‘burden of proof’ or the vaguely defined ‘clear and convincing manner’ standard, but at least, one court has suggested that there might be no ‘clear and convincing’ standard of proof in human rights courts’ jurisprudence. In one recognizable ICJ judgment in the Corfu Channel case, a similar ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ approach was adopted. The court explicitly espoused;
“A charge of such exceptional gravity against a state would require a high degree of certainty that has not been reached here.”
Even though the statement quoted above hints towards a more stringent standard being adopted by the court, it alternatively also stated that a more flexible recourse in terms of prima facie evidence must be undertaken when one of the parties is a victim of an international breach and is unable to furnish enough evidence to make a rigid claim.
Other standards that are of importance in this discussion is the ‘convincing’ standard of the Velasquez-Rodriguez case, the ‘preponderance of evidence’ standard, specifically enunciated by the ICJ in the Norwegian Loans case as a ‘balance of probabilities test’, and finally, the standard without a standard or the ‘judge’s discretion’ standard, which is followed by the majority of the tribunals.
The first of these standards stands in between the cusp of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ and ‘preponderance of evidence’ tests. Also known as the ‘sufficiency of evidence’ standard, it has been heavily relied upon by the courts in cases such as the Nicaragua case, the Oil Platforms case and the Congo case, and by other forums, especially in cases where the evidence must be established clearly and convincingly without reaching the extremity of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ and having to prove prima facie evidence. To quote the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the M/V Saiga judgment, where it was categorically stated, borrowing the approach in the Ambatielos case, that;
[F]or the purpose of the admissibility of the application for prompt release of the M/V Saiga, it is sufficient to note that non-compliance with article 73, paragraph 2, of the Convention, has been ‘alleged’ and to conclude that the allegation is arguable or sufficiently plausible.
The second of the preceding three standards is the ‘preponderance of evidence’ standard, a somewhat controversial standard in international adjudication as it involves a balance of probabilities, even when the issues being discussed before the international tribunals are of high national as well as international relevance. The Court adopted such an approach in the Norwegians Loans case, stating that;
“ The degree of burden of proof to be adduced ought not to be so stringent as to render the proof unduly exacting.”
The analogy laid down in this judgment becomes exceptionally crucial in those situations where either one of the parties is not in a position to present convincing or ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ evidence, either due to the infirmity of its position, evidence being possessed by the other party in the suit or where it is not available due to lack of access.
Finally, the third standard, which is popularly called the ‘judge’s discretion’ standard advances the idea that the international tribunals must not follow a rudimentary set of standards to determine the veracity of evidence in international jurisdiction. The civil law doctrine has been keenly followed by the international tribunals as it provides leverage to the judges to not be bound under the compartments of certain standards. This gives greater liberty of adjustment according to the factual framework of the disputes with a higher possibility of justice being meted to both the parties and avoiding the risk of party-superiority.
The complexities in defining the boundaries for a standard of proof emanates from the argument that international adjudication is just a misnomer for judicial reasoning based on living national/domestic procedural frameworks with a hypothetical fabric of international governing principles of law. Having this two-faced approach of interpretation and adjudication of international disputes makes it exceedingly difficult to cull out a flexible common standard for the mechanism of evidentiary fact-finding. In light of the catena of paths adopted by the international tribunals, the situation looks bleak for a systematically governed universal principle being employed by these courts of diverse nature in the near future. | https://medium.com/@dharmicrenaissance/treading-in-shallow-waters-the-contentious-standard-of-proof-in-international-adjudication-the-6856282740df | ['Bard Of Burke'] | 2021-05-19 09:49:50.412000+00:00 | ['International', 'International Law', 'Law', 'Adjudication'] |
Finding A Technical Founder | Spend minimal months in tech or startup social media orbits & you’re bound to bounce into a nontechnical-founder horror story. Or worse, a public mocking of a poor business soul trying to build the next Uber for X or AirBNB for Y that’s yet to discover the inspector console.
The scene itself has evolved into a meme — a post on a college bulletin or collegiate Facebook group with the enticing pitch of working on their idea for 10% equity & pizza (NDA signed first, of course).
The truth is, my fellow business school friend, most prospective technical partners, particularly young, arrogant programmers, are laughing mid-way through your pitch. They’re exhausted of seeing the same, exact failure points in these pitches & are therefore highly wary that you’d be an incompetent co-founder. The technical co-founder you’re so desperately seeking out asks him or herself one simple question while reading your pitch:
If I’m building the entire project, then what are you doing idea guy?
The most important principle overlooked by these pitches is that they simply ignore a core truth: you’re pitching yourself as much as the idea.
If you’re a non-technical wannapreneur in your late teens or early twenties, then breathe easy — I’m about to drastically increase your chances of seeing an MVP (minimal viable product) all the way through. 90% of the time these attempts at luring a technical co-founder fall flat on their face for two core reasons:
You’re displaying a general lack of knowledge/preparation/understanding of the very serious task that lies ahead You suck at selling yourself & how you’ll equally contribute to a specifically-defined vision
There are likely a hundred more faux-pas that’ll land you on the top post of I Can Handle The Business Side, however, if you can succinctly approach the two largest hiccups displayed above, you’re in a much better position than most.
There are three main steps that a nontechnical founder should take before reaching out publicly or privately to potential tech co-founders:
I. Plan An End Goal In Mind
II. Fill Your MVP Knowledge Gap
III. Prepare A Realistic Budget
Recall the statement made above: you’re pitching yourself as much if not more than the idea itself. Yes, this means work on your end. But it also means you’ll likely stand out. Note, as a completely nontechnical founder when I first started down my path, a lot of what follows is both a culmination of my personal experience & a decade-worth of observations in startup & technology circles.
I. Plan An End Goal In Mind
Unlike most dreamers that have yet to taste the sourness of a flat launch, any application veteran will confirm: launching an app does not guarantee reliable traffic. Read researched articles on the subject. Talk to dev shop owners that launch countless client experiments. Take my word personally on tens of sunsetted passion-projects. I’ve been there, pitching straight-faced to investors with my garbage spreadsheet projections showing 500K downloads by the end of Month 4.
The first turn-off I see in nontechnical pitches is a lacking sense of reality. Most business people start their projections with researching (or worse, guessing) market sizes & then extrapolating down through a series of convergences to a projected EBITDA (total market -> direct market-> views etc…). While it’s highly recommended that you know these market numbers, I’m going to offer paradoxical advice here: do not tie MVP goals with projections distilled from marketing research.
The margin for error is simply too high & the final value-added for your efforts is quite low. It goes against expected advice, but for an MVP goal, you’re much better off following your intuition — if you think your MVP goal is laughably small, you’re on the right track to sounding realistic. Take the following examples:
Example 1 — Clearly In The Dark Dude
“Statista claims this is a $10B dollar market, so our goal is simply to capture 1% of the existing market — which would already be a $100M business!”
Example 2 — Researched & Realistic Dudette
“Understanding this is an MVP, our goal is to attain ten paying customers with an above industry-average churn”
“We’re testing a new market, so we need to prioritize organic feedback — our goal is to attain one hundred early-adopters that we can leverage for a v2.”
Realistic expectations, well-defined goals & an understanding of industry norms (“churn” & “early-adopters”). The second set of examples are significantly better positioned to attract the attention of a potential tech partner. Bonus here, technical co-founders are mainly sales-averse & therefore highly-value a competent salesman — you can’t go wrong by including a section on how you’ll drive sales to reach the MVP goals.
II. Fill Your MVP Knowledge Gap
Assuming you’re truly nontechnical, you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s a dangerous spot to start a venture that requires time & money. In order to sound semi-competent in any pitch, to customers, investors, or partners, you, as the assumed entrepreneur/business-side, need to know the basics.
The more specific you are in detailing your exact needs to a technical partner, the more prepared & professional you come across. An obvious caveat here is that spewing buzzwords without a rudimentary understanding is likely to land you in a heap of embarrassment. Do your homework.
First, figure out what you need in order to launch an MVP. Do you need a website? A mobile app? Both iOS & Android? At the very minimum I’d suggest conducting some research on the native languages required for each app-type needed; in the case of web development, read a bit on the most popular web frameworks. Let’s again review two contrasting examples:
Example 1 — Not Prepared Dude
“I need an app programmer that can build a website & an Apple app” yikes
Example 2 — Very Prepared Dudette
“Flexible & willing to default to your expertise, but for the MVP we’d prefer a React engineer for the web front-end & a native Swift developer for the iOS app.”
Tread this line carefully but don’t overlook it entirely. You’re now starting to come across as someone semi-technical, or at the very least someone that’s quite diligent & well-researched; again, you’re pitching yourself as much as the idea.
III. Prepare A Realistic Budget
I know it hurts to see, but I’m flat-out confirming that any equity-offer void of moola is a no-go. Despite the real progress in product tools intended for nontechnical people, one still needs a solid $5,000 to $10,000 budget for a single MVP (web app OR iOS app OR Android app). It’s possible, maybe, that some young college dreamer or Upwork contractor might stretch into the $2,500 area; but, at that point, you’re haphazardly approaching the you-get-what-you-pay-for territory. Again, I know it’s frustrating, possibly even momentum-crushing to see those figures.
So let me introduce one of the final, yet most sought-after characteristics in non-technical partners: they figure it out. Raising from friends, families & fools, entering school competitions or applying to accelerators. Sense the seriousness here — as the assumed CEO, one of your most important jobs is to always keep the project funded. If you can’t climb this first mountain, attaining a realistic budget for a realistic MVP, you’re not ready. Can’t scrape together $5K to $10K? God forbid the day arrives that you’re weeks out from missing payroll for an entire team & freeze-up.
But What If I Really Don’t Have Access To A High-Value Network, Business School Competitions, etc…?
You still figure it out. This isn’t a school test with a singular right answer — this is the startup world. Creativity, tenacity, persistence, & a hunger to learn is the name of the game.
Can’t raise enough to reach the realistic budget amount? Fine. Find a way to decrease the total budget needed. How? Require less work from your potential technical partner by taking on a product role, specifically, designing. Speaking from very personal experience here, the only sure-fire way I’ve found to deviate from the figures posted above is to come to the table with documentation, designs, & more designs.
Most developers don’t like designing whatsoever, yet your product undoubtedly requires an entire design process. Want to shave 10% to 34% off the prices posted above? Show up with a full prototype fleshed out. Yes, this might take massive action on your part. You’ll have to download Adobe XD or Sketch, watch tens of hours of YouTube tutorials, & then spend another hundred hours tweaking ux wireframes, greyscale mockup, & high-fidelity mock-ups.
Either way, get it done because this is the litmus test — if you can’t approach a technical partner with a realistic budget, or a lesser budget but completed designs, forget about it.
In Closing
And there, we, go. Setting a realistic goal. Researching MVP requirements. And attaining a realistic budget. As a nontechnical entrepreneur, if you follow the three steps detailed above before broadcasting your search for a technical co-founder, you drastically increase your chances. At a bare minimum, if you still fail to find a co-founder, you at least have enough documentation & knowledge to approach micro & small development shops without getting eaten alive.
While the steps above result in tangible changes to a pitch, again, the most important part of the pitch is you. In general, most programmers have a significantly better gauge than most non-technical people on what launching a new product truly requires; by putting in the time & care to understand the world through their eyes, you’re much more likely to excite someone to join you along for your journey.
Sources
The Lean Startup
Hot Seat: CEO Of A Startup
The $100 Startup | https://medium.com/setdesign/finding-a-technical-founder-993d7181337a | ['Jesus Najera'] | 2020-09-05 14:15:37.731000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Technology', 'Education', 'Life', 'Startup'] |
A Series About Time: Reality or an Illusion? Part I: History and Culture | A History of Time, and Time From a Cultural Perspective.
Time maybe not what you think it is. It is called the fourth dimension, but we cannot move in this dimension as we do in the other three. How we view time seems straightforward, minutes make hours, hours make days, days make weeks, weeks make months, and months make years, and so on. But there is only one direction, from present to future. Philosophers and physicists are trying to solve the riddles about time, and I will share some thoughts about time with you.
A History of Time
Before the Big Bang, there was no space or time. The Big Bang emerged about 13.7 billion years ago. Before the Big Bang, all matter was packed in one tiny dot. This matter became our universe, our sun, the earth, the moon. Interestingly these are also the celestial bodies we started to use to measure time.
Time became evident through motion. The sun and the moon move through our sky, which makes it possible to measure time. Time and motion are closely connected to each other. That time exists as physical propriety did not mean that we humans always had a notion of time. The first evidence that we had an idea of time is from the Paleolithic, about 6000 years ago. And the first calendars to appear were lunar calendars with twelve or thirteen lunar months. The solar calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC. This Julian calendar set the lengths of the months to their modern values. It has `normal` years of 365 days and `leap` years of 366 days. There is a simple cycle of three normal years, followed by a leap year. Compared to the astronomical solstices and equinoxes, there is an advance of about 11 minutes per year. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar to correct this and reducing the average year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days. It took centuries to get adopted but is now by far the most commonly used calendar. An interesting exception is the Eastern Orthodox Church, which still uses the Julian calendar.
Probably the first way we started to measure time was through sundials and water clocks. And after we developed the possibility to make glass, hourglasses. Which still are a ubiquitous symbol for the passing of time. Galileo Galilei and Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum driven clocks, which was a significant advance in accurate time-keeping.
The pinnacle of accurate time-keeping was reached when we started to use atomic clocks. We use the electronic transitions in cesium to get an exact measurement of time. The International System of Measurements defines a second as 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation that corresponds with the transition between two electron spin energy levels of a 133Cs atom’s ground state.
We know how to measure time, but knowing how to measure something, doesn´t mean you understand what you are measuring. Measuring time does not give us a fundamental understanding of the nature of time. For that, we need physicists and philosophers. (these two cannot always be strictly divided) But we will start with culture.
Time From a Cultural Perspective
Psychological time is subjective time (phenomenological time or perceived time); it is best understood not as a kind of time but instead as awareness of physical time. Our mental clock measures it. Our psychological time can change its rate (compared to physical time) depending on whether we are bored or intensively involved. There are also cultural differences in how we experience time. It even shows in our language. Using a tensed verb is a grammatical way of locating an event in time. All the world’s cultures have a conception of time, but only half the world’s languages use tenses. English has tenses, but the Chinese, Burmese, and Malay languages do not. The concept of time is also different between cultures. In the Anglo-Saxon world, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, the future stretches out in front of us. They have a linear vision of time and action. Time is passing, and we waste time if we don´t perform actions or make decisions.
In a world in which there was no experience, there would be no past, present, or future, but there might well be earlier and later Russell
Southern Europeans are multi-active instead of linear-active. The more things they can do at the same time, the happier they feel. Therefore they organize their time (and life) in a completely different way. Multi-active people are not interested in schedules or punctuality. The present reality is more important than appointments; priority is given to the significance of each meeting. Spaniards, Italians, and Arabs will ignore the passing of time if it means that conversations will be left unfinished. Completing a human interaction is the best way they can invest time. Time considerations will usually be subjected to human feelings.
In some Eastern cultures, time is viewed neither as linear nor event–relationship related, but as cyclic. Each day the sun rises and sets, the seasons follow one another, the heavenly bodies revolve around us, people grow old and die, but their children reconstitute the process. Cyclical time is not scarce; there seems always to be an unlimited supply of it. Time is not racing away in a linear future, but coming around again in a circle, where the same opportunities, risks, and dangers will represent themselves when people are so many days, weeks, or months wiser. The Thai attitude toward time is to see time as a pool one could gradually walk around. This metaphor applies to most Asians, who, instead of tackling problems immediately in a sequential fashion, circle around them for a few days or weeks before committing themselves. In Buddhist culture, not only time but also life itself goes around in a circle.
In Madagascar, people experience time in yet another way. Time flows into the back of your head from behind, then becoming the past as it stretches out in front of them. The past is in front of their eyes because it is visible, known, and influential. The Malagasy consider the future unknowable. It is behind their head where they do not have eyes. Their plans for this unknown area will be far from meticulous, for what can they be based on? Buses in Madagascar leave, not according to a predetermined timetable, but when the bus is full. The situation triggers the event. (Lewis, 2014)
The Greek language denotes two distinct principles, Chronos and Kairos. The former refers to numeric or chronological time. Kairos, literally `the right or opportune moment`, relates specifically to metaphysical or Divine time. In theology, Kairos is qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. According to Kabbalists, `time` is a paradox and an illusion. Both the future and the past are recognized to be combined and simultaneously present. Interestingly, these point of view are also found in physics and of course I will discuss that more extensively in the part: Time From a Philosophical Point of View.
But first, in the next story I will discuss time from a physicists point of view.
Reference
Lewis, R. (2014, June 2). How Different Cultures Understand Time. Retrieved from Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-understand-time-2014-5?r=US&IR=T | https://medium.com/@jansiebenga/a-series-about-time-reality-or-an-illusion-b0a927d75651 | ['Jan Siebenga'] | 2021-03-16 20:49:40.920000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Time', 'Physics', 'Culture', 'History'] |
Comparing Distributed Ledgers by Game of Thrones use case — BigchainDB | To implement an application, one still needs a processing layer and a platform layer, and they can then be connected to BigchainDB. However, what you can do in BigchainDB natively, is creating assets, divisible and non-divisible. Although we didn’t look much into it, the Role-based access control supported by BigchainDB is very neat.
To see the source code of our implementation, head over to our GitHub.
Technical overview
How do they accomplish the task of storing a common agreed on state across
nodes in tables?
They do this by utilizing Tendermint for BigchainDB’s blockchain characteristics. Tendermint is an open source blockchain that uses Tendermint Core as the consensus engine and Application BlockChain Interface (ABCI) as the api between an application written in any programming language and the Tendermint blockchain. For the database part, BigchainDB uses MongoDB.
Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash
Basically, on one end there is Tendermint for the distribution of canonically ordered transactions between nodes, there is MongoDB for storing the shared state in tables on the other end, and BigchainDB in the middle for coordinating everything.
Implementation
We used the javascript library of BigchainDB. The realization of a sample program as described on their official website, was harder than expected. The downloaded npm module was somehow not the latest stable release, and didn’t work as expected. Fortunately, the guys from BigchainDB’s gitter responded fast (thanks to Troy McConaghy @ttmc), and told us to specify a stable release version when downloading the module.
Second issue was that in order to generate a ‘Ed25519Keypair’ some file had to be changed according to a GitHub issues. But once that was done, we were ready to go. Our game of thrones use case was again just modeling two alliances, Khalessi and Cercei, assign them different families, and transfer the membership of the families between the alliances. The syntax of creating transactions has to be followed, other than that there were not many things to watch out for.
Coding with BigchainDB is straight forward, no bad surprises. Writing and reading to the testnet is fast and works well. To test our code, we used the node testing framework mocha.js and the node assertion library chai.js.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
An actual database that is decentrally stored (not file storage like IPFS or a mishmash of transactions)
Easy to code
Fast querying
An addition to a any development stack
Cons: | https://medium.com/block42-blockchain-company/comparing-distributed-ledgers-by-game-of-thrones-use-case-bigchaindb-7530bebce814 | ['Paul Plessing'] | 2019-09-20 08:13:50.925000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Bigchaindb', 'Crypto', 'Distributed Ledgers', 'Blockchain'] |
Vikings: Wolves of Midgard is A Great Action RPG You Shouldn’t Miss | You might not have heard of the Slovakian studio Games Farm before, but they’ve been quietly turning out quality action RPG’s for the last couple of decades. In 2017, they released Vikings: Wolves of Midgard on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The Unity-powered game is an impressive show for an engine that’s been wrongly-branded as bad by some folks due to one or two individual titles’ performance. It’s also a wonderful example of the classic Action RPG genre, and I wish I had played it sooner.
At the start of Vikings, you’ll customize either a male or female warrior, and set out on a grand quest that starts with small regional squabbles among warring bands but eventually involves mythological creatures and the fate of the world. The game features five unique skill trees themed after different Norse deities, and each one also corresponds to a type of weapon. So, you can mix and match provided you’re willing to switch weapon types throughout your adventure, or go all-in on one particular play style.
Combat is the core of the game. You’ll wage violent war across numerous large maps from an isometric perspective and collect lots of random loot. The combat is a little bit slower than in genre-stalwart Diablo III, and it reminds me of the heavier and well-animated battle in the recent Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem. It’s a very easy system to learn, with one main attack button and extra buttons for unlockable skills. On consoles, the right stick activates a handy dodge roll, and in a nice touch the speed and effectiveness of this roll is impacted by the weight of your current gear. | https://xander51.medium.com/vikings-wolves-of-midgard-is-a-great-action-rpg-you-shouldnt-miss-12156b06242d | ['Alex Rowe'] | 2020-04-06 18:42:19.368000+00:00 | ['Vikings', 'Rpg', 'Action', 'Technology', 'Gaming'] |
Sass finally introduced a new module system and nobody talks about it | Namespaces
One of the biggest downsides of the old module system is that it is merely impossible to know where a given variable, function or mixin is coming from. As @import only uses a single global namespace developers must always pay attention to not accidentally name two variables the same and override one value with another. Let’s take a look at the following code:
No namespaces in the old Sass module system
Sass will use the latest import that it can find to resolve references to the $color variable. All imports reside in a global namespace. So now take a look how this plays out when the @use rule comes in:
Namespaces in the new Sass module system
It becomes much clearer now where the definition of the color variable is coming from. The namespace is determined by the basename of its URL. You can also rename it using the as syntax: @use “buttons" as btns and then refer to a variable as btns.$color . And if you really want to stick with the old horrors of a global namespace, you can also include files in the global namespace via @use “buttons" as * . At least, Sass will now produce an error if multiple modules expose variables or functions with the same name.
Lastly, @use offers a more explicit way of configuring imported library styles using a with clause. Let’s say you are importing some awesome library that defines some variables using the !default keyword. You can then configure that library with the following syntax:
Configuring libraries using the with-clause
The with clause will only allow variables that are actually defined in the imported module and only if these are defined with the !default keyword. | https://medium.com/coyo-tech/sass-finally-introduced-a-new-module-system-655fae5d7efb | [] | 2020-05-04 11:42:53.950000+00:00 | ['UI', 'Sass', 'Software Development', 'Front End Development', 'CSS'] |
Accepting Life’s Lemons | Photo by Alex Loup on Unsplash
So, like most working mums, I pretty much work at full throttle 100 percent of the time. A typical day looks a bit like this:
The regime
5:30am — rise and get ready (interspersed with getting kids ready because of course they’re also morning kids — sigh). If it helps, picture me precariously holding an eyeliner brush between my teeth whilst helping #2 take his pyjama top off because apparently only mummy is allowed to do this
6:45am — leave for work and a 1 hour 20 commute where I listen to something inspirational on YouTube (like a talk by Marisa Peer or Brenee Brown for the 20 minutes I’m overground)
8am to 3pm — work with a verve that would give Tim Cook something to think about, eating lunch al desko (anything that can be eaten with one hand) whilst challenging my bladder with the ultimate endurance tests (I just need to respond to this last email before I absolutely have to pee)
3:30pm (because who actually leaves on time) — return commute home and of course normal people don’t travel at this time so there are no ‘fast’ trains or ‘short’ platform exits, no no, it’s the full travel experience the scenic way
4:30pm — home, put the kettle on, quick hugs and hello’s whilst hearing both parties’ representations about how the other has aggrieved them (not easy when they’re doing this simultaneously), express my sympathy and feign understanding at their pain, remind them that they are brothers that actually love each other and there’s no need to quibble over that one toy because there are 999,999 in that pile over there they could choose from
4:45pm — kettle boiled, put (some variety of) pasta on — change into home clothes (the dry cleaning bill would outstrip the cost of my work dresses within a week otherwise)
5:15pm — serve up the kids’ dinner with a dose of ‘why is he eating faster than me, that’s not fair!’ on loop
5:45pm — clear up then upstairs for bath and pyjamas (this bit can take as long as you like because it’s dictated by numerous factors including how long they’re on the loo, if they discover a toy in their room they have to play with straight away, if it’s a hair washing day (God forbid), if the older one decides to practice his gymnastics routine — in his pants or naked; somewhat different to the TV gymnastics most people are familiar with — and of course, mood
7:00pm — upstairs for reading time (again this can vary from one book to five however slow and monotone I make my voice)
8:00pm — If I haven’t accidentally nodded off with one of them (happens a lot) then it’s downstairs to root around in the fridge for the world’s speediest dinner or ingredients to achieve the same end (omelettes and stir-frys are a firm favourite) and I’m usually ably assisted by my darling husband who’s also returned home from saving the world (he’s a hospital based optometrist so only comes home after he’s seen the last patient — not a job you could boil an egg by…)
9:00pm — dinner done, we settle down for some TV time but I’m usually robbed of this and fall asleep a mere 15 minutes into watching a re-run of Gogglebox (why is it so compelling watching others watch TV?!)
The bump in the road
Any of it sound familiar? Well, you can imagine my horror when I recently had to undergo emergency knee surgery (I’m fine, don’t panic) and was told that I wouldn’t be walking properly for up to three months. I was in complete denial with a leg locked at 40 degrees yet still messaging my team from A&E to say I’ll be a “bit late” — that was five weeks ago and I still haven’t made it in.
I was obsessed with getting back to work and managing my household because my body knew no speed other than road runner mode. The thought of being ‘idle’ sent shivers through me; what was I going to do? I’m the matriarch, the one people come to for help when they need looking after; the one who can whip up tasty meals for unexpected guests and can host an impromptu kids party with innumerable activities that could give a vaguely decent entertainer a run for their money.
I was so focused on how I’d return to my crazy normality that I ignored my needs in the here and now.
Well, they say everything happens for a reason (I’m not sure who ‘they’ are but ‘they’ feature in my life a lot and seem reliably knowledgeable). In my case, my injury provided me with the gift of time and a forced halt to the 1200W blender that is my life. Instead of focusing on surviving through my convalescence, I used the time to take stock and make some really powerful life changes (more of that to follow in later blogs).
So, I thought I’d share some tips for any similarly highly charged people to avoid derailment if you’re stopped in your tracks for some reason.
My survival 101
1. Accept help.
I know on a normal day you can juggle plates on a scale worthy of the Moscow State Circus but acknowledge that things aren’t ‘normal’ temporarily and so it’s ok to allow your loved ones to cook/clean/tidy/nurse you to recovery — they’re only doing it to reciprocate the love you’ve showered upon them so really, fair’s fair.
2. Make lists.
Writing down the things that you want to get done rather than bottling it up in your head, will make you feel like you’re doing something and then you can either delegate the tasks or if you’re up to it, do them yourself. I took the time to put a bit more effort and research into gifts for the three upcoming kids parties my son would be attending as well as booking a long overdue fridge and oven clean. Amazing what you can do with wi-fi, a credit card and an armchair.
3. Sleep.
Seriously, when did you last have the house to yourself and the freedom to do this guilt-free? My last proper night’s sleep was definitely before my kids were born so nestled with my favourite fluffy pillow and a snuggly blanket, I’ve made my own daytime den in the living room where I can keep Come Dine with Me on low volume whilst I snooze (I can’t reconcile sleeping in my bed during the daytime because it just feels wrong). For the days I need a cat nap but just can’t get to sleep, listening to Dr Wayne Dyer’s Everyday Wisdom on low volume sends me gently to la la land.
4. Read.
Anything — be it trashy magazines, that book you’ve always wanted to read, recipes to finally use up that packet of buckwheat you bought knowing it’s a super grain but having no idea what to actually do with it; just read. When was the last time you read for pleasure or read something which was entirely unconnected to one of the hats you wear (mother, wife, employee), just reading for you. Indulge yourself, you deserve to and you’ll feel great for it.
5. Reflect.
‘Normal’ life is manic, you’re spread so thin across all your roles and responsibilities that you’re practically transparent.
You’re so busy doing all day long that you don’t get the chance to think about simply being.
Here’s your chance. Close your eyes and think about you; what did you aspire to be when you were a child? Did you achieve that? If not, what happened? What excites you? Do you have excitement or passion in your life? What does it look like? If you don’t, can you make some space for it?
Reflection and coaching during my convalescence has helped me to realise that I love to write and whilst my life and career are happily geared towards the service of others, actually writing is also a medium I can use to achieve this. And this is how my blog was born and I’m sitting here writing to you all, sharing my experience from my warm sofa den whilst my leg is bandaged up.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feel free to share your own survival tips with me!
Until next time. | https://medium.com/@reenaamriwalaanand/accepting-lifes-lemons-5f7b0beebe9f | ['Reena Anand'] | 2019-02-02 14:35:53.114000+00:00 | ['Reflections', 'Parenthood', 'Survival', 'Working Moms', 'Productivity'] |
Be Grateful to the Naysayers, Allow Them to Motivate You, to Prove Them Wrong, When They Say Something Can’t Be Done, By Carmel O’ Reilly | WorkLife Book Wisdom
“Opening a bookstore when everyone buys their books from Amazon is a crazy idea, and in a small town, that’s soon to be by-passed when that new road opens, makes it not only a crazy idea, but a stupid idea too, and in case it hadn’t come to your notice, there’s also that rather big obstacle that the town has never fully recovered from the recession. I’m sorry to say this, Michael, but your idea is crazy, stupid and it’s not going to work, I’m saying this for your own good, before you invest your time and money into something that has no future. What you’re proposing, can’t be done”
To say Michael was dumbfounded by this outburst from his uncle Matt is the understatement of the year. But let’s back up to Michael’s story to how he found himself on the receiving end of uncle Matt’s advice — unsolicited advice that his uncle Matt was prone to dish out rather frequently.
Be Grateful to the Naysayers, Allow Them to Motivate You, to Prove Them Wrong, When They Say Something Can’t Be Done: A Case Study
Be Grateful To The Naysayers
Michael had a lifelong love of books. As a young boy he was always first in line when the Books on Wheels mobile library parked up in the grounds of his village school every Saturday morning. Returning the books he’d avidly read, he’d leave with a new collection, with excited anticipation of the places, near and far, that he would soon be transported to. His encounters with the familiar, unfamiliar, and sometimes bizarre, people, places and happenings, continuously opened his mind to new learning and discovery. To what was and what could be, to how the impossible could become possible.
It was with no surprise that Michael went on to study Irish Literature at college. Then on graduating he began working at the library in the town close to the village he had grown up in. The library that served all the neighbouring small village communities with its Books on Wheels mobile library.
That the town had been hit hard by the recession was true. Some businesses didn’t make it, and the businesses that did survive, did so by the skin of their teeth, and were forced to make cuts. Job losses were high and livelihoods were severely impacted. This was followed by government cuts to public spending, the latest of which brought about the closure of libraries throughout the country.
Michael finding himself out of a job, had what uncle Matt labelled as a crazy, stupid idea, that wouldn’t work, that couldn’t be done, and that was to open a bookstore in the town.
Though dumbfounded by his uncle Matt’s outburst, Michael wasn’t deterred, in fact if anything it spurred him on. It motivated Michael to prove his uncle Matt wrong, and that what he was proposing to do, could be done.
It was more than wanting to prove his uncle wrong. Michael believed in his idea, he believed he could make it work, he believed the people of the town wanted and needed it, many of whom were bereft following the closure of the library. There was a gaping hole in the town, and Michael felt he had the ability and capability to fill it. His uncle was right that the new road could cause the town to be bypassed. Michael felt now was the time to ensure that didn’t happen. He was determined to plant the town firmly on the map, and in his mind there was no better way than a bookstore that brought people from near and far. He was under no illusion that it would be easy, but he believed it was possible.
There had been many books that had inspired Michael throughout his life. Books had taken him on a journey of make believe, and also on a journey that was real. It was books that had taken him along a path to college and to study Irish Literature. It was books that had taken him along a path to working at the library, a path that at the time had seemed to have taken him full circle, back to the beginning of where his love of books and love of book wisdom had first begun. Michael now knew that his journey wasn’t over, and he believed that it would be books that would take him along a path to his next destination.
Book Wisdom
The book that motivated Michael to follow the path that he believed he needed to be on at this moment in his WorkLife journey, the path to owning and running his own bookstore was Unstoppable: My Life So Far, by Maria Sharapova.
Sharapova talks about her rise to success, and the disasters that threatened her career and her fight back. She says if there are lessons she could share from her experiences, it would be about the people you surround yourself with, whether that’s your family, (excluding any uncle Matt types of course!), your mentors, your team members. Choose people you’d be comfortable to lose alongside. In sport you lose a lot more than you can win. If you can face those challenges in that moment with people you respect and trust, it makes the process so much better, it brings so much light to the situations, it carries you through. We don’t always feel at our best, but if we have people alongside us, paving the way and giving us a platform, giving us a voice, and sharing values that we have, it’s so meaningful. So much about the process is about the people you meet along your path.
She believed her earlier years formed a lot of her character, and that the foundation and skills she built when she was young was something she could always go back to. If the core of what you’re doing is so strong and so positive, it drives everything else. Whatever comes your way, at whatever age, it’s how you handle it in the moment that will ultimately set you up in the future. When you face challenges that are not necessarily the same, your life experiences never fail you. Stay grounded and real, when other worlds are stripped away from you, by keeping your feet on the ground. This is the belief that allowed Sharapova to successfully establish herself in the world of business.
Although their paths were very different, Michael believed by surrounding himself with good people, people he trusted and respected, he too could achieve his dream. This belief proved to be true. He met all the right people along his path: virtual people in the books he read, who became his mentors; and real people, who he seemed to meet at just the right time. This is where Michael believed the universe conspired — he did a lot of the work, every day he kept on moving, and every day he was directed along his path
Epilogue
Michael succeeded in his dream of owning and running his own bookstore. He succeeded in firmly planting his town on the map. He succeeded in bringing people from near and far to visit his bookstore and his town.
He achieved this by waking up every day and asking himself the questions:
How can I continue to do what I love doing?
What can I do next?
How can I get better or how can I stay level with where I was yesterday?
Reflecting on these questions through self-feedback, the answers always came to him.
Words of Wisdom
You can’t unilaterally try to give people feedback, you have to let them come to you and want that feedback. There are times in a relationship that it’s more welcome than others, and you have to know when to give.
In saying these words to his uncle Matt, Michael wasn’t sure if they were received with the same intention they were given. And in his mind he was thinking, “oh and when someone tells you it can’t be done, don’t believe them, believe in yourself instead”.
Sage Wisdom
When we face challenges, change and uncertainty in our WorkLife, this is the time to ask ourselves how we might take ourselves to a new place, a place that gets us though these difficult times or even a place that is even better.
Today’s book of the blog is: Unstoppable: My Life So Far, by Maria Sharapova
Disclosure: I participate in the Amazon Associate Programme. This means if you click through and make a purchase through my referral links, I’ll be compensated. Using the links won’t cost you anything extra, and it helps to keep the blog. Thank you.
WorkLife Book Wisdom
The intention of this blog is to inspire you through people’s stories of their WorkLife experiences. Through these stories you will learn about people’s dreams and ambitions, along with the challenges, obstacles and successes they encountered along the road of their WorkLife journey. And how they used the power of book wisdom to help them find the inspiration and guidance to navigate their path to live their WorkLife with passion, purpose and pride.
You can follow my blog to have ideas, inspiration and insights delivered to your inbox weekly.
You can learn more about Michael’’s story in How To Use Turning Points To Start Something Different And Better by Carmel O’Reilly, along with the other stories featured in the book. This book is part of the:
School of WorkLife Series of Books
In each book I tell stories which are based on real WorkLife situations. I share the exercises that helped the people in the stories work through their challenging situations to resolve their dilemmas. I present these as assignments for you to work through to create your unique stories.
Each book is available from Amazon in Kindle Format and from SendOwl in PDF Format.
To find out more click: School of WorkLife Books & Affiliate Programme: | https://medium.com/@worklifeincorporated-com/be-grateful-to-the-naysayers-allow-them-to-motivate-you-to-prove-them-wrong-when-they-say-728e9bc09703 | ['Carmel Worklife Incorporated'] | 2021-01-08 21:27:41.329000+00:00 | ['Career Coaching', 'Career Change', 'Learning And Development', 'Career Development', 'People Development'] |
5 Amazing Festivals of India You Need to Experience Once in | India and festivals are two souls in one body. Well, if you want to experience the real essence of this country, you need to start from festivals of India. As a traveler, it would be hard to choose one as there’re several Indian religious festivals.
From north to south, every Indian loves to celebrate any occasion with a smile, warmth, and happiness. Thousands of travelers are visiting here to have the magical experience of these celebrations.
To make it easier, we have handpicked some top festivals. If you are visiting India for the first time, make sure you are attending one of these celebrations. By reading this article, you will get all the details.
Top Festivals of India
When it comes to festivals of India, it’s hard to pick the top list. The best thing about this country is each state has its own festivals. Still, they are enjoying everything with happiness and warmth. Let’s find out what this county is offering:
1. Diwali
If you are looking for a festival that is celebrated in every nook of India, Diwali is the ideal one. Hence, it’s one of the most popular Indian religious festivals. People celebrate Diwali with lights and doing an auspicious pooja of Goddess Laxmi. Indians also include some traditions such as lighting diyas, buying new clothes, and distributing sweets.
2. Holi
Holi is one of the most popular festivals of India. Even though it’s a Hindu celebration, but other communities of this country also love to participate in this celebration. Holi is popular due to the colors and the beautiful atmosphere. People celebrate Holi by throwing colors, water balloons, and dancing. Moreover, Holi is incomplete without lassi and sweets.
3. Durga Puja
If you want to experience the artistic and devotional side of India, you have to visit here during Durga Puja. A grand celebration that is dedicated to Goddess Durga. Even though this is one of the best Indian religious festivals, you can feel the excitement among all Indians.
To get the real essence of Durga Puja, you need to visit West Bengal, especially Kolkata. This festival is also celebrated in other parts of India as Navaratri. The last day of Durga Puja is popular as Dussera. According to Ramayana, Lord Ram got the victory over the evil king Ravana on this day.
4. Krishna Janmashtami
Krishna Janmashtami is another famous celebration in India. The birthday of Lord Krishna, one of the main deities in Hinduism is popular as Janmasthami. This festival is majorly celebrated in Vrindavan and Mathura. Thousands of devotees visit these places during this festival. Experiencing Krishna Janmasthami can be one of the best memories of your life.
5. Ganesh Chaturthi
Just like Krishna Janmashtami, Ganesh Chaturthi is another great celebration in India. This festival is mainly celebrated in Maharashtra. It’s a 10-day long celebration and people welcome Lord Ganesh with open arms. To experience the best Ganesh Chaturthi, you need to visit Mumbai.
However, most people are celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi at their homes. They are doing an auspicious of Lord Ganesh on this day. There are some more traditional and cultural things related to this celebration.
Conclusion
Finally, you know about the top Indian famous festivals. As you can see, this country has countless celebrations. For getting the festive vibe, you can visit India in October. From Navratri to Diwali, you can have an amazing time with these festivals of India. If you want to know more, keep reading our articles as we will cover more details in the future. | https://medium.com/@ruchirasarkar/5-amazing-festivals-of-india-you-need-to-experience-once-in-4ba525645238 | ['Ruchira Sarkar'] | 2021-10-29 16:28:18.726000+00:00 | ['India', 'Krishna', 'Holi', 'Festivals', 'Diwali'] |
Predicting Newspaper Sales with Amazon SageMaker DeepAR | A passion for print media
At Sales Impact, a 100% subsidiary of Axel Springer, we are all about sales of print media. We provide regional sales activities and wholesale communication for the supervision of retail sales and the logistics involved for delivery domestic and overseas. Also we do the planning and execution of sales marketing measures, customer acquisition within the scope of direct sales, coordination of the German “Sunday market” and much more.
At my team market analytics, we evaluate, advise and control what happens in the German print media market in terms of sales, logistics and advertisement. This happens at an international, national, regional, wholesale and shop level for print media such as WELT and BILD. My work as a Data Scientist mainly gravitates around the prediction of the market and the calculation of key figures in the market.
Vast complexity, vast opportunities
Our shop-level sales data is among our most valuable assets. Without going too deep into detail, we know the sales of some 100,000 shops for Axel Springer’s print media with some delay. Making use of this data is hugely important to understand our print media sales. But sometimes a delay in shop-level sales data is unacceptable for instance when the editorial department of the BILD wants to know how well it performed last week in terms of sales. We can solve this and other related problems with predicting the sales for these 100,000 shops!
Your friend in the cloud
Using Amazon Web Services, we can leverage their machine learning solution Amazon SageMaker in order to make such a prediction. But then, how would you predict some 100,000 shops without losing the information that exists among these shops? Fortunately, there is an algorithm out there that takes into account just this: the Amazon SageMaker DeepAR forecasting algorithm. But this really can be translated to any problem that has at least several hundreds of concurrent time series like e.g. with many products.
The DeepAR forecasting algorithm is a supervised learning algorithm for forecasting scalar (one-dimensional) time series using recurrent neural networks (RNN) and it is astonishingly sound. You can hand this algo tens of thousands of time series possibly together with time-independent categories and additional time-dependent information for each time series, and it will train a model that then is able to predict the potential future of a time series (possibly together with its specific time-independent categories and additional time-dependent information).
Predicting Germany’s major newspapers’ sales
So we adopted and automated this RNN-based algorithm as follows in Figure 1 and did see some major improvements of our prediction quality compared to the singular approaches such as ARIMA or exponential smoothing that were previously in place. The original paper suggests a general improvement of accuracy of around 15% for the prediction of related time series compared to state-of-the-art methods. If you need a starting point for the implementation of DeepAR using SageMaker, I recommend this notebook from Amazon.
Figure 1: Exemplary sequence of the workflow.
It is amazing how much you can automate with a little help of the boto3 (the AWS SDK for Python) library. For your ease, you can find the complete boto3 workflow below (though the data pre- and post-processing part is missing). Please note that we used .json files as the input data type.
This is how a normal run can look like on my laptop:
Figure 2: Exemplary workflow as log output.
Implications to our business
With the more accurate prediction of sales, we are able to give even more accurate projections to the editorial departments. Also, we work on taking into account these sales predictions to improve logistical key figures we provide to our business partners.
Summary
In this article, we write about predicting newspaper sales using Amazon SageMaker DeepAR. After a short company and team introduction, we give a shallow description of our shop-level sales data and the related problem. We then describe how DeepAR is a suited algorithm for this problem, followed by an overview of our solution together with some sample code to reproduce our solution. Finally, we claim that such a prediction with DeepAR is beneficial to our business.
About the author: Justin Neumann is a Data Scientist and MS in Predictive Analytics helping to transform companies into analytical competitors. He works at Sales Impact, a subsidiary of Axel Springer. | https://medium.com/axel-springer-tech/predicting-newspaper-sales-with-amazon-sagemaker-deepar-dffde3af4b20 | ['Justin Neumann'] | 2020-02-19 12:44:29.394000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Time Series Analysis', 'Deep Learning'] |
Georgia-Michigan Betting Preview | Georgia looks to bounce back after getting embarrassed by Alabama and faces a Michigan team in the midst of a dream season.
Head to FanDuel Sportsbook to take advantage of your $1,000 risk-free bet
Orange Bowl — College Football Playoff Semifinal
3 Georgia vs 2 Michigan
Friday, 7:30pm, ESPN
Georgia -7.5/Total 45.5
The second Semifinal features a team who quieted a lot of their doubters against a team who saw their old doubters re-emerge after a poor performance in the conference championship game. Michigan followed up its dominance against Ohio State with a dominant win over Iowa to earn their first trip to the College Football Playoff. Georgia was widely viewed as the best team in college football, but they got a reality check in a 41–24 throttling at the hands of Alabama.
Alabama showed that scoring on the Georgia defense is actually pretty easy. All you need is great offensive line play, a wide receiver who can stretch the defense down the field and a transcendent talent at quarterback. Easy enough, right? The good news for Michigan is that they have the DUDES up front. The Michigan offensive line won the Joe Moore Award which goes to the top o-line in the nation. Michigan is second in the country in sack rate allowed. Michigan allowed the third fewest sacks in the country behind Air Force and Army who don’t throw the ball. The question for Michigan is do they have the quarterback and receivers to challenge the Georgia secondary? Michigan wants to win games with good defense and a run game that almost had two 1,000 yard rushers. Cade McNamara has been solid, but they’d prefer for the game not to be on his shoulder. He had 20 or more pass attempts just four times this season. They don’t have one real go-to receiver. The leader in receptions, Cornelius Johnson, had just 38 catches, but they have multiple big play threats. They have five different players with a reception over 50 yards this season.
The closest comparison to the Georgia defense that Michigan faced was Wisconsin and there were some positives and some negatives. Michigan couldn’t establish the run against the Badgers at all. They ran for just 2.5 yards per carry. Hassan Haskins and Blake Corum combined for 34 carries and 93 yards. Michigan was able to hit some big plays in the passing game to open some things up. Michigan averaged 14 yards per completion so when they were able to complete passes, they got yards. Michigan was also helped immensely by a Wisconsin offense that struggled with ball security. If Georgia doesn’t turn the ball over and Michigan has to sustain drives can they?
The other side of the ball is just as interesting because NARRATIVE is firmly attached to the Georgia offense. There has been plenty of doubt surrounding Stetson Bennett all year despite his positive numbers and it caught up to Georgia against Alabama when it was clear that Bennett couldn’t go toe-to-toe with Bryce Young. Fortunately for Georgia, Michigan isn’t as explosive as Alabama so can Bennett make enough plays to beat the Wolverines? It will start with pass protection. Georgia also has been good in that area. They’re 16th in the country in sack rate allowed and only gave up one more sack this season than Michigan did. They did give up three sacks to Alabama so it makes you wonder how they’ll hold up against the dynamic pass rushing tandem of Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo. Michigan will have its hands full with a tremendously talented freshman tight end Brock Bowers who led Georgia in catches, yards and touchdowns. Georgia is hoping to maybe get a boost from George Pickens who returned late in the year from a torn ACL, but just returned from COVID. Georgia can run the ball with Zeus White and James Cook, but Georgia’s run game is less dynamic than it’s been in a while.
That’s why so much is on the shoulders of Bennett. A lot of people have wondered why Kirby Smart won’t give JT Daniels a shot, but Bennett is his guy and Daniels missed some of the bowl prep with COVID so it seems as if he’s only going to play as a “break glass in case of emergency” situation. Bennett hasn’t been bad, it’s just a question of how high is his ceiling? This doesn’t feel like the kind of game where that is going to matter. This should be a defensive slugfest where neither team will be able to sustain drives consistently. The line has remained steady at 7.5 and if I’m getting more than a touchdown I think I’d lean Michigan. The total has ticked up a couple of points from where it opened and it’s at a good number, but I think it also comes in slightly under. | https://blog.fantasylifeapp.com/georgia-michigan-betting-preview-60bb1bb96aed | [] | 2021-12-30 14:16:37.035000+00:00 | ['Sportsbetting', 'Collegefootball'] |
Introducing: Made In the Future | Over the years I’ve conducted a multitude of experiments that would show my commitment to driving the change I wanted to see in the design industry. As a Black woman and one of a few visible Black American design leaders in this industry, I was aware of the inherent undulation of progress and regression that can characterize a career for a POC, with getting started often being the most difficult phase. I wanted to do my part to contribute to a different narrative for those along different points in their career path.
I began with office hours using my time to support and coach promising underrepresented designers. Some of my early office hour participants have gone on to work at companies like Slack, Google, Twitter and others. It was through this investment I became aware that there were a group of talented folks in “the gap.” That if we could scale office hours we could accelerate more underrepresented designers in helping them to achieve major career milestones (i.e getting hired, promotion).
The gap is where opportunity meets readiness. These are ambitious people who can make demonstrable strides forward with a measured level of access, information and coaching.
This experience has been years in the making and is a natural evolution of the 100s of office hours that I’ve done over the past 5 years. The structure of the program is inspired by my time at Florida A&M University’s School of Business and Industry. In connecting to emerging design talent, it became clear the opportunity to move beyond just mentorship but cultivating a community and professional development experience that scaled my vision beyond a phone call. I am excited to see what more we learn along the way.
About the Experience:
Often, underrepresented designers find themselves distributed and isolated within the industry without close connections to relatable peers, and under mentored and sponsored by senior leadership. This impacts their professional opportunities, industry connections and ability to gain the skills necessary to navigate an upward career trajectory.
Made in the Future (MITF) is a 3-day design career-building summit fostering community and connection amongst preeminent design leaders and emerging underrepresented design talent via a series of curriculum-based immersive events and experiences.
50 fellows will be selected to receive a foundational professional development curriculum inclusive of the tools and insights to equip them along their career progression.
Following their summit experience they will be paired with a mentor who will support their goals and augment their talent.
This isn’t something that we’re only passionate about. Our friends in the design industry have stepped up to support talent in the gaps around their professional endeavors.
Folks like Katie Dill (Lyft), Halli (UENO), Kat Vellos , Mike Davidson (Invison), Jeff Mahacek (Nerd Wallet), Isha Kasliwal (Twitch), Laci Jordan (SLL Studios), Michael Bierut (Pentagram) and many others are some of the mentors Fellows will have access to.
Our Design Org partners — Facebook, Webflow, Netflix were early to answer our call to action to engage our vision for the future. As well as founding community partners and friends.
Who Am I:
My name is Kristy Tillman. I bring over 15+ years of experience in design working across industries.
With a mixture of experience like Head of Global Experience Design, Head of Communication Design, Design Director - I’ve been able to become acquainted with what it takes to be equipped for a myriad of design challenges and development as a designer. I’ve also led MICA students through the Flexible Design Studio workshop with a module on social impact design. I am a proud HBCU Alum ( FamU — Florida A&M University) and I studied design at Kansas City Art Institute.
I’ve been in design leadership, responsible for creating design teams from scratch and transitioning talent from entry level to design leadership. I am an Advisor for the Designer Fund and sit on the board of the Design Advisory Council for the University of Texas at Austin.
I’m a designer, investor and cultivator of a different kind of tomorrow one that harnesses the exponential addition of talent in the gaps. As you can imagine I’ve learned a lot along the way around growing my own talent and those around me in the realm of design.
What’s Next?
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be hosting events and sessions with our partners and mentors to give a deeper dive. We’ll be opening up our applications later this month.
We couldn’t have done this ourselves. This experience also highlights the commitment of design leaders and corporate partners invested in doing their part to support burgeoning talent— you can see some of them here. We welcome more to join along this journey of cultivating the talent and impact of those in the gaps. | https://medium.com/@MITFfellowship/introducing-made-in-the-future-fdd0b5452d5e | ['Made In The Future Community'] | 2020-10-13 19:15:59.715000+00:00 | ['Diversity In Tech', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'Design', 'Design Industry'] |
Sprung Slats | Four years of
flogging cheap
Chinese furniture
at discounted prices,
slaving to
dirty e-commerce,
creating thousands
of dead listings,
building countless websites
for traditional beds
contemporary beds
traditional sprung
mattresses and
memory foam,
more, how many
more — work faster.
Publish.
Waiting outside the office
with heart palpitations,
my friend saying he’d
become an alcoholic —
he looks broken, or
is that me.
There is no escape,
nowhere to go,
no time to think
or breathe, staring
out the window
in the toilets watching
the train going by,
taking my heart out,
filling my gob
with sugar and
salt and gallons of
coffee.
Holding on to the bed
at night, shaking,
saying to my wife
I can’t do this anymore,
I’m not going back,
then doing it,
sprung slats,
and every day
there was a little less
and a little less
until there was nothing,
then doing it. | https://medium.com/genius-in-a-bottle/sprung-slats-3a88691c5a71 | ['Bogdan Tiganov'] | 2020-12-22 15:02:35.844000+00:00 | ['Modern Slavery', 'Poetry', 'Workplace', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Ecommerce'] |
Build Up A Daring Attitude For Successful Life | There might be occasions when you have resisted the urge to panic when you had a remark, ignore your nature when you expected to take any action, or hold down whenever you understood it’s an ideal occasion to push ahead.
Being timid, hesitant, and inert can run you into the peril of having a debilitating presence that is separated by unfulfilled targets. To benefit from the endless open entryways that life offers, you should be courageous. You need to rehearse that strength so you can fulfill your greatest limit and leave an engraving on this world.
Exactly when you leave a heroic life, you feel strengthened! You need to develop a bolder manner. Following are a few different ways you can do as such Continuously act with a reason. Before you take any action, pick how it will serve your more important targets. If the affiliation is delicate or non-existent, take that action off your arrangement for the afternoon. Impulsive development lounges around and energy.
Stretch yourself past your cutoff points each day.
Doing moreover old, typical, destroyed is debilitating, whether or not your ordinary, destroyed has been produced previously. Accomplishment looks like games; if you don’t expand yourself reliably, you step by step become moderate and feeble.
Take an action without envisioning results.
While you regularly should make decisions and take an action reliant on the results you’d want to achieve, it’s a genuine mistake to expect those results and thereafter be frustrated when you don’t get them. Do your most noticeably awful anyway don’t focus on the target.
Use setbacks to improve your capacities
around you. (This is a consequence of something many allude to as a mirror neuron). Hence, you ought to enclose yourself with positive researchers and dismissal the superfluously adverse people.
Make an effort not to focus on yourself so
If you should be happier and cause individuals around you to feel more incredible, build up the ability to giggle at yourself. If you don’t or can’t) chuckle at yourself, I promise you that the individuals you work with are giggling behind your back! Taking more dangers According to Mark Zuckerberg, the more genuine threat isn’t confronting the difficulties for the duration of regular daily existence. The world is changing rapidly and by not confronting difficulties, you will undoubtedly crash and burn. The current reality distorts the danger of taking certain actions and barely cares about the open entryways that they offer. As opposed to focusing on the negative outcomes, you ought to have the alternative to take the right kinds of threats that give you the right kind of possibilities.
Increment self-practicality
The perils that you take in life cause you to improve in various pieces of your life. It is because life itself is an assessment, the more you research it the more you learn. The activities that you sort out some way to fabricate your conviction and self-sufficiency. You become arranged by confronting more unobtrusive difficulties preceding taking the huge ones.
Reason the limitations of others
Elite prerequisites are huge, anyway, individuals are, indeed, human. It’s crazy to make yourself sad because others can’t deal with a duty similarly as you would speculate you could, or when people don’t give your vision to comparable energy that you feel.
State “thank you” all the more often
Achieving a “mindset of thankfulness” requires more than basically checking what’s sublime in your life. You should, and should, thank others for their favors to you, whether or not that gift is something as fundamental as a grin. Learning through trouble
Exactly when you live like an extreme individual, you keep endeavoring novel considerations and mixes till you find what truly works. You respond to burden by hypothesis imaginatively and not allowing challenges to crash your motivation.
Ending up being bolder anticipates that you should submit totally to learning and creating through the burden and going up against the unavoidable disasters. Exactly when you face difficulties, you set yourself up for progress through each inconvenience and opportunity and get unbelievable things done.
Accomplish something erratic
What might you be able to do that would totally astonish the individuals who know you? Wear high heels? Skydive? Take a dance class? Striking individuals aren’t apprehensive about difficult new things, and one reason they’re so energizing to be around is that they keep you speculating.
You can begin little, maybe by wearing a tone or way of attire that you don’t typically wear, or visiting a spot you ordinarily wouldn’t visit. At last, you may arrive at where you engage thoughts that cause others’ eyes to augment when you notice them (“Are you genuine? Wilderness boating?” or “You’re messing with me. You need to purchase that café on Third Street?”).
Stop faltering and make a move
Is there something you’ve been requiring or endeavoring to do, yet can’t get the grit up? Whether or not it’s moving toward a partner out for a drink, saying ‘sorry’ to a companion or relative after a broad stretch of misinterpretation, or basically being neighborly to a teammate, quit considering acting and truly achieve something. Creating the principle little step towards trying something new can give you the energy to continue onward.
Power is the opposite thing of vacillating. At whatever point you’re feeling hesitant in coordinated efforts with others, or in deciding for yourself, sort out some way to take care of business and make the chief move.
Finally, power has to do with understanding your characteristics and weaknesses, by then moving past them. Make an effort not to endeavor to cover your issues or disillusionments, anyway recognize them as a part of you. This will allow you to irrefutably push ahead, esteeming your uniqueness.
Rediscover who you are
It will be more straightforward to find things you’re vigorous about if you quit worrying about the “right” movement. Taking everything into account, permit yourself honestly and curious about what you do and despise.
Comprehend that you don’t have to do discretionary, special things to discover what your character is. Do whatever it takes not to reveal any odd upgrades just to paralyze people. Be direct with yourself.
The finish on your plans
It’s deficient to simply say you will achieve something, you truly need to do it or people think of you as a drop. Exactly when your assertion is satisfactory and you finish exercises, people will trust in you and view you as a solid, trustworthy, tangled individual.
If you assented to achieve something you genuinely don’t wish to do, you should apparently complete it since you gave your assertion. Next time, try to express no and advocate for yourself.
Solicitation what you need
Rather than keeping down to be seen for your undertakings, or foreseeing that somebody should consider your necessities, adventure up and ask. This doesn’t mean you should demand what you need or be intense. Taking everything into account, unquestionably and cautiously pick your words.
Make an effort not to confuse being hitting with being strong. Forcefulness as often as possible incorporates constraining your viewpoints or exercises on others. Power has nothing to do with the people around you. It’s connected to overcoming your sensations of fear and taking an action.
Assume liability
You are the place where you are in life given the decisions you make. On the off chance that you don’t care for what you see, change it. One inquiry I pose to myself frequently is, “Is this the existence I need to make?” If you don’t work out, roll out an improvement. If you need to escape obligation, spend less. Duty brings opportunity.
Keep your responsibilities
Record all that you state you will do. Record the guarantees you make to other people. At the point when you stay faithful to your obligations, you assemble a sense of pride. Others regard you also.
Cause trouble
Make some noise. Have any kind of effect. Offer your sentiments when you witness a shamefulness. Work on imparting your insight. Try not to permit somebody to exploit you. Figure out how to state, “no.” Refuse to keep down when your gut says to push ahead.
Develop
Discover some new information. Step into the obscure. Change how you get things done. It doesn’t make a difference if you get it the first run through. Attempt once more. Allow yourself to be a learner. Take advantage of the lucky break. The development brings new chances.
Tune in
Tune in to individuals who can’t help contradicting you. Tune in to relatives who think you are incorrect. Tune in to the older individual in the coffeehouse. Listen when you just need to talk and offer guidance. Tune in and thank the other individual for sharing.
Follow your fantasies
Make a move every day toward your objectives. Request help. Organization. Examination. Plan. Make a more move. Change your arrangements as you come. Be available to something shockingly better. Never surrender. Change. Push on.
Love Yourself
Acknowledge your defects. Be your own closest companion. Show yourself empathy, comprehension, and regard. This is the most fearless demonstration of all. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/build-up-a-daring-attitude-for-successful-life-c89070b304e1 | [] | 2020-12-29 16:42:15.351000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Science', 'Daring', 'Build Up', 'Attitude'] |
Meeting Philosophy in practice | 5What we should do better: measuring results and rewarding them
Create KPIs to measure results
With the Google Calendar API, we can gather data from public Back Maker invitations. These are the KPIs we are in the process of creating:
% of meetings with more than 8 attendees (to check if the 2 pizza rule is followed)
% of meetings with correct format/content (% of invitation where names starting with “SHARE, DECIDE, …”, invitation with a description, a Zoom link, a document link…)
% of meetings refused (measuring if Back Makers are really free to refuse invitations and linked this KPI to “% of meeting with good content”, we expect a high % of refusal in case of meeting with poor content)
# of meetings per day (with a focus especially on Productive day)
% time spent in a meeting per week
We think we should also look at the attendees' satisfaction:
R.O.T.I. method (as for “Returns On Time Invested”) asking the attendees to vote from 1 (I clearly wasted my time) to 5 (it was really useful, I would have been a shame if I wasn’t there)
Random satisfaction survey on our meetings policy to gather and test new and creative ideas
Clarify good behaviors and reward them
We’d like to create a virtuous circle encouraging people to better follow our guidelines. To do so, we intend to put the spotlight on people who have great “meeting KPIs” and publicly congratulate them (with an - asynchronous - Wall of Fame for example). We could also ask these people to publish some testimonials that highlight their personal motivations and gains.
We also plan to incentivize people to refuse invitations when they don’t understand what value they’d bring to the meeting or if they see that the meeting runs counter to the company’s meeting philosophy (for instance, when I see more than 8 participants in a meeting, I challenge the meeting owner about the role of each attendee). One way to do so would be by creating a playbook that explains when invitations should be refused and how it can be done politely and professionally.
In the roll-out of such actions, our ambassadors will have a key role in spreading these best practices among the teams and to identify room for improvement. | https://medium.com/back-market-engineering/meeting-philosophy-in-practice-1e573c2d780a | ['Nicolas Pellissier'] | 2021-01-13 15:11:53.880000+00:00 | ['Wasting Time', 'Startup', 'Organization', 'Meetings', 'Productivity'] |
Karşıyaka Beyaz Eşya Servisi — Özel Teknik Servis | in About Me Stories | https://medium.com/@servisi/kar%C5%9F%C4%B1yaka-ar%C3%A7elik-servisi-%C3%B6zel-teknik-servis-31182c87e0c5 | ['Beyaz Eşya Servisi'] | 2020-12-15 19:44:46.006000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Graphic Design', 'Design', 'Decor', 'Home'] |
Investing | I have a tiny bit of money to invest so I’m going to see what happens when I invest in companies that I truly support.
LNTH — Lantheus Holdings Inc is a company in North Billerica specializing in the development, manufacture, and commercialization of diagnostic medical imaging agents and products that assist clinicians in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular and other diseases. I bought a single share @ $14.30
ANCN — Anchiano Therapeutics LTD is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with two promising cancer treatments. I bought 5 shares @ $2.72
EVLO — Evelo Biosciences is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focusing on solutions for inflammatory diseases and cancer located in Massachusetts. I bought 5 shares @ $10.91
SLDB — Solid Biosciences is developing gene therapies for patients with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy located in Cambridge, MA. I bought 25 shares @ $5.86
ALRN — Aileron Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focusing on novel therapeutics for cancer. I bought 100 shares @ $0.96 | https://medium.com/@teresaenglish/investing-8c07cd817ccc | ['Teresa English'] | 2020-12-22 23:37:55.105000+00:00 | ['Beginner', 'Investing', 'Ethical Investment'] |
How might Blockchain technology impact Britain after the Brexit deal? | Wait…What? Brexit deal and Blockchain???? What’s the connection? Don’t worry! This was the first question that came to my mind when I first thought about the topic, but I will go in detail as to how Blockchain technology might impact Britain’s financial system after the Brexit deal.
What’s the Brexit deal any way?
BREXIT! Photo by Fred Moon on Unsplash
Brexit simple means “British exit” from the European Union. The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union that involves 28 European countries (now 27 after Brexit). The EU allows for free trade and free movement of people between these countries and was created after WWII to strengthen trade and economy between European countries. The main reason Britain left the EU is that it wants to take control of its borders and policies rather than relying on a third party. Furthermore, Britain thinks that EU is holding back Britain’s business with too many business regulations. However, these are just a few reasons on why Britain exit the EU.
What’s blockchain technology?
Photo by André François McKenzie on Unsplash
In short, blockchain technology contains a set of blocks that are connected to each other via hash encryptions. We can think of hash encryptions as a fingerprint that has the blocks data. Changing the data of the blockchain, changes the hash of the block which then breaks the connection of the blockchain. This makes it difficult to tamper with the blockchain. Another cool thing about blockchain technology is that it’s a decentralized technology that increases transparency of information. Also, the information inside blockchain is distributed among many nodes(computers).
If you want a full explanation about blockchain and its use cases in the financial industry, check out my blog here!
Brexit deal and Blockchain technology: What’s the connection?
Image by BITA (https://www.bita.studio/blockchain-news/2019/2/21/blockchain-might-be-the-answer-to-brexits-customs-predicament)
Now that we have the basics of Brexit and Blockchain technology down, you maybe asking yourself how Blockchain technology can help Britain after the Brexit deal.
In order to fully realize the impact of Blockhain on Britain after the Brexit deal, there has been an ongoing debate between Blockchain advocates and critics.
What do the Blockchain advocates say?
According to an article on cointelegraph.com, the finance minister of Britain was asked about how Britain will solve the UK-Irish border as well as the trade issues after the Brexit deal and he said that the solution is blockchain technology.
“There is technology becoming available […] I don’t claim to be an expert on it but the most obvious technology is blockchain.”- Britain’s finance minister.
But how might blockchain help Britain after the Brexit deal? Well, there are many ways Blockchain technology can help. These are:-
1. Trade finances
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
The Brexit deal impacted trade agreements between many EU countries and Britain. Before Brexit, EU countries could trade freely and without any trade expenses. However, the Brexit deal has allowed some business owners to fear over trading costs.
Cryptocurrency, blockchain’s massive innovation, can play big role in trade between EU countries and Britain.Cryptocurrency can be used as a tool for many businesses to send and receive transactions. Since everyone is using the same cryptocurrency, businesses don’t have to worry about exchange rates between different currencies. Another benefit of using cryptocurrency is that there will be lower tax and fees as there’s no third party to govern the transaction. In addition, the transaction will be recorded in detail into the blockchain which can help track transactions and logistics easier.
2. Efficiency in supply chain and logistics
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Today’s supply chain, ranging from producers to distributors, often have to go through a complex system of contracts, certificates and approvals in order to upheld existing custom and regulatory agencies policies. This includes exchange of different information among many entities that could result in error and possible fraud.
However, with blockchain, these processes can be made fast and efficient. From the place where the product was produced to where it was handled and manufactured, blockchain records every detail efficiently. Information on any shipment — whether it be a proof of purchase, a clearance form, a bill of lading, insurance — can be made part of a block, a transparent chain of custody, and be accessible to suppliers, transporters, buyers, and auditors. This, in turn, decreases accounting and auditing cost for businesses. Since blockchain is a decentralized technology, chances of fraud and error are reduced.
But, what do the critics say?
I LOVE THE CRITICS! .Photo by Max Böhme on Unsplash
There are some potential concerns that the critics raise about using blockchain technology in Britain after the Brexit deal. Some of these concerns are:-
1. Blockchain is still a NEW technology!
Photo by Sushobhan Badhai on Unsplash
Yes it’s! Blockchain is in its early stages which means that the technology still has to improve on potential security concerns before being called “secure.” This is one of the most common concern among critics, however, in the grand scheme of things, a technology can’t be improved until and unless it gets tested and used in real-world applications.Even though businesses are unsure of the technology, it can still lead to massive improvements if implemented correctly.
2. Cost and Efficiency
Photo by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash
It’s a no brainer that Blockchain technology will significantly reduce costs in the financial industry, however, the infrastructure of setting up the blockchain is quite expensive. It requires many computers/nodes to be set up to make it more decentralized and less prone to failures by hackers. Therefore, companies might not invest in a technology that is expensive and at the same time evolving.
3. Lack of Security
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
Even though blockchain is deemed to be cryptographically secured, there’s still some doubt that blockchain is not as secure as it could be. With blockchain, hackers can get control of the entire blockchain in the case of a “51 percent” attack. The “51 percent” happens when hackers get control of 51 percent of the network in the blockchain. This allows hackers to add fake transactions to the blockchain and change the data inside the blockchain in their favor. The probability of the “51 percent” attack is rare since the hackers have to hack the network all at once and in a short period of time, however, it’s still feared in the blockchain system
Conclusion
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Looking at the big picture, Blockchain holds a promising future. If we consider the pros of blockchain, that is, improvement in trade finance and logistics, it outweighs the cons. Of course blockchain like any other technology is not perfect and still has to improve, but the UK can still invest in the technology and try to evaluate whether the technology will be beneficial to improve Britain’s financial system after the Brexit deal.
If you enjoyed reading this far, be sure to leave a clap and feedback. It really helps :) | https://medium.com/@syedhassanalirizvi/how-might-blockchain-technology-impact-britain-after-the-brexit-deal-2fe90782c3d4 | ['Syed Hassan Ali Rizvi'] | 2020-08-04 21:35:28.686000+00:00 | ['Blockchain Startup', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain', 'Brexit'] |
Why we’re not doing an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) | CryptoKitties is not holding an ICO. Instead, we’re offering utility from day one and pursuing a sustainable revenue model based on our games’ mechanics.
The problem with ICOs
ICOs are a powerful funding model, allowing projects to succeed outside of traditional venture capitalism models and without a deep-pocketed founder. Instead, ICOs leverage investor trust on the principles and potential of the project.
Unfortunately, like all good things that work well, the model was almost immediately abused by scam artists and opportunists. Misuse has sown distrust in the underlying technology, created firebrand mindsets in the community, and fostered discordant expectations that are going to meet with a violent clash.
The right way to ICO
The CryptoKitties team subscribes to the same thinking as Jez San Obe, the CEO and Founder of FunFair:
“You should have a product before you ICO, you should know how to run a company, you shouldn’t have an anonymous team and you should release a prototype first.”
Despite ticking all of these boxes — we revealed our prototype at ETHWaterloo, we have numerous notable team members, we’re building in public — we’re still not pursuing an ICO.
CryptoKitties has the unique benefit of Axiom Zen’s backing. It would have been easy to leverage our parent company’s pedigree to hold an ICO and pursue our revenue model. However, it would have been disingenuous for both Axiom Zen and CryptoKitties to do so.
Your product needs to reflect your principles
When I say your product needs to reflect your principles, I mean that almost every way it can be interpreted: in terms of your team, your processes, your product’s purpose, and yes, how your product is funded.
Our technical architect has been following and mining cryptocurrency since 2010 and, as a company, we’ve been exploring blockchain technology since 2014. That same year, our team won the Money20/20 Hackathon with two projects based on blockchain technology.
We think it’s finally time for blockchain to make its way towards real-world application, especially outside of the headline-hogging cryptocurrency space. That’s what Axiom Zen wants to do, and CryptoKitties is our first attempt at building that bridge. This alignment in intentions is no accident.
Even though ICOs break down some of the traditional funding barriers, they put up a multitude of technical ones. Holding an ICO would result in a project limited to investors, and we want to make our game as accessible as possible.
Admittedly, blockchain still presents technical obstacles for the average consumer, but our award-winning UX aims to address as many of these as possible while the technology catches up.
We believe in blockchain, and we believe in this project
Numerous people are hoping to change the world with their blockchain project, and that’s great. Blockchain can disrupt numerous models and industries, especially ones dominated by legacy players. Personally, our team is excited about the concept of digital scarcity, and a big reason we’re pursuing CryptoKitties is that no one else has explored the idea in a way that satisfies our team.
However, almost every blockchain project is esoteric in concept and mind-numbing in its presentation. Few projects are exciting, let alone approachable, to the average consumer. That’s something we hope to change with CryptoKitties.
Our mission is to introduce the world to the first mainstream dApp (decentralized application).
A dApp has its backend code running on a decentralized peer-to-peer network. A traditional app has backend code running on centralized servers.
We consider it a win if we convince our grandparents, niece and nephews, and friends to engage with this technology and associate positive emotions to it.
We want to leverage the power of fun and games to make blockchain more accessible. We can’t do that by offering an ICO.
It turns out the best way to achieve our goals is more traditional: build something you believe in, make it as applicable and accessible as possible, and try to have fun along the way. | https://medium.com/cryptokitties/why-were-not-doing-an-initial-coin-offering-ico-5a6d6dfedca1 | ['Benny Giang'] | 2018-02-26 23:40:43.305000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin', 'Startup'] |
Yes Blackfriday Is Worth The Wait: Know Why | Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay
If you are someone who is confused about whether you should wait for the Black Friday sale for Webhosting or purchase it right away, then let this digital piece serve you as enlightenment. Keep with us till the end, and make the decision yourself. In this article, we are going to learn:
1. Why people are so excited about the Black Friday sale?
2. Why should you wait for Black Friday Sale?
3. 6 Black Friday deals you can’t miss
Why People Are So Excited About The Black Friday sale?
Image by Basim Miller from Pixabay
One of the largest sales in America is known as the Black Friday sale. The sale starts in the month of November and big e-commerce websites Amazon, eBay, Alibaba make colossal money out of it.
During this sale, you get deals on Webhosting plans which are very affordable. During normal hours, without the sale, these are very expensive.
Why Should You Wait For Black Friday Sale?
Image by ElisaRiva from Pixabay
The question should be why you should not? Don’t you want a premium web hosting plan that helps your website get the security it needs and the traffic it deserves? Of course, you do, and that’s should be the reason enough to wait for the black Friday sale.
6 Black Friday deals You can’t Miss
Image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay
75 % off on Siteground at $2.98/ per month
The web hosting plan in Siteground will be available from 27th November from 2 am CST and last till December 1, 2020. When you get hold of this web hosting plan you will get impeccable customer support which is available 24/7, some amazing and free domain names, and 99 percent uptime.
2. Straight 67 % off on A2 hosting at $1.98/per month
A2 is very popular among its customers, due to its two features. One is known as the turbo speed and the other is known as the money-back feature.
So it basically means that, when you purchase a hosting plan from A2 hosting, you will get a hosting speed that is 2x more than any other hosting plan available in the market.
Secondly, if you don’t like the web hosting plan after using it, you can opt for the money-back guarantee. The website will refund your money within 3 to 5 business days.
This feature is really fascinating as a money-back guarantee is not available on most of the websites that provide you with hosting plans. Some of the other noteworthy features of A2 hosting can be stated as follows :
· Inclusion of a free SSD plan.
· Availability of free CDN.
· SSD storage made available for all plans.
3. Black Friday deals by host starting at $2.65 per month
This is a Webhosting deal that is recommended by most of the bloggers. The reason, you will never get any web hosting issues with Bluehost.
If you are someone that is very concerned with the security of your website, then your search ends here with Bluehost. Some of the incredible features offered by the platform are:
· Your domain will be available for free for 1 year.
· Google will credit with 100 dollars as a complementary offer.
· No limit on disk and domain storage.
4. HostGator offering 70 % of black Friday sale
If you want to get a Webhosting plan for HostGator then you have to sit before your computer on November 25 and continue your journey till December 1st, 2020.
Now the greatest feature of this website lies in the variety. When you purchase a hosting plan from HostGator you will get three variations which are known as baby plan, business plan, and hatchling plan.
Just to let you know about the credibility of the website, search on the net about this website and you will get to see that 9 million people are already using HostGator as their hosting service. So imagine the trust and reliability of the website. Besides that, some of the attractive features offered by this website are:
· Click scripts installation can be done via one click.
· Massive amount of templates to choose from.
· Easy learning curve.
· Unlimited disk space and free domain availability.
5. Hostpapa offering a hosting plan at 1 dollar per month
The origin of this website gets traced back to Canada and people call it an eco-friendly website. This is because the website owners believe that they can use their technologies to reduce dreadful impacts on the environment.
The reason why it has gained so much popularity in much less time is that they offer web hosting plans that are a blessing for small and medium business owners. Check out some of the fascinating features of Hostpapa and decide for yourself:
· With this Hostpapa hosting plan, your websites will load faster.
· A customer support that out of the ordinary.
· Uptime is 99 %.
Some of the interesting offerings offered by HostPapa on black Friday are:
1.If you sign up for a package of 36 months then you will get hosting services only at 1 dollar per month. This will come under a shared hosting plan.
2.A WordPress hosting plan that has the same plan details as the previous one. If you buy the WordPress hosting package for 36 months. Each month you have to pay only a dollar.
3. Reseller plan made available for one dollar per month. Only if you are buying the plan for one month.
6. WPX hosting which offers 99 % off monthly and completely free on yearly
Let me make you understand this concept. When you purchase a hosting plan from this website for 36 months, and then you will have a discount of 99 %.
Similarly, if you buy a hosting plan for a year, you will get a hosting plan completely free for 3 months and after that, it will switch back to a normal pricing plan. The black Friday sale on WPX hosting will begin from November 4 and last till December 4, 2020.
Parting tips
Just by reading by all the information above, you will be convinced of why black Friday sale is totally worth the wait. Hope this digital piece will help you in selecting the best web hosting plan for your business.
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/yes-blackfriday-is-worth-the-wait-know-why-9bc13196724d | ['Only Gourav'] | 2020-10-13 06:33:31.672000+00:00 | ['Coupon', 'Black Friday', 'Promo', 'Web Hosting', 'Discount'] |
Bagging (Bootstrap Aggregating), Overview | 4. Advantage of Bagging
Random forest is one of the most popular bagging algorithms. Bagging offers the advantage of allowing many weak learners to combine efforts to outdo a single strong learner.
Bagging methods mainly focus on reducing the variance. If the base models trained on different samples have high variance (overfitting), then the aggregated result would even it out thereby reducing the variance. Therefore, this technique is chosen when the base models have high variance and low bias which is generally the case with models having high degrees of freedom for complex data (Ex: Deep Decision Trees).
The big advantage of bagging is that it can be parallelised (trained in parallel). As the different models are fitted independently from each other, intensive parallelisation techniques can be used if required.
Models with complex architecture or large data require more training time. bagging is parallelised , the time taken to train each of the base models is equivalent to training any one of them, making bagging a good choice of ensemble method. | https://medium.com/swlh/bagging-bootstrap-aggregating-overview-b73ca019e0e9 | ['Raouf Zoghbi'] | 2020-09-07 05:34:55.665000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Bagging', 'Towards Data Science', 'Bootstrap'] |
Xcode 專案名稱不要取的幾種名字 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/%E5%BD%BC%E5%BE%97%E6%BD%98%E7%9A%84-swift-ios-app-%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C%E8%A7%A3%E7%AD%94%E9%9B%86/xcode-%E5%B0%88%E6%A1%88%E5%90%8D%E7%A8%B1%E4%B8%8D%E8%A6%81%E5%8F%96%E7%9A%84%E5%B9%BE%E7%A8%AE%E5%90%8D%E5%AD%97-caff1f14b564 | ['彼得潘的 Ios App Neverland'] | 2021-02-20 08:59:05.197000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Xcode', 'Swift'] |
The One Key to Unlocking it All | And how I realized it was the greatest change I could ever make in my life and have never been happier with my relationships
Photo by Jacob Rank on Unsplash
I feel like i’ve gone back and forth my entire life trying to be comfortable in my own skin. Most people that know me seemed pretty surprised by that but I think it’s something everyone struggles with. Especially with social media, big Hollywood movies, and sports stars everywhere seemingly showing us how we should and shouldn’t look.
But authenticity isn’t about how you look…it’s about how you feel and act.
I recently wrote an article about how the best clothing one can buy is the clothing they feel (and act) the most comfortable in. And I think that idea flows perfectly into this one.
As i’ve progressed through my twenties and into my thirties my anxiety and depression drove me down a hard path of figuring out how to be happy in the present moment. And in my opinion finding the key to my authentic self has been one of the hardest, yet most rewarding journeys i’ve ever been on.
While I have yet to find my “dream girl” i’ve noticed that each and every one of the relationships in my life has grown tremendously due to my new-found authentic self finally shining through. I’m closer with my family more now than ever. They all open up more to me now than ever before.
I’ve left some friends in the past that i’d outgrown. I used to take that type of stuff so personally, good friendships dwindling and leaving my life for good. But what i’ve learned is when one door closes a better one usually opens. I now surround myself with some amazing friends, some as new as 1 year, yet I feel like i’ve known them for a lifetime. Being my authentic self around them makes me happy. They constantly cheer on my accomplishments and we all act that way towards one another. I truly love them like my second family.
It took me most of my twenties to truly realize all my relationships get better, faster, when I’m projecting my authentic self. No masks, no shields, no fake bravado. True, 100%, vulnerable me - 24/7. Everyone shines brighter around me if I lead through my most authentic self and I absolutely love it. Seeing those around me feed off my vulnerable qualities and show their wounds along the way is honestly one of the things i’m most proud of in my life.
Nothing bonds people stronger than hardship. And we all have checkered pasts’ and broken hearts. The sooner we feel comfortable talking about them openly, the sooner we can move on from them and realize we’re all a little broken on the inside and there’s nothing wrong with that. | https://medium.com/@riccoa12/the-one-key-to-unlocking-it-all-9ded8c14b728 | ['Anthony Ricco'] | 2020-12-25 00:15:13.699000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Friendship', 'Relationships', 'Authenticity', 'Vulnerability'] |
A Glimpse into Bayer’s U.S. LIFE Award Winners | Bayer’s LIFE values — Leadership, Integrity, Flexibility and Efficiency — are the tenets by which Bayer and all its employees operate. Every year, employees all over the world who have shown an “above and beyond” approach to one of these four values are nominated to receive Bayer’s LIFE Award. Bayer Scapes highlights the recent U.S. LIFE Award winners.
Leadership: Brent Craig, Crop Science business, St. Louis, MO
Putting the needs of our customers comes first. As head of Bayer Crop Science Seed Growth business for North America, I led a multi-functional team that evaluated all aspects of a product to ensure that it met a need for our customers. Based on our results, I made a recommendation to the leadership team that differed from our original plans.
Leadership completely supported and validated the team’s decision. Receiving the Leadership LIFE Award as a result of this work was an affirmation of the strong collective work we did to live up to our commitment to support and value our strong customer relationships. I am humbled and proud to receive this recognition.
Integrity: Yesmean Wahdan, Pharmaceuticals business, Women’s Healthcare, Whippany, NJ
I’ve been called “customer obsessed” and I am proud of that. Connecting with customers and being viewed as a resource to them is one of the most gratifying aspects of my work. Creating partnerships with these customers, who are healthcare providers and pharmacies, lets me share information about our products that helps patients and their families.
To be recognized for integrity is truly rewarding. Our women’s healthcare teams make a difference not only for women but for their communities and for generations to come. We work together to help women and their providers make important decisions about their lives. It’s something I’m very proud of.
Flexibility: Curtis Scherder, Crop Science business, Chesterfield, MO
I love stepping out of my comfort zone to learn new things. That’s why I was excited for the challenge of contributing to a new digital strategy for one of our technologies. It gave me a great opportunity to combine my practical experience from R&D and as a systems user, learn new approaches, and deliver a digital solution to propel the business.
Winning the Flexibility LIFE Award for this work highlights for me that the concept of One Bayer, where we work as a team to help each other and the business succeed, is truly in play here.
Efficiency: Govardhan Singh, Pharmaceuticals business, Radiology, O’Hara, PA and Rydalmere, Australia
I am honored to receive the Efficiency LIFE award and I accept it on behalf of the Rydalmere cross-functional team. Ensuring we deliver good quality product at the right time at competitive costs is a team effort across the organization. Our team did an excellent job by meeting customer needs by increasing throughput within a short period of time.
I have always embraced change and believe this helps you grow and learn. When this opportunity came up, I was thrilled to raise my hand to take on the assignment. I have been very fortunate not only to learn and grow but also get to know people from more than 10 different countries who work at the site. We’ve built a strong bond. | https://medium.com/bayer-scapes/a-glimpse-into-bayers-u-s-life-award-winners-b1592fafdf6b | ['Bayer Us'] | 2020-01-09 14:01:01.087000+00:00 | ['Integrity', 'Flexibility', 'Employee Engagement', 'Efficiency', 'Leadership'] |
5 Key Skills for PR Professionals | “Why do you want to go into public relations?” I queried.
“Because I’m good with people,” she responded.
I have lost count on the number of times I have heard this response from the uninformed person who acknowledges that she/he wants to pursue a career in public relations. In order to succeed in the public relations industry, there are several basic skills that must be either honed or acquired. Here is a list of my top five:
1. Strong writing. It always surprises me when a newbie is unaware of the need for good writing skills. In fact, that’s probably the most important skill of all. Employees have to be able to write to the media (via pitches and queries), write to the clients (status reports and updates) as well as their boss (weekly reports). A well written media query will garner the attention that clients deserve.
2. Think like a reporter. I was fortunate to have gotten my first job as a news reporter, but most of those in public relations don’t have that opportunity. It is a must to not only query the right media, but to read what they write so that you know how to approach them on relevant topics. If the reporter covers the area of technology, you will surely be embarrassed if you contact her on behalf of your interior designer client.
3. Confident public speaking. I can’t emphasize enough the need for students in marketing and public relations to take public speaking courses while in college. This will prove to be invaluable the first time attending a new business meeting or facing down a client across a conference room.
4. Know your client’s industry. I always tell my clients that “We work with you, not for you.” The important differential here is that we know his business as well as if we were actually on staff working for him. Learn to research the industry whether it’s consumer products, finance or pharmaceuticals…and become an expert in that field.
5. The ability to just figure it out. A new project, like learning how to upload a client’s blog to Facebook Instant Article, may seem daunting at first, but once done, will provide a new skill that can be brought on to other tasks. Take the time to figure it out. Remember, it’s not brain surgery, and no one will die if done incorrectly. But if done right, a new skill is added to the resume. | https://medium.com/@tjsacks/5-key-skills-for-pr-professionals-11c43713f90d | ['T.J. Sacks'] | 2020-11-16 16:51:48.068000+00:00 | ['Communication Skills', 'Writing', 'Public Relations', 'Marketing'] |
Breathless: Haiku | 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/red-rose/breathless-haiku-7776450c6f7a | ['Patsy Starke'] | 2020-12-05 22:25:59.811000+00:00 | ['Haiku', 'LGBTQ', 'Gender Identity', 'Poetry', 'Transgender'] |
8 reasons to invest in real estate | The financial world has shown us the risks of investing in equities and funds in recent years, and the ordinary savings account provides very little. You’ll have to pay extra taxes on your investment income in the not-too-distant future. The solution? Invest in real estate. Real estate investing can be rewarding even in times of economic and financial crisis. The value of your investment capital increases in the long term and your property itself can give you income without risk. This is how you get two birds for the price of one. The result? Your financial security and peace of mind.
1. Real estate investing is handier than saving
The interest rate on your savings account is low, and depending on the economic environment, inflation can occasionally outpace the return on a fixed-term investment. Purchasing an investment property is one of the best ways to put your money to work. With a good purchase, you will see capital increases for the value and the rental income will fill your bank account. Your retirement is assured.
2. By investing in real estate you protect yourself against weak currencies
During times of crisis, many currencies are affected, and as a result, they are valued less worldwide than stronger currencies such as the Euro or the Dollar. In general, properties are appraised and evaluated in dollars or in reference to a certain worldwide or regional market. Invest your savings quickly and safely. When you invest in real estate, you are not subject to the ups and downs of local currencies, and your capital is protected. A monthly rental can also be a decent source of income, which is another benefit of real estate investing.
3. Investing in real estate generates extra revenue in the form of a rental
Have you already invested in real estate? Then you know you’ve won twice: your investment property will appreciate in value over time, and you’ll be able to count on a consistent monthly rental income. In the long run, the average yearly return on a yield property is 7 to 8% each year (calculated with international currency).
4. Real estate investing is a safer bet than the stock market
Stock prices are volatile, and the financial sector is bolstered by a slew of new investment products, including sophisticated systems with low or no returns. Many people pick investment property as a risk-free way to ensure their future. This sort of investment is obviously more expensive at first, but after you have two or more homes, you will see that your money grows quicker and quicker as a result of rental income, and the value of investment properties increases over time.
5. Investing in real estate: goodbye to unstable prices of gold and commodities
Investing in commodities such as gold and silver, which are very volatile, is also a risk. The price of gold and silver plummeted later. Even experts agree that determining what elements determine the pricing is challenging. It’s just conjecture, and there isn’t a very strong foundation for retirement unless you delve extensively into the markets, which takes more time than real estate investing.
6. Investing in real estate rather than retirement funds or insurance
Except during a financial crisis, pension funds, life insurance, and group insurance are safe investments for the future. If your bank or insurance firm is having financial difficulties, switching to a different insurer or bank might be quite costly. Do you wish to leave your loved ones some money? Then the greatest option is to invest in real estate.
7. Investing in real estate as an addition to your pension
We already know that a minimal retirement, or even a retirement that you will receive after reaching a particular age, will most likely not be sufficient to meet your demands. The mandatory retirement system will be harmed by the aging of the population and the rise in life expectancy. That is why it is best to take care of your old age in a safe way that gives you the security you deserve with income from an additional rental. Your greatest bet for a dignified retirement and a worry-free retirement.
8. Real Estate Investing: Park Your Money in Parking Lots
Another very stable real estate investment? Garages and parking lots. Because most cars are not used for more than 90% of the time, they will always require the usage of a garage or parking lot. It’s safe to assume that public parking in major Canadian cities will continue to rise. In the future, you will get an even higher return, both for the rent and for the value of the parking lot itself. Another benefit of investing in garages and parking lots is that maintenance costs are low. | https://medium.com/@listingnearby/8-reasons-to-invest-in-real-estate-d965fac8725 | ['Listing Nearby'] | 2021-06-17 05:37:36.833000+00:00 | ['Investment In Real Estate', 'Real Estate', 'Real Estate Investments'] |
3D Printing Services near me | 3d printing services — Inoventive 3D printing brings 3D Printing technology at your door step. With our latest 3D Printing facility in UAE, we can now cater any of your 3D Printing needs. Whether it is a large scale 3D Printing project or Industrial 3D Printing project or a small object to be 3D Printed. At Inoventive 3D Printing Dubai, you can find the solution for every of your 3D Printing need which suits your budget. Just WhatsApp or email 3D Printable file and we will get it done and deliver it to your doorstep.
We are specialized in 3D Printing of Large scale objects like art installations, wall panels, wall fixtures, home decors, 3D printed customized furniture, giant sculptures, 3D printed boat hulls, automobile parts like car spoilers and bumpers etc. In our ultra-modern facility, we use latest technology for 3D Printing which is environment friendly and superfast in printing.
3D printed items are light-weight, environment friendly, cost-effective and the best advantage of additive manufacturing is that, it will reduce wastage of raw-material considerably on its production. 3D Printing improves lives with its customizability. Automobile and aerospace companies are always keeps an eye on this new technology for its capacity to save weight on their products.
Specially in aerospace, every ounce saved on aerospace spares and materials means more weight is available for passengers or cargo. Reducing weight never means, 3D Printing will compromise on its quality. At Inoventive 3D, we make sure that we maintain the strength and integrity of the product and its quality. If we speak about the complex designs and matrix designs, with 3D Printing it is easy to achieve. Some parts with complex designs are difficult to produce with the traditional manufacturing methods and 3D Printing suits well in such situations to produce parts with complex designs.
3D Printing Dubai, has changed manufacturing concept, with its unparalleled ability of 3D Printing, lower cost and customizability of speciality parts, Inoventive 3D Printing UAE is leading the market with the innovative ideas and providing affordable 3D Printing services to the region.
Please feel free to contact us for any further assistance. Call/WhatsApp: +971 52 598 8448 | Email: [email protected] | https://3dprintingdubai.ae/
https://3dprintingdubai.ae/3d-printing-services-near-me/ | https://medium.com/@sewig67441/3d-printing-services-near-me-43aabc0f9b2 | [] | 2021-12-28 11:26:16.974000+00:00 | ['3d Printing Dubai', '3d Printing Technology', '3D Printing', '3d Printing Uae', '3d Printing Services'] |
7 ways to put together the perfect family bathroom. | In an ideal world, we’d have an en suite bathroom room, a separate ‘main’ bathroom for the kids, and a cloakroom bathroom for the visitors. However, the reality for most of is, we have one bathroom to serve the whole household.
So, whether you’re a new home owner, or your only bathroom is in dire need of a family friendly makeover, here are some tips you may find helpful:
1. A practical layout
The first thing that every family friendly bathroom needs is a practical layout. What do you mean? I hear you ask. Well, before you start picking out a colour scheme, you need to consider the best ways to set out your bathroom, to suit all family members.
For example, consider how many vanity units you’re going to need and how they will fit into the room without compromising too much space. Figure out if you can fit a bathtub and a shower into one room or if you’ll have to compromise with a shower bath.
2. Include a Shower Bath
Shower baths are ideal for family bathrooms. Many shower baths have straight baths with a shower head fitted above them. They’re a great comprise in smaller bathroom layouts. You can create a beautiful looking shower bath, that will work for all the family.
Try to work your shower bath into the corner of the room. Consider installing one into a wall with recessed shelves. That way, you can pop all your bathroom goodies right next to your bath for easy access at wash times.
3. Don’t forget to double basin up
When you have a big family, early mornings and evenings can cause bathroom traffic jams. Especially if you only have one bathroom in your home. We suggest tackling bathroom congestion with a double basin. Double basins are standard double sinks, of the same size placed side by side.
Big Bathroom Shop
Installing a double basin into your family bathroom, will allow two people to brush, wash or floss at the same time — saving your family time in the early morning rush.
4. Wall hung everything
Wall hung bathroom pieces will offer a lighter aesthetic in your bathroom. Because they aren’t mounted on the floor, your bathroom will appear much bigger and less floor obstructions means it will be easier to mop the floors!
5. Keep it warm
Nothing will make bathing the children a harder task than having a cold bathroom. Installing a heated towel rail will help keep your bathroom and towels toasty warm. Not only will they keep your bathroom at a relaxing temperature, they’re also a luxurious touch for all of the family
6. Storage solutions
Family bathrooms need to have some great storage solutions. With so many bodies in one space, your toiletries are bound to build up. If you’re able to throw money into your bathroom, opt for built in cupboard and units for a streamline aesthetic.
If your looking for a cheaper solution, try putting up some shelves. Shelves will add height to your bathroom and offer you some extra space to store away your clutter — and the little ones won’t be able to reach them!
1. Add colour
Nothing looks quite as welcoming as a beautifully colour co-ordinated bathroom. Look for colours that will appeal to all family members.
For example, for your younger children try and include a colour bath mat and towels. Colourful accessories will make your bathroom more exciting for them.
Don’t forget this is your sanctuary too, so make sure you create a space that will provide you with the ultimate relaxation when taking those well needed baths!
So why not consider some colourful vintage tiles? Vintage tiles are all the range and will give your bathroom a vintage homely touch. | https://medium.com/@rikki.fothergill/7-ways-to-put-together-the-perfect-family-bathroom-18cbedb4f6a2 | ['Rikki Fothergill'] | 2019-11-21 15:58:44.806000+00:00 | ['Interior Design', 'Interior Decorating', 'Bathroom Decorating Ideas', 'Bathroom Renovations', 'Bathroom Design'] |
Dr. Andrea Natale, World-Renowned Cardiologist, Published Researcher | Dr. Andrea Natale, World-Renowned Cardiologist, Published Researcher
Academics, researchers, and members of the medical community the world over look to medical research specialized journals to increase their knowledge on specific topics. Dr. Andrea Natale, currently the Executive Medical Director of the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute at St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, is a world-renowned expert and sought-after lecturer and educator in the field of cardiac electrophysiology, the study and treatment of electrical abnormalities of the heart. His dedication to his work, research, and academic achievements have led cutting-edge publications in leading medical journals.
Dr. Andrea Natale Publications
Dr. Andrea Natale began his prestigious medical career in 1985 after graduating with honors from Universita’ degli Studi di Firenze, School of Medicine and Surgery in Florence, Italy, followed by cardiology studies at the Catholic University School of Cardiology in Rome. Between 1987 and 1997, Natale’s work was featured in more than 60 articles across no less than 10 prestigious publications.
In the decades that followed, his research was featured more than 500 times and cited by academics and researchers nearly 10,000 times. To date, Natale has had more than 100 articles published in Circulation, a leading scientific journal from the American Heart Association. Articles featured in Circulation are related to research as well as the practice of treating cardiovascular diseases. Circulation also publishes papers specific to unique areas of cardiology, including arrhythmia and electrophysiology (specialties of Dr. Natale), cardiovascular interventions, and heart failure, among others. Dr. Andrea Natale has been published in Circulation discussing these topics more than 20 times.
In addition, articles highlighting the research and work of Dr. Natale can be found in several well-known publications, including the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, The American Journal of Cardiology, the American Heart Journal which is Circulation so this reference should be removed, JAMA, The New England Journal of Medicine, and many more. Since 1987, Natale’s work has been featured in more than 400 publications across 50 different medical journals.
Dr. Andrea Natale’s Research
Dr. Andrea Natale is considered one of the preeminent heart arrhythmia specialists in the world. For the duration of his 30+ year medical career, Natale has focused on research and innovation in the treatment of atrial fibrillation. His research led to the creation of a circumferential ultrasound pulmonary vein-ablation system to correct atrial fibrillation, for which he received a patent. He performed the procedure on the first five patients to ever receive the surgery. His research and work on atrial fibrillation (or AFib) have also led to the development of today’s current catheter-based treatments.
Throughout his career, Andrea Natale’s goal has been to help restore patients with AFib to a normal heart rhythm, allowing for improved overall quality of life. His research has led to the receipt of several awards, including Innovator of the Year for several years during his time at the Cleveland Clinic. Documentation of his research and related studies can be found in various medical texts, medical reference books such as The Handbook of Cardiac Electrophysiology and Cardiac Electrophysiology: Clinical Case Review.
Editorial Boards
Peer reviewers are essential to the excellence and reliability of medical journals. Research articles presented in journals are designed to provide relevant, valid, clinically current evidence to guide patient-centered research and care. These articles, when reviewed by knowledgeable experts in the field, have the power to enhance the knowledge of others and encourage practitioners to provide the best, most patient-centered and evidence-based care possible. For this reason, journals and medical publications look to experts in the field to serve as reviewers and members of editorial boards. Reviews by members of the medical community who are subject matter experts help ensure that the articles and research published in a journal are of the highest quality.
Dr. Andrea Natale has served and, in many cases, continues to serve as a reviewer for multiple publications both in the United States and abroad, including many in which his own works have been featured. In the United States, Dr. Natale is a reviewer for the American Heart Journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, The American Journal of Cardiology, and the Journal of the American Heart Association, among several others. Internationally, he is listed as a reviewer for The British Medical Journal, the International Heart Journal, and the International Journal of Cardiology. Dr. Natale also reviews journal submissions for Lancet, which is published both internationally and in the United States.
Andrea Natale has also had the honor of serving as a guest editor and associate editor in chief for several publications over the years. Today, Dr. Natale remains an active member of several editorial boards, including those at the World Journal of Cardiology, the Journal of Innovations in Cardiac Rhythm Management, Advances in Arrhythmias, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the Journal of Interventional Electrophysiology, EP Lab Digest, JACC, the Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology Review, JAFIB, the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology JCE, and several others. In addition, Dr. Natale holds the title of editor in chief of the Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology.
About Dr. Andrea Natale
Andrea Natale began his decades-long career at Duke University, followed by the Cleveland Clinic. During his time there, he led the Department of Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology and served as the medical director for the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Atrial Fibrillation before leaving Ohio. After a tenure as the Arrhythmia Center director at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and the executive director of the Al Sabah Arrhythmia Institute at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Medical Center in New York, Dr. Natale relocated to Texas, where he currently serves as the Executive Medical Director of the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute at Saint David’s Medical Center.
Throughout his career, Dr. Natale has dedicated himself to educating the future members of the medical community because the wellbeing of all his patients across the world is his main focus. Natale remains committed to ongoing research and innovation in the fields of electrophysiology and atrial fibrillation treatment. | https://medium.com/@drandreanatale/dr-andrea-natale-world-renowned-cardiologist-published-researcher-d98dae12c41a | ['Dr. Andrea Natale'] | 2021-08-10 17:23:35.761000+00:00 | ['Research', 'Health', 'Cardiology', 'Doctors'] |
Lacking a Tribe, finding a Muse | Lacking a Tribe, finding a Muse
I’m sorry extremely off center. Death is at my door. Life is the hinges and handles that hold me in place. Dreams are static, attainable and real. Life is fucking good, but still I feel less than. Missing. Invisible.
I’m thinking this is old programming sent by my subconscious to test my resolve. To see if that mountain summit is the apex I desire or an illusion set up to make existing not so brutal.
I live outside the norm. I never have conformed to anyone’s standards. But my kind heart and willingness to serve others make those not on the fringe regard me with a southern euphuism, “She touched, but bless her heart.” I find people willing to humor themselves with my presence.
I don’t follow their rules, worship the dogmas or play their scenes. I’ve studied and know the games, but never ante in. They watch me like a sun flair- not understanding, squinting at the light. Trying to smell the sun.
I lack a tribe.
My domestic partner treats me as a petulant child. Someone to parade at dinner parties for antidotes.
The ones I gave birth to or brought into my family exist in the norms. The automaton shadows. They whisper behind my back while rolling eyes.
My friends want only the strong or comic me. They really aren’t friends. More acquaintances that have some common themes and hobbies.
I’m never able to just be. I’m lonely and shouldn’t be because I’m funny, passionate and loyal. I’m fucking awesome.
The few I’ve found that are simpatico to my existence — live in shadows too. Like me they yearn for more, but settled, and that life guides them. We reach out and connect every now and then. It’s a symphony of beauty and love, but all so temporary.
For now I’m living happily ever after every now and then. But I want my tribe. I thirst for a split apart to curl up by the fire at night. Somewhere I can just be me. My soul screams for its authentic self. I’m alone. I’m searching.
I read your words and resonate with the honesty. I think a great many people have a sense of unfulfilled potential but most cannot articulate it honestly to themselves let alone share it and await the echo of response.
I’m sorry if the delay made you feel uneasy. It’s a logistical thing rather than a desire to appear aloof.
I’m in awe. I’m listening to Pink Floyd and reading your words- equally inspiring. Both a work of unusual art. Expositioning art from a deep feeling. No rules. The authentic self reaching out. Witnessed by an audience enthralled and wanting of more. But knowing the magic happens in the crevices of life. And appreciating it more because the knowledge of how hard existence is, art seldom wins. You are a work of art my friend. In form and prose.
All that you touch, all that you see, all that you feel, all you create, all you destroy, and all that is life. Feel it. Revel and know you have a witness.
Tonight as I wind down with a glass of strong red wine, my thoughts drift to him. The one ever present in my mind, but never in the same zip code. He is my muse, sexual inspiration, friend, sounding board. It’s a new and wonderful pact carved out of the souls hidden desires.
It’s a gentle and nurturing coupling based on words and honesty. The most necessary of human needs being sexual and to be desired.
While the prose and live conversations are mostly debase and animalistic in its intent- the raw honesty is a crumb my hungry soul has never been tossed.
I revel in the fact that my pontifications don’t fall on deaf or evil ears. He is always kind. It’s the greatest gift I’ve been offered. One I will honor and reflect on always with a light twinge in my heart and twinkled eyes.
Neither of us seek to change our treehouse or the inhabitants therein, it’s just about being heard. And the freedom to say and do anything. All is accepted, nothing judged. Like breathing, this sustains and fills me.
Recognized Passion.
“Last night’s sunset was an angel weeping. Holding out a bloody sword.
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it’s pointing toward.”
Take me to the beach- barefoot and toes in the sand. Im happy with the ocean, needing no fancy ornaments or gadgets to distract my creativity, just the ocean spray and the endless waves. Lay with me on cool grass, fingers entwined, and watch the stars blaze a path of glory across an inky midnight sky.
Writing circus prose today.
The book is getting traction. It’s so visceral to write I can smell elephant dung.
Accessing memories.
Releasing demons.
Infecting minds.
Purging soul.
I Can hear the lions roar and my hand hurts from blisters. Then that utter loneliness of being on the road to long. It’s a good tale that must be told. People are going to buy it thinking its a fun romp- where it’s mostly heart retching.
Still needs to be told.
I know I’m uniquely one of a very few that ran off and joined the circus.
Teri’s Culinary Erotic Book, “Consumed” is available at http://www.amazon.com/Consumed-Teri-Bayus-ebook/dp/B016DW85PA.
“The Greatest of Ease” will be released in 2017 | https://medium.com/muse-writtings/lacking-a-tribe-finding-a-muse-45acb4cd8a40 | ['Teri Bayus'] | 2016-07-30 19:10:35.415000+00:00 | ['Artist', 'Writing'] |
Not Enough Time | Poet’s Note
I have written more haiku about time travel than any normal person would ever dream of. Of course, I passed that mark the moment I wrote my first-time travel haiku.
Time is an obsession of mine. It’s our true currency — and it’s the ultimate scarce resource. I believe that being on time for things is a way to show respect for other people. I don’t tolerate meetings that go over time. I get up and walk out. My time is too valuable to allow anyone to waste.
One of the best uses of time is laying out under the stars with someone you love and pondering the mysteries of the Universe. Another great way to spend time is eating ice cream outside on a sweltery summer day. | https://medium.com/weirdo-poetry/not-enough-time-f51a1169b806 | ['Jason Mcbride'] | 2020-08-23 18:11:37.541000+00:00 | ['Time Travel', 'Fiction', 'Haiku', 'Poetry', 'Weird'] |
Change Your Question | When running any type of business, the problems are inevitable. It is how you deal with these problems which makes or breaks you. You have to find solutions as soon as possible or else you will hate the process of running a business. What helped me the most is when I changed the question I asked from:
- Why does this always happen to me?
- How can I find any good cleaners? No one is reliable?
- Why can’t cleaners work properly?
TO
- How can we fix this problem so that it does not happen again?
- How can we improve our hiring process so that we have more efficient cleaners
- How can we setup proper inspection procedures using digital channels to check on the work of the cleaners after every clean.
Once you start to ask more positive questions, your brain automatically adjusts to being more positive whatever the problems you may face. If it is not for changing my questions to more positive ones, I would not be able to grow my cleaning business. When you grow any business, the problems you face double in size and you have to be able to handle it as quickly as possible without going insane.
Changing your question does not happen overnight. If you have been continuously looking at the negative of everything that happens in your life, chances are it takes your brain quite a while to train to become more positive. Most people grow up in such negative environments that it is passed on from their parents, friends, etc and it is hard to change this instantly when it has been imprinted in your brain for years.
Take small steps towards becoming more positive. Change Your Question To Become Positive & Happy. | https://medium.com/@maxshiyaz/change-your-question-4b0c5b9860f1 | ['Max Shiyaz'] | 2020-12-08 04:21:01.394000+00:00 | ['Change', 'Positive Thinking', 'Change Management', 'Business Advice', 'Positive'] |
5 Reasons to Buy Apple’s New iPod Touch | There’s a new iPod touch! A new iPod touch? Sure. It’s going to be popular with parents, with people who exercise, and with anyone who wants low-cost access to iMessage and FaceTime.
By Sascha Segan
Apple has announced a new iPod touch, which adds an A10 processor but retains the little device’s small and light form factor, low price, and good ol’ 3.5mm headphone jack.
The iPod touch has always been popular among parents who want a smartphone-like device for their kids without the monthly service plan or all-day 4G LTE access. You can use an old iPhone for that, but the new iPod touch starts at $199 while an iPhone 7, which has the same processor and thus the same power as the iPod touch, costs $449 new and starts at $279 for used models on Gazelle.
While I know a lot of people who would prefer a new iPhone SE, I think the iPod touch is what they’re going to get for now. Apple wants to keep its average iPhone selling prices high for Wall Street, which means not releasing a lower-priced iPhone. But the iPod touch isn’t an iPhone, so Apple can satisfy its customers without angering investors.
The new iPod touch, available now, fits into a lot of narrow little cracks in Apple’s market, though, and I think it will please a lot of people. We don’t have ours yet, and I’ll do a full review as soon as we do. But honestly, I don’t think it will disappoint. If you’re not convinced why it’s important, here are some key reasons.
1. It’s small
The iPhone SE is the only device with a 4-inch screen left in Apple’s lineup. So for those who want a very portable device that fits on an exercise arm strap, for example, the new iPod touch is the best bet.
2. It’s upgradeable
The previous iPod touch’s A8 processor only supported up to iOS 12. The new one will probably go up to iOS 14, which means the new iPod touch will support Apple’s subscription Apple Arcade gaming service and any new iOS 13 features announced at Apple’s WWDC conference next week. (Apple hasn’t said which devices will support Apple Arcade; we’re sure this one will, but we’re not sure about the older iPod touch.)
3. It still works as a phone without any monthly fees
The iPod touch can’t connect to cellular networks. But it has iMessage and FaceTime, including FaceTime Audio, over Wi-Fi. For a traditional phone number, you can add the Skype or Sideline app.
4. It offers support and parental controls
The iPod touch is spectacularly popular among families with younger kids in the US, because of Apple’s network of stores and Genius Bars, and iOS’s easy-to-use parental control options. Yes, parents could get cheap Android phones with no SIMs, but here in the US, those often have poor or no customer and technical support, and not much of a user community around them.
5. You join the iPhone club for under $200
Many teen and tween social groups rely on iMessage, and use its over-the-top messaging features such as reactions and read receipts, which don’t appear in SMS on Android phones. Having an iPod touch keeps you in the loop without going full iPhone. | https://medium.com/pcmag-access/5-reasons-to-buy-apples-new-ipod-touch-190ea47a94f2 | [] | 2019-06-05 15:12:18.554000+00:00 | ['Apple', 'Consumer Electronics', 'Technology', 'Music', 'Gadgets'] |
Fat Acceptance Is Self-Acceptance | I’ve wasted a lot of time waiting until I was thin to go after the things I wanted. I didn’t have the self-confidence to put myself out there because I was fat. Was it an excuse? In some ways, yes, but I did experience roadblocks because of my weight.
I’m getting older, and I no longer have the luxury to wait until I’m a perfect weight to go after my goals.
We have to love ourselves all the time, which what acceptance is all about. If you’re fat, then fat-acceptance is self-acceptance, the same way every other kind of acceptance is.
Fat-acceptance doesn’t mean not growing, improving, or challenging one’s self.
Acceptance gives you a foundation that allows you to move past your emotional obstacles with less fear. Think of it this way, if you’re cutting an apple on an unstable cutting-board, you run the risk of hurting yourself with the knife. We need a stable starting point to take chances, put ourselves out there, and take actionable steps.
How can you change if you loathe who you are at the start or seek help if you don’t feel you are worth it? Without acceptance, there’s nothing to keep you going.
The opposite of fat-acceptance is internalizing cruelty or mistreatment because you feel it’s justified.
You can’t defend yourself from fat-shaming, discrimination, and abuse if you’re convinced you deserve it because of your body-size.
Being fat isn’t a crime — though I’m sure some see it that way. Fat people should be allowed to be happy and accept themselves for their successes and failures.
Fat-acceptance isn’t the same thing as body-positivity.
I like to think the body-positive movement began with good intentions. They wanted people to feel good about their bodies, even when those bodies weren’t perfect.
However, somewhere along the line, as the movement grew, the idea of body-positivity began to apply to only those whose bodies were acceptable fat, and not unruly fat.
You could be positive about your body if it were curvy, thick in the right places, or voluptuous, but if it was obviously fat, then body-positive was something for you to aspire to.
In her article, Leaving Body Positivity Behind for Fat Acceptance, writer Rachael Hope writes:
I disagree with the idea that loving your body is a goal that sets us up for failure. Loving your body doesn’t have to mean that you don’t think you have flaws or that you don’t have bad days. The same way that when you love another human being you don’t like them every moment of every day. I have days where I feel down on myself or dislike the way my body looks or feels. There are specific parts of my body I like less than others. But I still love my body. I love that it is my home. I love that it lets me physically connect with people. I love that it lets me feel touch and pleasure. Accepting your body is something to be proud of. For me, accepting it was part of falling in love. I don’t love my body because it’s the BEST body or because it’s a BETTER body than someone else’s. I love it because it is my body, and I love myself.
As fat people, we need to accept, care for, and love our bodies — it’s vital to our feelings of worth, self-esteem, and the quality of our lives. We need it as armor to fight our battles and help protect us against shame and humiliation.
When you accept your body, you can start to heal.
Fat-acceptance allows us to be honest with ourselves and helps us to see both our limitations and talents. Without fat-acceptance, you may shut something down like working out or applying for a job because you’re starting from a shaky spot.
When you accept your body, you can start to heal. No matter what size it is, how healthy it’s perceived to be, or how it serves you — you’re alive and that’s thanks to your body.
The next time someone tries to shame you for having both self-acceptance and fat-acceptance let them know that you’re not dependent on their approval, and that you don’t need their opinions about your relationship to your own body. | https://medium.com/fattitude/fat-acceptance-is-self-acceptance-b05f19edaaaf | ['Christine Schoenwald'] | 2020-12-04 08:38:01.287000+00:00 | ['Self Acceptance', 'Fat Acceptance', 'Mental Health', 'Culture', 'Feminism'] |
Snapchat for Email Marketing | Snapchat for Email Marketing
Using Sendgrid API to Delete Content of Email after its Open @ TheNextWeb Hackathon
Snap marketing email would delete email content of user after opening. This creates urgency for users to take advantage of the content upon first viewing before destructing. | https://medium.com/garyyauchan/honeybee-snap-marketing-email-f596e029d17c | ['Gary-Yau Chan'] | 2016-10-19 18:59:01.295000+00:00 | ['Hackathons', 'Snapchat', 'Email', 'Growth Hacking', 'Email Marketing'] |
Single, Female, and Accomplished: What That’s Like in China | Single, Female, and Accomplished: What That’s Like in China
They are educated and remarkably successful, but they get called “leftover women”
Photo by Askar Ulzhabayev on Unsplash
One out of four of all the women in the world live in China. The current generation includes young women who live radically different lives than their mothers did when they were young. As Roseann Lake, a reporter for The Economist, notes in her book, Leftover in China: The Women Shaping the World’s Next Superpower, “A well-educated, professional woman in Beijing or Shanghai now has more in common with a well-educated, professional woman in New York or Los Angeles than she does with a female Chinese factory worker from a town just an hour’s train ride away.”
Unlike their mothers, today’s young women in China have greater opportunities to stay single longer, or even for life, and pursue educational and career opportunities. Lake believes that this is an unintended consequence of China’s one-child policy, which was in effect from 1979 through 2015. Chinese parents greatly favored boys, resulting in a lopsided sex ratio, but when their one child was a girl, they showered her with the necessary resources to pursue an education and a career, and encouraged her to do so.
Chinese parents want their daughters to succeed, but they also want them to marry. “Modern day career women — no matter how impressive their educational and professional accomplishments — are still devalued if they haven’t married by a certain age,” Lake tells us.
I’ve spent many years documenting and protesting the stereotyping and stigmatizing of people in the U.S. who are single, and the pressure they feel to marry, but Chinese parents and grandparents take that to a whole different level. Many Chinese mothers sign up their adult children for dating sites. Sometimes they procure the services of matchmakers, who then set up dates that include five people — the young woman and man who are getting to know each other, each of their mothers, and the matchmaker. Sunday mornings are for marriage markets; in a park in Beijing, for example, hundreds of parents and grandparents get together and swap “marriage resumes” of the children and grandchildren they are trying to marry off.
Parents are invested in the marriage of their children for social and psychological reasons, such as avoiding the shame of having a grown child who is not married. There are pressing practical reasons as well. Without a government-provided social safety net, parents count on their children for support as they age. That means they not only want their children to marry, they also want them to marry well.
Chinese women who are not married by a certain age are stigmatized as “leftover women.” That age could be as young as 25 in rural areas. In cities, it is closer to 30.
Single men do not get to scoot away scorn-free. If they stay single too long they are called “bare branches.” As more and more of their female peers were moving to cities to pursue jobs or their studies, many of the men were left behind in rural areas; they were expected to help with the family farm or business and care for their aging parents.
The single women who became highly educated and very successful professionally were no longer all that eager to take on the traditional domestic roles that would be expected of them if they married. They wanted to enjoy their autonomy. Urban, educated Chinese men held greater appeal for them as potential spouses than the men who stayed back on the family farms, but even the most sophisticated Chinese men still tend to prefer traditional women. None of this bodes well for the single people in China who do want to marry.
How all this plays out is illustrated with the stories of successful single Chinese women Lake got to know — for instance, as colleagues at the Beijing television station where she worked or as her Chinese-language tutor. The latter, Zhang Mei, told Lake about her friends from high school who never left home: “I see my former classmates — the girls — and they are like spinning tops. Their lives are spent in perpetual service to their husbands, their mothers-in-law, and their child. I don’t want that life.”
At the end of the book, Lake catches up on how life has unfolded for the women she profiled in depth. By then, all of them were either married, about to be married, or actively trying to get there. I was disappointed in that. After learning that the young women of China now have the option to stay single, I wanted to hear about at least one woman who aspired to that. How did Zhang Mei go from declaring, “I don’t want that life” to pursuing that life? We are not told.
Lake is very fond of the single women she has gotten to know and is mostly respectful of their single lives. She sees this generation of young, educated women and the ones to come as power players in determining China’s future. If the nation is to advance economically, she believes, it will need to facilitate “their full economic engagement –which includes allowing them to reach their educational and professional potential, without fear that either of these things will jeopardize their chances at marriage or doom them to a sorry life of singlehood.” What a compelling statement of the significance of these women — if only Lake had not undermined it by describing single life as a sorry life. After hundreds of pages criticizing the singleism these women face, Lake ends up tossing in a barb or her own.
In every other way, though, Leftover in China is an impressive book. It is deeply researched, offering insights into the history and economy of China. A particularly compelling chapter compares the social context of marriage and single life in China to the situations in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. The book is well-written, filled with eye-opening anecdotes and telling details, and persuasively argued.
Far too much of the research and writings about single life have focused on the U.S. and other Western nations. Leftover in China is a welcome and invigorating corrective. | https://medium.com/fourth-wave/single-female-and-accomplished-what-thats-like-in-china-19f29ca2f5dd | ['Bella Depaulo'] | 2020-11-09 03:23:43.235000+00:00 | ['China', 'Books', 'Singles', 'Psychology', 'Feminism'] |
Getting Started with Apache Zeppelin on Amazon EMR, using AWS Glue, RDS, and S3 | Getting Started with Apache Zeppelin on Amazon EMR, using AWS Glue, RDS, and S3
Introduction
There is little question big data analytics, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML), a subcategory of AI, have all experienced a tremendous surge in popularity over the last 3–5 years. Behind the hype cycles and marketing buzz, these technologies are having a significant influence on all aspects of our modern lives. Due to their popularity, commercial enterprises, academic institutions, and the public sector have all rushed to develop hardware and software solutions to decrease the barrier to entry and increase the velocity of ML and Data Scientists and Engineers.
Technologies
All three major cloud providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, have rapidly maturing big data analytics, data science, and AI and ML services. For example, AWS introduced Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR) in 2009, primarily as an Apache Hadoop-based big data processing service. Since then, according to Amazon, EMR has evolved into a service that uses Apache Spark, Apache Hadoop, and several other leading open-source frameworks to quickly and cost-effectively process and analyze vast amounts of data. More recently, in late 2017, Amazon released SageMaker, a service that provides the ability to build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly and securely.
Simultaneously, organizations are building solutions that integrate and enhance these Cloud-based big data analytics, data science, AI, and ML services. One such example is Apache Zeppelin. Similar to the immensely popular Project Jupyter and the newly open-sourced Netflix’s Polynote, Apache Zeppelin is a web-based, polyglot, computational notebook. Zeppelin enables data-driven, interactive data analytics and document collaboration using a number of interpreters such as Scala, Python, Spark SQL, JDBC, Markdown, and Shell. Zeppelin is one of the core applications natively supported by Amazon EMR.
Example of an Apache Zeppelin Notebook Paragraph
In the following post, we will explore the use of Apache Zeppelin on EMR for data analytics and data science, using a series of Zeppelin notebooks. The notebooks feature the use of AWS Glue, the fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service that makes it easy to prepare and load data for analytics. The notebooks also feature the use of Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for PostgreSQL and Amazon Simple Cloud Storage Service (S3). Amazon S3 will serve as a Data Lake to store our unstructured data. Given the current choice of Zeppelin’s more than twenty different interpreters, we will use Python3 and Apache Spark, specifically Spark SQL and PySpark, for all notebooks.
Featured Technologies
We will build an economical single-node EMR cluster for data exploration, as well as a larger multi-node EMR cluster for efficiently analyzing large data sets. Amazon S3 will be used to store input and output data, while intermediate results are stored in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) on the EMR cluster. Amazon provides a good overview of EMR architecture. Below is a high-level architectural diagram of the infrastructure we will construct for this demonstration.
High-level AWS Architecture
Notebook Features
Below is a brief overview of each Zeppelin notebook with a link to view, using Zepl’s free Notebook Explorer. Zepl was founded by the same engineers that developed Apache Zeppelin, including Moonsoo Lee, Zepl CTO and creator for Apache Zeppelin. Zepl’s enterprise collaboration platform, built on Apache Zeppelin, enables both Data Science and AI/ML teams to collaborate around data.
Notebook 1
The first notebook uses a small 21k row kaggle dataset, Transactions from a Bakery. The notebook demonstrates Zeppelin’s integration capabilities with the Helium plugin system for adding new chart types, the use of Amazon S3 for data storage and retrieval, and the use of Apache Parquet, a compressed and efficient columnar data storage format, and Zeppelin’s storage integration with GitHub for notebook version control.
Notebook 2
The second notebook demonstrates the use of a single-node and multi-node Amazon EMR cluster for the exploration and analysis of public datasets ranging from approximately 100k rows up to 27MM rows, using Zeppelin. We will use the latest GroupLens MovieLens rating datasets to examine the performance characteristics of Zeppelin, using Spark, on single- verses multi-node EMR clusters for analyzing big data using a variety of Amazon EC2 Instance Types.
Notebook 3
The third notebook demonstrates Amazon EMR and Zeppelin’s integration capabilities with an AWS Glue Data Catalog as an Apache Hive-compatible metastore for Spark SQL. We will create an Amazon S3-based Data Lake using the AWS Glue Data Catalog and a set of AWS Glue Crawlers.
Notebook 4
The fourth notebook demonstrates Zeppelin’s ability to integrate with an external data source. In this case, we will interact with data in an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL relational database using three methods, including the Psycopg 2 PostgreSQL adapter for Python, Spark’s native JDBC capability, and Zeppelin’s JDBC Interpreter.
Demonstration
First, as a DataOps Engineer, we will create and configure the AWS resources required to demonstrate the use of Apache Zeppelin on EMR, using an AWS Glue Data Catalog, Amazon RDS PostgreSQL database, and an S3-based data lake. Following the setup, as a Data Analyst, we will explore Apache Zeppelin’s features and integration capabilities with a variety of AWS services using the pre-built Zeppelin notebooks.
Source Code
The demonstration’s source code is contained in two public GitHub repositories. The first repository, zeppelin-emr-demo, includes the four pre-built Zeppelin notebooks, organized according to the conventions of Zeppelin’s pluggable notebook storage mechanisms.
.
├── 2ERVVKTCG
│ └── note.json
├── 2ERYY923A
│ └── note.json
├── 2ESH8DGFS
│ └── note.json
├── 2EUZKQXX7
│ └── note.json
├── LICENSE
└── README.md
Zeppelin GitHub Storage
During the demonstration, changes made to your copy of the Zeppelin notebooks running on EMR will be automatically pushed back to GitHub when a commit occurs. To accomplish this, instead of just cloning a local copy of the zeppelin-emr-demo project repository, you will want your own copy, within your personal GitHub account. You could fork the zeppelin-emr-demo GitHub repository or copy a clone into your own GitHub repository.
To make a copy of the project in your own GitHub account, first, create a new empty repository on GitHub, for example, ‘my-zeppelin-emr-demo-copy’. Then, execute the following commands from your terminal, to clone the original project repository to your local environment, and finally, push it to your GitHub account.
GitHub Personal Access Token
To automatically push changes to your GitHub repository when a commit occurs, Zeppelin will need a GitHub personal access token. Create a personal access token with the scope shown below. Be sure to keep the token secret. Make sure you do not accidentally check your token value into your source code on GitHub. To minimize the risk, immediately change or delete the token after completing the demo.
GitHub Developer Settings — Personal Access Tokens
The second repository, zeppelin-emr-config, contains the necessary bootstrap files, CloudFormation templates, and PostgreSQL DDL (Data Definition Language) SQL script.
.
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── bootstrap
│ ├── bootstrap.sh
│ ├── emr-config.json
│ ├── helium.json
├── cloudformation
│ ├── crawler.yml
│ ├── emr_single_node.yml
│ ├── emr_cluster.yml
│ └── rds_postgres.yml
└── sql
└── ratings.sql
Use the following AWS CLI command to clone the GitHub repository to your local environment.
Requirements
To follow along with the demonstration, you will need an AWS Account, an existing Amazon S3 bucket to store EMR configuration and data, and an EC2 key pair. You will also need a current version of the AWS CLI installed in your work environment. Due to the particular EMR features we will be using, I recommend using the us-east-1 AWS Region to create the demonstration’s resources.
Configuration Files in S3
To start, copy three configuration files, bootstrap.sh, helium.json, and ratings.sql, from the zeppelin-emr-demo-setup project directory to our S3 bucket. Change the ZEPPELIN_DEMO_BUCKET variable value, then run the following s3 cp API commands, using the AWS CLI. The three files will be copied to a bootstrap directory within your S3 bucket.
Below, sample output from copying local files to S3.
Copy Configuration Files to S3
Create AWS Resources
We will start by creating most of the required AWS resources for the demonstration using three AWS CloudFormation templates. We will create a single-node Amazon EMR cluster, an Amazon RDS PostgresSQL database, an AWS Glue Data Catalog database, two AWS Glue Crawlers, and a Glue IAM Role. We will wait to create the multi-node EMR cluster due to the compute costs of running large EC2 instances in the cluster. You should understand the cost of these resources before proceeding, and that you ensure they are destroyed immediately upon completion of the demonstration to minimize your expenses.
Single-Node EMR Cluster
We will start by creating the single-node Amazon EMR cluster, consisting of just one master node with no core or task nodes (a cluster of one). All operations will take place on the master node.
Default EMR Resources
The following EMR instructions assume you have already created at least one EMR cluster in the past, in your current AWS Region, using the EMR web interface with the ‘Create Cluster — Quick Options’ option. Creating a cluster this way creates several additional AWS resources, such as the EMR_EC2_DefaultRole EC2 instance profile, the default EMR_DefaultRole EMR IAM Role, and the default EMR S3 log bucket.
EMR — AWS Console
If you have not created any EMR clusters using the EMR ‘Create Cluster — Quick Options’ feature in the past, don’t worry. You can also create the required resources with a few quick AWS CLI commands. Change the following LOG_BUCKET variable value, then run the aws emr and aws s3api API commands, using the AWS CLI. The LOG_BUCKET variable value follows the convention of aws-logs-awsaccount-region . For example, aws-logs-012345678901-us-east-1 .
The new EMR IAM Roles can be viewed in the IAM Roles web interface.
IAM Management Console
Often, I see tutorials that reference these default EMR resources from the AWS CLI or CloudFormation, without any understanding or explanation of how they are created.
EMR Bootstrap Script
As part of creating our EMR cluster, the CloudFormation template, emr_single_node.yml, will call the bootstrap script we copied earlier to S3, bootstrap.sh. The bootstrap script pre-installs required Python and Linux software packages, and the PostgreSQL driver JAR. The bootstrap script also clones your copy of the zeppelin-emr-demo GitHub repository.
EMR Application Configuration
The EMR CloudFormation template will also modify the EMR cluster’s Spark and Zeppelin application configurations. Amongst other configuration properties, the template sets the default Python version to Python3, instructs Zeppelin to use the cloned GitHub notebook directory path, and adds the PostgreSQL Driver JAR to the JVM Classpath. Below we can see the configuration properties applied to an existing EMR cluster.
EMR — AWS Console
EMR Application Versions
As of the date of this post (December, 2019), EMR is at version 5.28.0. Below, as shown in the EMR web interface, are the current (21) applications and frameworks available for installation on EMR.
For this demo, we will install Apache Spark v2.4.4, Ganglia v3.7.2, and Zeppelin 0.8.2.
Apache Zeppelin: Web Interface
Apache Spark: DAG Visualization
Ganglia: Cluster CPU Monitoring
Create the EMR CloudFormation Stack
Change the following (7) variable values, then run the emr cloudformation create-stack API command, using the AWS CLI.
You can use the Amazon EMR web interface to confirm the results of the CloudFormation stack. The cluster should be in the ‘Waiting’ state.
EMR — AWS Console
PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS
Next, create a simple, single-AZ, single-master, non-replicated Amazon RDS PostgreSQL database, using the included CloudFormation template, rds_postgres.yml. We will use this database in Notebook 4. For the demo, I have selected the current-generation general purpose db.m4.large EC2 instance type to run PostgreSQL. You can easily change the instance type to another RDS-supported instance type to suit your particular requirements.
Change the following (3) variable values and then run the cloudformation create-stack API command using the AWS CLI.
You can use the Amazon RDS web interface to confirm the results of the CloudFormation stack.
RDS — AWS Console
AWS Glue
Next, create the AWS Glue Data Catalog database, the Apache Hive-compatible metastore for Spark SQL, two AWS Glue Crawlers, and a Glue IAM Role ( ZeppelinDemoCrawlerRole ), using the included CloudFormation template, crawler.yml. The AWS Glue Data Catalog database will be used in Notebook 3.
Change the following variable value, then run the cloudformation create-stack API command, using the AWS CLI.
You can use the AWS Glue web interface to confirm the results of the CloudFormation stack. Note the Data Catalog database and the two Glue Crawlers. We will not run the two crawlers later in the post. Thus, no tables will exist in the Data Catalog database, yet.
AWS Glue Console
AWS Glue Console
At this point in the demonstration, you should have successfully created a single-node Amazon EMR cluster, an Amazon RDS PostgresSQL database, and several AWS Glue resources, all using CloudFormation templates.
CloudFormation — AWS Console
Post-EMR Creation Configuration
RDS Security
For the new EMR cluster to communicate with the RDS PostgreSQL database, we need to ensure that port 5432 is open from the RDS database’s VPC security group, which is the default VPC security group, to the security groups of the EMR nodes. Obtain the Group ID of the ElasticMapReduce-master and ElasticMapReduce-slave Security Groups from the EMR web interface or using the AWS CLI.
EMR — AWS Console
Access the Security Group for the RDS database using the RDS web interface. Change the inbound rule for port 5432 to include both Security Group IDs.
EC2 Management Console
SSH to EMR Master Node
In addition to the bootstrap script and configurations, we have already applied to the EMR cluster, we need to make several post-EMR creation configuration changes to the EMR cluster for our demonstration. These changes will require connecting to the EMR cluster using SSH. Using the master node’s public DNS address and SSH command provided in the EMR web console, SSH into the master node.
EMR — AWS Console
If you cannot access the node using SSH, check that port 22 is open on the associated EMR master node IAM Security Group ( ElasticMapReduce-master ) to your IP address or address range.
EMR — AWS Console
EC2 Management Console
Git Permissions
We need to change permissions on the git repository we installed during the EMR bootstrapping phase. Typically, with an EC2 instance, you perform operations as the ec2-user user. With Amazon EMR, you often perform actions as the hadoop user. With Zeppelin on EMR, the notebooks perform operations, including interacting with the git repository as the zeppelin user. As a result of the bootstrap.sh script, the contents of the git repository directory, /tmp/zeppelin-emr-demo/ , are owned by the hadoop user and group by default.
Git Clone Project Permissions on EMR Master Node
We will change their owner to the zeppelin user and group. We could not perform this step as part of the bootstrap script since the the zeppelin user and group did not exist at the time the script was executed.
cd /tmp/zeppelin-emr-demo/
sudo chown -R zeppelin:zeppelin .
The results should look similar to the following output.
Git Clone Project Permissions on EMR Master Node
Pre-Install Visualization Packages
Next, we will pre-install several Apache Zeppelin Visualization packages. According to the Zeppelin website, an Apache Zeppelin Visualization is a pluggable package that can be loaded and unloaded at runtime through the Helium framework in Zeppelin. We can use them just like any other built-in visualization in the notebook. A Visualization is a javascript npm package. For example, here is a link to the ultimate-pie-chart on the public npm registry.
We can pre-load plugins by replacing the /usr/lib/zeppelin/conf/helium.json file with the version of helium.json we copied to S3, earlier, and restarting Zeppelin. If you have a lot of Visualizations or package types or use any DataOps automation to create EMR clusters, this approach is more efficient and repeatable than manually loading plugins using the Zeppelin UI, each time you create a new EMR cluster. Below, the helium.json file, which pre-loads (8) Visualization packages.
Run the following commands to load the plugins and adjust the permissions on the file.
Create New JDBC Interpreter
Lastly, we need to create a new Zeppelin JDBC Interpreter to connect to our RDS database. By default, Zeppelin has several interpreters installed. You can review a list of available interpreters using the following command.
sudo sh /usr/lib/zeppelin/bin/install-interpreter.sh --list
List of Installed Interpreters
The new JDBC interpreter will allow us to connect to our RDS PostgreSQL database, using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC). First, ensure all available interpreters are installed, including the current Zeppelin JDBC driver ( org.apache.zeppelin:zeppelin-jdbc:0.8.0 ) to /usr/lib/zeppelin/interpreter/jdbc .
Creating a new interpreter is a two-part process. In this stage, we install the required interpreter files on the master node using the following command. Then later, in the Zeppelin web interface, we will configure the new PostgreSQL JDBC interpreter. Note we must provide a unique name for the interpreter (i.e. ‘postgres’), which we will refer to in part two of the interpreter creation process.
To complete the post-EMR creation configuration on the master node, we must restart Zeppelin for our changes to take effect.
sudo stop zeppelin && sudo start zeppelin
In my experience, it could take 2–3 minutes for the Zeppelin UI to become fully responsive after a restart.
Restarting Zeppelin
Zeppelin Web Interface Access
With all the EMR application configuration complete, we will access the Zeppelin web interface running on the master node. Use the Zeppelin connection information provided in the EMR web interface to setup SSH tunneling to the Zeppelin web interface, running on the master node. Using SSH tunneling, we can also access the Spark History Server, Ganglia, and Hadoop Resource Manager web interfaces. All links are provided from the EMR web console.
EMR — AWS Console
To set up a web connection to the applications installed on the EMR cluster, I am using FoxyProxy as a proxy management tool with Google Chrome.
EMR — Enable Web Connection
If everything is working so far, you should see the Zeppelin web interface with all four Zeppelin notebooks available from the cloned GitHub repository. You will be logged in as the anonymous user. Zeppelin offers authentication for accessing notebooks on the EMR cluster. For brevity, we will not cover setting up authentication in Zeppelin, using Shiro Authentication.
Apache Zeppelin Landing Page
Notebook Path
To confirm the path to the local, cloned copy of the GitHub notebook repository, is correct, check the Notebook Repos interface, accessible under the Settings dropdown ( anonymous user) in the upper right of the screen. The value should match the ZEPPELIN_NOTEBOOK_DIR configuration property value in the emr_single_node.yml CloudFormation template we executed earlier.
Apache Zeppelin GitHub Notebook Repository
Helium Visualizations
To confirm the Helium Visualizations were pre-installed correctly, using the helium.json file, open the Helium interface, accessible under the Settings dropdown ( anonymous user) in the upper right of the screen.
Apache Zeppelin — Available Helium Visualizations
Note the enabled visualizations. And, it is easy to enable additional plugins through the web interface.
Apache Zeppelin — Enabled Helium Visualizations
New PostgreSQL JDBC Interpreter
If you recall, earlier, we install the required interpreter files on the master node using the following command using the bootstrap script. We will now complete the process of configuring the new PostgreSQL JDBC interpreter. Open the Interpreter interface, accessible under the Settings dropdown ( anonymous user) in the upper right of the screen.
The title of the new interpreter must match the name we used to install the interpreter files, ‘postgres’. The interpreter group will be ‘jdbc’. There are minimally, three properties we need to configure for your specific RDS database instance, including default.url , default.user , and default.password . These should match the values you used to create your RDS instance, earlier. Make sure to includes the database name in the default.url . An example is shown below.
We also need to provide a path to the PostgreSQL driver JAR dependency. This path is the location where we placed the JAR, earlier, using the bootstrap.sh script, /home/hadoop/extrajars/postgresql-42.2.8.jar . Save the new interpreter and make sure it starts successfully (shows a green icon).
Configuring the PostgreSQL JDBC Interpreter
Configuring the PostgreSQL JDBC Interpreter
Switch Interpreters to Python 3
The last thing we need to do is change the Spark and Python interpreters to use Python 3 instead of the default Python 2. On the same screen you used to create a new interpreter, modify the Spark and Python interpreters. First, for the Python interpreter, change the zeppelin.python property to python3 .
Setting Interpreters to Python 3
Lastly, for the Spark interpreter, change the zeppelin.pyspark.python property to python3 .
Setting Interpreters to Python 3
Congratulations, with the demonstration setup complete, we are ready to start exploring Apache Zeppelin using each of our four notebooks.
Notebook 1
The first notebook uses a small 21k row kaggle dataset, Transactions from a Bakery. The notebook demonstrates Zeppelin’s integration capabilities with the Helium plugin system for adding new chart types, the use of Amazon S3 for data storage and retrieval, and the use of Apache Parquet, a compressed and efficient columnar data storage format, and Zeppelin’s storage integration with GitHub for notebook version control.
Interpreters
When you open a notebook for the first time, you are given the choice of interpreters to bind and unbind to the notebook. The last interpreter in the list shown below, postgres , is the new PostgreSQL JDBC Zeppelin interpreter we created earlier in the post. We will use this interpreter in Notebook 3.
Application Versions
The first two paragraphs of the notebook are used to confirm the version of Spark, Scala, OpenJDK, and Python we are using. Recall we updated the Spark and Python interpreters to use Python 3.
Helium Visualizations
If you recall from earlier in this post, we pre-installed several additional Helium Visualizations, including the Ultimate Pie Chart. Below, we see the use of the Spark SQL ( %sql ) interpreter to query a Spark DataFrame, return results, and visualize the data using the Ultimate Pie Chart. In addition to the pie chart, we see the other pre-installed Helium visualizations proceeding the five default visualizations, in the menu bar.
With Zeppelin, all we have to do is write Spark SQL queries against the Spark DataFrame created earlier in the notebook, and Zeppelin will handle the visualization. You have some basic controls over charts using the ‘settings’ dropdown option.
Building a Data Lake
Notebook 1 demonstrates how to read and write data to S3. We read and write the Bakery dataset to both CSV-format and Apache Parquet-format, using Spark (PySpark). We also write the results of Spark SQL queries, like the one above, in Parquet, to S3.
S3 Management Console
With Parquet, data may be split into multiple files, as shown in the S3 bucket directory below. Parquet is much faster to read into a Spark DataFrame than CSV. Spark provides support for both reading and writing Parquet files. We will write all of our data to Parquet in S3, making future re-use of the data much more efficient than downloading data from the Internet, like GroupLens or kaggle, or consuming CSV from S3.
Paquet-Format Files in S3
Preview S3 Data
In addition to using the Zeppelin notebook, we can preview data right in the S3 bucket web interface using the Amazon S3 Select feature. This query in place feature is helpful to quickly understand the structure and content of new data files with which you want to interact within Zeppelin.
Previewing Data in S3 using the ‘Select from’ Feature
Previewing Data in S3 using the ‘Select from’ Feature
Previewing Data in S3 using the ‘Select from’ Feature
Saving Changes to GitHub
Earlier, we configured Zeppelin to read and write the notebooks from your own copy of the GitHub notebook repository. Using the ‘version control’ menu item, changes made to the notebooks can be committed directly to GitHub.
In GitHub, note the committer is the zeppelin user.
Commits in GitHub
Notebook 2
The second notebook demonstrates the use of a single-node and multi-node Amazon EMR cluster for the exploration and analysis of public datasets ranging from approximately 100k rows up to 27MM rows, using Zeppelin. We will use the latest GroupLens MovieLens rating datasets to examine the performance characteristics of Zeppelin, using Spark, on single- verses multi-node EMR clusters for analyzing big data using a variety of Amazon EC2 Instance Types.
Multi-Node EMR Cluster
If you recall, we waited to create the multi-node cluster due to the compute costs of running the cluster’s large EC2 instances. You should understand the cost of these resources before proceeding, and that you ensure they are destroyed immediately upon completion of the demonstration to minimize your expenses.
Normalized Instance Hours
Understanding the costs of EMR requires understanding the concept of normalized instance hours. Clusters displayed in the EMR AWS Console contains two columns, ‘Elapsed time’ and ‘Normalized instance hours’. The ‘Elapsed time’ column reflects the actual wall-clock time the cluster was used. The ‘Normalized instance hours’ column indicates the approximate number of compute hours the cluster has used, rounded up to the nearest hour.
EMR — AWS Console: Normalized Instance Hours
Normalized instance hours calculations are based on a normalization factor. The normalization factor ranges from 1 for a small instance, up to 64 for an 8xlarge. Based on the type and quantity of instances in our multi-node cluster, we would use approximately 56 compute hours (aka normalized instance hours) for every one hour of wall-clock time. Note the multi-node cluster used in our demo, highlighted in yellow above. The cluster ran for two hours, which equated to 112 normalized instance hours.
Create the Multi-Node Cluster
Create the multi-node EMR cluster using CloudFormation. Change the following nine variable values, then run the emr cloudformation create-stack API command, using the AWS CLI.
Use the Amazon EMR web interface to confirm the success of the CloudFormation stack. The fully-provisioned cluster should be in the ‘Waiting’ state when ready.
EMR — AWS Console
Configuring the EMR Cluster
Refer to the earlier single-node cluster instructions, for the configuration steps necessary to prepare the EMR cluster and Zeppelin before continuing. Repeat all the steps used for the single-node cluster.
Monitoring with Ganglia
Earlier, we installed Ganglia as part of creating the EMR cluster. Ganglia, according to its website, is a scalable distributed monitoring system for high-performance computing systems such as clusters and grids. Ganglia can be used to evaluate the performance of the single-node and multi-node EMR clusters. With Ganglia, we can easily view cluster and individual instance CPU, memory, and network I/O performance.
Ganglia Example: Cluster CPU
Ganglia Example: Cluster Memory
Ganglia Example: Cluster Network I/O
YARN Resource Manager
The YARN Resource Manager Web UI is also available on our EMR cluster. Using the Resource Manager, we can view the compute resource load on the cluster, as well as the individual EMR Core nodes. Below, we see that the multi-node cluster has 24 vCPUs and 72 GiB of memory available, split evenly across the three Core cluster nodes.
You might recall, the m5.2xlarge EC2 instance type, used for the three Core nodes, each contains 8 vCPUs and 32 GiB of memory. However, by default, although all 8 vCPUs are available for computation per node, only 24 GiB of the node’s 32 GiB of memory are available for computation. EMR ensures a portion of the memory on each node is reserved for other system processes. The maximum available memory is controlled by the YARN memory configuration option, yarn.scheduler.maximum-allocation-mb .
YARN Resource Manager
The YARN Resource Manager preview above shows the load on the Code nodes as Notebook 2 is executing the Spark SQL queries on the large MovieLens DataFrame with 27MM ratings. Note that only 4 of the 24 vCPUs (16.6%) are in use, but that 70.25 of the 72 GiB (97.6%) of available memory is being used. According to Spark, because of the in-memory nature of most Spark computations, Spark programs can be bottlenecked by any resource in the cluster: CPU, network bandwidth, or memory. Most often, if the data fits in memory, the bottleneck is network bandwidth. In this case, memory appears to be the most constrained resource. Using memory-optimized instances, such as r4 or r5 instance types, might be more effective for the core nodes than the m5 instance types.
MovieLens Datasets
By changing one variable in the notebook, we can work with the latest, smaller GroupLens MovieLens dataset containing approximately 100k rows ( ml-latest-small ) or the larger dataset, containing approximately 27M rows ( ml-latest ). For this demo, try both datasets on both the single-node and multi-node clusters. Compare the Spark SQL paragraph execution times for each of the four variations, including 1) single-node with the small dataset, 2) single-node with the large dataset, 3) multi-node with the small dataset, and 4) multi-node with the large dataset. Observe how fast the SQL queries are executed on the single-node versus multi-node cluster. Try switching to a different Core node instance type, such as r5.2xlarge. Try creating a cluster with additional Core nodes. How is the compute time effected?
Terminate the multi-node EMR cluster to save yourself the expense before continuing to Notebook 3.
aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name=zeppelin-emr-prod-stack
Notebook 3
The third notebook demonstrates Amazon EMR and Zeppelin’s integration capabilities with an AWS Glue Data Catalog as an Apache Hive-compatible metastore for Spark SQL. We will create an Amazon S3-based Data Lake using the AWS Glue Data Catalog and a set of AWS Glue Crawlers.
Glue Crawlers
Before continuing with Notebook 3, start the two Glue Crawlers using the AWS CLI.
aws glue start-crawler --name bakery-transactions-crawler
aws glue start-crawler --name movie-ratings-crawler
The two Crawlers should create a total of seven tables in the Glue Data Catalog database.
AWS Glue Console: Crawlers
If we examine the Glue Data Catalog database, we should now observe several tables, one for each dataset found in the S3 bucket. The location of each dataset is shown in the ‘Location’ column of the tables view.
AWS Glue Console: Data Catalog Tables
From the Zeppelin notebook, we can even use Spark SQL to query the AWS Glue Data Catalog, itself, for its databases and the tables within them.
According to Amazon, the Glue Data Catalog tables and databases are containers for the metadata definitions that define a schema for underlying source data. Using Zeppelin’s SQL interpreter, we can query the Data Catalog’s metadata and return the underlying source data. The SQL query example, below, demonstrates how we can perform a join across two tables in the data catalog database, representing two different data sources, and return results.
Notebook 4
The fourth notebook demonstrates Zeppelin’s ability to integrate with an external data source. In this case, we will interact with data in an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL relational database using three methods, including the Psycopg 2 PostgreSQL adapter for Python, Spark’s native JDBC capability, and Zeppelin’s JDBC Interpreter.
Psycopg
First, create a new database schema and four related tables for the RDS PostgreSQL movie ratings database using the Psycopg 2 PostgreSQL adapter for Python and the SQL file, which we copied earlier to S3.
The RDS database’s schema, shown below, approximates the schema of the four CSV files from the GroupLens MovieLens rating dataset we used in Notebook 2.
MovieLens Relational Database Schema
Since the schema of the PostgreSQL database matches the MovieLens dataset files, we can import the data from the CVS files, downloaded from GroupLens, directly into the RDS database, again using the Psycopg PostgreSQL adapter for Python.
Spark JDBC
According to the Spark documentation, Spark SQL also includes a data source that can read data from other databases using JDBC. Using Spark’s JDBC capability and the PostgreSQL JDBC Driver we installed earlier, during setup, we can perform Spark SQL queries against the RDS database using PySpark ( %spark.pyspark ). Below, we see an example of reading the RDS database’s movies table, using Spark.
Zeppelin PostgreSQL Interpreter
As a third method of querying the RDS database, we can use the custom Zeppelin PostgreSQL JDBC interpreter ( %postgres ) we created earlier. Although the default driver of the JDBC interpreter is set as PostgreSQL, and the associated JAR is included with Zeppelin, we overrode that older JAR, with the latest PostgreSQL JDBC Driver JAR.
Using the %postgres interpreter, we query the RDS database's public schema, and return the four database tables we created earlier in the notebook.
Dynamic Forms
Using the %postgres interpreter in the notebook’s paragraph, we query the RDS database and return data, which we then visualize using Zeppelin’s bar chart. Finally, note the use of Zeppelin Dynamic Forms in this example. Dynamic Forms allows Zeppelin to dynamically creates input forms, whose input values are then available to use programmatically. The notebook uses two form input values to control the data returned from our query and the resulting visualization.
Conclusion
In this post, we learned how effectively Apache Zeppelin integrates with Amazon EMR. We also learned how to extend Zeppelin’s capabilities, using AWS Glue, Amazon RDS, and Amazon S3 as a Data Lake. Beyond what was covered in this post, there are dozens of more Zeppelin and EMR features, as well as dozens of more AWS services that integrate with Zeppelin and EMR, for you to discover.
All opinions expressed in this post are my own and not necessarily the views of my current or past employers or their clients. | https://towardsdatascience.com/getting-started-with-apache-zeppelin-on-amazon-emr-using-aws-glue-rds-and-s3-2b5d231a788a | ['Gary A. Stafford'] | 2019-12-17 22:36:48.825000+00:00 | ['Apache Zeppelin', 'Amazon Emr', 'Data Analysis', 'Apache Spark', 'Aws Glue'] |
Where is Planet 9? Everything you need to know about Planet Nine | People have always been dreaming of conquering other galaxies and exploring space far away from our home.
But the thing is that there are enough enigmas in our own Milky Way galaxy! Even better, there is one right inside our Solar System!
This mystery is lurking somewhere on the outskirts of the planetary system, puzzling astronomers to no end.
Once upon a time, scientists noticed that something bizarre and inexplicable was causing chaos out there, in space.
A mysterious celestial body was influencing the orbits of six smaller object in Kuiper Belt, far, far away from our home planet.
This something got the name of “Planet Nine” and a much more offensive nickname “Fatty.”
Well, no wonder: the thing was 10 times heavier than Earth! But soon after astronomers started to research the hypothetical planet, things took an unexpected turn.
But before I tell you all about this new development, let me summarize
Everything I know about Planet Nine.
So, as I’ve already mentioned, the thing is massive: more than 10 times bigger than Earth and around 5,000 times as large as Pluto!
That’s why the planet might have great gravitational force. It also means that Planet Nine is likely to be an ice giant.
You see, rocky planets, like Mars or Earth, can’t grow bigger than a certain size because they are, well, pieces of rock.
If they became as huge as Saturn or Jupiter, they would turn into ginormous gas giants as well.
But ice giants are another matter: they aren’t as massive as gas giants but have a similar atmosphere.
And since it seems that Planet Nine doesn’t have the impressive size of a gas giant but is bigger than any rocky planet, there can be only one conclusion — an ice giant!
If “Fatty” does exist, people will most likely have to rewrite astronomy books! We used to believe that Neptune is the furthest planet from the Sun.
But now, it may turn out that Planet Nine is the champion, being 20 times further away from the center of the Solar System than Neptune!
In other words, it’s 56 billion miles away from the Sun, and NASA’s New Horizon Probe would need more than 50 years to reach the mysterious planet!
By the way, the probe got to Pluto after only 9 years of traveling through space.
Also, if you lived on Planet Nine, your year would last 10,000 to 20,000 Earth’s years!
That’s the time “Fatty” needs to orbit the Sun because of the immense distance between these space objects.
And if it’s difficult for you to visualize how long it is, just think of this: the last time Planet Nine was in the same place, mammoths were still roaming our planet.
Oh, and there were barely a few million people on the whole Earth. Of course, until scientists see Planet Nine with their own eyes, they can’t say for sure that it exists.
But the evidence they have is quite solid, and the chance that the planet doesn’t exist is really small — like one in 15,000!
Otherwise, why would 13 space objects outside the orbit of Neptune behave so strangely, clustering and tilting in a weird way? Only if a massive, far-away planet made them all swing in one direction!
And since there is no other massive planetary body in that area — hello, Planet Nine! Beware, astronomers are on the hunt!
You can also read: How does SpaceX make money?
Obviously, with such an enormous distance separating Earth and the hypothetical planet, it’s bound to be very difficult to spot “Fatty.”
But scientists don’t give up hope: they’re looking for the planet using infrared equipment.
If Planet Nine does exist, it’s supposed to leak infrared radiation. But so far, all that scientists have detected is weird gravitational effects on the outskirts of the Solar System.
But then, what if Planet Nine isn’t a planet at all? The idea, which first appeared in 2019, suggests that the object that has created all this hullabaloo, might be… a black hole! Wait, wait, wait.
Does it mean it’s going to swallow us and all the Solar System? Astronomers have divided all black holes into three groups: supermassive black holes, intermediate-mass black holes, and stellar-mass black holes.
The supermassive black hole closest to Earth is Sagitarrius A*, perched almost in the center of our home Milky Way galaxy.
Such supermassive black holes are gargantuan, they can control the way stars form and, being awake and feeding, they can be the brightest objects in space.
But even small black holes are still way bigger (and, honestly, even more impressive) than our Sun. Around black holes, there are swirling discs of material, and the whole picture resembles water going down a drain.
Black holes generate so much radiation that even astronomers on Earth manage to detect it with their telescopes.
But apart from these impressive giants and smaller holes, there might be one more type of black holes — primordial.
The problem with them is that scientists have never got any real proof of their existence — they just suppose that there are primordial black holes somewhere out there.
These holes are insanely old and quite tiny (of course, by black hole standards).
Astronomers believe that they appeared some milliseconds after the Big Bang and might have witnessed the whole history of the Universe.
At that time, not even stars or galaxies were born yet. By now, the smallest primordial black holes are likely to have evaporated away, but the bigger ones can still be scattered around the Universe.
As for how primordial black holes appeared in the first place, in the very beginning, space wasn’t the same. In some places, it was hotter, in others — cooler, and some regions were denser.
It sounds like some of the people I hang out with. Scientists suppose that these dense areas could collapse into primordial black holes.
But the most interesting thing is that these holes are likely to be so small exactly because they popped up right after the Big Bang! The longer it took them to appear, the larger they were.
The difference could vary from the mass thousand times greater than that of the Sun to the weight of a Jelly Bean. But let’s return to Planet Nine — or should I call it Primordial Black Hole Nine now?
Once again, astronomers haven’t seen the planet with their own eyes. The only thing that proves its existence is how it influences the behavior of other space bodies.
But let’s not forget that black holes are also notorious for their gravitational pull! So, why don’t we suppose that the thing hiding on the outskirts of the Solar System isn’t a mysterious, unidentified planet, but a mini black hole?
But even if this guess is correct, you have nothing to worry about: Earth isn’t in danger.
Primordial black holes are too small and weak to cause any serious harm to our planetary system.
But at the same time, they can mess with objects careless enough to get too close. (slurp — oops!) But what made astronomers come up with the idea of primordial black holes at all?
For one thing, it was an inexplicable brightening of stars, as if some massive but almost transparent object was passing in front of them.
What’s more, these stars not only started to shine brighter for a brief moment, but they also seemed curved, as if you were looking at them through a giant magnifying glass!
Besides, when scientists created a computer model of a primordial black hole 5 to 10 times as heavy as Earth and with an orbit very distant from the Sun, they got really interesting results.
The pattern of this model resembled the events happening in the region of Kuiper belt a bit too much for it to be a coincidence!
And finally, a primordial black hole would explain why hypothetical Planet Nine can’t be seen and doesn’t produce infrared radiation.
But one of the main reasons why astronomers would be ecstatic should Planet Nine turn out to be a primordial black hole is the mystery of dark matter!
You might know that scientists are still in the dark (yes, the pun was intended) about what exactly dark matter is, which makes up to 30% of the Universe.
But guess what? Primordial black holes could be the very dark matter astronomers are searching for! Or at least, a kind of dark matter named MACHOs (which stands for massive compact halo objects).
Well, it makes me believe that with astronomers being so motivated, we’ll soon get to know the real nature of Planet Nine slashes Primordial Black Hole! Or maybe — it’s only a half-mass black hole… can’t wait to find out! | https://medium.com/@tanujissbesst9825/iynk-in-information-you-need-to-know-where-is-planet-9-a1ccdef22d49 | ['Tanuj Sarva'] | 2019-12-14 11:34:08.231000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Planet 9', 'Galaxy', 'Facts', 'Space'] |
Startup products and community | This week is Phoenix Startup Week. Even though it’s only been a couple of days so far, I’ve talked to some great people, attended some good presentations and panels and even had a short session with a business mentor who gave me a good perspective on better presenting my Blocks Edit startup.
One of the daily panels Phoenix Startup Week has is called “Founder F Ups” where a moderator just talks to startups about mistakes they made while starting their business(es). Blocks Edit isn’t my first app startup. There was another app startup I ran called Indie Aisle which was essentially a failed attempt at “product market fit” — that is, finding the right people that I was solving a problem for. While I did go through a couple of iterations that got closer to a real solution, by the time I got there, I discovered there were other products available that I thought were doing a better job at solving the problem and I couldn’t come up with a “unique selling proposition” for it, another big word phrase meaning: what made it special; and it eventually began to feel like I was hopelessly forcing it to work.
Finding a problem to provide a solution for
So have I learned from my ‘f up’? I certainly think so. In the process of trying to make Indie Aisle work, I got a better sense of how solve a problem with a product. Along the way, I wrote a couple of comic books, and became my own target audience for the Indie Aisle tools I was promoting. And Blocks Edit came out of working with my business partner on client work and experiencing first-hand the problem we eventually set out to solve with the product! Another thing we did right is we showed the work in progress to our clients, who’s enthusiastic responses signaled that we were on the right track.
Marketing a product business
At a certain point, I started working on the marketing site for Blocks Edit (another thing we did right by starting early, before launching) and came across StackingtheBricks.com, a website and podcast that not only helped me write better content and sell my product, but better understand my audience and have the right mindset for running a business, including a sobering look at what a startup means. Ultimately, Stacking the Bricks taught me that product development and marketing go hand in hand and creating a product business cannot be done well without doing the work of both in unison. It helped me learn how to properly validate ideas to know whether they should become products.
A startup for startups
The best thing I’m getting out of Phoenix Startup Week is the sense of community. “Let’s make our mark” is the Phoenix Startup Week motto. Lifting my head up from work to hear other people talk about their startup journeys while sharing mine helps me be more mindful of the ups and downs of running a business, appreciating the things that work well and making the stuff that doesn’t feel less frustrating.
While dividing my time on Blocks Edit and still doing client work with my business partner, Steven Douglas, there was another startup idea that Steve had that we worked on putting together this past year, a community of our own that we wanted to create: basetime, a network for developers, designers and project managers who want to work on their own terms. And in time for Phoenix Startup Week and in the spirit of launching a startup, we’ve launched a landing page this week to start promoting it. And I’m looking forward for a great rest of the week to talk about it!
As if I didn’t have enough projects on my plate, I’m also working on an upcoming ebook I’m calling ‘Webspace’, which is a guide to putting stuff out and promoting it on the web. Sign up to get email updates on it. | https://medium.com/yesphx-stories/startup-products-and-community-637d1b224d8e | ['Ovi Demetrian Jr'] | 2018-02-26 17:35:26.047000+00:00 | ['Product Development', 'Community', 'Marketing', 'Business', 'Startup'] |
100% impact plastic cleanups (and that is for real) | Plastic Credits with 100% IMPACT → 0% to Empower
EMPOWER is happy to have announced that we are providing Plastic Credits as a FREE SERVICE for all collectors and cleanup-organisations on our platform immediately.
100% of your donations goes directly to the waste collectors and your impact is beyond what you can find anywhere else — Let’s push for transparency & traceability that can change the world for real!
What does this mean:
100% of any donations for plastic cleanups goes directly to the organisations and people on the ground doing the work. The main purpose is to fund cleanups and help kick-start waste management infrastructure where it is needed the most. We want to empower local entrepreneurs and give them the tools to grow.
0% goes to Empower for facilitating and documenting the impact, we take this cost on us and still make sure money goes directly where it should go — we still provide the (blockchain secured) proof of and trust. The only costs are 3rd party costs (like banks) who still charge for their part of this service.
So when we say 100% — does it mean that money go to Empowers local orgs, infrastructure, software?
NO! 0% is 0%! We don’t fund our own operations, own collection points or plastic banks with this it all goes to local entrepreneurs and waste pickers.
WE WANT REAL IMPACT that improves the life of people everywhere, also on the ground, and we believe by kickstarting waste management infrastructure everywhere, there will be enough opportunities for Empower to grow.
HOW CAN YOU HELP? To boost the cleanup of plastic waste around the world we need funding that goes where it has the most impact, we are looking for partners and supporters who want to help fund these collectors and their work on the ground. Partners that want to help create change and real impact, empowering people around the world to take real action in the fight against plastic pollution with awareness and concrete solutions.
JOIN US HERE: www.plastic-positive.com or [email protected]
Read about Plastic Credits here: | https://medium.com/empowerplastic/100-impact-and-that-is-for-real-8b1e7959709d | ['Wilhelm Myrer'] | 2021-08-17 08:58:35.737000+00:00 | ['Recycling', 'Transparency', 'Plastic Pollution', 'Blockchain', 'Donations'] |
My 4 steps to becoming an online teacher as a medical student | My 4 steps to becoming an online teacher as a medical student Aya smiai Follow Jul 5 · 5 min read
Since high school, I have always tried to find a side hustle that meets my interests.
I have tons of interests and million things that I enjoy doing.
I like photography, books, literature, writing, cartoon, graphic design, animation, LANGUAGES….
And l almost tried to create a side hustle around each one of them😁.
#1
What I consider my first successful project was creating a YouTube channel and a Facebook page for animated book reviews.
But I’m such a lazy girl and I felt that creating one animated video took me forever.
Plus, I only had few views on my YouTube videos and I didn’t know how to promote myself and my content.
I almost uploaded 12 videos on my channel. Then, I gave up.
I always think about starting over on youtube but don’t know when the right moment will come.
#2
3 years later when I started my first year in med school and I hated my field of study.
Maybe you’re shocked who doesn’t like to be a doctor.
Well, I do! 🤷♀️😂
I thought maybe doing a side hustle around medicine will help me love it because at least all the anatomy, physiology, and histology will be useful at making me some money.
That’s what I thought😑
So the first dollars I made online were from writing and selling medical
articles on Fiverr and my brother bought the first four articles😂 .
I needed reviews to get clients and I needed clients to get reviews.
So I asked my brother for help and he supported me (actually he always does ) 😉.
When I had my reviews I got my first real client.
Unfortunately, that first experience was bad.
He didn’t like my article😏.
He said it’s not a good quality content.
I just replied saying. “ it’s a 5$ dollar article what are you expecting 😂.”
I’m happy he didn’t leave me a bad review at the end🤭.
I worked few months on Fiverr and I made around 120$.
But I hated this job because I was drowning in medical content.
So I hid my gigs, withdrew my money, and started looking for something else ….
#3
So here I’m searching again for online teaching opportunities.
I said again 😂 , because teaching online was always something that I tried to do but couldn’t get any dollar out of it.
Simply because I searched in the wrong place.
I thought my love for children and my relatively good English skills are enough to work for websites like VIP kids and Cambly.
But I was wrong 😑. I didn’t get accepted simply because I didn’t meet their requirements.
I also tried to teach in Italki.
But guess what my application was declined not only one time but 3 times or maybe more I not sure ( I have a bad memory and I always forget these details😅 ).
I applied to teach French as it’s my second language and I also tried Arabic my native language.
In the end, Nothing worked 😑.
#4
The next station was during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020.
When everything was closed in my country and we’re home 24/24h .
I thought It was the perfect time to start my research again.
And this is how I ended up in Preply. 🎉 .
I signed up to teach my native language Arabic and surprisingly in almost 4 days, I received my acceptance email.
I thought I was lucky because the website was hiring hundreds of new tutors.
Millions are locked in their homes and they’re trying to fill the huge amount of free time they have with multiple activities.
I set my price low at 5 $/hour just to find my first student.
In 7 days, I got my first trial lesson booked and I was so so excited about it.
I texted my new student to know more details and it turned out he’s the father and the lesson was for his 8-year-old and 11- year-old daughters.
He told me that they are bored at home ( just like me 😆) and that lockdown is a great opportunity for them to have fun and improve their Arabic writing and reading skills.
Suddenly, I started to freak out.
What I’m supposed to do during this trial lesson?
Where do I find materials that meet my students’ needs ?
I’m not a teacher and I don’t have any resources to use.
In this situation, any normal person will ask Teacher Google for help.
For sure he has millions of useful resources.
But I didn’t 🙂.
Instead, I went to the nearest book shop and I bought a 1 st grade Arabic school book, a small whiteboard, and 3 whiteboard pens black blue, and green, and here we go.
I started my lesson by asking them to introduce themselves and to speak about their hobbies and then we read a short text together.
During the lesson, I felt their mum’s presence in the room.
I didn’t see her directly on camera but I heard her whispering to her daughters some answers.
This stressed me a little bit but I tried my best to concentrate on my lesson.
When my trial class was done, I immediately received a notification that my student bought 10 HOURS with me😍, Yeey 🎊
This was my first milestone .
I increased my price to 7 $ and this is how I got my second student whom I still teach until now.
At that moment, I decided to never stop teaching.
The key message I wanted to deliver through this story is the importance of knocking on different doors.
Try as many opportunities as you can.
Surely, you’ll end up finding what suits you the most.
The greatest thing so far about online teaching is the amazing people I had the chance to meet, to help, to learn from, and to laugh with …
I’m grateful to you all. | https://medium.com/axis/my-4-steps-to-becoming-an-online-teacher-as-a-medical-student-6804de46b37d | ['Aya Smiai'] | 2021-08-24 16:27:59.492000+00:00 | ['Tips', 'Language Teaching', 'Side Hustle', 'Online Teaching', 'Life'] |
Why Java is the best Programming language for Beginners in 2021? | Why Java is the best Programming language for Beginners in 2021?
Even after 25 years, Java is still the best programming language to start coding
I often receive questions like which is a first programming language to learn?, Is Java a good programming language to start with?, how good Java is as a first programming language, which is the best programming language for beginners, or shall I start with Java or Python?.
Well, the answer to all these questions is, Java is one of the most popular programming languages, and there are a lot of reasons to learn Java, starting with Job opportunities to leveraging community support.
But, in the context of beginning programming or choosing Java as the first language, my most significant reason is that it’s simpler to learn.
People may argue that Python is even simpler and doesn’t even require to compile but I personally found Java much easier to read and understand.
The last generation of programmers started learning to program using languages like BASIC and then grew up learning C and C++ with Java as their second or third programming language.
One reason for this could be that C and C++ were more prevalent in those days than Java, the other most curriculum was designed to teach C and C++, and there was no Python those days, at least not in our college.
This is true, *often we don’t make a choice, and we learn as part of the programming curriculum at school and colleges. In my time, C was the first programming language in our engineering college, and then we learned C++, VB, VC++, and finally Java.
Now I am saying Java more straightforward and easy to learn, but I still remember saying it was more complicated than C++ because I had to type System.out.println() instead of simpler cout to print something on the screen, but that was just a momentary feeling.
When I started writing and maintaining bigger programs, I found Java much more readable, and you can think about what code is doing. Debugging and finding a problem was also much more comfortable in Java than compared to C++ or C.
By the way, I learn professional programming, or you say real coding only on my first job, and that was when I seriously started learning Java.
Is Java a Good Programming Langauge to Start With?
Here are my couple of reasons, why I think Java is the right programming language to start learning to code:
1. Simple
Java is simpler, the syntax is much more readable than C, C++ or any other language.
2. Object-Oriented Programming
Java is good to learn Object-Oriented programming, but not so good for procedural one, prefer C there. The OOP or Object Oriented programming is a useful skill because it handles the complexity of a real-world application quite well. It’s easier to think in terms of class and objects.
3. Rich API and third-party libraries
Java has a rich API, and you can do a lot more with Java including graphics, sound and most likely writing small games like Tic Tac Toe, Tetris, etc.
Not that you cannot do that with other languages, you often need to download and install different modules and library, which is a tough job for a starter. When you install Java, most of these feature comes as part of the installation only.
4. Community Support
Java has strong community support, no matter what kind of questions, doubt, or issue you have, Google can find answers for you. If not Google, then StackOverflow, Java forums, and a lot of other communities are there to help you out.
This is really the single biggest reason I suggest beginners learn to code using Java because when you are starting to learn to program you will face many different kinds of issues to understand for both programming fundamentals and Java.
Because there are millions of Java developers around and a big community is there to support, most likely you will find answers quickly without getting frustrated and disappointed.
5. Strongly typed language
Java is a strongly typed language, which catches many newbie mistakes. Also valid, to a lesser extent, for static typing. This is another reason I suggest beginners learn Java first then Python because Python is a dynamic typing language, you don’t need to define types which make learning confusing a bit.
6. Built-in Garbage Collector
Java comes with an in-built Garbage collection, which is a big plus for a complete beginner. Dealing with memory management is a big thing at the start of learning programming.
These are some of the reasons why I think beginners should learn Java first than any other language. I may be biased because I am a Java programmer, but I also know Python, and I have also done professional programming in C and C++. From that experience, I can say that Java is undoubtedly one of the best programming languages for beginners.
If you have already made up your mind to learn Java, then you can join The Complete Java Masterclass to start your journey into the beautiful world of Java. This is one of the best courses to learn Java for beginners. It’s comprehensive but at the same time hands-on and suitable for beginners.
Is Java Enough for a Successful Programming Career?
Now the question is the difference, It’s NOT. As a programmer, you must know a lot of things, like data structures, algorithms, memory management, object-oriented programming, scripting, etc. and different language teaches you a different thing.
Once you are comfortable with Java, you can move to other useful programming languages like Scala, JavaScript, or also go towards scripting languages, like Python, which doesn’t need to be compiled.
To be successful in a programming career, you need to keep learning and evolving, that’s the biggest challenge of this field. If you happen to love programming and learn new technologies and languages, then this is the right field for you.
Another important thing for a successful programmer is to develop debugging skills, which is a reasoning based skill. If you want to become a better Java developer, you can also see my recent post about 10 tips to become a better Java developer in 2021.
If you are good with reasoning and can make a conclusion based upon limited available information, then it will be easy for you to troubleshoot issues and find problems.
Having a good knowledge of IDE like Eclipse, Netbeans, or IntelliJIDEA will also help you with your coding and debugging journey, Java is blessed with a really excellent tool.
That’s all on this folks. In my opinion, Java is definitely an excellent language to start programming with, because it’s simpler than many others and focuses truly on programming rather than managing systems, like memory management.
If you are convinced to start learning to code with Java than pick up a copy of Head First Java or join The Complete Java Masterclass and start your journey of programming with one of the best programming languages, Java.
In short, You can definitely choose Java as your first programming language and once you are comfortable, try to learn a couple of more, like JavaScript or Python.
More Resources
Java Tutorial for Complete Beginners (FREE)
Data Structures and Algorithms: Deep Dive Using Java
Java Fundamentals: The Java Language
Java Basics for Beginners (FREE Course)
Practice Java by Building Projects (FREE Course)
10 Free Java Courses for Beginners and Intermediate developers
10 Things Java Developer should learn in 2019
21 Websites to Learn Coding for FREE
Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like this article, then please share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback, then please drop a note.
P. S. — If you like books, you can also check out this list of Must-Read Java Programming books to learn Java in depth.
P.S.S. — If you prefer online courses then you can also check out this list of best Java courses on Medium, which contains a lot of free resources to learn Java online. | https://medium.com/javarevisited/why-java-is-the-best-programming-language-to-learn-coding-for-beginners-cba79aed1271 | [] | 2020-12-13 04:58:46.985000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Coding', 'Programming', 'Computer Science', 'Java'] |
Updates from Timothy Oulton, The Vice & More | The Food, Wine and Spirit Team
Last week, members of the Maker’s Mark team joined SAVEUR Magazine in Cincinnati for this year’s 10th annual blogger awards! Joined by the best food/drink bloggers, content creators and writers from all over the world, Maker’s Mark was able to play a part in an impactful week by celebrating those who are a part of the culinary scene.
Timothy Oulton
“For the past 10 years, Timothy Oulton has served as the creative force behind his eponymous furniture brand, which he believes encapsulates a sense of “humble luxury.” Timothy Oulton was showcased in a full feature piece in Elle Decor titled “The Art of “Humble Luxury” is the Key to Timothy Oulton’s Business.” The article gave a in depth look into the business model of the brand and how each piece of Timothy Oulton furniture is made in Gaoming, China. Read the full article here.
The Lowell was highlighted in a L’Officiel article titled, “Find a Holiday Oasis at The Lowell Hotel.” The article showcases The Lowell’s Warmth & Wine Offer, which is described to include “especially luxurious amenities” like daily breakfast, newspaper delivery, shoe shines, and a personal Fireplace Butler, “who will hand-light your suite’s wood-burning fireplace (did you expect any less?) and supplement it with one of the hotel’s signature scents upon request.” Read the full article here.
On Monday, November 19, The Vice team organized a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Taste-Off at BLACKBARN NoMad, where guests blind-tasted The Vice wines among their peers — 14 wines to be exact! Guests included Wine Spectator, Well+Good, and Thrillist.
This week, four of our hotel clients were included in an article by Whenever Family. The article, titled “Over-the-Top Hotel Holidays,” featured The Lowell’s Warmth & Wine Offer, The Knickerbocker’s NYE Rooftop Offer, Halekulani Okinawa’s Firefly Experience and Half Moon’s Rose Villas. Read the full article here.
“The point of these sparkling waters is to help you find your focus, which is why they keep all the bad stuff out and the good stuff in.” Phocus was featured in Guilty Eats this week and the article highlighted why sparkling caffeinated water is the new “go-to” for consumers who want to be energized all day. Read the full article here.
On Tuesday, November 19, a member of the EVINS Digital team attended the Tech Up For Women Conference at the Javits Center. Keynote speakers included Rima Alameddine from Nvidia who demonstrated new Jarvis AI technology, Sanyogita Shamsunder from Version who discussed the evolution of 5G and what’s next, and Randi Zuckerberg from Zuckerberg Institute who talked about the challenges she faced throughout her career. Key Takeaways are that Adobe is creating a new program called “Adobe Sensei” where the technology is able to understand and point out different objects within images. Several keynote speakers and panelists noted that although AI is making some jobs obsolete, the technology has created “new collar” jobs that are technology based to help manage the AI. Think of it like HR management for AI. | https://medium.com/@evinssct/updates-from-timothy-oulton-the-vice-more-bc776449ddbc | [] | 2019-11-21 22:10:10.068000+00:00 | ['Agencylife', 'Public Relations', 'NYC', 'Pr', 'Agencynews'] |
Freezing Objects in JavaScript | As we edge closer to winter and the temperatures outside begin to get colder and colder, I bring you a relative topic in Javascript, Freezing Objects.
Objects in JavaScript are, essentially, containers for storing things, and in their natural state, we can always add new items into that container, change things in the container, or take stuff out of the container. Well, what if we want to put the lid on the container, so that nothing new can go inside it and nothing can come out? Now, your first thought may be to assign it with the const keyword, and I can understand that line of thought, however, it doesn’t quite solve our problem. Defining an object with const means that we cannot reassign that object’s name later in our code…
const anObject = {
a: 1,
b: "Hello",
c: [0, 1],
d: {e: 10, f: 20}
}; anObject = {
new: "object"
}; // TypeError: Assignment to constant variable.
…it still allows us to add things into our object…
const anObject = {
a: 1,
b: "Hello",
c: [0, 1],
d: {e: 10, f: 20}
}; anObject.a = 10;
anObject.b = "Goodbye";
anObject.c[2] = 2;
anObject.d.f = 30;
anObject.g = true; console.log(anObject); // Outputs {a: 10, b: 'Goodbye', c: [ 0, 1, 2 ], d: {e: 10, f: 30}, g: true}
As you can see, we are still able to add new things to our container, for more information on how this works see my article on the differences between var , let , and const .
So how do we solve our problem? Introducing… Object.freeze() ! With Object.freeze() we can lock, or freeze, our object so that changes cannot be made to it, meaning that you can no longer add, change, or remove properties from our object. Let’s take a look…
const anObject = {
a: 1,
b: "Hello",
c: [0, 1],
d: {e: 10, f: 20}
}; Object.freeze(anObject); anObject.g = 10; console.log(anObject); // Outputs { a: 1, b: 'Hello', c: [ 0, 1 ], d: { e: 10, f: 20 } }
// Our anObject remains unchanged
So by simply calling the Object.freeze() method on our object we can put the lid on our container, that way if we try to add a new property to our anObject we can’t, and we get back our frozen object (Note: if you are using strict mode you may receive a TypeError ). Just for demonstration purposes, this also is true if we try to change a property…
const anObject = {
a: 1,
b: "Hello",
c: [0, 1],
d: {e: 10, f: 20}
}; Object.freeze(anObject); anObject.a = 10000; console.log(anObject); // Outputs { a: 1, b: 'Hello', c: [ 0, 1 ], d: { e: 10, f: 20 } }
// Our anObject still remains unchanged
…or if we try to remove a property…
const anObject = {
a: 1,
b: "Hello",
c: [0, 1],
d: {e: 10, f: 20}
}; Object.freeze(anObject); delete anObject.a; console.log(anObject); // Outputs { a: 1, b: 'Hello', c: [ 0, 1 ], d: { e: 10, f: 20 } }
// Our anObject cannot be changed
As a quick aside, Object.freeze() can also be used for arrays…
const anArray = [ 0, 1, 2, 3 ]; Object.freeze(anArray); anArray[0] = 1000; console.log(anArray); // Outputs [ 0, 1, 2, 3 ]
…and if we try to remove an element…
const anArray = [ 0, 1, 2, 3 ]; Object.freeze(anArray); anArray.pop(); console.log(anArray); // TypeError: Cannot delete property '3' of [object Array]
Now things get a little interesting, whenever we use the Object.freeze() method, it only freezes the top level of our anObject so any nested objects or arrays that we have in our anObject can still be changed…
const anObject = {
a: 1,
b: "Hello",
c: [0, 1],
d: {e: 10, f: 20}
}; Object.freeze(anObject); anObject.c[0] = 2;
delete anObject.d.f;
anObject.d.g = "new"; console.log(anObject); // Outputs { a: 1, b: 'Hello', c: [ 2, 1 ], d: { e: 10, g: 'new' } }
// Our anObject HAS BEEN changed!
The question then becomes, is it possible to freeze everything within our anObject ? The answer is that, yes we can, it just takes a little bit of working. In order to freeze everything inside of our anObject we need to apply a little bit of Recursion to go through our anObject , check to see if any of it’s properties are an object, and if the property is an object apply the Object.freeze() method…
const anObject = {
a: 1,
b: "Hello",
c: [0, 1],
d: {e: 10, f: 20}
}; function freezeEverything(object) {
Object.keys(object).forEach(property => {
if (typeof object[property] === 'object')
freezeEverything(object[property]);
});
return Object.freeze(object);
}; freezeEverything(anObject); anObject.b = "anything";
anObject.c[0] = 1000; console.log(anObject); // Outputs { a: 1, b: 'Hello', c: [ 0, 1 ], d: { e: 10, f: 20 } }
// anObject now cannot be changed at all, completely frozen!!
Let’s walk through what is going on here. First, we are creating a new function freezeEverything that takes the argument of an object. freezeEverything then collects all of the properties that belong to the passed object, using the Object.keys() method. Next, we use the forEach method to go over, or iterate through, all of those collected properties. Then, if the property is an object, we again call on the freezeEverything function passing the property as the argument. The final step is to use the Object.freeze() method on any of the objects that work their way through the freezeEverything function, to well, freeze everything.
This will work even if we have more nested objects…
const anObject = {
a: 1,
b: "Hello",
c: [0, 1],
d: {e: {f: 1, g: 2}}
}; freezeEverything(anObject); // using our function from above anObject.d.e.f = 500; console.log(anObject) // Outputs { a: 1, b: 'Hello', c: [ 0, 1 ], d: { e: 10, f: 20 } }
So there you go, if you have an object and you want to make sure that the contents of that object cannot be changed, you can the Object.freeze() method to lock it down, and you can also utilize recursion to make sure that even if there are nested objects, things will stay the way you want them.
I hope that you find this useful and as always thanks for reading!! | https://medium.com/swlh/freezing-objects-in-javascript-1d2ec0aad199 | ['Chris Hosler'] | 2020-12-04 07:27:37.665000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Javascript Development', 'Software Development'] |
A More Strategic Way to Delete Your Emails | Photo: JohnnyGreigg / Getty Images
For all the ways that G Drive has made our lives run better, it makes getting rid of those memories kind of complicated. The most intuitive way to delete messages in Gmail is scrolling and clicking. Forever.
So technology columnist Angela Lashbrook tried to find another way, a journey she writes about in Debugger, Medium’s new publication about consumer technology.
Turns out you need a two-part system: Let an app clear out most of the junk. Then employ search-and-destroy strategies to find groups of emails to delete all at once. Her tips are surprising but easy and effective.
The best approach, however, is the simplest: daily maintenance. “That means deleting all the emails you don’t need as you receive them so you don’t get caught up in the mess I spent the last several days cleaning up,” Lashbrook writes.
And in that way, your inbox is like any important relationship: Pay a little attention every day so you can focus on the present, not thousands of pieces of baggage from the past. | https://forge.medium.com/how-your-inbox-is-like-any-other-relationship-in-your-life-df4f9d77f2b | ['Ross Mccammon'] | 2020-10-21 14:49:38.703000+00:00 | ['Inbox', 'Google', 'Email', 'Productivity'] |
We Are the Advent of Armageddon | In our most glorious moments
Humans cleave together
Aligned as tight as magnets
Yet because we are human
Avarice macerates our cells
So must we repel
As if polar opposites | https://medium.com/chalkboard/we-are-the-advent-of-armageddon-ac36cbf86902 | ['Sherry Kappel'] | 2020-12-13 13:32:42.054000+00:00 | ['Humanity', 'Poetry', 'Hate', 'Armageddon', 'One Line'] |
Infrastructure as Code — Terraform | Problem
IT infrastructure has evolved rapidly since the internet.
Virtualization and containerization have changed the way we think about IT infrastructure.
Cloud computing has solved the problem of availability and scalability, but it doesn’t solve the inconsistency issues and related complexity.
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS platforms further increase the complexity of the infrastructure configuration.
When you have more than one person performing the configurations, you’re bound to get discrepancies.
Can we manage Infrastructure like we manage the code?
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Historically, managing IT infrastructure was a manual process. People would physically put servers in place and configure them. Applications would be deployed only after the machines were configured to the correct settings required by the OS and applications. Unsurprisingly, this manual process would often result in several problems such as follows –
Cost
Scalability
Availability
Inconsistency
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the Missing Piece of the Puzzle to create a manageable and consistent IT infrastructure. Infrastructure as Code evolved to solve the problem of environment drift in the release pipeline. Without IaC, teams must maintain the settings of individual deployment environments. Over time, each environment becomes a snowflake, that is, a unique configuration that cannot be reproduced automatically. Inconsistency among environments leads to issues during deployments.
Teams who implement IaC can deliver stable environments rapidly and at scale. Teams avoid manual configuration of environments and enforce consistency by representing the desired state of their environments via code.
Idem-potence is a principle of Infrastructure as Code. Idem-potence is the property that a deployment command always sets the target environment into the same configuration, regardless of the environment’s starting state.
Modern cloud-native applications embrace the widely accepted practice of Infrastructure as Code or IaC. With IaC, you automate platform provisioning.
What is Infrastructure as Code?
Infrastructure as a code is the process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine definition files rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools and IT infrastructure managed by this compromise both physical equipment’s such as bare metal servers as well as virtual machines and associated configuration resource so let’s let me put this in simpler terms, infrastructure as code simply means to manage your IT infrastructure using configuration files, the key takeaway from this definition is that before IaC IT personnel would have to manually change configurations to manage their infrastructure, mainly they would use a throw script to automate some task but that was the extent of it, with IaC your infrastructures configuration takes the form of a code file, since it is just text it is easy for you to edit copy and distribute it, you can and you should put it under source control just like any other source code file, so this was about the definition infrastructure as a code.
Infrastructure as Code enables DevOps teams to test applications in production-like environments early in the development cycle. These teams expect to provision multiple test environments reliably and on-demand.
How Infrastructure as Code works?
A developer defines the configuration parameters in a domain-specific language (DCL).
The instruction files are sent to a master server, a management API, or a code repository.
The IaC platform follows the developer’s instructions to create and configure the infrastructure.
With IaC, users don’t need to configure an environment every time they want to develop, test, or deploy software. All infrastructure parameters are saved in the form of files called manifests.
As with all code files, manifests are easy to reuse, edit, copy and share. Manifests make building, testing, staging, and deploying infrastructure quicker and consistent.
Developers codify the configuration files store them in version control. If someone edits a file, pull requests and code review workflows can check the correctness of the changes.
Imperative vs Declarative Approach
IaC tools can vary as far as the specifies of how they work but we can generally divide them into two main types the one that follows the Imperative approach and the one that follows the Declarative approach if you think the above category have something to do with the programming language paradigms then you are absolutely correct.
The imperative approach gives orders to define a sequence of commands or instructions so the infrastructure can reach the final result.
For wear and tear down of VMs, or environment, or for scaling up or down, we have to write custom scripts.
A declarative approach on the other hand declares the desired outcome instead of explicitly outlining the sequence of steps the infrastructure needs to reach the final result. The declarative approach shows what the final result looks like.
A declarative approach allows you to more easily manage the configuration.
Mutable vs Immutable Infrastructure
When it comes to IaC, mutable refers to an infrastructure that needs to be constantly updated and changed to continue to meet the changing needs of the business. This means that IT professionals have to individually address each server and switch, which can translate into long hours spent identifying problems and coming up with solutions instead of taking the time to rebuild the system in a way that removes any quirks. Since each component is different and requires a unique approach that can often only be performed by one person, the servers are sometimes referred to as snowflakes.
Immutable IaC represents the future by requiring that each component is built according to exact specifications. There is no room for small deviations that have to be individually addressed. Once a change is required, the infrastructure is provisioned according to the new requirements, and the old IaC is taken out of commission.
Benefits of Infrastructure as Code
Speed — The first benefit IaC provides the speed, it enables you to quickly set up your complete infrastructure by running a script, you can do that for every environment from development to production passing through staging QA and more. IaC can make the entire software development lifecycle more efficient.
— The first benefit IaC provides the speed, it enables you to quickly set up your complete infrastructure by running a script, you can do that for every environment from development to production passing through staging QA and more. IaC can make the entire software development lifecycle more efficient. Consistent — Manual processes result in mistakes, communication is hard and we are in general pretty bad at it as you already know manual infrastructure management the result in discrepancies no matter how hard you try, we can easily solve the problem by having the config files themselves the single source of truth, that means you guarantee that same configuration will be deployed over and over without discrepancies.
— Manual processes result in mistakes, communication is hard and we are in general pretty bad at it as you already know manual infrastructure management the result in discrepancies no matter how hard you try, we can easily solve the problem by having the config files themselves the single source of truth, that means you guarantee that same configuration will be deployed over and over without discrepancies. Accountability — Since you can version IaC configuration files like any other source code file, you have full traceability of the changes each configuration suffered, no more guessing games about who did what and when.
— Since you can version IaC configuration files like any other source code file, you have full traceability of the changes each configuration suffered, no more guessing games about who did what and when. Efficiency — By employing IaC you can deploy your infrastructure architecture in many stages that make the whole software that makes the development lifecycle more efficient raising the team’s productivity to new levels, you could have programmers using the IaC to create and launch sandbox environments allowing them to develop in the isolation safely, the same would be true for QA professionals as well who can have the perfect copies of the production environments in which to run their tests, final minutes the deployment time you can push the infrastructure and code to the production in one step.
— By employing IaC you can deploy your infrastructure architecture in many stages that make the whole software that makes the development lifecycle more efficient raising the team’s productivity to new levels, you could have programmers using the IaC to create and launch sandbox environments allowing them to develop in the isolation safely, the same would be true for QA professionals as well who can have the perfect copies of the production environments in which to run their tests, final minutes the deployment time you can push the infrastructure and code to the production in one step. Cost — One of the main benefits of IaC without a doubt is lowering the cost of infrastructure management by employing cloud computing, along with IaC you dramatically reduce your cost that is because you don’t have to spend money on hardware, hire people to operate it, and build or rent physical space to store it. But IaC also lowers your cost in another and circular way that is what we call the opportunity cost.
Infrastructure as Code Tools
AWS CloudFormation
Azure Resource Manager
Google Cloud Deployment Manager
Terraform
Puppet
Chef
Ansible
The tool we are going to talk about is Terraform, the 3 tools (AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager, and Google Cloud Deployment Manager) are designed to work with specific cloud environment but that is not the case with the tool called Terraform, developed by HashiCorp. Terraform is completely cloud agnostic and helps you tackle large infrastructure for complex distributed applications, for example with more ease than working on a cloud-specific platform. These ships and is orchestrated in varying degree with the focus on the core plan or apply cycle.
Terraform
So, what is Terraform, Terraform is an infrastructure provisioning tool where you can store your cloud infrastructure setup as code, it’s very similar to tools such as CloudFormation which you would use to automate your AWS infrastructure but you can only use that on AWS, with Terraform you can use it on other providers you can use it for AWS, you can use it for Google, Azure, and thing like Cloudflare as well.
While we have ARM templates, ARM templates are specific to Azure. They’re not multi-Cloud, they don’t work with an on-premise environment, and both sides of the Devs and the infrastructure teams really struggle. That’s where Terraform comes in.
Most of the end-users are coming from an on-premise environment. A lot of them use things like VMware On-Prem and they try to orchestrate that. They are using one tool for VMware and they start looking at the Cloud platform GCP and AWS, there’s a different tool for that and then when they come to Azure, they have to use ARM templates. So, Terraform resolves that issue. You can deploy Terraform to VMware, GCP, and AWS. So, you have you use a different template but the same formatting. So, it’s loading one format of code, basically. | https://medium.com/@manthanlal2318/infrastructure-as-code-terraform-20e671a4d21d | ['Manthan Lal'] | 2020-12-19 05:37:40.211000+00:00 | ['Microsoft Azure', 'Infrastructure Management', 'Cloud', 'Terraform', 'Infrastructure As Code'] |
Top 10 Budget Laptops for Designers & Creatives in 2019 | For many of us, when we start our creative journey, we might have all the passion and imagination in the world, but one thing we may lack is the money to have the best technology to make our dreams a reality.
We started to reminisce about those early days and wanted to give you, our loyal reader some assistance in getting the best tech available for your budget and still keep your drive & business growing.
When we started building our list of the Best Budget Laptops for Designers and Creatives in 2019, we tried to consider the things that we would look for when buying a new laptop.
So let’s start there shall we?
Related Posts:
7 Things to Look For When Buying A Budget Laptop
When you’re serious about your craft and want to make sure that the work you’re putting out there is the best that it can be, you want to make sure that the tech you’re using does what you need it to.
Without the right gear, your work can suffer. Now while we know you might be on a budget, there can be many things you need to know and look for when buying a laptop. If nothing else, we wanted to make sure you don’t go in uninformed.
Let’s dive right in.
1. Set A Budget
We’ve all been there. You head to the store, see the newest and brightest tech available and get excited. Then reality sets back in and you realize that you have a budget, but can you get a good laptop on a tight budget? Let’s break it down a little bit.
$150 to $350
While these are the least expensive laptops out there, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t quality options out there for you to choose from. Chromebooks run the Google Operating system, might not have all the bells and whistles of some more expensive options, but can still be a quality choice when you’re first starting out. See our post on the best Chromebooks for designers.
$350 to $600
You can buy a quality laptop with an Intel Core i5 or even an AMD A8 CPU plus 4 to 8GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive for less than $600 these days. While these specs are impressive, for the price, they can come with some exclusions such as an SSD, FullHD display or long battery life. There are exceptions to this though such as the Acer Aspire E 15 or the Asus Vivobook which can be upgraded to an SSD.
$600 to $900
At this point, many manufacturers will start to put features on the laptop that won’t appear on those with lower price points such as a metal finish, SSDs or even high-resolution displays. Finding a quality laptop with the features you need without breaking the bank is very doable in this price range.
$1000+
You can get a top tier laptop for over $1000. Consider looking at our top laptops for graphic designers post and the best Macbooks for designers.
2. Operating System
Other than price, many people will end up choosing a laptop because of the operating system that the laptop runs on. Whether its personal preference because of familiarity or recommendations from a colleague, laptops are generally available with three different OS:
MacOS
The laptops that Apple manufacturers are packaged with MacOS. While functionally similar to Windows 10, there are subtle differences such as an Apps dock instead of a Start menu. Mac users also have Siri instead of Cortana for voice assistance. While many people tout the ease of use that comes with Apple’s operating system, the biggest downside is that the laptops that have this OS can be quite expensive. An entry point for a cheap Mac would be considering a renewed older model.
Windows 10
With its appearance on many more laptops than both MacOS and ChromeOS, Windows is considered to be the most flexible operating system out there. Appearing on a wide range of laptops from those costing $150 to thousands of dollars, the variety of features that Windows offers can make it an enticing choice. Since its release in July 2015, the improvements that have been added to Windows have made it a very popular choice for designers and creatives.
ChromeOS
A simple and secure operating system, the ChromeOS from Google is found on Chromebooks. While the interface is reminiscent of Windows with an app menu, desktop, and ability to drag windows around, the main browser is Google’s own Chrome browser. A downside to using the ChromeOS is that some web applications don’t work all that well offline. That is changing however as newer, high-end versions of the Chromebook are now able to run Android applications.
3. Traditional laptop or 2-in-1
These days, laptops will fall into two main categories: standard notebook style and 2-in-1 hybrids that come in two different variations. A hinged version that allows you to put the device in many different configurations and a detachable that come off the keyboard entirely.
Many of these tend to provide a better experience one way instead of the other with bend-back laptops being a laptop first while detachable offers a superior tablet experience. If you don’t see having a tablet in any form as a necessity, stick with a traditional laptop as you’ll usually get better performance for the money you will spend.
4. Screen Size & Weight
While all the power under the hood is great to have, if all that power causes you to lug around a huge laptop, it might not be worth the money. Laptops are generally categorized by the size of their display:
11 to 12 inches
These will generally be the thinnest and lightest laptop that you can find. The screen is between 11 and 12 inches and only weighs around 2.5 to 3.5 pounds.
13 to 14 inches
Laptops of this size will provide the best combination of portability and usability. This is especially true if you find a laptop that weighs less than 4 pounds.
15 inches
Usually weighing around 4.5 to 6.5 pounds, 15-inch laptops are the most popular choice for those who want a laptop with a larger screen but isn’t so heavy to be a burden when carrying it around
17 to 18 inches
If you have a laptop that stays primarily on your desk and isn’t carried around much, a laptop with a 17 or 18-inch screen can provide you with the processing power you need to do high-quality work without needing a desktop computer.
5. Keyboard & Touchpad
Having the best laptop in the world, no matter how much it costs, can mean absolutely nothing if the keyboard doesn’t fit your hands the right way. A good laptop keyboard should offer tactile feedback, enough space between the keys and when you press a key, it should move vertically enough to make it feel satisfying.
See here for our list of top external keyboards.
The touchpad shouldn’t give you a jumpy cursor and also responds well to your movements as well as multitouch gestures like pinch and zoom. Some manufacturers still provide a pointing stick between the G and H keys. This can be helpful as it will allow you to navigate your laptop’s screen while keeping your fingers on the home row of the keyboard.
6. Specifications (What’s Inside)
When you look at the specs that a laptop has, it can be a little daunting at first. There are a lot of letters on display and it can be tough to know what each one of them means and what you should pick. While there can be some debate over the screen size you should choose, for designers and creatives, focusing more on three areas will help you choose a quality laptop in your price range.
Storage size
Laptops will either come with an HDD (hard disk drive) or an SSD (solid state drive). You want to try and buy a laptop with the highest amount of storage that you can afford and should aim for at least 256GB to start. If you have many files and projects that you can’t keep saved on your laptop, you may want to also look at an external hard drive.
RAM
While there are some budget-friendly laptops that come with 2GB of RAM, you should strive for a laptop that starts with at least 8GB. 16GB would obviously be better if you can afford it, and anything higher might break your budget altogether.
CPU
The CPU is essentially your laptop’s brain and giving your laptop a strong brain can make doing your job much easier. The CPU can affect the performance of the laptop in both good and bad ways. In our opinion, if you don’t have any extra money to spend on other areas of the laptop, make sure you are getting a good processor for the money.
7. Battery Life
Some people who buy a laptop will only look at the specs that it may come with and overlook a very important factor: battery life. If you’re not going to be leaving your laptop on a desk, plugged in all day, you want to shoot for at least 7 hours of battery life, more is obviously better. Just because the manual says that it lasts for 10 hours isn’t always correct. Do your research and read third-party reviews of the laptops you are interested in to get an accurate idea of the battery life.
Top 10 Best Budget Laptops for Designers and Creatives in 2019
While it is true that there are many laptops available for you to purchase, finding the best budget laptops, especially for those who may be a designer or work in another creative field can be a bit tough. There are so many options out there for you to choose from.
What we decided to do was take our criteria of what to consider when buying a laptop and select those that most closely matched. This means that to us, the list below has the Best Budget Laptops for Designers and Creatives in 2019.
If you want to know more about any on our list, click a link below to get more information. However, if you want to know why we picked the ones we did, keep reading below.
Prices above are approximate. Live rates are below.
Can you afford more? See our post:
The Cheapest Laptops for Designers and Creatives in 2019
The term budget can mean many different things and doesn’t necessarily mean that if you are on a budget, that there isn’t a viable laptop option for you out there. In fact, we found eleven great options and even though we focused on these, there are so many more out there.
The choices on our list are the ones that right out of the box, you can turn it on and excel at whatever work you need to do. If you’re ready, keep reading.
The Best All-Around Budget Laptop
CPU: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 | RAM: 8 GB DDR4 | Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 620 | Storage: 1TB HDD | Weight: 3.7lbs | OS Windows 10 Home
Looking for the best all-around budget laptop for design? The Vivobook F510 UA from Asus is it. While priced as a budget laptop, anyone looking for a laptop no matter what their budget is should consider taking this one home. A 15.6" WideView display with FHD resolution can make your projects stand out with the help of a 7th gen Core i5–7200U processor and 8GB of RAM which helps make multitasking as easy as can be. The 1TB hard drive will have more than enough room for all of your files but if you want a faster SSD drive (such as the Crucial MX300), you can upgrade it quite easily. With connection options including HDMI, 2 USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0, and a Type-c port, it’s not hard to see why this is the top laptop on our list.
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The Best Budget Laptop Under $900
CPU: Intel Core i5-i7 | Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 620 | RAM: 8GB | Storage: 256GB DDR4 | Weight: 2.65 lbs | OS: Windows 10 Home
While the Lenovo Yoga may not fit into everyone’s idea of budget, those who can afford this 2-in-1 will be impressed by the performance they receive from a high-quality laptop that doesn’t cost as much as the big boys. A full HD 15.6-inch display is helped by the Intel UHD Graphics 620 graphics card, making all of your design work look amazing. Perfect for those who are looking for a light, powerful 2-in-1 with an accurate touchscreen along with sufficient processing power for all of your needs.
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The Best Budget Macbook Pro
CPU: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 | Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 | RAM: 4–8GB | Storage: 500GB Mechanical | Weight: 4.54lbs | OS: MacOS
If you’re wanting to go the Apple route, like many creatives do, but just don’t have the funds to fork out for their newest products, getting a renewed older model Macbook Pro is a great alternative. The 13.3" screen is a great middle ground, and the Intel HD Graphics 4000, while not outstanding, will do the job. It’s also important to consider that older MacBook Pro models come with mechanical hard drives VS the faster SSDs that come in modern day Macs. We recommend opting for the 8GB RAM model which is just $42 more.
See our guide to the best Macbooks for designers.
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The Most Powerful Budget Laptop
CPU: 7th generation Intel Core i5 | Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 620 | RAM: 8GB | Storage: 1TB HDD | Weight: 4.85lbs | OS: Windows 10
At first glance, the Dell i3567 Inspiron may not look like much, but trust us, it has a lot going on under the hood. With a Core i5–7200U CPU that has a processing speed of around 3 GHz with the use of the laptop’s turbo boost. Eight gigabytes of RAM makes multitasking easy while a hard drive of 1TB gives you more than enough room to save all of your work. A 15.6-inch display is backlit by LED’s which helps to produce almost perfect colors. While it may not appear as more than a simple laptop, the Dell i3657 Inspiron has muscle where it counts.
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The Best Long-Life Battery Laptop
CPU: 2.24 GHz Intel Celeron | Graphics: Intel HD Graphics | RAM: 4GB | Storage: 16GB eMMC | Weight: 3.42lbs | OS: Chrome
For many, Acer has been a computer company that releases quality products at affordable prices and the Chromebook 14" is no exception. Running Google’s own lightweight operating system, the Chromebook is powered by a quad-core Celeron chip plus 4GB of RAM as well as 16GB of eMMC storage. While not everyone is a fan of using a Chromebook, it can be a great first option, especially when you take into consideration the incredible battery life of 12 hours of normal use per charge.
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The Best Budget Laptop with an Optical Drive (CD/DVD)
CPU: 8th generation Intel Core i3 | Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 620 | RAM: 6GB | Storage: 1TB HDD | Weight: 5.27 lbs | OS: Windows 10
While not the lightest laptop on our list, the Acer Aspire E 15 has some features that other budget laptops don’t anymore. Namely an optical drive. In an age where the optical drive is becoming less and less common, Acer has packaged the Aspire with a 1TB HDD and an Intel HD Graphics 620 chip. While the large, 15.6-inch display is nice to look at, the Core i3 processor doesn’t move as quickly as some other options on our list. If you’re in need of an optical drive (CD/DVD drive) for your work or entertainment, the Aspire E 15 from Acer may be a great fit for you.
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The Best Budget Tablet Laptop
CPU: Pentium Gold 4415Y | Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 615 | RAM: 8GB | Storage: 128GB SSD | Weight: 1.15lbs | OS: Chrome
Sometimes the best budget-friendly laptop is more than just a laptop. Case in point, the Microsoft Surface Go is designed to primarily be a tablet. But with the Type Pad accessory, it becomes a quite capable laptop that can be taken pretty much anywhere. With a battery life of around 9 hours, you can spend that time working on the 10-inch PixelSense display which will portray your work in vivid color. A 128GB SSD and 8GB of RAM give you more than enough power and storage to handle any sketching you can do. While the added accessories can up the price a bit, the tablet alone can make for a great sketchpad. The only downfall is the 10" screen size which may be too small for some.
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The Best Budget Laptop for Video Editors
CPU: AMD dual-core A9 APU — Intel Core i7 | RAM: 6GB — 16GB | Graphics: AMD Radeon R5 — Nvidia GTX 1050 | Storage: 512GB SSD — 1TB HDD | Weight: 5lbs | OS Windows 10
Anyone who tells you that sticker shock isn’t a real thing has never been shopping for a laptop. While there are many to choose from, it can be hard to find one with quality construction and won’t destroy any kind of budget you might have. With the Pavilion 15 from HP, you can check both boxes off.
While its overall weight could be a concern for anyone looking to own a lightweight laptop, the 15 houses some impressive tech to make the weight worth it. An Intel Core i7 processor is the brains behind the machine while 8GB of RAM as well and expandable hard drive from 512GB to 1TB gives you more than enough space. If you’re just starting out in video, you can’t start anywhere better in our opinion. See our post on the best laptops for video editors.
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The Best Budget-Friendly 2-in-1 Laptop
CPU: 2.2 GHz Intel Core i3 | RAM: 500 SDRAM DDR4 | Graphics: Intel 620 chip | Storage: 1TB HDD | Weight: 6.61lbs | OS Windows
It can be hard to find a quality 2-in-1 laptop when you have a budget, most aren’t hanging around in the budget class of laptops but the HP Pavilion X360 has an affordable price and some of the style and features that might be found on some of the more popular options out there.
While the amount of memory is a bit lacking with just 4GB to start, the addition of 16GB of Intel Optane memory as a backup. A 15.6-inch FHD display makes a good size surface when in tablet mode and the digital pen is perfect for creatives who don’t want to buy more than one piece of tech.
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The Cheapest Chromebook
CPU: 2.1 GHz MediaTek_MT8127 | RAM: 4 GB LPDDR3 | Graphics: PowerVR SGX543 | Storage: 64 GB Flash Memory Solid State | Weight: 2.64lbs | OS: Chrome
While at first look, the Chromebook C3300 (11.6") from Lenovo may look too small and light to fit onto our list, its those features that help cement it’s spot on our list in the first place. A MediaTek MT8174C processor powers the 2-in-1 and while it comes with a standard 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage help keep all of your important files.
The biggest value in this reasonably priced laptop is the flexibility that it has. With a 360-degree hinge, it can be put in a multitude of positions making getting work done much easier. With a USB-C and USB 3.0 ports included on the machine, you cannot go wrong choosing this one, especially for the price.
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The Best Budget Laptop for Travel (and the clumsy)
CPU: 1.6 GHz Intel Celeron | RAM: 4 GB ddr3 | Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 400 | Storage: 16 GB Flash Memory Solid State | Weight: 2.54lbs | OS Chrome
If you’ve ever had that moment where it’s too late to save the laptop you just spilled coffee all over, then you’ll be happy to meet the Chromebook 3 from Samsung. Running on a 1.6 GHz Intel Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM, it may not be the fastest Chromebook out there but it still runs pretty smooth. An integrated Intel Graphics Card and 16GB SSD help you store and make your images pop on the 11.6-in screen.
Weighing only 2.54 pounds, it is extremely portable while its durable casing helps protect it from drops and spills, which can be all too common when you have a million things going on at once or trying to catch the subway.
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Best Budget Laptops Summary
Choosing the Best Budget Laptops for your Needs
Choosing a budget laptop can be tough especially when you see higher priced options with all the bells and whistles that you know you want. But if you look past the glitz and glamour, you’ll see on our list of the Best Budget Laptops for Designers and Creatives in 2019 many very capable and affordable laptops to help you get your work done.
We hope that we’ve inspired you to take a closer look at the many different options that you have out there and realize that just because you have a budget, it doesn’t mean that you cannot be successful.
Do you use a budget laptop that’s not on our list? Let us know about it in the comments below.
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Photo credits: Golubovy & Stanislaw Mikulski on Shutterstock | https://medium.com/just-creative/top-10-budget-laptops-for-designers-creatives-in-2019-5d0be5976447 | ['Jacob Cass'] | 2019-07-25 04:49:59.172000+00:00 | ['Best', 'Laptops', 'Gear', 'Tools'] |
Getting Started with XGBoost in scikit-learn | This article explains what XGBoost is, why XGBoost should be your go-to machine learning algorithm, and the code you need to get XGBoost up and running in Colab or Jupyter Notebooks. Basic familiarity with machine learning and Python is assumed.
What XGBoost is
In machine learning, ensemble models perform better than individual models with high probability. An ensemble model combines different machine learning models into one. The Random Forest is a popular ensemble that takes the average of many Decision Trees via bagging. Bagging is short for “bootstrap aggregation,” meaning that samples are chosen with replacement (bootstrapping), and combined (aggregated) by taking their average.
Boosting is a strong alternative to bagging. Instead of aggregating predictions, boosters turn weak learners into strong learners by focusing on where the individual models (usually Decision Trees) went wrong. In Gradient Boosting, individual models train upon the residuals, the difference between the prediction and the actual results. Instead of aggregating trees, gradient boosted trees learns from errors during each boosting round.
XGBoost is short for “eXtreme Gradient Boosting.” The “eXtreme” refers to speed enhancements such as parallel computing and cache awareness that makes XGBoost approximately 10 times faster than traditional Gradient Boosting. In addition, XGBoost includes a unique split-finding algorithm to optimize trees, along with built-in regularization that reduces overfitting. Generally speaking, XGBoost is a faster, more accurate version of Gradient Boosting.
Boosting performs better than bagging on average, and Gradient Boosting is arguably the best boosting ensemble. Since XGBoost is an advanced version of Gradient Boosting, and its results are unparalleled, it’s arguably the best machine learning ensemble that we have.
Why XGBoost should be your go-to machine learning algorithm
Starting with the Higgs boson Kaggle competition in 2014, XGBoost took the machine learning world by storm often winning first prize in Kaggle competitions. XGBoost’s popularity surged because it consistently outperformed comparable machine learning algorithms in a competitive environment when making predictions from tabular data (tables of rows and columns).
XGBoost is likely your best place to start when making predictions from tabular data for the following reasons:
XGBoost is easy to implement in scikit-learn.
XGBoost is an ensemble, so it scores better than individual models.
XGBoost is regularized, so default models often don’t overfit.
XGBoost is very fast (for ensembles).
XGBoost learns form its mistakes (gradient boosting).
XGBoost has extensive hyperparameters for fine-tuning.
XGBoost includes hyperparameters to scale imbalanced data and fill null values.
Now that you have a better idea of what XGBoost is, and why XGBoost should be your go-to machine learning algorithm when working with tabular data (as contrasted with unstructured data such as images or text where neural networks work better), let’s build some models.
Installing XGBoost
If you’re running Colab Notebooks, XGBoost is included as an option. If you’re running Anaconda in Jupyter Notebooks, you may need to install it first. Open your terminal and running the following to install XGBoost with Anaconda:
conda install -c conda-forge xgboost
If you want to verify installation, or your version of XGBoost, run the following:
import xgboost; print(xgboost.__version__)
For additional options, check out the XGBoost Installation Guide.
Next, let’s get some data to make predictions.
XGBRegressor in scikit-learn
Scikit-learn comes with several built-in datasets that you may access to quickly score models. The following code loads the scikit-learn Diabetes Dataset, which measures how much the disease has spread after one year. See the scikit-learn dataset loading page for more info.
from sklearn import datasets
X,y = datasets.load_diabetes(return_X_y=True)
The measure of how much diabetes has spread may take on continuous values, so we need a machine learning regressor to make predictions. The XGBoost regressor is called XGBRegressor and may be imported as follows:
from xgboost import XGBRegressor
We can build and score a model on multiple folds using cross-validation, which is always a good idea. An advantage of using cross-validation is that it splits the data (5 times by default) for you. First, import cross_val_score.
from sklearn.model_selection import cross_val_score
To use XGBoost, simply put the XGBRegressor inside of cross_val_score along with X, y, and your preferred scoring metric for regression. I prefer the root mean squared error, but this requires converting the negative mean squared error as an additional step.
scores = cross_val_score(XGBRegressor(), X, y, scoring='neg_mean_squared_error')
If you get warnings, it’s because XGBoost recently changed the name of their default regression objective and they want you to know. To eliminate warnings, try the following, which gives the same result:
# Alternative code to silence potential errors
scores = cross_val_score(XGBRegressor(objective='reg:squarederror'), X, y, scoring='neg_mean_squared_error')
To find the root mean squared error, just take the negative square root of the five scores.
(-scores)**0.5
Recall that in Python, the syntax x**0.5 means x to the 1/2 power which is the square root.
My Colab Notebook results are as follows.
array([56.04057166, 56.14039793, 60.3213523 , 59.67532995, 60.7722925 ])
If you prefer one score, try scores.mean() to find the average. | https://towardsdatascience.com/getting-started-with-xgboost-in-scikit-learn-f69f5f470a97 | ['Corey Wade'] | 2020-11-16 05:13:18.401000+00:00 | ['Getting Started', 'Data Science', 'Regression', 'Scikit Learn', 'Machine Learning'] |
The Last Entry | Dear dairy I fear this will be my last entry. As my loaded gun sits next me, I feel the only way out is one last gun shot to end them all. The all too familiar screams I hear in my nightmares never stop. The flash backs from my time fighting a war we would never win are all to real and terrifying. I still weep for the ones I couldn’t save. If I could go back to that war. 17th of July 1986 to be exact I would give my life for Matthew. He had a family to go home to. He had a kid, he had a wife! What did I have to go home to, a few family members I pushed away? That bullet should have gone through my head not his. The flashbacks have never gone away they have only gotten worse.
I went out into a death trap, into a war that couldn’t be won, for no other reason than to fight for my country and what do I return home to. Nothing… No big crowds cheering for us as we finally dock our boats. I fought an unimaginable, unwinnable war for my country, and they were ashamed of me. 521 of my friends died for this so call “great” nation and there ashamed of the ones who survived. I don’t want to cause pain to the ones I pushed away but I don’t want to feel the pain and suffer anymore.
Every day I relive the time we marched through that vast mine field, that was the day Peter lost his life, every day I still heard the terrifying explosion and I feel the heart stopping shock-wave and then came the scream. That howling scream, it wasn’t the scream of peter. It was the scream of the solider who stood next to him after pieces of peter rained down from the sky and landed on him. Luckily for peter by the time he knew what happen he was a fine pink mist.
Sometimes I wish I laid down in that flied and just rolled around until I hit one of those fatal land mines, or just run into the unrelenting gun fire. That would have been better then this shell shock hell I’ve lived since that war. I know helps out there for me, but I’m tired and exhausted I just want peace. The physical war may be over, but I’ve never stopped fighting. I brought home horrifying demons worse than the war itself. The demons never sleep there always shooting and screaming, and reminding me of the cries of my woman as I nearly strangled her to death for the 19th time since I returned home because she moved in her sleep. She was so helpless. I just wanted to sleep calmly in bed with my beautiful, loving woman. But I didn’t control my body those demons would take over. i nearly took her life one night it all got to much. She left me, I was left with no one and I don’t blame her or anyone who left.
Even looking at the gun that sits next to me I hear the echoing gunshots from that war. As I sit here the only thing I’m praying for is to not survive this. I picked up the gun and everything came flooding back from the first day in battle to the day we left, I Heard every single blood curdling scream, everyone last explosion, I heard every single bullet that was fired. I remembered things I haven’t remembered in years, memories I repressed, I remember names of people I called mates who died so horrifically I forgot that they ever existed. I remembered Richard he didn’t even get the honor to die from a weapon of war, he didn’t watch were he was walking and stepped in a deep hole, when he landed he landed on his left leg, the bone broke into a razor sharp edge, I remember the unearthly scream that came out of the hole he had landed in. His leg bone drove its way up into his body, through his intestines, stomach, lungs and finaly, cause of death was a puncture wound to the heart. as I am putting the gun to my head, I’m surprised at how calm I am. These years of torment and gunshots I just want to hear the terrifying sound of a gun being cocked, being aim, the trigger being pulled and the explosion of gunpowder that drives the bullet out of the gun and have it be real. I want a bullet to final go through my brain to kill all the demons. I only want to hear one more gunshot. One gunshot to end them all. So to who every find me and reads this I’m so sorry…….. | https://medium.com/@laynisymes/the-last-entry-18f82230e279 | ['Layni Symes'] | 2021-01-16 09:49:01.785000+00:00 | ['War', 'PTSD', 'Suicide', 'Diary'] |
Doctor Who Mutilated and Tortured Black Women Honored Around America | In the Alabama State Capitol building, a painting portraying Doctor James Marian Sims, who held the Presidency of the American Medical Association from 1876 to 1877 and established America’s first cancer institute, hangs in tribute to him.
A Painting by Robert Thom, part of the Great Moments in Medicine series representing Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey, three slaves Sims operated upon.
On the grounds of the South Carolina State House, a stone monument stands in honor of the famed physician, notable for groundbreaking gynecological tools and procedures, including surgically assisted childbirth. Additionally, a State Health Department building, also in the South Carolina capitol is named for the doctor.
A state health department building in Columbia, South Carolina, bears Sims’ name. [ Image Credit: Michael Pronzato ]
The Monument to James Marion Sims at the South Carolina State House in Columbia, SC. [ Image by Billy Hathorn ]
In New York City, yet another statue of the famed Dr. Sims was removed in 2018 after a series of protests.
A Monument in New York City’s Central Park was removed only after Black Women protested.
As the nation continues to hold up Dr. Sims as a hero of women for his contributions to medicine over 100 years ago, a renewed focus has been placed on his monstrous practices. While few may have heard of the revered phsyician, even fewer know of his history as a sadist- not because the information does not exist, but because it has been more convenient for modern leaders to turn the other cheek.
In fact, while his unethical, inhumane practices have been well documented, little attention has been given to the grim reality and devastating consequences of his approach to medicine, more specifically, his barbaric and violent mutilation of Black enslaved women whom he regarded as mere animals upon which he conducted brutal and gruesome experiments.
Sims was most certainly a murderer, and it is likely that many slave women- undocumented in historic medical records- died of complications from his malpractice.
He tortured innocent black women on his surgical table. Using primitive tools and no anesthetic, he sterilized them, mutilated their genitalia, removed their reproductive organs, cut into their flesh and tissue with a cold scalpel while they lay before their tormentor, restrained, legs splayed apart.
I the beginning of his career, Sims had many failed attempts in his gory experimentation but continued to acquire access to female slaves for his practices. According to historians, Sims even trained other female slaves to “Physically hold down…” his subjects as he butchered them. His first victim was a slave girl named Lucy, who suffered unfathomable agony at the hands of the doctor. Early documents state:
“That was before the days of anesthetics, and the poor girl [Lucy], on her knees, bore the operation with great heroism and bravery. I had about a dozen doctors there to witness the series of experiments I expected to perform… At the end of five days [Lucy] was very ill. She had fever, frequent pulse, and real blood-poisoning, but we did not know what to call it at that day and time.”
Lucy was provided no compassion or relief from her suffering.
Sims had no regard for the life of the black women he destroyed, believing, according to History.com, that Black people were intellectually inferior due to “Their skulls growing to quickly around their brains,” and that the women he abused were incapable of feeling pain.
Speaking to USA Today Vanessa Northington Gamble, a professor at George Washington University, told reporter Sarah Lynch, that between 1846 and 1849, the doctor operated on at least 10 female slaves without anesthesia, with one enslaved woman known as Anarcha, suffering through an unimaginable 30 surgical sessions.
After perfecting an array of surgical procedures focusing on gynecology, Sims moved his practice from Montgomery, Alabama and traveled Europe, teaching his techniques to other physicians and operating solely on white women- to whom he proved anesthesia in the form of opium.
Worse is how, despite the awareness of the deadly doctor’s practices, America has elevated him, idolated him and created shrines in his name for centuries. From stone pillars, he looks down upon black women every day in the south that fought to keep them in chains. The honoring of such a sinister figure stands out as a chilling reminder that Black Americans are still forced to exist in a world where their historical murderers and abusers are glorified.
These women, some whose names we know, some who remain invisible figures, victims of a madman, deserve to be acknowledged and given credit for their contributions to medical advancements- these women suffered horrific trials at the mercy of a psychopath so that we, today, could have remedy, yet they are never credited.
They deserve the honor. They deserve the monuments.
They deserve our attention and awareness.
Every women who has benefited from gynecological treatment owes their thanks, not to this doctor, but to the Black enslaved women who were forcibly subjected to the gruesome experiments of a dangerous man. | https://phaylen.medium.com/doctor-who-mutilated-and-tortured-black-women-honored-around-america-f1c85b8f499e | ['Phaylen Fairchild'] | 2020-06-23 10:39:50.810000+00:00 | ['Media', 'Culture', 'Equality', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Social Media'] |
When verifying mail-in ballots, states must follow the ‘measure twice, cut once’ rule | A few days after Colorado’s June primary election, I received an email from the Denver Elections Division telling me that my vote didn’t count. Apparently, the signature on my return envelope did not match what elections officials had on my voter registration file.
I was surprised, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been. The same issue occurred after the March presidential primary. I’ll admit — I was frustrated and annoyed that this was happening a second time. But ultimately, after going through a verification process called “curing,” my votes were counted. If I’m honest with myself, despite the mild inconvenience, this is a good story. It means we have strong election security in Colorado, and our state is committing to counting every legitimate vote.
Colorado is one of five vote-by-mail states where all registered voters are mailed a ballot for every election. But even before I lived in Colorado, voting by mail had become a regular thing for me. I’ve voted in Oregon — another vote-by-mail state — and I’ve voted absentee in Massachusetts when I was away on Election Day, and in Florida, where absentee ballots are available to anyone upon request.
Interestingly, though, I had never had an issue with vote-by-mail until I moved to Colorado. Clearly, there’s a problem with my handwriting now. Maybe it’s the arthritis in my wrist. Or simply that my fine motor skills have diminished with age. Or, frankly, that my handwriting has always been terrible.
The fact is, for two elections in a row, the Denver Elections Division has been unable to verify my signature and my ballot was not counted on Election Day either time. Signature matching is one of the most common ways states determine the legitimacy of mail-in ballots and prevent fraud. If trained election officials notice a discrepancy between the signature in the voter’s registration file and the signature on the ballot, the ballot is initially not counted.
While having my ballot rejected at first was annoying, it would be beyond infuriating if there was no recourse to fix the problem and I was left disenfranchised. Luckily, Colorado has a robust and efficient “curing” process in place to verify ballots initially deemed questionable. In my case, it was easy to cure my ballot and have my vote count.
Here’s how it worked. After I received the email alert that there was an issue with my signature, I got another alert a few days later in the mail. As the mailer instructed, I used my mobile phone to get on the election office website, filled in my voter ID (which is provided), completed and signed the affidavit, and took a photo of and submitted my driver’s license. It was all done online, and only took a few minutes. I received a nearly-immediate response that the cure had taken — meaning that my vote had been counted. I could have completed the same process by filling out and emailing the form that came by regular mail.
The Denver Elections Division outlines how signature verification works.
Again, this is a good story because Colorado has a strong vote-by-mail and curing system in place. But I do wonder if I lived in another state if my story would have ended the same way. Would I have been notified that my ballot wasn’t counted?
The short answer is that it depends. But there’s reason to believe I might not have been notified. Most states have expanded mail-in voting due to COVID-19, and huge numbers of voters have been taking advantage of this option. But alongside the surge in absentee voting, we’ve also seen thousands of ballots rejected over fixable problems — sometimes with the voter not given a chance to correct them.
If states don’t have a vote curing system, thousands of voters could be unfairly disenfranchised. And right now, only 19 states require that voters be notified when there’s a discrepancy.
If my experience is any indication, as states continue to prepare for huge increases in mail-in voting this November, it’s just as important that they focus on voter education and a curing system. They should look to Colorado as an example, and do everything they can to ensure all legitimate ballots are counted.
In all likelihood, I’ll have to go through this vote curing process again. I’m not happy with my limitations but I’m willing to cure my ballot every time if it means our elections are secure. Signature matching is one of the best defenses we have to make sure that mail-in ballots are legitimate, and it’s worth going through that extra step if it means we can have more confidence in our elections.
Here is a video from the Denver Elections Division about how the signature verification process works. | https://medium.com/the-public-interest-network/when-verifying-mail-in-ballots-states-must-follow-the-measure-twice-cut-once-rule-db00d015acf4 | ['Larry Rossini'] | 2020-07-16 21:14:14.410000+00:00 | ['Vote By Mail', 'Signature Verification', 'Democracy', 'Election 2020', 'Voting'] |
Best Way To Hire A PHP Developer | Driving a web development company or running a standalone application, you would always need someone to get your projects done. In a world where there thrive multiple programming languages, choosing either of them is a tough task and tougher is hiring someone who can proficiently render solutions of web development.
Taking into consideration the statistics of the programming language used by websites, it appears that around 79.8% web run on PHP based applications. So, of 10 websites that you come across each day, 8 are PHP driven. Call it the flexibility of the language or the ease to use interface, PHP is one such language proven to deploy strong web applications. However, the language alone cannot be credited for creating dynamic websites. The curious minds that aid the development of PHP based applications are the ones responsible for turning its fate. Efficiently developed applications have a promising future as compared to loosely tied applications. But how do you hire someone who is capable of developing feature-rich applications?
How To Recruit PHP Developers?
True that there are plenty of choices when it comes to hiring a PHP developer. You can opt for a PHP development company or look for a freelancer. However, finding the appropriate one might appear as looking for a needle in a haystack. Before you decide on who to choose, you need to be clear on the process of hiring a PHP programmer or to be precise, you need to know the process of recruiting someone who is capable of delivering function-oriented applications.
Clearing the clutter, let move straight towards the process of hiring PHP programmers. There are three different aspects that you would need to consider before hiring someone.
Categorization
This primarily is the type of programmer you prefer to work with. Based on the proficiency level, one can segregate programmers into three kinds.
Beginners: Whether a developer or a development company, beginners are ones that have just started on the journey of PHP development. They currently thrive in the growing phase and yet to render effective applications.
Whether a developer or a development company, beginners are ones that have just started on the journey of PHP development. They currently thrive in the growing phase and yet to render effective applications. Mid-Level: These are the ones that have had industrial exposure. Such companies have developed few projects in the past and can deliver effective solutions.
These are the ones that have had industrial exposure. Such companies have developed few projects in the past and can deliver effective solutions. Experienced: The ones that excel in PHP development, experienced programmers excel in developing PHP solutions that add value to your business. They can encapsulate ideas to blend them into real-life features. From designing to developing, integrating and maintaining, they are one step ahead of all.
Now, on the basis of what your project requirement is, you can choose either of the above three. However, the fact that a web development company has a team of developers, you are sure to find people having different experiences and so whether you choose a beginner, a mid-level or experienced, you are entitled to find all under the same head.
Sources To Hire A PHP Developer
Once you are done with making your choice in the category from which you wish to hire, you are now a step closer. While there are many sources that help in the hiring process, there again exist three sources.
PHP Developer Community: PHP being a versatile and widely accepted programming language, it has huge community support. While looking to get hold of someone who would help you develop a PHP project, such communities are worthy enough to give a look.
PHP being a versatile and widely accepted programming language, it has huge community support. While looking to get hold of someone who would help you develop a PHP project, such communities are worthy enough to give a look. Freelance Portals: Technology has unraveled several domains and the most successful one has been job search. Giving people the ease to work at their own convenience is what freelancing is all about. Today, there are more than 57.3 million freelancers working. So, your next option is to hire one from the available portals.
Technology has unraveled several domains and the most successful one has been job search. Giving people the ease to work at their own convenience is what freelancing is all about. Today, there are more than 57.3 million freelancers working. So, your next option is to hire one from the available portals. Certified PHP Development Company: The first term, itself boasts of its capabilities. There exists a multitude of developing companies that cater to the minutest requirements of your project and pledge to deliver optimal results. Such companies hold expertise in their domain (here, PHP) and once you hand over your project to them, your job is done. They take over the task and would do all to develop efficient web solutions.
Based on the above two elements, you would have shortlisted some proposals that suit best your requirements. Now, it’s time to scrutinize them and find the ideal one.
Things To Consider:
Experience: No matter whether you choose an experienced or a mid-level programmer, it is always, desirable to reassess the experience of the company. The greater the number of projects served, the higher is the knowledge base. And this is where a PHP development company outstands individual developers. Different people have varied experience add to the total value provided by them
No matter whether you choose an experienced or a mid-level programmer, it is always, desirable to reassess the experience of the company. The greater the number of projects served, the higher is the knowledge base. And this is where a outstands individual developers. Different people have varied experience add to the total value provided by them Past Projects: This is one of the crucial aspects while you choose to hire a PHP development company or a developer. True that you would have gone through the experience level of the same, but you should scan through the projects done by the potential company. See what the earlier clients have to say about them, the website’s performance and additional details to better assess the capability of developing PHP driven websites. The fact that development companies work on multiple projects simultaneously, they are proven to have an extensive set of completed projects
This is one of the crucial aspects while you choose to hire a or a developer. True that you would have gone through the experience level of the same, but you should scan through the projects done by the potential company. See what the earlier clients have to say about them, the website’s performance and additional details to better assess the capability of developing The fact that development companies work on multiple projects simultaneously, they are proven to have an extensive set of completed projects Technology Stack: While PHP is used as one of the server-side languages, it is desirable to add more layers to the web page. This could be in terms of technology or functions. And hence, no matter who you choose, they must have hands-on experience in integrating varied features. Also, one who has a vast knowledge of different frameworks like XHTML, HTML, AJAX, MySQL, Zen and Cake PHP is preferred. Of course, blending technologies help develop modern solutions.
While PHP is used as one of the server-side languages, it is desirable to add more layers to the web page. This could be in terms of technology or functions. And hence, no matter who you choose, they must have hands-on experience in integrating varied features. Also, one who has a vast knowledge of different frameworks like XHTML, HTML, AJAX, MySQL, Zen and Cake PHP is preferred. Of course, Creative Skills: Web development is not just about creating solutions, but also giving them a distinct way to outreach targeted users. One that has the capability to think out of the box are more proficient than others. It is not always the quantity, but the quality of development that gains user traction. Here again, a PHP development company appears to be one step ahead than individual developers. With a team of developers, there arises a bundle of ideas and suggestions for a single project. This in a way helps them come up with the best solution.
Conclusion
Now that you have taken a ride through the process of hiring, you would have realized that both developers and development company have their area of expertise. Where one offers a team to cater to your requirements, it’s counterpart is less expensive. Where one needs to be tracked, the other doesn’t require constant monitoring.
Yet, lacing up all the plus and minus, it goes without saying that PHP development companies are one step ahead of individual developers. They not only narrow the process but at the same time guarantee developing applications capable of driving traffic and enhancing brand image.
But the choice always remains locked in your hands. So be wise before you check the price. | https://medium.com/swlh/best-way-to-hire-a-php-developer-69db67af01a | ['Mayank Pratap'] | 2020-02-28 11:19:22.747000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Startup', 'PHP', 'Developer', 'Hiring'] |
6 things that one should consider while choosing retail POS: | 6 things that one should consider while choosing retail POS:
Whether you are an experienced merchant in retail industry or setting up a new retail store, having right POS system is essential for your business. Not all retail POS software has equal features, so it becomes very important to select which suits best to your business.
Need versus Wants
POS systems are being used in different industries ranging from cafes, salons and furniture retail. You know your business process better than anyone else, so create the list of requirements and features that you want in POS and prioritize them. Answers to these questions will help you to determine what your business needs are and what you want to achieve. From there you can begin your search for the best retail POS software.
2.Pricing
Monthly or annual cost of running a great POS software is relative low, but you have to consider the initial pricing to set up POS software. Initial cost to set up POS software can be more than you expect because you have to make sure that POS software is compatible with your current hardware. Hardware includes barcode scanner, credit card reader, display unit or tablet, receipt printer and cash drawer. Make sure to choose POS system which matches the most to your current hardware configurations
3. Customer Support
When you are buying a retail POS system, you are not just buying a software alone but you are entering into relationship with vendor who will be going to support you long term for the success of your business.
Also make sure what the definition of Support for vendor is. For example, vendor provides automatic delivery of upgrades by fixing bugs, or support through FAQ, or through any other online resources.
In evaluating the customer support for retail POS software, inquire about response time in normal working hours, weekend and on holidays. Test yourself phone support and online support during working hours, weekend and in holidays.
4. Training
A great POS system doesn’t means it is easy to use, but also providing training to the store associates on how to take benefit of POS system. Choose a retail POS software that is very user-friendly and offers plenty of training resources.
5. Integration with third-party software
Third-party integrations can help you to reduce many days and months of work, so when you choose POS system check what integrations are available. Integrations with different accounting software, E-commerce website and email marketing software’s should be essential.
6. Scalability
To maximize the return on your retail POS software investment over time, ensure that the solution you select is highly scalable. In other words, make sure it has the capability to grow with your business and its needs. A scalable retail POS software package will easily accommodate additional users and workstations in existing stores, as well as in new ones as they come online.
Contact us today to help you select the right retail POS package for your business. Visit Ordorite.com or + 44 203 2861 202 for more information. | https://medium.com/@marketing_88907/6-things-that-one-should-consider-while-choosing-retail-pos-b5c32d3377ce | ['Stephen Connoly'] | 2019-12-31 08:59:58.815000+00:00 | ['Retail', 'Pos', 'Software', 'Furniture', 'Pos Software'] |
Best Hackers in Australia? Here is What We Have Found. | Have you ever needed a hacker but were not sure exactly who to hire?
Australians agree that Hire A Hacker Pro is one of the top ten for sure, if not top 3 hacking services in All of Australia.
Here are the reasons why:
Fast response time. No one likes to wait. Hire A Hacker Pro has a 5 minute response time and most jobs are completed within 1–2 days. English speaking. It seems the majority of all websites are in English but once you get someone on the phone they can hardly speak at all. Hire a Hacker Pro is a global company, but English is spoken naturally there. Easy payment method. Not only do they have a 100% Money Back Guarantee, but they have the easiest form of payment available for anyone looking to be discreet. They use a platform that keep your payments anonymous.
Australians have a certain way about them. The down under mentality and hospitable charm that comes with it is a rarity. Not only are Australians some of the nicest people, but their economy directly attributes to the success of the hacker world.
Check out Hire a Hacker Pro and see what you think… | https://medium.com/@dvius/best-hackers-in-australia-here-is-what-we-have-found-6d94f33a8e82 | [] | 2021-01-21 20:25:48.880000+00:00 | ['Help', 'Best Hacker', 'Hacked', 'Hacker Online', 'Australia Hacker'] |
Making This Mistake as a Leader Can Be Detrimental to Your Team | By: Angelica Rodriguez
Offices nationwide have moved to telework arrangements, with some managers nervous about the productivity of their team members. Conversely, team members are working overtime to manage their personal life (which, for many, now includes home-schooling) as well as maintaining their job productivity.
As we all adjust to the current “normal,” there is a key mistake leaders make that can be detrimental to their team. The phrase is subtle and creates misunderstandings — and in a time of uncertainty, clear communication is crucial.
In my experience, supervisors, project managers, team leaders, and employees alike have tricked themselves into thinking that this phrase is a constructive method of idea-sharing, brainstorming activities, and motivating team members.
The opposite is true. This phrase not only negatively impacts employee morale but also smashes creativity.
The phase leaders mistakenly use is: “We should be…” (Keyword: should.)
This short, yet sneaky, phrase communicates to team members that work that could benefit the organization is NOT being done.
In other words, “we should be” recognizes that we are lacking in something, but it does not identify what is lacking. Moreover, this expression has a demoralizing effect on teams, as it fails to recognize all of the work that is currently being done.
[Related: What Becomes Possible When You Get Rid of “Should?”]
Mini case study: The project leader that “shoulds” on their team.
A key project leader at a best-in-class organization consistently used the phrase “we should be” when providing feedback to their team about product launches. Regardless of the time and energy needed to accomplish major feats, the leader consistently provided feedback that insinuated the team was not meeting expectations.
Team members were confused and demoralized. The project leader’s feedback directly contradicted the external success, customer satisfaction, and stellar publicity the product launches received.
To course correct, a team member informed the project lead that their feedback was negatively affecting the team, as it pointed to what they weren’t doing. As a result of the interchange, the project lead immediately changed how they communicated to the team and the team’s morale bounced back.
It is often more productive to consider the desired outcome to determine what needs to be stated. A few alternative ways to re-frame a sentence using “should” are in the below example:
We should be launching a new product next quarter.
Here are alternative ways of making this statement:
We could launch a new product next quarter. (This feedback opens the team up for brainstorming and discussing future activities.)
I want/would like to launch a new product next quarter. (This phrase can be used to either state what is envisioned for the future or to state a goal.)
By substituting one word, the entire sentiment of a sentence changes and the message is received differently by the audience.
The phrase “we should be” is draining and demotivating, whereas the alternatives “we could” or “I want/would like to” are more energizing and state a vision for the future. It is the role of leaders to show team members a vision and earn their trust, which then creates an environment in which creativity and innovation can flourish.
[Related: The Secret to Success is Knowing What Motivates Your Team]
Stop should-ing on yourself (and everyone else).
This is a common phrase in the personal development space. “Stop should-ing on yourself” usually is directed at someone who has unreasonable expectations about their work, goals, or accomplishments.
Right now, COVID-19 has many of us distracted, and this is causing anxiety. This is a perfect time for leaders to be clear, focus, and remove any doubt about what “should” be done. Get straight to the point and communicate what you want or need done.
[Related: Leader Equals Motivator]
—
Angelica Rodriguez is a non-profit executive and corporate coach who helps leaders of organizations reach their next level of mastery and innovation so they can leave a legacy of lasting change in their industries. She helps executive leaders go “below the surface” to uncover what is really holding them back from identifying and leading the big transitions needed to catapult their organizations to industry-leading mainstays. | https://ellevatentwk.medium.com/making-this-mistake-as-a-leader-can-be-detrimental-to-your-team-594d07013aa9 | ['Ellevate Network'] | 2020-04-08 21:50:47.670000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Team Building', 'Business', 'Leadership', 'Professional Women'] |
How Will Travel Change In 2021? | How Will Travel Change In 2021?
The New Year is right around the corner, so we have decided to look back at this year in tourism and make a forecast for the near future of the hospitality industry.
The main trends we have already seen this year will continue developing. The sense of uncertainty that led to a decrease in bookings will stay — people now plan trips at the last moment. Until the situation returns to some semblance of normalcy, people will stick to this behaviour. With that said, as tourist traffic recovers, planning in advance should once again become more beneficial, and people will come back.
Another thing is that with less income, people became less mobile. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change next year. What is here to stay, however, is domestic tourism. In 2021 it will continue to be the driving trend of the hospitality industry. If previously people used to travel to a handful of popular destinations, now the word “mass” in regards to tourism has become synonymous with “unsafe”, thus more and more people choose the seldom-travelled routes and resorts within their countries. This means domestic markets are expanding from within. Customized travel has also become more prominent — smaller tourist groups, carefully designed experiences, and guided journeys through nature reserves. There is a growing demand for vacations centered around outdoor activities — rafting, horseback riding, bike trails, fitness tours.
It’s hard to make a solid forecast for the near future of international tourism — it depends on a plethora of factors and decisions made by multiple countries. Of course, the world will continue opening up again, but it will be a very slow and gradual process. Firstly, new medical certificates required for international travel will be introduced, and people will keep cautious about catching a disease. All of this leads to a conclusion that crowded resorts aren’t coming back anytime soon, and when they do, most people will be wearing masks. | https://medium.com/modihost/how-will-travel-change-in-2021-bf3fad744167 | [] | 2020-12-28 09:45:59.483000+00:00 | ['Tourism', 'Travel', 'Hms', 'Hospitality', 'Hotel'] |
7 Best Hotels for Pumping Parents | As COVID-19 restrictions are slowly lifting across the country, pumping moms are once again beginning to take flight.
Experts predict the massive surge of travel this summer will continue, with business travel beginning to rebound in the fall.
So know before you go! Read this helpful article of things you should consider before planning and heading out to your next adventure.
Breastfeeding moms know a hotel room can make or break pumping logistics. So with that in mind, here are the seven hotels equipped to support jet-setting pumping moms. Not only are these hotels priced right for business travel, but they also include kitchenettes — Hello, actual refrigerators and sinks! And, goodbye trying to store your breast milk in the mini bar fridge and washing pump parts in the bathroom.
1. Homewood Suites
Stretch out after a long day of fun in a studio, one or two-bedroom apartment. Each in-suite kitchen is fully equipped with a full-size fridge, dishwasher, microwave, and stovetop. And with their free grocery shopping service, have fresh produce and ingredients delivered right to your door!
2. Hyatt House
With almost 100 locations across the U.S., this residential-inspired hotel offers modern studios, 1, and 2 apartment-style bedrooms. With full kitchens, your family can have plenty of room to spread out, cook meals, and relax in a space that feels right at home. Forget something? Make use of their Borrows Program — where you can borrow (or even buy) curling irons, yoga mats, humidifiers, and more.
3. Element Hotels
Why not make your business trip more like a vacation? If you are seeking a more intimate boutique hotel experience, check into Element Hotels for a nature-inspired stay. Their new Studio Commons concept is the first of its kind to blend a hotel room with a home rental. This provides families with a flexible design so you can choose to spend time together or retreat to a more private setting while still enjoying all the comforts of a hotel room. Also, Moms would appreciate escaping to the spa-like bathrooms with refreshing rain showers!
4. Marriott Executive Apartments
Upscale housing located in 16 countries, close to major city hubs and financial centers, Marriott Executive Apartments are a popular choice for business travelers. Experience their studio or up to 3 bedroom suite. Each has a gourmet kitchen with a separate dining area that flows into a comfortable living room. Request in advance, and they will stock your fridge upon arrival. There is also a 24 hours concierge to help you locate restaurants, shops and get you acquainted with your new surroundings — and, of course, help you with your Milk Stork shipments. Finally, don’t forget to collect and use your Marriott Bonvey Points for your stay!
5. Residence Inn by Marriott
Travel like you live! Their spacious suites boast a distinguished space for you to sleep, eat, and relax. Expect to find a fully equipped kitchen with a full-sized fridge, stovetop, microwave, dishwasher, and coffee maker. And if you need anything, call the front desk for free grocery delivery or swing by their 24-hour market and grab a quick snack.
6. MainStay Suites
Enjoy the conveniences of home plus the perks of staying in a budget-friendly hotel — like open-concept suites with separate areas for working and relaxing, a fully-equipped kitchenette, complimentary continental breakfast, free high-speed Internet, an on-site laundry room, a marketplace, and regular housekeeping. Sounds like the best of both worlds to us!
7. Extended Stay
Staying for a few nights or even a month, Extended Stay’s new Premiere Suites is your affordable solution. These suites are similar to large studios, with fully equipped kitchenettes, a complimentary grab-and-go breakfast bar, and free wi-fi. There are over 650 locations across the U.S.
As Americans get more comfortable with the idea of traveling again, hotels continue diligently working to keep their guests safe by following these general protocols:
Providing social distance and special training for their staff — who will also continue wearing masks and gloves.
Offering hand sanitizer stations and face masks and gloves upon request to their guests.
Cleaning and sanitizing all public areas on a consistent routine schedule.
Inspecting and deep cleaning all rooms in between each guest-stay
Modifying housekeeping processes so you have the choice for how often and when your room is cleaned.
If you are using Milk Stork during your business trip, make sure to call your hotel ahead of time to ask if they can help you with your outbound shipments. Most business-friendly hotels are happy to help their guests schedule FedEx Express pickups. However, if they are unable to assist you, FedEx drop boxes and authorized shipping locations are widely available at almost every destination.
Did we miss a great place to stay on our list? Let us know! | https://medium.com/@milkstork/7-best-hotels-for-breastfeeding-moms-and-their-babies-b2a75cc8d0db | ['Milk Stork'] | 2021-07-08 20:34:20.630000+00:00 | ['Business Travel', 'Breastfeeding', 'Breastfeeding Tips', 'Working Moms'] |
Conservation laws and symmetry considerations. Their fundamental importance in physics. | The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed and can only be converted from one form to another. A system, such as the room I’m sitting in or the universe, always has the same amount of energy, unless it is added from outside.
This can be illustrated by steam / heat engines, where if you provide heat, you get work and motion. Heat energy is converted to motive energy.
In a gravitational field, as an object falls to earth, its potential energy decreases as height is decreasing and it is converted to kinetic energy as the object gains speed and accelerates in free fall. Kinetic energy is related to movement. Kinetic energy is a result of gaining energy due to movement. Hence to do work, the object has to move. However, potential energy is not a consequence of movement because it is a result of configuration or position as it is a stored energy. It is converted to kinetic energy and vice versa. Due to conversion, as illustrated in a gravitational field, energy is conserved.
Potential energy can also be explained by other means not depending on gravity. Such as winding a spring or an elastic rubber band which can be unwounded to do work and release the band or spring by converting elastic potential energy to kinetic energy.
According to the law of conservation of momentum, in an isolated system, if two or more bodies act upon each other, their total momentum stays the same unless an external force is applied. Hence, momentum, like energy, cannot be created or destroyed.
This law was derived by Newton from his third law of motion. It states that if an object applies a force on another object, the second object applies an equal force on the first object but in the opposite direction. It portrays the famous notion that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Consider two colliding particles A and B whose masses are m1 and m2 with initial and final velocities as u1 and v1 of A and u2 and v2 of B. The time of contact between two particles is given as t.
A=m1(v1−u1) (change in momentum of particle A)
B=m2(v2−u2) (change in momentum of particle B)
FBA=−FAB (from third law of motion)
FBA=m2∗a2=m2(v2−u2)t
FAB=m1∗a1=m1(v1−u1)t
m2(v2−u2)t=−m1(v1−u1)t
m1u1+m2u2=m1v1+m2v2
Therefore, above is the equation of law of conservation of momentum where m1u1+m2u2 is the representation of total momentum of particles A and B before the collision and m1v1+m2v2 is the representation of total momentum of particles A and B after the collision.
The follow scenarios portray the law of conservation of momentum perfectly.
In a rocket, initially during takeoff, gas pressure is created and gas is ejected from behind which is the action and causes the rocket to go forward into space, which is the reaction. Newton’s third law of motion also applies here. This example is also applicable in case of jet engines.
A heavy person colliding with a small person has more momentum even if they travel with the same velocity. If both are heavy, masses are more and hence the total momentum is higher than it would be if both people were light and small. If both are heavy they experience more pain than if both were light. Thus total momentum depends on mass more than on velocity. Momentum is important as it gives impact of collision.
Suppose on a boat, I’m sitting and my friend is sitting on another boat.
My mass and boat mass = m. Friend’s and her boat mass = m
If I push her boat forward, my boat goes backward. Third law of motion applies here as an action creates and equal and opposite reaction.
Before the push, total momentum = 0 as both were at rest.
After push, my momentum = mv. Friend momentum = mv. Velocity is same because my push causes her boat to go forward and hence I also moved backward.
Total momentum after the push = mv — mv = 0.
Thus total momentum is conserved in this simple example.
Angular momentum is momentum in circular direction and equals mass X velocity X radius.
If ice skaters spread their hands, they go slow and if they bring their hands together, they go very fast. If radius increases, velocity decreases according to law of conservation of momentum.
I am sitting on a revolving chair with a cycle wheel in hand. If I rotate it, my chair will start moving in opposite direction. When I rotated the wheel, the momentum was in one direction but when it caused my revolving chair to move in opposite direction, the momentum was in the opposite direction. I started to rotate with my chair which means angular momentum is conserved.
Conservation of energy and momentum are like symmetry. If we try to change total energy or momentum, it does not change. Law of conservation of momentum is a consequence of position symmetry. The laws of physics don’t depend on our location implies that momentum is conserved. Law of conservation of angular momentum is a consequence of direction symmetry, which implies that laws of physics don’t depend on which direction in space angular momentum is applied. Law of conservation of energy is a consequence of time symmetry, which implies laws of physics don’t depend on which time we are in.
This connection between conservation laws and symmetry portrays a great beauty in nature. Thus as conservation laws are connected to nature, science and arts collide. This theory was proposed by a notable mathematician contemporary to Einstein, known as Emmy Noether. The fundamental importance of conservation in physics lies here.
More integral qualities of conservation which are pivotal in physics can be illustrated by laws of thermodynamics.
First law of thermodynamics states that total energy in a system never changes. One type can be converted to another form.
In a river dam, when water accumulates, its height increases. Potential energy increases as a result, which is converted to kinetic energy. That is converted to electricity and in houses we get heat and motion.
The second law of thermodynamics states that in any conversion of energy, 100% efficiency cannot be achieved. Total conversion is not possible. As much electricity that we provide, not that much heat we get. Nothing is an ideal environment. Output/input is not equal to 1. Complete conversion is never achieved even if my engine and technology are perfect. This is a pessimistic, inevitable and inviolable law of nature. It is never to be changed. It is a consequence of the fact that energy is dissipated and wasted as heat to the surroundings.
There is a second way of stating it which is heat moves from higher to lower temperature. Heat death is a fate of the universe as it will lose its temperature and so will the sun which will die one day.
Third way of stating it is anything we do leads to chaos and irregularity. Entropy is chaos which never decreases in the universe. After many days of coming back home, room gathers dust as molecules are constantly rearranged. Old never becomes young. Locally entropy may increase when we decorate a room but somewhere else and globally total entropy increases.
The fourth way of stating the law is that we can use it to recognize past from future. It is an indicator of future from past. Entropy is arrow. Wherever entropy increases, that is the future.
The third law of thermodynamics states that absolute zero temperature cannot be achieved ever because it is the theoretical lowest temperature and molecules cannot move any slower.
The contradiction between the first and the second laws is that if total energy is always constant, there should be 100% conversion possible. But the fact that 100% efficiency is not achieved despite total energy in a system remaining constant is a consequence of the fact that energy is dissipated or lost as heat to the surroundings. Energy is not lost from the universe though it is just lost from the system in question. This contradiction is another important feature of conservation and the contradiction makes conservation play an essential role in physics.
More ways in which conservation plays a key role in physics are related here. Conservation and thermodynamics laws are very pessimistic and sad theories. They deal with heat and motion and are important for engines and everything in the universe. Thermodynamics is a completely different branch of physics and deals with heat and motion solely.
If the laws of conservation and thermodynamics were false, we would not be able to explain where extra energy comes from or where the additional energy goes to. | https://medium.com/@farahtabira/conservation-laws-and-symmetry-considerations-their-fundamental-importance-in-physics-8d9b9bc02304 | ['Farah Tabira'] | 2020-12-27 14:50:11.532000+00:00 | ['Thermodynamics Laws', 'Energy', 'Momentum', 'Conservation Laws', 'Energy Efficiency'] |
Science Fiction Theatre episode review — 1.3 — Out of Nowhere | Original air date: April 23, 1955
Director: Herbert L. Strock
Writer: Donn Mullally
Rating: 5/10
Is it bad that I’m kind of enjoying the Truman Bradley little intro segments more than the actual stories? I like when he pops up just to give us a highly abbreviated science lesson. It adds some character, somehow.
At any rate, this story involves bats crashing into a skyscraper, which alerts some scientists, since bats shouldn’t crash into anything with their little anatomical radar things.
They investigate, and find that there might be some kind of signal or wavelength coming from somewhere else.
After discovering that it’s not from the American military, people speculate that it could be Soviet, or perhaps from outer space. And honestly, the story doesn’t go anywhere satisfying with that. It’s only a half-hour show, and I feel like this story just needed more to it.
I’m not feeling great about this show so far, as much as I did like the first episode. A few episodes coming up are directed by Jack Arnold, the man behind such sci-fi classics as It Came from Outer Space, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Actually, he directed the second episode, the only one I’ve really liked so far. | https://medium.com/as-vast-as-space-and-as-timeless-as-infinity/science-fiction-theatre-episode-review-1-3-out-of-nowhere-6b713c75611f | ['Patrick J Mullen'] | 2021-03-21 18:32:40.466000+00:00 | ['Science Fiction Theatre', 'Science Fiction', 'SciFi', 'Television', 'TV'] |
What are Traits ? And how to use it in simple words ? | I agree ! Even though most of the programmer have deep knowledge of OOPs concept but they some time fail to explain the core concept of Few important terminology of OOPS.
I have made a small effort to explain one of such terms of OOPS which is Trait
— in simple words
“ Traits are something which helps you to reuse the certain portion of your code and prevents you from rewriting same code again and again”
I know its stupidity to explain such a big term in such a short definition .here we go in more depth:
Example :
Suppose You have 5 pages in your website where different stuffs are displaying ,now if you will be asked to set filter on all the pages for lets says color and price.
you have a list of products that you want to filter out based on above criteria (, color price ),So You can create a Filter trait that contains different functions for different filter types (Price,Color). You can then use this trait not only in your one class (as given in the example), but also in all other classes that need similar strategies .
coding example
Lets say my trait file name is filter_trait.php
trait filter{
public function color($category_id) {
echo $blue;
// you can return any result based on on your requirement
}
public function Price($category_id) {
echo $100;
// you can return any result based on on your requirement
}
}
}
=======================
Now the auspicious time has come to Use the above Trait
Having said that lets suppose you have 5 pages where you want to apply filter for color and price,one of the page is lets say category.php and its content is below
class allcategories{
use filter;
}
$o = new allcategories();
$o->Price();
$o->color();
Believe me no miracle is happening above , its a simple thing
i have accessed the function or methods of trait through object of class allcategories.because i wrote a line “use filter” in the class which give me right to access the methods of this trait “which is filter trait ”.
that’s it go ahead in all of your pages and just through the object of declared classes in those respective page use the methods of trait.
:)
DHANYABAAD/THANKS/SUKRIYA | https://medium.com/@adityakohli467/what-are-traits-and-how-to-use-it-in-simple-words-8f72bcfa9b8d | ['Aditya Kohli'] | 2020-12-17 12:02:52.096000+00:00 | ['Oops Interview Questions', 'Oops Concepts', 'Object Oriented', 'PHP', 'Traits'] |
Are You Connected To Your Children Or You Lack One Of The Four Foundations Of Successful Parenting? | Are You Connected To Your Children Or You Lack One Of The Four Foundations Of Successful Parenting?
Imagine your child wants to disclose his pornography addiction to you, how do you think he would put it?
How about your daughter telling you she has "a crush" on some boy?
The answer for most parents is this: they can't even imagine it!
Many parents believe it is a sign of their strictness, but in reality, it is a sign of failure in what we consider one of the four foundations of successful parenting (the rest shall be discussed later), and that is: strong connection.
Your children not being able to discuss some of their struggles with you is a sign of failed connection, and maybe even failed parenting.
This is because if the kids do not feel comfortable to bring those worrying things to you, they would take them to others they trust and feel comfortable around, and in most cases, would be exposed to bad advice and guidance. What such parent-child relationships lack is a good connection, so what is connection itself?
Good and Failed Connection
Connection to children is being not only physically present, but being emotionally present.
Good connection is when our children always long to be with us, when they feel confident around us, when they are eager to have us actively involved in their lives and decisions, when they find it easy to talk to us about their fears, struggles, mistakes and failures.
Failed connection is when kids are scared whenever they hear our voices, they rejoice when they see us leaving the home, they are scared to talk in our presence, they do not find it easy to discuss with us the problems they are going through and they never want us to be involved in their decisions.
Good connection produces children who love and trust us, children who are confident, children who are eager to be advised and helped by us.
Bad connection produces vulnerable children who will fall easily for anything or anyone who seems to promise them love, acceptance and inclusion. Bad connection makes children vulnerable to peer pressure, to lovers who want to exploit them and it makes them feel alone and prone to depression.
What It Takes To Be Connected To Children
Time: It is often hard for most parents to connect with their children because connection requires spending time with children and listening to them when they have unimportant things to say, so they can come to you and feel comfortable when they have important things to say.
Connection requires engaging the children in fun activities, games, walks and talks that make them long to be around us, and make them miss our presence. All of these require time.
2. Consciousness: Creating a strong connection to children is not only about being present with them; in fact, a parent who spends less time with children might be better connected to them than one who spends the whole day with them.
Strong connection is created by being consciously present, but in any case, you still have to be present.
Conscious presence means you are constantly watching your children and before reacting to any situation, you ask yourself: "what can I teach the child from this incident? How can I make him improve?"
It means you listen attentively to their jargon, you follow their storylines and ask about some random friend they mentioned the previous week.
3. Self-regulation: Most connections get destroyed during one process: the process of correction.
The way we react to mistakes, failure and misdeeds from our children is the biggest thing that severs most connections.
Reacting in ways that would correct children's mistakes, make them better, and still not sever the connection and love between us and them requires a lot of self-regulation and control.
It requires us to manage our anger, to be patient sometimes, and not react immediately. It requires us to be in a good state of mind ourselves and not be frustrated and under pressure.
Why Connection Is Often Hard To Create
Wrong Priority: One of the biggest things that destroys connection with children is how parents rank priorities; both theirs, and the children's.
Many parents have set for themselves wrong priorities that make it hard for them to fulfill their responsibilities towards their children; insha Allah we would be discussing these further.
The Way We Were Raised: Many parents find it hard to connect to their children because of the way they were raised: they see some actions that foster connection to be disrespectful, they see some actions they foster discipline to be too harsh, and they see some actions that foster growth to be too permissive.
Getting over these behaviours would be hard, but tust us, insha Allah, we are here to stay until the end of this journey.
This is not the end, it is only the beginning of our journey to giving tips on creating connection with children. Subsequently, we will be giving detailed thoughts on specific actions that need to be taken to foster connection and get over the bad habits that make connection hard.
To follow each of our activities and stay connected: https://linktr.ee/naaseducators | https://medium.com/@naaseducators/which-do-you-have-the-four-foundations-of-successful-parenting-aac4ec245796 | ['Naas Educators'] | 2021-04-27 18:16:38.716000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Muslim', 'Parenting', 'Childhood', 'Parents'] |
Sorting Lists in Python | There are at least two common ways to sort lists in Python:
With sorted function that returns a new list
With list.sort method that modifies list in place
Which one is faster? Let’s find out!
sorted() vs list.sort()
I will start with a list of 1 000 000 randomly shuffled integers. Later on, I will also check if the order matters.
sorted is less than 10% slower (385/352≈1.094). Since we only run one loop, the exact numbers are not very reliable. I have rerun the same tests a couple more times, and the results were slightly different each time. sort took around 345-355 msec and sorted took around 379-394 msec (but it was always slower than sort ). This difference comes mostly from the fact that sorted creates a new list.
Why do I make a copy of the original list in each test? Well, in the original version of this article, I forgot to do this, and I ended up with completely wrong benchmarks. sort was running on a sorted list (because the first iteration of timeit sorted it), and sorted was running on a random list. You can see the whole explanation in the original post.
Initial order matters
What happens when our initial list is already sorted?
Now, sorting takes much less time and the difference between sort and sorted grows to 37% (16.6/12.1≈1.372). Why is sorted 37% slower this time? Well, creating a new list takes the same amount of time as before. And since the time spent on sorting has shrunk, the impact of creating that new list got bigger.
And if we try to sort a list of 1 000 000 numbers ordered in descending order:
The results are almost identical as before. The sorting algorithm is clever enough to optimize the sorting process for a descending list.
For our last test, let’s try to sort 1 000 000 numbers where 100 000 elements are shuffled, and the rest are ordered:
Both functions get slower as the input list becomes more scrambled.
Using list.sort() is my preferred way of sorting lists - it saves some time (and memory) by not creating a new list. But that's a double-edged sword! Sometimes you might accidentally overwrite the initial list without realizing it (as I did with my initial benchmarks 😅). So, if you want to preserve the initial list's order, you have to use sorted instead. And sorted can be used with any iterable, while sort only works with lists. If you want to sort a set, then sorted is your only solution.
Conclusions
sort is slightly faster than sorted , because it doesn't create a new list. But you might still stick with sorted if:
You don’t want to modify the original list. sort performs sorting in-place, so you can't use it here.
performs sorting in-place, so you can't use it here. You need to sort something else than a list. sort is only defined on lists, so if you want to sort a set or any other collection of items, you have to use sorted instead.
If you want to learn more, the Sorting HOW TO guide from Python documentation contains a lot of useful information. | https://python.plainenglish.io/sorting-lists-in-python-b4cbd107ad72 | ['Sebastian Witowski'] | 2020-10-22 17:16:53.495000+00:00 | ['Tips And Tricks', 'Performance', 'Best Practices', 'Writing Faster Python', 'Python'] |
Perv caught lifting up woman’s skirt on shopping mall escalator to take pictures | Perv caught lifting up woman’s skirt on shopping mall escalator to take pictures
Summer is almost here. Ladies in skirts, beware!
While perverts on elevators have been making headlines in China in recent months, it’s worth remembering that escalators can be dangerous places as well.
On Sunday, a man riding an escalator in a shopping mall in the Anhui city of Wuhu lifted up the skirt of the woman in front of him while secretively snapping a photo without her noticing.
However, it turns out that the man was not secretive enough as his perverted actions were all caught by the cell phone camera of a Good Samaritan shopper who then reported the incident to the police.
Officers arrived quickly to the scene and arrested the man. On his phone, they found numerous other photos and videos of a similar nature.
As usual, the man has been detained for 10 days. Something tells us he won’t be the only such upskirter put briefly behind bars in what has already been an unusually creep-filled year. | https://medium.com/shanghaiist/perv-caught-lifting-up-womans-skirt-on-shopping-mall-escalator-to-take-pictures-aa1591b417d2 | [] | 2018-05-28 11:43:01.802000+00:00 | ['China'] |
In our opinion: It’s the season to help others | The holiday season has arrived. And that means that many good-hearted people and organizations will be gathering food, clothing, toys, money and other items for those less fortunate.
At The Sun, we want to help make your event as successful as possible. But to do that, we need your help.
Many retailers count on “Black Friday” to help put their business “in the black” for the year. If holiday sales are strong, they have a good overall year. If sales are soft, they struggle to get by.
The same theory can hold true for nonprofits and other groups that depend on the public’s generosity during the holiday season to see them through the rest of the year. People, naturally, are more giving during this time of the year. So, in the coming weeks, you’ll see bell-ringers, donation drives and a lot of other efforts to help those in need.
We salute everyone who holds a drive to help those in need. But we also want to help make those efforts as grand and successful as possible.
To do that, we need to know about your event well in advance (at least two weeks is best). We need to know what types of items you are trying to collect, who will benefit from the drive, and, most importantly, how people can get involved to help you.
Email is the best way to send us this information, and you’ll find our news email address throughout this paper.
Then, after we get your information, we’ll take it from there. We’ll get it into the paper and let everyone in town know what it is you are trying to accomplish and how they can be a part of it.
Many families are still struggling with the economy. There always are people in need.
Let us help you to help them. Send us your event information and let’s make this a big donation year. | https://medium.com/the-marlton-sun/in-our-opinion-its-the-season-to-help-others-75c9445d7a66 | [] | 2016-09-23 16:08:08.255000+00:00 | ['Headlines', 'Families', 'Clothing', 'Food', 'Generosity'] |
The Admirer Made Of Fire | “You’re not supposed to walk under a tree with your hair down in the evening. Hasn’t anyone told you?” Zoya rode her bicycle, looping around Aasira.
“Why not?” Aasira asked.
“Because of the jinns, obviously. Gosh, Aasy Baaji, for a grown-up, you don’t know very much,” Zoya teased.
I watched the two, hoping Zoya’s comments wouldn’t affect Aasira’s plan. Each day, after she had fulfilled the responsibilities of her life, Aasira sat under this tree and wrote. I loved watching her.
“Do you really believe that?” Aasira laughed.
“I don’t just believe it. I know. I’ve seen one at this exact tree before.”
“Oh really?” Aasira plopped down in her favorite spot, leaning against the trunk. “What did he look like?”
The bicycling came to a halt. Zoya’s face looked confused as she tried to describe the image.
“I don’t know if I would call the jinn a he,” she began. “Actually it looked a lot like you if you were made of fire.”
My eyes widened. How had I not noticed this girl watching me?
“Well, I’m not scared of an imaginary woman who looks like me, Zoya.”
“You should be. You’re pretty scary-looking,” Zoya retorted, wheeling herself away from Aasira.
“Very funny!” yelled Aasira.
“Don’t be too late Aasy Baaji, or I’ll eat your plate of biryani too,” Zoya yelled back.
Aasira settled into her writing pose. Legs crossed, back arched, notebook and pen ready to go.
As noiselessly as possible, I moved to stand behind her. I was curious to see what she would come up with today.
She shivered and turned to look directly at the space I occupied. “I guess Zoya did creep me out,” she whispered.
I wanted to touch her, to talk to her, but I knew I had only one shot at an introduction. If I scared her off, she would never return, and I was bound to this tree. I couldn’t follow her.
I had waited every evening for years to spend a few minutes, maybe an hour if I was lucky, sitting under the tree with Aasira. I had watched her write intently about her family, her mother who rarely made time for her, her father who worked so much she barely saw him, and her sister, the only person in the family Aasira felt happy with.
I was the one who sat quietly beside her for weeks as she mourned Ahmed’s marriage. She loved him, but he left her to marry a girl his parents had chosen. Spineless.
She still wrote about him from time to time, but she had never again let another man close to her, at least not close enough to make an appearance in her journal.
Her loneliness was a companion to my own, and I wanted so much to share my own story with her. Alas, I was a jinn, and she was a human. I was made of a fire that does not burn, and she was made of blood that runs cold at the sight of us.
If I mustered up the courage to show myself to Aasira, there were several considerations, the biggest of which was that I needed to decide what I should look like when I first meet her.
Jinns are shape-shifting creatures. We can appear to a human as their beloved or their nightmare. It really depends on our relationship with the person. When Zoya had seen me, I was experimenting with transforming into Aasira’s fiery lookalike. I thought that perhaps appearing as someone she was most familiar with would ease her initial anxiety.
I could do this all wrong. I could enter Aasira’s body through her beautiful, loose black hair. I could possess her and talk to her from within her mind, and I could escape this tree too, that way. She would take me with her wherever she went.
No. Then I would be nothing more than a parasite, and any true relationship between the two of us would be forever impossible. I knew it. I wanted so much to be close to her, but she would first have to choose me.
If Aasira did ever decide to love me, I could take her with me into my own world. It was much more splendid than this one. We were not as limited by the laws of matter. However, our nation would never let her return to her own world. It would be too risky to have a human walking about with so much lived knowledge of jinns.
Anyway, Aasira would never leave Zoya. I smiled.
I could stay here with her, but I would require a body. My fiery likeness of humans would not allow me to blend in.
I surprised myself with the lengths I took to be near her, but she had the most beautiful mind I had ever come across. Her words, even the ones she often crossed out, were love poems to me. She understood the depth of emotion in ways that transcended our differences.
Maybe it was time to say something to her.
I moved closer to her ear.
“Aasira,” I whispered, “Please don’t be afraid. I am not here to hurt you. I just want to talk to you.”
She jumped up and turned to face the tree.
“Who’s there?” she yelled.
This was the moment. If I didn’t show myself, she might never return.
I appeared.
“Ahmed?” she asked, “What happened to you?”
“I’m not him. I just made myself look like him. Let me explain,” I replied.
She backed away.
“Please stay,” I pleaded.
She began to run toward her house, away from the tree, from me.
I’d blown it. I had squandered my one shot. I lowered my gaze. It was too painful to watch her go. I knew she would never come back.
When I looked up again, I felt a jolt of surprise. Aasira was walking back toward me. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating.
“Why did you come back?” I asked her, utterly bewildered.
“Well, I looked at you one last time, and you seemed too sad and defeated to be a killer, especially when you probably could have caught me,” she said.
“I don’t want to harm you,” I repeated, “But, my sadness can’t be the only reason you turned around.”
She paused, “It’s not. I came back for the story.”
She waved her journal at me, sat down in her usual position against the tree, and patted the ground next to her.
“People won’t believe you,” I said.
“So I’ll pass this off as a work of fiction,” she shrugged.
I sat down beside her. She really was something special.
“Once upon a time,” I began, “A jinn fell in love with a human.” | https://medium.com/geezer-speaks/the-admirer-made-of-fire-eb9797da4c36 | ['Rebeca Ansar'] | 2019-06-22 21:08:27.026000+00:00 | ['Mythology', 'Short Story', 'Love', 'Asian American', 'Fiction'] |
Historical Treatment of Gay Sex Workers | A 1932 account from the Afro-American describes an arrest of a sex worker in Druid Hill park. Park police happened onto a parked taxi cab by the duck pond, inside they found Princeton Royal, 29, & the taxi driver “surprised in the act of engaging in an unnatural petting party”.
Adapted from a Baltimore Gay Paper cartoon, a woman sits at the bar with a client. Behind her, are statements taken from the paper that are both about and by sex workers.
Royal testified that the cab had picked him up at Pressman & Madison nearby & that he had instructed the driver to take him to the park for fresh air. When the magistrate asked the Royal to respond to the fact that the police had caught him in such a compromising situation, he remarked, flippantly, “Well, this is the first time I’ve been caught this year.” This indicates that sex workers like Princeton were accustomed to regular interaction with the police.
When a fine was announced for both parties, Royal turned to three effeminate male spectators in the courtroom & said: “Sisters of the clan, I need money.” The four were able to pool the $25 necessary to avoid jail time, something that the cab driver was unable to do. Notably, a black homosexual community of sex workers operated so effectively that it superseded racial and class differences that might have otherwise caused Princeton Royal to be imprisoned and the white taxi driver to be released. This case proves street-based &/or full-service queer sex workers have been able to reduce harm through community for nearly a century.
A headline that reads “The Art Museum Drive Incident” details the wrongful arrest of another gay person outside a public park in 1981. The letter is written by the arrestee's attorney, & follows that the unnamed gay person went walking on the street by Wyman Park, Art Museum Drive after trying to go to the community center & discovering it was closed for the night. The individual was propositioned for sex by an undercover police officer who arrested him, despite his refusal. Because the sting was unsuccessful, the individual was charged with “Violation of Park Rule 50, park curfew”
These charges were successfully cleared in court because he was just outside of the park, but it was clear that this arrest was targeted not at park curfew violators but gay sex workers who used the park for cruising. The dismissal of this case on such arbitrary bounds elaborates that criminalization can occur for any reason. Indeed, at least 62 people were arrested that hot summer weekend for similar incidental charges.
This was a part of a targeted “clean-up” effort emboldened by a city ordinance that prevented loitering in all public places. Passed in the city council in 1979, Ordinance 1195 contained deliberate vague wording that police used to expand their power & control over the streets.
Baltimore City Police used this new city ordinance to mass arrest street-based sex workers, many of whom were black & transgender. The MDACLU challenged this new law as it unconstitutionally infringed on the right to assembly. These loitering cases were less about blocking walkways & more about who has access to public space. During the ACLU’s defense, which focused heavily on the discriminatory intent of police officers, two defendants were found guilty & two were acquitted; essentially resulting in an inconclusive ruling. However, reported incidents decrease in the months following the defeat.
The following year, 1982, the Baltimore Gay Alliance publically replied to a letter from Democratic candidate Kurt Shmoke, who was then running for State’s Attorney, urging him to consider decriminalizing sex work. In his letter, he stated concern over the solicitation of male sex workers in the Patterson Park/Eastern Avenue area who he referred to as “young boys”. The BGA was quick to call out that his perspective reflected a mentality that sex workers are victims & that gay people are pedophiles. At the time it was radical to have such a political candidate taking part in any conversation with LGBT community & the BGA doubled down on their activist roots by challenging their new supporter. This letter shows that the decriminalization of sex work has been a goal of gay activists for more than 38 years. | https://medium.com/baltimore-queer-paper/historical-treatment-of-gay-sex-workers-853f74f5ee62 | ['Jamie Grace Alexander'] | 2020-09-30 23:11:52.047000+00:00 | ['Sex Work', 'History', 'Newspapers', 'LGBT', 'Gay'] |
A lesson I learned on improving my relationship with people. | A lesson I learned on improving my relationship with people.
One important lesson I have learned in building and managing relationships is to refrain from using my experiences, perception, or popular opinion to define the people in my life.
I have friends who are not active on social media and they are just fine, living life just the way they want, it's fine.
I have female friends who are not keen about pursuing any career, they devote a major part of their time to raising the kids, their marriages aren't in shambles, they love the life they are living, it's fine.
Not everyone is keen about some grand aspiration and the likes, and it's fine.
Some just want to be social workers, not regular career chaps or entrepreneurs, and they are cool like that. It's fine.
Some are not keen about plenty money, they just want enough to get by and live comfortably on their own terms. It's fine.
I have a beloved friend and at one time, herself, her boyfriend (now husband), and myself all shared a bed in a hotel room. No stories and the usual drama, sometimes we lose beautiful relationships because we let toxic opinions and perceptions into them.
Another of my friend at one time offered me accommodation for some nights in her self-contain apartment. We shared the same small bed and there was no 'touching-body', her boyfriend then (now husband) was aware. They had such level of trust and yes, not every man has the poisonous and repulsive kind of jealousy that define a lot of relationships.
Some people are prisoners in their marriages, they can't keep or make friends even if they would like to because, they are married to people who think everyone that comes close is a threat. We use our insecurity to define and shape other people's lives.
What is my point?
Slow down with labeling people and defining them on your terms and expectations.
Bad things have happened between people who met online, but then, good things have also happened between people who met online.
So when you warn people against online connections, do not forget that people have had their lives transformed for good as well through online connections.
Sometimes we miss it, other times we hit it.
Just live and let live.
Your Co-Traveler,
Mister Maple | https://medium.com/@mapledappa/a-lesson-i-learned-on-improving-my-relationship-with-people-c4a941d5f348 | ['Maple Dappa'] | 2020-12-14 06:42:48.733000+00:00 | ['Social Intelligence', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Skills', 'Relationships'] |
Apache Airflow Tutorial, Part 1: Data Pipeline Orchestration on Steroids | Apache Airflow Tutorial, Part 1: Data Pipeline Orchestration on Steroids
By Rafael Pierre
Data Engineer, Rafael Pierre, works with Apache Airflow. Being enthusiastic about everything he is learning, he shares his insights in this tutorial. Read how Apache Airflow is used in different companies, how it can help set up different types of data pipelines. Learn how to install, setup, and run Apache Airflow.
What is Apache Airflow?
Apache Airflow is an open-source data workflow management project originally created at Airbnb in 2014. In terms of data workflows it covers, we can think about the following sample use cases:
🚀 Automate training, testing and deploying a machine learning model
🍽 Ingesting data from multiple REST APIs
🚦 Coordinating Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) or Extraction, Loading and Transformation (ELT) Processes Across an Enterprise Data Lake
As we can see, one of the main features of Airflow is its flexibility: it can be used for many different data workflow scenarios. Due to this aspect and its rich feature set, it has gained significant traction over the years. It has been battle-tested by many companies, from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. Some examples include Spotify, Twitter, Walmart, Slack, Robinhood, Reddit, PayPal, Lyft, and of course, Airbnb.
OK, But Why?
Feature Set
Apache Airflow works with the concept of Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), which are a powerful way of defining dependencies across different types of tasks. In Apache Airflow, DAGs are developed in Python, which unlocks many interesting features from software engineering: modularity, reusability, readability, among others.
Sensors, Hooks, and Operators are the main building blocks of Apache Airflow. They provide an easy and flexible way of connecting to multiple external resources. Want to integrate with Amazon S3? Maybe you also want to add Azure Container Instances to the picture in order to run some short-lived Docker containers? Perhaps running a batch workload in an Apache Spark or Databricks cluster? Or maybe just executing some basic Python code to connect with REST APIs? Airflow ships with multiple operators, hooks, and sensors out of the box, which allow for easy integration with these resources, and many more, such as DockerOperator, BashOperator, HiveOperator, JDBCOperator — the list goes on. You can also build upon one of the standard operators and create your own. Or you can simply write your own operators, hooks, and sensors from scratch.
and Operators are the main building blocks of Apache Airflow. They provide an easy and flexible way of connecting to multiple external resources. Want to integrate with Amazon S3? Maybe you also want to add Azure Container Instances to the picture in order to run some short-lived Docker containers? Perhaps running a batch workload in an Apache Spark or Databricks cluster? Or maybe just executing some basic Python code to connect with REST APIs? Airflow ships with multiple operators, hooks, and sensors out of the box, which allow for easy integration with these resources, and many more, such as DockerOperator, BashOperator, HiveOperator, JDBCOperator — the list goes on. You can also build upon one of the standard operators and create your own. Or you can simply write your own operators, hooks, and sensors from scratch. The UI allows for quick and easy monitoring and management of your Airflow instance. Detailed logs also make it easier to debug your DAGs.
Airflow UI Tree View. Source: Airflow Documentation
…and there are many more. Personally, I believe one of the fun parts of working with Airflow is discovering new and exciting features as you use it — and if you miss something, you might as well create it.
It is part of the Apache Foundation, and the community behind it is pretty active — currently, there are more than a hundred direct contributors. One might argue that Open Source projects always run the risk of dying at some point — but with a vibrant developer community, we can say this risk is mitigated. In fact, 2020 has seen individual contributions for Airflow at an all-time high.
Apache Airflow Tutorial
Time to get our hands dirty and actually start with the tutorial.
There are multiple ways of installing Apache Airflow. In this introduction, we will cover the easiest one, which is by installing it from the PyPi repository.
Basic Requirements
Python 3.6+
Pip
Linux/Mac OS — for those running Windows, activate and install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), download Ubuntu 18 LTS from the Windows Marketplace and be happy :)
Initial Setup
Create a new directory for your Airflow project (e.g. “airflow-intro”)
From your new directory, create and activate a new virtual environment for your Airflow project using venv
# Run this from newly created directory to create the venv
python3 -m venv venv# Activate your venv
source venv/bin/activate
Install Apache-airflow through pip
pip install apache-airflow
Before proceeding, it is important to discuss a bit about Airflow’s main component: the Executor. The name is pretty self-explanatory: this component handles the coordination and execution of different tasks across multiple DAGs.
There are many types of Executors in Apache Airflow, such as the SequentialExecutor, LocalExecutor, CeleryExecutor, DaskExecutor, and others. For the sake of this tutorial, we will focus on the SequentialExecutor. It presents very basic functionality and has a main limitation, which is the fact that it cannot execute tasks in parallel. This is due to the fact that it leverages an SQLite database as the backend (which can only handle one connection at a time), hence multithreading is not supported. Therefore it is not recommended for a production setup, but it should not be an issue for our case.
Going back to our example, we need to initialize our backend database. But before that, we must override our AIRFLOW_HOME environment variable, so that we specify that our current directory will be used for running Airflow.
export AIRFLOW_HOME=$(pwd)
Now we can initialize our Airflow database. We can do this by simply executing the following:
airflow initdb
Take a look at the output and make sure that no error messages are displayed. If everything went well, you should now see the following files in your directory:
To confirm if the initialization is correct, quickly inspect airflow.cfg and confirm if the following lines correctly point to your work directory in the [core] section. If they do, you should be good to go.
Optional: Airflow ships with many sample DAGs, which might help you get up to speed with how they work. While it is certainly helpful, it can make your UI convoluted. You can set load_examples to False so that you will see only your own DAGs in the Airflow’s UI.
DAG Creation
We will start with a really basic DAG, which will do two simple tasks:
Create a text file Rename this text file
To get started, create a new Python script file named simple_bash_dag.py inside your dags folder. In this script, we must first import some modules:
# Python standard modules
from datetime import datetime, timedelta# Airflow modules
from airflow import DAG
from airflow.operators.bash_operator import BashOperator
We now proceed to create a DAG object. In order to do that, we must specify some basic parameters, such as: when will it become active, which intervals do we want it to run, how many retries should be made in case any of its tasks fail, and others. So let’s define these parameters:
default_args = {
'owner': 'airflow',
'depends_on_past': False,
# Start on 27th of June, 2020
'start_date': datetime(2020, 6, 27),
'email': ['[email protected]'],
'email_on_failure': False,
'email_on_retry': False,
# In case of errors, do one retry
'retries': 1,
# Do the retry with 30 seconds delay after the error
'retry_delay': timedelta(seconds=30),
# Run once every 15 minutes
'schedule_interval': '*/15 * * * *'
}
We have defined our parameters. Now it is time to actually tell our DAG what it is supposed to do. We do this by declaring different tasks — T1 and T2. We must also define which task depends on the other.
with DAG( dag_id=’simple_bash_dag’,
default_args=default_args,
schedule_interval=None,
tags=[‘my_dags’],
) as dag: #Here we define our first task
t1 = BashOperator(bash_command=”touch ~/my_bash_file.txt”, task_id=”create_file”) #Here we define our second task
t2 = BashOperator(bash_command=”mv ~/my_bash_file.txt ~/my_bash_file_changed.txt”, task_id=”change_file_name”) # Configure T2 to be dependent on T1’s execution
t1 >> t2
And as simple as that, we have finished creating our DAG 🎉
Testing our DAG
Let’s see how our DAG looks like and most importantly, see if it works.
To do this, we must start two Airflow components:
The Scheduler, which controls the flow of our DAGs
airflow scheduler
The Web Server, a UI which allows us to control and monitor our DAGs
airflow webserver
You should see the following outputs (or at least something similar):
Output for the Scheduler’s startup
Output for the Webserver’s startup
Showtime
We should now be ready to look at our Airflow UI and test our DAG.
Just fire up your navigator and go to https://localhost:8080. Once you hit Enter, the Airflow UI should be displayed.
Look for our DAG — simple_bash_dag — and click on the button to its left, so that it is activated. Last, on the right-hand side, click on the play button ▶ to trigger the DAG manually.
Clicking on the DAG enables us to see the status of the latest runs. If we click on the Graph View, we should see a graphical representation of our DAG — along with the color codes indicating the execution status for each task.
As we can see, our DAG has run successfully 🍾
We can also confirm that by looking at our home directory:
Wrap Up
We had a quick tutorial about Apache Airflow, how it is used in different companies and how it can help us in setting up different types of data pipelines
We were able to install, setup and run a simple Airflow environment using an SQLite backend and the SequentialExecutor
environment using an SQLite backend and the SequentialExecutor We used the BashOperator to run simple file creation and manipulation logic
There are many nice things you can do with Apache Airflow, and I hope my post helped you get started. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment or contact me. Click here to go to the original post.
Curious to see which APIs ABN AMRO offers? Have a look at our Developer Portal. | https://medium.com/abn-amro-developer/data-pipeline-orchestration-on-steroids-apache-airflow-tutorial-part-1-87361905db6d | ['Abn Amro'] | 2020-10-14 08:03:18.813000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Developer', 'Tutorial', 'Apache', 'Apache Airflow'] |
Sevencoin Exchange 進展報告 12/17–12/23 | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/7sevencoin/sevencoin-exchange-%E9%80%B2%E5%B1%95%E5%A0%B1%E5%91%8A-12-17-12-23-3100f80645a7 | [] | 2018-12-24 09:12:09.347000+00:00 | ['進展報告', 'Sevencoin', 'Blockchain', '工作誌'] |
Conflict Over Curiosity | Conflict Over Curiosity
NBAE via Getty Images
The Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers are already on a collision course to meet in this season’s NBA Finals. But the media would rather The Nets derail themselves before making it there. We are only 2 games into the 2020–21 NBA season but two things are already crystal clear to basketball fans.
The Lakers are even better than they were last year and are rightfully the favorites to repeat their championship. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving on the same team are down right frightening for the rest of the league.
One more thing is also crystal clear to basketball fans such as myself…The media seems disappointed about #2. The Brooklyn Net’s new superstar duo of Kyrie and KD (also known as “7/11”) have looked sensational in their first 2 games together. They washed the injured and out gunned Golden State Warriors a few days ago on opening night. Cool, that was to be expected. But yesterday, they dismantled the Boston Celtics and handed out all types of coal on Christmas Day. Naturally, there were many curious questions asked during the offseason about The Net’s and how this team would function with 2 of the most “sensitive” superstar players in the league.
Will 1 ball be enough?
Who will lead the Team?
Will KD still be KD after his achilles injury?
Should The Nets trade for James Harden?
1 ball seems to work just fine.
Kyrie is the team’s vocal leader, while KD leads by example.
Kevin Durant looks just like his old Finals MVP self after an injury that is 1 of the most brutal to athletes and basketball players specifically. He’s not only still pulling up from 3 and devastating defenders but he seems to be moving around just fine on defense himself.
No - The Nets not only should not trade for James Harden, but they don’t need him. Adding him would throw off the team’s chemistry and fit on the court.
There are other curious questions still to ask and answer but all of them seem more fun to me than wishing for injuries, media mayhem, discontent with supporting role players, etc. I get it, conflict is entertaining. Always has been and always will be. But as a basketball fan I enjoy watching the best players and teams play against each other. Wanting Brooklyn to self destruct seems very scrooge-ish and haven’t we all had a long enough year?
Kyrie and KD haven’t done themselves any favors in terms of their relationships with the media, this we know. But reporters and writers should instead hope the Nets take over the eastern conference and meet the Lakers in the Finals. Why? Because it would be amazing. Lebron & Anthony Davis vs Kyrie & KD. The games 2 best interior players against the games 2 best perimeter players, with outstanding supporting casts surrounding them in a best of 7? Sign me up. Sign up even the most casual basketball fan after last year’s Bubble Finals ratings understandably took a dip from previous years ratings.
There are many potential curious questions and a plethora of storylines should the Lakers and Nets meet in the Finals this year.
We finally get to see Lebron vs KD in the Finals “Equally Matched” in terms of teammates.
Will Bron guard KD or leave the task up to AD?
Will Kyrie outplay everyone and be named MVP?
Will AD officially be named the Lakers’ best player?
With another ring and Finals MVP will KD be named the NBA’s best player?
The only conflict we should be rooting for is the clash of basketball’s best. | https://medium.com/@isang2x/conflict-over-curiosity-13cd16066233 | ['Isang S. Isang'] | 2020-12-26 22:29:39.055000+00:00 | ['NBA', 'LeBron James', 'Brooklyn Nets', 'Kevin Durant', 'Kyrie Irving'] |
THE STORY OF LOGISTIC REGRESSION… | Logistic Regression is one of the simple and elegant classification techniques, which is generally use to find the hyperplane(multidimension) or line(2D) which best seperates positive points from negative points or in another words Logistic Regression is one of the best techniques for BINARY CLASSIFICATION.
I will be very straight forward to explain all the details in LR(LOGISTIC REGRESSION in short for now).
Its a wonderful algorithm, just take algorithm as a story and its equations as a poetry and rest you will automatically fall in love with Machine Learning.
Lets get started then,
So the aim of LR is to find the hyperplane which best seperates positive points from negative points or which seperated two diffferent classes.
In this article series, i will try to explain the LR algorithm through geometry and through LOSS FUNCTION.
Lets begin with Geomtery
In the picture above we can see that there are two different classes , lets say orange is positive and blue is negative, now our aim is to find the best possible line (if 2D) or best possible hyperplane(if multidimension), so what is the equation of a line
y=mx+c, where c is the intercept and m is the slope of the line.
what is the equation of hyperplane?
w^T *x+b=0, where T means transpose , equation means (w transpose x +b), where w is vector of dimensionality d , x is also a vector with dimensionalty d and b is a scaler quantity (intercept).
“w” here is always perpendicular to the hyperplane.
So if i generalize for all the dimensions i can say that In LR we need to find the equation of hyperplane which is
w^T *x+b=0
so basically the task is very simple i just need to find w and b.
Here we are taking a very big assumption, if you notice we are saying that we just need to find a hyperplane which seperates two classes, what if those two classes are not linearly seperable.
like in the above picture.
ASSUMPTION OF LOGISTIC REGRESSION- WE ARE ASSUMING THAT CLASSES ARE LINEARLY SEPERABLE
If you would have read my other articles we saw some assumption in NAIVE BAYES AND KNN as well
ASSUMPTION OF NAIVE BAYES- FEATURES ARE CONDITIONALLY INDEPENDENT
ASSUMPTION OF KNN- NEIGHBOURHOOD OF A POINT IS SAME AS A POINT
Lets get back to logistic regression, so we know the assumption and for now we know that we can’t use logistic regression if classes are not linearly seperable.
So lets take an example where we have two classes positive aand negative, so lets say y=+1 when there is a positive point and y=-1 when there is a nagative point. Now someone can ask that here why we are taking y=-1 when in all the other algorithms we take y=0 . I will come to this in a while.
so now we have yi that belongs to {-1,+1}
Now we know that distance from a hyper plane is di=w^T*xi/||w||, where w is perpendicular to hyperplane and a unit vector so ||w|| is 1, then
di=w^T*xi (distance from hyperplane to all the positive points)
lets say xi are all the positive points and xj are all the negative points as shown in the image.
Then dj=w^T*xj(distance from hyperbola to all the negative points)
and we can say that
di=w^T*xi > 0 (w and xi vectors are on the same sides)
dj=w^T*xj <0 (w and xj are on the opposite sides)
NOW MY CLASSIFIER WILL LOOK LIKE THIS:
if w^T*xi>0 then yi=+1
if w^T*xi<0 then yi=-1
Now i want to mention one small detail that this classifier is not perfect, this will also make mistakes, like for the xq point ,w^T*xi>0 but yi=-1 so obviously this classifier will make mistake.
Lets see some cases:
CASE 1
if yi=+1 and w^T*xi>0
then, yi*w^T*xi>0
CASE 2
if yi=-1 and w^T*xi<0
then, yi*w^T*xi>0
it simply means whenever classifier classifies correctly, yi*w^T*xi>0 this condition satisfies.
CASE 3
if yi=+1 and w^T*xi<0
then, yi*w^T*xi<0
CASE 4
if yi=-1 and w^T*xi>0
then, yi*w^T*xi<0
it simply means whenever classifier classifies incorrectly, yi*w^T*xi<0 this condition satisfies.
This is the reason we made y=-1 for negative points.
So again what is our main aim, to get minimum number of misclassification points and maximum number of classified points, so basically all we want is as many points as possible satisfying
yi*w^T*xi>0, so if we find a plane which has w which satisfies above condition we are done.
We have a optimization problem which is we need to find the optimal w* which maximizes above condition
optimization problem can be seen in below picture.
Now as i told you, for me algorithms are stories and equations are poetry so lets begin with the second fold of this story.
Uptil now we got a basic mathematical problem in which we need to get the “w” or hyper plane such that it maximizes the sum of signed distance(yi*w^T*xi).
Now lets seee whats the problem with this statement and how can w optimize our solution, lets take a simple example in which we have an outlier. so for all the “x”, yi=1(we are assuming that all the “x” in the picture are positive and all the “0” are negatives), so for all the “0” in the picture, yi=-1.
LETS SEE SOME CASES…
CASE 1: Now again task is to find the best “w” or hyperplane which maximizes the sum of signed distance, so lets say algorithm found a hyperplane1 (shown in the picture below), lets find the sum of signed distance for the picture.
Distance from the hyperplane is 1 for all the points except the outlier point, Distance of outlier from hyperplane1 is 100.
In the picture we can see sum comes out to be -90.
CASE 2: Now again task is to find the best “w” or hyperplane which maximizes the sum of signed distance, so lets say algorithm found a hyperplane2 (shown in the picture below), lets find the sum of signed distance for the picture.
Distance from the hyperplane is increasing by 1 for all the points except the outlier point, Distance of outlier from hyperplane2 is 1.
In this picture we can see sum comes out to be 1
Now if we go by statement that “we want hyperplane which maximizes the sum of signed distance we will opt hyperplane 2(sum is 1) rather than hyperplane1(sum is -90) but if we think intutively, hyperplane 1 is best classifier with just one mistake.
NOW WHAT TO DO?
Can we think of something which can taper off extra distance because we just got the problem from outliers.
if signed distance is small — use signed distance as it is
if signed distance is large — use a function which can taper off extra distance
As in the picture below, i have plot signed distance vs f(signed distance), this f(signed distance) must be able to taper off extra distance like in the picture it did.
This tapering off distance is called “SQUASHING”.
So we can replace our optimization equation as
Now the question is, Which function to use?
There are lots of functions which can be helpful in tappering off but we prefer sigmoid function as shown in picture because of two main reasons.
It has a very nice probablistic Interpretation. It is easy to differiantiate and we want our functions to be easily diiferiantiable otherwise we won’t be able to solve our optimization problem.
Thats enough for one article, i will continue “The story of Logistic Regression” in next articles,
THANKS FOR READING AND PLEASE SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS IN COMMENTS. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/the-story-of-logistic-regression-3a978fdc4fe2 | ['Nishesh Gogia'] | 2020-08-16 08:12:00.789000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Data Science', 'Regression', 'Algorithms'] |
Getting Started with Family Meetings | Getting Started with Family Meetings
Family meetings were a foreign concept to me for much of my life. I had a hard time imagining my family, or any other family, sitting down with an agenda and having a productive conversation.
Let me walk you through what a zoom family meeting would sound like with my parents and siblings:
Hillarie: Okay, fam, we have thirty minutes! What do we need to talk about tonight?
[silence for a solid 20 seconds]
Sister: Tomorrow is Bella’s birthday! Meow, meow, meow!
[continues to hold her cat in the camera for another 30 seconds]
Hillarie: Coolcoolcool. So, I think we should talk about a family vacation this summer. What did you think of what we did last year?
Dad: It would have been nice if people could shut the door open and not let out all of the cool air.
Mom: I will bring some cheap scissors for crafts with the kids. Last year somebody used my nice fabric scissors to open a box.
Sister: That was Hillarie.
Hillarie: Literally your scissors are just fine, mom.
Brother: [heavy sigh]
Dad: Mom, we need to go to the grocery store. [hangs up]
Mom: I’m making cookies! Talk to you later! [hangs up]
Brother: So, what did we decide?
Sister: Nothing.
All this to say that family meetings are not a natural form of communication for many of us and they do take work. Let me give you a bit of history on how we started family meetings and how you can make them work for you.
Genesis of our family meeting
We didn’t call it a meeting at first because it felt too formal. When my husband and I got married, our biggest point of friction together was our finances. For him, it was just math but for me it was emotional experience that I avoided at all costs. However, I knew it was important and I wanted to get better at it. And adding some structure around the conversation seemed like a way to make it less scary.
We called our finance meetings “Sunday walk and talk” and would walk to a local tea shop while discussing financial goals, challenges, and ideas — we kept it simple and the agenda very loose. Over time, our communication about finances became easier and we were able to evolve what we talked about and how we talked about it.
With time and after many tears, we stabilized our budget and our weekly meetings have become monthly check-ins. We also started having budget strategy workshops once a year and anytime there is a significant event that impacts our finances, such as a baby, a move, or change in earnings. The name, purpose, and outcomes of our meetings has been intentional so we do not become complacent about what we are trying to accomplish.
We do sometimes fall off the wagon with our finance meetings but we continue to find ways to increase accountability. Things we have done include defining our roles (budget manager vs auditor) or asking assessing if the purpose of our meetings needs to evolve. Our meetings have taught me a lot about effective communication and provided great preparation for larger family meetings with our extended family.
Why hold a family meeting
Meetings, regardless of formality, are useful tools because they provide a defined space and time communicate using agreed-upon rules. Those rules can be created and adapted based on what works for you and your family.
When my husband and I moved in with his parents we knew it would be important to discuss boundaries in order for us to cohabitate successfully. After all, an adult child does not want to continue to be parented any more than a parent wants to assume the normal parent role to a grown child.
We did successfully reset boundaries, establish new norms together, and we have even waded through some very uncomfortable but necessary conversations along the way. This year, meetings became especially important as other boundaries were blurred now that we are all working from home together. Things like cleaning, groceries, childcare, Covid hygiene, home maintenance, and work are regular topics for us.
Tips for starting your family meetings
We’ve come a long way and have benefited from a formal structure for communication. With a few years of family meetings behind me, here are my recommendations for running a successful family meeting.
Choose a style that fits your family
Does the word ‘meeting’ make you feel sad and like your time is about to be wasted? I get it. But rather than foregoing them altogether, pick a different name. Try family check-in, a quick pause, or dinner chat. Whatever makes it feel less sanitized and fits your preferred style. You’ll likely be more successful if you lure people in with a good meal or a fun activity.
Hold the meeting in a place that is neutral territory for the whole family. In other words, don’t force people into your office or crowd into the man cave if it puts some members at a disadvantage. Instead try the kitchen, on the deck, at the playground, or over a board game.
Keep the agenda tight, but not rigid. This is especially important if you are just starting or have active kiddos. Have no more than three items you want to discuss and know what you need to get out of the discussion — a decision, awareness, support, etc. Know that the conversation will veer off track, and that’s normal and perfectly fine. Have patience and experiment with different ways to gently bring the conversation back to the topics.
Set boundaries
Healthy boundaries can make or break a family meeting. Why? Because healthy boundaries create trust. Once trust is lost, people will not engage and it can be difficult to repair the damage.
One way to get buy-in on boundaries is to create them together. As a family, create a list of the things that will improve communication and trust. Some boundaries that we use in our meetings include:
One person speaking at a time
Start and end on-time
Assume good intent
No phones or TV during the meeting
Depending on your family dynamics, you may need to be explicit about the kind of communication that is tolerable and that which is not okay. For example, only bring up issues that are open for group input, avoiding topics that are raw or invasive, or zero tolerance for shaming, name calling, or other forms of put-downs.
Lastly, actively enforce boundaries and make sure that everyone is empowered to do the same. Allowing kids or sibling to call out adult misbehavior and responding positively is extremely powerful modeling. It will forge better relationships and boundaries for everyone.
Allow room for uncomfortable conversations
This recommendation is highly contingent on healthy boundaries. The ability to navigate discomfort is an important skill and many of us don’t have enough opportunities to learn how to do it effectively. A safe and loving family setting can be a great place to learn.
Lots of big feelings come up during family meetings, leading to a palpable level of discomfort. It can be triggered by the loss of a family member, a breach in trust, or general ambiguity in life. Sometimes you can alleviate the discomfort by calling it out and gently acknowledging into the source of the discomfort. (“I know this is hard to talk about now that dad isn’t with us. How can we help?”)
Other times, the source of discomfort may be too deep or complex to resolve in a family meeting. Either way, it is important to recognize there is tension, call it out, and do the work to address the tension in a healthy and productive manner.
Rotate responsibilities
This is my favorite recommendation because you get to see your family members in new and different ways. Typically we have a few roles in our family meetings: a facilitator, a note-taker, and a food czar. We have gotten used to certain people doing each, but it is fun to mix things up sometimes.
Give the role of facilitator to a child or another adult who is not seasoned in the role. It takes patience, coaching, and a sense of humor, but it will be a learning experience for everyone involved.
You may find the need for specific roles based on how you choose to hold your family meetings. Don’t feel like you have to do everything. The more you can delegate responsibilities and allow space for learning, the more commitment and engagement you will see.
Now you try
Put on your own family meetings and see what works. You will also absolutely learn what doesn’t work, and that’s great too! If you have other pointers, please share. | https://medium.com/@hillarie/getting-started-with-family-meetings-25e48ed131da | ['Hillarie Maddox'] | 2020-11-11 05:43:37.047000+00:00 | ['Multigenerational', 'Boundaries', 'Meetings', 'Communication', 'Family'] |
Last Mile Delivery — Access Vs Ownership — Howdy use case | How Modern Businesses Compete for Today’s Customer
The current last mile business landscape is dramatically different than it was 10 years ago. Consumers everywhere demand fast delivery from retailers if they are buying online or buying in the brick and mortar store. Businesses must adapt and deliver products like never before or run a serious risk of becoming overlooked by today’s consumer. Some traditional players in retail have struggled to keep pace with The Amazon but we are seeing forward thinking businesses show their resilience by adopting technology and the new economies of scale in order to stay competitive.
Owning Delivery Assets
A small fleet of vans can cost a fortune in upfront and ongoing costs. Our research has shown that the total cost of ownership for a single new cargo van in California is about €107,000. That does not include the costs associated with having a driver and insuring the cargo and employees. Those costs can quickly add up to more than €35,000 per year. These vehicles tend to sit idle more than 90% of the time. Managing the last mile logistics of a business can be quite complicated typically requiring at least one dedicated employee for a small operation. Businesses that are using this model are finding that they are unable to meet their customers delivery expectations.
Outsourcing to Traditional Delivery Providers
Retailers who don’t want the burden of owning delivery assets have typically relied heavily on traditional delivery companies to fulfill local last mile deliveries. Traditional delivery companies are struggling today as well. High overhead leads to high delivery costs. Our research shows that many of these traditional delivery providers lack the adequate communication tools that are necessary to satisfy today’s customer. This asset heavy business model leads to slow delivery times, inconvenient delivery times. In some cases we observed delivery services taking two weeks to move a single item a few miles from store to home. The inability to provide delivery transparency, real time notifications and two way communication can negatively impact the delivery experience.
Restaurant Use Cases: Uber Eats
Restaurant owners were some of the earliest businesses to adapt the access model of food delivery. 10 years ago it was commonplace for a restaurant to hire their own employees to be delivery professionals. Much of their time was spent hiring and managing delivery drivers. Restauranteurs have found that partnering with sharing economy businesses like Uber Eats allow them to focus more on their core business of cooking delicious food. The restaurants are also able to increase their customer reach as they can now deliver to customers far outside of the 1–5 mile radius from store that they were previously able to reach. In the future it will be interesting to see if the physical location of restaurants will become less important because of this new ability to deliver quickly and reliably.
Big Box Retail Use Cases: Howdy
One of the toughest verticals of last mile delivery are big box items. Furniture, mattresses, TVs and Appliances all require a truck or van plus muscle. Howdy has built a network of vetted truck and van owners who are available on demand to deliver big box items. Deliveries can also be scheduled in advance to accommodate a busy customer’s schedule. Howdy is unique in that retailers can select the size of truck needed and the number of delivery professionals (1 or 2). These delivery professionals provide white glove service, they are able to help with light assembly and reverse logistics. Major retailers are on going using Howdy regionally to make big box last mile delivery easier than ever before. | https://medium.com/@sn.mouhcine/last-mile-delivery-access-vs-ownership-afa1b0965c90 | ['Jonathan Leroy'] | 2019-04-12 14:41:50.571000+00:00 | ['Uber', 'Startup', 'Howdy', 'Brussels', 'IKEA'] |
The Home Food Habits of Overweight Women | Here are a few easy ways you can increase the health of your home food environment.
1. Turn off the television while eating.
Research suggests that this is difficult, especially for people who spend a large amount of time in the home. Try utilizing the season’s warmer weather by enjoying your meals outside, using nature as your focal point instead of your television set. Make a firm rule that whenever your family eats, even snacks, the television must be turned off. Music can also be a great replacement, and it encourages a positive eating environment.
2. Clear out the high-fat snack foods in your house.
While fat is not necessarily the culprit, eating easily-accessible, processed snack foods that are high in fat can be detrimental to weight loss. Replace the processed fats with natural ones, such as avocados, nuts and eggs. Incorporate lighter, healthier foods, like fresh fruit and vegetables, to encourage weight loss and improved overall health.
3. Limit fast food.
This is a difficult task for many folks, especially those who are too busy to cook during the day. If you must order fast food, take stock of healthier menu options, and avoid sodas and other sweetened beverages. If possible, use your weekend to prepare a week’s worth of meals. It’s easy to make light stir-fries, roasts, soups and sauces, like marinara or pesto, and then store them for easy weeknight cooking.
4. Cut sugary beverages.
Of the many factors mentioned in an unhealthy home food environment, drinking sweetened beverages was fairly common for a majority of obese study participants. Sugar can be extremely harmful to the body, and known to increase your risk of heart disease, obesity, hypertension and even cancer. Reducing your consumption of this potentially dangerous and addictive substance is important for your overall health. Get in the habit of drinking water with meals and limiting juice to one eight-ounce glass per day. By cutting just one soda a day, you can save yourself a whopping 87,600 calories per year, which translates into roughly 25 pounds. Water adds zero calories and helps your body eliminate toxins.
5. Learn healthy food preparation methods.
Frying food is a surefire way to add unnecessary, extra fat and calories to your meals. A majority of people who participated in the home food environment study relied on unhealthy food preparation methods. Avoid recipes that require you to fry food or drench it in high-fat/high-calorie sauces. Also, avoid using processed carbohydrates as the main source of food on your plate. If you utilize lighter preparations—such as baking and light sautéing—while also reducing your processed carbohydrate intake and limiting portion sizes, you will encourage healthier eating for everyone in your home.
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CLICK HERE | https://medium.com/@sapta.rossy/the-home-food-habits-of-overweight-women-a16a529577ce | ['Sapta Rossy'] | 2021-12-27 07:46:51.207000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss Tips', 'Weight Loss', 'Weightloss Foods', 'Weightloss Recipe'] |
COVID 19 Diary — March 17th 2020 — This is getting surreal | COVID 19 Diary — March 17th 2020 — This is getting surreal
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Everyday, the whole virus situation keeps getting surreally crazy. I have this habit of reading the news from multiple sources (technology, business, regular news, memes, whatsapp updates), and put them all together. Entire countries are shutting down.
The virus is spreading. The last time I saw something like this happen was in my video games. I play a ton of video games. When I was young or when I have too much free time, I would pick up games like Caesar 3 or City Skylines. In these games, a single point of fault (like a water pipe not working, or a plague hitting, or a traffic jam) will occur. The game of course, will notify you, and then, there are so many notifications.
I sometimes would ignore them. But the single point of fault become a second fault. It develops into 4 faults. Soon, I am getting dozens and dozens of notifications about faults. Soon, I am marshalling the in game emergency services, reducing interest rates, building new roads.
However, by the time, these new actions take effect, it’s already too late. The city has burned down. There is nothing to do but start a new game.
This virus seems eerily similar. It really hit me today, when I saw this.
I have never seen that in my entire life. An entire city’s movie theatre shutdown. I remember reading the world war 2 book by this guy, William L. Shirer. He describes in some chapters, how life had shutdown for people. Right now, what is happening, it reminds me of that.
I don’t know what else is in store. I am also currently in the middle of an ongoing business battle with my office provider. I am looking to cut costs but my supplier is using a clause in the contract, threaten with legal issues.
As mentioned to you that we unable to proceed neither early terminate nor temporary suspend your account.
Since you have agreed both with the agreement that you signed and we have stated in our house rules as well as for VO house rules point 37 and Office house rules point 46.
“We shall have no liability to you under this agreement if it is prevented from, or delayed in, performing its obligations under this agreement or from carrying on its business by acts, events, omissions or accidents beyond its reasonable control, including (without limitation) strikes, failure of a utility service or transport network, act of God, war, riot, civil commotion, malicious damage, disease or quarantine restrictions compliance with any law or governmental order, rule, regulation or direction, accident, fire, flood, storm or default of suppliers or subcontractors.
Our obligation to perform its obligations shall be suspended during the period required to remove such force majeure event. We shall notify you as soon as reasonably possible of the force majeure event and propose a suitable alternative accommodation (if any) in the same business centre or in another available business centre.”
Our centre remain in the office do as usual business task need to be done for VO products and our centre team has ensure first assistance to ensure clean and hygiene in the centre.
Secondly, As we explain over the phone that our legal team will be appoint once our debt-collection not able to collect the outstanding amount remain in your account.
That is happening as well. So, I am really feeling the heat of this virus on multiple directions. Like an enemy that attacks on multiple fronts. I always kept hearing about corporate greed, but recently, I seem to be experiencing it on multiple occasions.
In a way, it is also becoming like a major business lesson for me. The virus is teaching me things I did not think I had to. I know now, going forward, I will add a delay clause in all of my contracts.
I worry for my wife. I worry for my parents and myself. Every now and then, I will think, phew, what about my friends, my team that works for me and so on.
Perhaps I am over reacting. In my city, Hyderabad, although the movie halls are shut down, the road in front of my apartment building appears normal. People are walking about and going on with their lives. Universities and schools are shut down. However, I just spoke with my office provider’s reception and I found out that she has been asked to come to office. I spoke with a couple of my friends, they are also being asked to come and work in office.
On one end, people are being asked to avoid groups and gatherings. On the other hand, people are being asked to come to office. I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing. As I mentioned before, countries Italy and US are in lockdown. When the same lockdown will take effect here in this city and my country, I do not know. | https://medium.com/the-sanguine-tech-trainer/covid-19-diary-march-17th-2020-this-is-getting-surreal-2db8fd2f2f7c | [] | 2020-03-17 09:09:37.832000+00:00 | ['Shutdown', 'Diary', 'Covid 19', 'Coronovirus', 'Self Qurantine'] |
The tour with Amal family | Last week, we the fellows of batch 127 happened to visit Khewra Salt mines and Kitas Raj Temple alongside our Program Manager and Program Associate at Amal Academy. The visit was the part of the fellowship and everybody was informed about the plan one day before leaving for it. The time decided for departure was 6:30–7:00 am to ensure timely return as weather was expected to be more foggy at night which may hinder driving as well.
It was 5th of January 2020 and as per plans everybody willing was on the meeting point in time. It took a little extra time in doing breakfast as it was arranged beforehand. We left for the Khewra Salt Mines by 9:00 am. The great journey has been started which was our 1st and last outdoor session as well as a final meetup.
It was a great day. I had the most comfortable seat in front line which didn’t let me feel tired throughout the travel. Cool breeze was blowing and light music was adding beauty to the whole scene. By we get into almost the half way the demands of some quality performances (on music being played) started to growl till one of our fellows who is really good at dance presented some of his moves which entertained us all. Gradually everyone started to participate in it and this made 1st half of our day one of the most colorful ones. We enjoyed music, did dance, played antakshiri (a musical game) and a lot other stuff.
Fellows of B127 doing fun in the bus
Then we stopped near a filling station (near Khewra) where our fellows from B128 were present as well. We gathered and photographed this beautiful moment
Fellows of Batch 127 and Batch 128
Soon we reached Khewra Salt Mines, the second biggest salt mines in the world and biggest in Asia
Entrance to Khewra Salt Mines
I alongside my fellows strolled here and there in the salt mine, observing various interesting spots. I have been there for the first time so was surprised to see the salt rocks making all of the mine
This water was surprisingly crystal clear!
And the mine as a whole was structured as a tunnel. So many thanks to this rail track, this made our day
And finally some photography session at Khewra
On departure from Khewra we headed towards Katas Raj Temple, the one with thousands of years of history in it. Right after 30 minutes, we were at Katas Raj Temple
A picture near main Katas Raj Temple
The site consists of 4 temples, one for each of Sri Shiv, Sri Hanuman, Raam and one other
Temple of Shri Shiv
Temple of Hanuman
After spending couple of minutes here, we headed towards our last spot which was “Khabbeki Jheel” near Kalar Kahar
A view of Khabbeki Lake
Here we spent our last couple of minutes, taking rides, playing games and doing much more of the fun. Now it was the time to leaving off for dinner before departure
Group photo of Batch 127 taken before departing Khabbeki Lake
We stopped near a restaurant for dinner
Then left for our destination, the home. It was the beginning of the ending and we all were sad at it. However in order to keep things lighter we played the songs and did some really great performances as well. It was the best high ever
The final group photo
This one journey was very different from what we fellows have been through the entire 3-months and this reinforced our belief that Amal is a journey, not a destiny. We had the fun together. Our program manager Ma’am Anum Nasir told us how close ties we made with each others and with her as well and she gave us compliments and feedback on individual basis which was soothing. The ending was not however very peaceful as some of us guys were burst into emotions. However this journey and having lots of fun together shaped us as the family which we commit to be so even after the fellowship. | https://medium.com/@zain.ulabdin127/the-tour-with-amal-family-202ee143b679 | ['Zain Ul Abdin'] | 2020-01-15 19:13:58.993000+00:00 | ['Travel Writing', 'Batch 127', 'Amal Fellowship'] |
After 1 year of the pandemic, we are still in the same deep trouble with COVID-19 | After 1 year of the pandemic, we are still in the same deep trouble with COVID-19 Jannat E Jahan Jul 5·1 min read
I wrote this piece last year, 24th of April precisely. Today, after one year and two months, the death toll in Bangladesh hit its highest.
Source: We Heart It Pinterest page. Link: https://pin.it/4Efyu1N
From tomorrow Ramadan month is starting here in Bangladesh. People won’t go to offices, schools would stay shut, roads will be empty after 6 in the afternoon. Not because the holy month of Muslims is gonna start, but because there is a virus ramping on the world. A situation which no movies had ever wondered about will prevail, no superheroes were sent to protect humans and no brilliant mind is on the mission to save the world. COVID-19, popularly known as Corona Virus, started its spreading last December originating from China and then embracing the whole world by each day under its undiscriminating umbrella. One virus, similar to those cringy slogans of one earth-one world-united us and what not, has put each and every cast, creed, race, and color of human existence at stake. | https://medium.com/@jannatejahan/after-1-year-of-the-pandemic-we-are-still-in-the-same-deep-trouble-with-covid-19-72e9d8fbb10a | ['Jannat E Jahan'] | 2021-07-05 18:34:21.732000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Lockdown Diary', 'Covid Diaries', 'Pandemic Diaries'] |
From Project Roomkey to Recovery Housing | Over the next six months, LAHSA will transition clients from all 37 Project Roomkey sites into housing, at a rate of 400 to 1,000 people per month.
Project Roomkey sites have begun transitioning clients from the emergency shelter program to sustainable housing solutions through the COVID-19 Recovery Plan. The plan features strategies to move the most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness, who are in danger of catastrophic health results from COVID-19, into safe and long-term housing.
LA’s homeless rehousing system responded to the onset of the COVID-19 crisis with a quickly organized multi-agency collaboration that brought more than 8,260 vulnerable people inside in just a few months — the equivalent of 20% of LA’s unsheltered population. Through Project Roomkey, the cornerstone of that response, the city, and the county of Los Angeles secured more than 4,000 rooms in 37 hotels, and LAHSA filled them with more than 6,000 people.
“With Project Roomkey, we saw what is possible when our system focuses on a rehousing solution and is provided with the resources and political will to accomplish a goal,” said LAHSA Executive Director Heidi Marston. “But that was a temporary solution. With the COVID-19 Recovery Plan, we have dedicated, concentrated resources to move our most vulnerable homeless neighbors into permanent housing.
“We know that 88% of the people placed through our system don’t return to homelessness, so we must use the full power of this system to prioritize our most vulnerable, and make sure they are safely inside for good.”
Based on current funding levels from the City and County for the COVID-19 Recovery Plan, we have the funds to house at least 4,900 of the 15,000 most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness: those who are 65+ or have underlying conditions making them susceptible to serious illness or death from COVID-19.
Three Project Roomkey sites have completed their transition. Most of those participants moved temporarily to interim housing or other Project Roomkey sites because the hotel leases expired before LAHSA received the funds for the COVID-19 Recovery Plan.
The COVID-19 Recovery Plan will use a Housing Central Command model to move people from Project Roomkey into housing quickly.
The vast majority of the 4,900 will move into newly leased “Recovery Housing.” The Recovery Housing units will consist of preexisting and new units that will be deeply subsidized and come with supportive services. Some people will immediately move into supportive housing units that are opening now or as units turnover each month. Others will be assisted into permanent housing through one-time problem-solving resources without a long-term subsidy.
Once the one-year lease-up period ends, participants with the highest service needs will be transferred to permanent supportive housing on a rolling basis as units become available. Other clients will be transferred to a long-term shallow subsidy program to keep them stably housed. Participants with lower service needs will receive a short-term recovery rehousing rental subsidy and supportive services.
LAHSA and its network of providers are also calling on landlords to participate in the program by contacting PATH Lease Up at 323–644–2200.
Partial funding in place to house 4900
The County has approved $43 million in Coronavirus Relief Funds for the COVID-19 Recovery Plan, and LAHSA expects to receive another $80 million in County Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) and $15 million in Measure H funding once initial CRF funds are close to being expended. The City released $30 million out of $97 million in ESG reserved for the Recovery Plan.
We maintain the goal of housing 15,000 COVID-19 vulnerable people experiencing homelessness through the Recovery Plan though we are funded to house 4,750. We will require additional funding from our government partners to meet that goal. | https://medium.com/@lahomeless/from-project-roomkey-to-recovery-housing-9fdd9eb90e80 | ['La Homeless Services Authority'] | 2020-10-08 04:28:08.259000+00:00 | ['Homelessness', 'Project Roomkey', 'Homeless', 'Los Angeles'] |
Why Kubernetes? Why companies are adopting Kubernetes (K8s) | I mean why not kubernetes? Imagine a situation where you have been using Docker for a little while, and have deployed on a few different servers. Your application starts getting massive traffic, and you need to scale up fast, how will you go from 3 servers to 40 servers that you may require? And how will you decide which container should go where? How would you monitor all these containers and make sure they are restarted if they exit?
Yes, this is why we need kubernetes. Let us take a look at how some of the most successful companies of our time are successfully using Kubernetes.
Tinder
Due to high traffic volume, Tinder’s engineering team faced challenges of scale and stability. What did they do?
Yes, the answer is Kubernetes.
Tinder’s engineering team solved interesting challenges to migrate 200 services and run a Kubernetes cluster at scale totaling 1,000 nodes, 15,000 pods, and 48,000 running containers.
Was that easy? No ways. However, they had to do it for the smooth business operations going further.
Reddit
Reddit is one of the top busiest sites in the world. Kubernetes forms the core of Reddit’s internal Infrastructure.
From many years, the Reddit infrastructure team followed traditional ways of provisioning and configuring. However, this didn’t go long until they saw some huge drawbacks and failures happening while doing the things the old way. They moved to ‘Kubernetes.’
Airbnb
Airbnb’s transition from a monolithic to a microservices architecture is pretty amazing. They needed to scale continuous delivery horizontally, and the goal was to make continuous delivery available to the company’s 1000 or so engineers so they could add new services. Airbnb adopted to support over 1000 engineers concurrently configuring and deploying over 250 critical services to Kubernetes (at a frequency of about 500 deploys per day on average). | https://medium.com/@shahtech/why-kubernetes-why-companies-are-adopting-kubernetes-k8s-7717cc7b83da | ['Samkit Shah'] | 2020-12-26 09:24:55.571000+00:00 | ['Deployment', 'Innovation', 'Kubernetes', 'Docker', 'Technology'] |
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