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30+ realizations of My Fourth Trimester in GIFs. | I gave birth for the first time while the world was revolving with a pandemic. Which means restrictions, no help, insecurity, limited access, NO FAMILY around and so on. To keep my spirit up I avoided all the negative contents (Thank god!) And fast forward 3 months into that I can say WOMEN ARE INVINCIBLE. My newbie mom-brain has encountered thousands of experiences, here’s the prime ones. Enjoy!
The pain heals. (Just hang in there)
2. How many times can one wash their hands? Ask a mum.
3. I realized I can do almost everything with only one hand.
4. Hot Beverage is a dream.
5. A good rocking chair is bae.
6. Sleep is a luxury that I can’t afford right now.
7. Nothing bothers the baby except when mom moves an inch.
8. Breastfeeding is B.R.U.T.A.L.
9. Oh I hate Colic!
10. Burp..Burp..Burp….
11. Not brushing teeth is normal.
12. I lost my comb last month and I kind of don’t care.
13. Shower time is set by alarms.
14. Constipation sucks.
15. My makeup is a lip balm.
16. Baby wipe is a life savior.
17. There’s an amazing tribe out there called “Parents”.
18. I can feel my parents like never before.
19. Sleep when the baby sleeps does not work, at least I couldn’t (Can’t)
20. Why do I hear baby cries even when there isn’t any?
21. You can never spoil a baby with love. Never.
22. The pregnancy support groups are gems (Specially in a time like this!)
23. Everything is a blur in the first few weeks.
24. My search history got replaced by millions of baby questions.
25. All hail minimalism.
26. My partner is my bff.
27. I let the house be messy while trying to be cosy. It’s hard in the beginning but rewarding as time passes by.
28. baby vomits? not bothered at all.
29. And when everyone has gone to sleep, it’s just me and my sleep thief in the corner. I keep reminding myself the days are longer and the years are short!
30. Having loads of liquid helps.
31. People who sent food are angels.
32. Going out in the sunlight helps.
33. Whispering in bed with partner is fun! (works as ASMR as well. Lol)
34. I made a section in my closet called “Breastfeeding Friendly Dress”.
35. Formula or breastfeed, it’s always your decision.
36. It’s been a tough day but one smile of that little creature is enough to give hope to the power infinity.
37. Self care is important. For you, for the baby, for the family. | https://medium.com/@absolutebasma/30-realizations-of-my-fourth-trimester-in-gifs-ecce8138be00 | ['Nafisa Hasan Basma'] | 2020-12-02 09:09:21.196000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Postpartum', 'Mum', 'New Mom', 'Pregnancy'] |
Shuttered gyms & dumbbell price gouging: COVID-19 is threatening the Peninsula’s diverse fitness scene | Up until now, the Peninsula’s fitness scene has offered a diverse ecosystem of gyms, studios and personal trainers who collectively showcase as many ways to exercise as one can imagine — from Olympic weightlifting to dance classes.
But these businesses — especially the small, locally-owned ones, already facing steep rent costs by nature of being located in the Bay Area — are now coming to terms with an uncertain future, threatened by the coronavirus and the tight restrictions that could keep them from opening in person for some time. It’s still not clear when or how these locations will be allowed to reopen, and even once they do, whether they’ll find enough willing customers to make up for months of revenue lost during the shutdown.
Many are adapting rapidly, pivoting to new delivery models, or shifting the uses of their spaces entirely.
For instance, some local YMCA chapters, like the YMCA of Silicon Valley location in Mountain View, across the street from El Camino Hospital, have repurposed their physical locations to become child care centers for children of health care workers.
Kids participate in socially-distanced day camps at the YMCA of Silicon Valley location in Mountain View while their parents work at El Camino Hospital across the street. (Photo by Magali Gauthier.)
Many have switched to offering pre-recorded or live-streamed video classes. Some are free; others require a fee.
Fantasy Dance Studio, based in Mountain View, has switched to offering live-streamed classes via Zoom to its roughly 100 dance students from ages 3 to adult, according to Sarah Monreal, who teaches hip hop, jazz, contemporary dance and ballet there. The studio switched to online classes almost immediately when the shelter-in-place orders took effect and is running classes as close to normal as possible, maintaining the same schedule and expecting students to dress and prepare for each class as they would in-person.
Monreal said they’ve kept about 95% of their students; in part by providing discounts to all students for April and May and offering scholarships to students whose parents have lost their jobs. Looking to the future, they’re devising plans for how to keep students safe when they’re allowed to meet again. For instance, students will likely have to undergo temperature checks.
Another way they’ve kept students busy is by developing challenges for them to participate in, like this Mother’s Day Dance Competition, where mother-daughter teams were invited to submit videos of choreographed routines to Meghan Trainor’s “Mom.”
Switching to Zoom classes enables workouts to still be interactive, but it’s still not the same as having in-person classes, some say.
“There’s nothing that really replaces authentic human connections,” said Erin Paruszewski, owner of Alkalign Studios, located in Menlo Park and Los Altos, who was quick to pivot to online classes. Still, there are a lot of unknowns about how long people will be willing to pay for live-streamed classes when they can’t go in person.
“I think right now people are being supportive and patient,” she said. “We worry about how long that will last.”
The incomes of their clients have been impacted by COVID-19 too, she added.
Josh Courage is one small gym owner who said his timing was good — for getting out of the gym business. Before the pandemic struck, he and his family were planning a cross-country move and he was in the process of selling his Belmont-based gym, where he specializes in Olympic weight lifting training.
When the pandemic hit, he decided to instead shutter the gym completely, and has since taken his training knowledge online, where he offers members five customized workouts per week based on a monthly subscription model. The workouts are provided through an app, and the model has tiers based on how much workout equipment the subscriber has access to at home.
Tier 1 is for people who don’t have any extra gear and limited space; it seems to be working well for his clients living in small New York City apartments right now, he said. Tier 3 is for people who have access to a full suite of gym equipment. Prices range from $35 to $50 per month.
“The future of fitness is at home,” he said in an interview. “People will quickly realize you can get a great workout at our house if you have the space.”
Manufacturers of home workout equipment are backlogged; dumbbells are now the latest hot item undergoing price-gouging, he added.
“It’s interesting to watch how the fitness industry has transitioned into this,” he said. While some gyms have pivoted to online live-streamed classes, he predicted that enthusiasm for those would wane over time.
He also was skeptical that people will rush back to gyms at the rate they would need to for business owners to make up for their losses over the past few months.
If he were still in business, he said, “Yeah, I’d be very scared — and not 100% confident that after all this I’d be able to market aggressively enough to bring in the (money for the) extra rent I’d have to be paying.” | https://thesixfifty.com/shuttered-gyms-dumb-bell-price-gouging-covid-19-is-threatening-the-650s-diverse-fitness-scene-d6d9bd28ec53 | ['Kate Bradshaw'] | 2020-05-14 20:04:44.225000+00:00 | ['Bay Area', 'Fitness Tips', 'San Francisco', 'Silicon Valley', 'Small Business'] |
Asia’s consumers blaze new trails to growth | by Oliver Tonby, Chairman, McKinsey Asia
Asia — home to more than half the world’s population and a fast-growing middle class –represents a ten trillion-dollar consumption growth opportunity. Beyond the sheer scale, the trends reshaping consumerism in Asia are likely to have global influence.
How well businesses understand and meet these increasingly diverse and changing needs of Asian consumers will determine their success. A new article from McKinsey Global Institute set out to understand this shifting consumer landscape, and the strategies businesses will need to adapt to it.
The opportunity is clear: Asia’s consumers are expected to account for half of global consumption growth in the next decade. Globally, one of every two households in the upper-middle income and above is expected to be in Asia. In the region as a whole, poverty is falling and incomes and spending power are rising. But there are challenges to this positive outlook, notably inequality and climate disruption.
Consumer-driven businesses ignore Asia at their peril. Conversely, those looking to thrive in these markets need a deep understanding of Asia’s consumers. While Asia has always been a diverse region, our new report suggests that diversity is increasingly important as demographic, social, and economic forces dramatically reshape Asian consumerism.
Four such trends stand out. First, a rising generation of digital natives will drive Asia’s consumption over the coming decade. Digital natives already account for a third of Asia’s population. They are eager for new experiences and twice as likely to buy new brands than Generation X. However, many digital natives are resorting to debt to fuel their consumption, raising questions about whether their spending is sustainable.
Second, shrinking household size puts the ‘lonely economy’ in focus. Single-person households already make up 15 to 35 percent in Asia’s advanced economies and China. This demographic shift is propelling growth in certain products — think smaller portions of packaged food, and food delivery at home — in leisure categories like digital entertainment, solo dining and solo travel, and in the self-care market.
Third, seniors (those over 60) are driving growth across the region. They are expected to account for one-third of consumption growth in Asia and are increasingly comfortable online. This shift calls for businesses to reassess how they serve these consumers, while also taking into account that the purchasing power of Asian seniors varies enormously within the region.
The fourth key trend is the potential for Asia’s economically empowered women to boost growth. In 2018, MGI research found that advancing women’s equality in Asia Pacific could add $4.5 trillion a year to collective GDP in 2025. Unfortunately, progress towards narrowing gender gaps has been slow, and the COVID-19 pandemic has set women back in many countries.
These demographic, social, and economic forces — combined with technological innovation — are driving new, different, sometimes surprising consumer patterns. From Japanese Insta-grannies to Indonesian Generation Z gamers, Indian small shop owners, Chinese lifestyle-indulging millennials, and everyone in between, trailblazing consumers across Asia are dramatically changing the way they live, shop, move, and relax. Key consumer trends identified in our report include:
A more responsible consumer. Consumers concerned about sustainability and the risk of climate change are increasingly willing to pay for more sustainable alternative products. In some cases, in this regard, they are matching or even ahead of their western counterparts.
A ‘big convergence’ of brands into superapps as consumers turn to cross-border superapps for convenience and personalization. Asia’s superapps have successfully expanded their user bases (with more than 80 percent penetration in South Korea and China), and the aspects of consumers’ lives covered, from social media to healthcare and mobility.
Changing notions of ownership are emerging as consumers switch to an asset-light life and the sharing economy. The renting and subscription economies are gaining traction. Consumers are also embracing second-hand ownership and shifting towards ownership of digital, rather than physical goods and services.
The segment of one is coming into focus as Asian consumers increasingly demand personalization, even more so than their western counterparts, and display relatively high willingness to share their data to achieve it. Consumers expect personalized offers, interactions, and communication but also personalized experiences in stores.
Asian brands on the rise. In consumer-packaged goods, local players still dominate with a market share of more than 60 percent. However, Asian regional players have grown three percentage points faster than the market over the past five years. Given this, businesses serving Asian consumer markets need to hone their understanding of local tastes, and tailor their offerings to them.
These and other emerging consumer patterns will reshape the corporate landscape. Companies that understand these and other consumer trends, and their underlying drivers, can position themselves to capture the next decade of growth opportunities and reap the rewards. | https://medium.com/@futureofasia/asias-consumers-blaze-new-trails-to-growth-7222f5f3212f | ['Mckinsey Future Of Asia'] | 2021-06-08 01:28:23.073000+00:00 | ['Asia'] |
How to analyze data from WhatsApp group chat with Python | Photo by Oleg Magni from Pexels
Introduction
WhatsApp is a messaging app created by Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009. Currently, it’s owned by Facebook, that acquired the app in 2014. In Brazil, WhatsApp is almost ubiquitous, installed on 99% of Brazilian smartphones.
Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp is delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day. With this huge amount of data being created everyday, how can we structure everything in order to extract insights from it?
There’s a interesting GitHub repository by kurasaiteja that shows a path on how to achieve this objective. In this article, I’ll be presenting what you can find in the repository code, as well as some modifications I made when analyzing a group chat of my graduation course.
Method
First of all, we need to get the data we will analyze. This can be done quickly, you just need to open the group you want to analyze, go to Settings and then Export Chat, choose to export without media.
To process the data, we’ll import a bunch of libraries, you can find the full code in the references. I’ll highlight some of them as we use. Now that you got a .txt with the messages from a group, pay attention to the format of the lines, because it can vary. My messages are formatted like this:
[11/3/19 10:47:48 AM] John Doe: Hello world
Each line can be broken in specific blocks, as follows.
[{DATE} {TIME} {PERIOD}] {AUTHOR}: {MESSAGE}
This format may vary if you extracted the data using an Android device or a device with iOS, and even between devices with the same OS. One feature from kurasaiteja’s code involves two functions that detects if the line starts with date and time format from Android or iOS. In order to achieve this, it uses Regex to match the different formats.
def startsWithDateAndTimeios(s):
pattern = '^\[([0-9]+)([\/-])([0-9]+)([\/-])([0-9]+)[,]? ([0-9]+):([0-9][0-9]):([0-9][0-9])?[ ]?(AM|PM|am|pm)?\]'
result = re.match(pattern, s)
if result:
return True
return False
Another function is responsible to detect if there is an author to this message. But why wouldn’t it? Some warnings, like when someone leaves the chat or changes their number, are shown as messages, but they don’t have an author.
There area two functions to extract the data from each line, one for each OS. I’ll keep showing the examples with the function for iOS, for this is the version I used.
First, we break the line at “]”. The date and time will be before the character. Some formats separates date and time with a comma, mine doesn’t. In this case the code would split date and time at a space character, but here we have a problem.
date, time = dateTime.split(' ')
This line threw an error, because when you split this way, the result has three elements: date, time and period. To fix this, we’ll limit the split to only one split adding a second parameter.
date, time = dateTime.split(' ', 1)
There is a function responsible to convert the date string to a datetime object. I made a little adjustment there too, changing the format from “%d-%m-%y” to “%m/%d/%y”. Be careful to find the correct line that needs to be changed, because there are some conditionals inside the function to detect if the date uses dashes or slashes and whether it writes the year with 2 or 4 digits.
After further processing, a dataframe will be assembled with the columns Date, Time, Author, Message, emoji and urlcount. If you are going to publish the data you are using, you’ll want to hide personal information. Because of this, the Author column is a little problematic and probably will be full of phone numbers.
The original code doesn’t give any method to anonymize this data, so I added a simple way to hide these infos. We’ll create a dictionary to map each author to a generic name like “Person 1”, “Person 2”, etc. Then, we’ll replace each author with its respective generic name. This can be done with one line of code, which I’ll break in two for better readability.
anon_authors = {key: f'Person {value}' for value, key in enumerate(df.Author.unique())} df.Author.replace(anon_authors, inplace=True)
After all of this processing, you’ll have a dataframe that looks like this:
Now you can use this dataframe to create analysis and visualizations. The original code has a lot of good examples of things that can be done. One of them is plot with the amount of messages sent each day. Here’s the one I generated with the data from my graduation course group chat:
Notice that there is a huge peak on March 17th. That’s the day that was announced that the classes would stop because of COVID-19, a good reason for extra messages.
Conclusion
When you structure the data of messages from a group chat, you can extract insights that are very useful. For example, if you manage a community on WhatsApp, you can see when is the group more active, who is more engaged with the group, what topics are more discussed, etc. These analysis will give you more information to be a better manager.
Anyway, it’s a fun thing to check with your friends group chat and, if you won’t share it with anyone, you can skip the anonymization step and get some author wise analysis.
References
Kurasaiteja’s Original Repository
https://github.com/kurasaiteja/Whatsapp-Analysis
IPython Notebook With My Changes
https://github.com/edusrmt/one-figure-projects/ | https://medium.com/python-in-plain-english/analyzing-data-from-whatsapp-group-chat-with-python-90b79c6830cc | ['Eduardo Sarmento'] | 2020-11-06 08:32:34.579000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Python', 'Data Analysis', 'Programming', 'WhatsApp'] |
John Clare Country: Bucolic landscape of the most famous English poet you have never heard of | Byron, Keats, Wordsworth — for a few brief months in 1820, when his first book of verse topped the English best seller list, John Clare, who toiled as a farm laborer near Peterborough 80 miles north of London, outsold them all. Hailed as the “Peasant Poet” by London society for his vivid descriptions of English rural life, fickle popular taste rejected his more accomplished later works.
“Fame blazed on me like a comets glare
Fame waned and left me like fallen star”
Born into rural poverty in 1793, his story is one of the most moving and tragic in a field rife with drama. After his brief blaze of fame, he returned to the fields to support his family. The world soon forgot John Clare.
He continued to write on whatever material came to hand. According to records at the Peterborough Museum sometimes he’d use the back of an invoice. Or, if he was out in the field, his hat band or slivers of bark from a tree. He wrote of the birds, flowers, trees, and gentle beauty of the landscape around his native village of Helpston eight-miles north of Peterborough.
“O who can pass such lovely spots
Without a wish to stray
& leave lifes cares a while forgot
To muse an hour away”
After several breakdowns he was committed to an asylum for the insane. By his death in 1864, he had composed over 3,500 poems, plus numerous essays and letters. In addition to the natural world, Clare’s works on love, politics, and environmental and social change provide an unsurpassed picture of early nineteenth century English rural life.
In 1989, Poet Laureate Ted Hughes unveiled a memorial to John Clare in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner inscribed with the phrase “Fields were the essence of the song." He is also celebrated by an annual festival in Helpston organized by the John Clare Society.
Several years ago, I made a driving tour of John Clare Country. I discovered a bucolic landscape of rolling countryside blessed with some of the finest stone towns and villages in England and nary a tourist in sight. Manicured hedgerows bordered patchwork fields of butter-yellow rapeseed (canola), verdant sheep pasture, and scattered groves and windbreaks of ash, hazel, hawthorn, and oak laced with languid meandering rivers straight out of Wind in the Willows.
In a recurring Clare image, an iridescent blur of plumage burst from the roadside as I slowed to avoid startled pheasants and pulled onto a grassy verge at Castor Hanglands. Now a national nature reserve, this remnant of an ancient hunting forest is the sole wild area remaining in a state familiar to John Clare prior to the 1809 Inclosure Act that restricted public access to former community lands.
The poet’s chronicles of the dislocation and hardship faced by working people as landowners fenced their fields in pursuit of more efficient agriculture leads some historians to speculate that his eventual incarceration was hastened by his public condemnation of the practice.
“Inclosure came and trampled on the graves
Of labourer’s rights and left the poor a slave”
Bluebells, celandine, and anemone on Emmonsales Heath
I tiptoed over a woodland carpet of bluebells, yellow celandine, and drooping white wood anemone. Clare celebrated this sanctuary of birds and flowers in his poem “Emmonsales Heath.”
“How beautiful through April time and May
The woods look, filled with wild anemonie”
Helpston
Village sign on the Green
The point of St. Botholph’s, the parish church of Helpston, broke the level horizon. John Clare’s childhood home lies a stone’s throw from its prominent tower.
“Hail humble Helpstone where thy valleys spread
And thy mean village lifts its lowly head
Unknown to grandeur and unknown to fame.”
The John Clare Trust purchased his family cottage in 2005. After restoration it reopened in 2009 as a center to celebrate his work and share his understanding of the natural world with future generations. Outwardly the house at 12 Woodgate Street, Helpston is little changed from an etching published in his first volume of poems. White stucco walls supporting climbing roses are overhung by thick thatched eaves. Inside, space intended for five families has been restored using traditional building materials and methods and opened up to create a series of galleries chronicling the life and times of the poet and his village. The garden flourishes with varieties of plants from his era.
Restored interior of John Clare Cottage, Helpston
After leaving school at age 12, young John worked at the Bluebell Inn that still stands next door. The landlord treated him “more like a son than a servant … I believe that this place was the nursery for my rhymes.” I bent under a low-beamed ceiling festooned with pewter tankards to enter a traditional English public house. Locals crowded up against the bar: Historic maps and lithographs decorated the walls.
John Clare Memorial and St. Botholph’s Church tower, Helpston
An ornate Victorian stone memorial inscribed with Clare’s verse stood outside St. Botholph’s churchyard gate. His gravestone sheltered in the lee of the chancel wall. Copies of his baptism and burial records were posted on a notice board.
Surrounded by mellow stone cottages, the predominantly 14th century chapel incorporates materials salvaged from Saxon and even earlier structures. Sections of mosaic pavement excavated from a nearby Roman villa were set into the floor. Such antiquities intrigued Clare and inspired an ambitious poem, “Triumphs of Time,” on the impermanence of human achievement.
Glinton
Clare walked two miles over flat fenland fields to school in the church at my next stop. Glinton village stands in the shadow of the graceful spire of St. Benedict’s. | https://medium.com/books-are-our-superpower/john-clare-country-bucolic-landscape-of-the-most-english-famous-poet-you-have-never-heard-of-50536c674be8 | ['David A. Laws'] | 2020-12-13 18:02:35.752000+00:00 | ['History', 'English Literature', 'Poetry', 'England', 'Travel'] |
A wider selection of synchronization frequencies — 8 synchronizations now in PPC Bee | This article has been moved to the official blog of PPC Bee. You will get to the article by clicking on this link. | https://medium.com/ppc-bee/a-wider-selection-of-synchronization-frequencies-8-synchronizations-now-in-ppc-bee-6f86f2ced87f | ['Michaela Zákopčaníková'] | 2019-06-14 11:51:03.637000+00:00 | ['Tips', 'SaaS', 'Digital Marketing', 'Ecommerce', 'PPC Marketing'] |
Advice For Start Coding Journey in 2021 | Hi, let me introduce am, my name is hand. I am still a junior web developer, i was excited about learning Web Developer since the lockdown. Several hours ago, it was the announcement about the winner of Scrimba JavaScriptmas challenge. And yeah i am not winning anything. But, i really happy!!!
Did you know, there is 32000 tweet around the global for this challenge, and i must become the 1 of them to show as a winner. I prefer to not believing that i could win right hahaha.
2020 teach me a lot about life. In the first quarter of this year, i was in the condition of giving up with life. I don’t know why, i could thinking like that. But, maybe it because i don’t have purpose in life that time. Until someone told me for not giving up in life and for the target of my life, she encourage me to catch a very little target although it was a thin air.
From that time, i choose to start learning coding intensively. The reason i choose the Web Development path is because it was really fun, light for my device, many sources, and yeah it’s cool. I success for being consistent for about 1 or 2 month that times. But i got stuck after that, because i feel my improvement seems don’t bring me to anything. And yeah, if i tell you more, it just a fuck*** reason for hiding my laziness.
100DaysofCode Challenge
Until it was around last of July, i talking to myself, about how if i did 100DaysofCode Challenge. This challenge is simple, i just need to keep uploading things about coding into my social media account in 100days, for me i use my twitter account @handhikayp. This challenge is about commitment with myself. No one ask me and i must do a code, at least it just a suck html css.
But yeah i did it, i still remember in around day 40 i said that i will stop for about five days, because i want to enjoy holiday. This okay, as long i still code again after the day five of stopping. After the stop for while, so many excuse will come up. But, if our dream is greater than our excuse, and also if the dream is trustworthy, it will passes day by day until day 100.
Around the day 80, i can’t believe that my friend and i could won a competition in designing a web application of male fashion shop. It was so exciting. Trust me this 100DaysofCode challenge is my recommendation for you to did in 2021.
Following Bootcamp
Since the covid-19 become large and still large until this day. Many place had been changed into online system. I think the online meeting business teleconference has the massive benefit on this time. But yeah, we can’t regret what had been pass right?
So, by using this opportunity too, we can following many bootcamp with a few buck or all free. Until today, i found many place that help learning about coding and many of them is free. The purpose on bootcamp is to make you learn in structured way.
Do What Your Mind Asking
Do you ever thinking about improvement in something. Like when you watch an online store. And you think it was ugly, why you don’t try to replicate it. Trust me by doing this thing, you will learn very big thing.
If the example is too high, you can step down it. Do you ever think that the default video player in windows OS is not supported with rewind using keyboard, can’t play video with 2x speed or perhaps you want get 3x speed. From that simple thinking, just spend a few times, to rebuild a thing. What i mean, it must not desktop application, use your creativity.
Show Yourself
I don’t want to teach you about this, but someone in around 2000 years ago once said
“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.” ~Marcus Aurelius
Today we live in digital era, and social media is just like a door for us, to see something that was so far far away from us. Don’t be shy, this trait is useless. IT’S THE GOOD START.
Because, think about how if you write the 1st day of code challenge. You are watched by all of your followers. So there is no reason you stop the code, your credibility will drown if you not finished until the end. Just because others opinion right???
Follow Community
Don’t being alone, we are human. Life with other makes us still exist until today. Following community is the best way to engage more deep into something. If you can find something hard you can ask it, if you see easier task that another ask you can help it. Using community we build our connectivity between others. And because of that you will grow more faster.
START RIGHT NOW
If you think, you don’t have anything to show up. Trust me, the more you do nothing, you will get nothing. Because Nothing is not good nor bad, it just nothing. Just like Arya Stark said in Games of Thrones series. And the more you start you will learn more.
If you think you don’t have time. I think it just another excuse to hiding your laziness. Everybody has 24 hours a day, if we count sleep and work around 16 hours, we still have 8 hours. Why, we don’t just being honest with ourselves.
The only way to stop all procrastination is to START TODAY AND RIGHT NOW. | https://medium.com/@handhikayp/advice-for-start-coding-journey-in-2021-219bacc45660 | ['Handhika Yanuar Pratama'] | 2020-12-25 13:02:42.003000+00:00 | ['Advice and Opinion', 'Challenge', 'Developer Stories', 'Beginners Guide', 'Stoicism'] |
BLOCKCHAIN VISIONARIES AND THE JOURNEY WITH MANN MATHARU | Mann Matharu on the Speaking of Crypto podcast
CLICK TO HEAR MANN MATHARU ON THE SOC PODCAST
The potential that Satoshi Nakamoto introduced to the world, through the Bitcoin Whitepaper https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/ has motivated a community of people who are working to make the world a better place, who are looking at a broader perspective and who see the world for all of its potential.
“I think it’s going to take some great visionaries. It will require governments to create this new consensus. The irony of that is that we already agreed to some consensus on the blockchain in order to prove proof of work, proof of stake or whatever, but government leaders, big organizations, who are running the world as we know it will need to generically agree on some consensus, if we are going to work towards this.” – MANN MATHARU
Mann Matharu, Blockchain Innovation Project Manager, Stark Technologies Ltd
Mann Matharu was inspired, after reading the Whitepaper, by the core principles of Bitcoin and blockchain technology — decentralization, trustlessness and transacting peer to peer.
He saw it as a technology in line with human nature. Creating a system of transparency and immutability breeds a more fair society. He felt that it was “what humans are leaning towards anyway, just naturally, instinctively.”
Mann works as a blockchain consultant and he’s also an author, probably not surprisingly, of an award-winning novella about a man looking for a deeper more meaningful existence. I talk to Mann about the ideas and the potential of blockchain technology and also about the importance of ‘the journey’ that he so eloquently illustrates through the storyline in his book.
“The Monk of Lantau” http://mannmatharu.com/author/ serves as a reminder to think a little deeper about what’s important, more than the day to day that most of us tend to get caught up in. It questions where we’re looking for what it is we’re truly seeking.
And with the revolutionary technology of blockchain brought into existence through Bitcoin, we, as a society, are now able to think a little deeper about where we want this next phase of the internet to take us.
Projecting into blockchain’s future potential, Mann talks about non-profit organizations like UNICEF taking advantage of blockchain’s transparency. If there is a system for tracking donor funds and where they’re used in non-profit organizations, will that increase donor participation?
He also believes that we may one day have a society with no fake news. If there’s a single source of truth and evidence or notable information can be verified before it goes on the blockchain, then the dissemination of information, verifiable information will be enhanced.
We discuss smaller governments with smaller populations and shorter histories that are adopting the technology faster than others because they have something like a blank canvas to be able to almost start again from the ground up. What will that mean for greater adoption and when will larger governments catch up?
Ona personal level we talk about something negative in his past that ended up propelling him in a positive direction. Not everyone can turn things around for the better, but when Mann was met with a negative situation, it fuelled him with determination to make the most of his future and move forward.
WhenI asked Mann about what it takes to change the world, aside from determination, he said he believes it’s a single creative thought. In order do what hasn’t been done before, an idea needs spark imagination.
Lastly, we talk about the difference between creativity and competition and how these two ideas are on opposites ends of a spectrum. Being in the competitive vein may fuel some people toward positive action, but Mann’s clearly someone who’s creative.
CLICK TO HEAR MANN MATHARU ON THE SOC PODCAST
Mann Matharu
Home
Book: The Monk of Lantau
Award Winning Author
Stark Technologies Ltd | https://medium.com/speaking-of-crypto/blockchain-visionaries-and-the-journey-with-mann-matharu-8ff9abe5d6bb | ['Shannon Grinnell'] | 2018-12-20 21:03:36.441000+00:00 | ['Authors', 'Journey', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Inspiration', 'Bitcoin'] |
Anatomy of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID19 mRNA Vaccine | The WHO Published the Details of the Injected Sequence - Here’s What it Means
“You have no idea what’s in that injection, other than the microchips,” the meme proclaims.
But thanks to great transparency we know exactly what’s in the new Pfizer / BioNTech mRNA vaccine directed against SARS-CoV2. First, no microchips! The following information comes from a release by the World Health Organization. To the average person it probably looks frightening, an injection of jargon. That’s why I’m here to sort it out for you.
What is mRNA?
RNA is a chemical compound very similar to DNA, the master blueprint of the cell. Messenger RNA (or mRNA) is a temporary copy of that blueprint that carries the information to the place in the cell where the code is literally translated into building a specific protein that plays a role in metabolism or structure in the cell. Most important, while DNA is stable and secure (as a master blueprint should be) RNA is inherently unstable and goes away shortly after its information is delivered.
The mRNA vaccine is a special molecule made in the lab that instructs your cells to make one tiny part of the virus (an antigen) that will trick your body into thinking there’s an infection when there really is not. It has various features that aid in production that that protein antigen.
Anatomy of the Vaccine mRNA Molecule
The vaccine contains 30 micrograms of mRNA. A gram is about the weight of a dollar bill. So if you fold the dollar in half, then in half again, then 13 more times, that piece is the same weight as the mRNA injected. That’s a small amount, equivalent to 30 seconds in the last 11.5 days. It contains the information that your cells decipher into the in “spike” protein from SARS-CoV2, the infectious agent that causes COVID19 symptoms. By instructing your cells to be factories creating this little signature of the virus, your body mounts a defense against it when the virus actually comes along. Neat trick!
The “Cap”
From left to right, the RNA has multiple parts. The “cap” is a modification that the cell does on most RNA molecules. It has several functions, including protecting the end from degradation and also connecting with the ribosome, the cellular machinery that takes the information in RNA and creates a protein based on the information within. The image above shows the detail of the cap structure. You can see that the left half looks like the right half, connected by three phosphtates (the P’s between them). This is how just about all of your RNA is capped, with a backwards “G”. The information in RNA starts with the stuff on the right side.
The ”5'-UTR”
The next features is called the 5'-UTR or 5'-untranslated region. The “ 5' ” part is just a chemical notation that tells us it is on the front part of this RNA molecule. “Untranslated Region” means that this part of the RNA does not contain information about the protein to be made, but it has information that will make it happen efficiently.
The description in their text says, “human alpha globin RNA with an optimized Kozak sequence.” The 5'-UTR of the human alpha globin gene imparts stability to the alpha globin RNA (Russell and Liebhaber, 1996), so by adding it to the sequence here, it makes the spike protein RNA more stable. That is important, as the cell has many mechanisms that attack and degrade RNA. Like the aforementioned cap, the alpha globin 5'-UTR helps keep this molecule intact so its information can be translated into a protein that will induce an immune response. Sometimes the 5'-UTR contains information that makes the information conversion to a protein more efficient.
Modified Kozak Sequence
The DNA molecule is a chain of four molecules we familiarly call A,G,C, and T, letters representing the actual chemical constituents. RNA is slightly different. It reflects the information in DNA only replacing “T” with a “U” (instead of thymidine there is uracil) a slightly different chemical found in RNA.
Thymidine nucleotides in DNA are represented by uracil in RNA. Note the slight differences in the upper right ring and the lower ring. The one on the left is missing an “OH” (it is just an H, hence “deoxy”) and it also has that extra line, which implies a methyl group.
The “Kozak Sequence” is defined as the A,C,G, and U that are present right around where the information in the RNA will be translated into protein. It is kind of a “start here” signal, originally identified by brilliant experiments by Dr. Marylin Kozak, starting in the 1980’s. The letters in the Kozak Sequence greatly affect the efficiency of translating the information in RNA into a protein, in this case the Spike protein of the virus.
What Does the “Psi” Mean in the Sequence?
Here is part of the mRNA sequence:
Not G, A, C and U. What’s up wit that?
The normal U(for uracil) in the RNA sequence is replaced by its cousin, pseudouracil. It actually is replaced by a slightly different form, called methyl pseudouracil. Pseudouracil occurs naturally and is a feature of other types of RNA molecules, namely something called transfer RNA or tRNA.
Replacing uracil with methylpseudouracil helps the molecule evade recognition by cellular receptors that would flag the molecule as foreign, and start a response against it that could trigger negative physiological events (for geeks: dendritic cells produce fewer cytokines). This discovery was a key advance in the creation of mRNA-based therapeutics and vaccines (Kariko et al., 2005).
The replacement does not change the information in the RNA message, it only changes its visibility to cellular surveillance, helping to ensure that the vaccine will do its job without collateral effects.
“Sig” The Signal Peptide
Once synthesized the peptide has to leave the cell or at least collect on the membrane to be recognized by the immune system. The next feature on the mRNA is referred to as “sig” in the World Health Organization release, and it is the first part of the mRNA vaccine that is translated into a protein. It is not exactly clear where the information for this sequence came from, but it is noted in public databases as the signal sequence from the SARS-CoV2 antigen. The sequence directs the synthesized protein to secretion and is typically cleaved off, revealing the final protein that induces the immune response.
S Prot_mut
This section of the mRNA vaccine is the most important. It creates the physical structure, part of the “spike” protein, that will induce the immune response.
On the diagram it is labeled as “S Prot_mut” which is shorthand for mutant spike protein. The spike proteins are the little projections that decorate the coronavirus. These are the features that physically connect to discrete receptors on your cell’s surface, shaking hands with it, and telling the cell “Bring me aboard” as the first step in infection.
Why is it a mutant? The spike protein does not exist in a constant shape, it changes slightly, and that could make it challenging for antibodies to detect. Scientists figured out how to lock the spike protein in its prefusion state, the form it takes before it connects to the cell. They lock it into that conformation by changing a few amino acids, the protein’s building blocks (for geeks only: changing a few to proline) (Hseih, et al., 2020).
The mutant form is more stable and always present in the prefusion state, the one that is present on the virus, so that the body’s immune system will be primed to recognize it.
3'-UTR
Like the 5'-UTR the 3'-UTR (UTR= untranslated region) is just extra RNA that can confer stability to the mRNA as a whole. There are two elements in the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA SARS-CoV2 vaccine, derived from the amino-terminal enhancer of split (AES) and the mitochondrial 12S RNA genes. Both were described as conferring stability to the mRNA, as well as enhancing the production of the encoded protein, and are common features in mRNA based therapeutics and vaccines (von Niessen et al. 2019). These features help the information in the mRNA stay around the cell a bit longer and create more of the important protein that activates the immune response against SARS-CoV2 coronavirus if /when it actually arrives.
poly (A) Tail
The poly A part of the diagram simply is a modification that helps keep the mRNA from being digested by cellular enzymes. Just about all mRNAs in the cell are decorated with this terminal extension, the “tail” of the mRNA. The tail helps resist the enzymes that constantly assault the mRNA, trying to degrade it. It is important in the vaccine because it provides stability to the molecule.
In Conclusion
While the concepts of the mRNA vaccine may seem new, these products have been in development for about 30 years. Development has been punctuated by several breakthroughs that hastened drug design. The most important take-home message is that this is not magic, not anything wacky and experimental — the vaccines are the outcome of three decades of hard work, creative experimentation, and a substantial investment.
I’m glad to answer your questions @kevinfolta on Twitter.
Cited References
Hsieh, Ching-Lin, et al. “Structure-based Design of Prefusion-stabilized SARS-CoV-2 Spikes.” bioRxiv (2020).
Karikó, Katalin, et al. “Suppression of RNA recognition by Toll-like receptors: the impact of nucleoside modification and the evolutionary origin of RNA.” Immunity 23.2 (2005): 165–175.
Russell, J. Eric, and Stephen A. Liebhaber. “The stability of human beta-globin mRNA is dependent on structural determinants positioned within its 3'untranslated region.” (1996): 5314–5323.
von Niessen, Alexandra G. Orlandini, et al. “Improving mRNA-based therapeutic gene delivery by expression-augmenting 3′ UTRs identified by cellular library screening.” Molecular Therapy 27.4 (2019): 824–836. | https://medium.com/@kevinfolta/anatomy-of-the-pfizer-covid19-mrna-vaccine-eb29beff7aa3 | ['Kevin Folta'] | 2021-01-11 15:22:33.030000+00:00 | ['Vaccines', 'Covid 19', 'Vaccination', 'Pfizer', 'Sars Cov2'] |
ASP.NET Core 6.0 Minimal API with Entity framework core | Install EF Core within our project
To install EF Core within our existing project, lets add the following Nuget packages
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore" Version="5.0.8" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design" Version="5.0.8">
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer" Version="5.0.8" />
Create DBContext access class
DBContext will set the EF context for data access and set the DataSet for our model to access data from data source. We are going to call it as EmployeeDbContext
Here we will create the following
//Constructor with DbContextOptions and the context class itself
public EmployeeDbContext(DbContextOptions<EmployeeDbContext> options) : base(options)
{ } //Create the DataSet for the Employee public DbSet<Employee> Employee { get; set; }
Once created, we need to override the OnConfiguring method to read the connection string of database from SQL server via appsettings.json file
Set Dependency Injection with service container
This is done in our Program.cs file
var connectionString = builder.Configuration.GetConnectionString("AppDb"); builder.Services.AddDbContext<EmployeeDbContext>(x => x.UseSqlServer(connectionString));
Finally, Entity Framework Database update via dotnet-ef
Pre-requisite:
Make sure you have already installed the dotnet-ef tool, which can be done something like this
Lets run the command from Powershell/Commandline as to start adding the database and create our first initial tables
To Add Database
dotnet ef database update
To add the migration
dotnet ef migrations add initialDb
The above will create the migration script for us
Complete video demonstration
Here is the complete video of the above article demonstration in action | https://medium.com/executeautomation/asp-net-core-6-0-minimal-api-with-entity-framework-core-69d0c13ba9ab | [] | 2021-08-08 19:23:01.754000+00:00 | ['Entity Framework Core', 'Asp', 'Aspnetcore', 'Executeautomation'] |
How Many YouTube Channels Have Over 1 Million Subscribers | The Mathematics To The Equation:
Image Source: The Conversation
YouTube is never going to flat-out tell us how much YouTubers are making. Still, with current information, we can assume and calculate that some of the larger channels are making millions per year just off of ad revenue.
The same goes for the number of channels that have hit the milestone to receive the golden play button award, the one million subscriber mark.
Most YouTubers have made a video announcing when they cross the massive milestone; I know I certainly would if I ever hit it. Not to brag, but just to thank you for the support from their community and give some ideas on things they hope to achieve in the future.
When searching on YouTube, you can set filters; most people, for some reason don’t realize or utilize this.
Image Source: YouTube.com
By searching for “one million subscribers,” I set the filter to sort by the most recently uploaded.
This brought me back these results first:
Image Source: YouTube.com
As you can see, all of these videos have extremely low views for someone with one million subscribers, even if they did just upload the video.
If you have one million subscribers, the moment you upload a video, and it is ready to be viewed on YouTube, they will send out a notification to all of your subscribers. This is why whenever a large channel publishes a video, no matter how fast you click on it, it already has hundreds or thousands of views.
So we after checking the top few results, I quickly ruled them out, which brings us to this video here:
Image Source: YouTube.com
Tabor Hill's video titled “My ONE MILLION SUBSCRIBER Item Shop Review” was just published two days ago and already had over 130,000 views on YouTube. This was a great indicator that odds are, the channel probably has a large number of subscribers, or a video just happened to go trending with that title and received a larger number of views above their norm.
After clicking on the channel, Tabor Hill does indeed have one million subscribers; he is actually sitting at 1.01 Million Subscribers, meaning he just reached the milestone.
Image Source: YouTube.com
Before we go any further, I want to give a shoutout to Tabor Hill for hitting such a big milestone. I had never heard of him before now, but congratulations on being the newest gold play button award winner!
Using The Information, We Have:
Image Source: YouTube.com
After sorting through numerous different search results on YouTube, I think we have found one of the newest channels to break the one million subscriber milestone that has posted a video about it.
But now we have to see where they rank against all other YouTube channels based on the number of subscribers the channel has.
If we head over to Social Blade — a website that tracks followers, views, subscribers, and so many more analytics across channels, Twitter accounts & other social platforms, we can enter Tabor Hill’s name, being it is one of the newest channels to hit one million subscribers.
Image Source: SocialBlade.com
According to Social Blade, Tabor Hill now sits at the rank of 23,010 based on the number of subscribers his YouTube channel has compared to all of the other channels on the Platform.
With that in mind, we can now assume the number of YouTube Channels with over one million subscribers is…
23,000–24,000 total channels. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-many-youtube-channels-have-over-1-million-subscribers-56881000f35a | ['Jacob Bates'] | 2021-02-04 15:54:00.349000+00:00 | ['YouTube', 'YouTuber', 'Video Marketing', 'Youtube Marketing', 'Youtube Creators'] |
At school today I learnt a lot Of hard and complex words. | At school today
I learnt a lot
Of hard and complex words.
Like Math and Science,
and literature,
Will sit with me at lunch.
I pass my tests
I’m pretty nice
Yet still don’t understand
Why I’m the constant
victim of
their cold and cruel words.
I try my best
to act so tough
but it’s like they also know
as soon as I
walk out the door,
I’ll go and cry at home. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/at-school-today-i-learnt-a-lot-of-hard-and-complex-words-bbe2783e69da | [] | 2017-10-16 14:01:33.460000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Hurt', 'Literally Literary', 'Sad', 'Bullying'] |
How to Build a Mailing List With Ruby on Rails and MailChimp | How to build a mailing list with Ruby on Rails and Mailchimp
Ever needed to collect simple form data from users on a landing page and have a nice UI to show that list on? MailChimp is for you! And here’s how to setup a MailChimp mailing list with Ruby on Rails!
What you’ll need
Rails 6 installed Ruby installed. You can follow my article on how to get Rails setup on your machine. A MailChimp account
Initial Setup — Ruby on Rails
Create a new rails API using rails new mailing-list-app --api --database=postgresql . Once your rails application is setup, run rails db:create db:migrate to setup your postgres database. In your terminal, run rails s and navigate to http://localhost:3000 to ensure everything is up and running.
Setup — MailChimp
Next, create an account with mailchimp. You can also refer to the developer guides here Create an audience (mailchimp uses the word audience interchangeably with mailing list).
Head over to the audience dashboard
5. For the free plan, mailchimp only allows you have one mailing list/audience and to store a maximum of 2000 contacts in that list.
To the left of the dashboard, click the audience button. MailChimp usually already creates an audience list for you once you create an account.
6. We need 3 keys to be able to connect to the MailChimp API from our Rails application. The first key is the unique id. Head to the audience dashboard, click the manage audience > settings. You should see the following box that shows your unique id at the bottom of the page.
Next, in your browser’s address bar, note down the number that comes after the us In my case, this number was us13. This is the mailchimp data center(dc) that your mailchimp account is connected to.
Finally, we need to get the api key. From the menu navigation, navigate to website > domains > extras and you should see your api key. If you cannot see your api key, click the Create api key button.
Or click here to navigate to the API Keys section in Mailchimp.
Mailchimp API key
Mailchimp by default will only accept first name, last name, phone number and email address from your API. To be able to send more fields from your API to mailchimp, you’ll need to add custom tags in the Mailchimp dashboard.
Still in your audience dashboard, head to All contacts. Then, click on the settings dropdown. Select the Audience fields and *|MERGE|* tags option.
Adding more fields to your mailing list in mailchimp
For our use case, let’s assume the extra field we would like to store about users subscribing to our mailing list is what Company they work for. Click Add field > text, then type the word Company under the label section. Under the merge section, type in COMPANY, in all caps. Click save changes and we should be ready to go.
Adding a company custom tag to your mailing list in mailchimp
Integrating MailChimp and Ruby on Rails
For this tutorial, we’ll send back the response as JSON rather which can then be consumed by your Rails App or any frontend framework you’re using to consume the API.
1. Next, we need to create a controller to receive requests. This controller will call the mailchimp API.
To setup your controller, run the command rails g controller MailingList addUser . This will create a new MailingList controller class in app > controllers > mailing_list_controller. This is where we write the magic!
With our controller setup, we can now setup our routes. Head to config > routes.rb and replace the get mailing_list line with
post '/adduser', to: 'mailing_list#addUser'
2. Let’s install the faraday gem to help us make HTTP requests. In your gem file, add gem 'faraday' to a new line. Save the file. Then run bundle install
3. Now for the code! Inside your MailingListController file, add the following, substituting the appropriate values for your use case.
And there you have it! You can now head to your MailChimp dashboard to see that the users were successfully added to your Audience/list.
Unsubscribing users from the mailing list
MailChimp exposes an additional endpoint to unsubscribe users from a mailing list. For this part, we’ll need to send a MD5 hash of the user’s email address(and not the actual email address string itself). MailChimp identifies users by storing an MD5 hash of their email address.
Let’s get into the code!
We’ll create a new route in our Rails Application that will handle unsubscribing users from the mailing list. In your routes.rb file, add the following route.
put '/removeuser', to: 'mailing_list#removeUser'
Next, we need to add the removeUser method in our controller file — mailing_list_controller.rb. We are using the PUT verb for this route to match what MailChimp expects for the unsubscribe endpoint.
Before writing the code for the removeUser method, we need to require the digest package which is inbuilt in Rails. At the top of your mailing_list controller file, add
require 'digest'
Now, here’s the code that goes into that method. I’ve added code comments for clarity.
Access the full code repo | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-build-a-mailing-list-with-ruby-on-rails-and-mailchimp-ae9bb45b041f | ['Adebola Adeniran'] | 2021-03-24 10:12:04.884000+00:00 | ['MailChimp', 'Ruby', 'Ruby on Rails', 'Rails', 'Mailing Lists'] |
5 Reasons why I’m enough | Initially I accepted, supported and believed in the lockdown. I’ve been a proud and complimentary advocate of our Honorable President Cyril Ramaphosa. He demonstrated brave leadership and decision making.
His actions and decisions are now misdirected.
Selfish they may be. These are my reasons why this lockdown must end.
Freedom
I don’t want to feel like a criminal any longer. A prisoner in my own home. Existing in this harsh regulatory environment. Living with curfews and restrictions that I don’t agree with. That don’t make sense to me. Having to sneak around. Worried about the repercussions if I get back from a run at 09:15! If I get caught without a mask on whist driving alone in my car! Responsible for the man who cares for my garden, desperate to earn a living, getting pulled over, harassed, and arrested for going to work!
I was reminded of my youth this past weekend, meeting my friends at the back of the local pool hall parking lot to smoke a zol (Thanks NDZ!). Only now, 25 years on, it’s behind our local butchers. Our weekly routine, a lively breakfast after our Saturday long run. A highlight. Disrupted for the last 8 weeks by C19 and CR’s directive and their potentially lethal combined impact. Desperate to get out, to reconnect with friends and let loose a little. With limited options, hiding behind the butcher, in fear of being caught for socialising!
This isn’t ok. It’s time we started returning to some level of normality. Those who are healthy, willing, and able-bodied. Safely and sensibly.
Flexibility
I want to go back to work. Work work. Office work. See, in-person, my colleagues, customers, and suppliers. Deliver and install back orders. Get new orders. Help and service people. Add value. Invoice and get paid. Support staff and other dependents. I want to design new solutions and be able to prototype and test them. To access the necessary raw materials and components. To rebuild our business. Contribute to society.
I’ve loved working from home over lockdown. I’m privileged that my role has allowed me to. I’ll continue to work from home, to some extent. On my terms, not because I’m forced to. I’ll encourage others to work remotely. I genuinely believe in the benefits.
But for now, I need to get out.
Family and Friends
The ability to facilitate ‘meetings’, via technology, has been a profoundly positive experience. I’m thankful we’re able to connect via these platforms. I’m intrigued to see how the future of communication evolves.
However, Xbox, TikTok and Zoom, learning, socialising and interacting via VC, is not enough. We’re missing out on valuable lessons, learnt through social interactions. Friendships, sport, school, playdates. Living via technology has deficiencies. It serves a purpose. It’s efficient and powerful, but it’s not always fulfilling. It’s incomplete.
My kids are missing out. They need to see their friends, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. In-person. Technology will never replace human connection, compassion, creativity.
I’m missing out.
Fortune (and lack thereof)
I’m deeply saddened and affected by the extreme poverty that surrounds me. Beggars and homeless at every corner, robot, stop street, traffic circle, garage, shop, parking lot, park and door-to-door are commonplace. Always quintessentially Joburg. It’s now an epidemic, and likely to get a whole lot worse in the coming weeks and months.
The rate of businesses closing, and retrenchments is unprecedented in my life. Food ques that have no end. Hunger and desperation. What’s the endgame? I’m frightened.
Those that can, must be allowed to return to work. We must get our economy going again.
Future
I love my life. I love South Africa. I accept that it won’t be the same as it was. There will be changes. I can deal with this uncertainty. But I want to contribute to making it better. For myself and my children. I appreciate how difficult this will be, but I’m up for the challenge.
There’s still a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. South African’s are resilient, we’re hopeful. I’m hopeful.
The extended lockdown has compounded our country’s issues, exponentially. It’s now doing more damage than good. The light is getting dimmer. If we don’t start seeing a relaxing of restrictions soon, ALL RESTRICTIONS, not this easing of levels BS, the light will disappear.
I’m angry. I’m frustrated. I’m enough. I’m going out. Safely and sensibly.
I continue to remain positive and was inspired by an article I recently read, written by Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein, which finished off with the following words:
‘There are times when the road ahead is unclear, when we start to lose our way — when the difficulties we face as individuals, as communities and as humanity seem insurmountable. Lag B’Omer* teaches us the great power we have to bounce back, to create the world anew.’
I’m ready to bounce back.
*Lag B’Omer is a Jewish religious holiday celebrated on the 18th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar. (11th and 12th May). | https://medium.com/@_SteveFish/5-reasons-why-im-enough-2e8fe1f79ca4 | ['Steve Fish'] | 2020-05-20 21:07:46.836000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Covid 19', 'Live', 'Lockdown'] |
Morpheus Labs and TomoChain partner to bring Blockchain Agnosticism to the forefront | Morpheus Labs X TomoChain
Days ago, we welcomed CPChain as the newest addition to the Morpheus Labs family. Today, we’re excited to announce that another Blockchain Partner — TomoChain — is joining us.
Our pursuit of quality partnerships is another step towards our goal of building the world’s leading comprehensive blockchain-agnostic platform. We are happy to have TomoChain with us. Blockchain agnostic tech is needed to fulfill the evolving needs of the digital economy — and accelerate App development towards mass adoption as blockchain technology matures.
About TomoChain
TomoChain launched their Mainnet in December 2018. TomoChain is an innovative solution to the scalability problems endemic to Ethereum and other blockchains. It features a 150-Masternode architecture with Proof of Stake Voting (POSV) consensus resulting in a near-zero fee with instant transaction confirmation. Security, stability, and chain finality are all guaranteed via novel techniques such as double validation, staking via smart-contracts, and uniform randomization processes.
TomoChain supports all EVM-compatible smart-contracts, protocols, and atomic cross-chain token transfers. Scaling techniques such as sharding, EVM parallelisation, private-chain generation, hardware integration will be continuously researched and integrated into TomoChain, creating an ideal scalable smart-contract public blockchain for decentralized apps, token issuance and token integration for businesses of all sizes. | https://medium.com/morpheus-labs/morpheus-labs-and-tomochain-partner-to-bring-blockchain-agnosticism-to-the-forefront-9297cfcbd91d | ['Morpheus Labs Team'] | 2019-04-18 10:49:39.386000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain Agnostic', 'Bpaas', 'Smart Contract'] |
Me, My Mask And Halloween | Pretty darn good, don’t you think?
Let’s start with Halloween. It was on Saturday, 31st October.
A friend of mine was doing a Halloween project and she requested Me to go model for her. And Me thought, Why not?
My Mask came as part of the Halloween costume and if you are wondering just how I looked, the photos will help you out.
I guess we are all set, Me, My Mask and Halloween.
The shoot was at Museum, it was a pretty lit shoot coz it was just the four of us drinking, smoking and taking pictures. That’s what we did the whole day…
It was getting late and we were to go eat then go home. But then we realized the taps were closed and I only had one piece of wipe, which would make the whole situation fucked up if I tried wiping off the paint. So, I was like fuck it I’ll just walk home like this or where I get water, I’ll wash it off…
Picture this, I was supposed to spend the night at a friend’s place. The relevance which will be revealed at the end of all this. So just sip on that mug of porridge.
The night pretty got interesting when everyone suggested we go to Klabu (a place where UON students go to eat) if you’ve been there trust me it’s always full. If i said no, my friends were gonna leave me so a better way was to walk with paint on your face is at least when you have company so yeah…
Pretty weird walking to Klabu then having to eat (ugali matumbo na avocado) with all eyes on me…anyway we were having fun since I met some of friends there and I had to remind them who I was. Damn! At that point am sure if I met my mom, I would have to introduce myself. Then walking all the way from Klabu to Imenti House meeting weird people calling names or shouting Halloween. My Lawd! I wanted to get home so badly. I ended up taking MSL coz it was the first mat I saw…
At least nilikaa mbele where nobody could look at me. I got off hapo Roysambu roundabout. It was about 10.pm. I got a bike to get me to my friend’s house and pretty weird how the bodaboda guys looked at me others laughing or calling names. I walked straight to the most silent one and asked him to take me where I was heading to and even though he was quiet, I was sure he was on pins and needles about my Mask.
I got to the gate, paid him then he started asking why am i walking with paint what does it mean and all that I tried explaining but poor guy he didn’t understand what Halloween was… He left.
It was pretty dark and not comforting knowing that two of the tenants had been robbed at that same spot and exact time. Worse off! The gate was locked. And hey, My phone had fucking gone off! A So, it was just me, My Mask and My Halloween memoir!
I decided to be patient for like 5 min to see if someone would show up but it took me more than 30min waiting. So, I decided to just throw my bag in coz I was a little bit scared so I took a stick and threw the bag in. Knocking bore no fruits.
I thought of knocking at the windows of some of the neighbors but how was I to explain who I was. Would they believe me if I told them… naah.
Cold and scared with no hope of anyone rescuing me there I was, just Me, My Mask and Halloween. | https://medium.com/@wambuiochieng/me-my-mask-and-halloween-b36f5a084de6 | [] | 2019-11-15 06:06:29.724000+00:00 | ['Halloween'] |
3 Online B2B Marketplaces That Can Help You Grow Your Business | Why is the business of others better and better, but yours is stagnant? Do you want to know how successful retailers choose suppliers? Do you want your business to grow fast？How can FashionTIY / Worldwide Brands / Wholesale Central become a good partner for many successful retailers to develop their business?
In recent years, due to the rise of cross-border e-commerce and international logistics, global cross-border trade has become increasingly popular, and more and more small and medium-sized enterprises have begun to enter this field and benefit from it. However, we must also realize that there are many small and medium-sized retailers and wholesalers find their businesses stagnant, but do not know how to grow their businesses. Why are so many people struggling to find new business? These 3 B2B platforms can help you grow your business.
1.FashionTIY
https://www.fashiontiy.com/
FashionTIY is a super factory wholesale platform that professionally serves global SMEs, and is a source supplier for all categories factory. It is committed to helping small and medium-sized enterprises worldwide to achieve low-cost procurement. For products of the same quality, the price of FashionTIY can save you 40% on average.
FashionTIY cooperates with thousands of factories, has more than 200,000 styles of online wholesale inventory, updated daily, all implement factory wholesale prices. Including apparel, jewelry, accessories, beauty, bags & shoes, wedding & party supplies, home & garden products, pet products, consumer electronics, etc.
Unlike buying products on Amazon, AliExpress, Wish and other platforms, FashionTIY has more than one hundred thousand products, all of which implement one-stop procurement, one-time payment, and one order delivery. For most of the SME importers newly entering the cross-border procurement field or having insufficient procurement experience, this model effectively solves many troubles such as multiple purchases and payments from different stores, scattered received, and difficulty in check.
Join FashionTIY now with the coupon code：wholesale15，you will get an extra $15 discount.
2.Worldwide Brands
https://www.worldwidebrands.com/
Worldwide Brands is a directory of wholesale distributors from around the globe. With more than 20 years in business. And retailers can use it to find either wholesaler or dropshippers.
Direct access to all wholesalers, no middlemen taking your profits!
One time low price, lifetime access, no recurring fees or additional charges!
16+ Million Certified Wholesale Products, the Only 100% Certified legitimate directory!
Perfect for Amazon, eBay & Online Stores. Retailers need to compete when selling products on Amazon, eBay or in your Online Store. That means you need real wholesalers with real profit margins. The Worldwide Brands Directory of certified wholesalers will instantly show you who the real dropshippers and wholesalers are for the products you want to sell online!
3.Wholesale Central
https://www.wholesalecentral.com/
Wholesale Central is the leading B2B directory of wholesale suppliers and products, it offers powerful sourcing tools to help resellers find thousands of prescreened wholesalers, importers, distributors, dropshippers, and manufacturers. No registration is required to search the site and shop for great values in wholesale merchandise.
When retailers find a supplier or product on WholesaleCentral, click on the link and you will be taken directly to the supplier’s website where you can place orders directly with them. WholesaleCentral is not a middle-man. They connect buyers directly with wholesale sources, allowing both buyers and suppliers to maximize their profits.
Source from: https://www.fashiontiy.com/knowledges/3_online_B2B_Market_that_can_help_your_business/ | https://medium.com/@fashiontiy-wholesale/3-online-b2b-marketplaces-that-can-help-you-grow-your-business-fbc133f3e0d6 | ['Fashiontiy', 'Online Wholesale Market'] | 2020-05-29 05:38:33.383000+00:00 | ['Fashion', 'Coupon', 'Wholesale', 'Business', 'Fashiontiy'] |
Will Death Be Like Birth? Questions for my Newborn. | Do you suppose the transition from life into death is as unbearably confounding as that of “death” into life? Suddenly we will be thrust into a world where we are practically blind, if not seeing through a blurred fog, and if discomfort should arise, should we feel exhausted, hungry, filthy from shitting our own pants, or just painfully alone, our only recourse is to scream and cry, and pray that some foreign being thirty times the size of us will quickly arrive to fill our voids. Unfortunately, when they do, we feel manhandled, utterly helpless, without awareness of our arms and legs, which would be futile anyway for their pathetic lack of strength. In every moment it feels as though death is imminent. Every hunger pang, every dampened diaper (or whatever we wear in the afterlife), every insufferable moment of isolation from love might kill us, and then when its source of remedy arrives there are a few moments of transition that bring us even closer to death. We are under their control. We rely on these beasts and there is nothing we can do but hope that they take mercy on us.
For a while there is no potential for joy. We are not alternating between sadness and happiness, the way the beasts seem to, but instead terror and relief, terror and relief. Fuck, I am about to die! No, wait, I’m OK. No, I am about to die! No, wait, I’m OK. I’m OK. They saved me. I’m OK. I’m OK. I am OK, thank God. I wake up. I am about to die!
Time shall pass, and will we acclimate like they do? Will we begin to recognize what and whom we like, understand, even if unconsciously so, the passage of time and our new routine? Will we learn the language of our new surroundings in death, no longer rely only on our loudest and most guttural sounds in desperate cries for help? As we transition from terrified confusion to a particular familiarity, we acquire preferences and specific displeasures. We can communicate them, but it is apparent that we are still not in control. Will we ever regain control? In moments where our newly learned communication fails we regress back to the bestial screams that served us previously. Are we destined to suffer all of the same stages of growth in death? Will time heal our wounds, we’ll gradually forget about our “before world,” and finally experience true joy in our new existence? We’ll have friends and things we enjoy doing, places that feel like home, and instead of labeling the terrifying beasts as mere caretakers, they will become our favorite people in our new world, by which everything and everyone else is defined. Around the same time we finally discover control we will briefly hate them and reject all that they are, until finally, somewhere in the depths of our unconscious we decide, for better or worse, that they were right all along. Our death was in fact no death, but another gift of life, and we shall begin our own journey back to life, by giving life, “or death” to another. This is what I think about every time I watch my newborn scream as I change her diaper. | https://medium.com/@davidfosteracupuncture/will-death-be-like-birth-questions-for-my-newborn-77d17e983d27 | ['David Foster'] | 2021-08-23 23:55:04.821000+00:00 | ['Birth', 'Newborn', 'Afterlife', 'Death And Dying', 'Mwc Reentry'] |
Invest in your Smart Devices, Don’t Just Buy Them | I am here sharing my insights on how and why I consider my smart devices as an investment. For the sake of this story, I am narrowing the smart devices to Smartphones, Tablets and Laptops, some of the few devices that are purchased on regular basis.
Your Device is an Extension of your Uniqueness
“People recognise themselves in their commodities” — Philosopher Herbert Marcuse
I know it's tempting to buy things about which everyone is raving about. However, the most popular or trending choice doesn't need to be the right choice for you. Every individual is unique in his/her own way. The question that you need to ask yourself is what you really need from your smart device. Don't just buy it because the world is saying it is right for you. You are unique and only you can decide what's right for you.
I know Influencers and Peer Pressure play a very important role in the purchase decision of a consumer. However, as mentioned in my previous article, I identify Influencers as Advertisers rather than my well-wishers. It is their job to influence (its right there in their name), your responsibility is to make an informed choice. We need to break the vicious cycle of peer pressure and regain control of our purchase decisions.
Commit in the Relationship
“Without commitment, you cannot have depth in anything.” — Neil Strauss
I know it will raise some eyebrows, but I have always committed to my devices as I commit to my relationships. If you don't give up on your relationships easily, then this is going to be a walk in the park for you. Accept the flaws of your device and be OK about it. Over a period of time, just like in relationships, you will keep learning new things about your device. It will become more resourceful and approachable. It will grow on you. You need to create an unshakeable bond, because your device will stand with you through thick and thin, and you need to do the same.
Set your own LifeCycle
“Everything has a lifecycle. You have to believe its going to change.” — Les Wexner
As a rule of thumb, I set the life of the device as when they die out or when its battery has started betraying me (Did you notice how often I use relationship terms when I am talking about my smart devices?). You will be more mature and mindful when choosing the successor to the heavenly departed.
A Responsible Consumer
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today” — Abraham Lincoln
According to the UN’s Global e-Waste Monitor 2020, a record 53.6 Million Metric Tonnes (Mt) of electric waste was generated worldwide in 2019, which is an increase of 21 per cent in the last five years.
You will be actively contributing to reducing your impact of E-Waste on the environment once you decide to hold on to your devices for a longer-term. You can give yourself a pat on the back that you are actually concerned about the environment rather than giving the same credit to the Corporate entities that will supply smartphone without charging brick in the name of reducing e-waste.
If they were really concerned about e-waste, rather than following an annual launch cycle, they should keep the launch cycle once in 2 or 3 years.
The Product at the Right Price
“The Right Price has nothing to do with greed. It has to do with demand.” — Josh Bernoff
Flagship phones from Apple and Samsung are relatively expensive in India as compared to the USA. Apple iPhone 12 Pro 128GB Costs USD 999 in the USA, whereas, it costs around INR 119900 (~USD 1599) in India. Similarly, Galaxy Note 20 Ultra costs USD 1100 in the USA, whereas, it costs INR 104999 (~USD 1399) in India. As observed, there is a markup of around USD 600 and USD 299 between the prices of the Apple iPhone 12 Pro and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra respectively.
Don't compromise on the quality when buying a smart device. You need to decide which features are a necessity for you and the features that you can sacrifice without giving a second thought.
I prefer buying last generation smartphone rather than buying a current-generation one. There is a substantial price cut and generally, smartphones have incremental updates year on year rather than radical changes. I see myself in a win-win situation where I am getting an economically priced last-gen flagship and not sacrificing much on incremental features. It is preferable on seeing the half glass full rather than half glass empty.
You may find attractive devices at a cheaper price but they heavily compromise on other aspects of the phone.
There is a difference between buying an economical product and a cheap one. Economical means the best that you can afford. Cheap means you can buy better but choose otherwise.
The Buck Stops Here
“Saving a small amount soon builds up to a large amount” — Scottish Proverb
The moment you decide to hold on to your devices for longer, you will be able to realize the importance of saving. It will allow you to buy your next device from your own savings rather than on credit. It has been always alluring to buy the latest and greatest on credit just to keep up with peer pressure and societal norm. I have been guilty of it as well. But nothing is truly gratifying than financial freedom and having the ability to ‘really’ afford something that you intend to purchase.
You can set a financial goal for your next purchase. Invest regularly towards reaching that goal. We are reversing the cycle, rather than paying EMIs on the product we have purchased in the past, we are allocating certain savings for the purchase of a future product. I know it’s a small step toward financial freedom, but a step in the right direction.
Don’t Buy The Product On Its Launch
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” — Leo Tolstoy
I don't buy the device as soon as it launched. As a rule of thumb, I wait for 6 months after the product is launched, as a large number of people have got their hands on the device and they can share their experiences and teething problem that they have used while using the product. Remember, the objective is to buy the product for long term use, and any issue that will act as a deterrent to that objective needs to be resolved. I rely more on real-life hands-on experience by common folks like me rather than going on the words of the Manufacturer or Influencer. | https://medium.com/illumination/invest-in-your-smart-devices-dont-just-buy-them-30a895eecbd7 | [] | 2021-03-16 08:54:51.304000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Consumerism', 'Technology', 'Investing', 'Smartphones'] |
Reinforcement Learning Explained: Overview, Comparisons and Applications in Business | Reinforcement learning vs supervised learning. In supervised learning, an agent “knows” what task to perform and which set of actions is correct. Data scientists train the agent on historical data with target variables (desired answers with predictive analysis) AKA labeled data. The agent receives direct feedback. As a result of training, an agent can forecast whether there will be target variables in new data or not. Supervised learning allows for solving classification and regression tasks.
Reinforcement learning doesn’t rely on labeled datasets: The agent isn’t told which actions to take or the optimal way of performing a task. RL uses rewards and penalties instead of labels associated with each decision in datasets to signal whether a taken action is good or bad. So, the agent only gets feedback once it completes the task. That’s how time-delayed feedback and the trial-and-error principle differentiate reinforcement learning from supervised learning.
Since one of the goals of RL is to find a set of consecutive actions that maximize a reward, sequential decision making is another significant difference between these algorithm training styles. Each agent’s decision can affect its future actions.
Reinforcement learning vs unsupervised learning. In unsupervised learning, the algorithm analyzes unlabeled data to find hidden interconnections between data points and structures them by similarities or differences. RL aims at defining the best action model to get the biggest long-term reward, differentiating it from unsupervised learning in terms of the key goal.
Reinforcement and deep learning. Most of reinforcement learning implementations employ deep learning models. They involve the use of deep neural networks as the core method for agent training. Unlike other machine learning methods, deep learning fits best for recognizing complex patterns in images, sounds, and texts. Additionally, neural networks allow data scientists to fit all processes into a single model without breaking down the agent’s architecture into multiple modules.
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Reinforcement learning use cases
Reinforcement learning is applicable in numerous industries, including internet advertising and eCommerce, finance, robotics, and manufacturing. Let’s take a closer look at these use cases.
Personalization
News recommendation. Machine learning has made it possible for businesses to personalize customer interactions at scale through the analysis of data on their preferences, background, and online behavior patterns.
However, recommending such content type as online news is still a complex task. News features are dynamic by nature and become rapidly irrelevant. User preferences in topics change as well.
Authors of the research paper DRN: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework for News Recommendation discuss three main challenges related to news recommendation methods. First, these methods only try to model current (short-term) reward (e.g., click-through rate that shows the ratios page/ad/email viewers that click on a link). The second issue is that current recommendation methods usually take into account the click/no click labels or ratings as users’ feedback. And third, these methods typically continue suggesting similar news to readers, so users can get bored.
The researchers used the Deep Q-Learning based recommendation framework that considers current reward and future reward simultaneously in addition to user return as feedback rather than clicks data.
Games personalization. Gaming companies also have joined the personalization party. Really, why not tailor a video game experience (rules and content) taking into account an individual player’s skill level, playing style, or preferred gameplay? Personalization of game experience is done through player modeling with the goal of increasing their enjoyment. A player model is an abstract description of a player based on their behavior in a game.
Game components that can be adapted include space, mission, character, narrative, music and sound, game mechanics, difficulty scaling, and player matching (in multiplayer games).
RL can be used for optimizing game experience in real-time. In Reinforcement learning for game personalization on edge devices, researchers demonstrate capabilities of this machine learning technique using Pong, last century’s arcade game, as the example.
Unity provides an ML toolset for researchers and developers that allows for training intelligent agents with reinforcement learning and “evolutionary methods via a simple Python API.”
It’s worth mentioning that we haven’t found any application of RL agents in production.
eCommerce and internet advertising
Specialists are experimenting with reinforcement learning algorithms to solve a problem of impressions allocation on eCommerce sites like eBay, Taobao, and Amazon. Impressions refer to the number of times a visitor sees some element of a web page, an ad or a product link with a description. Impressions are often used to calculate how much an advertiser has to pay to show his message on a website. Each time a user loads a page and the ad pops up, it counts as one impression.
These platforms aim to generate maximum total revenue from transactions, that’s why they must use algorithms that will allocate buyer impressions (show buyer requests on items) to the most appropriate potential merchants.
Most platforms use such recommendation methods as collaborative filtering or content-based filtering. These algorithms rank merchants using their “historical scores” that rely on the transaction history of the sellers with customers of similar characteristics. Sellers experiment with prices to get higher ranking positions, and these algorithms don’t take into account changes in pricing schemes.
As a solution to this problem, researchers applied a general framework of reinforcement mechanism design. The framework uses deep reinforcement learning to develop efficient algorithms that evaluate sellers’ behavior.
Online merchants can also conduct fraudulent transactions to improve their rating on eCommerce platforms to draw more buyers. And that, according to researchers, decreases the efficiency of use of buyer impressions and threatens the business environment. However, it’s possible to improve the platform’s impression allocation mechanism while increasing its profit and minimizing fraudulent activities with reinforcement learning.
In the article on AI and DS advances and trends, we discussed another RL use case — real-time bidding strategy optimization. It allows businesses to dynamically allocate the advertisement campaign budget “across all the available impressions on the basis of both the immediate and future rewards.” During real-time bidding, an advertiser bids on an impression, and their ad is displayed on a publisher’s platform if they win an auction.
Trading in financial industry
Financial institutions use AI-driven systems to automate trading tasks. Generally, these systems use supervised learning to forecast stock prices. What they can’t do is to decide what action to take in a specific situation: to buy, sell, or hold. Traders still must make business rules that are trend-following, pattern-based, or counter-trend to govern system choices. Because analysts may define patterns and confirmation conditions in different ways, there is a need for consistency.
Michael Kearns, computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, hired by Morgan Stanley, stock trading firm, in June 2018 noted that RL models allow for making predictions that take into account outcomes of one’s actions on the market. In addition, traders may also learn about the most appropriate time for action and/or the optimum size of a trade.
IBM built a financial trading system on its Data Science Experience platform that utilizes reinforcement learning. “The model winds around training on the historical stock price data using stochastic actions at each time step, and we calculate the reward function based on the profit or loss for each trade,” said Aishwarya Srinivasan from IBM. Developers use active return on investment to evaluate the model’s performance. An active return is the difference between the benchmark and the actual return expressed as a percentage. | https://medium.com/gobeyond-ai/reinforcement-learning-explained-overview-comparisons-and-applications-in-business-7ecc8549a39a | ['Altexsoft Inc'] | 2020-02-22 03:55:42.919000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Business'] |
Bitcoin ATMs — Everything you need to know! | ATM has made the money transaction process — an easy and accessible procedure. Similarly we have Bitcoin ATMs that are also known as BTMs — Bitcoin Teller Machine. They cannot really be termed with the traditional ATM as with BTM — one can purchase and sell BTC with the transaction to fiat money, however, BTM looks pretty much like ATM. This concept or this machine of BTC is majorly used by the users who are not a part of the banking system, people who are not tech-savvy and people that are underbanked
The Bitcoin ATM consists of a monitor, a bill acceptor, a dispenser, and a QR scanner. The BTM is directly connected through the Internet with the cryptocurrency exchange. While all this is tied together to make its user’s transaction easy and secure.
The first BTM ever reported was in the year 2013 of October in Vancouver, Canada at the Waves Coffee Shop. However, it was later removed but this new concept of process paved its way for the companies to innovate and initiate the Bitcoin ATMs.
The Installation Growth of the Cryptocurrency ATM
Using the Bitcoin ATM (BTM)
The first and foremost part of the process is to find the BTM near you. Many sites provide such services to help you locate the nearest BTM. Many BTM as per the manufacturer may have both the services or either one such as — both buying and selling BTC else, either selling or buying BTC. The user needs to have an ID which could be a phone number or any detail to access the BTC for the transaction. It depends on the operator and the machine about which detail is required to access as this helps to keep your BTC and transaction security. BTM mostly requires a phone number so that a One Time Password is sent for verification or else a few BTMs have BTM scanner that would require an ID card such as passport, driving license, and so forth.
Also Read, Everything About Bitcoin Wallet & Address!
Buying BTC
We’ll take Dollar as fiat money in the following process:
You need to click on the “Buy Bitcoin” option. Verification of the Identity is required to access buying Bitcoin. You need to enter the dollar amount and slip in the dollar notes as designated in the deposit area. Post depositing dollar, the machine will either do the following things — send BTC to your wallet, print of your offline wallet, or BTC is sent to your email address. Initially when you start a BTC wallet, a paper slip is printed along with QR code. This code needs to be scanned to receive the private key and thus the private key is utilized to gain access to your wallet for the BTC that you have purchased. In case if you want the BTC on your pre-existing wallet, you need to scan a QR code along with your wallet address with the help of BTM scanner. And if you want the BTC to be sent on your email address, you would need to choose the email option and the QR code will be sent accordingly. Also many BTM services enable you to set a password for the encryption of your email.
The only thing to note is the price of the Bitcoin in the BTM will be considerably 5% to 10% high for reasons such as the maintenance of the machine, rent, charges, volatility, regulatory requirements, and so forth.
Selling BTC
Firstly, you need to choose the option of Withdraw cash and choose Bitcoin. You need to enter the amount of BTC that you want to sell from your wallet. It needs to send it to the address or the QR that is mentioned on the screen of the BTM. Post the completion of the transaction, the fiat money is dispensed.
The only thing to note is that the selling price that is offered by the BTM is also 5% to 10% less than what the current exchange rate would be.
Other relative information on Bitcoin ATM | https://medium.com/coinscapture/bitcoin-atms-everything-you-need-to-know-dfb9537e8fdd | [] | 2020-05-25 07:11:46.829000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin Atm Machine', 'Wallet', 'Bitcoin', 'Crypto'] |
The Gas Station | The 1957 Chevy pulled off the mountain highway into a gas station. The family inside had been traveling across the country; the two parents in the front and the four children in the back. The second oldest child — a boy named Scott — was born the same year as the car, and was now eleven years old. As the four kids scrambled out of the car one of Scott’s younger sisters asked, “Where are we?”
“Colorado,” said Scott as he raced ahead of his siblings and made it to the restrooms first. But Scott could think of nothing else until he had relieved himself. He had not peed since New Mexico. Closing his eyes, he completely emptied his mind.
Coming out of the dark restroom, Scott’s eyes were greeted by a very bright sky. He shielded his eyes with his hand and looked around. There was a man in a uniform putting gas into the car. Scott’s mother was getting something out of the trunk. The rest of the family was in the restrooms or waiting to get in one. Scott then looked around at the tall mountains surrounding the gas station. Though it was summer, there was snow on the summits.
Suddenly, Scott got the urge to walk around to the side of the gas station. At the edge of the gas station property, Scott saw a green meadow with a small stream running through the middle of it. It was incredibly beautiful, but there was something else about it that Scott did not understand. The little meadow had a very strong pull on Scott and it seemed so very familiar, but he had never been there before. Following this feeling, Scott walked out into the meadow, and as he did so, he saw the mountains rising behind the gas station.
After getting out into the middle of the pasture, Scott stopped in his tracks and stared up at the mountains. That same feeling came over him in regards to the mountains. They looked so familiar, but he had never seen them before. The contours of the mountains and even the shape of the snow on them all seemed to correspond with a memory, but how could that be?
It was also the smell of the meadow that overwhelmed Scott. Finally taking his gaze off the mountains, he then looked at the tall grass gently swaying in the breeze. The sound of babbling water coming from the stream seemed to take over his hearing. Scott just stood there in the meadow mesmerized by the feelings that were washing over him. Slowly, he knelt down and touched the tops of the grasses and wildflowers. He did not pull at them, but rather just gently waved his hands over them. The smell of horses suddenly entered his thoughts as the breeze changed. Then, a bluebird began singing from atop a tall pine tree on the other side of the stream.
Scott tried hard to understand the feelings he was experiencing, but they just did not make sense. He sensed that he had been in this exact spot before, but he was a different person when he was there. But something made this spot special to that other him. Scott tried hard to feel what that special-ness was, but he could not identify it. So he just luxuriated in it, imprinting it on his memory. Someday he would be on land that felt like this again. Listening to the babbling stream, Scott felt like he was about to be transported to that time, but then someone shaking his shoulder brought him out of it.
It was his sister, “Where have you been Scott? Mother’s been looking for you. What were you looking at?”
“Nothing!” replied Scott emphatically. He got up and turned around to walk back to the gas station, ignoring his sister’s repeated questions.
Just then, Scott’s mother came around the corner of the gas station and saw Scott and his sister walking back. She immediately began hollering, “Will you get back here right this minute! What on earth do you think you’re doing, Scott? What did I say about wandering off? Will you hurry up!”
Scott and his sister began running. They headed straight to the car. The rest of the family were in their seats ready to resume the trip. Scott’s mother was still blabbering on, but Scott had tuned her out. She was saying something about getting to Wichita by sunset. The fight for the window seat was a quick one, with Scott winning. As the 57 Chevy left the gas station and re-entered the highway, he stared at the meadow and the mountains as they came into view. After they passed the meadow, Scott continued staring at the mountains, enjoying their every feature, until he could see them no more. | https://whitefeather9.medium.com/the-gas-station-9603bb60cf78 | ['White Feather'] | 2018-05-23 13:44:09.792000+00:00 | ['Literature', 'Short Story', 'Fiction', 'Childhood', 'Life'] |
Did the Paris climate deal deliver? | (Pic: UNFCCC/Flickr)
It's five years since the Paris Agreement was gaveled through… but was it any good? It’s a tricky question. Based on emissions, temperature data and impacts, no. But did we really expect to turn the ship in 5 years flat? Here’s a different take…
The team at @SystemIQ_LTD have crunched the numbers & reviewed how far + fast sectors have shifted since 2015. Their take is the global economy could be a decade away from seismic tipping points that see the world move fast towards low carbon.
In 2015, zero-carbon technologies and business models could rarely compete with incumbent carbon-solutions. In 2020, zero-carbon solutions are competitive in sectors representing around 25% of emissions. In 2030 the figure’s looking like 70%.
(Pic: The Paris Effect / Systemiq)
What does this mean for a COVID-smashed world, where 2021 is shaping up to be a hellish mix of recessions and mass unemployment? Well, the 2020s could see a net increase of 35 million low carbon jobs if governments roll out the right policies + invest wisely.
Can the low carbon acceleration be pinned to Paris? Not entirely, but partly. In 2014 no-one talked of net zero targets. Now 120+ countries either have carbon neutrality plans or are working on them. By mid 2021 the US, China, EU, UK, Japan, Korea, Canada will have these targets.
The Paris “ratchet” is nationally determined, not imposed by the UN. Leaders get to decide. And they are increasingly deciding to be more ambitious. In addition, cities and regions are joining the party, meaning that well over 50% of global GDP now has Paris-aligned targets. Policies are needed, sure, but the goal is clearer.
We can’t be confident this means a climate-safe planet is assured, but we know technology shifts fast. In 2014, the IEA forecast that average solar prices would reach $0.05/kWh by 2050. It took only 6 not 36 years to hit that price. Solar and wind will be the cheapest form of new generation everywhere later this decade.
Before 2024, electric vehicles (EVs) will beat internal combustion on sticker price parity, a fraction of the maintenance, unparalleled acceleration, and near equal range. Combustion engines could go the same way as DVDs. Once an innovation, now killed by Netflix.
(Pic: The Paris Effect / Systemiq)
It’s not just power and EVs. Today, there are 66 zero-emissions shipping pilots and demonstrations. 200 electric airplanes are in development. SystemIQ reckon electric aviation will be commercial by the mid 2020s — 2030s for larger planes. Low carbon steel, cement, aluminium pilots are a reality.
Big oil sees the writing on the wall, quitting long-life projects: since 2014, the average lifetime of major industry projects has declined from 50 to 30 years and the trend is accelerating. Money spent on dirty, old sectors could be a dollar that an investor might not get back.
Yeah, but. The 2020 UNEP Emissions Gap is bleak. A thread by climate scientist Glen Peters this week highlighted that governments have largely failed to use their COVID stimulus packages to go green not dirty. Dollars have been poured into fossil fuel industry black holes instead of backing the future.
Models are often wrong (Pic: The Paris Effect/Systemiq)
Temperatures continue to rise, impacts mount, climate finance flows go down, the whole concept of multilateralism looks shaky. And yet, to rip off the Systemiq report’s Executive Summary, ‘The case for enlightened self- interest has never been stronger’.
Tangible shifts are taking place in the face of fierce, wealthy and powerful incumbent forces. At the same time external elements are moving faster than many realise. The digitisation of the economy and connected world is accelerating learning. Low interest rates benefit investors in new capital.
And yes, public opinion is shifting. Consider elections for the EU Presidency, UK, New Zealand and US were all won in 2019–2020 on a strong climate platform. Polling (and I defer to @LeoBarasi on this) consistently shows strong support for greener spaces, cleaner air, a safer environment.
This is not to say we’ll be fine on climate, that all investors in the City of London and Wall Street are piling into sustainable investments (although increasing numbers are). And it’s not to say the changes aren’t scary for many who rely on incumbent high carbon sectors. But it is to say they’re already happening, and we either accept that and swim with the flow, or ultimately we get swept along.
A final thought. Tackling the climate crisis is often now referred to as a ‘sprint’. Sprinters typically take 40–50 metres to hit top speed. I’d argue that post Paris, the low carbon athlete is in the 10–20m transition zone phase. Heads coming up, bodies straightening, legs powering.
Key rivals — impacts, temperatures, emissions — are ahead. But the low carbon runner isn’t close to top speed. The 2020s are when they turn up the (green) gas. A decade of transition and truth awaits. | https://medium.com/@edking-i/did-the-paris-climate-deal-deliver-186ac79cb806 | ['Ed King'] | 2020-12-10 00:05:42.061000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Clean Technology', 'Paris Agreement', 'Global Warming', 'United Nations'] |
Which Covid-19 Tests are Considered Most Accurate? | image courtesy of Omar Medina
What happens when you test positive for Covid-19?
There are a few things to know before testing, and that is what type of tests are available and which are the most accurate?
To date there are three Covid-19 tests, the first being a rapid test known as an antigen test.
The antigen test or rapid test uses an oral, throat, or nose swab, that screens for Covid-19 proteins using a device such as BD Veritor System, commonly purchased on Amazon or other online shopping platforms.
BD Veritor Plus Analyzer courtesy of Amazon
The rapid test can display results within 15 to 30 minutes, yet as studies conclude, the rapid test may not be accurate, but can be a great tool for early discovery and implementing isolation precautions.
The Centers for Disease Control advised individuals who display Covid-19 symptoms, but test negative from a rapid antigen test, to follow up with a PCR test to confirm the results.
Due to improper collection technique, antigen tests can sometimes produce false positive results simply because they scan for additional viruses including type A & B influenzas.
Second type of Covid-19 test
The polymerase chain reaction.
The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or RNA test, is a procedure in molecular biology used to amplify small amounts of DNA used as analysis for diagnosing the presence of disease.
Samples for PCR testing is primarily performed using mucus specimens from deep nasal or throat swabbing.
Typical result time is 1–3 days.
The PCR Test is considered the gold standard for diagnosing active coronavirus infection but does not indicate if you’ve had Covid-19 in the past.
Third Type of Coronavirus Test
The Covid-19 Antibody Test, also known as, Serology test, are screening tests for coronavirus antibodies using blood samples which determine if you were previously infected with the virus.
It is recommended that blood serum testing be done 14 days after exposure to Coronavirus.
Taking a blood serum test too soon, can cause inaccurate results.
Individuals develop antibodies when their body’s immune system responds to an infection.
In most coronavirus cases It usually takes a week for symptoms to appear after infection from SARS-CoV-2.
Antibodies will typically start presenting 2–3 weeks after infection from SARS-Cov-2.
So, let us use a hypothetical situation to better understand each testing procedure.
Situation #9
Brian works in a long-term-care facility where he receives a weekly test for Covid-19.
On December 18, 2020, Brian was tested by his employer using a rapid test, as well as a PCR test.
The rapid test conducted by his job revealed a positive result within 15 minutes, and Brian was placed on a 14-day quarantine by his employer as precautionary protocol.
The PCR sample was sent to an outside lab for additional screening.
Within two days, Brian’s result from the PCR Test was complete and revealed he was negative for Covid-19.
So, what happened here? Why did the two tests show conflicting results?
As stated before, rapid false positive or false negative results can occur due to mishandling specimen samples, and the rapid test’s ability to screen for other viruses including other respiratory tract infections not related to the SARS-COV-2.
In this scenario, Brian had the flu, and the rapid testing system picked up on the influenza virus, resulting in a positive test.
But the PCR test performed in the third-party laboratory was able to confirm that Brian did not have Covid-19.
For added confirmation, Brian requested a blood serum Covid-19 test 14 days later to determine if antibodies from the coronavirus had formed in his body.
With the use of the blood serum test, it was safe to say Brian had not been previously infected with the SARS-CoV-2 because no antibodies had formed within his body.
Brian was cleared to return to work.
As you can see, all three tests are vital to the screening and early detection of Covid-19 and must be used in conjunction to accurately diagnose the Covid-19 virus.
Current Covid-19 symptoms as stated by the CDC.
Fever or chills
Cough
Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
Fatigue
Muscle or body aches
Headache
New loss of taste or smell
Sore throat
Congestion or runny nose
Nausea or vomiting
Diarrhea.
Please follow up with your health care provider for any of the reported symptoms.
REFERENCE:
BD 256066 Veritor Plus System Veritor Analyzer: Amazon.com: Industrial & Scientific
3 Types of COVID-19 Tests, and Which One Is the Most Accurate | Health.com
Symptoms of Coronavirus | CDC
Polymerase Chain Reaction: Genetic Testing for COVID-19 Coronavirus (emedicinehealth.com)
Rapid Testing Is Less Accurate Than the Government Wants to Admit — ProPublica
FDA warns about potential false positive results with rapid COVID-19 antigen tests | Health Tips and News (timesnownews.com) | https://medium.com/@oliviameadows4/which-covid-19-tests-are-considered-most-accurate-538ff99e2d3b | ['Olivia Meadows'] | 2020-12-27 22:13:01.874000+00:00 | ['Covid 19 Testing', 'Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Sars Cov2', 'BlackLivesMatter'] |
Should You Follow MicroStrategy & Use Debt to Buy Bitcoin? | MicroStrategy, the billion dollar publicly traded business intelligence software company became famous among the Bitcoin community after announcing it has adopted Bitcoin as their primary treasury reserve asset. Now it has taken its Bitcoin position one big step further.
MicroStrategy is issuing $650M of unsecured corporate debt at an interest rate of 0.75% that is not due until 2025.
This means that MicroStrategy is borrowing $650M at an incredibly low interest rate without having to post any collateral. All MicroStrategy must do for the next 5 years is pay $4.9M in interest each year, which their annual cash flows are more than enough to cover that expense.
And of course, as long as Bitcoin goes up more than 0.75% annually over the next 5 years, this will be a profitable trade for MicroStrategy. This shouldn’t be a tall order for Bitcoin either, as it is up 5,214% over the previous 5 years.
Can individuals take on debt structured like this?
Unfortunately, nobody is willing to give individuals an unsecured (you put up no collateral) loan at a 0.75% interest rate that isn’t due for another 5 years.
If you own your own private company, you may have opportunities to take on debt that most individuals do not have, but personal debt options are rather limited compared to the financial markets that billion dollar publicly traded companies have access to.
If you want to take on personal debt to buy Bitcoin, you’re likely going to have to put up some form of collateral. It is relatively easy to borrow against three things. They are real estate, stocks, and Bitcoin.
Believe it or not, if you have a mortgage on your house and you own Bitcoin, you already are a leveraged Bitcoin holder. In fact, if you have any debt (student loans, car loan, credit card, etc.) you are using leverage. You could use your Bitcoin holdings to pay off your debt, but you’d rather have exposure to Bitcoin and take on the risk (of the debt).
Let’s take a look into each of the three options you could leverage against to buy more Bitcoin.
Real Estate
Pros:
You likely already own a house. It’s relatively easy to get a mortgage. 30yr Fixed Rate Mortgage currently has an interest rate of less than 3%. Real Estate can generate cash flow (tenants). Not as volatile as stocks.
Cons:
You have to make a (somewhat significant) down payment. COVID uncertainty poses a risk to market prices especially in large cities.
Stocks
Pros:
Easy to borrow money through a brokerage account (Etrade, Fidelity, etc.)
Cons:
Higher interest rates than mortgages. Risk of a margin call because they are volatile and traded daily.
Bitcoin
Pros:
If you want to buy more Bitcoin you likely already have Bitcoin. You can do it in a non rehypothecated manner (Unchained Capital).
Cons:
High interest rates (nascent market). Risk of a margin call due to extreme volatility.
Fragility of Debt
All of the options require you to post collateral, and you have margin risk that the collateral you post goes under the amount of you owe. MicroStrategy is not exposed to these risks due to the nature of how corporate debt can be issued.
Taking on debt will amplify your returns. Due to potential tail risks and unexpected volatility, debt makes your portfolio fragile.
In The Investor’s Podcast with Preston Pysh and Luke Gromen, they talk about how volatile gold traded (on a month to month basis) during the Weimar hyperinflation.
If you look back to a chart of the price of gold in the Weimar Republic, the line appears to be going entirely up, but if you zoom in to see the price of gold at the end of each month, nasty quick down swings tended to occasionally follow the endless parabolic upswings.
Weimar Hyperinflation by PlanB on Twitter
Luke referenced this and mentioned that if you were using leverage to buy more gold, you were likely “wiped out four or five times”.
This is an extremely important point to understand. Debt makes your portfolio fragile, especially if you haven’t structured it correctly.
Leverage Long Bitcoin?
With that said, if you have found Bitcoin to be the world’s safest asset, and you have extra steady cash flow from your job, business, or real estate, it may make sense to use a small amount of debt to purchase Bitcoin.
As long as you have more than enough steady cash flow to cover all potential monthly payments on your debt, and the value of all your assets (bitcoin, real estate, stocks, etc.) is significantly higher than the amount you owe on your liabilities, then it might be worth considering.
Big Picture — Speculative Attack
While discussing a speculative attack entirely requires its own unique report, using debt denominated in a weak currency to purchase a stronger, more scarce currency is the definition of a speculative attack.
The US Dollar and all other fiat currencies today are debt based. Meaning more dollars can only be created by issuing new debt within the financial system. Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy just “created” an additional $650 Million USD to buy a share of Bitcoin — the only money with a truly fixed supply.
A speculative attack has the potential to start an aggressive positive feedback loop. As more companies, individuals, and even governments begin borrowing in weaker currencies to buy harder money like Bitcoin, they devalue the weak currency (by borrowing it), and increase the value of the hard currency (by buying and saving it).
As MicroStrategy does this, it begins to incentivize other corporations and individuals to do the same because the value of the dollar falls and the value of Bitcoin increases.
It is very possible that we are witnessing the early stages of a large speculative attack on all fiat currencies.
Written by Joe Burnett (@Moon__Capital), Research Analyst at Mimesis Capital. | https://medium.com/@mimesiscapital/should-you-follow-microstrategy-use-debt-to-buy-bitcoin-6b208d5beec3 | ['Mimesis Capital'] | 2020-12-18 19:46:13.268000+00:00 | ['Wealth', 'Bitcoin', 'Money', 'Finance'] |
Eustress is the key to personal and professional growth. | Did you know that we can actually also create eustress , which is actually “good” or beneficial stress? It can help to motivate and energize us, and give u… | https://medium.com/@tpseager/eustress-is-the-key-to-personal-and-professional-growth-a38b427331d | ['Thomas P Seager'] | 2020-12-07 14:22:45.505000+00:00 | ['Anxiety', 'Stress Management', 'Stress And Anxiety', 'Stress Relief', 'Stress'] |
What is your fashion style? identify yours. | What is your fashion style? identify yours.
Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash
Your style is obviously an advancement and will change after some time contingent upon different elements identifying with your way of life. Notwithstanding, being sure about who you need to present to the world is something that is probably not going to be definitely extraordinary regardless of what phase of life you’re in. Since you’ve found your tones and comprehend and love your body shapes the last advance prior to building your closet is to track down your own style.
There are 7 generally regular style characters with effectively recognizable names, you should simply find which ones you identify with most. Once more, recollect that we are altogether remarkable and similar as with body shapes it’s possible you will not fit precisely into one of the style characters. They are rules to help you sort out your style character by taking motivation from and joining the attributes that impact you.
First, have a consider how you would …
CONTINUE READING PLEASE CLICK HERE | https://medium.com/@intofashionfox/what-is-your-fashion-style-identify-yours-8db27d14d45e | ['In To Fashion Fox'] | 2021-05-08 21:46:41.694000+00:00 | ['Style', 'Family', 'Women', 'Beauty', 'Fashion'] |
Must-Have Tools to Master Your Freelancing Finances | Must-Have Tools to Master Your Freelancing Finances
For many of us, freelancing equals freedom; freedom to set your own hours, freedom to choose your work, your clients, even your location.
But, as anyone who’s swapped the 9-to-5 for freelancing will tell you, with freedom comes new (and annoying) responsibilities. Like looking after your own IT needs, hunting for customers and paying the right amount of tax.
Yep tax. Tax is one of the not-fun parts of freelancing, along with its totally un-sexy cousin, bookkeeping.
Bookkeeping— keeping track of what you earn and what you spend — is, for most of us, an irksome task, something we prefer to avoid. But for anyone who earns a living as an independent operator, it’s a necessary evil. If you don’t keep track of your freelancing finances, tax time is going to suck extra hard.
At tax time you need to know exactly how much money you have earned from your freelancing activities, and how much you have spent to earn it.
If you report the wrong amount you will either pay too much tax or be breaking the law. If you don’t have good records of the money you have spent you might miss out on valuable tax deductions.
Tax is, arguably the most important reason to keep your freelancing finances organised. But there are other reasons too. If you don’t have good financial records you won’t know how profitable your business is. This, in turn, robs you of the opportunity to make better decisions. And if your finances are really in a mess you might not even realise that your business is in trouble, until it is too late!
These are the five tools that will help you get your freelancing finances sorted, so you can sleep soundly and feel confident and in control.
Photo by BRUNO EMMANUELLE on Unsplash
1. A Dedicated Bank Account
You need a dedicated bank account for your freelancing activities. It should be completely separate from your personal money. Deposit all your freelancing revenue into the dedicated account and use it to pay all your expenses. A debit card linked to the account is a convenient way to pay for expenses like subscriptions and website fees.
You don’t need a special ‘business’ account if you are new to freelancing, just a new, separate account in your own name.
Of course you will want to use your freelancing income for personal needs. The best way to do this is to withdraw money from the dedicated account and deposit it straight to your personal account. Don’t use a debit/credit card attached to your ‘business’ account to directly purchase anything that is not related to your freelancing. If you do so, tax time will become a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
Keeping your personal and business accounts separate is the easiest and most powerful way to simplify your freelancing finances.
2. A Killer Invoice Template
Invoices are a record of who you worked for, what you did for them, what they were supposed to pay, and when. Badly made invoices are annoying for your customers and are less likely to be paid on time (or at all!).
A good invoice template has
clearly communicated expectations for payment,
easy-to-follow instructions for how your customers should pay and,
information needed to meet your government and tax obligations.
A great-looking invoice template can also give you a feeling of confidence and authority… a crappy black and white Microsoft word document is no way to ask for payment!
If you want your customers to pay by credit card, create your invoices in Stripe or PayPal. Both platforms have easy-to-customise invoice templates and invoice management dashboards.
Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash
3. A Simple Spreadsheet
Keep track of the money you earn and spend using a spreadsheet.
You will outgrow spreadsheets as a bookkeeping tool eventually, but they are the perfect solution for new freelancers.
In your spreadsheet, enter the date, the amount and the description (or invoice number) of each payment that comes into and goes out of your bank account. Put the amounts going into your business and the amounts going out in different columns or even on different worksheets (tabs) of the spreadsheet so that they are easy to add up.
You can also use a spreadsheet to keep track of debtors (customers who owe you money) and tax obligations.
Set the spreadsheet up so you can easily calculate;
the amount of money you have earned (revenue) in a certain period, such as a month or a year.
the amount of money you have spent on different types of expenses, such as office expenses, computer equipment, website hosting.
Note that you also need to keep copies of receipts and other proofs of purchase as well as entering the amounts into a spreadsheet.
4. Obsessively Organised Folders
Tool number four — obsessively organised folders —is almost too simple to be called a tool. But don’t overlook the power of a good filing system.
Having to keep track of money is onerous enough without constantly losing files and documents. A well-set-up group of folders makes things easy to find, which keeps stress levels under control.
So channel your inner neat-freak and create a beautifully structured, numerically ordered folder system.
Easy-to-find records equals happier freelancers. Screenshot by author
Suggested folders:
Invoices. Use subfolders for templates, unpaid invoices and paid invoices. It’s also a great idea to create new folders for records from previous financial years so it’s easier to find current information.
Receipts. Keep receipts from purchases you have made. You need these to be able to legally claim tax deductions.
Bookkeeping spreadsheets. If you’re an offline-type-of person, keep your Excel spreadsheet files organised in a folder on your device. If you’re a Google Sheets user then use an offline folder to house your downloaded backups (you do make offline backups, don’t you?!)
Bank statements. Okay, okay, downloading bank statements is so last-decade. But if your bank is anything like mine, then getting copies of years-past statements is annoyingly difficult. Tax rules usually require you to hang on to financial records for many years, so it’s prudent to download and keep bank statements offline.
Business registration documents. Keep trademark records, business registrations, licence numbers together in a folder so they are easy to find.
Tax records. File documents that you sent to the tax office and any they sent to you in their own special folder.
It goes without saying that all important documents should be backed up to the cloud or to a separate hard drive (ideally both).
5. A Vision Board
Just kiddin’, a vision board might have pretty pictures on it but it will NOT help you get your finances sorted.
However, do keep some ‘white space’ in your schedule. White space is time you haven’t allocated for any particular task.
Every week or two, use the white space in your schedule to think about your freelancing money situation:
Are you making as much money as you want?
Are you focusing on the most profitable activities?
Is your spending under control?
When your white space can’t accommodate creative or strategic thinking, use it for the boring, mundane tasks associated with money management instead. Like getting your bookkeeping spreadsheet up to date.
No excuses! | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/must-have-tools-to-master-your-freelancing-finances-1a89683a5aad | ['Karen Cherry'] | 2021-04-09 05:54:12.297000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Freelancing', 'Founders', 'Home Business', 'Side Hustle'] |
Take Back Your Online Privacy With Dave z Ameryki VPN Discount | VPN is a virtual private network that encrypts your data on your way to the vast internet and back. Instead of seeing everything you do, your ISP sees only that you’re using a VPN. This is why you can bypass geographical restrictions, reach videos and news articles that were previously unavailable to you and get a lot more out of your streaming platforms.
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If you want to get back to watching Dave in America you can click here. | https://medium.com/@sandersbo796/take-back-your-online-privacy-with-dave-z-ameryki-vpn-discount-ed200e26a0da | ['Bob Sanders'] | 2020-09-10 12:30:05.939000+00:00 | ['Deal', 'Deals And Discounts', 'Discount', 'VPN', 'Coupon'] |
Day 43: 2020 Pandemic. Don’t Lose Track of Other Potential Disasters During The Pandemic | California was shaking the other morning. We had deadly tornadoes in this area last week killing 33 that would have been front page news except that COVID-19 is the focus. The summer is looming with warmer weather. The southwest is still suffering from an almost two decades long drought.
Yes, happy news on top of happy news, I know. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean people have been out to get me. You know who I’m talking about.
I think we all now accept that being prepared is key. People have asked me how I had surgical masks and N100 respirators before this happened and it was just part of my preparation.
BTW-if you have a respirator like an N100 or an N95 with an exhale valve, you should still wear a surgical mask over it because while it protects you, it doesn’t do as much for those around you with the exhale. Anywho.
My wife and I were talking about when this first reared up and we ramped up preparation, well before I even started this daily blog. How we worst-cased things and made sure we were ready. I really don’t believe we’ve hit peak yet-in fact I think a lot of these states that are thinking about opening up are going to be slammed (read Georgia)-but so far, social distancing and other measures have helped prevent it being horrible; simply terrible as we reach 50,000 dead.
Since this started I’ve expanded my preparation, not only for ourselves, but to check out various things, such as solar power. I’m still working with it and plan in the next week or so to take some of this stuff to the mountains and test it out at a base camp. Yesterday, I activated a two way satellite messenger because it’s always concerned me when I’m by myself out in the wild, out of cell phone coverage, and something happens back home with my wife or to me in the wilds. You know, sort of 127 hours thing. So I’ll let you know how that works out. But that’s for later. BTW- did you know park rangers have had to perform more than 2 dozen rescues of idiots going to check it out from the same area where that event occurred, including one man who fell, broke his leg and had to crawl for four days, trying to get out? Duh.
I did earlier posts on basic preparation and I’m going to circle back. While a pandemic is perhaps the only, definitely one of the few, natural disasters that doesn’t lead to a lack of water, the #1 priority in normal preparation is water. My base line is two cases of bottled water per person in your household. Just get them, put them in a dark closet and forget about them. Until you need them. Then a first aid kit for basic things. I’m a fan of having a Quik-Clot bandage handy. I’ve got a bunch and have used it once. I carry them on my bike, in my day pack, in my Grab-n-Go bags, in my Jeep, etc.
An emergency radio, that also doubles as a flashlight and an emergency cell phone charger is another must have. And finally a survival manual with first aid info. I’ve got three I recommend.
Here’s the slideshow on the basics you can accumulate for under $60.
Stay safe. Stay positive. Be like Cool Gus. Or even Scout.
The Green Beret Preparation and Survival Guide. Also now in Kindle Unlimited.
The Green Beret Pocket-Sized Survival Guide (same as above, minus the preparation part in order to be smaller in print) | https://medium.com/@sifiauthor/day-43-2020-pandemic-dont-lose-track-of-other-potential-disasters-during-the-pandemic-2c175b41b147 | ['Bob Mayer'] | 2020-04-23 22:23:46.300000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Covid 19', 'Survival', 'Disaster', 'Preparation'] |
Advice for beginners in marketing | After two years of marketing experience I wanted to share what have I learned from the whole process. This can benefit everyone but I think it will be particularly useful for people getting started. I hope you find it useful.
Understand the product you are trying to market
It’s very important you know the product you’re trying to promote. This will allow you to provide valuable content that people can actually benefit from. It allows you to see the pain points users have, ask insightful questions, have very accurate ads, and so on. Besides, people are hyper-aware of bullshit nowadays so keep that in mind. Also, If you have the opportunity to speak with a customer don’t hesitate to pick his brain. Ask all sorts of questions people like being the center of attention and feeling acknowledged. Of course, use your social skills to see if you’re being annoying or not.
Good copywriting and sales are a must
Copywriting and sales are everywhere, they intertwine with your life on a daily basis. Everything from your first tinder message to a bot to how you order your coffee. It’s important you know to communicate and grab people’s attention. Especially in times like these where most people’s attention span is 7 seconds due to platforms like Tik Tok and social media. I’m 99% sure you have been bombarded with ads from gurus from all around the world.
Let me just tell you as someone who has spent thousands on courses one of the most important things I have learned is not to judge a book by its cover. Don’t think that you will get some godly advice only because you are paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a course. I recently read two books that offered me the same value if not even more. The sad part was that they were both $20… Those books helped me close dozens of high ticket sales and changed my whole mindset of marketing. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a product that isn’t hundreds of dollars won’t benefit your career. If you want some of the resources that helped me on my journey here is a wonderful resource https://gumroad.com/a/119403635. Also, there are hundreds of blogs that provide quality resources, just make sure to do your research to filter out the bs.
Know how to use your tools
Depending on your budget I would strongly recommend you buy some tools. Here are some of the tools I use on a daily basis:
Semrush — really good for SEO analysis, competitor research, keyword research, and content ideas. (PAID)
— really good for SEO analysis, competitor research, keyword research, and content ideas. Google trends — I mainly use this when researching niche industries and keyword research. (FREE)
— I mainly use this when researching niche industries and keyword research. Moz — I mainly use this tool for SEO purposes, if you don’t have the budget I would recommend picking Semrush or Moz both tools are great. (PAID)
— I mainly use this tool for SEO purposes, if you don’t have the budget I would recommend picking Semrush or Moz both tools are great. Hubspot — I use this for my CRM, it provides a lot of integrations through zapier which I love (PAID)
— I use this for my CRM, it provides a lot of integrations through zapier which I love Google Tag Assistant (browser extension) — I mainly use this extension when dealing with SEO. You can also use it to analyze your competitor's pages to see what tracking they have enabled (FREE)
(browser extension) — I mainly use this extension when dealing with SEO. You can also use it to analyze your competitor's pages to see what tracking they have enabled Screaming frog — This is one of the best SEO tools I have used, its free up to the first 500 pages you analyze on your website. (Freemium)
— This is one of the best SEO tools I have used, its free up to the first 500 pages you analyze on your website. Google keyword planner — I use this for keyword research and analyzing what keywords have high CPC. If people are paying big bucks for those particular keywords they most likely convert into sales. (FREE)
— I use this for keyword research and analyzing what keywords have high CPC. If people are paying big bucks for those particular keywords they most likely convert into sales. Mautic — I’m currently using this tool for email campaigns, it’s a bit more technical than most tools but it provides you with very valuable insights and it’s (FREE)
— I’m currently using this tool for email campaigns, it’s a bit more technical than most tools but it provides you with very valuable insights and it’s Google Analytics — One of the most essential platforms I use to get valuable insights. Strongly recommend having a solid understanding of this tool (FREE)
I use a lot of additional software but I think that covers a good portion. The best part is that there are hundreds of videos and blogs with educational content about these platforms. So if you’re confused just google your question and you will most likely get your answer in a matter of seconds.
Know which platforms to target
Understand where your potential clients are getting their information from. What social media platforms they use daily, what forums they like to go on, what kind of content they like to watch ect.
This will help you with a couple of things:
You can get amazing content ideas from questions people ask
You can become a recognized figure in that particular domain and build authority
You can get valuable feedback
You will know their pain points better
You can target those particular channels with hyper-targeted ads
And most importantly you will know what provides value
Always try to provide value
I think this one is crucial, whatever you do always try to benefit your clients. There was an interesting discussion on a forum about email campaigns. One member was stating that he is very careful with his email list because he is afraid of spamming. The response which he got stuck with me to this day, “if you are emailing them the winning lottery numbers do you think they will complain about spam”?. It comes down to providing valuable content on all fronts. I’m sure you have heard the phrase content is king. I’m not saying you should spam but if you are getting complaints most of the time it means you’re not providing enough valuable content.
One of the most important things that good content gives you is authority. When people see you understand their pain points and you offer an easy solution that’s when things start to kick off. I mean you have hundreds of examples like Gary Vee, Tony Robbins, and Russell Brunson.
At the end of the day just don’t stop trying new things and listen to the feedback. | https://medium.com/@simeonovalt/advice-for-beginners-in-marketing-ade214b55158 | [] | 2020-12-23 02:40:24.616000+00:00 | ['Copywriting', 'Marketing', 'Beginner', 'Advice', 'Sales'] |
Forever Dream — (Chapter 6) The Meeting With My Brother | I lean back on the locked classroom door and stare out the corridor to watch the sunrise over the sandpit in the highschool yard. It’s been almost 2 hours since I woke up near the teacher’s staff but I’m not too concerned. I like waking up in school.
I look at my wristwatch once more and smile when I realise that Ami will be here any minute now. She’ll probably jump down next to me and lie down in my lap. We’ll fight over who gets to lie down in whose lap until Yumi comes and then we’ll probably fight some more on who lets to lean on Yumi’s shoulders while waiting for someone to come and open the classroom door for us.
And sure enough, like some ghost that can read minds, her footsteps echo in the corridor. My smile stretches wider and it almost feels like my face with tear apart. But then it drops just as quickly.
Because standing at the end of the corridor is not Ami or even Yumi. Standing at the end of the corridor is a figure, dressed in a black turtleneck, a tan blazer, trousers and black loafers. At the end of the corridor is my brother, his face hidden by the darkness.
A cold sweat breaks down my spine as I find myself unable to move. He’s walking towards me, threateningly. Mockingly. Silently jeering me to run away. His footsteps echo the walls of the corridor like an earthquake. Getting more violent as he comes closer.
He stops an arms-length away. His face is hidden under darkness but I know he’s smirking at me. My lungs refuse to function and my limbs curl up in some form of protection. My voice is lost.
He hunches over me — hands in pocket. He smells just like Papa did but it’s not calming me down. It makes me shiver in fear.
He pulls his hand out from his blazer pocket and is about to reach out to me. His hands are gloved — to hide his deed. And he’s going to take me away again.
No! No, I won’t go back. I can’t…
My body goes numb when he holds my arm and pulls me up. Looming over me like some dark shadow ready to devour me alive. He starts walking away, pulling me in tow. And I can’t help limply follow.
He takes long, languid steps towards the exit. Taking his own sweet time, enjoying the darkness around us. The sun should’ve risen by now but it seems to have betrayed me too (much like my body that continues to follow him). We are turning the corridor when another set of hurried footsteps echo in turn with ours and a hand grabs my free arm pulling me away from the man. And just like that, I fall into Ami’s arm.
My brother turns angrily raising his fist to hit me but stops. His fist hangs in the air as he stares at Ami then stumbles back a step. Then two. And just as threateningly he had arrived, starts running away.
Ami holds me tight in her embrace as he runs back to the exit, taking away the darkness with him. The sun rises as he leaves and my breathing returns to normal again.
I smile when he disappears into nothingness as if swallowed by the light. And hide away into Ami’s arms. I know I’m safe as long they’re here.
After all, my brother may be evil but he too has fears. Just like Johan Liebert was scared of forgetting Anna, my brother is terrified of my friends.
He’s terrified of what they can do. | https://medium.com/@dunyazatde/forever-dream-chapter-6-the-meeting-with-my-brother-b091393cde3b | [] | 2020-11-22 19:41:55.853000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Fiction', 'Series', 'Forever Dream', 'Magical Realism'] |
Scottish Minister Visits local Veterans | Ayrshire Veterans Breakfast Club enjoyed a welcomed visit from the Scottish Veteran Minister Mr Graeme Dey MSP and North Ayrshire Provost Ian Clarkson as part of the Scottish Government Veterans consultation.
Ayrshire Veterans in Saltcoats
This is extremely important work raising awareness of the Unforgotten Forces programme.
Decorated Veteran Suzanne Fernando, who served with the Royal Military Police said: “The Melbourne Cafe, Saltcoats opened there doors specially for the visit. We had a great turn out and everyone had a lovely morning filled with tea, cakes and banter! Our Veteran Breakfast Club meet every Monday morning in the Melbourne Cafe and all are welcome. Numerous veterans have settled or are settling across Ayrshire after completing service or on discharge, and whilst most of us do not experience serious problems some do. This can be made worse by isolation and the availability of drugs and alcohol. As recently reported although Service in the Armed Forces is a positive and rewarding experience for the majority of those who serve, research indicates that Armed forces personnel and veterans can, like others, experience mental health problems like myself.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can affect all walks of life, members of the Armed Forces are frequently exposed to distressing sights and experiences on deployment, research has found that rates of PTSD are higher within regular members of the Armed Forces. More concerning are the statistics relating to alcohol misuse, the impact of deployment on the mental health of members of the Reserve Forces, and the suicide rates amongst young early Service leavers.
One of the main reasons for setting up our Ayrshire Veteran Breakfast Club was to assist our veterans and to help them no matter what age, or need, should it be health, welfare, finance or other there are people to help. We are a Community Organisation who are here to support Veterans and Serving Members of H.M Forces. It is run "BY Veterans FOR Veterans" NOT "by veterans for the few". We are all volunteers simply wishing to integrate our lonely veterans back into society again. Our ethos is mutual support, it works because we all have a similar humour & outlook, & the social life we now enjoy is like our service days with the element of a family feeling again.
Breakfast Clubs are completely FREE…. And will always remain free! There are no fees or subs and we're NOT here to make money for any organisation/business.
We believe that the commitment of our Forces and their families deserves our lifelong support. So we provide practical, emotional and financial support to anyone who is serving or has ever served and their families. Whenever you need us, we’ll do whatever we can to help. Over 2,000 veterans in Scotland contacted Legion Scotland last year looking for a befriender to help them combat loneliness and isolation. Vveterans of all ages and backgrounds can encounter a range of challenges upon leaving the Armed Forces including isolation, unemployment and housing issues. Service makes a massive difference to the general wellbeing of our fellow veterans. Some members of the ex-service community have had no interaction for months, even years and it is heart breaking. Everybody needs to talk, to socialise. I struggled with depression upon leaving the services and being diagnosed with cervical cancer so I loathe the idea of someone having to go through a similar situation.
We often visit our veterans at home who are now alone and many of whom have no one else to talk to. Since establising our breakfast club we have been able to provide advice and signpost them to vital support services and other military charities which has had a long lasting positive change on their lives.
Veterans are in need of support. Our breakfast club is simple but highly effective. We know that many of our members have felt isolated, depressed, suicidal and lonely after leaving the military and having someone to talk to, share a laugh with and confide in really has made a huge difference to their lives.
We now enjoy social events, day trips, comradeship events, clubs, sports, parades and remembrance services together and whether they left service yesterday or 50 years ago – everyone is welcome. Being able to speak to Mr Dey directly about what support is being provided in Scotland to assist the significant number of ex-service personnel, was a wonderful opportunity.”
Find your nearest veteran breakfast club here: https://www.afvbc.net/
All service veterans (If you can cope with the banter), who turn up will be made welcome.
Ayrshire Club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/804615282982632/
Following the launch of the UK-wide Strategy ‘For Our Veterans’; the Minister has been widely consulting with the veteran community. The strategy sets out the vision, principles and aims which will drive support for veterans in the future. The Ayrshire Veterans Breakfast Club is a regular place to provide direct support and referrals to other agencies. The ministerial visit provided an opportunity for veterans to discuss their experiences past and present, and the impact it has had on their lives.
Mr Dey said: “Scotland has a long and very proud military tradition. Our Armed Forces and Veterans Community are assets to our society and I want to ensure that their service is properly acknowledged and that they are well supported and looked after. I am pleased to have been able to join in the Veterans Breakfast this morning.”
Unforgotten Forces is a partnership between 15 leading organisations which will deliver a range of new services and enhancements in areas including advice, access to healthcare, social isolation, respite, along with creative activities and events for those in care settings.
For more information go to: https://www.poppyscotland.org.uk/get-help/unforgotten-forces/ | https://medium.com/@suzannefernando/scottish-minister-visits-local-veterans-91b4b4c6dedc | ['Suzanne Fernando'] | 2019-02-03 15:39:16.085000+00:00 | ['Veterans', 'Minister', 'Government', 'Scotland', 'Parliament'] |
RandoPHP, a PHP package for generating random values | RandoPHP is a PHP open source package for generating random numbers, characters, strings and sequences. With this package you can:
Draw : Extract random items (sample) from an array. This is useful when you want to “draw” some numbers or items;
: Extract random items (sample) from an array. This is useful when you want to “draw” some numbers or items; Generate: useful for create random items like integer, byte, boolean, float, lat/long coordinates, char (numeric, alphabetic, alphanumeric), and sequences like array of integer or char.
With a fluent interface, you can control some behavior like:
minimum and maximum value;
how many items you want to create;
for sequences if you want or not duplicates (for example in the array [1,5,3,1,1], the value 1 is duplicated).
Why RandoPHP
I started to write RandoPHP in order to wrap up all methods, functions, approaches to generate values. Every time I needed some Random values in my applications, I see that I was writing the same piece of codes, applying the same controls and validations. Then, I decided to release it with an Open Source package.
Installation
You can install the package via composer:
composer require hi-folks/rando-php
Source code is available: https://github.com/Hi-Folks/rando-php
Usage
Once you installed the package, you can import the autoload file (if you are not using a framework that provides import all needed files) and them declare the right class via “use” statement, in your PHP file:
require __DIR__ . "/vendor/autoload.php";
use HiFolks\RandoPhp\Randomize;
Generate random stuff
Generate Char
Sometimes you want to obtain a random char, for example, a numeric char (‘0’..‘9’):
Randomize::char()->numeric()->generate();
Or you might want an alphabetic char (‘a’ ..‘z’ or ‘A’ ..‘Z’):
Randomize::char()->alpha()->generate();
You can generate both, alphabetic or numeric char (‘a’ ..‘z’ or ‘A’ ..‘Z’ or ‘0’..’9').
Randomize::char()->alphanumeric()->generate();
You can generate a lower case char (‘a’..’z’):
Randomize::char()->alpha()->lower()->generate();
You can generate an upper case char (‘A’..’Z’):
Randomize::char()->alpha()->upper()->generate();
You can generate a special character.
A special character is one of ‘!”#$%&’()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~’:
$specialChar = Randomize::char()->specialCharacters()->generate();
Generate Boolean
Sometimes you want to obtain a random boolean true or false (flip a coin, yes or no, red or blue pillow … ):
$randomBool = Randomize::boolean()->generate(); // true or false
Generate a Float
Sometimes you want to obtain a random float (default min — max range of 0.0–1.0). For example, you want to generate a random number in the range 0.0 to 1.0:
$randomFloat = Randomize::float()->generate();
Or you can set the range, for example 0.0 to 90.0, which is equivalent to ->min(0)->max(90):
$randomFloat = Randomize::float()->min(0)->max(90)->generate();
Generate an Integer
Sometimes you want to obtain a random integer.
$randomNumber = Randomize::integer()->generate();
By default you will obtain an integer between 0 .. 100.
If you want to customize the range ( min and max ) you have some methods like min(), max(), range() and a construct.
For example, you want to roll the dice, you can use min() and max() method:
$randomNumber = Randomize::integer()->min(1)->max(6)->generate();
The same thing using range() method, instead of min() and max():
$randomNumber = Randomize::integer()->range(1,6)->generate();
You can use a shortcut helper to generate an integer calling the constructor with min and max:
$randomNumber = Randomize::integer(1,6)->generate();
Generate bytes
Sometime you want to obtain some random bytes (hexadecimal). For example, you want to generate a random RGB color (a hex triplet in hexadecimal format):
$randomRGB = Randomize::byte()->length(3)->generate();
Generate a Date
Sometimes you want to obtain a random date. For example, you want to generate a random date:
$randomDate = Randomize::datetime()->generate();
By default, a date between the first day of current year to the last day of current year.
If you want to define the range, for example a range of 01 Jan 2020 to 10 Jan 2020, which is equivalent to ->min(‘2020–01–01’)->max(‘2020–01–10’):
$randomDate = Randomize::datetime()->min(‘2020–01–01’)->max(‘2020–01–10’)->generate();
You can even specify your preferred format for the random date generated, by using format() method:
$randomDate = Randomize::datetime()->format(‘d-M-Y’)->generate();
You can use min() and max() with format():
$randomDate = Randomize::datetime()->min(‘2020–01–01’)->max(‘2020–01–10’)->format(‘d-M-Y’)->generate();
With the latest example you can obtain something like: “05-Jan-2020”.
Generate sequences
Sometimes, you want to obtain some random sequences. For example, you want to roll the dice 15 times:
$randomRolls = Randomize::sequence()->min(1)->max(6)->count(15)->generate();
// [3,6,5,5,2,2,4,1,4,4,5,4,5,2,6]
Sometime you want to obtain some random char sequences. For example, char sequences of length 10:
$randomChars = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->count(10)->generate();
// ["b","q","f","k","o","o","m","i","z","h"]
Or you might want numeric char sequences.
$randomChars = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->numeric()->count(10)->generate();
// ["9","5","8","6","5","4","2","9","7","2"]
Or you might want alphabetical char sequences.
$randomChars = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->alpha()->count(10)->generate();
// ["t","f","U","O","r","Y","C","S","g","J"]
Yes, even both.
$randomChars = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->alphanumeric()->count(10)->generate();
// ["L","5","h","A","c","q","C","W","F","z"]
You want 20 lowercase letters as string, you could use asString() method:
$randomString = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->alphaLowerCase()->count(20)->asString()->generate();
// "ybmzekmvvqpzviswdhob"
You want a string with 20 upper case letters:
$randomString = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->alphaUpperCase()->count(20)->asString()->generate();
// "LIYSENBIJRSBWVMEFEVA"
Sometimes you want to get some random numbers array without duplicates. For example, you want to play “Tombola” (extracting number from 1 to 90 without duplicates):
$randomTombola = Randomize::sequence()->min(1)->max(90)->count(90)->noDuplicates()->generate();
Sometime you want to obtain some random letters array without duplicates.
$randomChars = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->count(10)->noDuplicates()->generate();
// ["e","j","b","s","o","z","x","i","c","l"]
Or you might want numeric char array without duplicates. For example, char sequences of length 10:
$randomChars = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->numeric()->count(10)->noDuplicates()->generate();
// ["6","0","8","9","4","3","5","7","2","1"]
Or you might want letters array without duplicates.
$randomChars = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->alpha()->count(10)->noDuplicates()->generate();
If you want alphanumeric (letters and number) array without duplicates.
$randomChars = Randomize::sequence()->chars()->alphanumeric()->count(10)->noDuplicates()->generate();
Random String
If you want to generate random string (alphanumeric, only letters, only numbers, with no duplication, lower case, upper case etc) you can use Random Chars generation.
To generate a string use Randomize::chars():
$string = Randomize::chars()->generate();
Default behavior is:
10 chars;
only letters (a-z);
lower case;
duplication is allowed (the string ‘aba’ has a duplication for ‘a’ char).
You can change the default values with some methods and parameters.
Methods availabe, to set the type of chars (numeric, alpha, alphanumeric…):
alpha(): for selecting ‘a-z’, ‘A-Z’;
alphanumeric(): for selecting ‘a-z’, ‘A-Z’, ‘0–9’;
numeric(): for selecting ‘0–9’;
alphaLowerCase(): for selecting ‘a-z’;
alphaUpperCase(): for selecting ‘A-Z’;
specialCharacters(): for selecting !”#$%&’()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~
You have also some methods to “control” the output, for example avoid duplications:
unique() : it generates a string with at most one occurrence per character.
For example, if you want to generate a string with 16 numeric chars (‘0’-’9'):
$string = Randomize::chars(16)->numeric()->generate();
// "1607986939661884"
You could obtain something like this “1607986939661884”.
If you want to obtain a string with 20 chars, lower case and just letters (‘a’-’z’), and you want to avoid character duplications, you should use alphaLowerCase() and unique() methods:
$string = Randomize::chars(20)->alphaLowerCase()->unique()->generate();
// "tibuxmhwndjprzlagsqc"
You could obtain something like this: ‘tibuxmhwndjprzlagsqc’.
If you want to obtain a string with 20 chars, with letters and special characters, you should use specialCharacters() and alpha() methods:
$string = Randomize::chars(20)->specialCharacters()->alpha()->generate();
// "NZ`,{of)<-CeusEX+U<n"
You could obtain something like this: “NZ`,{of)<-CeusEX+U<n”.
Draw random stuff
If you have a list of values and you want to extract/select/draw one or more elements, you could use Draw class instead of Randomize.
For using Draw class you need to declare HiFolks\RandoPhp\Draw:
use HiFolks\RandoPhp\Draw;
For example if you have an array with some programming language and you want to pick one:
use HiFolks\RandoPhp\Draw; $randomLanguage = Draw::sample([“PHP”, “Python”, “Golang”, “Javascript”])->snap();
// "PHP"
With snap() method you obtain one element of the array.
If you want to obtain an array as result, you could use extract() method instead of snap():
$array=[“React.js”, “Vue.js”, “Svelte.js”, “Angular.js”, “Alpine.js”, “Vanilla js”]; $randomJs = Draw::sample($array)->extract();
Extract three JS frameworks that you could use in your next project:
$array=[“React.js”, “Vue.js”, “Svelte.js”, “Angular.js” , “Alpine.js”, “Vanilla js”];
$randomJs = Draw::sample($array)->count(3)->extract();
Extract three JS framework (duplicates allowed):
$array = [“React.js”, “Vue.js”, “Svelte.js”, “Angular.js”, “Alpine.js”, “Vanilla js”]; $randomJs = Draw::sample($array)->count(3)->allowDuplicates()->extract();
Warning
Under the hood RandoPHP uses some native PHP functions like:
- array_rand(): [PHP Doc for array_rand](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array-rand.php);
- random_int(): [PHP Doc for random_int](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.random-int.php);
- shuffle(): [PHP Doc for shuffle](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.shuffle);
- random_bytes(): [PHP Doc for random_bytes](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.random-bytes).
These PHP functions use a pseudo random number generator that is not suitable for cryptographic purposes.
Some notes
To submit ideas or feature requests or issues, please take a look if your request is already there https://github.com/Hi-Folks/rando-php/issues.
If it is not present, you can create a new one https://github.com/Hi-Folks/rando-php/issues/new
The PHP versions supported are: ‘8.0’,’7.4',’7.3'.
All these versions are used in the CI/CD workflow . If you want to take a look about the workflow used , go to https://github.com/Hi-Folks/rando-php/blob/master/.github/workflows/php.yml
RandoPHP is released with the Open Source license: “the MIT License (MIT)”. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/randophp-is-a-php-package-for-generating-random-values-4d3ade58c976 | ['Roberto Butti'] | 2021-09-12 12:50:26.705000+00:00 | ['Package', 'Open Source', 'PHP', 'Php Developers', 'Random'] |
Best of Modern JavaScript — Proxy Handlers | Photo by Matthew Buchanan on Unsplash
Since 2015, JavaScript has improved immensely.
It’s much more pleasant to use it now than ever.
In this article, we’ll look at how to control JavaScript object operations.
Function Proxy Handlers
We can also add handler methods to the handler we pass into the Proxy constructor or Proxy.revocable method.
apply(target, thisArgument, argumentsList) lets us change the behavior of the apply or call method.
It can also change the behavior of direct calls to a function.
target is the target object which we want to control.
thisArgument lets us pass in the value of this in the function.
argumentsList lets us pass in a list of arguments.
Invariants of Handler Methods
Handler methods have various invariants enforced on them.
They include the following.
apply(target, thisArgument, argumentsList) has no invariants enforced on them.
construct(target, argumentsList, newTarget) must return an object, and not null or a primitive value.
defineProperty(target, propKey, propDesc) must not let us add [properties to an object that isn’t extensible.
The target must have a property must have a non-configurable own property with propKey if configurable is false .
If writable and configurable are both false , then we can’t write a new property to the property.
deleteProperty(target, propKey) can’t delete non-configurable own properties of the target .
get(target, propKey, receiver) must return the property’s value if it has an own, non-writable, and non-configurable data property with name propKey .
Otherwise, it must return undefined .
getOwnPropertyDescriptor(target, propKey) must return either an object or undefined .
Non-configurable now properties of the target can’t be reported as non-existent.
If the target is non-extensile, then it must report as existing.
It can’t report a non-configurable property as configurable and can’t report a different value for a non-configurable and non-writable property.
getPrototypeOf(target) must return either an object or null .
If the target isn't extensible, then the handler must return the prototype of the target object.
has(target, propKey) mustn’t hide a non-configurable own property of target .
If the target is on-extensible than no own property of target may be hidden.
isExtensible(target) must return a boolean.
The coerced boolean value must be the same as target.isExtensible .
ownKeys(target) must return an object which is treated as array-like and converted to an array.
Each element of the result must either be a string or a symbol.
The result must have the keys of all non-configurable non-inherited properties of target .
If target isn’t extensible then the result must only the keys of its own properties.
preventExtensions(target) returns a boolean.
target.isExtensible() must return false after this is called.
set(target, propKey, value, receiver) should set the property of a writable, configurable property of target .
If target already has an own non-configurable property with name propKey , then a TypeError should be thrown since the property can’t be set.
setPrototypeOf(target, proto) ‘s returned result is coerced into a boolean.
If the target isn’t extensible, then its prototype can’t be changed.
In this case, target ‘s prototype must be the same as what it is now, or a TypeError would be thrown.
Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash
Conclusion
The proxy handler methods must follow some conditions even though it lets us customize those operations.
This way, the object operations are still predictable.
Enjoyed this article? If so, get more similar content by subscribing to Decoded, our YouTube channel! | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/best-of-modern-javascript-proxy-handlers-efdf34cdf4cb | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-11-15 12:27:43.296000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Technology', 'Web Development'] |
KnownOrigin.io x Auctionity Creative Challenge | KnownOrigin.io x Auctionity Creative Challenge
Auctionity partners with KnownOrigin and sets up a creative challenge dedicated to digital art as non-fungible tokens.
Auctionity partners with KnownOrigin.io to promote digital art
Hey there! Want to know more about our collaboration with KnownOrigin? You’ll have to head over to our new blog to read the rest of the post! | https://medium.com/auctionity/knownorigin-io-x-auctionity-creative-challenge-df29fd4f3aa0 | ['Domraider Team'] | 2019-05-15 09:39:02.669000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Digital Art', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Auction'] |
Female Disruptors: How Charlie Javice of Frank, Is Shaking Up Access to Student Financial Aid | Thank you so much for doing this with us Charlie! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
My first start-up was on the road to creating an alternative credit score to FICO, one that was based on more current criteria and inherently fairer to students and low-income consumers. The company had come to a crossroads: to secure compliance approval in each state for our product, it would require much more than the $10 million in seed money I was seeking at the time.
My lead investor said to me, you have three choices: you can take three years to raise the money you’ll need to tackle state-by-state compliance, you can become an entrepreneur-in-residence for me, or you can come up with a brand new idea from scratch, as long as it has nothing to do with retail.
I went away for a week. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t see any people.
When I returned, I fired all my employees — it was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. A lot of my employees were close friends, and still won’t talk with me to this day. They didn’t understand that it wasn’t a personal decision. I’m sure I could’ve done a better job communicating what was happening, but at the end of the day, no one would have liked the outcome.
Even though it didn’t make monetary sense to pursue a new credit score project, one thing became pretty obvious during the 18-months we worked on it: people were getting screwed by the cost of education. And that lenders had no right to decide whether a student was worthy or not based on the information they had.
The turning point for me was when somebody said: “If student loan data is so bad, how can you make it better?” We couldn’t challenge FICO directly, but there was another entry point to help students and it was right there on the front lines: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, also known as FAFSA®. The FAFSA® is the application students fill out to be eligible for any kind of financial aid for college.
The scenario surrounding financial aid was astonishing: only 61% of eligible students submitted the FAFSA® forms, leaving millions of dollars in unclaimed Federal financial aid on the table each year. The FAFSA® application has always been notoriously confusing, and many students don’t even know it exists because U.S. high school students lack access to guidance counselor and resources for college.
I thought, if we could close the financial aid gap, supplementing it with revenue services strictly for the genuine benefit of students (especially low-income ones), we would have a viable business and still be doing something to help students.
I told my investors, “This is what I’m going to do. I don’t expect you to invest today. But if I hit these types of milestones, would you consider re-investing?” They said, of course.
The first thing I did was hire an intern to help with marketing research, and spent time helping students in the Bronx fill out their FAFSA® applications. It was the first-hand experience I needed to understand what students had to go through just to get funding for their education.
I always like to say, there are many doors into a house. If you can’t get inside with one of them, keep trying others until you can get in.
What is it about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
“Accessibility” is at the heart of everything we believe at Frank. A college degree has never been more valuable than it is today, but it’s also never been more expensive. We believe that regardless of socioeconomic background, anyone who wishes to attend college and earn a degree should have the opportunity to do so.
The national narrative surrounding college right now revolves around two things: the skyrocketing costs of attending college, and the $1.5 trillion student loan debt crisis. We want to put the focus back in the classroom. Figuring out how you’re going to pay for college shouldn’t be more complicated than your college curriculum.
We started by simplifying the FAFSA® form. The main issues with the form being that, while the overall program was created with the student in mind, the FAFSA® was created with government and school officials in mind. It’s an unnecessarily complicated and rigid application that serves as a roadblock for many students.
I worked with about 1,000 Bronx high school students over five months, then built out software with smart logic to literally replicate my guidance in filling out the forms. We took the 108 FAFSA® questions and transformed them into a shorter, student-friendly workflow that reduced errors and sped up completion. While the FAFSA® can take hours to complete, our application reduced the average time to just over four minutes! Just by making it easier to understand and complete, we started to see some of the barriers that prevent students from getting aid tumble down.
We all need a little help along the journey — who have been some of your mentors? Can you share how they made an impact?
Bobby Turner of Turner Impact Capital set a brilliant blueprint.
He told me a company’s success is often defined by how much change they earn or how much change they affect. It takes a truly special company to achieve both results.
How can you make money by fixing a financially broken education system? There’s an altruistic side to this project that wants to get money to students because the students need it to continue their education and ideally secure jobs in growing industries. But diverting money to other people and groups isn’t a sustainable business model.
It all seemed impossible, not just in the education space, but the entire social impact space. Until you hear Bobby Turner talking about it, and then you realize it can be done.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey?
I’m a mid-20’s female CEO in the tech industry, so I’ve heard the same sentiment expressed in a variety of different ways: “You’re too young. Go work for somebody else. Who’s the grey hair in the room?”
Those comments alone are enough motivation to keep pushing forward, but they also come back to the same piece of advice: “Don’t be patient.”
From a young age, I’ve known what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in three years, all while balancing the demands of my own non-profit. How long would I have waited for this opportunity if I pursued a more traditional career path? Some people wait for the perfect moment, but the perfect moment never comes.
I’ve been fortunate to have incredible mentors who have shown faith me in from the beginning. Armed with that support system, staying patient was never an option for me.
Another valuable piece of advice was, “When you hire, look for empathy.” You may never understand what low- and middle-income students go through, but you have to have empathy for their situation to do this job. I apply that to my entire recruiting process. I ask every candidate about an experience they’ve had where they couldn’t relate to the problem being presented, and how they responded to that experience.
It’s a mantra that even helped us raise money. We were lucky when we discovered one of our investors, Dan Senor, remembered filling out his FAFSA® forms for business school and what a nightmare it was. I told him, “That’s what I’m going to fix.” And he said, “Where do I write the check?”
How are you going to shake things up next?
We are about to chip away at an even bigger higher education problem called “undermatching.” Undermatching is when low-income students don’t apply to colleges they are academically qualified to get into because they don’t have the resources to know those options are available to them. Instead, they apply to only one or two colleges that are not particularly challenging. With so many high school students lacking resources like guidance counselors, many students stick with what they know, which limits their opportunities.
To combat undermatching, we recently launched our College Match program based on data we’ve collected through our FAFSA® application. The data showed that a lower household income directly correlated to the number of colleges a student applied to. So, for example, an annual household income of less than $50k means a student will often apply to only one or two colleges.
This phenomenon seriously impacts the students’ odds of receiving competitive financial aid offers, causing a chain of events that set students back financially before they even graduate and for years to come.
With the new College Match program, students who opt to send the FAFSA® forms to only one or two schools will be alerted to the advantages of applying to more schools, and how it will help improve their financial aid prospects. Then the students will get recommended additional colleges to apply to, based on the student’s location, field of study, and school value as defined by two industry benchmarks: graduation rate and cohort (loan) default rate.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
My generation has grown cynical about the American Dream, that it’s no longer attainable for the majority of Americans.
It’s funny, on the face of it, the American Dream is about engendering hope across the entire nation, and hope itself can be just as dangerous as it is inspiring. Hope can be fulfilling, which leads to complacency.
The key to the American Dream is using that hope to fuel action. I want to ensure that everyone has access to the tools they need to act on the hope of the American Dream.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Emile Zola said, “I’d rather die of passion than of boredom.”
I’m someone who’s always needed to work towards something that improves the lives of many. In college, I had my non-profit, PoverUp, which helped students gain experience in the world of microfinance. Now, I have Frank, which aims to open the doors to education for students who have been told that a college education is not a realistic goal for them.
I’d never be satisfied working a nine-to-five, rushing to the gym, and whiling away my evening drinking wine and binge-watching The Gilmour Girls. There’s too much I want to accomplish. | https://medium.com/authority-magazine/female-disruptors-how-charlie-javice-of-frank-is-shaking-up-access-to-student-financial-aid-6b16ca760b3c | ['Jason Malki'] | 2020-07-27 02:19:53.145000+00:00 | ['Investors', 'Startup', 'Finance', 'Social Impact', 'College'] |
Unsold! My ‘New Yorker’ cartoon idea | Unsold! My ‘New Yorker’ cartoon idea
How I sold a ‘New Yorker’ cartoonist on a ‘New Yorker’ cartoon idea but we still couldn’t get ‘The New Yorker’ to buy it
Now and then, I tinker with ideas for cartoons and captions. Long ago, having noticed that the typical fortune-cookie fortune is unspeakably boring, I thought of a captionless image that would show, in the foreground at left, a restaurant table with a fortune reading, “Call the kids! Something’s wrong — I just know it!” In the background at right, we’d see a woman rushing madly out the door, followed by a man who was perhaps flinging dollars at the cashier on his way.
Skipping ahead a few decades, I had another idea, this time in response to the increasing complications of TV shows, especially the floridly baroque, questionably intelligible series Lost, though it came to me some time after that series ended. Through a mutual friend, I got in touch with a cartoonist named Michael Crawford, who had sold many works to The New Yorker over the years. He saw something in my idea but thought my original notion, involving an oracle in a cave, wouldn’t work. Using instead the familiar trope of a sage on a mountaintop, he drew up a very rough sketch and sent it to me, with my original caption idea along with some other jottings. I liked the layout fine, we settled on a caption, and he pitched it to The New Yorker, which, however, failed to see the greatness in it and said no. There’s now an exhibition in New York of cartoons The New Yorker turned down (you can read about it here), so I thought I’d share our own rejected sketch. Because brevity is the soul of wit and all that, our final caption was shorter than what’s shown here: “That’s not explained until the final episode.”
Regrettably, Crawford passed away last year (one appreciation of him is here), so I can’t ask his permission to show this. Personally, I think his reputation is unlikely to be tarnished by it, but many people hate for their unfinished work to be seen, and perhaps he would too. If he’s looking down from one of those New Yorker–cartoon versions of heaven and he’s got a gripe, I hope he’ll get in touch. I want to run an idea past him. | https://medium.com/panel-frame/unsold-my-new-yorker-cartoon-idea-393d23dbf406 | ['John E. Branch Jr.'] | 2017-10-01 16:36:21.276000+00:00 | ['Cartoon', 'The New Yorker', 'Television'] |
Sky TV Effed-Up Captioning | Is it deliberate
Do you think
that your captions really stink?
Say her name fills the screen
But her name is nowhere to seen
The life and death of…
Space found for ‘new, exclusive,
really, moving’
By leaving out her name
What are you proving?
That Black lives matter not to you?
The truth of the matter is fully on view
Say her name, you mock with derision
And anger is all that fills my vision
Her name is SANDRA BLAND
SANDRA BLAND SANDRA BLAND
Put it IN where it belongs
And stop adding more wrong on wrongs | https://medium.com/illumination/sky-tv-effed-up-captioning-145f53eb5ca | ['Marla Bishop'] | 2020-06-27 16:46:34.801000+00:00 | ['Television', 'Poetry', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Change', 'Activism'] |
How Entrepreneurs Like Ray Kurzweil and Michael Ferro Maximize Their Charitable Donation Impact | We’re in the Holiday Giving Season, a time when many of us like to support the charities and issues we care about.
Sometimes the hardest part is choosing the beneficiary organizations that will make the biggest impact. We all want to make sure our donation dollars and time are being used in the best ways possible. This is especially important during a pandemic, when so many more people need some extra help.
I interviewed 3 people who leverage interesting ways to maximize the impact from charitable giving. The end result is they are able to make an even more significant difference in those communities and issues they care about the most.
Matching Gifts
Charitable giving can be a big employee morale booster and team builder. By adding matching funds to an employee’s personal donation, an organization can enhance employee morale even more. The best part is that the employee chooses the charitable recipient, allowing them to make an even bigger personal impact.
Many corporations have matching programs, and some will match thousands of dollars per employee. There are companies that compile lists of what corporations will match employee donations, and how much — so you can check your employer out. According to Double Your Donation, the amounts can change year to year, but currently Google matches up to $10,000, Bank of America up to $6,000, GE up to $5,000, and General Mills up to $15,000. Donation matches are on a per year, per employee basis.
In my world of technology — futurist, inventor and best-selling author Dr. Ray Kurzweil is a legend. While Ray works for Google now, he is an entrepreneur through and through. Fun fact — Google is the first company he’s worked for that he didn’t start himself. He likes to joke he got his first job in his 60's!
Ray has been donating to The National Federation of the Blind for around 30 years. This is near and dear to his heart, as in 1975 he invented the first reading machine for the blind. Since that time, he’s helped bring the cost down from a $20,000 machine to the current free app. Now that Ray is working for Google (Alphabet), his donations for the Blind have increased. For the past 8 years, the company has matched Ray’s donations, up to Google’s annual matching limit.
In this case, Ray’s current employer is supporting something he cares deeply about, which in turn helps more people. This creates goodwill all around, and can inspire loyalty and team spirit in the employees. You can check out some of the top matching gift programs in this article on Mobile Cause.
Futurist, Inventor and Author Dr. Ray Kurzweil; Healthcare Tech Entrepreneur Michael Ferro
Community Foundations
Many people like to help out their own community, but it can be confusing to figure out what organizations and causes to support that can make the most impact.
If you want to help out in your own community, Community Foundations are a great option. These foundations are public charities that provide benefits to a specific geographic location local to the foundation. According to The Council on Foundations, there are over 750 in the US, and they typically focus on issues like healthcare, disaster relief, and education. Another main benefit of Community Foundations is that they manage donations, so that the benefactor just needs to write the check and describe the types of issues they’d like to support, such as healthcare or aspiring college students. The Community Foundation knows all the areas in their community that need help, and know where to allocate their benfecator’s donations for the most impact.
Healthcare Tech Entrepreneur Michael Ferro donates to many nonprofits and foundations every year, including the Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA). Michael’s donation funds multiple grants for the use of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare — one of Michael’s main areas of expertise. Some of the MRA grants fund scientist Joann Elmore, MD, MPH — her team is working on detecting melanoma through the use of an AI based diagnostic system.
Since Michael also likes to support his surrounding community, he also donates annually to his local Community Foundation. This year, he’s asked the Palm Beach Community Foundation to direct his funds towards multiple student educational scholarships and COVID-19 relief in the Greater Miami Area in Florida. He trusts the foundation to find the best way his donation dollars can make a big impact on his local community, and in the areas he cares the most about, like healthcare and education.
Donations for Startup Investing
This donation vehicle is a cool idea — a nonprofit venture capital fund where the actual fund is made up of donations.
On a recent video call with Jonathan M. Fritz, the Chief Innovation Officer of CHIME, Jonathan mentioned he also sits on the Investment Committee of BrightStar Wisconsin. BrightStar Wisconsin is a 501(c)(3) that exists to create jobs and economic prosperity for the local community — by investing in startups. The capital comes from donations, and when there is an exit, that money goes right back into the fund. This nonprofit fund helps create local jobs by creating new local businesses.
BrightStar Wisconsin also holds startup pitches, and has a large group of co-investors made up of many angels and venture groups. In fact, multiple angel groups have formed in response to BrightStar! While their investment criteria is to benefit the local community, they also focus on investing in those startups that have the long term potential to also go national. As of 2019, BrightStar had invested $7.5M into 52 early stage Wisconsin startups including ImageMoverMD, a medical image software company that is expected to create 28 jobs in 3 years.
There are many ways to donate your time and money, and with a few tricks, you can also maximize your impact.
What causes do you care about the most? | https://medium.com/@Robinff3/how-entrepreneurs-like-ray-kurzweil-and-michael-ferro-maximize-their-charitable-donation-impact-ec2b27ff5fb9 | ['Robin Farmanfarmaian'] | 2021-03-15 18:43:50.551000+00:00 | ['Donations', 'Ray Kurzweil', 'Philanthropy', 'Entrepreneur', 'Michael Ferro'] |
Four Reasons You Won’t Make It as a Professional Writer | You complain.
You are complaining that other writers have it easier than you.
Yes. Some writers will just take off. Like my previous example of writer Allie Brosh. Good for them. Be happy for them, even if the only reason you are happy for them is that complaining will not be good for your writing career.
There is a lot of negativity online. Don’t add to it. People aren’t attracted to people who complain and approach anything with a “whoa is me” attitude.
We all have pangs of envy and jealousy.
I read an article in The Atlantic last night that had me really questioning if I’d ever be a great writer; that doesn’t really matter; the only thing that matters is if I like to write and whether I think it is worth time. I do.
If you wonder why some writers take-off faster than you, you are putting your energy in the wrong place. You may think, I can’t believe so and so wrote that piece, and it has X amount of views; it isn’t even very good. I can write a better piece than that four minute piece of…
Well, you didn’t write that four-minute piece of …that everyone seems to love. You didn’t come up with the idea or articulate it in a way that resonates.
Instead of concentrating on why you think they don’t deserve x and x, put that energy into writing better.
Do this instead.
One way of getting out of the comparison trap you put yourself in with other writers is to remember that growth happens when we compare ourselves to our own evolution.
Real growth doesn’t come from measuring ourselves against others but from measuring our progress. Compare yourself now to yourself a month ago, three months ago, a year ago. Then, plan what you want your life to look like three months, six months, or a year from now.
Don’t worry about what others are doing; put sustained effort into your writing journey and find out what you are capable of, and your writing life will expand exponentially. Complaining that you aren’t as far as such and such when you started earlier only increases that burden.
When I find myself in the comparison trap or dealing with “imposter syndrome,” I ask myself, what do I want, what could I do to grow my writing chops?
Then I answer the question. It is usually something straightforward, like read a book on writing or take a writing class. And then, I do it. I’m continually pushing myself to get better, and one of the ways I do this is sitting down to write every day. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/four-reasons-you-wont-make-it-as-a-professional-writer-941eb004c9bc | ['Jessica Lynn'] | 2020-11-02 12:47:39.954000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Self-awareness', 'Productivity', 'Money', 'Writing'] |
Money: Cult of Cults | Our family was watching “Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults” when my daughter asked if we would ever join a cult. After thinking about it for a minute, I told her that we are already a member of several “cults”.
Cults in our family include Seattle Seahawks, eosio and the US dollar. Of course my daughter and spouse vehemently disagreed that these are cults because they equate cults as extremely bad. Not all cults end in mass suicide so my view is that cults have both bad and good aspects just like anything in the world.
Let’s first look at the definition of a cult with the removal of “religion” since religion is just a set of beliefs so it can apply to anything. Also, the back of every US Dollar includes “IN GOD WE TRUST” so if you don’t believe the dollar is a religion you would need to first explain why that statement is on every dollar even though there is supposed to be a separation of church and state.
Here are all the cult definitions mapped to Seahawks, eosio, and Money:
a particular system of worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies. Examples: Seahawks: weekly games, cheering over touchdowns and praying for wins. eosio: review of the EOS price every hour, watching youtubes, praying for the price to go up, and building out tipit.io. Money: going to work, payroll, wishing/praying for more money an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, especially as manifested by a body of admirers. Seahwaks team along with Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson. eosio with Block.one’s Daniel Larimer, Brendan Blumer plus Everything EOS. Money the object of such devotion. The Seahawks team, the EOS token with Daniel Larimer, and the US Dollar has special veneration for “rich” people like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, and many, many others. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc. Seahawks players and fans, eosio token holders and B1 leaders for eosio, and everyone using US dollars. Sociology. a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.
Seahawks cult logo
EOS cult logo
US Dollar cult symbol
Money and the US dollar is a very interesting “cult” as it allows for a good life if you have a good standing with lots of money. If you have a bad standing in the cult of money you could starve, freeze to death through homelessness and lose relationships with loved ones. Money is either the number one or two cause of divorce along with infidelity. So if you have a bad relationship in the cult of money, it can lead to divorce from your loved one.
Cults are often associated with mass suicides'. One of the biggest cult suicides is the People’s Temple with Jim Jones where 909 people died. However, over 800,000 people commit suicide per year with the largest contributors being financial trouble and lack of access to health care which could also be related to money. Looking at it this way, Money causes 100’s of times more suicides every year than even the worse religious cults.
It’s easy to condemn religious cults after they have inflicted pain to their members. If we can recognize that money is the biggest cult and that it causes great amounts of pain and suffering, maybe we can design future systems that provide better results for everyone. And NO, I’m not a communist, socialist, or any other ‘ist, I just believe that Humans can do better than our current money and financial systems…and hopefully the eosio cult can lead the change as we move from analog money to digital tokens & money (dtm). | https://medium.com/@truer/money-cult-of-cults-cf80d34b04ee | ['Mark Stair'] | 2020-12-21 22:46:30.991000+00:00 | ['Eosio', 'Eos', 'Money', 'Cult', 'Us Dollar'] |
I Sing The Stocks Electric! | For years on my blog or on the Traders-Talk chat site I’ve said again and again “When in doubt, buy solar.”
Well, now there is even less doubt.
The solar stocks and all of their brothers, sisters and cousins have become no-brainers for the future with Biden in the White House since he has said climate change will be a top priority for his administration.
Case in point today (1/26/2021): Biden says something about charging stations coast-to-coast and BLNK goes BANG. Up 19% from its open.
IN STOCK PICKING that means renewable and alternative energy companies, everything electric led by the automobiles (TESLA, NIO), the solar energy manufacturers (FSLR, JKS, CSIQ), the industry support tech (ENPH, DQ), and on and on…
I did a sort of my Nifty-50-Stock list on Thanksgiving. Six of the top electric stocks that performed best with my market swing signals vaulted on to the list.
TSLA — always on the list because it is a leader in the electric sector and now a bellwether stock for the entire market.
BLNK — Number one on the list, it makes charging stations for electric vehicles; based in Florida, it is tiny in relation to its growth potential, and just getting started with a long way to go (think of all the EV being built now and sold and think of something akin to the number of gas station in the U.S. as a possible measure).
As for the others on my list there is BEEM, another charging infrastructure company, at number 5; JKS, a solar panel manufacturer at number nine; ENPH at number 19; NIO, the cause celeb car maker in China at number 22; RUN for more sun at number 35.
This is a vibrant sector.
On the recent swing signal (the rising NYSI from the open of 11/4 closing on today’s open) TSLA was up 48%, BLNK 184%, ENPH up 45%, BEEM up 98%. Well worth paying attention to anytime, and particularly now.
Many of these stocks (see the chart panel below) have been in consolidations after major runs to the upside at the prospect of Biden winning the Presidency (“Buy the rumor, sell the news,” as the old Wall-Street adage goes) but it appears as today most of them ended their period of consolidation and are ready for another run.
TAN — The ETF for the sector made a new high today (it’s on the panel below), as did BEEM and ENPH.
The swing signal I work with most gave sell on today’s open but today’s market breadth generated another buy signal for tomorrow’s open.
So a cautionary note: if this is a whipsaw, and the market tumble after the long run from early November, these stocks will likely feel it too.
But longer-term and on each swing going forward “When in doubt, buy solar.” | https://medium.com/@thegodoftrading/i-sing-the-stocks-electric-ea35c5f7208e | ['Michael Petryni'] | 2021-01-26 18:28:19.664000+00:00 | ['Renewable Energy', 'Stock Market', 'Solar Energy', 'Green Energy', 'Climate Change'] |
Lessons from SXSW 2019 | Lesson 1: Listen to everyone.
I learned this one from Shakey Graves when he chose to throw a life lesson at the audience to try and improve lives and also to kill time as he re-tuned his guitar between songs.
To paraphrase: Just because someone has beauty, popularity, a suit, a cool job, a microphone, or millions of dollars, doesn’t mean they know any better than you, your partner, your friends, or your family members do.
So listen to everyone, especially yourself and those closest to you.
Thanks, Shakey.
Lesson 2: Get off screens and blink.
One of the most unique products showcased at SXSW was a device that helps relieve dry eye syndrome, a condition that has become more prevalent as we’ve increased the amount of time we spend looking at screens. It seems that when human beings engage with a screen, we blink considerably less than what our eyes need in order to properly lubricate themselves.
While I see this device as a noble product that can help us cope with a modern-day health issue, I also see a simpler alternative: Get off screens.
We’ve survived so much as a species — war, genocide, plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis, and awful television. Are we actually going to depend on technological devices to mitigate the adverse effects of not blinking?
We’re better than this. Let’s get off screens and blink.
Lesson 3: “Disruptor” is not an occupation.
A top contender for Buzzword of the Decade has got to be “disruptor.” I hear “disruptor” used so often in so many different contexts that at this point I don’t know what the word means yet find it hilarious.
It seems I’m not alone.
As part of SXSW, I attended a comedy showcase at Esther’s Follies, where stand-up comedian Jena Friedman delivered my favorite joke of the evening. I won’t share the joke since I didn’t write it; suffice to say that it had to do with “disruptive disruptors” and that even the “disruptors” in the room laughed.
What I will share is the truth in Jena’s joke: “Disruptor” is not an occupation.
Comedian is an occupation, as are professor, operations manager, video editor, speaker, cook, hockey player, and many others. Some of these occupations might end up “disrupting” something, depending on how we choose to define and measure “disruption,” but that doesn’t make “disruptor” an occupation.
Lesson 4: Default to creative work and schedule promotional work.
I learned this one from Ryan Holiday after asking him how he advised reconciling doing focused, creative work and promoting it. His recommendation is simple and effective: Default to creative work and schedule your promotional work.
Whenever you find yourself with some time to work on your creative projects, forget about promotion, and instead focus on doing the actual creative work. Once your creative work is done, then and only then, schedule the emails you’ll send and the posts you’ll share. Once those are done, get back to work.
Trying to be creative and self-promote at the same time will lead to shallow focus, which will hurt the quality of your work, which will make it harder to promote, which will force you to push it even more on others, and so it goes.
A better strategy, in the words of Ryan: “Make it so you don’t have to fake it.”
Lesson 5: The people you admire are just people.
Before I asked Ryan the question that led to Lesson 4, I was nervous. Wow. He’s Ryan Holiday. He introduced me to stoicism. I have to get this question right.
After Ryan answered my question, it hit me. He’s just a guy…
Then I realized something about everyone I admire: They’re all just people!
They’re all just people! They’ve directed their energies toward some admirable and (hopefully) noble pursuits, but they’re still just people, with families, friends, diets, insecurities, loves, and anything else you can think of that makes people people. They still have to brush their teeth, use the restroom, choose which toppings they want on their pizza, and figure life out.
Media might elevate the people you admire to the status of demigods or “people who are better than you,” but that’s an illusion. They might be admirable, but they’re still just people, and as such, they’re not inherently better than anyone, dead or alive, and that includes you, unless you’re neither dead nor alive, in which case we should talk sometime.
Lesson 6: Resist innovating for innovation’s sake.
Without naming any specific examples, there were several digital products showcased at SXSW that struck me as, well…unnecessary.
Do songwriters really need a “disruptive” app to write songs? Do comedians really need a “disruptive” app to edit their jokes? Do we all really need a “disruptive” app that manages another “disruptive” app that makes sure we don’t use certain “disruptive” apps too much?
I don’t think so.
We live in a time where innovation is glorified across all areas of life and we rarely pause and ask why. Why are we innovating? Why?
So resist making something new just because it’s new.
Resist innovating for innovation’s sake.
Lesson 7: Showmanship isn’t necessary.
John Paul White got onstage for his set at NPR’s Tiny Desk Family Hour wearing a well-pressed suit and a Martin acoustic guitar. No fireworks, no backup dancers, and no caged tigers. Only a suit and a guitar.
He was, as far as my ear is concerned, the best performer of the night.
Showmanship is sometimes a helpful tool, but it’s important to remember that it isn’t necessary. Because while showmanship can be effective or gimmicky, depending on how it’s approached, being good at something is undeniable.
Lesson 8: When you’re not at your best, be a pro.
Gina Chávez, also featured during NPR’s Tiny Desk Family Hour, had arrived in Austin from a grueling tour and having to perform deeply emotional songs in an intimate setting. Before playing her first song, she was candid with the audience about not being at her best.
Then, she performed a solid set, start to finish.
It’s okay to not be at your best, and it’s okay to accept it, and even address it (sometimes). But you can be at less than your best and still do what you have to do. That’s what separates professionals from amateurs: Amateurs need to be at their best to be professional, whereas professionals are professional no matter what; they do what they have to do.
So when you’re not at your best, be a pro.
Lesson 9: Don’t hunch over your digital devices.
At SXSW, I met a computer scientist who was struggling with health issues due to years of hunching over his devices. In his words: “It’s not worth it.”
It really isn’t. Be aware of how you’re engaging with your devices. Prioritize using yourself well over using your devices. Take a break and go for a walk. Whatever you have to do. But please, don’t hunch over your digital devices.
Lesson 10: People will ask you what you do, so have an answer.
My first day at SXSW, I met someone from a company that offers employee-training services. I asked him several questions and learned a lot about him and his career. Suddenly, he asked, “What do you do?” to which I replied, after pausing for way too long, “Uh…I’m a student.”
Here’s the thing. I am a student, not only because I’m in graduate school, but because I’m always learning. I truly see myself as a student, so my answer wasn’t a lie. The problem is that I’ve also done and do other things besides being a student, and some of those other things would’ve been far more relevant to bring up at that moment.
You’re not defined by what you do, and it’s unrealistic to expect a single sentence or “elevator pitch” to define all of you. Still, people will ask what it is you do. When that happens, it’s best to have an answer.
BONUS
Lesson 11: Carry a journal.
You’ll learn more, more quickly. Plus, it’s a great tool to capture lessons learned at SXSW 2019 that you can then write into a short article. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/lessons-from-sxsw-2019-f1e88f3ee83d | ['Manny Vallarino'] | 2020-02-26 19:13:34.765000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Life', 'Travel', 'SXSW', 'Lessons'] |
Dog Games: 10 Fun Ways to Learn & Bond for Puppy & Child — Val Heart | 10 Great Dog Games Kids Can Play With Dogs
There are few things more joyful than the relationship between a child and their pet.
Most of us animal lovers have memories of bonding with the family dog, spending hours talking with our horse, or curled up for nap time and cuddles with our cat.
But the relationship between pets and kids can open up the door for much more than celebration: they provide emotional, physical, and social benefits to your developing puppy … your child. And playing dog games is one of the best ways to do that!
You don’t have to overthink it. Play is the best way to explore the wonderful synergy between your two young loved ones, both for the dog and child.
Introduce these simple dog games into your family’s routine, ones that your child can easily master. But first, let’s explore the benefits of puppy-child play.
Dog games aren’t just child’s play.
If you’ve ever observed a preschool or primary school class, you’ll know that there’s a great deal of play going on. It’s easy to assume children are just killing time. But in fact, parents and educators know that play is a crucial aspect of cognitive development.
Kids are learning about spatial relationships, manual dexterity, cause and effect, social norms like sharing and turn-taking, as well as physical and mental boundaries and how to overcome or adapt to them.
The same goes for your dog. They are wired for learning — some breeds are keener for a challenge than others, like German Shepherds and Border Collies for example. Good trainers know that dog games go hand-in-hand with obedience and even advanced levels of training. Even police dogs have playtime during their training and their workday.
In fact, training should always be fun for you AND your dog. Because if either of you isn’t having fun, then you won’t want to play. And why should you?
So above all else, keep it simple and remember to make it fun!
Playtime with a dog can:
Relieve anxiety and stress — for your child and the dog.
Create puppy training opportunities wrapped in “fun”.
Provide exercise for both the child and the dog.
Give your child an opportunity to be the teacher instead of a perpetual student.
Reduce boredom — bored kids and bored dogs get up to no good, as a rule.
Provide your child a way to become a leader of the pack, and to practice asking for what they want in a clear way.
Strengthen the bond and understanding between child and dog.
10 simple and fun dog games your child can master.
You don’t want to leave your child in charge of obedience training, but you can engage them in the process by teaching them these ten simple games to play with their furry companion.
Remember to teach them the simple commands you have for your dog: sit, wait, come, etc. so they can be reinforcing them while they play. Puppies, like kids, need and crave rules and boundaries.
They need to know what’s appropriate to do or not do, and how to behave properly in different situations, which improves their confidence. And that is a life skill they’ll put to good use for the rest of their life.
So here are the games:
1. Follow me
As the name suggests, your puppy is going to follow your child… but you’re going to add a layer of fun with obstacles. In the early going you’re going to keep the puppy on a leash until he or she is comfortable with the course. As they become more proficient you can add obstacles — things for the puppy to climb or jump over, wiggle through. Let your imagination go wild!
The world famous dog Skidboot was known as the World’s Smartest Dog! And it all started with games just like this one. Watch and you’ll see why in this wonderful interview with Skidboot and his dad on the show Pet Star:
2. Clean up
A parents dream come true, what better skill for both puppy and your child to develop than putting away their toys! You can make it a “timed tidy” with a countdown, a counting game, or just a clean-up of the living room. Dogs, like kids, can be taught to return their belongings to a central place, like this darling dog toy box, so their toys are not underfoot just waiting to trip you up as you walk by.
If you have elderly people, or anyone who’s unstable on their feet in your home, this is an especially wonderful trick to encourage in both your dog and your child. Again, you’re teaching a lifetime skill of valuing and maintaining a clean, neat space.
3. Hide & Seek
This is great fun for puppy and child alike. You’ll find out that your child gets more and more creative with their hiding spots as the dog becomes better at sniffing them out! This is an excellent dog game if you’re looking for some quiet time and want to keep your little troublemakers busy.
There’s a hidden benefit to this game that’s serious and very important. If you don’t play any other games, then play this one. Why?
Because if your child ever goes missing, you can ask your dog to find them. They’ll know how to do that if they’ve been taught! Fido could be your child’s HERO in a big way by saving the day!
If you’re a first-time puppy owner be sure there aren’t any hazards for inquisitive hands, paws or mouths tucked away in closets or in little nooks you thought were “out of range” because that could hurt. Nothing ends a fun game faster than OUCH and an unplanned race to the doctor’s office.
4. Frisbees
Dogs innately love to chase things… but catching a frisbee — like this one for stronger chewers , or this softer version for sensitive puppy mouths — out of mid-air takes some skill and training. Playing is a wonderful game for eye/hand/paw coordination and agility and will tucker out both of your little bundles of energy.
5. Fetch
Another great game for letting off some steam. Choose balls, special dog bones, and toys that are safe for your child to handle and don’t have any choking hazards attached that your pup might swallow.
Your child’s plushies might be appealing, but they won’t necessarily be safe, so choose toys designed for your dog. Like this one, , it’s one of my dogs favorites. Or this great set of crinkly dog toy flyers , easy for little hands to catch and throw, and super fun for pups to toss around too. For stronger jawed canines, get something like this.
6. Racing
If you’ve got space to spare and your little ones have the energy to burn, some foot races are just the ticket. You’ll need to supervise carefully in the early going, especially if you have a younger child or an enthusiastic puppy who still thinks nipping is appropriate contact. But it’s a great teaching opportunity for your puppy to learn manners while still having fun.
7. Tug-of-War
Make sure you learn the right rules of tug-of-war before introducing this game to your duo. Your child must know how to begin and end the game, because in the early going your puppy will have no clue and can come from an out-of-control game. Again, this is an opportunity to teach your dog some manners . It will make socializing easier… and your child and puppy will build up their strength and balance! It’s recommended for kids older than 10 years of age so that they can be careful and safe.
8. Pet tricks
Teaching their four-legged friends to dance, speak, shake, rollover, howl or kiss is a great way for kids to spend quality time with the pets. Dogs love to be challenged, and love to please…they’re ready to tackle new skills and will be open to all sorts of creative ideas that might inspire your child. Keep in mind that accolades, rewards, and inspiration are the best methods that lead your pooch to learn and remember tricks.
9. Catch the bubbles
This is another simple outdoor game that dogs and kids too just love. It’s easy and fun, and feeds off the fact that dogs have a sense that makes them chase anything. Kids aged 3–8 love this game the most. They even offer flavored bubbles these days that don’t give your dog an upset stomach. Be sure to find a safe version for dogs, like this one!
10. Hide the dog treats
Here’s a wonderful dog game you’ll have so much fun with!
Your child probably loves an Easter egg or treasure hunt… your dog will too! This is a wonderfully versatile game you can play inside or out in the yard. You’ll be enriching your dog’s sense of smell, their problem-solving abilities, their sense of adventure, and their analytical skills. All that just with buying a bag of treats! Our favorites are Wag More Bark Less , or Dog Mama’s Biscuits , or Full Moon’s Training Treats.
For more great games for kids and dogs check out Kyra Sundance’s 10 Minute Dog Training Games!
Playing dog games enriches the relationship between your child and your pet and will create hours of memories you can smile about for years. Capture the joy and innocence of play and watch your child and your puppy thrive.
BONUS GAME! Another great way to encourage your dog and child to bond, communicate and understand each other is to help them learn how to talk to each other! It’s easy as 1–2–3! Start here at The Heart School of Animal Communication with your free ebook Hidden Secrets to Communicating with Pets
Thanks to Lauren, a fellow dog lover, for all these great ideas!
Enjoyed this article? Here are three more to help you:
Why You Should Not Own a Cat and Dog Together
How To Calm Down A Dog On Fireworks Night
Animal Healing: Helping An Aging Dog Express Her Needs
Originally published at https://valheart.com on August 13, 2020. | https://valheartanimaltalk.medium.com/dog-games-10-fun-ways-to-learn-bond-for-puppy-child-val-heart-55d5cb20c22f | ['Val Heart The Real Dr Doolittle'] | 2020-08-13 22:38:32.478000+00:00 | ['Animals For Kids', 'Children And Dogs', 'Playing', 'Pets', 'Dogs'] |
Installing OpenVPN server in AWS EC2 with User data and Terraform | This is the terraform version of installing OpenVPN in the EC2 with user data, and it’s the 2nd part from the previous post to install the OpenVPN using the AWS EC2 console.
Everything will be work the same but I’m using the terraform script to deploy the resources.
I will use the terraform script to create the following resources in this post:
An Elastic IP for the EC2 2 Security group which allow the SSH to the OpenVPN server as well as the access for the VPN client to connect to the OpenVPN server 1 EC2 which install the OpenVPN server using the user data script
For the simplicity, I will just hardcode the value in the script such as the AMI and SSH Key, this stack will be deploy the resources to the ap-southeast-1 (Singapore) as this is my default region. If you want to reuse this script, you may just edit the script to pass in all the parameter using the variables or variable file.
To start the demo, just create a file call main.tf in your working directory, than copy and paste the following script to the .tf file.
provider "aws" {
region = "ap-southeast-1"
}
resource "aws_eip" "openVPN-eip" {
instance = aws_instance.openVPN-ec2.id
}
resource "aws_security_group" "allow_ssh" {
name = "openVPN-allow_ssh"
description = "OpenVPN allow ssh to the server"
# It's not recommended to allow SSH from all public IP, you should only allow your own public IP or organisation IPs
ingress {
from_port = 22
to_port = 22
protocol = "tcp"
cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
description = "Allow SSH to OpenVPN server"
}
egress {
protocol = "-1"
from_port = 0
to_port = 0
cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
}
}
resource "aws_security_group" "allow_vpn" {
name = "openVPN-allow_vpn-connection"
description = "OpenVPN allow VPN client to connect"
ingress {
from_port = 1194
to_port = 1194
protocol = "udp"
cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
description = "Allow VPN Client to connect to OpenVPN server"
}
egress {
protocol = "-1"
from_port = 0
to_port = 0
cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
}
}
resource "aws_instance" "openVPN-ec2" {
ami = "ami-0c20b8b385217763f" # Ubuntu AMI in ap-southeast-1
instance_type = "t3a.micro"
key_name = "[email protected]" # change to the keypair name in your account
vpc_security_group_ids = [aws_security_group.allow_ssh.id,
aws_security_group.allow_vpn.id]
tags = {
Name = "OpenVPN Demo"
}
user_data = <<-EOF
#! /bin/bash
apt-get update
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/angristan/openvpn-install/master/openvpn-install.sh
chmod +x openvpn-install.sh
APPROVE_INSTALL=y ENDPOINT=$(curl -4 ifconfig.co) APPROVE_IP=y IPV6_SUPPORT=n PORT_CHOICE=1 PROTOCOL_CHOICE=1 DNS=1 COMPRESSION_ENABLED=n CUSTOMIZE_ENC=n CLIENT=david PASS=1 ./openvpn-install.sh
EOF
depends_on = [aws_security_group.allow_ssh, aws_security_group.allow_vpn]
}
output "OpenVPN-public-ip" {
value = aws_eip.openVPN-eip.public_ip
}
If you wish to add more user during the bootup installation, you may just copy and paste the following script to the end of the user data, just add as much as number of user you wish to add to the OpenVPN server. Each line should only consist of one user only.
MENU_OPTION="1" CLIENT="Candy" PASS="1" ./openvpn-install.sh
After create the script, we need to first initialise the terraform project by using the terraform init command. The terraform init will go and pull all the dependency and module which we include in the project.
We get the following sample output if the initialization is success.
Before we deploy our resources to the AWS, it’s always a good practise to run the terraform plan and see what are the resources that will be deploy to the destination as well as what resources will be destroy or change.
If you are happy and confident with what’s resources will be create, change or destroy, than you can run the terraform apply -auto-approve to deploy the resources to the destination. The -auto-approve flag will auto confirm the pop up that terraform will ask before they actually deploy the resources.
You should see the following output from you console showing that 4 resources added, 0 changed and 0 destroyed, the public IP of the EC2 will be output on the screen as well.
Now, we can try to login to the server to check the installation of the OpenVPN server, you should see the following detail once you manage to SSH into your OpenVPN server.
Always remember that the ec2 user data script is run on root credential, so you may need to switch to the root account to get the .ovpn file.
You may use the command ps aux | grep vpn to double check is the OpenVPN service running.
Next we may need to download the .ovpn file to your local machine to try connect. First, we may need to switch over to the root credential, than go to the root directory of the user, list out the content. You may just display out the content of the file, copy and paste in your location machine or using the scp to copy the file to your local machine.
$ sudo su -
$ cd ~
$ ls
david.ovpn snap
To connect to the VPN server, you need to install the VPN client in your machine, for MacOS, you may download and install the Tunnelblick at https://tunnelblick.net/downloads.html. For the window user, you may just download the OpenVPN client at https://openvpn.net/community-downloads/.
Once the installation done, just go to the downloaded .ovpn file and double click it, the configuration will be import to the Tunnelblick apps, then you are ready to connect, just click on the connect button at the right bottom to connect to the OpenVPN server.
In MacOS, when you hover over the Tunnelblick apps on the top bar, you will see this small message box show up showing that you are connected to the VPN and your inbound/outbound speed and bandwidth.
You can double confirm the VPN connection by checking the local machine public IP by curl to the ipinfo.io website, now the public IP is display as 52.169.194.200, which is the same IP as the OpenVPN server, this show that the current outbound internet connection is over the VPN server in the AWS.
$ curl ipinfo.io/ip 54.169.194.200
Always remember to destroy your resources if you just testing it at your test environment by issue the command terraform destroy -auto-approve, else you may need to pay for the EC2 that running in your account. You should see all the resources that just created already clean up.
You also can verify the EC2 has been clean up by the terraform by visit to the EC2 console and check the instance state, it’s should be Terminate now.
It’s a very convenient to use the terraform to deploy th and to clean up the environment, because every deployment and cleaning up process will be work exactly the same no matter how many time you run the deploy. If you are using console to do the deployment and cleaning up, you may leave behind some resources without delete it.
Not only that, by using terraform or any other IAC tools, you can easily share your script to any of your colleagues and they can just deploy the same stack again and again. | https://medium.com/@david-cheong/installing-openvpn-server-in-aws-ec2-with-user-data-and-terraform-ad9dccee2ca0 | ['David Cheong'] | 2020-11-24 08:27:56.648000+00:00 | ['Ec2', 'Openvpn', 'Terraform'] |
Linking Black Lives Matter to Israeli affairs is inaccurate and dishonest. | By Zac Schildcrout, CAMERA on Campus Managing Editor
Photo: Alexander Clegg/Detroit Jewish News
On Oct. 8, the Jewish News online published an op-ed by IfNotNow Detroit activists Rebecca Driker-Ohren and Zak Witus titled “Palestinian Lives Matter.” Of course, Palestinian lives matter — that is not in dispute.
What one can dispute is Driker-Ohren and Witus’ conflation of one-sided denunciation of Israel with the movement for racial justice in the United States. Indeed, the authors seem to believe that the Metro Detroit Jewish community’s alleged reluctance to sufficiently admonish Israel renders its leaders nothing more than moral hypocrites.
As Driker-Ohren and Witus describe it, “We in the anti-occupation movement were left questioning whether this enthusiasm for [Black Lives Matter], with its attendant principles of universal equality and freedom, would extend to the arena of Israel/Palestine.”
To the authors, the fight for “universal equality and freedom” seems to necessitate myopic and context-free censure of Israel. Unfortunately, the piece employs myriad falsehoods to make its case.
Click here to read the rest on the CAMERA on Campus blog | https://medium.com/camera-on-campus/linking-black-lives-matter-to-israeli-affairs-is-inaccurate-and-dishonest-8c6f71c509f | ['Camera On Campus'] | 2020-10-25 13:36:34.849000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Ifnotnow', 'Palestine', 'Israel', 'International Law'] |
Do you need a writer on your design team? | Do you need a writer on your design team?
5 reasons why a UX writer makes designers more efficient and products more successful
Illustrations by: Jasmine Rosen
The role of a UX writer has grown and evolved in recent years as more and more tech companies integrate writers into the design process. UX writing — a skill that combines content strategy and copywriting with UX design principles — has now become an essential ingredient in any successful design org.
If you’re a product designer or manager of a design team, you might be thinking: “The designers on my team know how to write words. Do I really need a specialized UX writer or content strategist to join my project?”
The short answer is yes. An experienced writer will elevate your product by making it feel more polished, more consistent, and easier to use.
You’ll be able to let your designers focus on what they do best, design. Even more importantly, a writer adds another creative partner to the team who will approach problems with a different mindset, one who can bring new solutions to the group that haven’t been thought of before.
Designers who’ve had good partnerships with writers will tell you of the numerous benefits. Here are some thoughts from Malia Eugenio, a designer at SurveyMonkey:
“I’ve found that working with a writer really improves my designs. The words can make or break a user experience. Having the perspective of a writer at the inception of a new design helps immensely with establishing IA and understanding where information, clarity, and direction are needed to help users be successful.”
1. Consistency creates trust in a product
Words are the voice of your product. When there are typos or grammar mistakes in your words, it erodes user trust in your brand. Research suggests that typos and other errors damage the credibility of a website. When I see a typo, or even something as harmless as inconsistent capitalization, I can’t help but think, “Do they know what they’re doing? Did they rush this?” A writer has a specially trained eye to catch even tiny errors in grammar, capitalization, and punctuation.
2. If you don’t have a writer, who writes your copy now?
The answer is usually some combination of the designer, product manager, marketing partners, and engineers. Each of these people likely have a different approach to style, voice, tone, word choice, capitalization, and punctuation. What you end up with is a Frankenstein-like product where different parts of your app have different personalities — and worse yet, conflicting terminology.
A writer will create (and habitually use) style, voice, and tone guidelines and consistent terminology, so that your product sounds and feels the same no matter where the user is in their journey. What capitalization do you use for buttons? What punctuation do you use for modals? A good UX writer will have a point of view on all the small details that others might miss.
3. Good content can speed up your process
As an accomplished designer, you might say, “I like to move fast. Bringing in a writer will slow down my project.”
Actually, bringing in a writer — especially early on in a project — can save you from backtracking or redoing work later on. A content expert can help you establish the right information architecture, taxonomy, and product or feature names from the beginning, so you’re less likely to need big foundational changes later on. They’ll think about how the terms you choose fit into your broader systems, product portfolio, and future growth plans, setting you up for success in the long term.
Also, better UI copy can speed up your review process. Design reviews with placeholder copy can often get the conversation going in the wrong direction — drawing focus to the messaging and not the design. Working with a writer to get more thoughtful copy into your designs will only make critiques go smoother and get you better feedback.
4. A writer helps you scale your team
If you’re not at a big tech company (or even if you are) resources are probably an issue. In a small, scrappy design team, it may be hard to convince people that hiring a writer is the right way to spend limited resources.
I’d point out that having a small, scrappy design team may actually be more of a reason to hire a writer. Think of what areas your team is the strongest in and where you have skill gaps and needs. Will hiring more people with a similar skill set help you fill in those gaps? Hiring a talented person with a different skill set can help you get to more balanced and complete team faster.
With a new content partner, designers can focus on pushing their work further without spending valuable time struggling with skills that are outside their wheelhouse. Plus, a writer can bring a new dynamic to your team by thinking about ways to solve user problems with words and by addressing information needs. That design problem you’ve been noodling on for weeks? Maybe it’s not a design problem after all, but a messaging problem.
Adding a writer early can set you up for future success by starting with thoughtful writing guidelines and systems. It’s also an opportunity to set a precedent about how an effective design team should function as your company grows.
5. Good copy will move your metrics
Lastly, but maybe most importantly, the business case for bringing in a skilled writer is strong. Even small changes to the text in a key flow or prominent CTA can lead to big moves in metrics.
Almost all big tech companies now have growing UX writing or content strategy teams, and it’s because they’ve seen the value it brings to their bottom line. In fact, Booking.com has a team of nearly 60 writers who perform scores of copy experiments to optimize every part of their site.
In a 2017 talk at Google I/O, Content Strategy Director Maggie Stanphill showed an example from Google’s hotel booking flow where they changed a line of copy from “Book a room” to the less committal “Check availability.” The result of the change was a 17% increase in engagement.
Giving people the information they need — when and where they need it — can increase engagement with your product. My teammate Deanna Horton wrote an onboarding tour for SurveyMonkey that increased feature engagement by 15%. Along the same lines, she wrote tours for a survey gallery that showed how you might go about making important decisions based on survey data, which increased the rate people sent surveys by 9.2%.
A small copy update to Wufoo increased clicks by 60%.
Small changes matter. Earlier this year, I helped our Wufoo team rework copy for a button to get customers to try a new experience in the product. After we updated the button copy, the click rate increased by 60%, just from the copy change.
So, there’s clearly enormous value to unlock by adding writing skills to your design team. But if you’re still not sure, here’s more on the subject: | https://medium.com/curiosity-by-design/do-you-need-a-writer-on-your-team-62805a8de5df | ['Michelle Wu Cunningham'] | 2019-09-10 15:01:01.189000+00:00 | ['Ux Writing', 'Content Strategy', 'Design', 'UX', 'Surveymonkey'] |
Lead representative Steve Sisolak: Job Growth in Nevada Remains Strong | Lead representative Steve Sisolak: Job Growth in Nevada Remains Strong
Without a doubt, the most recent two years have been hard for the betting and accommodation industry around the world. Nevada was no exemption, yet deciding by the club’s gaming win for the last months, the betting capital of the world is in good shape. Truth be told, October was the eighth continuous month with club making billion-dollar rewards.
Work Growth in Nevada Continues
In an assertion delivered recently, Governor Steve Sisolak recognized that the state is doing great. He clarified that the work development in the state stays solid considering the forthcoming 2022. Also, Governor Sisolak said that in November alone, the state added in excess of 2,600 positions. As per the Governor, Nevada was among the best three expresses that have been recruiting workers since May this year. He focused on that while there is still work to be done to reach pre-COVID-levels, the state has done “gigantic work up until this point.”
“We actually have work to do to get our economy back to pre-COVID level however we’ve accomplished colossal work up to this point.”
Lead representative Steve Sisolak
In light of joblessness information, Nevada is on the correct way. The state’s joblessness rate was 7.8 in June this year, while in November, it diminished to 6.8. Interestingly, the joblessness rate in California was 7.6 this June, and it diminished to 6.9 in November, which is marginally underneath what Nevada accomplished.
In another assertion, Governor Sisolak reminded Nevadans that immunizations “give strong insurance against extreme instances of COVID-19, hospitalization, and demise.” He encouraged inhabitants to get inoculated or to get a sponsor antibody as soon as could really be expected.
Positive COVID-19 Cases Increase
While diminishing joblessness sounds great, Nevada 레이스벳 might be confronting more troubles this colder time of year. As indicated by Nevada Health Response, the 14-day moving normal of affirmed cases is at present 704. Throughout the late spring, the quantity of normal cases had diminished altogether however over the most recent couple of months, it has begun developing bit by bit. In addition, in the midst of the colder time of year flood of positive cases, there’s likewise the danger of the new COVID-variation Omicron.
Considering the serious effect of the pandemic on Nevada and the continuous wellbeing circumstance, not every person concurs with Governor Sisolak. Reacting on Twitter, one client nicknamed Katherine D asked the Governor to end the veil command.
One more client completely couldn’t help contradicting Governor Sisolak saying that “Individuals landing their positions back isn’t adding occupations.” The client nicknamed Buddy in Vegas added: “We have the second-most noticeably terrible joblessness in the country. That is the thing that happens when you lock down a state for political purposes.”
Santa Fe Casino December Shooting Suspect Caught by Police
It takes a particular sort of individual to need to attempt to carry out a wrongdoing at a club. Dislike there aren’t cameras and different sorts of observation gear all over. Pulling off the wrongdoing isn’t logical, yet maybe those people very much like the bet. One ongoing criminal brains is currently in a correctional facility in the wake of shooting a safety officer at the Santa Fe Station Casino in Las Vegas recently. With his set of experiences, he isn’t probably going to see opportunity for quite a while.
St Nick Fe Shooting Has a Happy Ending
A Henderson man was associated with shooting a Santa Fe Casino safety officer on December 16. He was attempting to cash a bogus City of Las Vegas finance check at a gambling club confine at that point. As per the capture report, Michael Kasper, strolled into the property and went straightforwardly to a clerk’s enclosure. There, he endeavored to cash a $1,981 check.
Inconsistencies in the check prompted the gambling club calling the city’s finance office. They affirmed that no check had been shipped off Kasper. Kasper’s check had hazy prints and had a produced signature.
The representative at the gambling club called her administrator, who then, at that point, advised security. Kasper attempted to escape, however was halted by the safety officer. A battle followed and a gathering of safety officers, including Winston Bouman, then, at that point, took Kasper to the floor and attempted to nail him down. As indicated by the capture report, Kasper ventured into his pocket and took out a weapon. Kasper shot Bouman in his left thigh two times while he was on the ground.
As per the capture report, security took Kasper to a safe region. He remained there until he was arrested by police. Meanwhile, the watchman was taken to UMC Trauma, where he was in stable condition following the extraction of the two projectiles.
Savage Past Catches Up With Him
Police captured the 33-year-old after the shooting. He is as of now being held at Clark County Detention Center, where he deals with indictments of endeavored murder, having phonies or charges and endeavored robbery. Those are only a couple of the charges forthcoming, and others could be attached. The last rundown relies upon how far investigators need to go.
In 2009, Kasper was sentenced for furnished theft, connivance to submit theft and outfitted robbery. As indicated by police, it was a solitary event that didn’t represent a threat to people in general. While the examination was progressing, police shut down one part of the gambling club, however the remainder of the tasks proceeded.
As indicated by court records, Kasper has effectively shown up. A criminal grievance will be recorded on March 17 of the following year.
Government backing for Catawba Indian Nation land into-trust choice
In the United States and President Joe Biden (imagined) apparently marked regulation into law recently that formally makes room for the Catawba Indian Nation to bring a $273 million club resort toward the southern province of North Carolina.
As indicated by a report from The Herald paper, the Catawba Indian Nations Act was predominantly endorsed by the United States House of Representatives in November prior to being passed by the United States Senate by means of a 89-to-ten edge. The source nitty gritty that this action was accordingly remembered for the National Defense Authorization Act endorsed into law by President Biden on Monday to carry government security to the United States Department of Interior’s prior positive land-into-trust choice with respect to a 16.5-section of land plot of Cleveland County land for the Catawba Indian Nation.
Looming weakness:
The paper detailed that the Catawba Indian Nation inked an income offering gaming reduced to the territory of North Carolina in January in order to have the option to open its imagined Catawba Two Kings Casino Resort on this package close to the little local area of Kings Mountain before the finish of 2023. Be that as it may, the entire plan was purportedly imperiled by various claims including those documented by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which is answerable for the main existing pair of ‘The Tar Heel State’ gambling clubs in the Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino and Hotel and surprisingly bigger Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort 벳무브.
Extreme underwriting:
Charge Harris fills in as the Chief for the Catawba Indian Nation and he purportedly portrayed the endorsement of the Catawba Indian Nations Act as ‘the last advance in a decades-in length battle’ to get government support for the clan’s arrangement to bring a club resort to North Carolina. The figure purportedly besides clarified that the entry of this regulation implies that any future resistance to the prior land-into-trust choice will address a test to government law.
Harris apparently expressed…
“The establishment into law of our properties act will probably altogether affect the allure from the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. Depend on it, this regulation method more individuals will have great paying positions, more children will have superior training and more individuals will have better lodging and medical services. That is the thing that this bill truly implies.”
Correcting wrongs:
The Catawba Indian Nations Act was allegedly presented by South Carolina delegate Jim Clyburn with help from North Carolina partners Alma Adams, David Price and George Butterfield trying to take off the crossing out of the imagined ancestral gambling club project. The 81-year-old Democrat from ‘The Palmetto State’ purportedly declared that his regulation will moreover guarantee that the Catawba Indian Nation stays the plan’s essential recipient and bring the coming Catawba Two Kings Casino Resort under the oversight of the government Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
Supposedly read an assertion from Clyburn… | https://medium.com/@irvingjrich/lead-representative-steve-sisolak-job-growth-in-nevada-remains-strong-1afa09f42319 | ['Irving Rich'] | 2021-12-30 04:01:12.915000+00:00 | ['Betting', 'Casino Games', 'Gambling', 'Casino', 'Casino Gaming'] |
The #1 toxicity factor at work | So this is the start of a shorter (medium?) version of Wise Wednesdays while I test if some of the writing momentum can be put into the book.
It’s officially three years since I took a career leap into the unknown: beyond a structured, institutional career into entrepreneurialism.
Yesterday, I was at a meeting on reinventing healthcare public services.
Last week, a client was reflecting on the role of work culture on her career decisions. She’s worked in some of the most pressured and prestigious organisations in the world including alongside the military in fragile states.
She was clear that one of her core values is collaborativeness. This clarity has played a key role in her decision to take a career leap to create something that works better for her.
I was reminded of the aphorism that People don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses.
I would rephrase to:
People don’t leave jobs, they leave work cultures.
Interestingly, research by Google and others has found that the best performing work teams didn’t deliver because of talent, resources or money. Out of 250 factors they examined, the common denominator for outstanding teams was psychological safety. Those that lacked it, didn’t do so well…
What is Psychological Safety?
[Read on or watch the video]
You’ve probably come across an environment with a lack of psychological safety i.e. an environment where competitiveness dominates (people play a zero sum game, hog credit, talk over one another, devalue each other to improve their own standing, claim superior knowledge through snide criticism, etc. — there’s a constant sense of threat and manipulative politicking). Imposter Syndrome thrives here!
If you’re fortunate, you may have experienced an environment built on psychological safety i.e. one where individuals can take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.
“We don’t solve our problems, we grow larger than them.” — Carl Jung.
The rest of the top 5 factors for outstanding teams were Dependability; Structure and Clarity; Meaning or work; and Impact of work.
We spend so much time trying to prove our technical skill and specialist knowledge in solving problems. But what might be most needed for teams and individuals to thrive in 21st century complexity is completely different…
What we might really need is to outgrow industrial work cultures and embrace kinder, more humane principles of relating that make us feel valued and unlock creativity — a radical transformation of our social matrix.
Have a great week,
Amina
www.doctoramina.com
p.s. Join the next webinar?
Insights, tools and strategy
Hot seat coaching
Peer learning
Q&A
See you there!
Liked this? Subscribe to Wise Wednesdays — weekly wisdom to live by. | https://medium.com/@CallDoctorAmina/the-1-toxicity-factor-at-work-7847d0c6756c | ['Dr Amina Aitsi-Selmi'] | 2019-03-20 09:36:11.150000+00:00 | ['Coaching', 'Leadership', 'Doctors', 'Health', 'Careers'] |
Beginners guide to Amazon FBA- Why should you sell on Amazon. | I Am pretty sure that you have already heard about Amazon and selling on Amazon FBA. We recommended it on our other post about ways how to make money online. Have you heard that you can earn some serious money with this business?
But let me tell you- it’s not passive income and it’s not easy. There are so many quite bad things that can happen with this kind of business model. But if you are not a quitter and you have a serious motivation to work towards your goals and towards your own brand- Amazon FBA could be the amazing opportunity that you have been searching for.
We have now been working on our Amazon FBA business for a year. And this has been one of the best decisions that we could have made. We have gained so much experience, knowledge and through that, we have had some very good opportunities with our business.
But as I said, it’s not easy and boy did we thought that it will be easier than that. The one thing that we can recommend to you is to take Amazon FBA selling course before you start anything. There are so many details that you couldn’t possibly search for in google. It’s so much easier to follow a course and move towards your goal with some help. We stumbled on to a very good course that we definitely would recommend. It helps you from the very beginning and guides you through every little detail and if something is not clear, you can always ask! Such a helpful course. I am sure that we would have been lost on Week 1!
Check out the course that helped us to build our own Amazon FBA brand here!
As time went on, we got more excited and started to see development and some actual money that we made. This was a surreal feeling. A feeling that we actually did something right and made money! Because the thing is that you probably have to work and work and work some more for about 3–6 months before you can see any money in your account. But it’s totally worth it!
So I really encourage you to take the step and start with your own Amazon FBA business.
First of all, Is selling on amazon Fba Worth it?
In our experience, I would definitely say yes but the thing is that you can’t really make this decision based on others. Just think about yourself and is this kind of business model for you.
Selling on Amazon FBA IS FOR YOU if:
You are a hard worker– This is not something that will bring passive income. It requires a lot of work!
You want scalable business– Amazon fba can definitely grow into a big business.
You are looking for a side hustle– It’s perfect for it!
You are not a quitter– There’s going to be so many failures, problems and obstacles but you just have to keep your head up and work harder!
Selling on Amazon FBA IS NOT FOR YOU if:
You want to get rich quick– it’s not a business that will get you rich fast, you need to put in the work and time.
You want a passive income– As I said before, this is not a passive business. Work, work and one more time- work, especially in the beginning.
You are not willing to play by the rules– Amazon has so many rules for amazon fba sellers that it’s hard to even count them. Play by the rules, otherwise, Amazon will not let you play at all.
You don’t want to build a brand– Yes, this one may be questionable but we do believe that nowadays, to sell in amazon fba, you have to build a brand. Otherwise, you will be hidden behind the big brand sellers and no one will notice your products. If you decide to do it- do it right!
So yes, selling on Amazon is not for everyone and therefore not worth it for some people. But if you feel like this is a business model that would work for you and you have the power to work for it- Do it!
If we talk in numbers, selling on Amazon will be worth it if you choose the right products. More on that later!
Amazon FBA vs Amazon FBM
Let’s start from the very beginning and clear things out. There are two different ways that you can sell on Amazon. One is Amazon fba and the other is Amason fba.
Amazon FBA (Fulfilment By Amazon)
“You sell it, we ship it. Amazon has one of the most advanced fulfilment networks in the world. With Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), you store your products in Amazon’s fulfilment centres, and we pick, pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. FBA can help you scale your business and reach more customers.” (Amazon.com)
This means that you have to choose your product, find a manufacturer, order your products from the manufacturer, the manufacturer will send these products directly to Amazon fba fulfilment centre, you can start selling and Amazon will send the product to your customer.
The good thing is that you don’t have to pick and pack the products and deal with the sending process. Amazon fba will do it for you.
Amazon FBM (Fulfilment By Merchant)
“Fulfillment By Merchant (FBM) is when the seller is in control of his entire handling and shipping process. Instead of paying a fee and shipping inventory to Amazon to handle, the seller uses his or her own resources and sends the items directly to the buyer. By choosing FBM, a seller takes complete control of the entire process, from purchasing to shipping and receiving.” (feedvisor.com)
This means that you control the whole process and you have A LOT more work to do. You only have a listings about your products on Amazon and when products are ordered by customers, you have to have a warehouse where you keep your inventory and you have to send them out too. You also have to deal with returns.
Because we have only had experience with Amazon fba, we can’t take sides here. But we chose amazon fba because it’s easier and as we live in Estonia there are no other ways for us to sell on Amazon.
Amazon fba is more automated for the seller and I would recommend that but everyone has to choose by themselves.
Now the big question, what products to sell on Amazon FBA?
The main thing to do is to find out products and categories that are selling well but have not yet too many sellers. And for that, you can use different programs.
We use regularly very good program called jungle scout. It will give you data about other sellers on this category and also will give you an opportunity score.
Usually, it’s recommended not to sell products that are:
easily breakable- you want your customers to receive a good and useable product. Very heavy weight- because of the high fees. products with too many competitions Very complex products- the easier to understand the product, the better
Keep in mind that these are just recommendations and if every seller is following them, you may just sell something on the list because no one is selling this product. For example something heavy. Maybe you find some heavy product that will have a very good margin.
Product reachers are the single most important thing in Amazon FBA business! And the process is complicated and not that easy. That’s why I recommend a amazon FBA course for you.
This is just a small introduction to Amazon FBA. It’s such an interesting world and we will definitely write about it more in the future. Let us know what are some of the questions you have when it comes to Amazon FBA and we are more than happy to answer them. | https://medium.com/@brightfultwenties/beginners-guide-to-amazon-fba-why-should-you-sell-on-amazon-2a76d0133802 | ['Brightful Twenties Blog'] | 2019-02-16 15:11:45.985000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce', 'Amazon', 'Amazon Fba', 'Side Hustle', 'Making Money'] |
A Design Journey to Create a New Experience at the Edmonton Food Bank | During this time of self isolation, I decided to do some self reflection which meant taking a look at my old design projects that I had worked on. I came across this wonderful project where I had documented our work in a blog, but did not do a good job in telling a story. Therefore, I thought I would do it justice by rewriting it here on Medium today.
Without further ado let’s jump into it!
This project was done for a design class at the University of Alberta known as Integrative Media and Health Design, instructed by the wonderful Ben King.
What does it mean to be healthy?
After class introductions and the project briefing, each student in the class was asked to describe what being healthy meant to them. There were obvious answers like being free of diseases, or going to the gym, but there were also interesting answers such as not having limitations. This was eye opening as it made me realize that I was answering this question based on my experience, and perspective on being healthy.
Next, we were asked to find one umbrella topic regarding health, to work on for the next 3 weeks. Each person was asked to think of a health issue that Canadians face, and the answers were as follows:
Health prevention such as vaccinations
Physical and mental health issues related to natural disasters (based on the recent Fort McMurray forest fire)
Food sustainability
Food security and food accessibility
Air pollution
Obesity and heart diseases
Health education
Active transport
Given a range of topics, we created categories to find links between the topics. We managed to create four categories; physical activity, mental health, disaster relief, and nutrition.
The class had a majority vote and decided on physical activity as our umbrella topic.
Group Up!
The next day started off with the class having to create four groups to tackle a topic for the next two and a half weeks.
Time management
Mental health
Facility access
Nutrition
The group that I joined was the “facility access” group which consisted of Hannah Mousek, Fatme Elkadry, Zhiying Zheng, and myself Ravin Perera.
Once we had introduced ourselves to each other in the group, we started to list down our interests. We decided to do some secondary research in to these areas and reconvene the next day.
Surprisingly, all of had done some research in accessibility, and obesity. I did research on childhood obesity, and the other group members also had touched on this topic. This clearly was a important issue we felt strongly about, so we decided to concentrate our forces on childhood obesity and access.
Themes
After discussing and reviewing our research, we came across some major themes regarding childhood obesity and access:
Pregnancy and preconception
Childhood obesity in rural areas vs. urban areas
Prevalence of childhood obesity in low income families
Environmental influences on childhood obesity
Mental health related to childhood obesity
Measurement of childhood obesity
Mind Map
As a next step, we decided to create a mind map around childhood obesity, and find the links between these themes.
We highlighted some major themes, which we defined by the number of links they contained.
And then we did individual mind maps for each of those themes.
The main takeaway from this mind map was that we found out that childhood obesity was prevalent in low income families, because they have limited accessibility (physical, mental, and social) to resources compared to a family above the upper income scale.
Next, we presented our findings to our instructor, and received some useful feedback.
Think of alternatives.
Define what you mean by low income families.
Question concepts such as BMI, and see if that is still a valid standard of measuring obesity.
Who are we designing for?
Talk to a family.
Reflecting on the feedback, we decided to come up with some possible solutions related to childhood obesity in low income families.
Design Sprint
We started with the the same design sprint as we did last week. We folded a paper into 8 sections and drew/wrote 8 possible solutions in 4 minutes. Then we took a similar paper, and built on those ideas for 3 minutes.
After this session, we began a brainstorming session where we spent 2 minutes to come up with quick solutions.
After pasting the stickies on the board, we began to categorize solutions under general themes.
The popular themes were Physical Activity, Nutrition, Education, & Transportation.
Keeping these solutions in mind, we decided to come back with two storyboards each.
Another Planning Session
We started off the day by laying out each group members story boards.
The storyboards dealt with issues like food accessibility and awareness of public parks for physical activity.
Collaboration
The class task for the day was to team up with a group and explain to each others design challenge. Our group went first, and we used the board to visualize our problem. The other group gave advice on possible solutions and stakeholders that we should consider.
The major themes that came out of this session was food insecurity, nutrition and food deserts.
Field Research
As the deadline was getting closer, we decided to begin our primary research. As a group, we listed the places to visit that dealt with physical activity, food insecurity, nutrition and food deserts. We decided to visit John Janzen, H&W Produce, Edmonton Food Bank, and a Public Recreational Center.
John Janzen
This is a recreational facility for kids, and it works as an educational experience to educate kids about nature and the importance of it. We decided to check it out, as it was related to children and physical activity. We also wanted to observe if it was accessible for children in low income families, and get an idea of the demographic.
What we observed was that it isn’t a very big facility, but he has many great programs for kids. We found out that it was a popular field trip choice for many schools. The location is quite accessible with a public transit stop right inside the park. The one issue that we found out with accessibility for low income families, was the entrance fee. John Janzen costs $7/adult, and $7 for a child. That is quite a price to pay for a low income family, with addition to public transportation costs.
The Kinsmen
Next stop was the Kinsmen sports center. This was a very popular place for athletes and schools.
In our exploration, we found out that the City of Edmonton provides free access to people of low income. How this low income was considered was through a tax bracket. The application form required to register for this free service was overwhelming, with many questions to fill in.
Edmonton Food Bank
This was the most eye opening part of our field trip. At first, this place was very intimidating, as I had never had to deal with the food bank. I did not know what to expect, and I felt like I was not the only one with this perception.
When we entered the food bank, we were greeted at the reception, and we were immediately set up with a tour from a kind man named Walter Dong. Regardless of the chaotic and busy nature of the food bank, Walter was excited to hear about our project, and with a smile, we were given a personal tour of the warehouse.
The box in the picture above is the standard box (hamper) that is given to a client. Each box weighs over 35lbs, and the boxes increase based on family size. We realized that this was an issue in terms of transportation for a user group that can’t afford vehicles.
During the time of this project, the city of Fort McMurry was being evacuated due to a devastating wildfire. Walter explained to us about the increase in the number of food bank users due to the fires. This increase in volume was putting extra pressure and demand on the place which was receiving no government funding.
H&W Produce
This was our final stop. H&W Produce is a grocery store that only sells produce and other nutritious items. They sell local goods that may be perceived as “going bad” at a significantly cheaper rate. This was an interesting place for us, as it deals directly with food security and food accessibility.
Reviewing our Findings
Upon reviewing our findings from the field trip, we realized that the Edmonton Food Bank, was the area that had the most opportunity for design intervention, and directly dealt with the user group that we were interested in.
Therefore we started to list the possible problems that we observed, and two main themes were accessibility of transport, and education of clients.
Issues related to education were as follows:
How do you know when the food goes bad?
How do you know what food is good for you?
Do visitors know how to prepare the food?
Do visitors know how to budget?
How do you know the appropriate portion size?
Transportation related issues were:
How do visitors get to the food bank?
How do visitors transport their food boxes?
Back to the Food Bank
With these questions in mind, we decided that we needed to go back to the food bank and get the clients perspective on some of the questions. We prepared some questions and a card sorting method to find out different depths of information.
Went back to the food bank and ask some of the questions from Walter. He cleared up many of the assumptions such as transportation, and preparation of food. Many clients have a carpool system that they share to transport their food. The food bank adds in quick recipes in the boxes for users to prepare at home.
We asked Walter if it was possible to interview some of the clients at the food bank. Due to privacy reasons and invasive nature of the questions, Walter advised us not to. Although, he did provided us with another alternative which was the opportunity to shadow the employees at the call center, and to shadow an employee who conducts the required interview for new food bank users.
We gathered some great observations.
We observed that many of the people who use the food bank also unpacked the big boxes into donated shopping bags. These shopping bags were their tool of carrying their groceries home.
were their tool of carrying their groceries home. One of the people interviewed was a evacuee from Fort McMurray, and after the interview was done, she was asked to take a seat in the waiting area until her food box was ready. She said she felt very uncomfortable in the waiting room, and asked if she could drive somewhere and come back later. she was advised not to do that as they have no way of reaching her, so she took her seat in the waiting area with disappointment.
We discussed our findings, and with the help of our instructor Ben, brainstormed quick possible solution and an area of focus.
This helped narrow our area down to the waiting room of the food bank. The decision was largely influenced by the experience of the Fort McMurray evacuee we witnessed. | https://medium.com/@ravinperera/a-design-journey-to-create-a-new-experience-at-the-edmonton-food-bank-4eb819533e3f | ['Ravin Perera'] | 2020-04-24 00:13:44.774000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'UX Research', 'Design Process', 'Service Design'] |
[Python In Depth] Logistic Regression without scikit-learn(a.k.a sklearn) | Sklearn(scikit-learn) is one of the most widely used machine learning libraries in Python.
Its official name is scikit-learn, but the shortened name sklearn is more than enough. Once the library is imported, to deploy Logistic analysis we only need about 3 lines of code. We assume that you have already tried that before. So here, we will introduce how to construct Logistic Regression only with Numpy library, the most basic and fundamental one for data analysis in Python.
We will go through with code blocks to see how the algorithm works.
I worked in Colab, and highly recommend you to use it since we can use free GPU resource, and don’t have to hustle downloading many different libraries. (Link below)
https://colab.research.google.com/
Import dependent libraries, and generate a simple dataset
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random df = pd.DataFrame({“age”: [22,25,47,52, 46,56,55,60,62,61,18,28,27,29,49,55,25,58,19,18,21,26,40,45,50,54,23], “bought_insurance”:[0,0,1,0,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0]})
To briefly explain, Pandas is to handle Dataframes which is one of the characteristic features of Python. Numpy is for matrix calculations, and Matplotlib is for data visualization. Lastly, Random is to import diverse functions featuring randomness in it.
The generated dataset is very simple, only having two columns; age and whether the person bought insurance or not. If the person had one, then 1, if not, then 0.
2. Split dataset into two parts: Training, and Testing
test = df.sample(7) train = df[~df.isin(test)]
train.dropna(inplace = True)
For simplicity, we only made 27 units in our dataset. Out of the 27, we will leave 7 for testing, to see how our Numpy backed Logistic Regression performs on unfamiliar data. And the remaining 20 will be used to learn the parameters in Logistic Regression model.
Since we will check the performance level of our model after training it, the target value we are aiming is [1 1 0 0 0 1 1] which means first two and the last two of the testing dataset have insurance coverage.
3. Activation function
def sigmoid(x):
return 1/(1+np.exp(-x))
Activation function gives non-linearity to the linearly computed value. This is one of the super important features of machine learning, and you will see this again in neural networks part.
4. Loss function
def square_loss(y_pred, target):
return np.mean(pow((y_pred — target),2))
There are literally thousands of loss functions. You can even make your own one if you want, but here we will deploy the most basic and one of the widely used one. Square loss function, which calculates the euclidean distance between the target value and the predicted one.
5. Split X (feature) part and y (target) part
X_tr, y_tr = train.age, train[‘bought_insurance’]
X_te, y_te = test.age, test[‘bought_insurance’]
As you can see to select a column, which could be regarded as a series in python, there are two ways: using a dot to indicate certain column or using square brackets and assigning column name in it as a string value.
6. Model setup and running
lr = 0.01 #learning late
W = np.random.uniform(0,1) # colom 1
b = 0.1 for i in range(10000):
z = np.dot(X_tr, W) + b y_pred = sigmoid(z) l = square_loss(y_pred, y_tr) gradient_W = np.dot((y_pred-y_tr).T, X_tr)/X_tr.shape[0] gradient_b = np.mean(y_pred-y_tr) W = W — lr * gradient_W b = b — lr* gradient_b
‘lr’ in code signifies ‘learning rate’, and this would be multiplied to the gradient value so that this will determine how much you would like to move from the current spot for better performance of the model. And the gradient, which I mentioned just before shows how much you missed out from the target value. So iteratively updating gradients and fixing it with the tuned learning rate, we could hopefully and finally reach the desired performance of the model.
7. Test the performance of the model
After step 6, we would have W and b, which has been updated 10,000 times iteratively. So, what we have is a linear discriminating function whose slope is W and intercept is b.
for i in range(len(X_te)):
r = sigmoid(np.dot(X_te, W) + b)
And this will return sequence of probabilities between 0 and 1. And according to the property that we assigned while defining the function Sigmoid earlier, if the value exceeds 0.5, the final value would be 1, indicating the person would have bought insurance.
What I have got was,
[0.7919596733344769, 0.9410453079178125, 0.9152338193767108, 0.08000347093257619, 0.17797780617706674, 0.9045616415408676, 0.8491202536233904]
for the 7 people in the test dataset. And the end result is [1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1], so I have missed 3rd person’s decision, compared to the target [1 1 0 0 0 1 1].
There are tons of ways to upgrade this simple model. You can change the learning rate or a number of iterations. Also, you can deploy other types of loss functions such as cross-entropy or log-likelihood and so forth.
So, happy learning!
And we welcome your feedback and comments :)!!!!!
Thank you for your time, and we would be sooooo happy for the clap!!! Yeyyy | https://medium.com/@financial-engineering/logistic-regression-without-sklearn-107e9ea9a9b6 | ['A Ydobon'] | 2019-10-08 04:43:59.448000+00:00 | ['Numpy', 'Scikit Learn', 'Sklearn', 'Logistic Regression', 'Machine Learning'] |
The Intellectually Elite | Always talking conservation of a circle. Using unnecessarily complex words to do so. Keeping everybody safe.
Intellectual X and Y’s. (Photo by Samuel Zeller)
If you really knew the odds to everything were an even 50–50, how would that impact you? Your life? Your choices?
Chances are, if you were born in an odd month, you’d say, I’d worry more. If you were born in an even month you’d say, wow, great!.
Chances are, also, you’d reverse your point of view every other day.
You get this. It’s what the intellectually elite are trying to tell you. In a not-so-obvious way.
Conservation of the circle is the core dynamic in nature. | https://medium.com/the-circular-theory/the-intellectually-elite-df64e61d817d | ['Ilexa Yardley'] | 2017-08-08 12:05:25.477000+00:00 | ['Circular Theory', 'Universal Relativity', 'Leadership', 'Education', 'Life'] |
Two Hundred Percent with Ni/Co | Two Hundred Percent with Ni/Co
This Nashville-based pop duo is challenging others to feel something more.
Ni/Co performing at The High Watt, January 22nd, 2018
When most people think of live music in Nashville, they picture country music played at the crowded honky tonks of Broadway. In contrast, what I automatically picture is the growing pop music scene.
At shows such as those put on by Housequake, the people who show up are usually there to support one person. Instead of struggling against drunken tourists for a spot by the stage or at a table, the crowd shifts easily between sets as the next artist’s friends move to the foot of the stage. Frequently, people hang back and talk or surf on their phones while artists they don’t know are on the stage. But when Ni/Co took the stage for their set on Monday the 22nd at The High Watt, they quickly grabbed and held the attention of everyone in the venue.
Clearly having a blast while still hitting every note like pros, Ni/Co’s presence was a crowd pleaser. They brought the energy of the room to a crescendo with their cover of Rockstar 101, and as they left the stage, I heard a guy in the crowd behind me yell “That was BADASS!” to his friends, who enthusiastically agreed.
Colton Jones & Dani Brillhart of Ni/Co
Earlier in the night, I stood with Dani Brillhart and Colton Jones in the lobby, discussing how Ni/Co came to be. As Colton told the story of how they met as students at Belmont University, I quickly began to wish I were recording on a camera instead of a voice recorder, just to capture his hilarious storytelling emphases.
“One day, we were at a party and she was talking about some songs she had written, and I was like ‘oh you write music? What kind of music?’ and she was like ‘R&B’ — and I was like ‘lit lit lit’-” here he emphasizes his point by moving his head and shoulders in time to his words, then continues, “so we wrote together. It wasn’t until two years after that that we decided to be a duo. We wrote a couple songs after [the party] and we both wrote the same way and clicked really well…”
“And we took the leap!” Dani finishes.
When asked about deciding on their name, Dani jokes that they “went down a very dark path” before settling on Ni/Co. “We went through a lot of really weird names. One was Zenith. That was almost our name.”
“Why might you have gone with Zenith?”
“It got to the point where we were just Googling names or words for things, phrases that we liked. I think Zenith is the ultimate pinnacle of something — do I have that right?” Dani looks to Colton, and he nods.
“It’s the pinnacle. And when we first started the duo, we wanted it to be to where we’re not just 50% and 50%, we wanted to be two one hundred percents coming together. So if Zenith is the pinnacle, so it’s like 100 and 100.”
“We both want to bring 100% of ourselves so that when we’re together we’re at 200%. Being together, we don’t want to let the other person down, so we push our hardest and tap into something within ourself that allows us to keep pushing and take risks that get us to where we want to be.”
Spending time with these two, it’s obvious that they provide balance to each other and the work that they are doing. I ask them what they want others to get from their music, and they answer in unison that they want people to feel something — anything.
Dani elaborates further. “We want them to leave the show and be listening to our album and feel something, think, be challenged a little bit. We’re going to make a lot of people uncomfortable with the way we look, the things we say, and the songs that we sing… but we want it to be a good challenge. We want to make people uncomfortable, but we want to make them think outside of where they usually think.”
“Whether it’s good or bad, we want them to go through a range of emotions. We don’t want to be shallow.” Colton says.
And while their goals are big, they’re also reasonable, and it seems they don’t mind taking their time. “Ultimately we’d like our music to be more generally accessible, selling out arenas… we haven’t released anything yet, but in a year or so we’d like to have several songs out, have something people can experience with us.”
Expanding on that, Dani says, “My one year goal is to be on a tour as the opening act by the end of the year — like a tour that we know and love and are super proud to be a part of, and see the world that way, as an opening act.”
Ni/Co hasn’t released anything other than covers on YouTube yet, but they are very excited about an upcoming Instagram promotion they have been hard at work on. Starting in February, they will be releasing 6 one-minute videos that intertwine into one story, all featuring original music.
image via Ni/Co
“Our aesthetic, looking at the two of us, we are challenging… but we want it to be a good challenge.”
Out of the music you listen to, who are your influences when you’re writing your music?”
“Beyonce, definitely!” Dani replies instantly, “But she’s more of an influence just for the Goddess I want to be. For writing, JoJo has to be my biggest one. I think we both like JoJo. Our writing lines up a lot with hers.”
“Yeah, I love the female vocals. I’ll write entire choruses for Dani that I could never have done myself.”
“But side note — he can sing higher than me.”
Colton continues, “Our sound that we love, at the core it’s pop music, but it leans urban. It has an R&B lean to it. Like she said, Jojo’s latest album, Kehlani’s record, even Justin Bieber. Early Chris Brown, early Rihanna…”
“We love our good throwback music.” Dani explains. “You know the song that comes on in the club and everyone’s freaking out — ‘this was my jam in middle school!’ — we’d love to have a song that makes people feel like that.”
“We build on each other. Where I’m weak, she’s strong, and vice versa. We’re very yin yang.”
If you had to sum up your experience working together so far in one word, what would you say?”
“Liberating.” Colton’s response is instantaneous. After a moment, Dani says, “Strength.”
“If you two weren’t musicians, what would you be doing career-wise?”
Both Dani and Colton are stumped by this. “Just… sad.”
“Whatever it was, it’d have to be creative.”
“Well, then, is there an art form that you admire and might be interested in learning at some point?”
“True painting and drawing — visual art.” Dani says, “That is something that blows my mind, when I look at paintings. I don’t know how they do it! I’d love to spend some time in Italy or France, taking an art class. I think that would be super out of my comfort zone, but I have so much respect for that kind of art.”
“If I could get myself to not burn out on focusing, I would definitely do some sort of creative writing or poetry.” This sparks a discussion on how funny it is that most people see poetry and lyrics as similar, but many poets frequently feel daunted by the thought of adding music to their words, while songwriters feel daunted by the idea of leaving music out of their words.
It’s all about personal perspective — and Dani and Colton are already living up to their goal of challenging others to think outside their boxes.
A good challenge, indeed.
Interested in seeing Ni/Co live in Nashville? They’re opening for Spazz Cardigan’s show on February 26th — get tickets here! Otherwise, stay tuned by following Ni/Co on Facebook & Instagram.
Enjoy what you just read?
Learn more about Meridian Creators here, give us a like on Facebook, & consider supporting our growth with a one-time donation through PayPal or a monthly one through Patreon! | https://medium.com/meridian-creators/two-hundred-percent-with-ni-co-87d3ee2a4148 | ['Taralei Griffin'] | 2018-01-25 16:33:30.351000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Interview', 'Journalism', 'Pop', 'Art'] |
How I Bought An NYC Skyline View Home with 60k Salary | When I was in my mid-twenties, my living situation became frustrating. I had been living in an apartment in Queens, New York with a roommate and renting out our living room to lower our expenses.
After several horrific roommate incidents, including one that involved our living room subtenant almost burning down the apartment, I began to question my co-living situation.
I felt that it was time to move on. As to where, I had no idea.
One day, as I was talking to my mother on the phone. She asked me if I had thought about buying my first home.
Having moved to New York right after college, I was accustomed to the high rent and subpar living condition. The idea of buying my own home with a modest salary of 60k a year working as a graphic designer has never crossed my mind, not to mention the fact that I was single.
“I can’t afford that. Do you know how little I make?” I told my mother without thinking twice.
“But have you even looked into it?” said my mother.
“Oh, that I haven’t.” I admitted.
It was then when I realized that I needed to do my own research before coming to a conclusion that I can’t afford a home in New York, arguably one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world.
It was then when I realized that I needed to do my own research before coming to a conclusion that I can’t afford a home in New York.
New York’s Co-Op Disappointment
The search didn’t start off promising as I realized that most apartments available in the New York area are out of my budget, not to mention that roughly 75% of them are co-ops.
When people buy co-ops, they aren’t actually buying real property because co-ops are owned by corporations that sell shares to buyers. In addition to the “non-ownership” nature as a buyer, you also have to seek co-op board approvals for almost everything you do with your apartment, such as renting, sale and renovation. The board want to maintain the quality of the community by knowing exactly who you rent/sell to and what you do with the apartment.
I couldn’t stand the idea of not owning outright when I make such a big investment. I wanted it to be a true step-up of my old living situation — being a true owner of my living space and whatever I do with it.
I couldn’t stand the idea of not owning outright when I make such a big investment.
That’s when I decided to expand my area of search.
I came across an area called Riverdale in the Bronx — a safe and picturesque residential neighborhood right above Manhattan. It is still within the 5 boroughs of New York City, but much more affordable with way less traffic noise.
I found quite a few properties there that fit within my price range, but ultimately decided that the neighborhood wasn’t a fit for me. It is still dominated by co-ops with few amenities nearby. As a single woman in my 20s, I knew that I would become bored of the neighborhood pretty quickly.
Say No to Location Snob
The search continued. This time, I made the decision to look outside of New York City.
It wasn’t an easy decision because I worked full-time in the city and the thought of commuting from another city and potentially sacrificing my social life was not appealing.
However, the reality of the market left me with few options — I can either give up on buying or look away from the city that many consider the center of the world.
If buying a home is my priority, I cannot afford to be a location snob.
If buying a home is my priority, I cannot afford to be a location snob.
Since New Jersey is just a river away, I decided to give it a shot.
I was excited to find a large inventory of condominiums with a few co-ops here and there- exactly what I was looking for.
One day, I got connected to Louise, a local realtor in New Jersey. She is a retired teacher-turned-realtor, jovial with a great sense of humor. We immediately hit it off and became friends.
Every weekend, she drove me around New Jersey looking at different properties. Being the proactive buyer that I was, I found most of the listings myself through major real estate websites like Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com or directly from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which is where most realtors pulled listings from.
After months of weekend road trips with my amazing realtor, I found a beautiful studio-turned-one-bedroom condo apartment by the Hudson River with a view of Manhattan. It was fully-renovated in a nice building and the price point was right above what I could afford.
Regardless, I made an offer. I knew good properties don’t last, even outside of Manhattan.
My offer came in slightly lower than the asking price because I realistically could not afford it at the time.
I was prepared to be countered but didn’t expect that the seller would decline my offer just a day later. Apparently, another buyer offered at asking price right after me. I had heard about bidding wars, but didn’t expect the heartbreak would come so soon!
After Losing My “First Love”, I Found “the One”
After losing out on my first offer, I got discouraged — I thought I would never find anything as good again.
Louise encouraged me to keep looking. A few months later, I found the home I was going to eventually purchase not far from the first apartment that I lost. It is much bigger than the one I thought I wanted so much and only slightly more expensive. At that point, my financial situation had improved and I could afford a higher price.
The apartment boasts a sweeping view of New Jersey, the George Washington Bridge and part of Upper Manhattan. The building has 24/7 concierge service, gym, pool, steam room, community room, dog park and dedicated parking garage for all residents. The express bus to New York City is right in front of the building. For all that amenities, the condo maintenance fee is surprisingly affordable. Even though the apartment itself was not in top notch condition, I knew it was a good deal.
The asking price was still a bit higher than I wanted to pay. But this time I had an advantage — the seller wanted to sell quickly and there wasn’t another compelling offer.
Louise quickly made friends with the seller’s realtor and learned of the price that they were likely to accept — it was below asking price and within my range. She started to draft up the contract as I flew to Florida for a vacation that I had planned earlier.
In real estate, everything moves fast.
Louise hounded me with texts while I was on the beach as we began negotiating with the seller. I signed the contract electronically while sitting on the beach.
There was no time to lose — good properties don’t stay just because you’re on vacation.
Good properties don’t stay just because you’re on vacation.
A Trick to Save Thousands in Legal Costs
My offer was quickly accepted, much to my relief. I finally found my first home!
Then it was time to hire a lawyer to go over the contract and take care of the closing process. I took advantage of Hyatt Legal Plan, an employee benefit program that provides free legal service of certain categories for a small premium of $5 per month.
This is a benefit that many big companies provide but most employees either don’t know about it or rarely utilize it. Knowing that I would be in the market for a new home, I elected this benefit as soon as it became available to me. It is a no-brainer to pay $5 per month and save thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Getting a Mortgage Was Less Daunting Than I Thought
Meanwhile, I also learned that in the process of buying a home, everything happens concurrently.
I had to be prepared to handle all the paperwork and stress even though I had a realtor and a lawyer working for me.
I was applying for a mortgage at the same time as I was finalizing contracts with the lawyer and seller. Meanwhile, I was also looking for a home inspector and contractor for minor renovation work to prepare for the final closing and move-in.
The process of getting a mortgage may seem daunting to many as there are so many requirements and paperwork, not to mention having to compare thousands of available options from different lenders.
Word of mouth played an important part in my decision as I trusted the recommendation of my former colleague who was an experienced homeowner. Of course, I did my own research before making the final decision.
Before starting your home shopping with a realtor, most of them will require that you get pre-approved for a mortgage. The process was relatively easy — I provided them with my income statement and was quickly pre-approved.
However, in the actual mortgage approval process, they did scrutinize every bit of financial information I provided. In order to get approved for a mortgage, the borrower has to show good credit and a stable source of income. A year or so before I decided to shop for a home, I started to strategically save every month to make sure I can afford the down payment.
It was definitely challenging because my salary was still modest at the time. Being a single buyer only added on to the challenge because I had no one to share the cost with, but it afforded me the opportunity to be truly independent.
The Realities Of Owning Property
Being a homeowner is empowering because you are no longer at the mercy of your landlords. You can take advantage of certain tax breaks. You can also make significant profit by selling your property later down the road when the market is right.
Of course, it is not without drawbacks.
My monthly payment now includes mortgage, property tax and condo maintenance fee, which adds up to more than what I paid in rent when I lived in Queens.
There is also unexpected maintenance cost that I had to come up with when something goes wrong. One time, I had to pay $600 to fix a severely clogged pipe in my bathroom. Having no landlord suddenly didn’t seem so fun.
Meanwhile, high living cost is driving millennials out of big cities. Many are delaying home-buying well into their 30s trying to pay down enormous amount of student debt.
While I didn’t have rich parents supporting me, I was spared of student loans because I was an international student who didn’t qualify for any but was lucky enough to receive a full-scholarship from my college. Not everyone is so lucky.
Therefore, my article is not meant to say “you can do it, too.”
Instead, I’d like to share how it was a simple question from my mother that made me realize how I drew conclusions too quickly. If you are looking to buy your first home, hopefully my experience provide some insights into how you can get started.
Owning a home is a huge undertaking, but if we start by asking “how can I afford it” instead of saying “I can’t afford it”, we are half way there.
To watch a video recap of my experience, check out my YouTube. | https://medium.com/@stellaguan/how-i-bought-an-nyc-skyline-view-home-with-60k-salary-fb2dd6176e4c | ['Stella Guan'] | 2020-12-22 21:17:45.982000+00:00 | ['Mortgage', 'Home Buying', 'Homeownership', 'Real Estate', 'Buying A Home'] |
[Untitled] | a peculiar soul who loves to write and passionate about carving her own world | https://medium.com/@mariasteffany/untitled-5689dc9f8b3 | ['Maria Steffany C'] | 2020-12-16 04:27:16.488000+00:00 | ['Memory', 'Feelings', 'Poem', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
To empathise with developers is to learn the basics of coding | Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
In early 2019, I started a Codecademy online course to learn the basics of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Every evening after work I would go through each lesson. Let me tell you — it was painful. I didn’t understand any of it. Why did things have to be done a certain way? Why can’t code be much simpler? I just didn’t get it. I didn’t get why coding works the way it does. For example, why do you need to add a Float property to push pixels around the screen? It is very difficult to transition from a UX to a Front End mindset. After a month of the course, I still understood very little and would have no idea where to start if I were to put it into practice.
A few weeks after the course, I discussed my need to understand more about coding with a former colleague named Rodolfo, (who is now a good friend) and has agreed to be my mentor, and from then on, things started to change drastically. He agreed to teach me how to code everyday for 1 hour after work including some weekends. I am thankful for that. | https://uxdesign.cc/to-empathise-with-developers-is-to-learn-the-basics-of-coding-6d21818d36f0 | ['Simon Hoang'] | 2020-07-05 12:27:02.398000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Design', 'Tech', 'UX', 'Coding'] |
New Face of BiKi.com: Rebranded But Still True to Roots | 26th November, 2019, Singapore — Digital assets trading platform BiKi.com has recently undergone a revamp of its official website and app, with a completely new user interface, the first steps in its rebranding and upgrading efforts.
Sporting a new color tone for its logo, BiKi has adopted a warmer and more vibrant yellow, in contrast to its earlier cool blue hues. According to the exchange, this change in palette signifies “more vitality and hope” and users can expect a more dynamic platform with correspondingly more vibrant services.
The backdrop depicts a vast and unknown universe with the implication that BiKi will extend into these unexplored and unchartered territories of the industry.
Officially launched in 2018, BiKi.com has been around for a year and three months. Within this span of time, the exchange has managed to accrue 2 million registered users worldwide and 130,000 daily active users, ranking amongst the best exchanges on CoinMarketCap and Feixiaohao.
According to data from Feixiaohao, the average daily transaction volume of BiKi has reached USD 1 billion (compared to USD 5 billion on Huobi Exchange), quite a feat considering it was achieved in only a little over a year. Traditional business infrastructure or practices have not held back the young exchange who has consistently demonstrated bravery in the areas of change and innovation.
A New and Complete Ecosystem
BiKi’s business ecosystem has evolved over the preceding months.
In addition to the basic exchange services, the platform has launched new features such as the BiKi Mining Pool and the BiKi Innovation Zone, in response to its community demand for derivatives.
Before that, BiKi established the BiKi Research Institute, led by BiKi founder, Winter, and also a Supervisory Committee. The institute will conduct in-depth research on apps and also the future developments in the blockchain industry. Next in the pipeline will be the setup of an industry fund as well as a project incubator.
BiKi’s strategy of meeting new challenges with a fresh new look and attitude sums up the comprehensive upgrade.
Strategic Offerings and Innovation
Taking a year to rise in the fiercely competitive exchange rankings to first-tier status has been an uphill battle.
Just as cities are categorized as first-, second- or third- tier cities, new first-tier exchanges hover between first- and second- tier exchanges. Generally speaking, there is not much of a difference in hardware performance between first-tier and new first-tier exchanges. The main differences are reflected in the product, branding and software experience.
The rise of numerous smaller tokens this year have taken place outside of first-tier exchanges. This ‘asset diversification’ has actually worked in BiKi’s favor, propelling it to the position of a front-line exchange. Meanwhile, the catchphrase “The popular token’s choice” has been meticulously imprinted in the minds of investors and projects these past months.
While exchanges get a lot of attention and users when a project scores a TenX (tenfold increase), if it can offer no other value propositions, users will start voting with their feet and the exchanges will eventually lose their user base.
It is thus crucial to be forward-looking and innovative to guarantee sustainability. From hot assets to the BiKi Innovation Zone, to the BiKi Mining Pool, to the BiKi Research Institute, to the Supervisory Committee, BiKi.com does not stop. Despite such endeavors consuming a lot of manpower and financial resources, BiKi considers these moves as insurance against losing its users to other exchanges in the event of an exchange melee.
In an industry that has no shortage of once-popular exchanges falling from grace, BiKi has adopted the stance that not advancing means retiring. Constantly innovating and researching new industry insights to break the ceiling remains a priority for the exchange.
Other examples of innovation include its policy of using 100% of its platform fees in the buyback of the BIKI platform token, a move unprecedented for exchanges but which has since been copied by smaller exchanges, as well as the quarterly burning of the platform token. This policy prioritizes platform users, indicative of the exchange’s focus on its users.
In line with its globalization initiatives, the exchange is expanding its business and operations center globally. It has implemented an overseas strategy of ‘localization after globalization’ successfully in several major countries so far.
A Summary of the Past; A Starting Point for the Future
BiKi’s brand upgrade can be considered a summary of all its past goals and endeavours while it positions itself for the future journey forward.
The rapid pace of innovation and expansion continues at BiKi with new features: leverage, contract and lending will be launched in the near future.
With its current brand upgrade covering multi-dimensional aspects — strategy, product, service, user experience etc., users can certainly look forward to plenty of surprises from the new ‘ready-to-wear’ BiKi. Yet despite the myriad changes, at its heart, the core focus on being user-oriented remains a constant.
About BiKi.com
Headquartered in Singapore, BiKi.com is a global cryptocurrency exchange ranked Top 20 on CoinMarketCap. BiKi.com provides a digital assets platform for trading more than 150 cryptocurrencies and 250 trading pairs. BiKi.com is focused on providing the safest, most stable and most effective cryptocurrency trading platform. 100% of the transaction fees are used in buyback and burning of platform token, BIKI. Since its official opening in August 2018, BiKi.com is considered one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchanges in the world with an accumulated 2 million registered users, 130,000 daily active users, over 2,000 community partners and 200,000 community members. BiKi.com has received investments from Huobi co-founder Du Jun, Genesis Capital Zhu Huai Yang, FBG Capital, ChainUP and others totaling approximately 10 million USD.
Read the article here: https://www.ccn.com/new-face-of-biki-com-rebranded-but-still-true-to-roots/ | https://medium.com/@bikicoin/new-face-of-biki-com-rebranded-but-still-true-to-roots-30b583543071 | [] | 2019-11-27 04:10:48.055000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto Mining', 'Staking', 'Mining', 'Biki'] |
Investor Beware: 5 Telltale Signs of a Scammy ICO | Investor Beware: 5 Telltale Signs of a Scammy ICO
Half of the 2017 ICOs have already failed. Pay attention to these warning signs before your next ICO investment.
Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are a new breed of investment, a hybrid baby of the crowdfunding model and the traditional company shares made available on the stock market.
This form of funding has soared over the last few years, equipping many startups with the funds to move forward, but at the same time bamboozling many investors and leaving a “digital graveyard” of failed ICOs and scam projects.
In fact, 46% of ICOs failed in 2017. It’s an astonishing number and it explains why social media giants like Twitter and Facebook have started to ban ads for the ICO offerings in a bid to stop susceptible investors from getting blinded by the blockchain and throwing funds at charlatans.
It can take more than a little common sense to sift out the potential scams and find the hidden gold, but these five factors are the fundamental ingredients of a bad ICO — make sure you consider these before investing in any project.
Coinification
The ICO trend has gone viral: every man and his dog want to have a token on their platform and companies are bending over backwards to coin-ify their offering and capitalize on the ICO craze.
It is questionable whether some of these companies could even benefit from a blockchain, never mind a token, but the blockchain hype has represented a way for companies to revive themselves by tacking the new tech onto their existing offering as an afterthought: Kodak Coin anyone?
It is not that all tokens are worthless, but that only those with intrinsic utility, or that function as equity, can have value.
Equity tokens represent a participatory role in a platform, or shares in the ownership of a company, and need to meet the three requirements of the Howey test. If this standard can’t be met, then a token may fall under the classification of a utility token, which provides users with access to a product or service.
A good example of utility tokens are Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have value because of utility enabled by possession of the token. Bitcoin, has utility as a peer-to-peer currency, and Ether is used within the blockchain for transaction fees, ICOs, etc.
Utility tokens are the most common kind, and are bound by more lenient laws, which makes them ripe for exploitation. Companies that might ordinarily adopt a traditional shareholder structure are instead implementing dubious tokens into their platforms.
It might seem obvious to point out, but tokens need utility! Whether it gives voting rights over the blockchain, or is just a coupon on the company platform, tokens without use are tokens without value.
This was illustrated perfectly by the man who made thousands from an ICO called the ‘Useless Ethereum Token’, marketed as the ‘The world’s first 100% honest Ethereum ICO’. He was completely candid about the uselessness of the token, but still managed to make enough money to buy himself 118 flat screen televisions!
Shifty Staffing
Cryptocurrency is a fresh field, a new realm of discovery, and has led many young investors down the blockchain rabbit hole.
This is no bad thing, but if you are throwing money at something, make sure it’s going to stick; don’t hand it to a bunch of unemployed architects who are trying their hand at an ICO to make some quick cash. Or worse, fakes; one Initial Coin Offering, Miroskii, pulled the wool over their investors eyes with a completely fabricated team, including a designer who looked just like Ryan Gosling!
Hey Girl. Watch out for ICO scams.
Take a look at the team of successful cryptocurrencies, and you will see finance magnates, tech CEOs, and experienced developers from the likes of Google that have the knowledge and wherewithal to drive a project forward.
The team should be qualified, experienced, and have a good track record of delivering projects. You can check this by seeking them out on LinkedIn.
Tumbleweed Community
The enthusiasm and engagement of a coin’s followers, is what creates the buzz of excitement and generates growth. A coin without community is a coin without use, and without value.
So what about those hidden gems, the obscure moonshots, the coins that noone is talking about?
Even coins that are under the radar should still have a semblance of community. Be this a developer group, or just a discussion forum.
The best way to get a sense of the strength of a coins community is through the numbers — just take a look at the facebook likes, twitter followers, and relevant reddit activity. You can also look for development activity on Github, the public software development platform.
The steady growth of relevant subreddits, twitter communities, and developer forums, tends to reflect the growth in price. But bear in mind all of these measures can be flawed, and along with the usual methods of buying fake followers on social media, paid shills have even been caught promoting particular coins on reddit.
Washout Whitepaper
Most ICOs have a flashy website, with some generic atomic background to hypnotise you into believing its legitimate, but you need to look beneath the hood.
The whitepaper is the premise of the coin; the raison d’etre. It should outline the vision, and help you to understand if the project is addressing a real problem, or if it’s just fluff.
With the exception of certain projects that are based on existing blockchains, every ICO should have a whitepaper: This explains why the altcoin should exist, how the token is integrated, and gives an overview of the technicalities.
It should also detail how investors funds will be used, and give a timeframe for bringing the project to market, including projections of profitability.
Some projects even provide technical and non-technical versions, so you can make sense of it even if you’re not a coder. Plagiarized, misspelt, and generally nonsensical whitepapers should set the alarm bells ringing.
Dodgy Distribution
Although some might see cryptocurrency as the great equaliser; transferring wealth from the rich to the poor, the bankers to the bitcoinists, what is actually happening is a little different.
Decentralisation doesn’t necessarily mean a more equal distribution of wealth, and in some cases ICOS have issued tokens in a distinctly dubious way: With large portions of the tokens kept back by the development team, and other portions pledged to to creating industry consortiums, a non-profit bodies, or a foundation to benefit the cause.
This might seem cynical, but who knows what these funds are really being set aside for, and it could easily turn out to benefit the individuals involved.
In other cases, a premine is undertaken — which is when some of the tokens are made available to a small group of investors and developers before hitting the public sale. If the proportion of tokens allocated for this is high, then this should raise suspicion from investors, suggesting that they intend to maximise their financial gain from token appreciation, instead of focusing on developing the network for all.
Paycoin, for example, was an ICO who had the majority of their tokens reserved for project developers, and whose CEO pleaded guilty to running a $9 Million Fraud Scheme. | https://medium.com/totle/investor-beware-5-telltale-signs-of-a-scammy-ico-6e32ff9555af | [] | 2018-03-29 19:33:34.179000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'ICO', 'Blockchain', 'Scam', 'Bitcoin'] |
The New Age of Media Manipulation | 01 The Current age
The long history of “fake news”
The concept of the term “media,” in the first place, was created as a means of communication. Its essence was to distribute and express thoughts and information, but it is up to one’s understanding and standpoint to interpret it. Although it has been a heated discussion in recent years, marked by several significant events such as reports in the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, the creation of “fake news” was not a recent decade’s invention. During the Jacobite rebellion in Great Britain during the mid-1700s, seditious printers printed much fake news to encourage the king’s throne’s destabilization, such as King George II was ill.
Examples of misinformation
Misinformation was continuously used as a tool to create for one’s benefit. With the help of recent technological developments, there are more advanced ways to manipulate the targets. Before the infamous 2016 elections, misinformation campaigns were happening in Mexico before the US. In its 2012 election, Enrique Peña Nieto, the president, and the current president hired Hacker Andrés Sepúlveda to help his campaign. Sepúlveda registered an army of automated accounts that would talk about Peña Nieto’s presidential plan, creating Twitter trends. Not only Mexico, but his teams also worked on presidential elections in Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Venezuela. A similar situation can be seen across the globe in Kenya’s election, gubernatorial vote in Jakarta, Indonesia.
John Moore / Getty Images
Why does misinformation always happen?
According to a case study research from the Technology and Social Change research team (TaSC) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, the life cycle of media manipulation campaign could be divided into five stages:
1. Manipulation campaign planning 2. Seeding campaign across social platforms and web 3. Responses by industry, activists, politicians, and journalists 4. Changes to the information ecosystem 5. Adjustments by manipulators to a new environment
These five stages formed an enclosed circle, in which once stage five ends, stage one will happen over and over again. However, a campaign will usually not be discovered until at a very late stage, or even after it is over.
However, it is also essential to recognize that not all misinformation is created with a purpose to harm. Information disorder doesn’t directly equate to the “fake news” that the public disgust. Ranged from “falseness in information” to “intentionally harness information,” it could be falling into three main categories. Firstly, misinformation means no harm, but spreading wrong information, not on purpose, including editing mistakes, or even when a satire was interpreted in the wrong way. The second category, disinformation, refers to those who create and spread incorrect information such as manipulated images or rumors on purpose, but usually means no harm. The third category, misinformation, is publishing information intending to deceive.
Uncontrollable information spread on social media
With the complexity within the misinformation, it would be tricky for governments or companies to regulate. When one spreads the correct information but accidentally with the wrong context, or when articles use clickbait that would lead to incorrect assumptions, it is hard to claim them guilty. Facebook, for example, had announced that they would not regulate or fact-check satire. What’s more, a massive amount of misinformation happens between private chats or direct messages, which is technically out of the public realm where regulations are hard to apply, as it violates users’ privacy. Although specific laws regulate information on the internet, for example, the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which holds pornographic material, it is still tricky to identify what is “right” or “wrong” and to punish those who “make fake news.” Who will be the judge to determine the “wrongness” of information? And how do you punish those who never intentionally spread out incorrect information? A not complete regulation system might violate the freedom of speech, which is the First Amendment's fundamental civil right.
With the invention of the internet, people can talk to each other or reach a massive public audience much more effortlessly. As information travels at a faster speed, inappropriate content is also accompanied. Regulation and censorship sound different, but they are, in fact, highly similar actions. Current laws for the internet regulate copyright material or offensive material, as it does cause visible harm to certain people. Then what about those who spread information through advertisements, including serious information such as political views? They did not do anything wrong but are distorting or manipulating people’s view to one’s benefit.
The growing problem in digital media
Nowadays, one issue is: compared to the good old days when you had limited resources for news, information was spread through so many more routes. According to research conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019, 54% of Americans got their news through social media, mostly Facebook. Acknowledging that social media are not a reliable source of distribution, as “one-sided news” on social media was the biggest concern among the participants, many are still under its effects. The heavy reliance on social media as the primary news source could be dangerous, as news agencies are responsible for political news, not social media. In January 2020, Facebook announced that it would continuously allow political advertisement as long as it abides by Facebook’s community standards. Although never intended to “manipulate information,” the algorithm for many social media platforms would prioritize their business partners, which would generate similar news items for the business’s support. While algorithms learned from users’ data, they would keep caused similar information to you, leading to an incomplete or biased perspective, therefore creating a divided nation.
So does it mean that if most people follow proper news resources and the problem will be solved? Unfortunately, The answer is no. Ideally, professional journalists should be delivering the only truth and facts without bias, and there are still tendencies when different news agencies have other voices within the same topic. As a result, Americans are divided by party in the sources they turn to for political news. Thus, according to the Pew Research Center, Democrats tend to trust more of the news sources, while Republicans question the reliability of news sources more. With that being said, either side will only see the information they are willing to see and receive different opinions. | https://medium.com/@hanzhanglai/the-new-age-of-media-manipulation-730fab432434 | [] | 2020-12-11 23:54:51.259000+00:00 | ['Manipulation', 'Media', 'Media Criticism'] |
Split your data into clusters with imperio ClusterizeTransformer | Feature engineering is the process of transforming your input data in such a way that it will be more representative of the Machine Learning Algorithms. However, it is very often forgotten because of the inexistence of an easy-to-use package. That’s why we decided to create the one — imperio, the third our unforgivable curse.
The technique discussed in this article doesn’t transform your data actually, it adds a new column to it, which can be very helpful to your model. This technique is called ClusterizeTransformer.
How ClusterizeTransformer works?
If you ever heard about Unsupervised learning, then this technique won’t be hard for you, unsupervised learning is a type of algorithm that learns patterns from data without labels, meaning without the target column. In this circumstances were developed other techniques that can predict something based only on the input data. One of these algorithms clustering algorithms is KMeans.
I won’t explain how KMeans and many other clustering algorithms works, but shortly it just finds a way to divide your data in different groups, usually the number of groups is specified by the user. Thus, in this example below, the data was divide in three clusters, red, blue and green.
After the clustering algorithm is applied, it returns the labels corresponding to each data point, for example: 1 for green, 2 for red, 3 for blue. In that way we can obtain a new column, which will represent the number of the cluster for every data point.
Using imperio ClusterizeTransformer:
All transformers from imperio follow the transformers API from sci-kit-learn, which makes them fully compatible with sci-kit learn pipelines. First, if you didn’t installed the library, then you can do it by typing the following command:
pip install imperio
Now you can import the algorithm, fit it and transform some data.
from imperio import ClusterizeTransformer kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=2)
cluster = ClusterizeTransformer(kmeans)
X_transformed = cluster.fit_transform(X)
As we said it can be easily used in a sci-kit learn pipeline.
from sklearn.pipeline import Pipeline
from imperio import ClusterizeTransformer
from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans pipe = Pipeline(
[
('std', StandardScaler()),
('cluster', ClusterizeTransformer(KMeans(n_clusters = 5))),
('model', LogisticRegression())
])
Besides the sci-kit learn API, Imperio transformers have an additional function that allows the transformer to be applied on a pandas data frame.
new_df = cluster.apply(df, target = 'target')
The ClusterizeTransformer constructor has the following arguments:
algorithm (Object): The instance of the algorithm that will do the clusterization.
(Object): The instance of the algorithm that will do the clusterization. column_index (list, default = None): The list of indexes of the columns to apply the transformer on. If set to None it will be applied to all columns.
The apply function has the following arguments.
df (pd.DataFrame): The pandas DataFrame on which the transformer should be applied.
(pd.DataFrame): The pandas DataFrame on which the transformer should be applied. target (str): The name of the target column.
(str): The name of the target column. columns (list, default = None): The list with the names of columns on which the transformers should be applied.
Now let’s test with Heart Disease, a classic Machine Learning dataset. Note, we can apply it only on numeric data, so choose the columns if needed.
As we can observe from confusion matrices, initially we got 75% accuracy, and after applying ClusterizeTransformer we obtained 93% accuracy.
Made with ❤ by Sigmoid.
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/sigmoid/ | https://medium.com/softplus-publication/split-your-data-into-clusters-with-imperio-clusterizetransformer-1e5d4166296f | ['Vladimir Stojoc'] | 2021-07-08 10:03:44.775000+00:00 | ['Feature Engineering', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning'] |
How To Inspect Your Local Network | How To Inspect Your Local Network
A practical guide with examples
I must concede, spying on a network (and everything and everybody on it) is just candid fun. Imagine, silently typing on your keyboard, exploring a network, examining what things are there and what they are up to. How would this not be equally intriguing as reading a mystery novel?
Photo by Artur Rutkowski on Unsplash
But do you know how to scan your local network How to find its vulnerabilities?
So few of us know how to do this. How do you get a list of every open port on your computer? Or of every connection to the WiFi? This topic is often discussed on a theoretical level, but very rarely with a practical approach. That is why all talks on cybersecurity and hacking are always full to the last seat. We want to know about this, we want to learn. And yes, we absolutely do want to spy on everybody 😎
The following guide describes how to inspect your network in Linux.
We will start with ourselves
First, we have to figure out where we are, do we have a network connection? How many do we have?
To get a list of currently active network connections, we will use the very convenient ip command. ip has been replacing the ifconfig command since iproute2 tools became available.
ip addr show will show us everything that has an IP address, a MAC address or is pretending to have one (i.e. veth — Virtual Ethernet Device).
To make the output more readable, we’ll add -c (=use colour). For ease of use, I suggest adding the alias ip=ip -c to your environment.
How to read the above? Immediately, you can see 4 sections: lo , wlp58s0 , docker-0 and br-9ad7ea412ea4 .
lo stands for localhost (archaically called loopback).
Most of you probably already know, but let’s state it clearly nevertheless: this address is used for internal testing of network services. It is implemented entirely within your computer and is not accessible from the outside (from other computers, devices, the internet).
From the 3rd line of its description ( inet 127.0.0.1/8 ), we can see that its IP address 127.0.0.1 , just as expected.
wl... stands for wireless LAN, this is our wireless connection to our immediate network. In the 3rd line ( inet 10.0.0.8/24 ) we can see that its IP address is 10.0.0.8 .
10.0.0.8 is an interesting address, it is the public IP address of our computer. Other devices on our network see our computer as the host 10.0.0.8 . But because the IP starts with 10.- we also know that this is a private network, our computer is not accessible from the internet.
Which IPs are private again and which public? The IETF’s standard (document RFC-1918) explains that IP addresses 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 are reserved for the private IP space and cannot be routable on the global internet. (Together with a few addresses in the 172.- and 192.- blocks)
wl... appears only if you have a wireless interface or adapter. If your connection to a network is via a cable, then you are looking for a connection called eth... .
If there are several wired or wireless interfaces available, all will be listed.
In the inet6... line of each section we can see the various MAC addresses of each device.
To see only the list of MAC addresses, run ip -c link show .
What role do Docker containers play?
Did you know or, better, did you pay attention, to the detail that every Docker install comes with a bridge network?
This is what the above docker0 is referencing.
As long as no containers are running, the bridge docker0 ’s status is DOWN .
What happens if I now start a few Docker containers and run ip -c addr show again?
I get a veth.. section for every container. veth s are virtual ethernet connections. They always come in pairs, one is created in the localhost namespace, and the other in the namespace of the container’s network.
What are we showing?
The next step in our “Practical guide with examples” is to figure out what services we are exposing to others on this network. We will use nmap .
nmap is a great tool for network exploration and security auditing. It is also open-source and very straightforward to use.
nmap researches which hosts are available on the network, what services those hosts offer, what OS they are running, what type of packet filtering/firewalls are in use, …
BE CAREFUL! Scanning random servers can get you in trouble!
From the above, we learned that our computer has 2 IP addresses, the localhost 127.0.0.1 and the network address 10.0.0.8 . Both of these represent our computer. Everything on localhost is visible only from our computer and everything on 10.0.0.8 is visible to every device on this network.
The good news is that these 2 IPs do not overlap by default. What is accessible on 127.0.0.1 is not by default accessible on 10.0.0.8 . We have to put in extra effort to make something from our localhost visible to the network. But the bad news is that sometimes we are running services, which by default ARE visible to everybody on our network. 😨 And let us be honest, 99.99% of us are not sure which services these are.
Thus, let's ask the computer which ports are open.
What is hooked to localhost?
nmap is truly simple to use. It does have lots of settings, but for starters (because we are scanning localhost and not spamming a random server) it is enough if we just give it an IP address.
Just short note, scanning TCP ports ( -sT ) is much faster than scanning UTP ports, and checking the status of just 1 port ( -p 80 ) is vastly faster than scanning all ports.
Because ..localhost, we’ll scan everything:
$ nmap 127.0.0.1 Starting Nmap 7.60 ( https://nmap.org ) at ...
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.00020s latency).
Not shown: 992 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
139/tcp open netbios-ssn
445/tcp open microsoft-ds
631/tcp open ipp
1010/tcp open surf
1111/tcp open lmsocialserver
1500/tcp open vlsi-lm
3306/tcp open mysql
5432/tcp open postgres
4000/tcp open remoteanything
Ok, how does one read this? Is this list too long, too short, just right? It is localhost, after all, it is not accessible to others.
Localhost or not, the rule with ports is very simple:
Keep all ports closed, except the ones you are using.
I went through the above list and instantly understood all but the first 3 ports:
To learn more about these 3 ports, we can use -A to enable OS detection, version detections, script scanning and traceroute and we can limit the scan to only 1 port with -p 631 .
$ nmap 127.0.0.1 -A -p 139
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.000089s latency). Starting Nmap 7.60 ( https://nmap.org ) at ...Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)Host is up (0.000089s latency). PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
139/tcp open netbios-ssn Samba 4.10-Ubuntu (workgroup: ABCD)
Service Info: Host: MON Host script results:
|_nbstat: NetBIOS name: MON, ....
| smb-os-discovery:
| OS: Windows ......
|_ System time: ....
| smb-security-mode:
| account_used: ...
| authentication_level: ...
|_ message_signing: ....
------------------snip------------------------------------
This is one way of figuring out more about these ports, a far more efficient way is to google them all 😄.
After googling the other 3, I discovered that:
631 is used to communicate with the printer. This makes sense since there is a printer right next to me 😌.
445 is used for a Microsoft service for file sharing. And it appears that this is a horrible port to have open 😱. For a long time this port has been known as a horrendous security hole:
“As you might imagine, malicious hackers have been having a field day scanning for port 445, then easily and remotely commandeering Windows machines.”
— Gibson Research Corporation
139 is also used for file sharing to Windows computers. Apparently, it is not that terrifying to have this one open.
I just created some work for myself. I will have to deal with 445 and 139. Soon. There is a reason why computer administration is a full-time job.
But, I will definitely check who else has 445 open at work 🍹.
(later that week): Ha, 12 other hosts have 445 open. I guess I will have to share the knowledge and offer to explain the danger. Again, more work.
Who said knowledge is power? Knowledge is mostly work.
What are we sharing with everybody on the network?
After the 445 gave us a scare, we might have brushed it off thinking, “It is only localhost, localhost ports are most probably not really dangerous, .. I think. They are at least benign enough for me to procrastinate on closing them for a few days/months. It is the public ports, which I will concentrate on”.
So let’s see, what is visible to other devices on our network.
$ nmap 10.0.0.8 Starting Nmap 7.60 ( https://nmap.org ) at ...
Nmap scan report for Mon (10.0.0.8)
Host is up (0.00020s latency).
Not shown: 996 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
139/tcp open netbios-ssn
445/tcp open microsoft-ds
1500/tcp open vlsi-lm
3306/tcp open mysql
8080/tcp open http-proxy
8888/tcp open sun-answerbook
9000/tcp open cslistener
Uh-oh, 💀 the dreaded 139 and 445 are open… Which makes sense, since they are meant for file sharing between computers, not between this computer and itself. This will need my attention ASAP.
But first, 😉 why are all the Docker ports visible to everybody? Ah… this is turning into a much bigger mess than anticipated.
After some googling, I learnt that by default Docker exposes ports to the IP address 0.0.0.0 and not 127.0.0.1 . The 0.0.0.0 address is a placeholder address, its meaning is similar to that of * in a regex. Saying “Expose 0.0.0.0:30 ” means expose the port 30 on all IP addresses, thus also our public 10.0.0.8 .
Each time you mapped a Docker port to an outside port, you were making this port publicly accessible. Great!
So, to remedy this, I might want to update the docker-compose.yml files by explicitly binding ports to IPs. Once this is done, nmap no longer shows Docker ports among the publicly open ports.
Perfect, we finally have all ports accounted for.
Now we can move on to …
Who else is here?
For starters, let’s check which WiFi network we are connected to. Let’s run nmcli dev wifi :
nmcli will display a brief summary of all available wifi access points (APs). It can also be used to connect to a selected network ( nmcli dev wifi connect MANET-3 ).
Given that we have 3 wifi networks, we should definitely scan all 3 of them. But for starters, let’s see what is on MANET-2 . We will use nmap .
To see which other hosts are “up”/“live” on our network, we need to know our IP address and our subnet mask. From running the ip command, we got both these details: 10.0.0.8/24 .
A quick reminder of what a subnet mask is. The IPs of all hosts in the same network start with the same bits, only the last bits are different. Our subnet mask /24 means that the first 24 bits will be the same. Given our IP 10.0.0.8/24 , we know that all hosts in our network will be between 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.254 ( 10.0.0.0 is the network address and 10.0.0.255 is used for broadcasting).
To quickly see all devices on my network, run nmap with the option -sn . This means nmap will no scan the ports, it will just return a list of “live” hosts:
$ nmap -sn 10.0.0.8/24 Starting Nmap 7.60 ( https://nmap.org ) at ...
Nmap scan report for _gateway (10.0.0.1)
Nmap scan report for 10.0.0.3
Nmap scan report for 10.0.0.4
Nmap scan report for 10.0.0.5
Nmap scan report for MON (10.0.0.8)
Nmap scan report for 10.0.0.9 Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (6 hosts up) scanned in 15.31 seconds
There are 6 active hosts in our network. 10.0.0.1 is the gateway, the router connecting our private network to the internet. 10.0.0.8 is us (our computer’s name is MON).
But who are the others?
To learn more about them we can run nmap with
-sV , to see which services are listening on which ports,
, to see which services are listening on which ports, -sS , for the quickest and relatively stealthy scan,
, for the quickest and relatively stealthy scan, -O , to enable OS detection,
, to enable OS detection, -A , to enable OS detection and other features
, to enable OS detection and other features -p 80 , to check only the port 80
, to check only the port 80 -sT , to scan only TCP ports (scanning TCP ports is much quicker than scanning UTP ports).
Investigating host 10.0.0.3 reveals:
$ sudo nmap -sS 10.0.0.3 -A Starting Nmap 7.60 ( https://nmap.org ) at ...
Nmap scan report for 10.0.0.3
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
80/tcp open http GoAhead WebServer
|_http-server-header: GoAhead-Webs
| http-title: Range Extender
|_Requested resource was http://10.0.0.3/login.asp
MAC Address: 09:0A:XX:XX:XX (Tenda Technology)
Device type: general purpose
Running: Wind River VxWorks
OS CPE: cpe:/o:windriver:vxworks
OS details: VxWorks
Network Distance: 1 hop Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 20.60 seconds
Look at the line | http-title: Range Extender and OS details: VxWorks . This host is just a WiFi range extender. A quick google search of OS VxWorks reveals a pretty awesome Wiki page explaining that this OS is used for embedded systems, that the Mars rovers are using it, as well as the ASIMO robot and a bunch of auto manufacturers. And here I am using it to merely extend my WiFi range. This is the technology that went to Mars and I paid 40€ for the hardware, software, transportation, design,… Feels like uncovering a small jewel.
Investigating host 10.0.0.4 reveals:
$ nmap -sS 10.0.0.4 -A Starting Nmap 7.60 ( https://nmap.org ) at ...
Nmap scan report for 10.0.0.4
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
80/tcp open http nginx
8008/tcp open http?
8009/tcp open ssl/ajp13?
| ssl-cert: Subject: commonName=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
8443/tcp open ssl/https-alt?
9000/tcp open ssl/cslistener?
MAC Address: XXXXXXXXX (Hon Hai Precision Ind.)
Device type: firewall
Running (JUST GUESSING): Fortinet embedded (87%)
OS CPE: cpe:/h:fortinet:fortigate_100d
Aggressive OS guesses: Fortinet FortiGate 100D firewall (87%)
No exact OS matches for host (test conditions non-ideal). Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 187.96 seconds
This is an interesting device, it runs a full-fledged Nginx web server. And it seems to have been built by Hon Hai Precision Ind., a Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturer. Since they are a contractor, we are no closer to figuring out what device this is. The Fortinet FortiGate is a professional firewall. 3 ports are protected by SSL (the connections are encrypted).
Not knowing what this device is, is actually a happy surprise. Some people have put at least some effort into making sure this device demands a bit of know-how and effort to crack.
After checking manually, it turns out it is the TV.
Checking 10.0.0.5 was an enigma. nmap couldn’t figure out anything. I ran it with all kinds of settings, I’ve tried out all kinds of approaches, but the main problem was that this device had all ports closed. Everything. Each and every one of them.
It should come as no surprise that a port-scanning tool isn’t good at figuring out a device, which has all its ports shut. 😅
I checked manually and it was an Android smartphone.
Last one to go! What is 10.0.0.9 ?
$ nmap 10.0.0.9 -sT
Nmap scan report for 10.0.0.6
PORT STATE SERVICE
62078/tcp open iphone-sync Starting Nmap 7.60 ( https://nmap.org )...Nmap scan report for 10.0.0.6PORT STATE SERVICE62078/tcp open iphone-sync Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 40.79 seconds
What a surprise, this device practically introduced itself. It appears to be an iPhone, which apparently likes to sync something via this port.
Googling this port proved to be very Apple-like: lots of rumours lots of guesses, no official explanation. From what is written about this port, it seems to be used by iTunes for data-syncing on a WiFi network. I do wonder how often this syncing is happening and if the owner of this phone, knows about it.
Try nmap today
With just a few nmap commands I was able to learn a great amount about the devices on my network. Pretty good, considering I just learned about this tool recently.
Now it is your turn, check your devices and your networks and try not to get in trouble.
External sources | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-inspect-your-local-network-4187d7ae3b10 | ['Ines Panker'] | 2019-10-01 20:51:02.604000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Nmap', 'Networking', 'Technology', 'Cybersecurity'] |
Saving Pot Features in Fintech and CoreWallet | Your bed stand is the best place to store your savings.
Strange statement from a company with a background in the financial industry.
But hear us out. It’s very true. In a way. Provided of course that the bed stand in question contains a specific tool often found there. This tool will become the new focal point of saving and storing money: The smartphone.
In fintech-savvy countries like the USA, mobile devices already have a significant impact on how users access their finances. At least 63% of American users have a financial app installed on their mobile devices. German users, on the other hand, are still at odds with financial apps for the most part.
And that’s despite the fact that digital financial applications assist users in a number of ways. An especially exciting field: Apps aiding users in saving money and gaining wealth. Neobanks and fintech companies have established a whole range of solutions that transfer their user’s money into savings accounts, set rules for automatic saving and evaluate their spending behaviors. And even more innovative: Some of those apps feature money storage containers, often called pots or virtual accounts, which allow users to allocate their savings just as they prefer. Doing so, they put traditional banking houses in a tight spot.
Savings: A Necessity
But is it still worthwhile to save money in the first place?
Since several decades, we can observe interest rates rolling downward, with little hope for a soon turnaround. It’s only natural that many customers ask themselves whether putting their money on a bank is still the best option, especially if activity fees slowly melt savings instead of increasing them.
How eagerly people put money on the side is as much a question of financial culture, though. Germany recently hit a record high of 69 billion Euro worth of savings (which did not procure a significant jump in wealth).
On the other hand, U.S. Americans are more reluctant to savers. Up to 40% of them have less than $400 in reserves — bad news when there is an emergency. Given such situations alone, it’s important to have a few nest eggs to fall back on. Just in case.
So saving should remain an important pillar in our financial life. But it’s not an easy thing to do for most people, as it requires a specific mindset and strong dedication. With alternatives to banks popping up in the digital realm, traditional financial institutions might find themselves to be part of the problem rather than the solution. As Jon Stein put it in Betterment:
“The world creates many reasons to buy things. Meanwhile, no part of the industry solves saving. Banks and investment managers leave it to their customers to solve.”
The Case for Digital Saving Apps
Digital money-saving applications, while largely not providing additional incentives to build up reserves, make the process of saving more convenient for the user nonetheless.
Some apps are standalone products. They connect with the user’s regular banking accounts, moving money between accounts according to set rules — apps like Plum, Squirrel and savedroid belong within this category.
Other money-saving solutions are part of a wide feature set of banking services, as is the case with Monzo. These accounts might also give interest rate (although fairly low) on the money stored.
There are a number of features common in all such apps, which constitute the unique advantage they have on traditional saving processes in banks.
1. Spending Statistics
One of the key features of many banking and financial apps are spending statistics. Algorithms — some simple, some sophisticate — evaluate a user’s transactions, categorizing and visualizing their spending habits in tables and pie charts. This makes it easier for users to control their finances and discover categories, in which spendings can be cut, to the benefit of savings.
2. Automated Saving
A unique quality of many app-based financial assistants is that they don’t simply encourage us to save money — they trick us into doing it. Putting money on the side on a regular basis is a task which challenges our discipline. We must remind ourselves to save while keeping an eye on our finances, so we don’t “over-save”. Financial apps can tackle this problem in creative ways. For example, some banking apps round up the price of every purchase and transfer the difference to a savings account. Some apps feature even more sophisticated forms of automatic saving. They might enable users to set rules, under which circumstances money wanders into the pots. For example, every time you spend a specific sum dining out, €5 move to your “Spa Weekend” saving pot.
3. Separate Saving Pots
Speaking of which: Digital saving containers, called pots in apps such as Monzo, rank among the clearest advantages of apps in comparison to offline deposit accounts. It’s beneficial to take a detailed look at them, as the integration of separate saving containers can have huge benefits for providers of financial service apps.
The Benefits of Saving Pots
Separate saving containers or pots represent singular saving goals and purposes, such as reserve funds for big-ticket items, holiday money or a digital “Swearing Jar”. The integration of such containers is more than just a feature of convenience. At a bank, all saved money is usually deposited on one coherent account. Status updates on one’s savings take the shape of checking the account balance via online banking platforms or at ATMs. Money stocked in an account, that’s all there is to it.
Savings-storing containers follow a different approach. Usually, pots have a visible funding goal and a progress bar, showing how much money has already been contributed to reaching this goal. This adds just a pinch of gamification to the somber experience of building up money reserves. And it adds focus, as clear labeling can visualize the goal of saving right on first sight. Statistics and visualization also help to track progress and bolster motivation to really put the money aside.
What’s more: Pots can work together with automated saving rules, as discussed above. That means that funds can move from one container to another, which makes smart saving decisions possible.
Shared Saving Pots
The abundance of digital ways to connect with other people today makes way for one final, promise full functionality in savings applications: Shared saving pots. They are connected to several accounts and allow contributors to save towards a common goal. This makes them a worthwhile choice for families, groups of peers and even private organizations — once common banking regulations such as KYC or CTF are adhered to.
Shared saving is also one of the features which are not easy to develop, on the software side of things, as we will see right away.
Building Savings Pots: 2 Variations
In theory, anyone with access to account statement data can build a savings app. Yet, there are two ways to organize money-saving in applications. We will mostly concentrate on the second type, with the former having a number of disadvantages and does not allow shared saving pots.
1st Type: Pots on Wallet Level
Digital saving pots can either be realized as separate wallets or as subaccounts linked to one wallet. We will call those subaccounts wallet accounts here as we do in the context of CoreWallet, our emoney management software framework, which can implement both types of saving pots.
Wallet accounts have some advantages when it comes to the logical separation of funds. Savings are not transferred from one (bank) account to another one. Instead, the funds remain within one (bank) account. The money meant to be saved is booked to a separate wallet account to logically split it from the “available” balance. It still can be displayed accordingly in a UI/frontend.
However, these wallet accounts are not genuine accounts. No (real) money has been withdrawn from the main account and transferred there. This means that the “savings containers” don’t affect the balance of the actual account. There is no blocking mechanism preventing the savings from being spent or disappearing from the account once it gets cleared.
It’s just money with a different denotation attached to it. For detailed information, consult the CoreWallet Documentation.
2nd Type: Pots as Different Accounts
In this variant, every savings pot exists as a new, full account, related to a user’s general account. A wallet system, connecting to the accounts via a PSD2 API, projects and regulates transactions between those accounts. It’s there, where account balances are monitored and where routines are executed — if money moves from one account to the other, it’s displayed in the wallet system as well.
Integrating a simple reconciliation logic into the wallet system also makes automatic saving possible. It allows the service providers to integrate an algorithm which processes balance statements and determines actions. The user can set rules using a frontend built upon the wallet system. For example, they order the system to “save €10 whenever I eat outside”. The wallet system would then inspect the general account statements for entries that signify eating at restaurants and puts transactions to the saving account in motion.
Setting up Saving Pots With
CoreWallet can be used as a solid software foundation for the backend of a wallet system. It is all set to integrate the functionalities a service provider requires:
The CoreWallet backend can also be adapted to dock a PSD2 API. It is then set to allow more advanced saving pot features, such as:
Social Savings
Processed by the CoreWallet backend, saving pots can be connected to each other to form a whole saving network. There, groups of people share saving pots, allowing them to transfer their emoney to them. CoreWallet can also act as a foundation for peer-to-peer transactions or a payment system based on saving accounts — the wallet provider manages the accounts and allows users to choose which account to debit for purchases.
(Please mind, though that such business models must be counterchecked to adhere to the effective regulations of the countries the service is available in — compliance is a key business factor. However, CoreWallet is designed to adhere to KYC and anti-fraud measures taken.)
Summary
Saving features in digital finance apps have the potential to influence our spending behavior for the better, providing new incentives and convenient ways to build up monetary reserves. Among them, digital saving pots hold great potential for innovation. By designing specific rules, locks and bolts, interacting with each other, digital saving accounts can be set up to react to our spending habits and overall financial situation.
In the end, it’s up to your business to find new lines of thought and develop specific use cases for your financial app. What you can rely on is, that CoreWallet is all set to support you with a battle-proven, yet flexible software framework.
Did you like what you have read? Or do you have a different view? Let us know in the comment section. We’re also on social media, so be sure to follow us on , and on our Facebook page. | https://medium.com/trimplement/saving-pot-features-in-fintech-and-corewallet-a3a82dffd58b | ['The Trimplement Team'] | 2019-08-12 07:30:17.214000+00:00 | ['Fintech', 'Saving Money', 'Digital Transformation', 'Automation', 'Finance'] |
Live Web Chat: The Extreme Importance and Key Benefits within the U.S. and Europe | live web chat with conversational AI
Over the past five years, live web chat — also known simply as live chat — has been increasingly becoming a mainstream and essential communication tool throughout the United States and Europe by which global consumers get in contact with eCommerce sellers (i.e. Amazon Sellers, Shopify Sellers, eBay Sellers, Lazada Sellers, Shopee Sellers, Online Stores, etcetera) for remote customer service and technical support solutions; live chat happens to provide many key benefits to startups, small, medium, and large businesses and corporations and should be implemented to maximize on the provision of high-quality customer experiences that increase customer retention rates and that create strong brand loyalty, bringing steady short-term growth and long-term success to businesses and corporations on a global level.
Sales consumers for the past 5-to-10 years have been steadily evolving in the way that they connect with e-Commerce sellers (i.e. Amazon Sellers, Shopify Sellers, eBay Sellers, Lazada Sellers, Shopee Sellers, Online Stores, etcetera) for pre-sales / post-sales customer care and tech support solutions; due to the advancement of the Internet and mobile technology and the standardization of the Worldwide Web (WWW), new communication and telecom channels have been strengthening the sales connection between startups, small, medium, and large businesses and corporations and their consumers, solidifying their sales relationships with their eCommerce customers and providing unlimited access to prospective consumers on a global level. For outsourcing businesses and corporations such as cross-border e-Commerce sellers, international large Belt and Road (B&R) enterprises, etcetera — and especially for self-built offshore e-Commerce businesses and corporations, live web chat — also known simply as live chat — is silently becoming an extremely powerful pre-sales and after-sales customer service communication tool amongst other communication and telecom channels such as SMS messaging, phone calls, e-mail, or social media; though many cross-border eCommerce businesses and corporations that have evolved from traditional foreign trade companies still use e-mail as their main customer care communication method, the new generation of e-Commerce sellers have been rapidly discovering the high sales efficiency brought by high-quality customer service and have begun to adopt tollfree 1–800 customer service calling in countries around the world in addition to live chat as a means of serving global consumers 24/7 in real-time.
Live web chat — a platform that is usually embedded into official brand websites through a string of software code that brings up small pop-up customer service communication windows on brands’ websites in the form of conversational AI chat bots, human services, or a mixture of both — is not just another communication platform in addition to the rest; live chat is becoming a viable standard in and of itself for global consumers and provides a plethora of benefits that other communication platforms simply cannot afford — especially in the United States and in Europe alone. Even though the traditional toll-free 1–800 telephone service is still essential, about 20% of consumers in Europe and in the United States said that they hardly use telephone communication to contact brands — whether it be pre-sales consultation or post-sales service — and are more accustomed to direct online communication, SMS texting, or e-mail according to a survey by our very own Callnovo Contact Center’s American and European Marketing Department; at the end of this year, European and U.S. consumers who insist that brand companies must have telephone contact options available will still account for 31% of all consumers; however, the proportion of consumers who prefer to use live chat to communicate with brands has already reached as high as 38% and is rapidly growing.
To read more, please visit here… | https://medium.com/@callnovoint/outsourced-remote-customer-service-via-live-web-chat-its-extreme-importance-and-key-benefits-5c8e0b88c3c0 | ['Callnovo Contact Center'] | 2021-02-19 20:22:16.090000+00:00 | ['Live Web Chat', 'Live Chat', 'Call Center', 'Customer Service', 'Callnovo'] |
Tale of Ice Cubes | We
are the ice cubes
sitting in the dark behind this
closed freezer door;
Last night we transformed from
water to ice cubes
The beauty sitting on my left
is Jenny
The princess sitting on my right
is Julie
Julie’s eyes are filled with tears
when I spoke to Julie;
Julie didn’t speak much
Jenny is a cute chatterbox
Sometimes,
I am a monk
Sometimes,
I am a music artist
I travel between the
silence and noise;
One day,
when we were in deep sleep,
Julie was taken away from
the ice tray by our
nineteen-year-old owner’s son
for his drink;
My water heart shed tears for
the loss of Julie
I realized her pure love for me.
Jenny leaned on my shoulders
with fear.
In the darkest night,
Someone unplugged the
refrigerator,
Jenny and I melted,
mingled into
an eternal soul.
© Rajesh Vairapandian 2019 | https://writerrajeshvairapandian.medium.com/tale-of-ice-cubes-55cc37f4050c | ['Rajesh Vairapandian'] | 2019-10-03 05:10:29.624000+00:00 | ['Literature', 'Love', 'Poetry', 'Poem', 'Art'] |
Logging with Enums in .NET Core. In this blog post, I extend the… | In this blog post, I extend the built-in logging framework with the use of enums as log events, building on the out-of-the-box log event concept.
A Brief Introduction
With the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging package, flexible and powerful logging concepts are available. This is an integral part of dotnet core. The new logging framework has integrated concepts like log categories, familiar to users of the Log4j, Log4net and NLog logging libraries, and structured logging, familiar to users of Serilog.
Microsoft has a nice introduction to the logging concepts here, and here is a short snippet that give you an idea of the standard functionality in ASP.NET core:
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private readonly ILogger<HomeController> _logger;
public HomeController(ILogger<HomeController> logger)
{
_logger = logger;
}
public IActionResult Index()
{
_logger.LogInformation("Index read {user}",
Request.HttpContext.User);
return View();
}
}
An implementation if ILogger<T> is automatically injected into the constructor by the built-in dependency injection container. This type also has overloaded methods that take an EventId as the first parameter, for example void LogInformation(EventId eventId, string message, params object[] args) Basically, you pass in any integer as the first parameter as the EventId type has an implicit operator converting an int to EventId : public static implicit operator EventId(int) . So, the typical example is that you create a class containing constants that represent your application events:
public class LoggingEvents
{
public const int GenerateItems = 1000;
public const int ListItems = 1001;
public const int GetItem = 1002;
public const int InsertItem = 1003;
public const int UpdateItem = 1004;
public const int DeleteItem = 1005;
public const int GetItemNotFound = 4000;
public const int UpdateItemNotFound = 4001;
}
And then you use this like so:
public IActionResult Index()
{
_logger.LogInformation(LoggingEvents.ListItems, "Index read {user}",
Request.HttpContext.User);
return View();
}
Using Enums As Event Ids
So, the first improvement that I suggest, is to use enums instead of having a static class containing a list of integer constants containing my event ids. What I would like to have, a definition of event ids like this:
public enum LoggingEvents
{
GenerateItems = 1000,
ListItems,
GetItem,
InsertItem,
UpdateItem,
DeleteItem,
GetItemNotFound = 4000,
UpdateItemNotFound
}
So, let’s have a first shot at an overloaded extension method that will implement this:
public static class LoggerExtensions
{
public static void LogInformation<T>(this ILogger<T> @this, Enum e, string message, params object[] args)
{
var i = (int)Convert.ChangeType(e, e.GetTypeCode());
@this.LogInformation(i, message, args);
}
}
Notice that we use the Enum type for the parameter, which is the ancestor type for all enums in C#. Then we do some magic to get the integer representation of the passed enum instance. Then, the log statement looks similar to the one above, but uses an enum instead of an integer: _logger.LogInformation(LoggingEvents.ListItems, "Index read {user}", Request.HttpContest.User);
Let’s try to improve this a bit by leveraging the fact that we are using enums. As I mentioned before, the built in logging features so-called semantic or structured logging. So let’s add some more semantics to our extension method above:
public static void LogInformation<T>(this ILogger<T> @this, Enum e,
string message, params object[] args)
{
var i = (int)Convert.ChangeType(e, e.GetTypeCode());
var eventName = Enum.GetName(e.GetType(), e);
var eventScope = e.GetType().Name;
var parameters = args.Append(eventScope).Append(eventName).ToArray();
@this.LogInformation(i, message + " (Event scope: {eventScope}, name: {eventName})",
parameters);
}
There’s a lot of stuff going on here, but let’s try to sort it out:
The eventName variable would hold the enum name, like ListItems.
variable would hold the enum name, like ListItems. The eventScope variable will be the name of the enum type, like LoggingEvents.
variable will be the name of the enum type, like LoggingEvents. The variables above are added to the log message parameters, so that they automatically become a part of the log message structure and are available for filtering, sorting, etc. when making sense of the logs.
Using Several Enum Types
With having the name and scope parameters attached to the log messages, it is feasible to structure the log events using several enum types. You could, for instance, do something like this:
public enum CustomerEvents
{
CustomerCreated = 1000,
CustomerRead,
CustomerChanged,
CustomerDeleted
}
public enum OrderEvents
{
OrderCreated = 2000,
OrderLineAdded,
OrderLineRemoved,
OrderCancelled
}
The only thing you would need to make sure, is that the integer values of the different enum types do not overlap, as that would mess up the event ids.
Centralizing Log Levels
One thing that always puzzles me when coding, is to figure out the correct log level (information, warning, error, critical, etc.). To me, it is very difficult to comprehend this while writing code. So, what I would like to do, is to move the log level concern out of the application code. Instead of having it sprinkled around the code, let’s make a map that maps the events to log levels:
private static readonly Dictionary<Enum, LogLevel> LogLevelMap = new Dictionary<Enum, LogLevel>
{
{ AppEvents.GenerateItems, LogLevel.Information },
{ AppEvents.ListItems, LogLevel.Information },
{ AppEvents.GetItem, LogLevel.Information },
{ AppEvents.InsertItem, LogLevel.Information },
{ AppEvents.UpdateItem, LogLevel.Information },
{ AppEvents.DeleteItem, LogLevel.Information },
{ AppEvents.GetItemNotFound, LogLevel.Error },
{ AppEvents.UpdateItemNotFound, LogLevel.Error }
};
Now we don’t have to implement overloads for LogInformation , LogError , LogWarning , and so on. We need only one overloaded method, Emit :
private const LogLevel DefaultLogLevel = LogLevel.None;
public static void Emit<T>(this ILogger<T> @this, Enum e, string message = null,
params object[] args)
{
var i = (int)Convert.ChangeType(e, e.GetTypeCode());
var eventName = Enum.GetName(e.GetType(), e);
var eventScope = e.GetType().Name;
var level = LogLevelMap.ContainsKey(e) ? LogLevelMap[e] : DefaultLogLevel;
var parameters = args.Append(eventScope).Append(eventName).ToArray();
@this.Log(level, i, message + " (Event scope: {eventScope}, name: {eventName})", parameters);
}
Then we can write log statements like these:
var id = 1;
_logger.Emit(LoggingEvents.GetItem, "Item({id})", id);
_logger.Emit(LoggingEvents.ListItems);
Thank you for reading my article. See you :) | https://medium.com/@sebahattin-catal/logging-with-enums-in-net-core-e9773c286f9 | ['Sebahattin Çatal'] | 2020-11-03 06:55:23.419000+00:00 | ['Dotnet', 'Dotnet Core'] |
Building a Multi-Platform Travel App With Flutter [With Code Samples] | Building a Multi-Platform Travel App With Flutter [With Code Samples]
Apps that have a single codebase but run on a few platforms is one of the hottest trends in 2020. Github, in their latest ‘The State of the Octoverse’ report, includes Flutter to the three most trending open source projects (13k contributors).
Easy to guess why: technologies like Flutter UI framework are time-savers for devs and budget-cutters for owners.
In this guide, we’re going to show you how to build a simple travel app with Flutter. If you want to see the outcome right now, check the app on Google Play.
Here’s what you’ll see in this tutorial, by screens:
MyApp
Splash screen
StartPage
Facebook authorization
Sign In/Sign Up
Complete profile
Profile
List of countries
Search by countries
Detail page
Add comment
One more thing: this guide is mostly for devs that already have some experience with Flutter, Firebase, and know UI design principles.
Now, it’s coding time.
MyApp
First, orientation. Mind that the app will support the portrait mode only:
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
// only portrait orientation
SystemChrome.setPreferredOrientations([
DeviceOrientation.portraitUp,
DeviceOrientation.portraitDown,
]);
return MaterialApp(…);
}
} class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {Widget build(BuildContext context) {// only portrait orientationSystemChrome.setPreferredOrientations([DeviceOrientation.portraitUp,DeviceOrientation.portraitDown,]);return MaterialApp(…);
Next, we should set up basic widgets styles. That means you create a class with styles, colors, resources, and so on.
TextStyle class:
class FCIStyle {
static TextStyle H4White100Left = const TextStyle(
fontFamily: ‘Metropolis’,
color: Color(0xffffffff),
fontSize: 28,
fontWeight: FontWeight.w700,
fontStyle: FontStyle.normal,
letterSpacing: 0.36,
);
…
}
Same with colors. Here’s how you set styles for most used elements and AppBar:
MaterialApp(
theme: ThemeData(
accentColor: FCIColors.accent,
primaryColor: FCIColors.primary,
textTheme: TextTheme(
subtitle: FCIStyle.Subtitle1Black100Left,
body1: FCIStyle.Body1Black100Center,
body2: FCIStyle.Body2Black100Left,
button: FCIStyle.ButtonWhite100Center,
caption: FCIStyle.CaptionBlack100Center,
title: FCIStyle.H6Black100Center,
),
buttonTheme: ButtonThemeData(
hoverColor: FCIColors.vermillion,
buttonColor: FCIColors.blue_violet,
shape: RoundedRectangleBorder(
borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(24),
),
textTheme: ButtonTextTheme.primary,
height: 48,
),
appBarTheme: AppBarTheme(
elevation: 0,
textTheme: TextTheme(title: FCIStyle.TitleWhite100Left),
),
),
);
Define the screens of the future app:
initialRoute: SplashPage.routeName,
routes: {
SplashPage.routeName: (context) => SplashPage(),
StartPage.routeName: (context) => StartPage(),
SignInPage.routeName: (context) => SignInPage(),
SignUpPage.routeName: (context) => SignUpPage(),
CompleteProfilePage.routeName: (context) => CompleteProfilePage(),
CountriesPage.routeName: (context) => CountriesPage(),
InfoPage.routeName: (context) => InfoPage(),
RestorePasswordPage.routeName: (context) => RestorePasswordPage(),
ProfilePage.routeName: (context) => ProfilePage(),
CountryDetailPage.routeName: (context) => CountryDetailPage(),
FullPhotoPage.routeName: (context) => FullPhotoPage(),
AddCommentPage.routeName: (context) => AddCommentPage(),
SearchPage.routeName: (context) => SearchPage(),
},
The routeName is a string constant with the route’s name opening widgets.
Splash Screen
To make the process simpler, we’re going to use the flutter_bloc and the BLoC pattern for architecture. If you need more Block use cases, check them on pub.dev.
Now, let’s get down to the splash screen.
Splash screen
class _SplashPage extends State<SplashPage> {
var _bloc = SplashBloc();
var _isUserLogged = false; @override
void initState() {
_bloc.dispatch(IsUserLoggedEvent());
super.initState();
} void initState() {_bloc.dispatch(IsUserLoggedEvent());super.initState(); @override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Scaffold(
body: BlocBuilder(
bloc: _bloc,
builder: (context, state) {
switch (state.runtimeType) {
case IsUserLoggedState:
_isUserLogged = (state as IsUserLoggedState).isUserLogged;
break;
}
return _initState();
},
),
);
} Widget build(BuildContext context) {return Scaffold(body: BlocBuilder(bloc: _bloc,builder: (context, state) {switch (state.runtimeType) {case IsUserLoggedState:_isUserLogged = (state as IsUserLoggedState).isUserLogged;break;return _initState();},),); _initState() => Container(
width: double.infinity,
height: double.infinity,
child: Stack(
children: <Widget>[
Center(
child: Container(
child: Column(
mainAxisSize: MainAxisSize.min,
mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
children: <Widget>[
Container(
width: 133,
height: 145,
child: SvgPicture.asset(FCIAssets.logo),
),
Text(
FCIStrings.of(context).travelTime.toUpperCase(),
style: FCIStyle.H5White100Center,
)
],
)),
),
Align(
alignment: Alignment.bottomCenter,
child: Container(
margin: EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 32, left: 50, right: 50),
child: TimerLinearIndicator(onStop: () {
_navigatePage();
}),
),
),
],
),
decoration: BoxDecoration(
gradient: LinearGradient(
begin: Alignment.topCenter,
end: Alignment.bottomCenter,
colors: <Color>[
FCIColors.gradientStart,
FCIColors.gradientEnd,
]),
),
); _navigatePage() {
if (_isUserLogged) {
Navigator.pushReplacementNamed(context, CountriesPage.routeName);
} else {
Navigator.pushReplacementNamed(context, StartPage.routeName);
}
}
}
Who is who:
_initState is the UI that users see. With this method, you’re calling _bloc.dispatch(IsUserLoggedEvent());. It holds the event returning a state to BlocBuilder builder: (context, state).
Depending on the state, you can change the current UI or redirect users to the next screen.
Here’s how the Bloc looks like:
First, it receives event(IsUserLoggedEvent) and checks whether a user is logged in or not. Next, it returns event(IsUserLoggedEvent) for our Splash screen.
class SplashBloc extends BaseBloc {
final userRepository = FirebaseProvider.userRepository; @override
Stream<BaseState> mapEventToState(BaseEvent event) async* {
switch (event.runtimeType) {
case IsUserLoggedEvent:
yield await _isUserLogged();
}
} Stream mapEventToState(BaseEvent event) async* {switch (event.runtimeType) {case IsUserLoggedEvent:yield await _isUserLogged(); _isUserLogged() => userRepository
.isUserLogged()
.then((isUserLogged) => IsUserLoggedState(isUserLogged))
.catchError((e) => handleError(e));
}
Basic BLoC implementation:
@override
BaseState get initialState => InitState(); abstract class BaseBloc extends Bloc {BaseState get initialState => InitState(); ErrorState errorState; handleError(e) {
if (e is PlatformException) {
errorState = ErrorState(msg: e.message);
} else if (...) ...
else {
errorState = ErrorState(msg: e.toString());
}
}
}
Redefine one method and create a function for error-handling. There you can add the types of Exceptions you need and handle them the way you want.
Next, handle State from the SplashBloc (Splash — BlocBuilder — builder method). You get State as a parameter and call the _navigatePage to redirect users to the registration/login screen or the list.
StartPage
How the start page looks in the app:
Start page
This screen redirects to the sing up or login page, plus offers a Facebook login option.
class _StartPage extends State<StartPage> {
final _bloc = StartBloc(); @override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return BaseScaffold(
child: BlocBuilder(
bloc: _bloc,
condition: (oldState, currentState) {
if (currentState is FacebookLoggedState) {
if (currentState.user.isCompleteProfile()) {
Navigator.pushNamedAndRemoveUntil(
context, CountriesPage.routeName, (route) => false);
} else {
Navigator.pushNamedAndRemoveUntil(
context, CompleteProfilePage.routeName, (route) => false,
arguments: CompleteModel(false,
isNewFacebookUser: currentState.isLogin));
}
}
return true;
},
builder: (context, state) {
switch (state.runtimeType) {
case ProgressState:
return Center(
child: CircularProgressIndicator(),
);
}
return _initState();
},
));
} Widget build(BuildContext context) {return BaseScaffold(child: BlocBuilder(bloc: _bloc,condition: (oldState, currentState) {if (currentState is FacebookLoggedState) {if (currentState.user.isCompleteProfile()) {Navigator.pushNamedAndRemoveUntil(context, CountriesPage.routeName, (route) => false);} else {Navigator.pushNamedAndRemoveUntil(context, CompleteProfilePage.routeName, (route) => false,arguments: CompleteModel(false,isNewFacebookUser: currentState.isLogin));return true;},builder: (context, state) {switch (state.runtimeType) {case ProgressState:return Center(child: CircularProgressIndicator(),);return _initState();},)); _initState() => Container(
width: double.infinity,
height: double.infinity,
decoration: BoxDecoration(
image: DecorationImage(
fit: BoxFit.fill, image: AssetImage(FCIAssets.bgPhoto)),
),
child: Stack(
children: <Widget>[
Align(
alignment: Alignment.topRight,
child: InkWell(
child: Padding(
padding: const EdgeInsets.only(
right: 30, top: 24, left: 30, bottom: 12),
child: Text(
FCIStrings.of(context).signUp.toUpperCase(),
style: FCIStyle.ButtonWhite100Right,
),
),
onTap: () => Navigator.pushNamed(context, SignUpPage.routeName),
),
),
Align(
alignment: Alignment.bottomCenter,
child: Padding(
padding: const EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 34, left: 32, right: 32),
child: Column(
mainAxisSize: MainAxisSize.min,
children: <Widget>[
Text(
FCIStrings.of(context).travelTime.toUpperCase(),
style: FCIStyle.H5White100Center,
),
SizedBox(
height: 8,
),
Text(
FCIStrings.of(context).startPageDesc,
textAlign: TextAlign.center,
style: FCIStyle.Subtitle1White100Center,
),
SizedBox(
height: 45,
),
Container(
width: double.infinity,
child: OutlineButton(
borderSide: BorderSide(color: FCIColors.whiteBg),
onPressed: () =>
Navigator.pushNamed(context, SignInPage.routeName),
child: Text(
FCIStrings.of(context).login.toUpperCase(),
style: FCIStyle.ButtonWhite100Center,
),
),
),
SizedBox(
height: 16,
),
Container(
width: double.infinity,
child: RaisedButton(
child: AutoSizeText(
FCIStrings.of(context).btnFacebook.toUpperCase(),
style: FCIStyle.ButtonWhite100Center,
maxLines: 1,
),
onPressed: () => _bloc.dispatch(FacebookAuthEvent()),
)),
],
),
),
),
],
),
);
}
In BlocBuilder, you determine the meta condition that returns true or false value. true means calling the builder method, false — not calling. Now you move to a new screen or show an error by displaying it on SnackBar.
Facebook Authorization
Social network integration is quite important these days. For that, we’re going to use the Flutter Facebook Login plugin.
By clicking the Facebook button, we call bloc.dispatch(FacebookAuthEvent()). This code sample tells bloc(StartBloc) that a user wants to log in with their Facebook account.
Let’s look at the code.
class StartBloc extends BaseBloc {
final facebookLogin = FacebookLogin();
final userRepository = FirebaseProvider.userRepository;
final facebookPermissions = ["email", "public_profile"]; @override
Stream<BaseState> mapEventToState(BaseEvent event) async* {
switch (event.runtimeType) {
case FacebookAuthEvent:
yield ProgressState();
yield await _facebookLogin(
await facebookLogin.logIn(facebookPermissions));
break;
}
} Stream mapEventToState(BaseEvent event) async* {switch (event.runtimeType) {case FacebookAuthEvent:yield ProgressState();yield await _facebookLogin(await facebookLogin.logIn(facebookPermissions));break; _facebookLogin(FacebookLoginResult result) async {
switch (result.status) {
case FacebookLoginStatus.loggedIn:
return await _getUserData(result);
case FacebookLoginStatus.cancelledByUser:
return FacebookCanceledState();
case FacebookLoginStatus.error:
return ErrorState(msg: result.errorMessage);
}
} _getUserData(FacebookLoginResult result) => userRepository
.getUserFromFacebook(result.accessToken)
.then((userData) =>
FacebookLoggedState(userData.keys.first, userData.values.first))
.catchError((e) => handleError(e));
}
facebookLogin calls the logIn method receiving the permissions you must get if the user wants to log in via Facebook. In this case, you receive [“email”, “public_profile”].
_facebookLogin method handles all cases after the authorization (e.g. loggedIn, cancelledByUser, error). It depends on FacebookLoginStatus.
Everything fine? Then you get the loggedIn status and FacebookAccessToken accessToken. You send it to Firebase for registration via Facebook.
To do that, set your app up on Facebook and Firebase Auth in advance (email + password and Facebook Auth).
To link the Facebook Token with Firebase, use the following method:
Future<Map<User, bool>> getUserFromFacebook(FacebookAccessToken token) async {
var facebookUser = await _firebaseAuth
.signInWithCredential(
FacebookAuthProvider.getCredential(accessToken: token.token))
.then((authResult) =>
FacebookUser.fromJson(authResult.additionalUserInfo.profile));
if (await isUserExist(facebookUser?.email)) {
return await _facebookSignIn();
} else {
return _facebookSignUp(facebookUser);
}
}
Here’s how the Facebookuser looks:
class FacebookUser {
String id;
String name;
String birthday;
String email;
Picture picture; FacebookUser({this.id, this.name, this.birthday, this.email, this.picture}); FacebookUser.fromJson(Map<String, dynamic> json) {
id = json['id'];
name = json['name'];
birthday = json['birthday'];
email = json['email'];
picture =
json['picture'] != null ? Picture.fromJson(json['picture']) : null;
} Map<String, dynamic> toJson() {
final Map<String, dynamic> data = Map<String, dynamic>();
data['id'] = this.id;
data['name'] = this.name;
data['birthday'] = this.birthday;
data['email'] = this.email;
if (this.picture != null) {
data['picture'] = this.picture.toJson();
}
return data;
}
} class Picture {
Data data; Picture({this.data}); Picture.fromJson(Map<dynamic, dynamic> json) {
data = json['data'] != null ? Data.fromJson(json['data']) : null;
} Map<String, dynamic> toJson() {
final Map<String, dynamic> data = Map<String, dynamic>();
if (this.data != null) {
data['data'] = this.data.toJson();
}
return data;
}
} class Data {
int height;
bool isSilhouette;
String url;
int width; Data({this.height, this.isSilhouette, this.url, this.width}); Data.fromJson(Map<dynamic, dynamic> json) {
height = json['height'];
isSilhouette = json['is_silhouette'];
url = json['url'];
width = json['width'];
} Map<String, dynamic> toJson() {
final Map<String, dynamic> data = Map<String, dynamic>();
data['height'] = this.height;
data['is_silhouette'] = this.isSilhouette;
data['url'] = this.url;
data['width'] = this.width;
return data;
}
}
Then redirect users to the Complete Profile if the profile isn’t complete yet. Or to the main screen if all details are added.
But we’re going to review the Complete Profile screen later on. Now, it’s authorization and registration we’re taking a look at.
Sign In Screen
Check the screen below. Yep, it’s not a default behavior of handling errors.
Sign-in screen
To do this, configure your widget once and then you can reuse it.
Here’s how you implement it:
class FCITextFieldBox extends StatefulWidget {
final String hint;
final String label;
final int maxLines;
final double marginTop;
final TextEditingController controller;
final bool obscureText;
final TextInputType inputType;
final int maxLength; const FCITextFieldBox(
{Key key,
this.hint,
this.label,
this.maxLines = 1,
this.marginTop = 0,
this.controller,
this.obscureText = false,
this.inputType,
this.maxLength})
: super(key: key); @override
State<StatefulWidget> createState() => FCITextFieldBoxState();
} State createState() => FCITextFieldBoxState(); class FCITextFieldBoxState extends State<FCITextFieldBox> {
bool _isValid = true;
String _lastText = "";
bool _isFocused = false; var focusNode = FocusNode(); @override
void initState() {
widget.controller?.addListener(() {
if (_lastText != widget.controller.text && !_isValid) {
setState(() {
_isValid = true;
});
}
_lastText = widget.controller.text;
});
focusNode.addListener(() {
setState(() {
_isFocused = focusNode.hasFocus;
});
});
super.initState();
} void initState() {widget.controller?.addListener(() {if (_lastText != widget.controller.text && !_isValid) {setState(() {_isValid = true;});_lastText = widget.controller.text;});focusNode.addListener(() {setState(() {_isFocused = focusNode.hasFocus;});});super.initState(); @override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Container(
margin: EdgeInsets.only(top: widget.marginTop),
child: TextField(
buildCounter: (BuildContext context,
{int currentLength, int maxLength, bool isFocused}) =>
null,
maxLengthEnforced: true,
maxLength: widget.maxLength,
keyboardType: widget.inputType,
focusNode: focusNode,
obscureText: widget.obscureText,
controller: widget.controller,
style: widget.obscureText
? FCIStyle.PasswordBlack100left
: FCIStyle.TextFieldsBlack100Left,
decoration: InputDecoration(
contentPadding:
EdgeInsets.only(left: 30, bottom: 15, top: 15, right: 30),
enabledBorder: _createBorder(false),
focusedBorder: _createBorder(true),
hintText: widget.hint,
hintStyle: FCIStyle.Body1Black22left,
labelText: widget.label,
errorStyle: FCIStyle.CaptionRed100Right,
labelStyle: _isFocused ? _focusedStyle() : _unFocusedStyle(),
),
maxLines: widget.maxLines,
));
} Widget build(BuildContext context) {return Container(margin: EdgeInsets.only(top: widget.marginTop),child: TextField(buildCounter: (BuildContext context,{int currentLength, int maxLength, bool isFocused}) =>null,maxLengthEnforced: true,maxLength: widget.maxLength,keyboardType: widget.inputType,focusNode: focusNode,obscureText: widget.obscureText,controller: widget.controller,style: widget.obscureText? FCIStyle.PasswordBlack100left: FCIStyle.TextFieldsBlack100Left,decoration: InputDecoration(contentPadding:EdgeInsets.only(left: 30, bottom: 15, top: 15, right: 30),enabledBorder: _createBorder(false),focusedBorder: _createBorder(true),hintText: widget.hint,hintStyle: FCIStyle.Body1Black22left,labelText: widget.label,errorStyle: FCIStyle.CaptionRed100Right,labelStyle: _isFocused ? _focusedStyle() : _unFocusedStyle(),),maxLines: widget.maxLines,)); _createBorder(bool isFocused) => OutlineInputBorder(
borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(24),
borderSide: BorderSide(
color: isFocused ? _focusedBorderColor() : _unFocusedBorderColor())); _focusedBorderColor() =>
_isValid ? FCIColors.blue_violet : FCIColors.vermillion; _unFocusedBorderColor() =>
_isValid ? FCIColors.black_22 : FCIColors.vermillion; _focusedStyle() =>
_isValid ? FCIStyle.CaptionPurple100Right : FCIStyle.CaptionRed100Right; _unFocusedStyle() =>
_isValid ? FCIStyle.Body1Black22left : FCIStyle.CaptionRed100Right; changeValidator(bool isValid) {
setState(() {
_isValid = isValid;
});
}
}
Set up the widget to let users see in which field they’ve made an error.
Call currentState.changeValidator(false) for that. The incorrect field will be highlighted red.
Plus, show the SnackBar with an error message. Once a user starts typing, the red color disappears.
Now, take a look at AppBar. The AppBar below is a default one.
Except for the Back button and no shadow (you can turn off in MaterialApp theme settings).
appBarTheme: AppBarTheme(
elevation: 0,
textTheme: TextTheme(title: FCIStyle.TitleWhite100Left),
), Scaffold(
appBar: title != null
? AppBar(
actions: actions,
leading: ModalRoute.of(context)?.canPop ?? false
? backButton(context, back: back)
: null,
title: Text(
title,
),
)
: null,
body: child,
)
Add the ModalRoute.of(context)?.canPop line to show the Back button only when the user has an option to return to the previous screen.
The button itself looks like this:
Widget backButton(context,
{String arrow = FCIAssets.arrowBackWhite, Widget back}) =>
IconButton(
icon: back ?? SvgPicture.asset(arrow),
tooltip: MaterialLocalizations.of(context).backButtonTooltip,
onPressed: () => Navigator.maybePop(context),
);
Next, let’s add a container with rounded edges that looks like the Toolbar extension. To do this, create a separate widget and reuse it on other screens.
class BasePageContainer extends StatelessWidget {
final Widget child; const BasePageContainer({Key key, this.child}) : super(key: key); @override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return LayoutBuilder(
builder: (BuildContext context, BoxConstraints viewportConstraints) {
return Container(
color: FCIColors.primaryBg,
child: Container(
child: SingleChildScrollView(
child: ConstrainedBox(
constraints: BoxConstraints(
minHeight: viewportConstraints.maxHeight,
),
child: IntrinsicHeight(child: child),
),
),
decoration: BoxDecoration(
color: FCIColors.whiteBg,
borderRadius: BorderRadius.only(
topLeft: Radius.circular(20.0),
topRight: Radius.circular(20.0),
),
),
),
);
},
);
}
} Widget build(BuildContext context) {return LayoutBuilder(builder: (BuildContext context, BoxConstraints viewportConstraints) {return Container(color: FCIColors.primaryBg,child: Container(child: SingleChildScrollView(child: ConstrainedBox(constraints: BoxConstraints(minHeight: viewportConstraints.maxHeight,),child: IntrinsicHeight(child: child),),),decoration: BoxDecoration(color: FCIColors.whiteBg,borderRadius: BorderRadius.only(topLeft: Radius.circular(20.0),topRight: Radius.circular(20.0),),),),);},);
We’ve created a full-height container with curved edges:
decoration: BoxDecoration(
color: FCIColors.whiteBg,
borderRadius: BorderRadius.only(
topLeft: Radius.circular(20.0),
topRight: Radius.circular(20.0),
),
),
And made a scroll for elements inside the container with SingleChildScrollView.
When a user clicks on the SignIn button, you send SignInEvent and handle it.
class SignInBloc extends BaseBloc {
var userRepository = FirebaseProvider.userRepository; @override
Stream<BaseState> mapEventToState(BaseEvent event) async* {
switch (event.runtimeType) {
case SignInEvent:
var result = _signInValidator(event);
yield result;
if (result is ProgressState) {
yield await _signInHandler(event);
}
break;
case GoToInitEvent:
yield GoToInitState();
break;
}
} Stream mapEventToState(BaseEvent event) async* {switch (event.runtimeType) {case SignInEvent:var result = _signInValidator(event);yield result;if (result is ProgressState) {yield await _signInHandler(event);break;case GoToInitEvent:yield GoToInitState();break; Future<BaseState> _signInHandler(SignInEvent event) => userRepository
.singIn(event.email, event.password)
.then((user) => SignInSuccessfulState(user.isCompleteProfile()))
.catchError((e) => handleError(e)); BaseState _signInValidator(SignInEvent event) {
if (!emailRegex.hasMatch(event.email)) {
return ErrorState(msg: "Wrong email", data: TextFieldType.email);
}
if (event.password.isEmpty) {
return ErrorState(msg: "Password is empty", data: TextFieldType.password);
}
if (event.password.length < 6) {
return ErrorState(
msg: "Password must be longer than 6 characters",
data: TextFieldType.password);
}
return ProgressState();
}
}
_signInValidator method checks the validity of input fields. When there’s a problem, it displays the error on SnackBar and highlights the invalid field.
enum TextFieldType { email, password, confirmPassword }
Now, the SignIn method:
Future<User> singIn(String email, String password) async => _firebaseAuth
.signInWithEmailAndPassword(email: email, password: password)
.then((result) => getCurrentUser()); Future<User> getCurrentUser() =>
_firebaseAuth.currentUser().then((FirebaseUser user) => _firestore
.document("${userCollection}/${user.uid}")
.get()
.then((document) => User.fromSnapshot(document)));
If an error shows up during the login, it’ll be handled with BaseState handleError(e) form BaseBloc. If everything’s good, it checks whether the profile is filled and opens the main screen. Or sends the user to the Complete Profile screen.
Users will have additional fields to fill like profile pic, birth data, first and last name, and phone number. That’s why you should store the model in Firebase Database where the document’s ID is authResult.user.uid.
Sign Up Screen
Sign up works similar to sign in. But in our case, you need to check if the user enters a new (not yet registered in the app) email address. If no user with such an email exists, we proceed with creating a new user and sending them to the Complete Profile screen.
Complete Profile Screen
We’re finally here. We used a simple Complete Profile screen with basic functionality:
Complete profile feature
There are three input fields on this screen. One is going to call the Date Picker like iOS. See a similar picker in Flutter gallery on GitHub.
One last thing is the profile picture. First, we need a File Image. The easiest way to get it is using the Image Picker plugin.
Image Picker lets you choose how to get the pic by using the device’s camera or gallery. Respectively, it returns null or file image.
The next step is cropping the pic. We’re going to use the Image Cropping plugin for that.
Cropping images
Image upload:
Future<String> uploadFile(String fileName, File file) => _firebaseStorage
.ref()
.child(fileName)
.putFile(file)
.onComplete
.then((data) => data.ref.getDownloadURL().then((url) => url));
To update the fields, use the code below. The reference is DocumentReference of the user:
Future<void> updateUser(CompleteProfileEvent event, String path) =>
reference.updateData({
'name': event.user.name,
'phone': event.user.phone,
'dob': event.user.dob,
'imageUrl': path ?? event.user.imageUrl
});
Finally, the user gets redirected to the main screen.
Profile Screen
Complete Screen and Profile Screen are much the same. There’s a difference though: instead of filling these fields in, you just show them. That’s the reason we’re going to describe the logout only here.
Profile screen
As said, there are email and Facebook login, so you should set up the logout this way:
Future<void> logOut() async {
await _firebaseAuth.signOut();
return facebookLogin.logOut();
}
List of Countries
This screen comes with a search-like button that redirects users to the search screen (we’ll talk about it later on). Next to it there’s a profile picture that redirects users to their profiles.
List of countries screen
But first, the search bar.
Widget _searchBar() {
return GestureDetector(
child: Padding(
padding: const EdgeInsets.only(
bottom: 16,
top: 16,
left: 12,
right: 12,
),
child: Material(
elevation: 10.0,
borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(25.0),
child: Row(
children: <Widget>[
SizedBox(
width: 16,
),
SvgPicture.asset(FCIAssets.search),
Expanded(
child: Padding(
padding: const EdgeInsets.all(14.0),
child: Text(
FCIStrings.of(context).searchCountry,
style: FCIStyle.Body2Black38Left,
),
),
),
InkWell(
customBorder: CircleBorder(),
child: Hero(
tag: avatarTag,
child: Padding(
padding: const EdgeInsets.all(9),
child: Container(
height: 30,
width: 30,
child: CachedNetworkImage(
imageUrl: user?.imageUrl ?? "",
imageBuilder: (context, imageProvider) => Container(
decoration: BoxDecoration(
borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(45),
image: DecorationImage(
image: imageProvider,
fit: BoxFit.cover,
),
),
),
placeholder: (context, url) =>
CircularProgressIndicator(),
errorWidget: (context, url, error) => Container(
child: Icon(
Icons.person,
color: FCIColors.white,
),
decoration: BoxDecoration(
color: FCIColors.accent,
borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(45),
),
),
),
),
),
),
onTap: () {
Navigator.pushNamed(context, ProfilePage.routeName);
},
),
],
),
),
),
onTap: () {
Navigator.pushNamed(context, SearchPage.routeName);
},
);
}
Moving on to the list of countries, use the following query:
Future<List<Country>> getCountries({orderBy = orderByCountryDefault}) =>
_firestore
.collection(countryCollection)
.orderBy(orderBy)
.limit(paginationLimit)
.getDocuments()
.then((snapshot) => snapshot.documents
.map((country) => Country.fromJson(
country.data,
doc: country,
))
.toList());
There can be a ton of data, so you may want it to load in parts. Plus, set a limit on their account. We used final paginationLimit = 25.
When you get the list of documents, parse them into the models:
class Country {
String name;
String capital;
String imagePreview;
String bigImagePreview;
List<String> images; DocumentSnapshot doc; Country({
this.name,
this.capital,
this.imagePreview,
this.bigImagePreview,
this.images,
}); Country.fromJson(Map<String, dynamic> json, {DocumentSnapshot doc}) {
name = json['name'];
capital = json['capital'];
imagePreview = json['imagePreview'];
bigImagePreview = json['bigImagePreview'];
images = json['images'].cast<String>();
this.doc = doc;
} Map<String, dynamic> toJson() {
final Map<String, dynamic> data = Map<String, dynamic>();
data['name'] = this.name;
data['capital'] = this.capital;
data['imagePreview'] = this.imagePreview;
data['bigImagePreview'] = this.bigImagePreview;
data['images'] = this.images;
return data;
}
}
Then send the state to the BlocBuilder and show the list.
Here’s a question: how to load more data when users scroll already loaded parts?
Use final _scrollController = ScrollController() for that.
ListView.builder(
controller: _scrollController,
itemCount: state.isNoMore ? itemCount : itemCount + 1,
itemBuilder: (BuildContext context, int index) {
return index >= state.counties.length
? _bottomLoader()
: Padding(
padding: EdgeInsets.only(
top: index == 0 ? 42 : 0,
bottom: 12,
left: 12,
right: 12,
),
child: _countryWidget(state.counties[index], index),
);
}),
Pass it to the ListView and set field itemCount state.isNoMore ? itemCount : itemCount + 1.
isNoMore shows if there is more data on a server available for loading. If not, add another element to the list showing the loading progress.
And you should override scroll changes. Use initState method for that.
@override
void initState() {
_bloc.dispatch(GetListOfCountiesEvent());
_scrollController.addListener(_onScroll);
super.initState();
} void initState() {_bloc.dispatch(GetListOfCountiesEvent());_scrollController.addListener(_onScroll);super.initState(); void _onScroll() {
final maxScroll = _scrollController.position.maxScrollExtent;
final currentScroll = _scrollController.position.pixels;
if (maxScroll - currentScroll <= _scrollThreshold &&
_bloc.currentState is! ProgressLoadMoreState &&
!_isNoMore) {
_bloc.dispatch(LoadMoreCountriesEvent());
}
}
Send an even to load data to Block and handle it when users go to the end of the list.
Here’s a loading method for Firebase:
Future<List<Country>> loadMoreCountries(DocumentSnapshot document,
{orderBy = orderByCountryDefault}) =>
_firestore
.collection(countryCollection)
.orderBy(orderBy)
.startAfterDocument(document)
.limit(paginationLimit)
.getDocuments()
.then((snapshot) => snapshot.documents
.map((country) => Country.fromJson(country.data, doc: country))
.toList());
See the document parameter? It’s the last loaded element needed to continue data loading from the point the user stopped at.
Update and show the list to users after receiving the data.
Search By Countries
For user convenience, add search for countries by names.
Search by countries
AppBar with search:
AppBar(
elevation: 6,
backgroundColor: FCIColors.white,
leading:
BaseScaffold.backButton(context, arrow: FCIAssets.arrowBackBlack),
title: _buildSearchField(),
actions: _buildActions(),
), List<Widget> _buildActions() => <Widget>[
IconButton(
icon: const Icon(
Icons.clear,
color: Color(0x60000000),
),
onPressed: () {
if (_searchQuery == null || _searchQuery.text.isEmpty) {
Navigator.pop(context);
return;
}
_clearSearchQuery();
},
),
]; Widget _buildSearchField() => TextField(
controller: _searchQuery,
autofocus: true,
decoration: InputDecoration(
hintText: FCIStrings.of(context).searchCountry,
border: InputBorder.none,
hintStyle: FCIStyle.Body2Black38Left,
),
style: FCIStyle.Body1Black100Left,
onChanged: _updateSearchQuery,
);
As soon as users finish entering the text, make a request for getting data:
Future<List<Country>> searchCountry(String query,
{orderBy = orderByCountryDefault}) =>
_firestore
.collection(countryCollection)
.orderBy(orderBy)
.startAt([
query.substring(0, 1).toUpperCase() +
query.substring(1).toLowerCase()
])
.endAt([
query.substring(0, 1).toUpperCase() +
query.substring(1).toLowerCase() +
"\uf8ff"
])
.getDocuments()
.then((docs) => docs.documents
.map((item) => Country.fromJson(item.data, doc: item))
.toList());
Mind this: Firebase has restrictions on text search. Still, the option above will work as an example.
Show the list once you get it. To create a separator, use ListView.separated(). It’s similar to ListView.builder but with an additional parameter: separatorBuilder: (BuildContext context, int index) => YourSeparatedWidget. There you set the separator on the widget.
Detail Page Screen
The detail page shows travelers’ reviews on the countries they’ve visited.
Review screen
Use CustomScrollView with SliverPersistentHeader and SliverList to build the appBar.
CustomScrollView(
controller: _scrollController,
slivers: [
SliverPersistentHeader(
delegate: SliverAppBarDelegate(330, arg.country.name,
arg.country.capital, arg.country.imagePreview),
pinned: true,
),
SliverList(
delegate: SliverChildBuilderDelegate(
(BuildContext context, index) => ListView(...),
childCount: 1,
),
)
],
)
Start with SliverAppBarDelegate which is your AppBar. Then set the height and transmit the parameters.
final double expandedHeight;
final String name;
final String capital;
final String imagePreview; SliverAppBarDelegate(
this.expandedHeight, this.name, this.capital, this.imagePreview); double scrollAnimationValue(double shrinkOffset) {
double maxScrollAllowed = maxExtent - minExtent;
return ((maxScrollAllowed - shrinkOffset) / maxScrollAllowed)
.clamp(0, 1)
.toDouble();
} @override
Widget build(
BuildContext context,
double shrinkOffset,
bool overlapsContent,
) {
final double visibleMainHeight =
math.max(maxExtent - shrinkOffset, minExtent);
final double animationVal = scrollAnimationValue(shrinkOffset); Widget build(BuildContext context,double shrinkOffset,bool overlapsContent,) {final double visibleMainHeight =math.max(maxExtent - shrinkOffset, minExtent);final double animationVal = scrollAnimationValue(shrinkOffset); return Container(
height: visibleMainHeight,
width: MediaQuery.of(context).size.width,
child: Stack(
children: <Widget>[
Container(
margin: EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 2), color: FCIColors.primary),
Opacity(
opacity: animationVal < 0.4 ? animationVal / 0.4 : 1,
child: Hero(
tag: imagePreviewTag,
child: Container(
height: expandedHeight,
width: double.infinity,
margin: EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 2),
child: CachedNetworkImage(
imageUrl: imagePreview,
fit: BoxFit.cover,
placeholder: (ctx, url) => SvgPicture.asset(
FCIAssets.countryPlaceholder,
color: FCIColors.white,
),
),
),
),
),
Opacity(
opacity: animationVal < 0.4 ? animationVal / 0.4 : 1,
child: Container(
margin: EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 2),
decoration: BoxDecoration(
gradient: LinearGradient(
begin: Alignment.topCenter,
end: Alignment.bottomCenter,
colors: [
Color(0x00000000),
Color(0x77000000),
],
),
),
),
),
Positioned(
bottom: 0.0,
child: SizedBox(
width: MediaQuery.of(context).size.width,
child: Padding(
padding: EdgeInsets.only(
left: math.min(115 - animationVal * 100, 72), bottom: 16),
child: Padding(
padding: EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 17),
child: Column(
crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.start,
mainAxisSize: MainAxisSize.min,
children: <Widget>[
Text(
name,
style: TextStyle(
fontFamily: 'Metropolis',
color: Color(0xffffffff),
fontSize: 20 + (animationVal * 8),
fontWeight: FontWeight.w600,
fontStyle: FontStyle.normal,
letterSpacing: 0.24,
),
),
animationVal * 100 < 5
? SizedBox()
: AutoSizeText(
capital,
textAlign: TextAlign.start,
style: TextStyle(
fontFamily: 'Metropolis',
color: Color(0xffffffff),
fontSize: 16,
fontWeight: FontWeight.w400,
fontStyle: FontStyle.normal,
),
),
],
),
),
),
),
),
Positioned(top: 5, left: 5, child: BaseScaffold.backButton(context)),
Positioned(
bottom: 0,
child: Container(
height: 16,
width: MediaQuery.of(context).size.width,
decoration: BoxDecoration(
color: FCIColors.white,
borderRadius: BorderRadius.only(
topLeft: Radius.circular(16),
topRight: Radius.circular(16))),
),
)
],
),
);
} @override
double get maxExtent => expandedHeight; double get maxExtent => expandedHeight; @override
double get minExtent => kToolbarHeight + 16; double get minExtent => kToolbarHeight + 16; @override
bool shouldRebuild(SliverPersistentHeaderDelegate oldDelegate) => true;
} bool shouldRebuild(SliverPersistentHeaderDelegate oldDelegate) => true;
That’s how you shift text. The app will show a country’s name or the country plus its capital, depending on AppBar’s size.
Then the list of photos:
ListView.builder(
scrollDirection: Axis.horizontal,
itemCount: images.length,
itemBuilder: (ctx, index) =>
_imageWithDecorator(images, index),
),
And the photo widget:
Widget _imageWithDecorator(List<String> urls, int index) => InkWell(
child: Hero(
tag: "$fullImageTag$index",
child: CachedNetworkImage(
imageUrl: urls[index],
imageBuilder: (ctx, img) => Container(
height: 120,
width: 120,
margin: EdgeInsets.only(left: 8, right: 8, top: 8, bottom: 8),
decoration: BoxDecoration(
image: DecorationImage(image: img, fit: BoxFit.cover),
borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(16),
),
),
placeholder: (ctx, url) => Container(
height: 120,
width: 120,
margin: EdgeInsets.only(left: 8, right: 8, top: 8, bottom: 8),
child: Padding(
padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
child: SvgPicture.asset(FCIAssets.countrySmallPlaceholder),
),
decoration: BoxDecoration(
color: Color(0xFFf5f5f5),
borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(16)),
),
),
),
onTap: () {
Navigator.pushNamed(context, FullPhotoPage.routeName,
arguments: FullPhotoArgument(urls, index));
},
);
To handle clicks, use InkWell and Hero to transition animation for the pics. When the user clicks on a photo, it’ll transition smoothly between screens.
Next comes the list of comments. Actually, there may be quite a lot of them, so we suggest loading them in parts as the user scrolls the page. (yeah, we’ve considered data loading with page numbering.)
ListView.builder(
itemCount:
_isNoMore ? listData.length : listData.length + 1,
shrinkWrap: true,
physics: ClampingScrollPhysics(),
itemBuilder: (ctx, index) => index >= listData.length
? _progres()
: _message(
listData[index]),
),
Leave a Comment Screen
Everything’s pretty standard here.
Add comment
The screen comes with a text field and a button to add images. If users skip adding text, they won’t be able to click the Send comment button.
Add a variable keeping the last modified text to call the setState function less frequently. The button gets active/inactive when calling the setState.
@override
void initState() {
_messageController.addListener(() {
var text = _messageController.text.trim();
if (_lastText.isEmpty && text.isNotEmpty) {
setState(() {
_lastText = text;
});
} else if (_lastText.isNotEmpty && text.isEmpty) {
setState(() {
_lastText = text;
});
}
});
super.initState();
} void initState() {_messageController.addListener(() {var text = _messageController.text.trim();if (_lastText.isEmpty && text.isNotEmpty) {setState(() {_lastText = text;});} else if (_lastText.isNotEmpty && text.isEmpty) {setState(() {_lastText = text;});});super.initState();
We already know how to get images from the gallery or devices’ cameras. Let’s move on to the comments.
When a user clicks the button the event is sent to bloc:
_onSend() {
_bloc.dispatch(CreateCommentEvent(_messageController.text.trim(), image,
currentCountry.doc.reference.path));
}
The function of creating a message in bloc:
Future<BaseState> _createComment(CreateCommentEvent event) => userRepository
.getCurrentUser()
.then((user) => _uploadImageIfExist(event.image)
.then((imageUrl) => Comment(
message: event.message,
image: imageUrl,
userRef: user.reference,
createdAt: DateTime.now().millisecondsSinceEpoch,
))
.then((comment) => countryRepository
.createComment(event.path + commentsPath, comment)
.then((_) => CreatedCommentState())))
.catchError((e) => handleError(e)); Future<String> _uploadImageIfExist(File file) {
if (file != null) {
return userRepository.uploadFile(Uuid().v4(), file);
} else {
return Future.value("");
}
}
And of sending a comment to Firestore:
Future<void> createComment(String path, Comment comment) => _firestore
.collection(path)
.document(Uuid().v4())
.setData(comment.toJson());
How is the data being stored on Firebase?
In the countries document, you have a collection of comments with the link to image and message, the creation date and link to the user who left it.
You may want to specify the createAt field as timestamp but a number will do for this example.
Wrapping Up
That’s basically all you need to know to build a simple travel app with Flutter. I’ve tried to include the most commonly used travel app features to show you how to build them using Flutter framework.
Go ahead and try it out. | https://medium.com/flutter-community/building-a-multi-platform-travel-app-with-flutter-with-code-samples-9a30a40afc1a | ['Vitaly Kuprenko'] | 2020-03-17 16:01:16.922000+00:00 | ['Flutter', 'Flutter App', 'App Development', 'Flutter App Development', 'Flutter Ui'] |
Five Key Risk Management Principles | In every industry, there are certain risks involved. If you plan ahead, you might be able to mitigate and prevent risks before they ever happen. Whether you are in the travel industry or you are worried about supply chain disruption, make sure you know the core risk management principles, so you can best position your company for success and protect against the worst.
The Basic Risk Management Principles
You can’t prepare for every eventuality and you’ll drive yourself and your team crazy if you try, but if you prioritize mitigating risk and making the right decisions, you can consistently avoid the worst outcomes. Every industry needs risk management, and the risks are different depending on what your business is. Here are five core principles of risk management:
Risk Identification
This might seem obvious, but it’s a step that’s often neglected. You first have to start by identifying possible risks in your industry. You can’t prevent a risk you don’t know exists, so look at your competitors and review the recent history of your industry for crises, oversights, and foul-ups. It’s a smart business practice to learn from the mistakes made by others before you, and unless you’re inventing an entirely new business model, you don’t have to start from scratch. These risks can be small and simple — internet outages, theft, product shortages — to large and hugely threatening — political unrest, large-scale security breaches, major weather events, etc. Depending on your industry, some risks are going to be more concerning than others — if you’re a cloud storage company, a hack is one of the worst eventualities you are likely to face, but a bad storm might not impact your business terribly at all. If you’re a major airline, on the other hand, the weather is one of your primary risk factors.
Risk Control
Here you can look at things like avoiding or preventing the risk in the first place. To use the airline example again, you have identified that mechanical problems are a risk to your airplane, and now you can try to control that risk by scheduling regular and routine maintenance for each airplane to hopefully prevent any mechanical problems from occurring. While you can’t mitigate that nor’easter coming through your city, you can do everything you can to take care of your planes and prevent mechanical problems. Most travelers are understandable when the weather causes a flight delay, but less so when it’s a problem the airline can control, like a mechanical problem. Mitigate what you can ahead of time.
Scheduling routine maintenance is important for almost every business. Make sure your computers, machinery, and tools are all in working order so you can prevent as many accidents from occurring as possible. You wouldn’t go on a road trip with an empty gas tank, and you need to make sure all of your company’s equipment is ready to perform.
Analyzing Risks
This is where you can ask all the “what-if” questions you want. Things like — how likely is the risk and how bad is the risk? In other words, mechanical failures on your airplane are a lot worse if the failure is broken landing gear instead of a broken tray table. You want to make sure you prioritize mitigating your risks based on how likely they are to happen and how big of a problem it is if they do happen.
If you can knock off some low-hanging fruit and there are easy risks to prevent, do it. Safety should always be a top concern and you want to make sure you work to mitigate any risk that could cause catastrophic problems.
Claims Management
Think of this as the part of the risk where the customer makes a claim against you. This covers a broad category of events, not just actual claims. If you are running a supply chain organization, the complaint could be that the consumer never received the product he ordered because he got stuck somewhere in the production part of your supply chain.
You are not going to be able to mitigate and prevent every risk. Part of your company’s reputation is in how you process claims and deal with customers that have been affected by risks that came true. Accept responsibility and ownership for any problems or errors caused by your company, and work with the customer until they are satisfied their claim has been resolved.
How to Finance Risk Management
Whether you have insurance that covers your risks, or your company keeps a pot of money set aside, you will need a plan to finance risks after they happen. Maybe it’s as simple as giving an unhappy customer a 50% discount on the next product from your company, but it could be as complicated as offering free flights for stranded travelers who got stuck because of a problem with your airline.
Benjamin Franklin said, “failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” When you identify risks and determine which ones you think you can mitigate and prevent, you need to also plan for the risks that you just can’t prevent. Don’t let a risk coming to fruition sink your company financially or otherwise.
Automate Risk Intelligence
You do not have to do risk management all by yourself. There are tools available now that can help automate your risk intelligence and management. In the supply chain industry, considering using a tool like predictive analytics, which can help you forecast and decide how many items to keep in stock.
You never want to run out of stock, as that could lead to unhappy customers, but keeping too much in stock could put you in a financial hole until you make more sales. There are a lot of tools available to analyze that data and help you predict when people are going to purchase your goods and how many will be purchased. This is just one example of a type of tool that can help you with risk management.
It seems obvious to sell bikinis in summer and heated blankets in winter. But, if you make products that aren’t quite as seasonal — like a nice watch, for example, wouldn’t it be helpful to see analytical trends presented to you so you can make good supply chain decisions? Your company should absolutely use predictive analytics as part of your risk management process.
A tool like Hyperion can make this extremely painless, allowing you to identify stability from the city level all the way up to the global level, pinpoint hotspots, and even forecast trouble before it happens. In an increasingly complex world, having the right tools is essential, and more and more firms are going to want to invest in sophisticated risk intelligence platforms like what Geospark Analytics has to offer.
Putting Risk Management Principles into Practice
You’re ready to take the next steps and manage the risk that your company faces. There are a lot of ways to mitigate risk and to plan for risk, and every strong organization in every industry has a risk management team for these exact reasons. Reach out and contact us today to see how we can help you prevent and mitigate risks, which will set your company up on a plan for success! | https://medium.com/@robert.guthrie/five-key-risk-management-principles-2c3adf061d2c | ['Robert Guthrie'] | 2021-02-12 18:19:29.557000+00:00 | ['Risk Management', 'Analytics', 'Gsai'] |
The easy grain bowl you’ll want to make all throughout the winter | This post was originally published on blog.healthtap.com on January 9, 2018.
As we get deep into the dark and cold months of winter, we find ourselves turning toward nourishing, hot, and hearty foods to warm our bodies and our spirits.
This simple, nutrient rich grain bowl is effortless to throw together, and is a perfect option for dinner when you want something savory and filling but don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen. Extra roasted veggies also make perfect leftovers for your lunches and meals all week long.
This bowl nails comforting, hearty flavor while being a perfectly balanced meal: dark leafy greens are topped with seasonal roasted veggies, whole grains, protein-packed chickpeas, and nourishing monounsaturated fat from creamy, sliced avocado. This nutritionally powerful, veggie-based winter bowl is sure to be something you’ll want to whip up all throughout the rest of these chilly months.
Winter Grain Bowl
What you’ll need:
Cooked quinoa
Raw (or steamed) kale
Sweet potato
Can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
Bell pepper
Avocado
Spices: salt, pepper, paprika, rosemary, garlic powder
Olive oil
To Serve:
Lemon tahini dressing
1/3 cup tahini
1/3- 1/2 cup water (depending on desired consistency)
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
Salt and pepper, to taste
What you need to do:
Preheat your oven to 400F. Slice your sweet potato into wedges, and evenly coat them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary. Brush your bell pepper with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Spread your veggies evenly on a baking sheet, and roast them or 35–40 minutes until the bell pepper is slightly blackened and the sweet potato wedges are soft throughout.
While your veggies are roasting, Add the chickpeas, a tablespoon of olive oil, 1/2 tsp smoked paprika, 1/4 tsp garlic powder, and salt and pepper to taste in a skillet. Stir the chickpeas over medium heat for about 5 minutes until they become hot and a little crispy.
To make the dressing, combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until creamy.
Once the veggies, chickpeas, and dressing are done, slice your avocado. Finally, layer your bowls with kale, quinoa, sweet potatoes, peppers, chickpeas, and add sliced avocado over the top. For a finishing touch, drizzle all with your lemon tahini dressing. Enjoy!
Author: Maggie Harriman | https://medium.com/healthtap/the-easy-grain-bowl-youll-want-to-make-all-throughout-the-winter-51b5ebe40978 | [] | 2018-02-01 17:41:45.483000+00:00 | ['Nutrition', 'Healthy Foods', 'Wellness', 'Recipe', 'Healthy Eating'] |
Record Retail Sales in a Pandemic Recession? | Record Retail Sales in a Pandemic Recession?
Yes, but the figures are deceiving and won’t last
Photo by Arturo Rey on Unsplash
Retail sales climbed back to record levels in June and continued to grow in July and August — despite painful levels of unemployment and income loss. But the good times will not last much longer. The massive government income support programs that funded consumer spending are ending, while shoppers will need to resume normal household necessities like rent and health care.
These are truly baffling times. Over 25 million Americans are out of work and collecting unemployment insurance. Millions more unemployed workers don’t even qualified for benefits. And millions of gig workers have experienced significant income declines. Yet retail sales in the U.S. are back to their highest levels ever — just months after the retail sectors endured its sharpest decline on record. Overall spending on retail goods and services plunged 22% in just two months — 15% in April alone — as the county went into lockdown. But sales already exceed their pre-pandemic peaks as retailers registered record volumes in August for the third month in a row (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Monthly retail sales since 2000, total and in-store.
Retail’s recovery began with a sharp rebound in May as at least some brave souls ventured out from their cocoons to shop, and by June sales were already reaching new peaks. These spending figures obviously have been bolstered by a huge spike in online shopping. But even excluding e-commerce and other nonstore sales (e.g., catalog sales), spending at physical retailers is down only 1.3% from its prior peak in January (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2: Change in monthly retail sales since Jan 2020
So, while hopes for a quick revival for the economy overall have proven to be unrealistic, one could almost believe that retail’s “V-shaped” sales recovery demonstrates that consumers have already moved beyond COVID. But not quite.
An Incomplete Picture: Winners and Losers
A closer look at the sales data reveals that all is not well at the nation’s shopping centers and along our main streets. The picture painted by the broad brush of total retail sales figures obscures the reality that the pandemic is cleaving the retail sector into distinct winners and losers as households make major profound shifts in what, how, and where they buy. More people are buying a lot more online than ever before — not just more stuff overall but more types of goods (especially groceries and personal care items) and even services (like prepared food and cocktails).
Look for my forthcoming deep dive on the changing nature of e-commerce spending and its impact on physical retailers and malls. But for now I’ll just point out that — contrary to expectations — consumers have not reduced their online shopping as mobility restrictions have eased in recent months: While non-store sales predictably surged during the initial lockdown, with sales up 16% this year through the end of April, e-commerce has continued to increase since, if at a slower pace. Expect e-tailers share of spending to wane once people feel safer resuming their old routines, but not back to pre-pandemic levels. With more consumers introduced to the convenience of buying more products online, much of the shift will endure.
Beyond new ways of shopping, more profound have been the wide-ranging changes in the composition of the household shopping basket (Fig. 3). Confined to our homes, we’re spending more on eating at home and upgrading our houses and gardens, to the benefit of grocers (+9.4% this year) and home improvement stores (+9.8%). On the other hand, restaurants (-16.6%) have been devastated by government restrictions as well as consumer fears of contracting the virus.
Fig. 3: Change in monthly select categories of retail sales since Jan 2020
Other clear losers in the pandemic economy have been department stores (-14.8%) and especially apparel stores (-21.2%). Both have been crushed by the fall in socializing and entertainment options, as well as the shift to working from home. With fewer opportunities to dress up. we just don’t need as many new clothes or accessories. All three segments have been hurt by the plunge in travel, as tourists account for a large share of spending. And with so many people out of work, mid-priced retailers also have been hurt by consumers’ need to economize, to the benefit of discount stores (+4.1%), such as warehouse clubs, superstores, and dollar stores.
To be sure, the recovery has begun, even in the most impacted categories: Spending is up materially in restaurants, department stores, and apparel stores compared to the lows reached in April. But as with e-commerce, we should not expect the pendulum to swing back to pre-pandemic volumes, at least until the economy makes a broader recovery; more workers are back at their jobs; and we all feel safe enough to travel, attend a concert, or splurge on a big meal.
And a Distorted Picture: A Rebound Less than it Seems
Regardless of the distribution of retail sales across different sales categories and channels, the paradox remains: How can total retail spending be back up to record levels exceeding pre-pandemic volumes when so many households are obviously still struggling financially? For comparison, retail sales took 2½ years to return to their pre-recession peak after the Great Financial Recession, and here we are back at a new peak after less than six months.
So how to explain this almost miraculous rebound? I offer three factors. Far and away, the most important reason is the unprecedented level of income support from the federal government. To keep households and business solvent — and ultimately keep consumers spending — Washington enacted an array of programs under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to put cash directly into consumers’ pockets and provide liquidity to small businesses. These included a $1,200 Economic Impact Payment (EIP) per qualified adult and $600 in weekly supplemental unemployment insurance payments through the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) program.
Collectively the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reports that COVID-related programs accounted for 15% of all personal income in April and still amounted to 8% in July. And unemployment insurance, which pre-COVID typically accounted for 0.2% of personal income, soared to 7% in June. Add it up and the combination of COVID-related federal and state government programs accounted for an astonishing 14% of all income in July, though this support fell by almost half in August with the expiration of some COVID programs. (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4: Pandemic stimulus programs vs. other personal income by type, monthly, March-August 2020
Second, and directly related, CARES didn’t just stabilize aggregate income in the country but actually raised incomes for most Americans. Research from the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago estimates that two-thirds of unemployed workers eligible for unemployment benefits were able to receive payments exceeding their lost earnings, with a median compensation 34% greater than their prior wage income. And millions more low- and moderate-income households got a meaningful one-time income boost through the EIP payouts.
Flush with this cash, even out-of-work Americans were able to afford groceries and other necessities. But they didn’t spend all of their extra income. On the contrary, people surveyed by the Census Bureau, particularly in more affluent households, typically either saved most of their stimulus payments or used them to pay down debt. With the income saved, many households have been able to maintain their spending even once their unemployment benefits expired.
The final reason consumers could maintain their spending on retail goods and services is by cutting back elsewhere. Retail sales account for less than half of all consumer spending. What else do consumers buy? Housing, utilities, education, most health care expenses, travel, and most forms of entertainment, to name some of the biggest non-retail items.
And households have been cutting back on all sorts of expenses. In addition to income support, the CARES Act also provided a temporary eviction moratorium for qualifying renters, while the federal mortgage agencies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) provided mortgage forbearance protection to homeowners. State and local governments enacted their own eviction moratoria. So, many unemployed workers have reduced their housing costs, at least for a while. Despite the pandemic, spending on health care is down because medical providers have sharply reduced discretionary office visits and hospital procedures. Fewer students are attending college and paying tuition. And of course, travel spending is way, way down.
In sum, I estimate based on BEA figures that total non-retail consumer spending is down 7% this year, while retail sales over the same period were up over 1% (Fig. 5). Thus, households could afford to keep spending on retail goods and services — whether online or at the mall — only by cutting spending elsewhere.
Fig. 5: Retail sales vs. non-retail consumer spending since January 2020
Sustainable Recovery? Not Likely.
So much about the pandemic and the economic morass that followed has been unprecedented and unpredictable. But here’s a not-so-bold prediction: Retail sales growth will reverse course this autumn, absent another major federal stimulus package. How can we be so sure? By reviewing the same three factors that have supported retail spending through this crisis.
First, the pandemic income support programs are largely gone, and six months after the CARES Act was signed into law, Congress evinces little likelihood of extending, expanding, or replacing the measure. Moreover, unemployment benefits, which typically last for six months, are now ending for unemployed workers who were laid off in March. Many will qualify for extended benefits of up to 26 weeks in most states, but these will expire at the end of the year, as will the CARES program that provides income to self-employed (“gig”) workers. In all, personal income declined by 3% in August as pandemic-related income fell 44% (Fig. 4 above), with further declines certain in the coming months
And more job cuts are coming, further eroding household incomes. The Payroll Protection Program (PPP) — which kept countless small businesses afloat and enabled them to retain their workers — ended in August. The expiration of this program is certain to trigger numerous more layoffs and convert millions of “temporary” furloughs into permanent job losses. Further, the special bailout program for airlines expires at the end of September, and already several leading carriers have announced major layoffs.
We can also expect significantly more layoffs by state and local governments whose finances have been severely stressed by the pandemic. And layoffs could magnify further if the growing wave of new COVID infections continues to accelerate and triggers another round of lockdowns this fall.
In sum, the end of pandemic income support and the coming wave of additional layoffs will sharply cut consumer income, thereby reducing all types of consumer spending. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that eliminating the $600 supplement alone would cause a 44% decline in local spending. Even if the FPUC supplement is reduced by just $200, spending would still fall by 12%.
The accumulated savings that households have socked away will help sustain spending for a while but won’t last long. After spiking in April with the massive infusion of government transfers, the personal savings rate has declined each month. As consumers begin to tap into their savings, they inevitably cut back their spending further until their employment prospects improve.
Finally, retail sales will fall because households won’t be able to defer their non-retail spending indefinitely. Importantly, the various housing protection programs only deferred — but did not forgive — rent and mortgage payments. Eventually, the missed payments must be repaid. Nor can medical treatments be delayed forever. Eventually, people will begin to incur more medical expenses.
Taken together, it seems certain that — again, absent additional government interventions — retail sales will soon fall again and remain depressed until the pandemic eases and the economy recovers. And for that we need wide adoption of a safe, effective vaccine. I’m waiting.
A somewhat expanded version of this article with additional charts and data is available on my website at NelsonEconomics. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/record-retail-sales-in-a-pandemic-recession-eedced0a565f | ['Andrew Nelson'] | 2020-10-12 16:46:43.261000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Recession', 'Retail', 'Economy'] |
Farmer Recoups Additional $110,000 in Crop Losses Thanks to Drone Imagery | Farmer Recoups Additional $110,000 in Crop Losses Thanks to Drone Imagery
Silicon Falcon Micro Aviation uses DroneDeploy to help farmer increase crop insurance claim
It was a terribly wet July in Western Kentucky, and for the area’s tobacco farmers, this spelled trouble. Heavy rains, such as the ones seen this summer, can decimate a tobacco field, leaving a farmer with huge losses to bear. As a result, most carry extensive insurance on their crops.
The standard in the industry is for crop adjusters to survey damage manually, walking only select sections of a field and taking pictures of damage. Doing any more than this manually would require far too much time. Based on the information gathered, the adjuster must extrapolate to estimate the damage across the entire field. Given the limited amount of data they have to work with, even the most seasoned adjuster can sometimes come up with an estimate that is far below the actual losses a farmer has suffered.
As is illustrated in the following case study, brought to us by Gregg Heath of Silicon Falcon Micro Aviation, farmers and crop adjusters are increasingly turning to the commercial drone industry to help recover a fair percentage for lost crops.
UAVs a Natural Step for Retired Pilot
Starting a commercial drone business seemed like a natural next step for Gregg Heath, who spent most of his career working as a professional pilot. His business partner is also a pilot, as well as a retired state trooper who uses drones for accident reconstruction. Together they started Silicon Falcon in January of this year. Being around aviation for most of their professional lives, they were both somewhat familiar with trends in the drone industry. But it wasn’t until they went into business for themselves that they began to realize just how indispensable commercial drones are becoming for a wide variety of industries.
Heath has spent the last year growing his business and refining his skills. If he has just one piece of advice for someone starting out in the commercial drone industry, it is this: Find a testing ground where you can practice flying your drone in a variety of scenarios. You will enhance your skills and also develop a great portfolio of maps to show to prospective clients. For his part, Heath had an existing relationship with a local farmer (he taught him how to fly a plane several years ago.) During the last growing season, he used the farmer’s fields as his testing ground, flying them at various stages of growth.
“Testing your drone in real scenarios is relatively quick and doesn’t cost anything,” says Heath. “It gives you great experience and the chance to play around with different settings in a real-world environment.”
As it turned out, this testing ground led to a turning point in Silicon Falcon’s business. Prior to this July, Heath and his partner had primarily used their drones to monitor crop health for farmers near their home base in western Kentucky. But when the farmer who owned the test fields suffered huge tobacco crop losses during the summer rains, he called on the pair to help with his crop insurance claim. The map that resulted from the process, and the insurance savings it brought the farmer, has quickly become news in the community. As a result, Silicon Falcon expects that helping farmers recoup the cost of lost crops will become a larger part of their business.
DroneDeploy Tailor Made for Crop Surveying
The losses Heath’s client faced were devastating. Nearly 100 acres of tobacco crop was flooded, rendering it unviable. But, after visiting the damaged fields, the crop adjuster offered the farmer a 34% loss. The farmer had assumed the damage was closer to 50%. Faced with the possibility of swallowing a huge margin of loss, he called on Silicon Falcon to produce a map that would provide a much more comprehensive picture of the damage.
“DroneDeploy is really tailor made for when you are surveying crops,” says Heath. [click to tweet]
Using the RGB4K camera and a near-Infrared sensor, Heath flew the field with his Phantom 3 Pro. After about an hour of uploading, and three more hours during which DroneDeploy processed the images, he was able to produce a crop health map, providing real-time data only a day after after the insurance adjuster’s visit.
Heath used the plant health algorithms and histogram within DroneDeploy to help estimate the crop loss
Aerial Map Finds Damage Not Seen By Insurance Adjuster
The Silicon Falcon team Using the area tool on an orthomosaic map, the Silicon Falcon team gathered a rough idea of the crop damage, drawing lines around the obvious areas of bare ground. They then applied the histogram scale to highlight variability within the field and get a better idea of the damaged areas. Ultimately, they came up with a crop loss of almost 50%, compared to the 34% offered by the insurance adjustor.
Armed with a 3-foot by 3-foot orthomosaic map, the farmer convinced the insurance adjuster to revisit the site. Using the annotated map as a reference point, the adjuster ground-truthed a targeted section of the field and, based on the new information he gathered, offered the farmer a 47% loss. This amounted to an additional $1,100 more per acre above the original claim amount.
For the 100 acre field, this meant the farmer recouped $110,000 more than he had initially been offered.
A farmer knows his land. When a major loss occurs, he is probably the first to know just how much damage has been done. But proving that damage is difficult because crop adjusters can only spend time walking a small portion of a field. An aerial survey of crop damage gives farmers and adjusters real-time, comprehensive evidence to support insurance claims. An annotated map produced in DroneDeploy can be used as a reference point for an adjuster to conduct targeted ground-truthing. The result is a far more accurate picture of a farmer’s losses, and hopefully, a fair insurance settlement. | https://medium.com/aerial-acuity/farmer-recoups-additional-110-000-in-crop-losses-thanks-to-drone-imagery-7ac922bbcaf2 | [] | 2016-11-18 21:11:13.181000+00:00 | ['Insurance', 'Mapping', 'Agriculture', 'Drones'] |
Every restaurant needs at least ONE plant-based dish on their menu — and this is why. | Pretty bold statement from Vegan Junk Food Bar in Amsterdam.
Veganism is hot. Vegans care about animal welfare and care about the environment. More people nowadays are turning to a (partial) plant-based diet.
The number of vegan meat replacements is growing at significant rates in supermarkets all over the world. Local restaurants and big chains (like dominos or subway) are adding vegan options to their menus. And if they do, well it means there really is a market for this right? In 4 minutes, I will tell you everything what you should know about vegan food for your restaurant or café. I talk from experience, since 1. I only eat plants and 2. I know a bit about hospitality.
Firstly, I will explain what a plant-based diet is. Moreover, I will tell you why you need to have at least one vegan option available and what you definitely should think about when you design a vegan menu.
What is a plant-based diet?
Someone who eats vegan can decide to do this for numerous reasons. It could be for the animals, to reduce one’s carbon footprint or for health or religious reasons. When someone eats vegetarian, this person does not eat meat or fish. A vegan decides to eat no animals products at all. When someone says he/she eats plant-based, it means this person does not eat:
meat or fish
dairy products; milk, cheese, cream etcetera
eggs
honey
bee wax
gelatine
anything else I forget here but come from animals 😉
Surprisingly, there are a few products, most people do not even know that contain animal products like beer, wine and liquor. Some of these drinks contain gelatine, egg whites or casein (which comes from fish). These ingredients are added to remove the cloudiness from the booze and make them clear. By law, this does not necessarily have to be mentioned on the label. Otherwise, ask Google or your supplier.
Why would you need to add vegan options to your menu?
When I decided to eat only plants, a little over two years ago, I had to say goodbye to my favourite activity, going out to enjoy a meal in a restaurant. OK, maybe this statement is a bit too dramatic, but it was like this for a little. In my country, the Netherlands, and especially in my city, there weren’t many restaurants which had vegan options on their menus. So most of the time, I would stay at home, cooked my own delicious meals. But this is what most vegans do when there are no options. They stay at home.
Next to this, when there is a part of a minimum of two — the vegan decides where to eat. I don’t mean this in a way that he/she chooses the exact restaurant, but he/she more decides where NOT to eat. If there is a group of six and one of them is vegan. They will never go to the restaurant where there are no vegan options on the menu. So you don’t miss out on one guest — you miss out on a whole party. Therefore, add at least one vegan creation to your chef’s recipes.
A few facts about creating a vegan menu for your business
No vegan likes a dish which consists SOLELY of vegetables. I once had a chef tell me “I will create something outstanding for you”. I wasn’t only a little disappointed when the server placed a plate with 500 gram of grilled vegetables in front of me. Think for a bit about protein. With fish or meat dishes, it is easy where to get the protein from. Vegetarian meals often contain cheese as a protein. Make sure you add something to the plate. This could, for example, be legumes, a type of grain, tofu or another meat substitute. When you add a vegan dish to your menu, you automatically also satisfy your vegetarian guest. So don’t think of it as being a sacrifice for only a small group of (potential) guests. Additionally, more meat-eaters are flexitarian nowadays and do enjoy a vegan dish too. Please make sure that you write somewhere on your menu or website that there are vegan options available. If you don’t, vegans do not even consider coming to your place also though you have a creative chef who does not mind creating the most amazing plant-based meals. No vegan is going to call all restaurants and ask whether there are vegan options available. Educate your colleagues about veganism. It is not very guest friendly when someone has enjoyed a vegan dish and orders a cappuccino with oat milk to serve them a butter cookie with the coffee. Also don’t think of it as not being guest friendly if you do not have a vegan alternative to provide with the coffee. Vegans find it worse when you serve it and then when they don’t finish it you throw the cookie in the bin. Then it is again animal waste for nothing. Be creative! Don’t do what other cafes and restaurants in your area are doing. The amount of vegan options has increased significantly since the day I turned vegan. It is a lot easier for me to enjoy a vegan meal in cafes and restaurants. However, Dutch chefs often think vegans really like hummus or vegan burgers. So obviously, when I see a cafe with original plant-based offerings, I know where to spend my money. Change your vegan menu every now and then. Vegans do not (yet) have the luxury to try every restaurant in the city like meat-eaters. They often only have a small number of restaurants to choose from. For this reason, make sure that you keep them enticed by updating your offerings. Maybe a different vegan menu every month? Vegans are loyal, and if they like your food, they will definitely come back.
And well, how to attract those vegans?
Vegan Dish
Well, most vegans hang out together. So word of mouth is essential in this one. If a vegan enjoys your restaurant, you can be sure they will tell their vegan friends. Moreover, often there are local vegan Facebook pages where you could post that you have vegan offerings. Also, Instagram is a good source where a lot of vegans can be found. See whether there is a local vegan hashtag in your area like #veganinlisbon and make sure you post your vegan dishes there quite often. You can be sure social media sassy vegans will see that. | https://medium.com/@spoonstir/every-restaurant-needs-at-least-one-plant-based-dish-on-their-menu-and-this-is-why-bbcdc85c9913 | ['San Vtn'] | 2020-12-20 19:37:35.233000+00:00 | ['Restaurant Business', 'Restaurant', 'Hospitality', 'Vegan', 'Menu Design'] |
AI and machine learning In the right infrastructure-1 | Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are emerging fields that will transform businesses faster than ever before. In the digital era, success will be based on using analytics to discover key insights locked in the massive volume of data being generated today.
In the past, these insights were discovered using manually intensive analytic methods. Today, that doesn’t work, as data volumes continue to grow as does the complexity of data. AI and ML are the latest tools for data scientists, enabling them to refine the data into value faster.
To Know about: How is Robotic Technology Helping the Education Sector?
Data explosion necessitates the need for AI and ML
Historically, businesses operated with a small set of data generated from large systems of record. Today’s environment is completely different where there are orders of magnitude more devices and systems that generate their own data that can be used in the analysis. The challenge for businesses is that there is far too much data to be analyzed manually. The only way to compete in an increasingly digital world is to use AL and ML.
AI and ML use cases vary by vertical
AI and ML apply across all verticals, although there is no universal “killer application.” Instead, there are a number of “deadly” use cases that apply to various industries. Common use cases include:
Healthcare — Anomaly detection to diagnose MRIs scans faster
Automotive — Classification is used to identify objects in the roadway
Retail — Predictions can accurately forecast future sales
Contact center — Translation enables agents to converse with people in different languages
The right infrastructure, quality data needed
Regardless of the use case, AI/ML success depends on making the right infrastructure choice, which requires understanding the role of data. AI and ML success are largely based on the quality of data fed into the systems. There’s an axiom in the AI industry stating that “bad data leads to bad inferences”- meaning businesses should pay particular attention to how they manage their data. One could extend the axiom to “good data leads to good inferences,” highlighting the need for the right type of infrastructure to ensure the data is “good.”
Data plays a key role in every use case of AI, although the type of data used can vary. For example, innovation can be fueled by having machine learning find insights into the large data lakes being generated by businesses. In fact, it’s possible for businesses to cultivate new thinking inside their organization based on data sciences. The key is to understand the role data plays at every step in the AI/ML workflow.
AI/ML workflows have the following components:
Data collection: Data aggregation, data preparation, data transformation, and storage
Data science/engineering: Data analysis, data processing, security and governance
Training: Model development, validation, and data classification
Deployment: Execution inferencing
One of the most significant challenges with data is building a data pipeline in real-time. Data scientists who conduct exploratory and discovery work with new data sources need to collect, prepare, model, and infer. Therefore, IT requires change during each phase, and as more data is gathered from more sources.
To Know About: How Artificial Intelligence Will Change in 2050?
It’s also important to note that the workflow is an iterative cycle in which the output of the deployment phase becomes an input to data collection and improves the model. The success of moving data through these phases depends largely on having the right infrastructure. | https://medium.com/@pvvajradhar/ai-and-machine-learning-in-the-right-infrastructure-1-8d9506144699 | ['Venkat Vajradhar'] | 2020-12-14 07:11:20.227000+00:00 | ['Infrastructure', 'Machine Learning', 'AI', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
How to Talk to Children About 9/11 | How to Talk to Children About 9/11
Key points
On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, children are likely to be exposed to information about the tragic event, which may evoke emotional reactions.
Parents can help their child process information and emotions but they should gauge where their child is at and whether they are willing to talk.
Parents can use discussions about 9/11 to foster valuable lessons regarding adversity and resilience, respect, security and solidarity.
This marks the 20th anniversary of the tragic events that occurred in New York on September 11, 2001. Kids all over the country will learn about, hear about, and observe tributes and commemorations marking this anniversary.
Most of our children will have faint memories of the event, many were too young to remember it, and some weren’t even born yet. It becomes a challenge for us to know what to say about it and how to say it in a developmentally age-appropriate way.
Be conscious not to shy away from having this potentially difficult conversation. Make the concerted effort to gauge where your child is at and their willingness to talk about it. Be respectful of where they are at and take notice of what they’re saying and what their body language conveys. Evaluate whether or not they want to speak. Don’t force the conversation. If they prefer not to speak, continue to check in and let them know that you are there to listen whenever they are ready to talk. For those kids who are readily willing to speak, let your child’s thoughts, feelings and interests guide the conversation.
Express details of the facts in age-appropriate language. Here’s a resource list with facts about the history of The World Trade Center, what happened on 9/11 and how the site was rebuilt. An additional resource from the 9/11 Memorial Museum helps families with activities to create at home.
Dealing with emotions and reactions to the anniversary:
This coming week, kids are bound to be exposed to TV and internet discussions about the attacks and may even get a glimpse of video footage from the scenes on 9/11. They are also bound to have tributes and commemorations at school, at their local places of worship, and in other settings. Be sure to ask kids how they are processing all the information that they are exposed to. It can evoke emotions such as sadness, fear and/or confusion, which you can help manage and process with them.
Be aware of your own emotions and reactions to the anniversary, as well as all that your child is conveying about it. We may have experienced trauma, whether directly or indirectly, and it can impact the way in which we are able to offer support to our children. We also have the opportunity to model open empathic communication if the dialogue is collaborative, engaging and supportive.
Why we need to talk about 9/11 and how we need to talk about it stems from our core values and the fundamental principles we hope to instill in our children. We can help to foster valuable lessons in the midst of devastating tragedy. These values can directly guide how we talk about it.
We have the opportunity to teach our children about:
Adversity and resilience: Even if they fall in challenging situations, which can sometimes be inevitable, they can persevere and thrive, and very often learn something valuable, recalibrate/rebuild and emerge even stronger. Openness toward difference and the unfamiliar/unknown: With curiosity and compassion, rather than with inflexibility and preconceived negative judgments, they can be open to others who are different or unfamiliar to them. Unity and connection: Even among tragedy or misfortune, they can unite, connect, be compassionate and heroic. Solidarity and standing up for what they believe in: As Americans and in their personal value system, they continually strive for freedom, justice, and peace. Safety and security: They remain safe as we currently have stronger policies in place to ensure our safety and security. They share the belief that most people in the world by nature are kind and loving, the ones that are violent and hurtful are the small minority. Being present and in the moment: Moments in life and life in general are so precious that they want to really pay attention to all that surrounds them and live life to the fullest. Practicing gratitude: They can promote gratitude for their freedom and liberty by seizing opportunities to express themselves and be heard by advocating for themselves and others. Personal pride and living life purposefully: They can take pride in doing the right thing and for living a meaningful, purposeful life based on what they identify as being truly important to them. Sound judgement and personal responsibility/choice: They can take personal responsibility for having judgments and making certain choices and decisions and consciously learn from them. Being respectful of others: They can make the choice to be kind and behave respectfully toward others no matter how they are being treated because of their fundamental humanism and value of showing respect to all people all of the time.
Some experiential exercises that help to reinforce these values include: (a) identifying rescue workers and first responders who were heroic during the attacks and exploring what their role is in helping people, (b) interviewing several adults about how they experienced or felt a sense of unity and connection to others during this time, and © creating a collage out of magazines or other materials or mediums expressing how they feel and are processing the anniversary.
These exercises give kids the opportunity to express themselves and process their thoughts and feelings regarding the attacks. It also reminds us to assess ours as well as we all embody the quote from Deepak Chopra: “For me and my family personally, September 11 was a reminder that life is fleeting, impermanent, and uncertain. Therefore, we must make use of every moment and nurture it with affection, tenderness, beauty, creativity, and laughter.” | https://medium.com/@drmichellemaidenberg/how-to-talk-to-children-about-9-11-37df88316f94 | ['Dr. Michelle Maidenberg'] | 2021-09-08 18:22:48.229000+00:00 | ['September 11', 'Parenting Advice', 'Parenting', 'Tragedy'] |
How My Peter Pan Syndrome Landed Me In Prison For 10 Years | The Simpsons started my whole obsession with art. My sisters and I used to watch The Tracey Ullman Show together. One time, when I was nine, my sister drew the entire Simpsons family, including their cat and dog. She was a very good artist when we were younger, so I took her drawing and traced it, in an attempt to get the same attention from our foster parents that she did. But I was ultimately unsuccessful. Instead of celebrating it like they did with her, they just said, oh that’s nice, and pushed aside.
I eventually decided, around age 15, that I didn’t want to be in a foster home anymore, so I ran away. I moved to different parts of the city—North Philly, South Philly, West Philly, the Northeast, Germantown — all considered dangerous crime-infested neighborhoods. When I say crime-infested, I mean, drug dealing, drug using, prostitution, robberies, murder, cops killing innocent people, cops planting drugs on people, police brutality, stuff like that.
There was no disciplinarian to tell me to go to school — so I stopped. I was like a black Peter Pan with no real comprehension of reality. I was just in my own world. But one day that all changed. I was riding my bike when someone’s dog started chasing me and I got hit by a car. The hospital told me there was nothing wrong with me even though I had a broken ankle. There was a warrant out for my arrest because I was skipping school. I went to the youth study center and from there I went to a place called Sleighton Farms. I was 15 when I arrived and 17 when I left.
Some years later, when I was 20, I was arrested again… this time for drug charges — possession with intent to deliver crack cocaine. I had fallen into the wrong crowd. Drug dealers were my role models, so I did whatever they asked me to do. I got three to nine months because I was a first time offender. A number of arrests followed for the same charge. Each time I got arrested, my jail time got longer and longer.
As you can see, recidivism was a big problem of mine. I was locked up every time for the same thing: crack cocaine. Why’d I get caught like this? Because I had no education and no parental guidance. I thought that selling crack was the only way to make a living.
I fell into the downward spiral because of my lack of understanding of the consequences and the nature of that whole lifestyle — that Peter Pan syndrome again. Never never land turned out to be a maximum security penitentiary. | https://medium.com/the-composite/how-my-peter-pan-syndrome-landed-me-in-prison-for-10-years-17fc932512b5 | ['Russel Omar-Shareef'] | 2017-09-09 04:25:09.459000+00:00 | ['Criminal Justice Reform', 'Prison Reform', 'War On Drugs'] |
Paga hits 3 trillion Naira in transactions value | On June 7, 2021, the Founder & CEO of Paga Group Limited announced that the financial services firm has reached a big milestone by crossing three trillion Naira in the value of transactions processed since the start of its business operations in 2012.
He added that the company hit the two trillion Naira threshold in March 2020 and by May 2021, only 15 months later, the company had reached the three million Naira milestone.
Earlier, Paga announced its partnership with Visa, a move the two companies believe will enable businesses to earn more as they sell more.
“Paga, has partnered with Visa to create a way for these smaller merchants to raise their digital game quickly, called the Busniess, Connect & Grow.”
The partnership seeks to combine Visa’s payment acceptance and Paga’s merchant tools on a single app which will help businesses to develop their credit history, receive micro loans and ultimately help to grow their business capital.
Paga is a mobile payments company. We are building an ecosystem to enable people to digitally send & receive money, & creating simple financial services. Our company is focused on serving emerging markets. Nigeria is our first market, we are launching Mexico and Ethiopia next.
READ ALSO: Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS): What it is, What its Not and The Nigerian Context | https://medium.com/@esq-law.com/paga-hits-3-trillion-naira-in-transactions-value-ec47b3f32cca | ['Esq Legal Practice Blog'] | 2021-06-08 08:19:12.061000+00:00 | ['Featured', 'Paga'] |
Useful Details about Causes of Acid Reflux | Acid reflux is best described by chronic symptoms of chest pain and heartburn. Dehydration of the acidic substances in the small amounts in the esophagus, mixed with uncooked food, is also a symptom of acid reflux. When gastric contents of the stomach flow into the esophagus, it causes the discomfort, pain, and possibly permanent tissue damage. Over time, abnormal reflux of the contents of the stomach can damage to the mucous membrane of the esophagus.
This is a physical trouble. When lower esophagus (LES) does not contain stomach contents effectively or when the opening (interval) of the diaphragm is weak or large, it is a factor, acid reflux results.
A common symptom of people suffering from the condition is heartburn. Other symptoms include complexity swallowing and changes in the sensitive lining of the throat or esophagus. Ignoring these symptoms without the treatment, sufferers may develop esophageal ulcers or scars.
Causes of Acid Reflux includes coffee, tea, and other drinks that contain the caffeine. These help relax the LES and agree to the acid to return back from the stomach to the esophagus. Foods such as, fatty fried foods and chocolate also contribute to causing or triggering the disease. Chocolate contains a chemical called theobromine, which is generally present in the plants such as cocoa. They are known to relax the muscles of the esophagus that allow the stomach acid to return back to our esophagus.
Foods with a lot of fat are also considered to be one of the several Causes of Acid Reflux as they slow down digestion and keep the food in your stomach longer, thus making the acid more likely to return to the esophagus will be. Other foods such as sour foods and, tomatoes juices are also helping to trigger the condition.
See also some prescription causes the heartburn problems like birth management pills, tranquilizer relenium, tetracycline, bronchial asthma medicine aminophylline, progesterone in various heart medications. Vitamin C can also cause the heartburn problem.
What we have described is related to the signs of the acid reflux heartburn that manifest in a healthy person. While heartburn can be a sign of sickness. Major signs of gastric ulcer — burning sensation, pain in upper abdomen and the lower chest. It usually starts after eating food and lasts for several hours. These kinds of problems are characterized by acute infection of ulcers. They can last for numerous weeks; disappear due to injury, only to resume after a few weeks.
Ulcers are generally detected in the duodenum. In this case, the nature of pain is the same, but there it is between the meals. After the food, it may collapse in the short term, followed by return for several hours. Duodenal ulcers are characterized by the evening pain. This is a reliable sign of the acid reflux.
Knowing the causes of syndrome can assist you prevent this uncomfortable conditions. It is important to know the indicators of heartburn acid reflux take timely action and not get it wrong with the one thing.
If you want to know more about Causes of Acid Reflux, you can visit our website or you can also call on +919015100300. Vedas Acidity Cure provides best Treatment of Acid Reflux.
Resource: https://bit.ly/32PX51Y | https://medium.com/@vedascure/useful-details-about-causes-of-acid-reflux-6a6506c5c89 | ['Vedas Cure'] | 2019-11-14 10:17:47.532000+00:00 | ['Healthy', 'Healthcare', 'Health', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Health Foods'] |
Money Talks: Here’s What You Need To Know Before Listening | Every business has a story and the foundation of that story starts with money. Forbes Diversity & Inclusion reporter Ruth Umoh is often the one discovering these stories. During this quarter’s undivided We Rise Virtual Summit, she moderated a conversation with Co-Founder of the Fearless Fund Arian Simone, CEO and Co-Founder of Topicals Olamide Olowe, and Head of Partnerships at Republic, Bianca Caban to talk dollars and cents.
Diversity Is Needed In Financing Too
“Speaking to Black and Latinx founders, as far as raising capital and the discussion of money, I think it is very important right now,” said Simone.
She was drawn to financing through her own struggles securing funds. “I got into this space actually to solve a problem I was having myself,” she said. “I was raising capital as a college student at Florida University when I was 21. I told myself then that one day I was going to be the business investor that I was looking for.”
Simone’s Fearless Fund is one of a growing segment of organizations who are tired of traditional industry stop gaps, and looking to be the change.
“We’re the first fund that’s built by us for us. We are not looking to be the last,” she said. She pointed out that funds led by Black women are not just better at creating access, but they also lead to results.
“There are definitely strategic alliances and advantages that we do have currently at our fund,” she said.
Cashing In Doesn’t Always Equal Selling Out
Simone seeks to be the type of investor that goes out of their way to shut down stereotypes, including the recurring one that misleads founders to believe that selling their business makes them a sellout. “That’s the stigma in our community. It needs to be just demolished. It really does,” she said.
While White men get applauded for cashing in and becoming serial entrepreneurs, Black and Latinx female founders get shamed for moving on from their organizations.
“I think in our community, we see acquisition and we see I’m selling your company to a larger company as selling out or as you know, trying to jump ship or get rich, but really every single person who takes funding or has investors, the exit opportunities are exactly what your investors are looking for,” said Olamide Olowe, founder of Topicals.
“I think in communities of color, we haven’t seen exits, or we haven’t seen large acquisitions in the same way maybe other communities have seen. We should see acquisition as success and not as someone selling out.”
Arian Simone reminded the audience that acquisitions can prompt meaningful community investment.
“I hate when people romanticize about the business too much to where they’re just so in love with it, but I’m like at the end of the day, are you in love with this $10 million revenue business that you can’t even cut a $10,000 check for? Whereas if you had a $40 million exit, an acquisition for this business, you’re now in position as a person of color in your community to go and start another business and just do so much more,” said Simone.
She also reminded the audience that there’s more than one way to build a legacy.
“There are some businesses that will be legacy businesses, but at the end of the day, capital and cash is king and they are going to put you in a better financial place for your community, whether you’re running that business or having an exit, that puts you in a better position,” she added.
Start-Ups Require Some Studying
Bianca Caban used the opportunity to speak with the digitalundivided community to share vital information with founders. She is committed to “enabling founders regardless of where they are,” through her work at Republic.
As stated in ProjectDiane, “while there is a growing number of Black women crossing the $1MM venture threshold, a majority of Black women–led startups do not raise any money,” meaning that minority founders need access to as many resources as they can get.
Caban explained terms like bootstrapping, shopping, unicorns, debt-based financing and IPOs .
She then suggested founders look to the data available to pinpoint their strengths before reaching for outside investors who might want to speed up their exit timeline.
“Data shows that women are very good at storytelling and galvanizing supporters. And so equity crowdfunding is a really powerful way for women of color to do just that, to leverage their ability, to rally a community, to inspire, to influence and to leverage their near superpower in doing that to raise capital and receive the funding they need to get to the next stage,” she said.
“You just have to be mindful of what your business model is and what you need to support it in order to scale and grow at a rapid rate,” added Simone.
The panel advised founders to consider the limitation of certain funds before committing to one.
“The main question you have to ask yourself is, are you ready to lead an organization that has to one day either be sold or go public on the stock exchange?” said Olamide Olowe.
Arian Simone recommended that founders research the values of the funds they are courting.
“Make sure that your values fall in alignment with whatever that mission is for who you’re looking for funding from,” she said.
Learn more tips on money matters and connect with the digitalundivided community? Check out our website. | https://medium.com/digitalundivided/money-talks-heres-what-you-need-to-know-before-listening-a09858dd7dfd | ['Keyaira Boone'] | 2020-10-14 15:50:32.650000+00:00 | ['Black', 'Finance', 'Latinx', 'Business', 'Startup'] |
What is internet? | What is internet? And how does it work?
Photo by Headway on Unsplash
What Is the Internet, Exactly?
You probably have your own “local area network” at home, and it’s made up of all the devices connected to your router, which connects to the internet. The word “internet” refers to a worldwide system of “interconnected computer networks”.
That’s all the internet really is — a large number of computer networks all over the world, connected together. Of course, there’s a lot of physical hardware — from the cables under your city streets to the massive cables on the ocean floors to satellites in orbit around the planet that makes this communication possible. There’s also a lot of software at work in the background, allowing you to type in a website address like “google.com” and have your computer to send information to the physical location where that website is located in the fastest way possible.
Even when you only connect to one website, there’s a lot more going on under the hood. Your computer cannot directly send a piece of information, or a “package” of data, to the computer that hosts the website. Instead, it forwards the packet to your home router with information about where it is going and where the web server should reply to. Your router then sends it to the router at your internet service provider (Comcast, Time Warner, or whoever you use), where it is sent to another router at another internet service provider, and so on, until it reaches its destination. Any packets sent back to your system from a remote server make the reverse journey.
To use an imperfect analogy, it’s a bit like sending a letter in the mail. Your local postal employee can’t just grab the letter and take it directly across the country or continent to its destination address. Instead, the letter goes to your local post office, where it’s sent to another post office, and then another one, and so on, until it gets to its destination. It takes longer for a letter to get to the other side of the world than the other side of the country because it has to make more stops, and that’s generally true for the internet as well. It will take a bit longer for packets to go longer distances with more transfers, or “hops”, as they’re called.
Unlike with physical mail, sending data packets is still very fast, though, and it happens many times a second. Each packet is very small, and large numbers of packets are sent back and forth when computers communicate — even if one is just loading a website from another one. A packet’s travel time is measured in milliseconds.
Data Can Take Many Paths
This network of networks is a little more interesting and complex than it might seem. With all these networks connected together, there isn’t just a single path data takes. Because networks are connected to multiple other networks, there’s a whole web of connections stretching out around the globe. This means that those packets (small pieces of data sent between devices) can take multiple paths to get where they’re going.
In other words, even if a network between you and a website goes down, there’s usually another path the data can take. The routers along the path use something called the Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP, to communicate information about whether a network is down and the optimal path for data to take.
Creating this interconnected network (or internet) isn’t just as simple as plugging each network into a nearby one, one by one. Networks are connected in many different ways along many different paths, and the software running on these routers (so named because they route traffic along the network) is always working to find the optimal paths for data to take.
You can actually see the path your packets take to a destination address by using the traceroute command, which tells routers along the path the packet travels to report back.
For example, in the screenshot below, we traced the route to howtogeek.com from a Comcast internet connection in Eugene, Oregon. The packets traveled to our router, through Comcast’s network north to Seattle, before being routed onto a Tata Communications (as6453.net) backbone network through Chicago, New York, and Newark before making their way to a Linode data center in Newark, New Jersey where the website is hosted.
We speak of packets “traveling”, but of course, they’re just pieces of data. A router contacts another router and communicates the data in the packet. The next router uses the information on the packet to figure out where it’s going and transmits the data to the next router along its the path. The packet is just a signal on the wire.
IP Addresses, DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP, and More Details
That’s a high level overview of how the internet works, at least. There are lots of little topics that are important to the internet we all use, and which you can read about in more detail.
For example, every device on a network has a unique, numerical IP Address on that network. Data is sent to these addresses. There are both older IPv4 addresses and newer IPv6 Address. IP stands for “internet Protocol”, so an IP address is an “internet Protocol address”. These are the addresses that devices on the network use and speak.
People use human-readable domain names like howtogeek.com and google.com, which are more memorable and understandable than a series of numbers. However, when you use domain names like these, your computer contacts its Domain Name System (DNS) Server and asks for the numerical IP address for that domain. Think of it like a large, public address book for phone numbers. Companies and individuals who want domain names have to pay to register them. You probably use your internet service provider’s DNS service, but you can choose to user another DNS Server like Google Public DNS or OpenDNS.
Underlying all this, there are different layers of “protocols” that devices use to communicate, even when using internet protocol. The most common transport protocol is TCP/IP, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol over internet Protocol. TCP is all about reliability, and devices chat back and forth and track packets of data to ensure nothing gets lost along the way. If it does, it’s noticed and resent. There are also other protocols, like UDP, which throws out the reliability stuff for raw speed.
Above transport protocols like TCP and UDP are application protocols, like HTTP or HTTPS the hypertext transfer protocol, which your web browser users. The HTTP protocol works on top of the TCP protocol, which works on top of the IP protocol. Other applications might use different protocols or create their own protocols that nevertheless operate on top of protocols like TCP and IP. So much of the technology we use involves layers of technology built on other layers, and the same is true for the internet.
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Apa itu Internet, Tepatnya?
Anda mungkin memiliki “jaringan area lokal” Anda sendiri di rumah, dan itu terdiri dari semua perangkat yang terhubung ke router Anda, yang terhubung ke internet. Kata “internet” mengacu pada sistem “jaringan komputer yang saling terhubung” di seluruh dunia.
Itu saja internet sebenarnya sejumlah besar jaringan komputer di seluruh dunia, terhubung bersama. Tentu saja, ada banyak perangkat keras fisik — dari kabel di bawah jalan-jalan kota Anda hingga kabel besar di dasar laut hingga satelit di orbit di sekitar planet yang memungkinkan komunikasi ini. Ada juga banyak perangkat lunak yang bekerja di latar belakang, memungkinkan Anda mengetikkan alamat situs web seperti “google.com” dan meminta komputer Anda mengirim informasi ke lokasi fisik tempat situs web itu berada secepat mungkin.
Bahkan ketika Anda hanya terhubung ke satu situs web, ada lebih banyak hal yang terjadi di bawah tenda. Komputer Anda tidak dapat secara langsung mengirim sepotong informasi, atau “paket” data, ke komputer yang menghosting situs web. Alih-alih, ia meneruskan paket ke router rumah Anda dengan informasi tentang ke mana ia pergi dan ke mana server web harus membalas. Router Anda kemudian mengirimkannya ke router di penyedia layanan internet Anda (Comcast, Time Warner, atau siapa pun yang Anda gunakan), di mana ia dikirim ke router lain di penyedia layanan internet lain, dan seterusnya, hingga mencapai tujuannya. Paket apa pun yang dikirim kembali ke sistem Anda dari server jauh membuat perjalanan sebaliknya.
Untuk menggunakan analogi yang tidak sempurna, ini seperti mengirim surat melalui pos. Pegawai pos lokal Anda tidak bisa begitu saja mengambil surat itu dan membawanya langsung melintasi negara atau benua ke alamat tujuannya. Alih-alih, surat itu dikirim ke kantor pos setempat, di mana surat itu dikirim ke kantor pos lain, dan kemudian ke kantor pos lainnya, dan seterusnya, hingga sampai ke tujuannya. Dibutuhkan waktu lebih lama bagi sebuah surat untuk sampai ke sisi lain dunia daripada sisi lain negara karena harus membuat lebih banyak pemberhentian, dan itu umumnya berlaku untuk internet juga. Ini akan memakan waktu sedikit lebih lama untuk paket untuk menempuh jarak yang lebih jauh dengan lebih banyak transfer, atau “hop”, seperti yang mereka sebut.
Tidak seperti surat fisik, pengiriman paket data masih sangat cepat, dan itu terjadi berkali-kali dalam satu detik. Setiap paket sangat kecil, dan sejumlah besar paket dikirim bolak-balik ketika komputer berkomunikasi — bahkan jika seseorang hanya memuat situs web dari yang lain. Waktu perjalanan paket diukur dalam milidetik.
Data Dapat Mengambil Banyak Jalur
Jaringan jaringan ini sedikit lebih menarik dan kompleks daripada yang terlihat. Dengan semua jaringan ini terhubung bersama, tidak hanya ada satu jalur data yang diambil. Karena jaringan terhubung ke beberapa jaringan lain, ada jaringan koneksi yang terbentang di seluruh dunia. Ini berarti bahwa paket-paket tersebut (potongan kecil data yang dikirim antar perangkat) dapat mengambil banyak jalur untuk sampai ke tujuan.
Dengan kata lain, bahkan jika jaringan antara Anda dan situs web terputus, biasanya ada jalur lain yang dapat diambil data. Router di sepanjang jalur menggunakan sesuatu yang disebut Border Gateway Protocol, atau BGP, untuk mengomunikasikan informasi tentang apakah jaringan sedang down dan jalur optimal untuk pengambilan data.
Membuat jaringan (atau internet) yang saling terhubung ini tidak sesederhana menghubungkan setiap jaringan ke jaringan terdekat, satu per satu. Jaringan terhubung dengan berbagai cara di sepanjang banyak jalur yang berbeda, dan perangkat lunak yang berjalan pada router ini (dinamakan demikian karena mereka merutekan lalu lintas di sepanjang jaringan) selalu bekerja untuk menemukan jalur optimal yang akan diambil data.
Anda benar-benar dapat melihat jalur yang diambil paket Anda ke alamat tujuan dengan menggunakan perintah traceroute, yang memberi tahu router di sepanjang jalur yang dilalui paket untuk melaporkan kembali.
Misalnya, pada tangkapan layar di bawah, kami menelusuri rute ke howtogeek.com dari koneksi internet Comcast di Eugene, Oregon. Paket dikirim ke router kami, melalui jaringan Comcast di utara ke Seattle, sebelum dialihkan ke jaringan tulang punggung Tata Communications (as6453.net) melalui Chicago, New York, dan Newark sebelum menuju ke pusat data Linode di Newark, New Jersey tempat situs web dihosting.
Kami berbicara tentang paket “bepergian”, tetapi tentu saja, itu hanya potongan data. Router menghubungi router lain dan mengomunikasikan data dalam paket. Router berikutnya menggunakan informasi pada paket untuk mencari tahu ke mana arahnya dan mengirimkan data ke router berikutnya di sepanjang jalurnya. Paket hanyalah sinyal di kabel.
Alamat IP, DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP, dan Detail Lainnya
Setidaknya itulah gambaran tingkat tinggi tentang cara kerja internet. Ada banyak topik kecil yang penting bagi internet yang kita semua gunakan, dan yang dapat Anda baca lebih detail.
Misalnya, setiap perangkat di jaringan memiliki Alamat IP numerik yang unik di jaringan itu. Data dikirim ke alamat ini. Ada alamat IPv4 yang lebih lama dan Alamat IPv6 yang lebih baru. IP adalah singkatan dari “internet Protokol”, jadi alamat IP adalah “alamat Protokol internet”. Ini adalah alamat yang digunakan dan diucapkan oleh perangkat di jaringan.
Orang-orang menggunakan nama domain yang dapat dibaca manusia seperti howtogeek.com dan google.com, yang lebih mudah diingat dan dimengerti daripada serangkaian angka. Namun, saat Anda menggunakan nama domain seperti ini, komputer Anda menghubungi Server Domain Name System (DNS) dan meminta alamat IP numerik untuk domain tersebut. Anggap saja seperti buku alamat publik yang besar untuk nomor telepon. Perusahaan dan individu yang menginginkan nama domain harus membayar untuk mendaftarkannya. Anda mungkin menggunakan layanan DNS penyedia layanan internet Anda, tetapi Anda dapat memilih untuk menggunakan Server DNS lain seperti Google Public DNS atau OpenDNS.
Mendasari semua ini, ada berbagai lapisan “protokol” yang digunakan perangkat untuk berkomunikasi, bahkan saat menggunakan protokol internet. Protokol transport yang paling umum adalah TCP/IP, yang merupakan singkatan dari Transmission Control Protocol over internet Protocol. TCP adalah semua tentang keandalan, dan perangkat mengobrol bolak-balik dan melacak paket data untuk memastikan tidak ada yang hilang di sepanjang jalan. Jika ya, itu diperhatikan dan dibenci. Ada juga protokol lain, seperti UDP, yang membuang keandalan untuk kecepatan mentah.
Protokol transport di atas seperti TCP dan UDP adalah protokol aplikasi, seperti HTTP atau HTTPS, protokol transfer hypertext, yang digunakan pengguna browser web Anda. Protokol HTTP bekerja di atas protokol TCP, yang bekerja di atas protokol IP. Aplikasi lain mungkin menggunakan protokol yang berbeda atau membuat protokol mereka sendiri yang tetap beroperasi di atas protokol seperti TCP dan IP. Begitu banyak teknologi yang kami gunakan melibatkan lapisan teknologi yang dibangun di atas lapisan lain, dan hal yang sama berlaku untuk internet. | https://medium.com/@patrickramadhani/what-is-internet-5409a9ffcbd1 | ['Patrick Ramadhani'] | 2021-06-17 07:48:53.632000+00:00 | ['Internet', 'Web', 'Network'] |
4 Top AI/ML Github Repositories in November 2020 | 4 Top AI/ML Github Repositories in November 2020
Some of these will blow your mind
Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash
Data Scientists and Machine Learning researchers will both keep a nose around for what’s going on in the community.
There are various ways to do this: by checking out what’s going on in Kaggle or Product Hunt. Maybe having a look through stack overflow trends, or even looking at GitHub trends.
I’m a curious individual, so I wanted to see what had been trending this month: all of which I found to be pretty damn interesting.
Here goes it: | https://towardsdatascience.com/4-top-ai-ml-github-repositories-in-november-2020-aa51656aaab9 | ['Mohammad Ahmad'] | 2020-11-20 22:13:05.806000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Github', 'Python', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Everything You Need To Know About The Symbols On Our Plastic Containers | The plastic types, with the associated code, are:
# 1 — PET or PETE — can be recycled
Used in the manufacture of beverage and water bottles, plastic food containers, and pens, this plastic has the most common usage rate. However, since they are designed for single-use, heavy metals and various chemicals can mix into the water when you refill and use it. These bottles are hardly soluble in nature.
# 2 — HDPE or HDP — can be recycled
HDPE or HDP, which is mostly used in the production of milk, detergent, oil containers, toys, and plastic bags, does not mix a chemical in water and is shown as the most preferred plastic by experts when it comes to water.
Photo by Weiqi Xiong on Unsplash
# 3 — PVC or V can be recycled, but contact your recycler
This plastic is used for CDs, sanitary ware, doors, furniture, food containers, soft materials, and toys. This plastic, which can mix two toxic materials into water, is not recommended for use in bottles.
Efficient recycling practices could save companies millions. In Apple’s latest Environmental Responsibility Report, the company said it recovered more than a ton of gold from recycled devices — that’s an estimated worth of $40 million.
# 4 — LDPE — recyclable, but contact your recycler
This plastic is forbidden to be used as a water bottle, although it does not mix any chemicals into the water. It has the possibility of contaminating chemicals that it does not mix with water to foods.
# 5 — PP — not recyclable
Standing out with its hardness and lightness, PP has a high resistance to heat. So much so that when heated, unlike other plastics, it does not melt. This makes it a good preservative for the product it preserves.
# 6 — PS — not recyclable
PS, which is a cheap and light plastic type used for many different purposes, is generally used in disposable style cups and containers, egg containers, etc. used for. When heated, it can emit carcinogenic compounds. Therefore, it is not recommended for long-term use.
Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash
# 7 — Other plastics like nylon and styrene — not recyclable
We should take care of our environment and ourselves; it is our planet, so being ‘selfish’ should not be applicable when it comes to mother nature.
Please think again when you’re about to buy an item which is ‘single-use’ plastic. You can start by buying a 100% plastic-free reusable coffee cup :) ☕🌱 | https://medium.com/illumination/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-symbols-on-our-plastic-containers-8eeea1a277b3 | ['Oyku Uzuncarsili'] | 2020-12-17 15:20:25.517000+00:00 | ['Animals', 'Coffee', 'Plastic', 'Sustainability', 'Environment'] |
Artificial Intelligence’s Role in the Future of Mental Illness | The Ethics of Where We’re Going
Artificial Intelligence exists in three subcategories: Artificial Narrow Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence, and Artificial Super Intelligence (du Toit, 2019). Blackwell and colleagues have employed an Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) — and AI built to perform one specific task, rather than mimic the true intelligence of humans — in their efforts to better match a patient to a therapist and psychotherapeutic method. While this use of ANI has been generally perceived as a success, there is no shortage of ethical concerns surrounding its use in healthcare. Among the many, common concerns tend to center around discrimination, lack of privacy, and lack of transparency or understanding of how the systems are built and operate, and despite actions being taken to prepare for these understandable concerns, often enforcing them is an entirely different struggle all together (Mörch et al. 2020).
An approach taken by many has been to develop checklists. The Canada Protocol, an ethical checklist for the use of artificial intelligence in suicide prevention and mental healthcare, is one such list. The approach: build a team consisting of experts, ethicists, and professors across the fields of psychological and computer sciences to develop questions, extract evidence, develop recommendations, and have them reviewed by a panel of peers for further revising. As a result, a list of 44 items were submitted, divided by types of concern: “Description of the Autonomous Intelligence System”, “Privacy and Transparency”, “Security”, “Health-Related Risks”, and “Biases” (Mörch et al. 2020). This ethical checklist outlines actions necessary to provide a safe product to the public, including transparency surrounding data collection, manipulation, and sharing, as well as levels of autonomy and moderation of the system. As an end-user, this type of information would often be presented in the form of an End User Licensing Agreement. While these ethical concerns are constantly being thought about and addressed, it’s imperative to state that legal precedent still has yet to be established for the misuse and inevitable shortcomings of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare, especially in high-stakes use-cases as suicide prevention.
In accordance with the Canada Protocol, developers and doctors are able to ideate new and innovative uses for ANI systems within mental health research and treatment while remaining ethically sound. One such use, inspired by the 2013 film Her — starring Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely individual who falls in love with his AI-based virtual assistant, voiced by Scarlet Johannsen — could be a virtual assistant serving as a biometric-driven emergency responder for individuals experiencing panic attacks, anxiety attacks, various forms of depressive episodes, and more. Wearable technologies such as the Apple Watch or Fitbit Charge could provide the input necessary for a trained machine learning algorithm to accurately predict whether an individual is suffering a mental health emergency or perhaps just enjoying a jog through the neighborhood. For example, incoming data from a heartrate monitoring device with additional capabilities such as GPS tracking, and the ability to tell whether or not you’re standing up, could transmit those three inputs to an Artificially Intelligent system to determine whether your raised heartrate were due to a high-intensity activity or a panic attack. In a similar way, researchers in Korea have had success rates over 78.4% in predicting whether an individual suffers from a panic disorder or some other form of anxiety disorder using a Logistic Regression Machine Learning algorithm and one singular input: heartrate variance (Na et al. 2021). Utilizing the same “fingerprint” method Blackwell and colleagues used to match a patient to a clinician and methodology, so too could this program match you to a trained personality. Whether a virtual assistant would make a patient feel more secure with a male or female voice, what words would likely aid in calming a panic-ridden individual, and determining whether or not a sufferer is capable of vocally responding are all within the realm of possibility for properly-trained Artificially Intelligent systems.
To abide by the Canada Protocol, we must remain fully transparent in the development of our theoretical system. Firstly, our objective(s): we are aiming to mitigate the damage of triggered responses to panic disorders, anxiety disorders, and mood disorders. Additionally, we’ll need written, verbal, or virtual content outlining our funding, any potential conflicts of interest, credentials, target population, any evidence supporting our marketing claims, our testing protocol, and any complaints expressed about our system. From there, an End User License Agreement would need to be created and presented in an ethical way; in short, it should not be presented as a long legal document with an easy-to-click “Agree” button in our software, but rather bulleted or outlined, showcasing key information such as legal responsibility, data collection practices, accessibility, consent and withdrawal of consent, access to one’s data, the right to be forgotten, and data collection from minors among other security-related practices. Lastly, messaging surrounding heath risks and potential biases must be presented in easily digestible manners. Considering the 56% rise in suicide rates for people ages 10–24 between 2007 and 2017 (Tanzi, 2019), these forms of communication should be catered towards younger audiences, potentially through social media and online entertainment hubs like YouTube.
This thought exercise was meant to develop a safe and ethical business plan surrounding the release of a theoretical AI-based mental health platform. However, this technology would still exist within the realm of Artificial Narrow Intelligence, the lowest of the three tiers of Artificial Intelligence. In a survey conducted by Oracle, 80% of individuals surveyed were willing to receive therapeutic services from a robot (Hickins, 2020). While modern day robots are capable of mimicking human behavior, the role of a counselor and therapist requires emotional cognition and advanced sentiment analysis that ANI is just not capable of; this level of mental health treatment by Artificial Intelligence certainly requires Artificial General Intelligence. Artificial General Intelligence is where machine transcend single-function uses and begin to mimic human intelligence, even going as far as to become sentient, driven by emotional desires and capable of abstract thought (du Toit, 2019). This level of AI has yet to be achieved, however that presents the human species the perfect time to address use cases and ethical concerns the same way we have with Artificial Narrow Intelligence.
Though they are driven by similar technology, ANI and AGI differ drastically in their ethical concerns; we are shifting away from the simple privacy and security concerns of present day into far more complex concerns like the value of an AI life, cohabitation of our species with another fully-sentient lifeform, and even “playing God”. The evolution of man’s desire to transcend their God-given right to rule over His creation into a realm where they are the creators themselves has been documented through a multitude of historic events and religious texts (du Toit, 2019). If we are to create machines in our likeness, designed with brains that function as ours and provide consciousness, what is stopping these machines from becoming as fallible as humans in the eye of their creator? To better raise and address the concerns of Artificial General Intelligence, the human species must make drastic strides in their understanding of their own consciousness, the value and rights associated with their own lives, and come to an agreement on a baseline moral and ethical code. | https://medium.com/@thekevinhaube/artificial-intelligences-role-in-the-future-of-mental-illness-6fa318a70236 | ['Kevin Haube'] | 2020-12-17 20:15:01.374000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Therapy', 'Mental Health', 'Machine Learning', 'Psychology'] |
How To Be Better At Socializing When You’re An Introvert With Constantly Flailing Hands | How To Be Better At Socializing When You’re An Introvert With Constantly Flailing Hands
Finally, some tips that work.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Having an active social life can be difficult when you’re an introvert who prefers to be home alone because you don’t want people to witness you knocking things over as you try to control your wild hands. It’s just so discouraging when you try to socialize with someone new, but you don’t know what to say, and also you can’t stop shaking their hand, and your handshake gets faster and faster until they’re forced to push you away. We’ve all been there. Here’s how to fix it:
Practice in the Mirror
Practice telling a story in the mirror. It can be about anything, except for the problem with your hands. Start small and work your way up to longer stories. When your hands start recklessly drumming on the countertop, take a deep breath and slam them inside your vanity drawer. It’s the only way they’ll learn.
Acknowledge Strangers
This can be as simple as making eye contact with someone and nodding. Don’t wave: that will encourage your hands. Keep them hidden in your pockets, balled tightly around your behavior-correcting razor blades.
Initiate Conversation
Talk to a cashier or barista. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Just say hi, and ask them how their day is going. When your hand reaches out to punch the Children’s Charity donation jar across the room, use your behavior-correcting knife to skewer your hand to the counter: it can’t bash if it’s impaled! If the cashier notices, just laugh and say, “Mondays!”
Attend a Child’s Birthday Party
Interacting with children is a great way to practice talking to other human beings because kids don’t care about you or anything you say. When it’s time to open presents, the wild paper-tearing and screams of delight will awaken your hands’ craving for chaos. To prevent a Traumatic Event, ignite your behavior-correcting hand gasoline and burn your fists into submission. If any kids see, tell them you’re the real-life Human Torch. Flame on!
Make Sure You Recharge
It can be exhausting to go from indoor hermit to social butterfly, so make sure you set aside some alone time for yourself. Take your hands out of their special weighted mittens and set them free. Throw your bunny ceramics, tear some doors off their hinges, pick up the roaches in your kitchen, and rip them into confetti.
Remember, the most important thing is to be yourself — just not the self that stabbed that man in the alley. Your hands cannot afford another mess like that. Now get out there and make some friends! | https://medium.com/slackjaw/how-to-be-better-at-socializing-when-youre-an-introvert-with-constantly-flailing-hands-4b4103b225b9 | ['Tab Parker'] | 2020-10-25 14:02:21.402000+00:00 | ['Social', 'Humor', 'Life', 'Life Lessons', 'Satire'] |
Lambda Authorizers to the Rescue | A typical story: You want to build on AWS API Gateway so that your applications have highly scalable and managed REST APIs. You need a front door for your users or other applications to interact with your application. You need to authenticate your API, so you go with the default “out of the box” option: AWS_IAM. Everything is quickly set up and the POC works fine. You are ready to onboard your first user/service. But wait…
AWS API Gateway is a super simple and intuitive managed service by AWS that can super charge your entire serverless ecosystem. It is the microservice front door. It has it all. REST, Websocket, authentication, validation, the works. However, always using the default authentication method for your api gateway methods/resources could possibly create more issues for your teams and applications than solutions. It might be simpler out of the box, but it can end up tightly coupling all of your microservices and increasing unnecessary toil for your entire environment. There must be a better way!
Photo by Lester Hine on Unsplash
Whether your gamut of applications are same-account, cross-account, external to your company, etc., if you use the default way to secure your API’s on API Gateway each and every time, then you could be setting yourself up for an IAM nightmare. This is because in increasingly many scenarios IAM authentication requires cross-account role creation and management. This can reduce flexibility and cause extra toil the more complex your environment becomes. All too often the management becomes too overwhelming and teams can opt for less secure IAM policies and roles. This leads to greater and more frequent application coupling. To combat this potentially hazardous scenario, Lambda Authorizers come to the rescue.
Photo by Esteban Lopez on Unsplash
Lambda Authorizers, formerly called Custom Authorizers, are lambda functions you write and attach to your API methods to authenticate requests. You can choose your preferred programming language such as Nodejs or Python, and then write code as simple as a whitelist of applications or users allowed to access your API. The lambda can do whatever you want it to do. That is the power of lambda. Authenticate how exactly you need to, as long as the lambda returns either false (if the service/user shouldn’t have access), or a role with the correct permissions you wish to grant. Also, it’s free. You don’t get charged for the invoked lambda authorizer, and you can save costs by avoiding an unnecessary invoke of your downstream lambdas. As your validation/authentication logic evolves over time, you can update the lambda authorizer instead of adding additional code into your actual applications.
This is critical, and alongside the other powerful features of API Gateway, such as resource policies and json-schema validation of the request body, you have very flexible and powerful tools at your fingertips to up your serverless game. Here is an example where you specify a lambda authorizer in your serverless.yml file.
functions: myGreatFunction: handler: handler.hello events: - http: path: users method: get authorizer: myAuthorizer myAuthorizer: handler: handler.myAuthorizer
Using bearer token authentication, the lambda authorizer can verify the request, usually in the form of a JWT token, by calling AWS Cognito or another OAuth token provider, to ensure the user is who they say they are (Authentication/AuthN) and that they should have access to your API (Authorization/AuthZ).
There are two types of Lambda Authorizers to choose from: token-based and request parameter-based. Which one to choose depends on a few different factors. Token-based is the most straight forward choice. You choose one header that the lambda authorizer will validate the request with, like Authorization. Request parameter-based offers a lot more flexibility, by combining headers, query strings, etc. that all get passed into the lambda authorizer through the context parameter. You also have the ability to add additional information to the request from the Lambda Authorizer.
Regardless of which type you choose, you have a way to do some additional validation free-of-charge (remember, lambda authorizers don’t get charged for running). There is even the ability to cache lambda authorizer responses for a given amount of time to speed up the authentication/authorization of the incoming requests.
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash
I have strongly enjoyed working with lambda authorizers. However, there are situations where the default is better. If you have only a few services that are in the same account that need to authenticate to each other via an API, then the default should be fine and is probably better. IAM gives you a powerfully easy way to authenticate out of the box. Below are the three main benefits, however, to using Lambda Authorizers instead of this default. These are important to keep in your mindset and vision as you create more and more APIs on API Gateway.
Check before you get charged. Lambda authorizers allow you to run code to authenticate, authorize, validate, or whatever you want to do (i.e. check the weather) before your lambda downstream ever gets invoked or charged. This helps with unnecessary requests that drown out your application that can cost unnecessary lambda invocations and wasted runtime. Gracefully enforce a decoupled infrastructure. With default IAM authentication on API Gateway, you are making a choice that can lead to some unintended consequences. A single account with 5 microservices is a lot different than an ecosystem with 200+ accounts and thousands of microservices. For cross account and external applications to gain access to your API, you will need to be granting these permissions directly into the account for each user/service/account on AWS IAM. Lambda authorizers can even connect to your current systems. As long as there is an accessible URL, the lambda authorizer can find it and use it to authenticate your requests. Keep your application code cleaner. As use-cases change and grow in complexity over time, using lambda authorizers to standardize how you authenticate and authorize will help over time. By separating your validation logic from your business logic, you are setting yourself up for easier business changes. Lambda Authorizers help standardize your microservice ecosystem communication by laying a foundation that is more conducive to a rapidly shifting environment. Even better, all of your microservices can use the same lambda authorizers, even from an account that is different then the account your API or application lambda is running in. That is definitely one of my favorite things about using lambda authorizers, second only to the fact that you get to write more lambda code! This allows you to uniformly update your authentication and authorization logic throughout larger groups of microservices in your environment all at the same time (different cache TTLs will effect that).
In absolute AWS fashion, we are able to customize the way we authenticate our APIs using actual Lambda functions. As your applications get more spread out and complex, better insight and more understanding into the problems that can arise from both types of authentication on API Gateway is extremely important. I have learned that it is definitely worth the initial effort of researching and planning which authentication method you want to choose for the long run, before you accidentally start rebuilding monoliths in the cloud. | https://medium.com/swlh/lambda-authorizers-to-the-rescue-cf2fb31c3cc7 | ['Nick Basinger'] | 2020-06-09 19:49:08.561000+00:00 | ['Api Gateway', 'Security', 'Amazon Web Services', 'Lambda', 'Cloud'] |
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Loched and Loaded | Day: 185
Towns / Cities Visited: 118
Countries Visited: 20
Steps Taken Today: 8,173
Steps Taken Around the World: 3,087,085
A luxury in and of itself, we indulged whole heartedly in a sleep in before tumbling out of bed for the days adventure. We’d had grandiose plans to go hiking, but with the heavens dousing this land, once again, in a heavy blanket of rain, we decided to drive to our first destination and assess the weather when we arrived. Rain or not our day was to be loaded with lochs. First up on our day of exploration within the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park was the largest of them all in this fair country, by surface area at least; Loch Lomond. Now, fun fact for those off you interested in linguistic origins, ‘loch’ is Gaelic for ‘lake’, and ‘lomond’ comes from the Gaelic word ‘laomainn’ meaning ‘beacon’, in reference to Ben Lomond, the mountain which looms over the lake on its eastern side. For those of you who are instead interested in the geological formation of this loch, and those surrounding it, that can all be traced back some ten to twenty thousand years ago when great glaciers scarred the earth with their force, leaving a thin indent in the harder rock of the highlands, but spreading to a much wider cut when it reached the softer soils of the lowlands. The small undulations left by the glaciers now serve as islands in the lower part of the loch. Eventually, said glaciers disappeared as the earth warmed and the sea level rose, and these picturesque places were once, for a short time at least, connected to the ocean which now lays quite some distance away. When you look at the grand timeline of these prehistoric bodies of water, our existence really does seem rather inconsequential.
At the suggestion of our gracious Airbnb hosts, we had decided to marvel at the beauty of the lake from its shores in the quaint little town of Luss on the western bank. An hour later we were pulling into this sleepy little village, and by the grace of whichever old Gaelic gods control the weather, the rain had let up, if only for a moment. Overshooting the carpark saw us having to do a loop through the rabbit warren of one way streets off the main motorway, dodging the seemingly oblivious wandering of locals and tourists alike, and being stuck between admittedly gorgeous little stone houses while a truck and a van blocked the way for us and the line of cars to our rear. After a solid five or ten minutes, one of the drivers decided that we had made enough stern and rather frustrated eye contact with them and shifted his van to clear the way. Car parked, rain coats on, and packed lunch in hand, we soon became a pair of the aforementioned wandering visitors, and were soon standing on the gently lapping shores. As we gandered across the water; past the speckle of bobbing boats, nonchalant seagulls, and the prismatic arch of a rainbow; our eyes reached the misty mountains, and I couldn’t help but think that I had not seen such a sight since we were on the shores of Lake Geneva all those months ago. | https://returndateunknown.medium.com/loched-and-loaded-b23fccd52e4f | ['Return Date Unknown'] | 2019-07-10 04:14:09.143000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Diary', 'Travel', 'Mythology', 'Blog'] |
🌎Time To Wake Up: The Party With No Plan | 🌎Time To Wake Up: The Party With No Plan
If you think all our bills are no good, come up with something better.
There’s no doubt that climate change is happening, that it is caused by human activity, and that we must act now to avoid the worst of it. But for too long we’ve seen the fossil fuel industry, and its army of front groups, use manufactured doubt — phony doubt — as their weapon of choice to obstruct any solution.
Well, science studies things, and it even studies doubt. A scientific study published by Nature has found that the evidence of human-caused climate change occurring has now achieved what they call the five-sigma level of certainty. This scientific standard means there is 99.9999 percent confidence that Earth is warming due to human activity.
Low Probability Events
Put another way, that is a one-in-3.5-million chance that human-caused warming is not occurring. To compare, you’ve got a one-in-15,000 chance that you will be struck by lightning in your lifetime. You’ve got a one-in-100,000 chance of being born a conjoined twin. And you’ve got a one-in-3.5 million chance the fossil fuel industry’s phony doubt about climate change is true.
Yet just one Republican has signed on to Senator Carper’s resolution stating the basics: that climate change is real, and caused by human activity, and Congress should take action now to address it. In an editorial last week, even the middle-of-the-road USA Today said climate change is
“a true crisis facing the United States and the world,” that “fossil-fuel polluters keep using the atmosphere as a free waste dump,” and that “[t]he public is growing impatient.”
Last week here on the Senate floor, we actually had something resembling a climate debate break out. It was a little weird. As a debate, it coughed and banged and sputtered, and we didn’t really engage. Our Republican colleagues had a really hard time mentioning the phrase “climate change.” They found it impossible to talk at all about the costs of climate change — the floods, the fires, the rising seas, the worse yet to come. No one could mention the 1.5 decrees Centigrade limit we need to meet. They mostly wanted to have fun bashing their imaginary, Koch-brothers-invented version of the Green New Deal.
However, some of them did say they accepted the science. In particular, I was happy to see the Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee clearly accept that climate change is real, and is caused by humans, and that we have a responsibility to do something about it. I appreciate that he pointed to the bipartisan work he and I have done on carbon capture and removal. I enjoyed working with him on that legislation and I hope we can get its successor bill passed, too — we just had a very good bipartisan hearing on it.
But, put those two bills together and you’re still nowhere near the scale of action the science demands. Our scientists report that we must aim for net-zero carbon emissions by the middle of this century to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Carbon capture will be a part of that, but there is zero chance it alone will be sufficient — and any plan that falls short of that mark amounts to its own brand of climate denial. Bashing the Green New Deal doesn’t solve this problem.
That USA Today editorial, saying climate change is “a true crisis facing the United States and the world,” also took to task the Green New Deal critics, saying “the critics owe this and future generations more than scorn; they have an obligation to put better ideas and solutions on the table.” So far we haven’t seen much from my Republican colleagues by way of real solutions.
Okay, we get you don’t like the Green New Deal. So let’s consider other proposals. We’ve got them on the Democratic side. We have had cap and trade, keep it in the ground, Green New Deals, and revenue-neutral carbon fee proposals. Today, I’m joined by my colleague from Maryland to discuss his ideas. We are ready.
Republicans last week said they wanted innovation to address climate change. Great. Me too. But you can’t count on the Innovation Fairy to fly down and wave Innovation Fairy Dust on the problem and make it go away. One of the reasons our bipartisan carbon capture bill was necessary is because there was not enough innovation; and there was not enough innovation because “fossil-fuel polluters keep using the atmosphere as a free waste dump.” It’s really hard to spur innovation when there’s no revenue in the business model, so our bill put revenue in. We did it in the form of tax credits.
But the big driver for developing innovative new technologies would be a price on carbon, like Senator Schatz and I have in our American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act: a revenue-neutral, border-adjustable carbon fee. This bill passes all major Republican tests: it’s a market solution that fixes a market failure; it does not grow government or regulation; and it does not put American industry at a disadvantage against our competitors. And it will drive innovation: put a $50/ton price on carbon emissions, and every polluter paying the price has an incentive to spend up to $49/ton on solutions.
Republican Carbon Fee Supporters
This carbon pricing idea has support from a swath of senior Republican officials, including seven Chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, six current and former members of Congress, four EPA Administrators, three Secretaries of State or Treasury, two Chairs of the Federal Reserve, and a Congressional Budget Office Director. All Republicans. Some of these Republicans were members of a group of prominent economists, including 27 Nobel Prize winners, that recently published this statement in the Wall Street Journal supporting such a carbon fee model. Over 3,500 U.S. economists have since signed this statement.
Bob Inglis Quote
Former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis said of our carbon fee proposal, “Democrats . . . have offered Republicans an olive limb, not just an olive branch.” That branch will remain extended as long as it takes. If you think all our bills are no good, come up with something better. I am ready to work with Republicans on passing a carbon fee or other climate change legislation.
But when you won’t propose anything, and won’t agree to anything, even an “olive limb,” then that’s a pretty strong sign that there’s something else going on beyond objections to a Green New Deal.
I yield the floor. | https://medium.com/senator-sheldon-whitehouse/time-to-wake-up-the-party-with-no-plan-ebfe7053cdd9 | ['Sheldon Whitehouse'] | 2019-03-12 22:48:11.097000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Trump', 'Congress', 'Climate Change', 'Climate'] |
7 Ways to Not Get the Writing Gig | Bad Example 2: One Size Fits All
Dear content director/creative director/head of copy
Or
To whom it may concern…
So now you’ve gone from over-familiarity (pretending to know someone you don’t) to a hopelessly generic approach (not even bothering to find out the name of the person you’re applying to).
This sort of one-size-fits-all approach just comes over as lazy and unprofessional. Great content makes the recipient think and feel it was written for them.
Takeaway: Personalise every job application.
Bad Example 3: Can I Borrow Your Career?
I’ve recently undergone a career change and, following a creativity workshop, digital looks like an interesting avenue for me. OK, so my 20 years in estate agency and HR consultancy, plus the odd spot of acting aren’t the natural progression, but sometimes the brightest lights hide under the most unlikely bushels…
The thing about copywriting or content strategy is that it’s a career, like acting or HR. It takes time and aptitude and experience to be any good at it.
So candidates who imply that they can just pick it up, or that this digital stuff is an easy game to play till their real work picks up again, tend not to be well received.
Takeaway: If you want to change careers, you have to be prepared to do the legwork. Get some work experience, build up your contacts, study the market. Don’t expect to get much work off people whose jobs you don’t take seriously. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/7-ways-to-not-get-the-writing-gig-d0ad9d394a73 | ['Dan Brotzel'] | 2020-01-21 15:29:39.141000+00:00 | ['Copywriting', 'Content Marketing', 'Cv Writing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Content Writing'] |
Free Hitman 3 Redeem Code Download Digital Game Serial Key Generator Giveaway — Standard and Deluxe Editions | Free Hitman 3 Redeem Code Download Digital Game Serial Key Generator Giveaway — Standard and Deluxe Editions gamer boy Jan 18·2 min read
This awesome collection now has free Hitman 3 redeem code giveaway happening at the website linked below. This is an awesome chance to get a digital Hitman 3 digital code serial key for the game, its brand new and with pre-order bonuses for free!
Hitman 3 Free Download
Click the download link below to start Hitman 3 Free Download with direct link. It is the full version of the game. Don’t forget to run the game as administrator.
There is a free Hitman 3 redeem code promotion where basketball gamers can grab a Hitman 3 download digital game code for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PS4, or PC digital versions of the game and soon PS5 and Xbox Series X. These offers usually happen leading up to a major game launch and work on a first come first serve basis like this one. This is a major game release and a really popular franchise so this is a great chance to get an awesome gaming freebie. Take a look at the link below to see if you can still get a game serial key I was able to snatch one up the other day and been having a blast playing this game online.
Most gamer’s especially Hitman 3 fans have long since known about this free Hitman 3 redeem code generator for Nintendo switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC, it was talked about even before it was official released! There is a reason Agent 47 is the mascot of all of gaming, this franchise is a big deal. And with this game having three all-time classic games under one roof it has gamers going crazy for this free Hitman 3 download code for switch. This game is going to be the biggest game of the year for sure. I have had a few hours of playing it and all three games are just as great as you remember them.
That said, while Hitman 3 will be available via the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite next week, it will not be in the same form as other platforms. Rather, Hitman 3 will only be playable on the pair of Nintendo consoles as Hitman 3: Cloud Version, a cloud-based edition of the game that can’t be downloaded, only streamed.
“Hitman III is the dramatic conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy and takes players around the world on a globetrotting adventure to sprawling sandbox locations,” reads an official pitch of the game. “Agent 47 returns as a ruthless professional for the most important contracts of his entire career. Death Awaits. Enjoy unrivaled freedom and complete your objectives as the game world reacts to everything you do. IO Interactive’s award-winning Glacier technology powers Hitman III‘s immersive game world to offer unparalleled player choice and replayability.” | https://medium.com/@nbaboyj/free-hitman-3-redeem-code-download-digital-game-serial-key-generator-giveaway-standard-and-343128a946c5 | ['Gamer Boy'] | 2021-01-30 11:34:46.573000+00:00 | ['Pre Order Bonus', 'Free', 'Digital Code', 'Hitman Iii', 'Hitman 3'] |
27 Inspiring Law Of Attraction Quotes | Are you lacking motivation when it comes to manifesting? These handpicked Law of Attraction quotes will shift your mindset on the right path to abundance.
Some of the links here might be affiliate links.
Today I have decided to list a collection of my favorite Law of Attraction quotes. As you’ve probably guessed already, this topic is very close to my heart. And that is why I love writing about it.
To say that the Law of Attraction is one of the most important laws governing our Universe almost feels like an understatement. Its principles and rules affect everyone. Through the power of the Law of Attraction, we can manifest the life of our dreams. It can allow us to manifest wealth, health, and a perfect relationship. It has been a source of abundance and happiness for millions of people.
On the flip side, if we’re not careful with our thoughts, intentions, and actions, we can also attract bad things into our lives. Law of Attraction works towards your intentions and manifestations. It is up to you to define them clearly and precisely.
There are many great techniques to mastering the Law of Attraction. They have been described in numerous books, blog posts (such as this one :D), and even movies. Principles of attraction and manifesting have been studied by thousands of experts from various different cultures, religions, and regions of this world. The Law of Attraction has been also heavily endorsed by many great celebrities.
Law of Attraction quotes and manifesting
When it comes to manifesting, the Law of Attraction quotes can serve as a great addition to your daily affirmations. They are not only a great source of inspiration, but also can give you some positive boost to your vibrations. These quotes carry with them both wisdom and good vibes, straight from people who have achieved great success.
Before we continue, I just wanted to tell you about a system called Overnight Millionaire that I discovered some time ago. It has allowed me to shift my mindset and to start seeing abundance in a different way. What makes it relevant to this topic is that it was created by a truly successful person. One that was able to attract amazing wealth that completely transformed his life. Now he is sharing his techniques to allow you to manifest the life of your dreams.
If you want to deepen your manifesting skills and attract the wealth of your dreams, go here using my link.
How can the Law of Attraction quotes help you?
So, let’s look at a lighter side of manifesting and the Law of Attraction quotes. I have plenty of other blog posts where I dive deep into more serious manifesting techniques and the Law of Attraction methods that work wonders for me. I also share a lot of affirmations to keep your vibrations at a high level. Feel free to browse My Happy Manifesting blog posts here.
However today we will simply look at some quotes that can be a source of inspiration for you. This is a collection of Law of Attraction quotes from successful people, various entrepreneurs, celebrities, experts, and overall happy people. Many of them have helped me in my manifestation journey. I use some of them as daily affirmations, especially when manifesting money.
You can use them to boost your vibration, to look for inspiration when manifesting, or to simply put a smile on your face.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy these Law of Attraction quotes.
List of my favorite Law of Attraction quotes
The first one is an absolute beauty, as it is the Law of Attraction in essence.
“If you think you can then you can.” — Stephen Richards
“Your thoughts are the architects of your destiny” — David O. McKay
“See yourself living in abundance and you will attract it.” — Bob Proctor
“What you think you become. What you feel you attract. What you imagine you create.” — Buddha
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” — Helen Keller
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way, you are right.” — Henry Ford
“You cannot solve a problem in the same frequency in which it was created.” ― Lynn Grabhorn
“Be thankful for what you have, you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never ever have enough.” — Oprah Winfrey
“The law of attraction is not the law of magic rather it is an action-based law where you have to be the person you desire to attract to your vortex.” ― Dhiraj Kumar Raj
“Man moves in a world that is nothing more or less than his consciousness objectified.” ― Neville Goddard
I hope you’re enjoying these Law of Attraction quotes. You can see how they are centered around a focused mindset that allows you to manifest your dreams. They relate to attracting wealth and abundance, as well as happiness in life.
“The first place where self-esteem begins its journey is within us.” ― Stephen Richards
“I attract to my life whatever I give my attention, energy and focus to, whether positive or negative.” — Michael Losier
“When working with the Universal Laws you are working with the laws of manifestation, not instant gratification” ― Jennifer O’Neill
“A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts.” ― James Allen
“The moment you say , , or , the skies will open for you and the non- physical energies begin instantly to orchestrate the manifestation of your desire.” ― Esther Hicks
“When you stop blaming others for where you are in life, that is when you can start to manifest your dream life!” ― Stephen Richards
“The law of attraction is not the law of magic rather it is an action-based law where you have to take inspired actions for manifesting your ideal partner into your physical experience because the last six letters in the word “attraction” are “action”.” ― Dhiraj Kumar Raj
“The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.” ― Rhonda Byrne
You can’t manifest your ideal partner with the old pattern of your thought, emotion, decision and action rather you have to change the pattern that must be relevant to your relationship goals as per the law of attraction.” ― Dhiraj Kumar Raj
You should remember that these Law of Attraction quotes can serve as a great basis for your daily affirmations. You can use them exactly as they are, or you can modify them using your language to best suit your vibrations. Ultimately you can make them different for each manifestation. This personal touch will greatly improve your manifesting abilities.
“Intention plus action equals manifestation.” ― Heather Colleen Reinhardt
“Our thoughts are powerful enough to attract into our lives, whatever truth or lie, good or evil, we passionately nurture in the corners of our hearts.” ― Kayide Banks
“You are either attracting what you want or you are attracting the absence of what you want! The law is still working!” ― Rhonda Byrne
“When you want something with all of your heart, the universe conspires to helping you achieve it” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“The Universe and Spirit do not understand limitations…PEOPLE invented limitations!” ― Jennifer O’Neill
“The power of manifestation lies in your ability to communicate with the source. Manifestation is essentially an active communication with the cosmos, which makes the reality.” ― Amit Ray
“The “Law of Attraction” simply states: “What you think about, you bring about.” — Susan C. Young
This list of Law of Attraction quotes is by no means exhaustive. There are hundreds of great thoughts expressed by people who have mastered manifesting their dream life. We should all learn from them to improve our manifesting skills.
And speaking of learning from the best: I would like to once again point you towards this amazing system I have discovered and used to some good effect. It’s called Overnight Millionaire and in it, you’ll find useful techniques of tuning in your mindset towards abundance, wealth, and other things you desire. It has been created by a highly successful and wealthy young person. He has decided to share his knowledge to show others the wonderful world of the Law of Attraction and manifesting.
If you wish to invest in yourself to enhance your manifesting abilities, this one’s for you. Find out more using my affiliate link here.
To give you even more of a boost, you should do what I did and combine this program with another tool that has been of great help in my journey. This one is called Manifestation Magic and it does exactly what is on the tin :D.
This program was developed by experts in the Law of Attraction methods and various manifesting techniques. This is actually their second iteration and they have other amazing products that have helped thousands of people around the world.
Feel free to read my full and detailed review here. Or if this already sounds like something you’d be interested in, go ahead and visit their official website using my link here to find out how it can help you too with your manifestations.
As always I would like to thank you for reading this article.
Stay Awesome! | https://medium.com/@myhappymanifesting/27-inspiring-law-of-attraction-quotes-3e0de6effc6b | ['My Happy Manifesting'] | 2020-10-25 22:38:56.949000+00:00 | ['Affirmations', 'Law Of Attraction Quotes', 'Manifesting', 'Manifestation', 'Law Of Attraction'] |
My Nana did doth too. | I will not be told what to think. It can be explained to me. | https://medium.com/@wjspirdione/my-nana-did-doth-too-7862e5f7a016 | ['William J Spirdione'] | 2020-12-26 03:59:37.451000+00:00 | ['Cooking', 'Nana', 'Poetry'] |
5 questions to ask before every design project | Basic questions to see the bigger picture and build an end to end rationale.
When I was in grad school, one of the things hardwired into our brain was to never stop thinking about the user. We (students) would do lots of research, design, fail, design and then end up with something user-centered (at least in our minds). As anyone working in the real world may know, there are plenty of constraints (organizational, technical and otherwise) that can quickly become distractions and make us lose sight of what may be called essentials when designing a product.
A few weeks ago, when reflecting on my own workflow and design process I asked myself — What are the few things that I must know before I start working on any project?
I listed the questions based on these goals –
Not losing sight of the basics.
Helping myself build an end to end rationale of a design in my mind. What is an end to end rationale? — As a designer I must be able to explain why something makes sense for the user(s), why it will result in success for the company and everything else in between.
of a design in my mind. What is an end to end rationale? — As a designer I must be able to explain why something makes sense for the user(s), why it will result in success for the company and everything else in between. Being strategic about design — to better plan and create designs that move the product line forward.
about design — to better plan and create designs that move the product line forward. Are we working on the the right design? [1]
I limited the questions to 5 because I felt that these can trigger other questions that may be equally important but cannot be answered without answering these basic questions first. Also, less is more.
1. 🤔 What problem(s) are we trying to solve?
If the problem framing is not clear, it could lead to an endless churn of design iterations that are not easy to test.
One thing about this question though — just because we start with problems does not mean the design project itself is a mere answer to the problem(s). It is just a trigger, a reason to start the discovery of a new opportunity. We are far from framing our core idea when starting out on a project.
2. 👨👩👧👦 Who are we designing for?
The most basic question but the most important. This question here is simple enough but it leads us to questions like what are the user’s needs, what their behaviors are,etc.
We may know who the user is, but how well do we know the user?
3. 🔲 What is the scope? What are the constraints?
This is one question that I have missed many times in the past and have seen many lose sight of too. This question could help resolve a lot of confusion right from the beginning. Some of the questions that this might trigger are — How much time do we have? Which platform? Mobile or web? What are some technical constraints? Other challenges?
Understanding the scope really helps in understanding how broad our design funnel can be, before we dig deep.
4. 🖊 What scenario(s) are we designing for?
It is not merely enough to know who we are designing for. It is also important to understand which experience we are designing for. This could be a story you can pen down or a string of screens (task flow) with problems highlighted along the way. Even when creating a brand new product (or a subsection of it), there is never a time when a current experience does not exist. It is important to map it out.
We are always designing for an experience, no matter what. What does that experience look like right now?
Any good scenario has characters, conflicts and goals[2]. Conflicts and goals cannot be understood without answering Q1 and characters in a story(users) cannot be understood without answering Q2. See how these are connected?
5. 📈 What are the success metrics?
Is it an increase in engagement? Increase in purchase rates? Better NPS scores? More active users? If success is not defined, it is hard to be on the same page with stakeholders and much harder to create successful (duh) products. | https://uxdesign.cc/5-questions-a02fb76dcbd | [] | 2017-02-18 23:12:15.487000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'UX', 'Design'] |
Know the DUI Charges Underlying Each DUI Offenses | Drunk driving and intoxicated driving charges are really serious, and the law utilizes such cases to set an example. The charges and laws surrounding such charges differ from state to state, as do the possible enhancements that can increase the severity of the charges.
Possible DUI Class Improvements
Potential improvements depend on numerous factors, however the most common kinds of enhancements to driving under the influence charges include running an automobile with a BAC of 0.15% or greater, drunk driving with a small as a passenger, dui that causes another individual bodily injury, and driving while intoxicated that causes the death of another person. Below you will discover a quick description of the most typical types of inebriated driving charges in the United States.
Worsened DUI and DUI School Approaches
An exacerbated DUI is any average DUI charge, however with improvements. See improvement examples above. Aggravated DUI charges are the same thing as Felony DUI charges, which is the term utilized in most states. Extra aggravated DUI offenses consist of DUI in a school zone, running a school bus under the impact of drugs or alcohol, driving intoxicated without a legitimate license, having multiple convictions within a brief time frame, and more.
Drug Driving (DUID) Lead To DUI Classes and Time
Alcohol is not the only substance that can lead to a DUI arrest. Operating an automobile while under the influence of Arrange I or Set up II drugs, whether legal or prohibited, can cause a DUID charge in the majority of states, which represents "driving under the impact of drugs." A law enforcement officer can lawfully arrest you for a DUID charge simply based on a sensible suspicion that such drugs are in your system.
DUI Deaths
Driving under the impact of drugs or alcohol is a severe criminal activity in itself, but couple it with an accident and the charges worsen. For instance, in Indiana, DUI-related mishaps are labeled as Felony DUI charges and feature extreme penalties.
DUI Deaths
When DUI accidents end with fatalities, the charges increase to DUI manslaughter. Although the fatalities in these cases are unintended, the charge still includes very serious charges in most states. DUI manslaughter is a Level 5 Felony, which is a really major charge.
Felony DUI Outcomes include Loss of License and DUI Classes
First-offense DUI charges are typically misdemeanors. However with enhancements or previous convictions, DUI charges become a felony very fast. Such elements consist of several convictions, fatalities, existence of children, bodily damage, home damage, and more. With the help of a hard defense legal representative, felony DUI charges can often be lowered to lower felonies or misdemeanors.
Misdemeanor DUI's
A typical DUI charge is a misdemeanor crime, unless there are improvements included, or a person has prior DUI convictions within a certain timespan (generally 5 to 10 years). Very first time DUI offenses are Class C misdemeanors, but with BAC levels greater than 0.15%, they leap to Class A misdemeanors. With the assistance of a lawyer, Level 6 felony DUI's can frequently be minimized to DUI misdemeanors.
Residential Or Commercial Property Damage DUI
When a DUI mishap ends with home damages, the penalties and fines increase drastically. A person can anticipate longer prison time, harsher sentencing agreements, and extreme fines. And although these are considered aggravated DUIs, they are not always charged as felonies. However, if residential or commercial property damages are comprehensive, the charge is most likely https://reclaimucounseling.com/classes/court-ordered-drug-and-alcohol-classes/ to increase to a conviction.
Minor DUI
A lot of states have a "per se" position on minor drinking and driving. This suggests there is a zero-tolerance rule for minor drinking. Any individual under the age of 21, the national legal drinking age, is forbidden to take in or buy liquors. Underage drinking is a crime in itself however integrated with driving and DUI charges, underage drinkers face severe charges. Requirement charges consist of license suspension, jail time, probation, large fines, social work, and diversion programs. | https://medium.com/@baniuskgqx/know-the-dui-charges-underlying-each-dui-offenses-b95f00e8dee9 | [] | 2019-10-09 05:24:07.967000+00:00 | ['Prison Reform'] |
“This is the quality of soldier we are now at risk of losing”: Trans troops speak to Congress | For the first time, five active-duty transgender service members testified before Congress in response to the President’s prejudiced ban.
In the year and a half since President Donald Trump tweeted his intent to ban transgender people from serving in the military, he and his administration have been met with resistance from lawmakers, doctors, lawyers, and military officials alike.
Medical groups like the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have denounced the ban as harmful and based on junk science. Lawmakers from both parties have voiced their opposition, with a bipartisan bill reversing the ban introduced earlier this month. And all four chiefs of the Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marines have thoroughly refuted the idea that transgender people represent any threat to unit cohesion, morale, or the strength of our armed forces.
Now, for the first time since the ban was introduced, transgender service members are telling Congress exactly what it feels like to have your Commander In Chief use prejudice and fear to call you unfit and a threat to your fellow soldiers. Five active duty service members addressed the House Armed Services Committee about their life, their service, and what they think of the ban.
Lieutenant Commander Blake Dremann
Having been deployed in the US Navy 11 times, Lt. Cmd. Dremann served in Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne and now serves as a supply chain manager for the Defense Department’s storied system for monitoring and transporting nuclear materials.
“I’ve been told three times that something other than my capability to do the job was the reason that I wasn’t worthy of an opportunity,” Dremann told the Committee. “First for my gender assigned at birth, second for sexual orientation prior to transition, and third for my gender identity.”
Before beginning his transition, Dremann had been excluded by the military’s ban on submarine service by female recruits and had lived in the closet under the harmful “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. After those limits were changed in 2010 and 2011 respectively, Dremann began to serve in a submarine squadron.
“I succeeded as a submariner and was ranked as the top supply officer in the submarine squadron,” said Dremann. “However, despite all of my success, there was still something amiss and had to change.”
Dremann began his transition in 2013, two years before the military would officially lift its ban on transgender troops under Secretary Ashton Carter and President Barack Obama.
“The next year I was a more confident officer and a better leader. It culminated in my ship being named top boat in the squadron and 2015 I won the Navy League’s Batchelder award, given to the top 5 junior officers in the Navy’s Supply Corps for contributions to the operational readiness of the fleet.”
Dremann, president of military advocacy group SPARTA, led efforts in the military to integrate open service for transgender people, finding “it was the same with women in submarines and the repeal of DADT. Good leaders can take a team and make it work. Great leaders mold their teams to exceed expectations because it doesn’t matter if you are female or LGBT. What matters is that each member is capable and focused on the mission.”
With this experience, Dremann knows Trump’s transgender ban is harmful not just to troops like himself, but to the military as a whole.
“Readiness and lethality of our military cannot be maintained by closing doors to the best and brightest this country has to offer,” he told the committee. “It just so happens that some of the best and brightest happen to be transgender.”
Captain Alivia Stehlik
Captain Stehlik served as 6 years in the infantry before studying to become a staff physical therapist for recruits in 2016. “I decided to become an Army physical therapist because I believed that Soldiers deserve medical providers who have walked in their shoes, and I have.”
After beginning her transition in 2017, Stehlik was concerned other troops would be uncomfortable around her — making her treatment of their injuries all that much harder. “There is no way to be a good physical therapist at a distance,” she told the Committee.
Much to the contrary, however, Stehlik — who worked with over 1700 wounded service members in her time — found her fellow service members were more than willing to work with someone living their authentic life.
“On the deployment to Afghanistan as a transgender woman,” Captain Stehlik said, “soldiers opened up. They talked to me, and told me things they would never have before,” she said. I asked them why, and the consistent answer was that they valued my authenticity, my courage in being myself. And while I was concerned that my presence might feel invasive to other women, at every turn they welcomed me into their lives and living spaces with open arms. I was part of their family.”
Contradicting the administration’s claims that transgender people are unfit for service, Stehlik strongly argued her transition only made her more capable and more effective to the military.
“I belong in a combat arms unit, taking care of my Soldiers,” she said. “I worked tirelessly to ensure that nothing could jeopardize that. It might be tempting to say that I am the exception, but that’s simply not true. Transgender service members around the world have done the same thing — add to the readiness and lethality of the United States Military.”
Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Akira Wyatt
Like many who enlist, Wyatt knew she wanted to follow in the footsteps of her father, a retired US Marine. But she also enlisted to honor the promise her parents sought when they migrated to the US from the Philippines.
Both parents, she told the committee, “showed us that freedom fosters a person’s chances for success and in bringing us here gave us the greatest gift: a chance to achieve high goals and to contribute to society.”
After serving for four years as a medic with the Navy, however, she had a life experience that “rocked me to my core,” she told the Committee.
While serving in a region of the Philippines in a sick bay, Wyatt was told she would be providing follow-up care to Private First Class Joseph Pemberton. Pemberton was in the custody of Philippine police for the murder of Jennifer Laude, a transgender woman he had met on shore. Wyatt, still closeted, was tasked with providing his check-up.
“I was pretty naïve until I saw him face to face,” she said. “During his work up, I looked into his eyes and it shook me. Cliché as it may sound, I saw darkness. He felt cold and was without remorse for what he had done. In his presence, I thought it could have been me and I felt the painful moments before Jennifer’s death.”
While chilling, the experience only made Wyatt more resolved in her need to transition. “I told myself I will transition and I won’t be afraid to, even if I might face the same circumstances as Jennifer did that night. Even if it comes from the hands of my marines.”
During her transition, she continued to earn high marks for her devotion to her work and the support she showed other troops.
“My experiences with my Marine and Navy comrades show that unit cohesion and readiness are not adversely impacted by having a transgender service member included,” said Wyatt. “I’ve formed incredibly tight bonds with the people I’ve worked with and I would follow them to the ends of the Earth to ensure they get the critical battlefield care they need to continue the fight.”
Staff Sergeant Patricia King
After serving 16 years in the Army and completing three tours in Afghanistan, Staff Sergeant Patricia King was given control an elite Stryker squad stationed outside of Fort Lewis in Washington state.
Starting with the squad just a year after beginning her transition, Sergeant King noticed she was only one of two women in the unit. In fact, the building housing she and her colleagues only had a men’s restroom, leading King to hang a flippable sign by the restroom door — blue for men and pink for women.
“Since I was an “‘only,’” she told the Committee, “the onus was on me to flip the sign when I needed to use the restroom. That pink female sign represented my first few weeks there. Wherever I went, I was ‘the pink sign in the room.’ However, it didn’t take long before my peers saw past my gender and the only thing that mattered was how well I could do my job.”
King quickly earned the nickname “Squad Mom” among her underlings.
“Within a month, we made our Stryker the best in battalion and our squad the most cohesive,” she said. “This is because each of us felt able to bring our whole self to work. There were no secrets, no false bravado or hiding. My authenticity inspired theirs and that — along with strong leadership, hard work, and solid training — built unit cohesion in a way I have not seen in almost 20 years of service.”
Throughout her testimony, King revisited one word: Leadership.
“I have witnessed first-hand that troops want strong leaders. Leaders who care for them. Leaders who can inspire them. They don’t care if the leaders are transgender. They don’t care if the leaders are gay, bi or straight, male or female. They don’t care which bathroom or shower you use. The questions that resound for them are: Can you do your job and accomplish the mission? Can you put rounds on target in the heat of battle? Can you look out for your troops’ best interests? If a Soldier-Leader can do those well, everything else doesn’t really matter.”
Captain Jennifer Peace
In her fifteen years of service to the US Army, Captain Jennifer Peace has not found herself short of accomplishments. After five deployments as an elisted solider — including tours through Iraq and Afghanistan — she was awarded the Noncommissioned Officer of the Year Award at Fort Huachuca and the Distinguished Honor Graduate after graduating from the Military Intelligence Captains Course. The latter led to a prestigious nomination to attend the National Intelligence University.
Listing her accomplishments before the Committee, Peace urged lawmakers to take her accomplishments as an example of what transgender people can do in our military.
“I tell you this not to highlight my own success, but to illustrate what all trans service members are capable of,” said Peace, “performing at the top of their career fields and contributing significantly to the defense of the nation. This is the quality of Soldiers we are now at risk of losing.”
Peace joined medical professionals in condemning the false evidence the Trump administration put forth to justify its ban against service members like her.
Peace stressed her own medical transition required little to no adjustment and mirrored needs met for other troops with medical needs. “Just like with any other Soldier, our medical providers determine what is necessary,” she told the Committee. “But command influences the timeline. With four surgeries and a complete medical transition, I was non-deployable for less time than a single pregnancy.”
As a Company Commander, Captain Peace also knows what it takes to establish unity and cohesion among her colleagues in the armed forces.
“A unit cannot function if individuals do not have trust in their leadership and trust in their fellow soldiers,” she said. “If they do not support and take care of each other. If they do not believe in each other’s abilities and dedication. I was open as a trans service member when I was in command, and I felt an overwhelming amount of support from my commander, from my first sergeant, from my peers and subordinates alike.”
As Peace noted, it actively harms unit cohesion to deny the military the service of qualified and esteemed troops like herself.
“Excluding a portion of the population when we cannot meet recruiting goals — that impacts readiness. And watching as those who you serve with and respect are told they are no longer welcome in service — that impacts moral. The honorable service of those who are qualified, capable and willing has not and will not.” | https://medium.com/transequalitynow/this-is-the-quality-of-soldier-we-are-now-at-risk-of-losing-trans-troops-speak-to-congress-c8125aa4363f | ['National Center For Transgender Equality'] | 2019-02-27 20:54:04.545000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Trump', 'Transgender', 'Military'] |
Trump Administration Makes Major H-1B Reform | In the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump promised to reform the H-1B work visa program. That should have been the least controversial of his plans, as the visa has long been recognized by both major parties as having major problems. Almost all the major candidates in 2016 — Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Clinton and Sanders — were critical of the program.
However, very little reform had come until this week. Trump did issue various executive orders, but as I’ve written here, they haven’t addressed the major problems. But yesterday, the administration announced a new policy, one that in my view is the first genuine reform of the visa in its 30-year history.
The H-1B statute (as well as the one for employer-sponsored green cards), imposes wage floors on employers who hire the visa workers. The new policy substantially raises these prevailing wage levels. To understand the implications of the change, one must first look at how prevailing wage works, and at its relation to the “Infosyses vs. Intels” metaphor I often use in these discussions.
There are four prevailing wage levels. Though they are described in terms of experience and expertise, they are actually pegged to different points in a wage distribution. Under the old policy, the Level I prevailing wage was set to the 17th percentile of the wages of all workers in a given occupation and a given region. These will now increase to the 45th and 62nd percentiles, respectively. (There are relatively few visas awarded at Levels 3 and 4, so I’ll limit my discussion here to Levels 1 and 2).
I mention the “Infosyses” and “Intels” in almost everything I write about H-1B, and consider it central to the entire issue. It’s the source of much confusion among (read “deliberate obfuscation by”) some of the players.
By “Infosyses” I mean the firms, mainly India-based, that hire H-1Bs and then “rent” them to US firms. The “Intels” are the employers who hire H-1Bs directly, typically foreign students studying at US universities. Note that the Intels are not just the big household name firms, just any company hiring H-1Bs from US campuses.
The Infosyses tend to hire at Level 1, while the Intels’ H-1Bs are typically at Level 2; the latter stems from the fact that the Intels typically hire at the Master’s degree level, which the regulations say should be Level 2.
It is often claimed that the main abuser of the visa are the Infosyses, while the Intels use the program responsibly. It would be easy to come to that misconception by simply noting the fact that the Intels hire their H-1Bs at Level 2, a higher wage. But as noted, the Intels hire at the Master’s level, thus a higher-quality worker. They are still getting a bargain in hiring the foreign workers, relative to US citizens and permanent residents of that quality; I’ll return to this point momentarily.
The DoL report explaining the move on prevailing wage is quite good. Frankly, I was prepared to see poor reasoning and not much detail, but the DoL looked at the issues in very fine, incisive detail, definitely one of the most carefully-reasoned government reports I’ve ever read. Whether you agree with their conclusions or not, the report is very carefully reasoned, and it’s clearly the result of a ton of time spent.
Will it help? Will more US tech workers be employed as a result of this move? The reason I use such phrasing is that many proposals to fix H-1B seemingly would be useful if implemented but in reality would not move the needle in terms of employment of Americans. Even shutting down the Infosyses entirely would have very little effect, as the employers would still want to save on labor costs, and have alternate ways to do so, as I’ve written before.
At any rate, yes, it would help, but more at Level 2 than Level 1, again due to the existence of alternatives in the case of Level 1. There really are no such alternatives at Level 2, so this new policy is big news.
However…another recurring theme in my writings on H-1B is that the visa is fundamentally about age. Younger workers are cheaper than older ones, and most H-1Bs are young. Though it is also true that young H-1Bs are cheaper than young Americans, the biggest wage savings arise from the age factor.
As noted above, the four-tier prevailing wage system is supposed to be a proxy for amount of experience, thus in turn a proxy for age. In other words, the prevailing wage core of H-1B is actually a government enabler for age discrimination, not to mention discrimination against US workers. Thus the new policy, which by statute must retain that age-related structure, does not solve the H-1B issue, though it’s a much-appreciated first step.
Another flaw is that the new policy does not account for the level of talent of a foreign worker. Take a company like Google. They hire only “the best and the brightest” — so they should pay more. But the prevailing wage structure cannot take talent into account, so Google can pay what in essence is “average” salary (at the given experience level) for much-better-than-average talent.
In that sense, Table 2 in the DoL report is misleading in saying that most of Google’s H-1Bs make more than prevailing wage. It was misleading to begin with, as those figures are based on the old prevailing wage, which the DoL found was substantially too low. But in addition, the table doesn’t take into account that Google workers, domestic or foreign, are of top quality.
Bottom line, data like that in Table 2 does NOT imply that Google is paying its H-1Bs fairly. The foreign workers could be making less than comparable Americans and yet still be making more than prevailing wage.
This is similar to a finding in the 2003 employer survey conducted by the Government Accountability Office that “Some employers said that they hired H-1B workers in part because these workers would often accept lower salaries than similarly qualified U.S. workers; however, these employers said they never paid H-1B workers less than the required wage.”
Another important point is that one must consider wage raises given subsequent to hire. The Intels typically sponsor their H-1Bs for green cards, essentially rendering them immobile. Employers love that their H-1Bs can’t jump ship to another firm, and Google stated in a meeting with several of us researchers that this is a key reason to hire H-1Bs. Among other things, immobility means the H-1Bs are in no position to demand big raises (also noted in the employer survey conducted by the National Research Council, commissioned by Congress), thus yet another way employers save money.
Some press reports quote industry officials as threatening to sue to block the new policy, on administrative law grounds. I won’t speculate on their chances for success, but hope this new prevailing wage policy, uh, prevails.
It’s a very solid, well-justified change, 30 years overdue. My hat is off to DoL. | https://medium.com/@normanmatloff1123/trump-administration-makes-major-h-1b-reform-c536da61256 | ['Norman Matloff'] | 2020-12-01 03:16:26.376000+00:00 | ['H 1b Visa', 'Labor', 'Trump Administration', 'STEM', 'Immigration'] |
5 Database technologies used by 2000 Wix microservices | Photo by Gabriel Sollmann on Unsplash
Unlike with UI frameworks, or software industry buzzwords, data storage technologies, i.e. databases are famously slow to change, and new innovation takes longer to be adopted.
For a large organization, switching to a different OLTP database as your main workhorse happens very rarely. In recent years, with the advent of microservices, more flexibility is given for each service to choose the way it persists it’s data. Still, the risk of using unproven technology sometimes outweighs the benefits, as losing crucial business related data is unacceptable. While the technology may be proven elsewhere, it may not be proven and battle-tested in your organization yet.
At Wix, the situation is not different, as MySQL is still the main go-to database, more than 10 years after it was first used. Albeit, new and modern MySQL APIs (e.g. JSON Documents) are being used more and more.
But with 2000 microservices in production, there are of course several storage technologies other than MySQL that are used by a significant portion of services due to various reasons. The reasons range from different API use-cases (e.g. support CRUD API, allow free-text search) to different tech stacks (JVM vs. Node.js) to more demanding technical requirements (infinitely scaling storage).
5 technologies are described below, each with its own use cases at Wix, unique characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. The technologies are MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch and S3.
Read on to get some insights that may help you choose your next microservice storage technology.
1. MySQL
Other DBs in this category
PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, Db2, SQLite
When to use MySQL
When you already widely use it in your organization
When you want both relational tables (when you know the schema upfront) and JSON collections (Schemaless)
Relational / normalized — when you need to optimize on writes instead of reads, to have strong read consistency
MySQL Advantages
Maturity & Reliability — MySQL is highly used, battle tested and mature
Fast read performance
Improved JSON/Document support (MySQL 8)
Cross-DC write consistency (when ProxySQL is used)
MySQL Disadvantages
Scalability — Does not scale horizontally. Limited by amount of disk space
Consistency and Replication Issues (when not using ProxySQL)
Example MySQL use cases at Wix
A. Pre MySQL8 JSON support — relational tables with BLOB
Almost all JVM (Scala/Java) services at Wix used to store their data in MySQL relational tables. Data was usually denormalized across multiple tables (SQL joins were rarely used). For added flexibility most of the content was kept in BLOB type in order to avoid frequent schema changes that add a lot of risk for production stability.
B. JSON support and Simple Data Layer
Simple Data Layer (SDL) is an internal infrastructure built at Wix in order to help speed-up the development time and reduce cognitive load when persisting a document data structure.
This is a very common pattern as persistence exists in CRUD methods as well as business operations. The value spans from having sensible defaults like page size through support for WixQL which is part of our API and up to wider cross cutting concerns like GDPR support, emitting domain-changed events, and more.
It supports the very common need of microservices for a non relational embedded document data structure (to have more operations done by DB instead of in-memory).
Its engine is MySQL8 with JSON datatype. MySQL was chosen mainly because of Wix DBAs long time experience with MySQL, a lot of infrastructure already in place for backups, migrations, indexing, and for the strong consistency and availability support provided by ProxySQL (see next paragraph)
C. Multi DC & replication support with ProxySQL
ProxySQL is used in order to seamlessly route write traffic to the currently active main data center’s MySQL clusters without any data loss. It also manages read distribution among replicas. It provides high availability and high performance out of the box.
2. MongoDB
Other DBs in this category
CouchDB (many relational/NoSQL DBs now offer JSON support)
When to use MongoDB
When data schema is predicted to keep changing and evolving
When working with dynamic JSON content
When keeping data denormalized is not a problem. i.e. to have eventual consistency
MongoDB Advantages
Flexibility — with Schemaless documents, the number of fields, content and size of the document can differ from one document to another in the same collection.
with Schemaless documents, the number of fields, content and size of the document can differ from one document to another in the same collection. Easy to scale with sharding
MongoDB Disadvantages
High Memory Usage — a lot of denormalized data is kept in memory
Document size limit — 16MB
Non optimal replication solution (data cannot be re-replicated after recovery from failure). Consistency issues on traffic switch to another data center (No automatic remaster)
Example MongoDB use cases at Wix
A. Wix Data
Wix Data is a service that allows anyone with a Wix website to own a document database — “Database as a Service”). It uses MongoDB behind the scenes to store the data.
Mongo was chosen in order to be able to store any schemaless (JSON) doc. When the team compared MongoDB performance to MySql 5.7.6, the former had 2X write and read performance over the latter (albeit, this older version of MySql didn’t support JSON natively yet)
Recently the Wix Data team published a post on how to host 1 million sites per 1 MongoDB cluster
B. Wix Blog
Wix Blog is Wix’s blog publishing site-app. The backend Node.js microservices use MongoDB to store several TBs worth of blog posts.
When the project was young the schema was still evolving, and MongoDB’s schema-less nature helped ease the pain of adding new fields to a fast growing database. Data is mostly kept denormalized as MongoDB joins ($lookup) are not convenient to use.
3. Amazon DynamoDB
Other DBs in this category
Cassandra, HBase, Redis (Key-value Store)
When to use DynamoDB
When you need a simple key value store without complex querying patterns
When you need to store expirable data
Low-medium throughput apps as writes are expensive and consistent reads are twice the cost of eventually consistent reads.
DynamoDB Advantages
Fast performance in any scale (as long as enough capacity is provisioned)
No storage limit
Schemaless — it’s possible to define a schema for each item, rather than for the whole table
Multi-master replication (update data in multiple regions)
Supports TTL per item
Built-in CDC events (DynamoDB streams)
DynamoDB Disadvantages
Size limit — item can only reach 400KB in size
Limited querying options (limited number of indices)
Throttling on burst throughput (and hot keys in certain situations)
Example DynamoDB use cases at Wix
A. KVStore + Cache
DynamoDB is the back-bone for Wix KV-store cache abstraction. You can find more details in this article (search for (Dynamo)DB+CDC based Cache)
B. Wix Chat
Wix Chat is a service that lets site owners instantly communicate with visitors.
They recently migrated their database from Cassandra to DynamoDB, in order to be able to handle growing scale without needing to increase the DBA & operations teams.
In DynamoDB the Wix Chat team stores chat messages and chat message indications (sent / seen / failed). In addition, data is stored about online site visitors (page, location, entrance time, etc.) which also takes advantage of DynamoDB TTL feature.
C. Wix Contacts
Wix Contacts is a service that manages all contacts of a Wix site owner (Part of Ascend business tools suite)
DynamoDB is used to help orchestrate event-driven bulk jobs (they save the job current status and current offset/page). Each of the job stages is advanced by sending a Kafka event to the appropriate topic. Then the Relevant data is fetched from DynamoDB.
4. Elasticsearch
Other DBs in this category
Apache Solr, Splunk, Amazon CloudSearch
When to use Elasticsearch
When you need to perform fuzzy search or have results with ranking
When you have another data store as source of truth (populate Elasticsearch as a materialized view)
Elasticsearch Advantages
Easy to horizontally scale with index sharding
Rich search API
Query for analytical data using aggregations
Elasticsearch Disadvantages
Indexes are created with a predefined number of shards. More shards requires migration to a new index. Usually done with ReIndex API
Performance issues when indices hit very large scale (> 1TB)
Example Elasticsearch use cases at Wix
Wix Search
Wix search allows searching inside any Wix site (out of the box) by having a generic API for indexing per site and installed apps.
It also provides custom search services for creating and managing self-owned indices by other Wix teams (basically serves as a proxy to Elasticsearch).
5. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
Other DBs in this category
Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage
S3 Stored file URL
When to use S3
When you need to store large binary objects/files (up to 5TB each)
When the amount of data you need to store is large (>10TB), continues to grow daily, and may need to be retrieved (can’t be deleted)
S3 Advantages
Supports very high throughput
Infinite scalability — No limit on amount of storage
S3 Disadvantages
No Query support, only key-based retrieval
Latency is 100–200 ms for small objects. Caching can alleviate this
Example S3 use cases at Wix
A. Wix Media
Wix Media manages all the media files that are uploaded by Wix site owners. These files are stored, and then accessed when the user’s site gets a visitor.
In order to have highest possible availability and lowest possible retrieval latency, the media files are stored and replicated between both Amazon S3 and Google GCS and cross-region within the same cloud provider.
A dedicated process moves files to cheaper storage classes (e.g. from S3 Standard to S3 Standard-IA) once it finds out they haven’t been accessed for a long time. for more information you can read — Storage Lifecycle: How We Cut Cost on 55% of Our Storage Without Deleting a Single File
B. Wix Editor
The Wix Editor backend team is in charge of (among other responsibilities) storage and fast retrieval of all Wix site pages during site editing.
A site page is actually a JSON file. Every change made to a site page means a new immutable JSON file is inserted to the database.
A couple of years ago they migrated the site pages from MySQL to S3. The main reason was that S3 guaranteed infinite scale (MySQL was unable to handle a scale >10TB well). The S3 latency they measured for read/write ranged from 30 ms on median case to 400ms on p99. In order to improve this they added a write-through caching layer on top of S3. | https://medium.com/wix-engineering/5-database-technologies-used-by-2000-wix-microservices-e4769638b8c3 | ['Natan Silnitsky'] | 2021-09-14 14:49:18.470000+00:00 | ['Elasticsearch', 'Dynamodb', 'MySQL', 'Database', 'Mongodb'] |
Show up before you optimize | It takes an inordinate amount of time for me to wash the dishes.
You might find this amusing, but I don’t feel like I’m doing anything excessively. Yes, I wash thoroughly, but other people wash the dishes just as thoroughly in half the time.
This made me quite upset, well, until I started listening to audiobooks while doing it. However, when I have some spare time, I usually try to avoid it, as it takes me so much time. Often this simply leads to doing nothing at all, instead of something useful.
So today I noticed that issue and decided to take a different course of action.
You see, it’s quite simple. If you’re trying to decide between doing something suboptimally or at least rather slow in my case, and doing nothing, it’s quite a simple choice. Trivial maybe, but not common practice, especially for personal development enthusiasts such as myself.
So my point for today is rather simple. When you procrastinate, and the options are to show up and perform, even if suboptimally, and doing something irrelevant or unimportant, choose to show up. You’ll be surprised at the difference this small change makes. | https://medium.com/@guy-oxnb/show-up-before-you-optimize-f56f50bfca77 | ['Guy Erez'] | 2020-02-10 20:56:53.169000+00:00 | ['Optimize', 'Productivity', 'Procrastination', 'Show Up'] |
The Last of Us Part 2: The Line Between A Good Story and Social Justice | ***Minor spoilers detailing the leaks are discussed in this article.
If you’ve been following any gaming news lately, then you’re probably aware of the recent controversy surrounding The Last of Us Part 2, the highly anticipated sequel to 2013’s The Last of Us. Earlier this week, a disgruntled employee working for Naughty Dog Studios released information detailing the game’s plot and footage of gameplay and cutscenes. The leaks were spread all across social media and many fans (myself included) have been left feeling disappointed and alienated. To call this situation a clusterfuck would be an understatement.
I won’t go into too much detail but I’m a huge fan of the first game. I thought the gameplay was great and the story was amazing. Watching the main characters Joel and Ellie grow and develop this father-daughter relationship was easily the biggest highlight, its overall theme of blurring the line of what we consider to be good or evil amidst a post-apocalyptic world was such a poignant philosophical statement. I honestly think it’s one of the best games to come out this past decade and is definitely one of the few video games I have a genuine emotional connection to. With that, it set itself up perfectly for a sequel, all the trailers, and gameplay that showcased the follow up looked good. We’d be playing as Ellie this time around, the story seemed to take a darker tone and they were introducing a ton of new elements with the movement and combat. Despite the numerous delays, I was still looking forward to what might be the PS4’s last AAA title until the next-gen consoles come out later this year.
Now imagine my disappointment when I saw the leaks. I don’t want to give too much info away but if you’re interested then, by all means check out Reddit, Twitter, and other sites that fully detail what was shown. Essentially many fans are upset with the direction the story is allegedly taking, I say “allegedly” because the info that’s been leaked isn’t exactly indicative of the final game. Mind you, these are major plot points that have been ruined but they’re not given any context into how they’ll fit into a 10–15-hour long game. I’ve had story elements spoiled for me in the past many times with movies such as Avengers Endgame, yet I still felt the emotional impact when I eventually saw the movie. I’m certainly not saying that I agree with the direction Naughty Dog is taking the narrative in, however, I’m not on board with them killing off major characters and switching the perspective of the game to that of the main antagonist and widdling the plot down to a lazy revenge story according to the spoilers. It undermines and throws away the deeper themes and motifs that the first game introduced that would have allowed the sequel to build upon. It's a concern that voice actor Troy Baker acknowledged in an interview, stating that fans should go in with an open mind and that he wants fans to be challenged with their ideas of what they think the sequel is. While I can understand where this is coming from, it still doesn't excuse the fact that the decisions made will make still make fans feel alienated. It’s comparable to the travesty that was Game of Thrones' final season. Taking everything that loyal fans loved and destroying it right in front of them. With that being said, I still remain somewhat optimistic. Mainly because of earlier Naughty Dog titles such as the Uncharted series and the aforementioned Last of Us 1. They're a studio that knows how to craft compelling stories equal to or even better than some films, so I do have a little bit of faith. For all we know, these poor decisions in the story may have an equally good one that overshadows it. We also got to keep in mind that this is still a video game, there’s still a ton of gameplay elements like the combat, exploration and so forth to still look forward to.
There is now also the issue of why the dev even leaked this info in the first place. According to numerous reports, namely a piece by Kotaku, the workplace culture at Naughty Dog leading up to the release has been described as toxic. Long work hours and unpaid overtime are the key points to keep in mind here. An approach that the company has done for some time but has come into question with regards to the worker's livelihood and sanity. Therefore, as a result, an upset worker felt the need to ruin key plot points with final test footage of the game. Certainly doesn’t help that the numerous delays of what is essentially a finished product ready for shipment playing a factor in the frustration as well.
What really has me concerned though, and what I want to actually focus on is Naughty Dog pushing an SJW agenda with the Last of Us Part 2. The bulk of the controversy seems to stem from the developer and more specifically, creative director Neil Druckmann’s insistence on forced inclusion that has fans questioning how detrimental it could be to the game’s overall narrative as according to the leaks. Challenging the audience by subverting expectations in the story is one thing, but pushing social justice politics into the equation as a way of defending lazy writing? That right there presents a huge problem.
Naughty Dog is a studio that prides itself on inclusiveness. Druckmann has stated in several interviews that he pushes for diversity in his stories, which I have no problem with. Genuinely speaking I’m more than happy to see a studio explore diversity in their games. As the average twenty-something-year-old who grew up in the GTA, I’ve witnessed progressiveness in terms of diversity, sexuality, gender unfold before my very eyes and I’ve welcomed it with open arms. I certainly have no issues with a developer or filmmaker or writer wanting to include a strong feminine protagonist or an LGBTQ+ character in their story. Both of which are to be showcased in TLOU 2, the main protagonist Ellie has been confirmed to be a lesbian after speculation in the previous game’s expansion Left Behind. There is also the inclusion of a supposed trans character acting as the game’s central villain, again not something that I have an issue with. It’s these two aspects that have unfortunately plagued TLOU 2’s hype, allowing for homo/transphobic fans to rebuke the game, considering it dead on arrival.
I’m not phased by what these characters identify as, as I said before I’m more than happy to see developers include diverse characters but rather my issue lies in the way Druckmann is handling them in terms of the game’s narrative. Justified by the leaked info, it seems that Naughty Dog is sacrificing the story in an attempt to allow Druckmann’s own personal biases and agenda to take over rather than to tell a compelling story that can be inclusive without pushing an agenda. It’s something that I believe needs to be criticized because what they seem to be doing and Druckmann’s overall response is only going to fuel these phobic fans even further, and I’m certain that somebody reading this is going to automatically label me as homophobic or sexist because of my critique but hear me out at least.
Neil Druckmann has been accused of forcing what many call a social justice agenda. It seems that he can’t keep his own personal politics outside of their games, something that he defended when a Twitter user asked him to keep his views to himself. Even his friendship with controversial critic Anita Sarkeesian, a person whose views on video games and representation showcases her sheer lack of ignorance towards them, have also come into question and had some sort of influence on Naughty Dog’s direction. His response to his views seeping into games such as Uncharted 4 and of course TLOU 2 are completely juvenile. In a now-deleted Instagram story post, he essentially claimed all fans who won’t buy the game as bigots and sexists. I understand calling the actual phobic people whose jaded views hinder them as bigots, but grouping fans like myself who are concerned with your personal beliefs souring what could be an excellent story? Give me a fucking break.
There are ways to be inclusive in your games without jeopardizing the game’s narrative. A number of Bioware’s games such as the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series have certainly proven this point. Regardless of what the player does, the story still remained strong and was still the central focus. I could list a myriad of other games or films that showcase inclusivity but my point still remains, you can be inclusive without sacrificing the narrative. You can still show representation without putting the overall plot at risk. With the case of TLOU2, these characters’ representation is going to be the result of one person’s insistence to showcase his personal beliefs entirely, and putting the main story of human survival and perseverance, the things that made the original so invigorating, completely on the backburner. Robingaming made a video that perfectly sums up this Naughty Dog Agenda that I highly encourage you to check out, as he does elaborate on key points that I address here. Namely Druckmann’s “you’re with us or against us mentality” when it comes to him defending the company’s choices. You can’t have any sort of objective criticism, and if you do you’re a phobic bigot.
Now despite all of this blabbering and as much as I rant, I want to see The Last of Us Part 2 succeed. This is a game I’ve waited nearly seven years for, and to see it get destroyed because of personal politics over actual story breaks my heart, yet I’m still optimistic. I still have hope that the few sane people over at Naughty Dog who had to toil with a person such as Druckmann, whose work tactics and personal politics have resulted in one of gaming’s biggest controversies, can deliver an experience similar to the first game. So until the game releases this June, I’m keeping quiet before I come to my final conclusion. | https://markiemark1887.medium.com/the-last-of-us-part-2-the-line-between-a-good-story-and-social-justice-4066b8f3ad8 | [] | 2020-05-01 02:48:51.508000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Opinion', 'Op Ed', 'The Last Of Us 2', 'The Last Of Us'] |
Vice-President Harris’s tone-deaf cookie choice threatens to derail Biden agenda | Vice President Harris speaking at a Press Conference in Guatemala
While traveling to Central America on a tour to improve diplomatic relations in the region and tackle the border crisis, Vice President Kamala Harris handed out cookies decorated in her likeness to members of the press pool. This move quickly generated sharp backlash from members of the online right and even drew the ire of Ronna McDaniel, the Chairwoman of the Republican Party, who commented that it was the “modern-day equivalent of ‘let them eat cake.”
Image of a cookie handed out by the VP
Even disregarding the immediate political fallout, some have speculated that this move could harm Biden’s agenda, which has faced growing opposition in recent days. While already struggling to gain the support of moderate Democrats, this blunder may push them even further away from the embattled administration. In fact, the growing scandal, now known by many as ‘Cookiegate,’ may have caused Senator Joe Manchin to withdraw support from the For The People Act, a bill he had previously co-sponsored.
For some Democrats, this latest misstep by the administration has brought back memories of Hillary Clinton’s cookie troubles. During her husband’s 1992 Presidential Campaign, Clinton stated “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.” This statement received immediate backlash and was a significant blow to the Clinton Campaign. Democrats today can only hope that voters will soon forget about Cookiegate, so that it will not hurt their chances in the 2022 midterm elections.
Even so, many on the left have disregarded Cookiegate, noting that it will most likely have very little impact on Biden's political capital. However, even they cannot predict the future, and only time will tell what comes of this latest cookietastrophe. | https://medium.com/@mfox99/vice-president-harriss-tone-deaf-cookie-choice-threatens-to-derail-biden-agenda-20da6f102426 | [] | 2021-06-08 22:03:27.331000+00:00 | ['Joe Biden', 'Cookies', 'Joe Manchin', 'Kamala Harris', 'Politics'] |
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