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FL Studio 20 Signature Bundle Crack Full Version for Windows | FL Studio 20 Signature Bundle Crack Full Version for Windows John Jan 16·2 min read
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Installing Postgres | Installing Postgres
Setting Up The Postgresql Database
Install Postgres
If you are using ubuntu 16.04 this is very easy to set up. First thing is to update your system:
sudo apt-get update
Now use apt-get to install Postgres:
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib
Check that Postgres is installed by opening another terminal and switch to the default Postgres user:
sudo -i -u postgres
Then log into Postgres:
psql
You can also access Postgres without switching accounts using this command:
sudo -u postgres psql
While in the Postgres terminal, create a password for the Postgres user:
\password postgres
Create a new user
While logged in as the Postgres’ default user you can create new users and adjust their roles.
postgres@satalite2:~$createuser --interactive
Or if you did not switch accounts:
sudo -u postgres createuser --interactive
Database GUI
I found DBeaver is the easiest to install on Ubuntu here is the link:
Once DBeaver installs select Postgres. Then connect to your database using the password you created.
Host is localhost and database and User are set to postgres | https://medium.com/@brianmayrose/installing-postgres-3e46a3ba7a3e | ['Brian Mayrose'] | 2019-07-11 20:14:20.800000+00:00 | ['Postgresql', 'Development', 'Postgres', 'Tutorial', 'Ubuntu'] |
Respectability Politics is a Sham. | Tone Policing By Another Name
IN THE WAKE OF THE MURDERS of unarmed blacks by either persons of authority (police) the first thing you hear, especially from the right wing media is a demand for blacks to in essence, up their respectability. Conservative Media pundits makes this a part of their show each time tragedy happens. Don Lemon — top liberal/moderate CNN anchor — and those similar follows suit. At first these guidelines look great; they are certainly things I can stand behind and most are things I do already. Let’s take a look at Don Lemon’s guide to equality:
Pulling Up Your Pants Stop Using the N-Word Stop Littering Finish School (we assume college, but he’s not specific) Stop Having Children Out of Wedlock
This totally looks reasonable on a superficial basis, however, one problem I spot is the fact that NONE of these are solely black problems or things only black people do. There’s millions of discount Kevin Federlines and Justin Beibers who sag their pants, yet there is yet to be an unarmed white kid who got shot on trigger-finger-reflex, who we swiftly learn the toxicology report of (but not the killer’s) and promptly anathematized in media. Everyone litters. Every ethnic group litters; black people didn’t invent that, nor hold a copyright or registered trademark to it. Most black people finish school much like most of anyone else. Blacks do not own that either. And everyone has children out of wedlock. Hell, the most famous kid having a child out of wedlock is currently Bristol Palin — and that’s a white girl (now imagine if Obama’s daughter did the same thing).
My life record should be completely irrelevant in regards to showing me basic human respect.
And while I diligently explained N-word privileges a while back, that doesn’t mean I support the word’s usage. Understanding social proximity doesn’t equal a sign off. But I’m more concerned with the N-word as an ideology which can manifest without even saying it (which of course disenfranchises or murders people) than the casual use or angered use of the word.
Now let’s just get this one thing straight; I agree with the notion of following these guidelines towards greater admirability. What I don’t agree with is the notion that Equality — basic human rights — should be tethered to admirability. After this fairly swift realization, Don Lemon — while being well intentioned — begins to look like Tom Dubois off of Boondocks; a highly intelligent brother who doesn’t have a clue. | https://medium.com/afrosapiophile/respectability-politics-is-a-sham-88e6a0cfd3af | ['Johnny Silvercloud'] | 2020-11-19 04:59:36.972000+00:00 | ['Tone Policing', 'Respectability Politics', 'Gaslighting', 'Bullshit', 'White Supremacy'] |
Introducing new open-source tools for the Elixir community | Steve Cohen | Pinterest engineer, Data
The eighties aren’t typically remembered as a somber and serious decade. Yet, while the masses were listening to Wang Chung’s “Everybody have fun tonight” and hoping for a DeLorean based time machine, several engineers at a Swedish telecom company were accidentally inventing the future. They were solving a problem for telecommunications, but by a strange coincidence, the problem they were solving also turned out to be very similar to the problems faced by engineers that would see that DeLorean time machine after it completed its 30 year jump to the future.
Despite its many advantages, this magical system never really got traction, but spread like an urban legend: Spoken in hushed tones by seasoned engineers, who always heard about it third hand. Sure, you knew a cousin who had a roommate that knew a gal that ran a couple million connections off of two servers, but you never actually believed that stuff anyway.
Well, I’m here to tell you that the stories were real. And there’s a sequel.
I am, of course, talking about Erlang, and while Erlang has had some recent high-profile success at WhatsApp, it also has some pretty nasty legacy due to the fear around “the syntax”. While those intrepid engineers at Ericsson got so much right, they based their creation on Prolog, which never caught on outside of certain niche communities. And because of this, they made it easy for programmers to declare, upon seeing Erlang for the first time, that it “looks weird” or “makes my eyes hurt.” That dismissal might not sound like much, but for years, it has hampered the adoption of Erlang.
Until now.
Enter one José Valim, the Rails core committer who grew tired of making Rails handle concurrency and sought refuge in Erlang’s warm embrace. This wasn’t enough, because he realized how people dismissed with pithy comments about its syntax. After tireless effort, the results are quite amazing: The Elixir Language. Elixir provides a syntax that a Python or Ruby programmer will find acceptable and one that maps 1:1 back to native Erlang. It actually goes further than that and gives you a small, powerful language, which is why we’re so excited about Elixir at Pinterest.
Elixir (and Erlang) are exciting to us because of the way they handle parallelism and errors. One of the surprising things about computers is they haven’t gotten much faster since around 2005. What has happened is that we can now fit more cores on a CPU, turning what was one processor into many. The problem with this is that programming languages haven’t really made taking advantage of these cores particularly easy. You might be able to create a thread, but managing that thread and handling shared state is really, really tough. What Elixir does differently is to run inside of an Actor system. An Actor system is just something that implements a couple of rules, which are:
An Actor has a mailbox.
Actors communicate with other Actors by sending them immutable messages.
Messages are put into the Actor’s mailbox.
When an Actor’s mailbox has a message, code is run with that message as an argument. This code is called serially.
When an Actor encounters an error, it dies.
Actors can supervise other Actors, and if the supervised Actors die, the supervisor is sent a message. If this message isn’t handled, the supervisor dies.
It doesn’t sound like much, but these rules make handling concurrency very simple, and recovering from errors possible. One of the things I didn’t tell you about Elixir is that it’s a functional language and has no mutable data structures. For example, if you have a Map and want to add a key and value to that Map, you call a function which returns a new Map with the key and value.
my_map = HashDict.new
other_map = HashDict.put(my_map, :my_age, 39)
IO.inspect(my_map)
#HashDict<[]> # my_map has not been changed
IO.inspect(other_map)
#HashDict<[my_age: 39]> # other_map has the new values
You can see from the above that the original Map is not changed. Because of this property, the Erlang VM can pause execution at any time and location in the code, resuming right where it left off at some time in the future. Most non-functional programming languages cannot do that, and this property enables Elixir and Erlang systems to keep your processors busy all the time.
Another core philosophical underpinning of Elixir is that “most errors are transient and caused by the accumulation of bad state.” This happens all the time in running systems, which is why restarting them fixes many problems. What if this behavior was a part of the system though? Well, then you’d have Elixir, Erlang, and now you understand the beginning of the “let it crash” philosophy.
Because Actors can monitor one another, they can also restart one another, and, in the case of a failure, an actor can be restarted with a known good state. This is really important, because it lets transient errors be truly transient, and it prevents you from writing a lot of error handling code. Heck, it prevents you from writing a lot of code that handles out of bound conditions in your data, preferring instead to code to the “happy path” and letting the Actor crash and burn if something else happens. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but when coding in Elixir, you find yourself writing less boilerplate error handling code and more business logic.
There are other reasons to love Elixir, too. It has excellent runtime instrumentation. I once fixed a production system while it was running by logging into a remote console, diagnosing the problem and restarting the logging application, which was overloaded due to a backend restart. Elixir also has a clean and simple standard library that’s very thoughtfully designed. The language makes heavy use of pattern matching, a technique that prevents *value* errors which are much more common than *type* errors. It also has an innovative pipelining operator, which allows data to flow from one function to the next in a clear and easy to read fashion. To get a feel for pipelining, contrast the two bits of code in Python and Elixir:
python
" ".join(map(str.capitalize, "hello_there_world".split("_")))
elixir
"hello_there_world"
|> String.split("_")
|> Enum.map(&String.capitalize\1)
|> Enum.join(" ")
Notice how in the python example, everything is backwards and spills out from a nested inner context to an outer context. Now contrast how linear and clear the Elixir code is, processing the data step by step. The output of the previous step is automatically sent to the next function call as the first parameter. This technique is inspired by pipes in Unix. Gorgeous.
So, we like Elixir and have seen some pretty big wins with it. The system that manages rate limits for both the Pinterest API and Ads API is built in Elixir. Its 50 percent response time is around 500 microseconds with a 90 percent response time of 800 microseconds. Yes, microseconds.
We’ve also seen an improvement in code clarity. We’re converting our notifications system from Java to Elixir. The Java version used an Actor system and weighed in at around 10,000 lines of code. The new Elixir system has shrunk this to around 1000 lines. The Elixir based system is also faster and more consistent than the Java one and runs on half the number of servers.
Wait, there’s more.
We didn’t write this blog post just to crow about a new programming language, though that would be kind of awesome. We also love open-source, and we’re going to give some code to the Elixir community. In that light, we’re excited to announce two projects that we’ve been leaning on quite heavily, Elixometer and Riffed.
Elixometer
Elixometer is a wrapper around the already excellent Exometer library, which provides stats and logging. You can’t fix what you can’t measure, and Exometer provides visibility across your code and even into included libraries and the Erlang VM itself. Elixometer enhances Exometer and provides Elixir-style access to its deep logging and stats collecting functionality.
Riffed
We use the Thrift RPC mechanism heavily, and sadly, there’s no Thrift implementation for Elixir. While there is an Erlang implementation, for a variety of reasons, it’s not very friendly for an Elixir developer. Riffed fixes this and makes heavy use of Elixir macros to rewrite the Erlang implementation into something an Elixir developer will love.
We’re pretty jazzed about Elixir and love building highly concurrent, fast and scalable servers in it. We’re also big fans of open-source, and you should watch this space for more Elixir-y goodness. If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of and you have deep knowledge of the Erlang VM, get in touch with us! | https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/introducing-new-open-source-tools-for-the-elixir-community-2f7bb0bb7d8c | ['Pinterest Engineering'] | 2017-02-21 19:26:34.515000+00:00 | ['Pinterest', 'Open Source', 'Erlang', 'Elixir'] |
Spinoza’s God | Spinoza’s God
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
I speak of gods and goddesses
heaven and hell
as the gateways to tensorial fields
what truth you seek, please tell
For I do indeed dwell
on the ways of dice and mice
did you read my words,
a Russian roulette of verse?
And, I, the humble servant
of shadows and dusk
Orion’s far away call
and Osiris’s chimera
As I wait in eternal slumber
to shove you off
the cliff of entropy.
Do we dance,
with ordered madness,
as we sprinkle stars
across a midnight sky?
Guide us back,
to love and might,
as we bleed,
electromagnetic
singularities
that manifold bends,
of spinors and light.
Or law and thought
twisted through
dimensions beyond the touch
through the wayward places
empty dirt roads
bottles clinking
in an old cellar
we wish upon
that final redemption,
an equation
to heed our last confession.
A place of god and men,
sand and pulsars,
a grain for every blunder,
a hill for every death,
we climb mount improbable,
and release our final breath.
© Bradley J Nordell 2020 | https://medium.com/scribe/spinozas-god-e617d60bf6f6 | ['Bradley J Nordell'] | 2020-12-11 22:11:49.072000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Science', 'Poetry', 'Philosophy', 'Pantheism'] |
Twinkle and Ezra Need You to Get Your White Men | BY TWINKLE BURKE and EZRA HUBBARD
TWINKLE
I’m not a teacher or a nurse, but I often play one on TV. See — producers and writers like to cast women of color as nurturers — teachers and nurses being the most popular forms in the acting world. Like the Modern Day Aunt Jemima — they are there to instruct and care-take.
This role seems to have permeated my life in the real world, as well. White people seem to gravitate to me for caretaking, instruction, and nurturing regardless of our relationship. I’ve begun to really look at all of the spaces and times where I’ve been forced into that role.
Twinkle and her son Ezra.
I don’t have an issue with it at work — it’s a gig — a well sometimes paying high profile gig that keeps me in the union and health insurance for my family. But privately — it feels as if the world — the white world — still expects women of color in general and me, in particular, to instruct or caretake, no matter where or when.
Like the time I’m sitting in a Red Lobster® in Hickory, NC, with my husband and our two-year-old son, Ezra. We are here visiting my husband’s family because my father-in-law, Ted, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. I am truly weary — from caring for my 2-year-old while performing some emotional heavy lifting for my husband and deflecting my husband’s mother and 2 sisters' racist microaggressions.
I am wife weary. Mother weary. Race weary. Weary weary. And I refuse to cook in my mother in laws house for fear she’ll attack the kitchen with air freshener again. Apparently, the smells of flavor are offensive. All of these circumstances bring us to be sitting in a noisy back room of the Red Lobster, where I am acutely aware of being the only brown face in the place.
Not even the busboys or barbacks are people of color. I can feel everyone keeping me in their peripheral vision.
No matter. My off duty sign is lit. I’m not carrying the burden of race for anyone. I reach across the table and hand Ezra a cheddar Bay biscuit and look at my husband. He’s wiped out too, but we are finding respite in this crustacean chain restaurant. That’s when I notice him — a white man that looks to be almost a century old, staring at me. I look around. Yup — he’s staring at me. I offer a wan smile, and his blue eyes dance with intrigue. I tuck back into my salad only to see him teetering towards our table. What is he doing?
“Hello,” he says, towering over my child — “is he yours?” He waves his wrinkled hand over Ezra’s head and positions himself next to Ezra.
I am stunned. What could he possibly want? Brad instinctively puts his arm around Ezra in his high chair.
“Excuse me?” Brad says in his soft southern drawl.
He is ever the Southern gentleman, who will never raise his voice in public as he politely tells you to go ‘F___ yourself”.
“Is this child yours?”
“Yes, he is our son,” Brad says.
“Oh, good!” The man says as he pulls the chair out beside Ezra.
I look over Ezra’s head at this man’s family, who are silently observing this intrusion.
“Come and get your old white man!” I am saying telepathically to the 40 something-year-old sons. Come. And. Get. Him.
“Come and get him NOW!”
But it doesn’t work. The son turns his attention back to his Surf and Turf without giving me another glance.
Here is the height of white entitlement — believing it’s okay to come and sit, uninvited, at my table and demand that I stop nurturing my family and teach you something,
It reminds me of when a white homeschool mom says that the “Hate” in the young adult novel “The Hate U Give” is fake.
I tell her the hate is not fake, that it’s all too real. When she puts her chin in her hands, elbows on the table, and, in her school girl stance, says, “Teach me,” I say ‘No.” I turn away and shut her down.
“NO, I will not teach you,” I tell the homeschool mom.
“So — being an interracial couple, I’d like you to answer something for me,” the old man says.
My eyes shoot daggers into this man. Answer what??!? Can’t I eat?
“My nurse, she’s a colored woman like yourself,” he continues, spittle falling from his lips, “and she says that when the woman is older in a mixed couple, the child always ends up being a male. Are you older than him?” He tosses his head in Brad’s direction.
It has me thinking, is this my job? Is it the burden of responsibility for me and other people of color to teach white people? Haven’t we done enough?
“I beg your pardon?” I say. I am seething. I extend my arms across the table in Ezra’s direction. He reaches for me.
“My nurse is from the Caribbean, and she said that if you’re older than the male, the offspring will be male. I just want to test the theory.”
What the F___???!?
Look, I’m not a nurse or a teacher, I play one on TV, but I am about to teach this older man so hard he’s going to need a nurse.
I look at this man’s family again. I can tell they are listening to this exchange, but since I haven’t stabbed great-grandpa with a steak knife, they assume he’s safe and make no attempt to intervene.
“Sir,” I tensely let slip through my teeth, “I assure you that your nurse’s theory is just that, a theory, or some old wives tale from whatever Caribbean island she’s from.”
“Oh, no! She told me it’s the truth! She’s seen it happen time and time again. So I want to know if you are older than the father?”
I don’t remember what Brad said to get him to leave. I was beyond words and just wanted the racist, ignorant fool away from my son. I do remember him teetering back to his table and my ears becoming hot.
Why did this man think it was ok to interrupt our meal? To take a seat at our table? To interrogate me and expect instruction?
I realize that being Black means a lot of different things. It’s choosing not to be a nurturing Mammy; to embrace Betye Saar’s machine-gun-toting Aunt Jemima archetype. It’s the declaration that I’ll nurture you on my time in my way IF I want.
Being Black is understanding that sometimes, a lot of times, ALL the time, I don’t need to talk about my Blackness. Black people don’t sit behind closed doors talking about our Blackness.
There ARE other topics, and because we are talking — it’s Black talking.
Being Black is so much more than any preconceived notions that I cannot define what it means because it just IS.
It’s the Sun and the Moon and the stars. It’s loving my white husband. It’s driving my car. It’s loving James Taylor and Lyle Lovett and not responding to you when you ignorantly say, “What are YOU doing listening to that?”
It’s not denying any part of me that wants to do anything, go anywhere, be anywhere. It’s not having to teach you about Being Black because you’ve dug your head in the sand for 40 plus years.
Recently, my new favorite line is “I’m auditioning to be a nurse — cause I’m a Black Woman!” Everyone laughs and then thinks about it.
Being Black is not one thing. It’s EVERYTHING and sometimes nothing at all. Nothing, as in. It’s a cool breeze. It’s sunlight on the leaves and water. It’s everything and nothing at all. Get it? You can’t have it. | https://medium.com/black-stories-matter/twinkle-and-ezra-need-you-to-get-your-white-men-8f28b4dc0962 | ['Tmi Project'] | 2020-12-23 13:02:21.153000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Storytelling', 'Black Lives Matter'] |
What is Data Science? | What is Data Science?
Myths, dreams, and reality of this beautiful job
Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
Data Science is considered as one of the most modern and fascinating jobs of our time. It can be funny and can give you satisfaction, but is it really as it’s described?
In this article, I’ll show you the reality of a Data Scientist’s life.
What you think it is
At the beginning of their career, Data Scientists think that Data Science is a wonderful, magical world full of algorithms, Python functions that performs every possible spell with a line of code and statistical models able to detect the most useful correlations among data that could make you an invincible superhero in your company. You start dreaming about your CEO congratulating with you and shaking your hand, you begin to see decision trees and clusters everywhere and, of course, the most terrifying neural network architectures your mind can dream.
But since the very first day of your first Data Science project, you start to realize what reality is.
What it really is
Expectation for results
Managers often think that Data Science is the Holy Grail of information technology. They have huge expectations about it and they want them to be satisfied here and now.
In reality, results are very difficult to achieve and need much time. Sometimes a result can’t be reached. Think about clustering, for example. You can spend an entire life searching for a clustering pattern that simply doesn’t exist in your data. Most managers don’t understand this fact and it can be very stressful for you and your team.
Explaining
The only thing better than a good algorithm is an explainable algorithm. Never forget this. No sane manager in the world would follow an unknown algorithm for managing their company’s money only because its AUROC is greater than 95%. Managers need to understand algorithms, figure out how they think about data and this is often a great task for a Data Scientist. Explaining algorithms to somebody with no scientific background can be quite difficult, but it’s very common in large companies and you must face this fact.
Most of your time you’ll find yourself trying to erase that awful question mark on your boss’ face, simplifying as much as possible to make them understand your results. Remember: if you can’t explain your results, managers will start to ask themselves whether you are useful or not in your company.
Business understanding
You’ll spend a lot of time interviewing product owners and ITC professionals to understand the information hidden inside business data they know or produce. There’s no way you can make it without their help.
Many times data comes from complex and heterogeneous systems and this often implies lines of log files that you need to understand. Data isn’t everything; information is everything. Never forget this. Information is buried inside data and you’ll need somebody telling you where you should dig.
The larger the company, the more difficult it is to find the right people to interview and when you finally make it, their answers will generate more questions and these people may not have enough time for you and your “nerdy stuff”.
Data visualization
You’ll find yourself using data visualization more often than you would have ever imagined. Charts, slides and other graphical tools will be like silver bullets in your shotgun. Maybe you have magic formulas in your mind, graphs and so on. Forget about them. Data Science is told by graphical representations and it’s often difficult to find the proper visualization technique suitable for your audience.
Deadlines
There they are. We are slaves in a world of deadlines and expectations. When you were a software engineer you had milestones in your plan and you weren’t allowed to delay a second. In Data Science, things aren’t easier.
There are deadlines and milestones even in Data Science, and there is a great difficulty inside them: Data Science is something very close to academic research, so it doesn’t fit well in the classical, waterfall ITC project management style. Instead, some Agile framework (e.g. Scrum or Kanban) should work well, due to its physiological ability to quickly adapt to changes. But Agile is difficult to teach to managers. It can give them the false idea that there’s no clear delivery date and this is very difficult to accept by companies.
Algorithms and programming
And finally, the fun part. Python, R, Knime, reading scientific papers, optimization algorithms, cross-validation and so on. The technical and nerdy real fun is a very small part of the work and it takes very little time in the whole project lifetime. Maybe you have already lost enthusiasm in the previous phases before writing your first line of code and things no longer seem as funny as you thought at the beginning.
What’s the best way to do Data Science?
According to my experience, I can answer with a single word: Agile. There’s no need to perform all the business understanding part before writing your first Python code line. Start with a simple business understanding of a small piece of data, explore it, visualize it and begin with a simple model. Create the first, quantifiable results week by week keeping your customers constantly engaged in the process. Deliver small results with a constant delivery rate and, please, don’t fall into the waterfall trap.
Simplicity is the key. Never forget it. Start with the simplest things possible and add a small piece of complexity only if needed.
There’s a psychological sense of relief in constant, small results and this is another weapon you have to use if you want to survive in the jungle of companies’ deadlines and business processes. In this way, every colleague of yours who is committed to your project will feel your difficulties and start to understand how difficult Data Science is.
Remember, companies still think about Data Science as an ITC branch; they are not completely wrong, but they shouldn’t expect you to follow the waterfall approach. So, you have to suffer the struggle to guide your company toward an Agile way of thinking.
Concerning the explanation part of the job, I prefer to start with the simplest machine learning model possible: k-nearest neighbors. It’s very easy to understand. You only need paper, a pencil and a Cartesian plane with some points drawn on it. That’s it. If it produces very nice results, everybody will finally see you like the great business partner you think you are.
If KNN doesn’t work, then you can use regressions and decision trees (random forests, gradient boosted tree classifiers and so on), which are very easy to explain, or Bayesian networks, which have a very useful graphical representation.
Finally, visualize. Visualize everything. Ask your boss to buy you a course in data visualization, learn as much as possible about the best visualization techniques and, please, remember to avoid pie charts. They are pretty useless and misleading. If you provide a simple scatter or bar plot, people will catch all the relevant information.
Simple results are the best ones. Some days ago, my team and I presented some results about a time series analysis using only three slides: high-level KPIs describing the business phenomenon, a confusion matrix and some performance metrics. Our audience was enthusiastic since the first slide, only because we started with clear numbers explaining the business in a simple way. In many situations, a small building block can really save your life.
Conclusions
Data Science is an exciting job, but it can be very difficult to perform if you speak to a non-technical audience. Data and business are intimately related to each other and you must remember this point when you work with business-oriented people. The only way to survive is to find a middle point between a data-driven bottom-up approach and a business-driven top-down approach.
Finally, as Data Science is hard and time-consuming, delivering small results with a constant delivery rate is the only way you can keep your customers engaged. | https://towardsdatascience.com/what-is-data-science-3a8b976f6cd3 | ['Gianluca Malato'] | 2019-10-13 17:10:47.432000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
My learnings from building creators of products | In 2019, I was mentoring a bunch of young folks who were either early in their product management career or were trying to break into product management roles. Talking to them, helped me understand the dilemmas these people face and gave me a chance to share some of the things I had learned in my career and have a relook at all the mistakes I had made. However, the number of requests were increasing and I was unable to do justice to most with my time limitations. I realised there could be a better way to connect these young or experienced creators. Last year around the same time, I put the following poll on Twitter -
From twitter.com/pentropy
And without thinking much, I started a telegram group called ‘Creators of Products’ with an aim of creating a safe place for people who want to share and learn the art and science of creating products. I saw some communities already existing, but they faced the same problem that product companies face — Silos. There are communities of product managers, engineers, designers etc which are brilliant in sharpening the individual crafts but over years, I have realised that building products need a lot more than super-smart individuals solving for their function or their tasks independently.
Here are some things I learnt while steering the community in last 1 year -
There are a lot of helpful people around. Most times we don’t see them or we don’t find them and that’s because we are looking in the wrong places Lot of us feel — ‘I don’t know enough to help’. While ‘I don’t know’ is always true, but our experiences even though they might look small or embarrassing are good enough to help a whole lot of people out there We did a lot of things in the community, figuring out which should we think through in intricate detail (The first expert speak session and alpha users group) and which one should just be launched (hiring excel) has helped balance impact and speed It’s necessary to have well-defined principles even at a small scale. Our principles of transparency and respect have helped create a non-negative environment in the community Getting feedback is important, but predictions like ‘This won’t work’ can be ignored as they just plant doubts which aren’t useful Open communities have their challenges but from the perspective of improving the overall level of creators, they do a better job than closed elite communities. They reflect the same problems that are faced by multiple product companies where decision making happens in closed circles. Product creation in the coming decade will not be limited to geographical centres. Though there is merit in having these ecosystems in cities but open, location-agnostic communities are proving that there aren’t any barriers to reaching to people anymore. The Internet can be a very toxic or a productive place, it will be as we make it. At creators of products, we keep a strong eye on weeding out any discrimination or bullying. A lot of my time early days went in flagging and deleting any pirated content that’s shared (which is sadly a common practice). Another thing we keep course-correcting is lack of gender neutrality. Having done these in early days, we hardly see these concerns in the community conversations. It never feels enough. There are always a hundred more things we need to do or we want to do. Oddly satisfying feeling that. The experts in the field are very human. As we break the imaginary doors, we realise that they speak the same language and that validation helps change the mindsets of young creators. The younger generation will have a much faster career graph ever seen. The 30s are now the 20s, the 40s are the 30s. Create and rule the world.
Some things that helped me grow the community
Seek help. One doesn’t need to do everything themselves Don’t wait for launch till features are fully cooked. A basic google sheet worked as the hiring sheet, a basic form helped map mentors Don’t waste time on things that aren’t working or helping anyone Use social media, especially Twitter as much as possible. Interact Try to be inclusive, but don’t be worried if everyone is benefitting all time time. In a community, those who engage and give end up learning a lot more
We are just warming up at creators of products. I am so grateful to all the 40 people who have volunteered over the last year. What a fascinating group of people! To take the community to the next level, we have decided to give more responsibility to some of these team members by making them co-founders. We will post more details on the Twitter handle on the same.
If you haven’t joined the slack channel yet. Here is the link — creatorsofproducts.com/join | https://theproductdesignblog.com/my-learnings-from-building-creators-of-products-dbea96ff0f1c | ['Diwakar Kaushik'] | 2020-12-20 06:25:48.234000+00:00 | ['Product', 'Design', 'Technology', 'Product Management', 'Community'] |
Tailored approach to data science interviews, step by step — How I entered the data science field (with an arts degree) | Tailored approach to data science interviews, step by step — How I entered the data science field (with an arts degree)
Full guide on recruiter calls, hiring manager technical interviews, and how to spend just a little time to tailor your answers to each company. Susan Shu Mar 29, 2020·10 min read
Photo by Simon Abrams (Unsplash)
Previously, I walked through the 2 pillars of data science roles: statistics and programming knowledge, as well as how to prepare to enter the field based on your expertise in those 2 pillars. (Link on Medium Towards Data Science).
Here, in this article, I’ll walk through what to expect, if you’ve received the good news that you’re getting an interview! This includes some time-saving tips for covering the huge variety of behavioral questions, how to make 10 minutes of research pay for itself many times over, and much more.
The first “gate”: HR or recruiter phone screen
Know the distinction between HR and hiring manager
For mid to large sized companies, HR or non-technical recruiters (aka talent acquisition) usually do the initial filter of resumes, and then have a call with candidates that seem qualified. After the conversation, if they feel the candidate is a potential fit, they might pass it on to a hiring manager.
Back in 2017, I was confused as to the difference between HR and hiring manager. Now, I know that hiring managers are usually who you’ll really be working with, and report to, whereas the HR usually conducts initial screening and other types of administration such as coordinating interviews. Once again, this is assuming a mid to large sized company with established departments — I will not be going through startup specific information in this article, although most tips should still be applicable.
Showcase your communication skills to pass the first “gate”
Here is a general rundown of how the first HR or recruiter phone screen usually goes like:
They ask you to introduce yourself They ask you about your experience in some technologies (they usually compare your answers against the job description or a list the hiring manager provided). Example: “Do you know how to use Tensorflow?” They probe you on items on your resume. Example: “Tell me more about your Reddit scraping project.” They ask you some behavioral interview questions. Example: “Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership.” They usually ask why you are interested in their company or this role.
Since the HR won’t be working with you in your day to day, what it takes to get past this first “gate” isn’t necessarily even technical skills, but rather, communication skills.
I wish I were kidding when I say people actually fail this round because of avoidable reasons such as being nervous, or being unable to articulate their answers with less technical jargon. This is because your recruiters may come from many types of educational backgrounds, so you need to be able to communicate at varying levels of technical detail. If you can convey, in a way that the HR or recruiter understands, just why your skills can be valuable, they will happily go to bat for you and recommend you to the hiring managers.
Full guide of tailored approaches to clear the phone screen
Introduction: “Tell me about yourself”
I prepared an “elevator pitch” for this question, which I reused for countless interviews. It includes a quick overview of my educational background, experience, and a sentence or two of why my experience can help me contribute to the company and role.
Experience in [technology], [machine learning technique] or [programming language]
Here, I usually prepared with the job description in hand. If the description lists something I have experience in (e.g. looking for a candidate skilled in SQL), I prepare a quick outline of what I have done before in SQL.
I also spent some time (10 minutes is enough) to brainstorm what type of projects the team might be working on, according to their industry. For example, for telecom, I asked around and discovered they are quite concerned about churn modelling (predicting which customers might leave). Personally, I did not have experience doing churn modelling, but could look up beforehand some examples or common techniques, so that I can connect that type of problem with my experience.
Probing about your experiences listed on resume
I prepared carefully to be able to describe any project I listed on my resume — this will pay off for the technical interview rounds as well. For the HR round, I focused on being able to describe the impact or results, in high-level language that non-technical folks can understand as well. However, if you can mention any jargon on the job description that the HR is listening for, that is great. Even better if you point it out (e.g. “I used gradient boosting techniques for this project, which is mentioned on the job description.”)
Behavioral interview questions
For these, I grabbed a list of questions online and made sure I could answer them verbally. Here are some examples. Every company and interviewer could ask drastically different questions, which makes it seem overwhelming to prepare for, but don’t worry — my time-saving tip is to prepare a handful of stories that can be used to answer a variety of questions.
For example, instead of 4 separate stories of how I demonstrated communication skills, leadership skills, initiative, or ownership, I prepared one single story that could be used to answer all of those 4 questions. You can modify what to emphasize on the fly: for example, if the question is on communication skills, you can drop some details about leadership, while using the same story. Using this method, you can be prepared for 99% of questions they can throw at you, with only a handful of stories!
Use the STAR method so that your answers do convey crucial information. Before I knew of this way to structure my answers, I forgot to mention the results of my projects most of the time, which was actually what the interviewers were most curious about!
Why are you interested in this company or role?
This is going to be pretty important to the HR, frankly. If you can show enthusiasm as well as understanding what the company does, it helps a lot for this round. It’s hard to be interested in a candidate that seems clueless about the products or services of the company. I usually browse the company’s website or social media for an overview, as well as the overall “mission” of the company, if possible. Are they B2B or B2C? If they’re some sort of web platform, are they more focused on the people who create content, or consume content, or both?
This research pays for itself many times over as you’ll be able to frame all your answers and stories around how you can help the company’s mission (e.g. “My educational background in [economic modelling] can help me create robust and accurate [churn models], so that we can proactively [save customers].”)
That’s a lot of information, as well as a lot to prepare for, but the good news is that the preparation in this round will pay for itself in future interview rounds. Though, if you don’t feel like you have time to prepare for all of those questions in detail, here are the time-saving methods that I found to greatly increase the odds of passing this round:
Spend 10 minutes quickly looking up the company, and their core mission (or guess what it could be). This pays for itself many times over to make your case as a compelling candidate
Prepare a quick elevator pitch that outlines your experience and why you’re interested in the company, team, or role specifically
Prepare ~3 stories of your past experience to answer a variety of behavioral questions
e.g. 1 single story to answer anything about communication/ collaboration/ leadership, another story to cover time management/ adaptability, and so on, each story being able to cover a handful of traits
If possible, find a friend to practice with — I was lucky that my friends spared their time to hear my elevator pitch — you’d rather stutter in front of your friends first, than the interviewer!
Technical/coding round(s) with hiring manager and future coworkers
If you wowed the HR during the initial phone screen, in a mid or large-sized company, you’ll likely be invited to interview with the hiring manager afterwards. My preparation strategy for these further rounds involved much more technical detail, for example reviewing any statistical modelling I mentioned anywhere on my resume. Since many of those projects were done some months or years ago when I interviewed, it was only natural that I needed to spend time brushing up on details!
The good news is, a lot of the preparation for the previous round can help you with this round as well. Some questions, especially the behavioral ones, might even be similar or identical, but the later rounds are a good time to toss in more technical details in your answers.
Tailored approach to hiring manager interviews
Now, in my experience, I found that technical interview rounds had much more variation than the phone screens. This is because each company, or even the team itself, may focus on different types of data science. Hence, this is where the research you did about the company and team will also come in handy.
If the role is entry level or the description isn’t specific enough, it’s always a good bet to review some common algorithms like random forest, logistic regression, K-means clustering, etc. (In the interview for my current role, I did get asked to explain all those algorithms verbally).
In general, I prioritized theory and technical details of basic machine learning algorithms, and those used in projects I specifically had mentioned on my resume. If you mentioned using CNNs on a project you did on your resume, be prepared to explain your approach, and its pros and cons. Of course, if your job description literally says they’re looking for someone strong in NLP, you had better prepare for techniques in the specified topic too.
However, if no one has yet told you what fields the role focuses on, from the company’s mission or information about the hiring team, you can make educated guesses on what kind of algorithms to review. If this happens to be the case, I recommend asking the HR or hiring manager, with more details in the following section.
Technical rounds vary wildly — gather as much information as you can
Now, regarding coding interviews, I have heard wildly varying experiences. There are some that are 90% coding and 10% asking about past experience or algorithms; there are some interviews that are the opposite way around.
For example, my own experience interviewing candidates is that we’re looking more for problem solving skills and proficiency in Python, and we do not ask LeetCode style coding questions, which seem to have risen in popularity. Hence, I won’t comment on too much detail about coding portion preparation since it could vary too much role to role, and I don’t want to misguide anyone.
It is possible to make an educated guess from what you understand of the team’s day to day usage of the 2 pillars of data science: statistics and programming — if the team’s work relies more on statistics knowledge, it’s possible they ask more of the former, and vice versa. I elaborate more on the 2 pillars in part 1 of this series.
I suggest you get as much information from the hiring manager as possible; if you don’t know who that will be at this stage, ask your HR or recruiter contact. If the HR doesn’t know, you can ask them to ask the hiring manager on your behalf. I found that the HR folks are very nice about this and do try to help you — part of their role is to give the candidate sufficient information, after all.
Review the technical details of projects you’ve mentioned on your resume — everything there is fair game to be asked, and it doesn’t look good if you can’t answer some detail about something you listed.
Depending on the role or job description, review families of algorithms you think might be applicable to the role.
Reach out to the hiring manager or HR to get as much detail about the technical rounds as possible, (within reason, of course).
If there are coding rounds, practice on LeetCode or review implementations of popular algorithms.
One last reminder, which I have mentioned before, but is worth repeating: I really suggest you frame your answers based on the company’s mission and what you know about the team. Think about it this way: if my team does machine learning for customer personalization, but nothing about the candidate’s experience seems to be able to contribute to our team’s mission or techniques we use day-to-day, it makes it harder to hire the candidate.
That’s why it pays off to tailor how you describe your experience to what you know of the interviewers, because they simply don’t know perfect information about the candidate. In reality, between two candidates with the exact same skill set, the one that can better make their case on how they can contribute to the team, will be much more attractive.
Summary and immediate interview preparation steps
There is a large amount of resources online about the data science interview process, which can be overwhelming. I was also in that situation when I started the job search, and I definitely can relate — which is why I shared the above details and tips. I hope that all that I learned can help you!
If you have some time before the applications and interviews, as mentioned in the first part of this blog series — the key is to bring your machine learning theory and programming both to a baseline level. For example, if you have 0 knowledge if one of them, bring it up to a 2 or 3.
If you have interviews booked, the immediate actions are:
Prepare your elevator pitch self-introduction Research the company and role Prepare a handful of stories that are each able to answer multiple behavioral questions Review technical details of your resume, and focus on skills that the team or role need Review code implementations of past projects or LeetCode
And that’s it for this blog series. I hope that it was helpful or interesting, whether you are job searching or not. If you happen to be going through interviews at this time, I wish you all the best! | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-i-entered-the-data-science-field-with-an-arts-degree-tailored-approach-to-data-science-f54f3bb8e15a | ['Susan Shu'] | 2020-09-11 12:23:14.037000+00:00 | ['Job Hunting', 'Data Science Career', 'Job Interview', 'Data Science Interview', 'Machine Learning'] |
How to find the right mentor for you as a Startup Founder | How to find the right mentor for you as a Startup Founder
Photo by nappy from Pexels
When I first started working on my startup, Cudy Technologies, I didn’t have anyone close to me who had founded a startup before. My mentors at the time were developers and designers and they provided me with knowledge about how to build a product.
These people provided me with mentorship through the knowledge that they were sharing with me.
But, it wasn’t until I started looking for people who had actually gone through the process of building a startup and failed, or built a startup and succeeded, that I was able to find the right mentor for my situation.
What I looked for in a Mentor
I decided that what I wanted from my mentor was someone who would understand where I was coming from as an entrepreneur.
Someone who would be able to relate to my struggles as an entrepreneur and help me understand how far along in the process of building a business that I actually was.
So I started by looking at my contacts and asking people that I knew if they had ever been involved in building a successful startup.
If the answer was yes, then I would ask if they’d be willing to meet with me for coffee or lunch and talk about their experiences.
If the answer was no, then I would follow up with the same question once they had gone through a few months of building a startup and failed or succeeded.
Most people were excited to share their experiences with me and most were happy to meet up for coffee to talk about what they’ve learned so far in their journey.
How do you know if someone is a good mentor?
For me, it took meeting more than one person before I finally found the right person who could provide me with mentorship based on my struggles as an entrepreneur.
It wasn’t until this person told me ‘you are here’ that I knew we could work well together as mentors.
This is why it’s important to meet more than one potential mentor before you decide who you want to take on as your mentor.
Just ask them questions like:
What was your experience like when you first started working on your startup? (failure or success)
How did you feel? What did you do about it? How long did it take from your first experience until you reached success? Which parts of building a business are you currently struggling with most? What have you tried so far that hasn’t worked? What have you not tried yet that might work for your situation? What are some resources that helped guide you through these challenges/successes? Which of these resources would be the most beneficial for me to start learning from now? What type of advice would be most helpful for someone just starting out like myself who wants to build a successful startup one day like yourself? Is there anything else that we should discuss before we go our separate ways today (if this is a first meeting)?
Have some questions prepared in advance by making notes as soon as possible after reading this article. This will help ensure that all details are fresh in mind when meeting someone new for the first time even though it may have been weeks or months since reading this post.
Bring a notebook along with pen and paper so that you can write down answers to any questions that come up during the course of the discussion, while taking notes during the conversation. Have an open mind!
Most people will tell you that they are not experts and that they don’t know everything. They will probably tell you some of the things that didn’t work for them and give you some ideas of where to start.
It is important to listen to their advice but not to take it as the only thing that you should be doing. Don’t let someone else’s failure prevent you from achieving success.
Remember, they were in a different situation than yours and you can build on their knowledge by applying it to your unique situation.
How do I find a mentor who can help me with my startup?
I have found it much easier to find someone who is willing to meet for coffee or lunch after having already built a successful business rather than starting out by asking for free advice from startup founders who are struggling with building their own business.
Most people are more likely to say yes when asked if they were willing to meet up for coffee or lunch after having already gone through a few months of struggling with building their startup because they want to share their knowledge with other people who might benefit from what they learned in the process.
I also found it helpful when meeting potential mentors to ask about what resources helped them through specific challenges in the past.
It’s great if someone has been through something like this before but even better if they know where I can find information about how others have dealt with this problem in the past so that I can learn from what others have done without having first hand experience myself.
This will save me a lot of time because I won’t need to try things out myself before discovering whether or not they work well for my situation.
Most mentors are happy tell you about any resources that helped them through similar challenges so that you don’t have to spend time trying everything yourself before finding out which things work well and which things don’t work well for your unique situation.
Why is building relationships with potential mentors so important?
Building relationships with potential mentors is so important because no one wants an investor or potential customer base walking into their company one day just because they happen upon your website while searching Google for information about your industry (for example).
They want their customers walking into their business because there is a connection between the two companies in some way such as:
They school together as students and decided that neither one would be able succeed without help from each other, or mentors introduced each other Startup founder learned a lot from an investor and decided to start working on a product together.
If you want to build a successful startup one day, then you will need to build relationships with people who can help you achieve your goals.
Your mentors don’t have to be someone that you are working with directly but they do need to be someone that you can confide in and rely on for advice when starting out on your own.
How do you build a relationship with potential mentors?
I have found that the best way to build a relationship with potential mentors is by starting to volunteer for related organizations or starting a blog about your interests and experiences.
This will help you start to build relationships with people who are in your community of interest so that when you do need a mentor, there will be someone who is already connected to you in some way and who will be more interested in meeting up with you for coffee or lunch because they already know something about you and might even want to help make your dream come true.
It’s much easier to get a ‘yes’ when asking someone for help if they already know something about your situation or have heard of you before. This is why building relationships with people from your community of interest is so important!
Why is it important to understand what my mentor has been through?
It’s important to understand what a mentor has been through because it will help you learn from their successes and mistakes so that you can avoid making the same mistakes yourself as you go through the process of building a successful startup.
This will save you a tremendous amount of time in the long run when compared to making all of the mistakes yourself and reinventing the wheel in some areas.
It’s also helpful to understand what your potential mentor wants out of the relationship as well.
Some people are willing to give advice freely without any expectations but most people want something in return for their time, even if it’s just having someone they can confide in or someone who is willing to keep them informed about what’s going on within their industry.
It’s much easier to work with someone if you both have something that you expect from each other.
About the Author
I am the Founder of Cudy Technologies (www.cudy.co), a full-stack EdTech startup helping teachers and students teach and learn better. I am also a mentor and angel investor in other Startups of my other interests (Proptech, Fintech, HRtech, Ride-hailing, C2C marketplaces and SaaS). You can also find me on Cudy for early-stage Startup Founder mentorship and advice.
You can connect with me on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderlhk) and let me know that you are a reader of my Medium posts in your invitation message. | https://medium.com/@alexanderlhk/how-to-find-the-right-mentor-for-you-as-a-startup-founder-65fefa63205d | ['Alexander Lim'] | 2020-12-26 06:03:07.099000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Startup Lessons', 'Founders', 'Founder Advice', 'Founder Stories'] |
A New Experience for Spotify for iPad | The learnings gave us a better understanding and an area to focus on. At Spotify, we follow the approach to build, test, and iterate — which helps us prioritize areas and help define an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). After a discovery workshop, the team agreed to three principles as a guiding rule throughout the project:
Establish a baseline: For a better tablet experience within our technical constraints.
Design for the form factor: Rearrange what we have today and present components in a way that makes sense to the form factor.
Feasibility: A feasible solution to implement the change.
An experience for everyone
We at Spotify want billions of fans to enjoy and be inspired by creators and their content; that’s why designing an inclusive and accessible experience is so essential to us. We take this mission seriously at Spotify, that’s why we paired up with our inhouse accessibility guild to receive support and consultancy. They helped us to prioritize and implement improvements for both design and technical accessibility. Adaptivity and design for multi-orientation was, therefore, the right decision.
Following standards and looking beyond
First, we got familiar with the landscape of all iPad device models to ensure a framework that works for adaptivity. Working closely with engineers, we followed the Apple size classes standard on iOS. In principle, the system defines two size classes, regular and compact, which describe the height and width of the view. Using these size classes helped us not only to follow platform standards but also to design an adaptable interface that provides a more enjoyable experience in any situation.
To afford a better experience on the tablet device, we looked outside of our field of expertise and studied how book and magazine designers work. Due to its larger screen size and form factor, the user needs are much more similar. A grid system and composition play an essential role in providing a fluent rhythm to the reader. The appropriate line length for sentences helps readers keep focus and digest content naturally. So we translated this guidance to the digital environment and readjusted the readable content guide property to our content view. | https://medium.com/spotify-design/a-new-experience-for-spotify-for-ipad-f80d2477d488 | ['Spotify Design'] | 2020-07-09 14:57:39.808000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'Spotify', 'Design', 'iOS', 'iPad'] |
3 Things You Need to Do to Conquer the New Normal | It’s time to admit to ourselves that we need to consider that as upside-down as it may feel, this is our new normal.
I’ve been working 100% remotely for 8 months now, and counting.
At first, I loved not having to commute 45 minutes or more each way to the office. I’ll also confess that wearing jeans and a polo shirt to work each day was a big plus for me…
However, after so many months, I’m really missing the camaraderie of walking into a colleague’s office and chatting about things both professional and personal. I miss being able to grab a lunch together, enjoying food in good company.
According to Dr. Faucci, we’re unlikely to get back to safe, unlimited, in-person interactions before the end of 2021. It may even be longer than that.
It’s time to admit to ourselves that we need to consider that as upside-down as it may feel, this is our new normal.
Conquering the New Normal
Here are 3 things you need to do now to accept and build on this new normal.
The First Arena — Your Mind
Like so many, I’ve been holding on to the notion that how things are now is temporary, that I just need to keep it together for just a bit longer until we can all go back to normal.
That’s ok for a week or a month.
It’s bearable for a few months.
For year, or two, or more, not so much.
My dad, may he rest in peace, used to quote this wise saying (attributed to Allen Saunders), “Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.”
“Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.” — Allen Saunders
So, to master this new normal, we need to stop “making other plans,” and accept what life handed us.
This is the first thing you need to do now — change your mindset from “I just need to hang on until things go back to normal” to “This is it, and I need to deal with what is, not what I wish it was.”
Related to this, you need to change your routines to ones that will sustain you through another year or more of pandemic-related constraints. This includes:
Safe ways of staying physically active ; for me this means walking regularly in our neighborhood or our treadmill when it’s too cold and wet, cycling on a stationary bike at home, kayaking when the weather is good enough, etc.
; for me this means walking regularly in our neighborhood or our treadmill when it’s too cold and wet, cycling on a stationary bike at home, kayaking when the weather is good enough, etc. Safely connecting with friends and family ; for me, this includes inviting people over to our porch when weather allows, meeting family who are staying socially distanced and working remotely themselves (or meeting those who have to take on higher risks but keeping our masks on), etc.
; for me, this includes inviting people over to our porch when weather allows, meeting family who are staying socially distanced and working remotely themselves (or meeting those who have to take on higher risks but keeping our masks on), etc. Finding safe options for getting out of the house ; for me, this includes walks through a nearby forested trail, occasionally eating at a restaurant offering outdoor dining, and finding new places to visit with beautiful views and the occasional quaint shop we can enter with masks fully covering everyone’s mouth and nose.
; for me, this includes walks through a nearby forested trail, occasionally eating at a restaurant offering outdoor dining, and finding new places to visit with beautiful views and the occasional quaint shop we can enter with masks fully covering everyone’s mouth and nose. Finding ways to challenge yourself mentally, to protect your brain (maintaining your “neuroplasticity”) and your mind (staying mentally active and healthy), and that help you find purpose; for me this includes doing jigsaw puzzles, playing word games and shape puzzles, writing blog posts (like this one), and developing new aspects of my business(es).
In general, find a wide variety of activities you can do and increase the challenge level over time. This is a great piece that offers lots of concrete ideas and examples.
The Second Arena — Your Physical Space
Depending on your specific business model, your physical space must provide a comfortable and professional environment.
This is critical when you meet clients in person or via Zoom. However, even if you have no face-to-face client interactions, it’s important to support your mindset. This includes:
A comfortable chair
A comfortable way to hold whatever equipment you use, such as a computer, microphone, webcam, notebook, or anything else; this is usually a standard desk, but can be a standing desk, a wheeled laptop desk you can pull over your lap, or even a walking desk attached to a treadmill
Good equipment, such as professional versions of the above-mentioned microphone and/or webcam that help clients see and hear you well
A space that looks professional to clients or colleagues who see you through your webcam, but that as importantly feels professional to you and puts you in the right mind space; this might mean no distracting pets, kids, or husbands in shorts walking behind you (or across your keyboard…); an attractive, non-distracting backdrop behind you; and an attractive, non-distracting view in front of you as you raise your eyes from work.
The Third Arena — Your Services and Products
If this is it for a year or more, you need to make sure how you run your practice/business is sustainable, and takes advantage of the changed environment.
You need to reach your clients in ways that work better for them, and offer them a range of services and products that help them regardless of their current circumstances.
Here are some ideas for sustainable marketing, from paid to free to income-producing:
(Paid) Since we’re all online even more these days, digital marketing such as Google ads and FB ads may be even more effective than ever.
(Free) Online quizzes are always a favorite, especially if they don’t require the prospect to give their email address to get the results — try an inviting additional offer for that, such as a free 15- or 30-minute Zoom debrief to understand the results and figure out what to do next.
(Free and can even bring in a small side income, e.g. on Medium) Since people have more hours to fill than when they commuted to work, blog posts and free webinars may be attractive. However, you need to provide true standalone value even for someone who doesn’t end up buying anything from you.
As for services and products, consider diversifying by adding lower-cost options that can serve as a first stepping stone to becoming clients for your standard services. Even better, these can provide standalone income streams from people who don’t want (or can’t afford) your regular services. This could include one or more of the following:
If you normally work with individuals, a group offering can increase your hourly income while costing each participant far less than your full individual rate. Groups also allow peers to offer each other insights you may otherwise miss.
Live seminar/webinar/FB-live/Zoom sessions with interactive Q&A.
Pre-recorded videos (e.g., of your live sessions).
Workbooks, quizzes, and exercises with guides on interpreting the results (you can offer these free as a marketing tool with more limited interpretation guides).
E-books.
Subscriptions offering monthly access to your live sessions, recordings, e-books, etc.
The Bottom Line
Since it looks like the current situation isn’t likely to go back to normal in less than a year, if ever, it’s time to embrace this new normal. The above offers three arenas for mastering the new situation, making it sustainable for the long haul, and even making it work to your advantage.
About the Author
Opher Ganel has set up several successful small businesses, including a consulting practice supporting NASA and government contractors. His most recent venture is a financial strategy service for independent professionals (where you can sign up for his biweekly newsletter and get some nifty free PDFs). You can also connect with him by following his Medium publication, Financial Strategy.
Disclaimer
This article is intended for informational purposes only, and should not be considered financial advice. You should consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions. | https://medium.com/financial-strategy/3-things-you-need-to-do-to-conquer-the-new-normal-d1ea8067f47d | ['Opher Ganel'] | 2020-11-06 21:00:16.479000+00:00 | ['Freelancing', 'Financial Strategy', 'Money', 'Small Business', 'Finance'] |
Working with Fastlane on iOS in an Enterprise Environment | 🤖 Service Account
Before you go ahead with submitting a new request for your IT infrastructure change, make sure you have a service account as well.
Unlike normal user accounts, service accounts are not tied to a particular employee. This is very important. When a person leaves a company, their account eventually gets wiped and CI pipelines get broken, so the lesson is: never use personal accounts for CI setup. Service accounts don’t ask for a pay raise, don’t chuck a sickie, and they just don’t quit.
Another good thing about service accounts—they normally don’t have the password expiry policy set. You don’t have to update your CI configuration with a new password every 90 days or so.
If you don’t have a service account, request one then. Yes, it may mean you have to open yet another request to some other DevOps team, but who said enterprise was easy?
Using Fastlane behind the Proxy
Fast-forward N weeks, where N is a random large non-negative number, and you have the following at your disposal:
A service account username and password, and maybe even an email, if you’re super lucky.
Let’s assume the username is part of the Active Directory Domain and comes in a au\username form, where au is the domain.
form, where is the domain. Let’s also assume the password is just password .
. All requested domains are whitelisted on all levels of intranet.
You service account can authenticate to the company proxy using username and password and access whitelisted domains.
Let’s assume the proxy host name is company-proxy and it listens on port 8080 for all incoming connections.
Curl Test
First off, run a simple curl test to make sure everything works:
The --proxy-user and --proxy options are self-explanatory, though note the backslash escaping as \\ .
By saying --proxy-anyauth we tell curl to work with any authentication scheme that the proxy supports.
Most likely, all outgoing network traffic on your dev machine is signed with your company’s own self-signed Root Certificate Authority (CA) certificate, so we use the --insecure option to convince curl to accept this self-signed certificate.
The self-signed root CA and authentication scheme will play very important roles further on.
The output of the command should be something like this:
Unauthenticated Request ID: ABCABCBACBACXYZXYZXYZZ37.0.0
This is good. It means the request went all the way to appstoreconnect.apple.com.
🔏 Root CA and SSL Certificates
Just like with curl , a self-signed root CA certificate won’t be accepted by Fastlane either. While running Fastlane, you won't have any option like the curl 's --insecure flag. Instead you need to add your internal root CA certificate to rubygems path, because Fastlane is a Ruby gem:
You may have to use sudo if you’re using the system Ruby version, though I'd recommend using RVM or rbenv to manage your rubies.
If you are using RVM, you’ll need to run the following as well:
Now you can use this Ruby script to test the SSL connection.
E.g. just run it directly like this:
💲 Environment Variables
The next thing you’ll notice is that Fastlane doesn’t have any option for passing proxy information. Luckily, Fastlane is being a good citizen and respects all the /http[s]_proxy/i environment variables, namely:
HTTP_PROXY
HTTPS_PROXY
http_proxy
https_proxy
Remember this “Gang of Four”—nothing else will cause you as much pain as this bunch!
Somewhere in your ~/.bash_profile or other appropriate shell profile, set these environment variables—for example:
Note that proxy URL is set in the following format:
http:// <domain> \ <username> : <password> @ host : port
Without the username and password, you wouldn’t be able to authenticate with your proxy.
Now give it a try. Run the simple download_screenshots deliver action:
Answer all the prompts and see if it worked. I bet it didn’t!
Long story short, Fastlane is using the faraday HTTP client Ruby library, which uses Kernel.URI method, which can’t handle a backslash \ in the username.
The solution is to use percent-encoding for \ , i.e. %5c :
You should be able to download screenshots now, though that’s just a first, tiny step towards the final goal. Well, actually, you can do a lot of things now, such as registering devices, managing App IDs and provisioning profiles, and more. But I’d assume you also want to upload a new ipa to TestFlight, so meet The Transporter then...
🚎 Transporter
Transporter, aka iTMSTransporter, is a Java-based command-line tool used to “upload things to the App Store”, including app metadata and new ipa builds.
Installing Transporter
So how do you get a copy?
Well…according to Apple, you first login to your developer account and then click the download link like this one.
But wait! You can’t download it unless you have an Admin or Technical role.
I mean, “Why, Apple?! Why?!” 😱
Transporter is available as part of the Xcode installation anyways…why make things so hard?
Why not make it available at Apple Developers Downloads at the very least?
Anyways, if you choose to use the copy bundled with Xcode, then you can find it at:
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Application Loader.app/Contents/itms
Just grab the whole directory.
If you installed it via the Mac OS package, then get it at:
/usr/local/itms
Patching Transporter
If you’re wondering: “Why do I need a copy of Transporter? Can’t Fastlane just use it as is?”
Good question. You don’t need a copy of Transporter. You can use the one available inside Xcode or in your /usr/local , but you would have to patch it before using it anyways.
Given that Transporter is a Java-based command-line app, it has the same issue as curl or any Ruby gem would have with your company's internal self-signed root CA certificate - it won't trust it. Apple didn't bother to add a command line or configuration option of any kind to Transporter to trust self-signed certificates.
Thankfully, Transporter isn’t just a Java-based app, it comes with its own version of Java runtime bundled up inside itms/java . Try running itms/java/bin/java -version to see more info.
Now, the itms/java folder also contains lib/security/cacerts file, which is a keystore with CA certificates. So you need to add your company certificate to cacerts , and itms/java/bin/keytool is just the right tool to do that.
Here ${ROOT_CA_PATH} is the path to the certificate file, which you can locate directly or find in the OS X keychain
Now you’ve convinced Transporter to trust your root CA, but you’re not there yet, because you also need to teach Transporter some respect towards your new and shiny proxy, which is where trouble awaits for you…again.
Transporter and Proxy
Now that we know that Transporter is a Java-based app, we look closer inside the itms folder and find itms/java/lib/net.properties - a Java properties file used to configure the JVM that Transporter runs in.
The group of proxy variables is exactly what we need:
You don’t even have to modify the net.properties file. Fastlane reads the value of the special DELIVER_ITMSTRANSPORTER_ADDITIONAL_UPLOAD_PARAMETERS environment variable and uses it to configure Transporter. For example, in your bash script add the following export statement:
But will it work? By now you’ve been there enough times to know the answer — “No”. 😜
Proxy configuration needs to include the username and password for Basic authentication.
You can try to add au%5cusername:password@company-proxy as the host value, but it won’t work.
Removing the jdk.http.auth.tunneling.disabledSchemes=Basic limitation from net.properties won't help either.
While trying to Google you may find mention of these properties:
Those are part of Apache HTTP Client JVM options, though, and are not part of Oracle’s default network properties. Also, Transporter doesn’t respect them.
🚧 Feels like another roadblock.
Another Proxy
The solution this time is to create yet another proxy (as if there weren’t enough problems with them already!).
This “man in the middle” local proxy will take care of passing authentication information to your company proxy. The credentials no longer have to be hard-coded in a proxy URL. This way, the command line tools like Transporter can use a local proxy for network connections, and a local proxy doesn’t require any type of authentication.
There are a number of proxy tools available for Mac OS. In this example, I’ll be using CNTLM.
I’ll briefly mention that I also tried TinyProxy and ProxyChains-NG. TinyProxy just wouldn’t let me use \ or %5c in the configuration file, while with ProxyChains-NG I eventually just gave up after a number of failed attempts to make it work.
So, CNTLM—a fast proxy for NTLM authentication implemented in C.
Easy to install.
Also easy to configure. Just put the following in cntlm.conf :
Now run this command to generate password hashes:
Type in your account password, copy hashes, and append them to cntlm.conf :
Then run it:
Finally, configure proxy environment variables:
Give it a go!
What do you mean “It doesn’t work!?” Something about the proxy returning an invalid challenge?
Well, that just means you company proxy doesn’t support NTLM authentication and only supports Basic authentication. That needs to be changed by requesting IT support again, I’m afraid. | https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/working-with-fastlane-on-ios-in-an-enterprise-environment-7057a9a8c2d3 | ['Maksym Grebenets'] | 2020-02-19 19:41:06.533000+00:00 | ['iOS App Development', 'Heartbeat', 'Programming', 'Continuous Delivery', 'Fastlane'] |
Rise from the Eternal Slumber gripping our Society. | Rise from the Eternal Slumber gripping our Society.
We have conditioned our Limitless Mind & Aptitude into limited & mediocre thinking and living.
Knowingly or Unknowingly,
Directly or Indirectly,
Consciously or Unconsciously we are gripped by this Self-limiting, Self Doubt Monster.
It breeds like CoronaVirus at each moment of distraction.
Distractions are everywhere from the NonStop Notifications bombarding our screens, the moment they are powered on, to the Talks, Thoughts and the Tales of Travesty all around us.
We live in the World of Heightened Distractions.
In order to get Some Sense and Saneness from this Disempowering Insanity, we need to Rise from this Eternal Slumber gripping our Society.
It’s time to Rise and Shine.
It’s time to Break the Shackles holding us back.
It’s time to Fight for what we Love.
It’s time to Conquer the Unconquerable.
It’s time to Question the Unquestionable.
It’s time to Defeat the Undefeatable.
It’s time to Truly Live again.
It’s time to Be Happy and Spread the Joy all around us.
#ZenModeOn
#EyeOfTheStorm | https://medium.com/@ethicalonlinebusiness/rise-from-the-eternal-slumber-gripping-our-society-912d2b9aea16 | ['Ronak Parmar'] | 2020-12-24 18:18:57.052000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Aptitude', 'Coronavirus', 'Distraction', 'Mind'] |
Tokyo Olympics Medal Trackers — DataViz Weekly | Delayed one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Summer Olympics officially known as the Games of the XXXII Olympiad and commonly referred to simply as Tokyo 2020 have been underway for two weeks and are already coming to a close, with under 50 medal sets yet to be distributed over the remaining two days.
In this special edition of DataViz Weekly, we are happy to showcase four wonderful Olympic medal trackers providing an insightful view of medal counts and country standings with the help of telling visualizations — from Bloomberg News, The New York Times’s The Upshot, FiveThirtyEight, and Axios.
Bloomberg News: “Tokyo Summer Olympics Medal Count”
Let’s begin with Bloomberg ‘s Tokyo 2020 medal tracker. It is an impressive project with a lot of (beautiful) everything. In addition to a standard, table-based representation of the medal count by country along with the information on the latest results and the calendar of Olympic events, there you can find a number of compelling visualizations and take a deep dive into the historical context.
In particular, streamgraphs are there to represent historical medals won, for each sport. An international map grid is used to visualize the medal distribution at Tokyo 2020, Rio 2016, and London 2012. A line-based isotype, force-directed clusters, and a whole lot of bubbles also do a great job communicating various interesting information about the current and previous Summer Olympic Games in a stunning way and making the medal tracker on Bloomberg News really fun to explore.
The Upshot by NYT: “Tokyo Olympics: Who Leads the Medal Count?”
If you are wondering what nation is doing best at the Tokyo Olympics, first you should determine the ranking model as the answer depends on it completely. For instance, as of the time of writing, China holds a lead if you prefer to count gold medals alone. But if you sort countries based on the total number of medals won, it appears that the United States is at the top.
The New York Times’s The Upshot allows you to check all possible medal counting functions and see what country is leading in Tokyo according to what you believe is the ultimate measure of success in the Olympic Games.
The interactive charts here display each country’s current rank at the Olympics depending on the relative worth of one gold medal to one silver medal and one silver medal to one bronze medal. For example, if you only care about the number of gold medals, check the top right corner. If you believe all medals matter and have the same value in such rankings, the bottom left corner is all yours. Other weights are represented in between.
FiveThirtyEight: “Which Countries Are Doing Better — Or Worse — Than Expected At The Tokyo Olympics?”
FiveThirtyEight’s interactive medal count project offers a look at the number of medals won by the national teams in the context of the initial analytic expectations. The projections used as the point of reference were generated based on the competing countries’ achievements in each sport over the past three Summer Olympics. (Learn more about the methodology here if you would like.)
So, in this project, you can compare the current Olympic award count for each nation with how many medals FiveThirtyEight thought it would have already won and see how much more it might get during the remaining time. Check out the streamgraph visualization for the top five countries. Scroll down a little bit to check out how each of the competing nations stacks up by current rank and current medals, medals won vs expected, and projected final rank.
Axios: “Olympics Medal Tracker”
The Olympic medal tracker launched by Axios looks pretty simple yet elegant. Depicting every medal won by a country as one medal of the respective color (gold, silver, or bronze), it provides an informative overview of how many medals each of the competing nations have already deserved to take home from Tokyo 2020.
Hover over a medal in a country’s collection and you will see the details of who, when, and in what sport and discipline have won it. The medals can be sorted by rank or by date. | https://medium.com/data-visualization-weekly/best-tokyo-olympics-medal-trackers-dataviz-weekly-11dcd704ea38 | [] | 2021-08-06 15:09:33.604000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Sports', 'Charts', 'Data Visualization', 'Olympics'] |
4 Most Important Methods for Plant Propagation. | There are 4 methods for a plant propagation.
Cutting is very common and the most important method of vegetative propagation. Parts of the plant which are capable of producing roots and shoots after inserting in the soil are used for cutting. It makes use of totipotency as an inherent property of plant cells.
Cutting are always taken from healthy plants. There are three subtypes of stem cutting namely softwood cutting, semi-hardwood cutting and hardwood cutting.
Examples: Rose twig, Hibiscus twig.
1) The cutting should be preferably about one year old and should be mature.
2) Early morning is the best time for performing cuttings.
3) The shoot of the selected plant is cut about 9–12 inches long and about 1cm thick.
4) The upper circular cut is given slightly above the upper node and the lower slanting cut is given slightly below the lower node.
5) Each cutting must have two to three nodes having vigorous buds. The upper leaves are kept intact and all the other leaves are removed to avoid excessive transpiration and drying of the cutting.
6) The lower end of the cutting is dipped in root growth hormone solution.
7) The two third portion of the twig is planted in soil with the slanting portion in the pot.
8) The cutting is watered regularly after planting.
9) The high humidity is maintained by covering the pot around the cutting.
10) Cutting are generally done for propagating Acalypha, Geranium, Coleus, Grapes etc.
Layering is the development of adventitious roots on a stem while it is still attached to the parent plant (i.e. development of roots in situ). The rooted branches are then detached and function as new individual plants.
Examples: Acalypha twig, Guava twig.
1) One or two year old shoot is selected for layering.
2) The leaves of the selected shoot branch are removed.
3) 2–3 cm wide bark of the stem is removed below the bud in a ring.
4) The rooting medium is applied to the ringed portion.
5) The ringed and the adjacent part of the stem are covered with moist moss and wrapped with a polythene sheet.
6) Both the ends of the polythene sheet are tied with strings.
7) When enough adventitious roots are visible through the plastic sheet, the stem is detached from the parent plant and planted in a pot having rooting medium.
8) Air Layering is generally done for propagating Ficus, Pomegranate, Guava, Mango etc.
In grafting a branch or a shoot of one plant is inserted into the root system of another plant and both unite to grow as one plant.
The branch or shoot that is inserted is called scion and the lower portion of the graft is called as root stock.
The stock and scion are placed intimately so that the vascular cambiums of both organs come in close contact and ultimately unite.
Grafting is done to improve the plant in its multiplication for its useful characters.
Example: Mango.
1) Two independent plants having their own root system are grafted together.
2) The chances of success in this grafting are maximum.
3) One of the plants is selected as stock and another as scion where the thickness of the branches to be approached or grafted must be equal thickness.
4) A thin slice of bark and wood (up to pholem) is removed from the stock and from the scion at their approachable junctions.
5) The exposed cambium layer of scion and stock should then be placed closely without any air gap.
6) The scion and stock are tied with jute or polythene tape and grafting wax is applied at the joints. The Union is complete, within 2 to 3 months.
7) The upper portion of root stock is cut after the union. The scion should also be detached from the parent plant. i.e. below the graft. e.g. Mango, Jack fruit, Custard apple.
Budding is form of grafting in which a single vegetative bud is taken from one plant and inserted into stem of another rooted stock. So that the two unite and grow as one unit. It is a quick and efficient method practiced mostly in ornamental, flowering plants.
Example: Rose.
T-budding
1) ‘T’ like cut is given on the stock;and it is also called shield budding because scion (bud) looks in appearance like shield.
2) A vertical cut is of 2.5 cm long is made on the root stock, with the help of a budding knife. Then a horizontal cut a cross the top at right angle to the first cut is made that resembles like ‘T’.
3) Two flaps of the bark can be lifted to this cut by twisting the knife to insert the shield bud.
4) The scion is selected from an improved variety branch of current year growth.
5) The bud is removed by a shallow cutting or scooping and is placed or inserted inside the flap at ‘T’ cut on the stock.
6) The union is wrapped by a polythene strip keeping the tip of the bud exposed to air.
7) In 3–4 weeks when the bud unites with the stock and starts growing, then polythene strip is removed. | https://medium.com/@kadamm5678/4-most-important-methods-for-plant-propagation-aca15a2e37c3 | [] | 2021-08-30 16:23:51.790000+00:00 | ['Cutting', 'Plants', 'Methods', 'Process'] |
The Trauma of Mass Production | Look- I know that this one might be coming out of nowhere. Even I feel a little nervous about putting the T word, which we all agreed should only be ghost pronounced in polite company until 2028, and Mass Production, which the whole of economics will chase you down the street with flags to tell you how good it is, in a cause and effect relationship.
However, as a maker of healing pants, I feel it my duty to try and get to the bottom of the great global north malaise. For a culture that has supposedly subjugated scarcity with industrialisation and enjoys creating museum exhibits about living on Mars soon, we really seem to be a lot more miserable and a lot more miserly than our ancestors might have hoped. A miriad of solutions exist to the climate predicament, from the charmingly simple economic restructuring, to the technocrazed gas bombs. We should have sorted this by now. WE ARE ADVANCED.
But instead we continue on the ultimate lemming mission. Buying and buying and buying totally suicidal amounts of gear, that eclipse every advancement in sustainable production with a curve of consumption that continues to reach for the stars; Perhaps there’s something deeper going on. Perhaps an endless conveyor belt of things that are impressively the same, isn’t actually proof of being totally, completely, brilliant. Maybe, its a symbol of our misunderstanding of the world, and holds one of the keys to sorting this mess out.
The inception of Mass Production was undoubtedly traumatic.
Its your classic, history is written by the victors situation; some capitalists made everyone miserable, and earnt a shit tonne of profit, some of which they devoted to telling people that it wasn’t them who made everyone miserable.
Now look, I’m obviously not in the majority of historians (I’m actually not allowed in the historians club at all), when I tell you that the peasants were about 1 trillion times more happy making stuff themselves, than buying things in a shop. But, honestly, that is at least incredibly likely to be true.* Have you ever knitted something? Which do you prefer- knitting something and either keeping or selling it, or being forced to make your children crawl underneath a moving freight trainesque piece of machinery for a couple of years so you can buy something that a robot knitted (and is not your favourite colour)?
There’s a risk with that analogy in that not many people nowadays have knitted something and know how great it is (I make things for my real job, so this is pure bias talking here) and not many people have that many children nowadays and know that they make you feel guilty about even the slightest inconvenience.
Here’s another one just in case-
Do you prefer playing a computer game, or watching a computer play its own computer game (for a year) so that (at the end of the year) the computer will give you a medium high score?
I’m (attempting to) making multiple points here-
Humans like doing stuff for themselves… EVEN IF IT IS HARD. We like learning things, and doing better next time, and seeing how much we’ve improved, and having something to show for it. We don’t necessarily like doing the same stuff, but some people stopping other people doing the stuff that they like doing is mean. Traumatic even. And that’s what the capitalists (circa industrial revolution) were about- they reaaaaally liked doing stuff like organising and being in charge and making loads of money and they decided to deliberately prevent other people from spinning wool or weaving. The lives of the peasants didn’t immediately go from knitting your own jumper to getting an iced latte and buying a knock off Ralph Lauren cashmere from TK Maxx (TBH knitting is just a metaphor, knitted jumpers weren’t the fashion back then, and the peasants made very complex and technical clothing that is difficult for our tiny 21st century brains to imagine). After the capitalists invented robots that wielded knitting needles (again thats a metaphor), the peasants got REALLY, INCREDIBLY poor. Like, literally sell your own children poor. And the horrible truth is, that mass production is still making metaphorical jumper knitters REALLY INCREDIBLY poor, in most of the world, with no intention of redeeming them with iced lattes and TK maxxs before we all die of climate change. Mass Production just gives you back stuff that you could have made yourself, or swapped with someone, and TBH the peasants were all over that and firmly set out their boundaries; i.e. that they didn’t in fact want to watch a computer playing the computer game. But those dang, capitalists were one step ahead of them. If you’ll revisit the computer game analogy with me- lets say you prefer option a) and would like to carry on playing the computer game yourself, well the capitalist turns around and says- that in fact it’s his computer, and he was only lennnnnnnding it to you and now he wants it back so you’ll have to watch the computer playing it anyway, (except for this analogy to work imagine that computers just occur naturally in the landscape and you can just find one and take it home). Which was known as ‘The Enclosure of the Commons’, the retracting of land rights, or the blatant imperialist take over of Britain, that prevented the peasants from peacefully knitting their jumpers and having a few home brews at the end of a hard weeks super fun knitting.
Generational Trauma with a dram of Personal Trauma to wash it down.
Now look. I’m not a professor of Generational Trauma, but I was a kid once, and once one of my siblings wanted something that they BLATANTLY did not deserve, and my parent said I had to give it to them by invoking the ultimate repudiation ‘LIFES NOT FAIR’ and I still have a tiny bit of trauma from realising, in that painful moment, that life is not fair.
If that thing, that gotten taken away, had been the actual land that I grazed my fave cow on, (and thus provided me and my beloveds with delicious sustenance)… well… that would be traumatic. And it turns out ‘LIFE’S NOT FAIR’ is not a scientific fact like Einstein or something, it was invented by bullies when they did some land enclosing, and forced you to work in a factory (and your children to join a gang of choral pickpockets). And the very fact that the phrase LIFES NOT FAIR, has become part of child rearing vernacular is probably a symptom of Generational Trauma.
And all of this for the ability to mass produce. ‘The ends justify the means’- you cry. ‘Look how much stuff we can make, thanks to the sacrifice of those peasants, who eventually gave up their knitting needles and knuckled down to starving and watching computers having all the fun.’
Way Too Much Stuff
Have you actually looked at how much stuff we make? Have you though? Have you really looked at one of those mountains of clothes that just one street in one town throws away, barely worn, in one year. Do you know whats bigger than that mountain? The mountain of clothes that Burberry made and never even sold in one year. Do you know whats bigger than that? -the mountain of plastic hangers that ‘insert a brand that mass produces’ uses JUST TO TRANSPORT CLOTHES BETWEEN FACTORIES AND WAREHOUSES, every year. (Do you know whats bigger than that? the literal mountain that ‘insert distant relative of the royal family’ bought with the money they got from using slaves to farm cotton). Looking at any one of those mountains makes me want to gouge my own eyes out with a handwhittled spoon, and sacrifice them to a grain of pure sand.
We’re are literally living out the folk story where the magical pot makes porridge and then everyone drowns in porridge because the person who knows the magic words that turn the magic porridge off, well he died. (I’m tempted to put a Karl Marx joke in here, LOL, but I’m an anarcho-syndicalist). “Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy”. In a debt culture you can’t turn off the porridge pot, without going bust, and as for your fall back plan of jumping off the hamster wheel and just growing your own vegetables and foraging your own fire twigs… see above under ‘Enclosure of the Commons’.
And like, that’s just the traumatic history, the trauma of being born without the right to eat, the trauma of buying and selling people to grow enough cotton to feed a minotaur of a cotton spinner that can spin cotton 24 hours a day, the trauma of buying that minotaur on credit with compound interest, the trauma of bullies taking all your stuff, and taking your time, and taking your children’s time and not even caring that you’re actually damn good at knitting.
There’s more!!!!-
There’s the trauma of earning your £8 an hour (which was not an easy amount of hourly money to prize from the hands of our good old friends the capitalists TBF), and going down that high street shop, and picking out a pair of jeans that are not your favourite colour, but they’re vogue’s favourite colour so maybe you like them too, and putting them on your perfect bum (that grew all on its own from two cells using codes that it made up itself in the middle of a star millenias ago)- and your perfect bum doesn’t fit in those jeans, even though your thighs do and your waist does. And now you’re being forced to question if your bum actually is perfect (stardust and millenias and the improbability of amino acids forming genetic material aside).
When the reality is- those jeans don’t fit anyone, they fit a made up picture on a computer, and then a robot made probably 300 of them, despite them not fitting anyone (except in a few random examples) especially for them to end up, discarded after two uncomfortable wears, in an embarrassing mountain of clothes next to a disgusted George Monbiot. I don’t want to be a total leftist floozy over here (particularly as I am an anarcho-syndicalist) but that experience, over and over again- the overwhelming evidence that despite it all- all the boredom, and the disenfranchisement, and the vulnerability to shocks in the housing market, despite all of that, those jeans aren’t for you. That is rubbing salt in a centuries old wound.
One Size To Fit Them All (after they replace us with robots)
Mass Production doesn’t even grant you a pair of jeans that fit (its not its fault, it just literally can’t because it has to make everything the same, and everyone isn’t the same). And yet, those magazines and billboards and philosophers and historians (#notallphilosophersandhistorians) will gaslight you to kingdom come. They’ll insist that you are lucky that you don’t have to knit a jumper, in your favourite colour, to the measurements of your own unique and perfect body. (Or as a gift for a favourite Aunt in exchange for a beautiful chair that is also your favourite colour and fits your delectable ass just spot-oningly). Whilst you’re looking in bewilderment at your ass, they’re already drinking in that sadness, like crazed self-esteem vampires (Selfestampires), repackaging it and selling it back to you as another pair of jeans, or a diet, ideally both. LOOLLLLOLLLLOLLLLLMFAO ALL. THE. WAY. TO. THE. BANK.
Lucky you that you don’t have to knit your own jumper. Luckily you don’t have time to anyway.
*(P.S Peasants didn’t spend a lot of time writing their feelings down, but they did spend a lot of time fighting to protect their way of life… ) | https://medium.com/@alice_56353/the-trauma-of-mass-production-4c4a55abfc1 | ['Alice Holloway'] | 2021-09-01 18:42:18.599000+00:00 | ['History Of Technology', 'Sustainability', 'Sustainable Fashion', 'Consumerism', 'Climate Change'] |
Fixing stuff around yourself | The work desk area was created around 1200 CE, and keeping in mind that the innovation upon it has developed, the work area itself has continued as before: a level surfaced work zone joined by drawers and cubbies for capacity.
After a busy Thursday at work place, I was sitting on my chair at the office and staring at the computer screen unintentionally and all in my mind was about the project work assigned by Amal Academy. All of sudden something clicks in mind and I start seeing my office table from a different perspective. I found my office desk very messy and found it cluttered. Then google about cluttered desks and find quotes about cluttered and messy work desks.
Awww moment for myself, that even famous physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics quote about a cluttered desk. In fact I felt proud.
Back in the day, a clean desk was considered a sign of slothful laziness. Busy people, and smart people didn’t have time to straighten up.
But as I dug more about my work desk I realized that I faced lots of problems in routine office work in finding important documents in a piled up building of papers on my desk. My messy desk causes loss of productivity and I am facing problems and feel less confident whenever I need to find any paper.
Our desk management and the way we organize our table shows how organized we are about our tasks and work. I lose lots of precious time in finding papers from messy desks and whenever during my busy work day I look at my table I get depressed and worried that so many tasks are left to complete.
So I decided to do the totally opposite of what Albert Einstein famously pointed out.
I decided to take action right at that moment and start cleaning my desk by allocating every piece of paper in the relevant file and keeping them in proper manners.
In the process of desk cleaning found many disadvantages of messy desks, few of them are below mentioned.
Messy workplace / Desk Affects Your Brain and Your Work
Less Productivity
Wastage of time in finding important documents
Give bad image to visitors
It took me an hour or more to arrange my table in the proper way but during the course found so many important lost papers and documents. Also learned different lessons during the desk cleaning process.
Here are a few pictures of my office desk after the completion of years awaited important tasks.
It was really an amazing experience.
Following key learning lessons from my this activity that I would like to share with my fellows.
Increase productivity
Increase Confidence
Organized Workplace
Organized time and space management
Increased Focus
Less time waste
Less Stress
Greater profitability
Less Absenteeism
Improved morale
I would suggest to every working professional to keep their desks cleans and organized. | https://medium.com/@faizan880/fixing-stuff-around-yourself-82ba1f6e6645 | ['Muhammad Faizan Mirza'] | 2020-12-19 08:07:14.107000+00:00 | ['Office Culture', 'Cleaning', 'Clutter Clearing', 'Workplace', 'Organizing'] |
Plastic Market Size Worth $722.6 Billion By 2027 | The global plastic market size is expected to reach USD 722.6 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 3.2% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Increasing automotive production and subsequent rise in plastics consumption in automotive component fabrication because of regulatory policies pertaining to vehicular weight reduction and fuel efficiency is expected to drive the market over the forecast period. Plastic facilitate fuel saving in automotive applications on account of reduced car weight and density as compared to conventional materials such as metals or rubber.
Since the last decade, there has been a substantial demand for the products as replacement for metals and ferrous alloys across various industries such as consumer goods, automotive, and industrial machinery. The growth of the market criticality lies on various factors such as ever-increasing requirement of end users in terms of product specification and versatility influencing consumption dynamics. Other factors such as socio-political, production process, and feedstock availability events also have a significant impact on industry trends.
Rapidly developing construction and automobile markets in Asia Pacific is expected to increase the demand for plastic in interiors, exteriors, and under hood components. Its major applications include under hood components in the automotive industry, building interior and exteriors in the construction and infrastructure industries, and various applications in electronics and durables.
However, the outbreak of highly contagious COVID-19 across the globe is severely affecting manufacturing industries, which, in turn, is anticipated to negatively impact the growth of the market. As COVID-19 continues to spread across the world, work from home rules, order cancellations, and shipping complications are surging throughout the plastics industry.
End-use industries such as automotive, consumer electronics, furniture and bedding, and construction are witnessing a sharp decline in terms of demand and production. This is owing to the reducing discretionary spending, increasing spending on essential items such as food and medical products, factory shutdowns, limitations on supply and transport, and a slowdown in infrastructure development activities across the globe. This, in turn, is anticipated to hamper the market. Moreover, rising number of COVID-19 positive cases across the globe is expected to result in an increased demand for medical devices, thereby positively influencing the growth of the market in medical device application such as ventilators, testing equipment, gloves, and masks.
Click the link below:
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/global-plastics-market
Further key findings from the report suggest: | https://medium.com/@marketnewsreports/plastic-market-ccaff64cc558 | ['Gaurav Shah'] | 2020-06-08 07:22:12.445000+00:00 | ['Brazil', 'Spain', 'Italy', 'Saudi Arabia', 'Plastic'] |
😢 Nos volvieron a estafar!!! | This is an email from Monee Blog . | https://medium.com/monee-blog/nos-volvieron-a-estafar-56946223bf7a | ['Alberto Gómez'] | 2017-06-20 02:13:03.273000+00:00 | ['Newsletter', 'Español', 'Finanzas Personales', 'Dinero', 'Bitcoin'] |
My Top 5 Kickstarter Projects — August 2021 | With September in full swing, let’s take a look back at the best August Kickstarter projects. I’ve got a great round-up of products for you.
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NOSU is a dual-purpose stainless steel tumbler with built-in cutlery. NOSU, which is short for No Single Use, is the next big, simple solution to convenient and sustainable living. NOSU is perfect for active lifestyles and hot or cold beverages. With this tumbler, you’ll never forget your cutlery for onto the go meals ever again.
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There are many duffle and laptop bags available on the market. However, CACHE is unique in that it is a hybrid tech sling and duffle. It’s spacious, has quick access, is versatile and convertible. It comes in two color options, static and carbon, and is perfect for carrying your everyday essentials. In addition, its ergonomic shoulder strap is compatible with both left and right-handed people.
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Razor blades get dull quickly, and traveling with one isn’t always convenient. Erazor is a revolutionary ceramic blade portable shaver that won’t go dull for years. Erazor will altogether remove any hair beneath it and can quickly be charged with a USB-C cable. The material used in the blade is well known for its superior performance and is generally used for precision cutting. Did I mention that it’s easy to clean and will stay charged for up to 60 days with one charge?
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If your family is anything like mine, we have different remotes lying around everywhere. It’s always tough to figure out which remote operates what in our house. SofabatonX1 is the most versatile universal all-in-one smart remote. This remote can control all your entertainment and home devices. The remote’s battery life lasts up to 60 days when charged, and it also works with Alexa and Google assistant. The SofabatonX1 is perfect for de-cluttering your remotes.
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Finally, the Culla Blanket by Crua is the ultimate outdoor blanket. Culla Blanket is a graphene-infused, lightweight, water-resistant, tear-resistant outdoor blanket. This blanket is the perfect addition to your outdoor adventures. The blanket is sure to warm you up, versatile, and can be used anyway, from a picnic blanket to a sleeping bag. | https://medium.com/@roymorejon/my-top-5-kickstarter-projects-august-2021-255dd2708061 | ['Roy Morejon'] | 2021-09-06 12:24:40.849000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Crowdfunding', 'Technology', 'Kickstarter', 'Gadgets'] |
What the Exchase project team is currently working on | December 2020
Social trading
Trader profile
A trader on the Exchase platform has three potential roles: the actual trader (by default), the PAMM investor or “subscriber”, and the PAMM manager or “master”.
Here is the “master” profile:
It displays the flow of “subscribers”, and also contains sections of portfolio settings, through which the PAMM manager sort of advertises his “strategies”.
A strategy is a concept on the basis of which the “master” carries out trade. A “subscriber” can believe either in a specific strategy, or, in general, its author (this depends on the mental pattern of a “subscriber” and those performance evaluation metrics by which they predict the trading success of this “master”: based on the personality of the PAMM manager or relying on the “strategy” algorithm).
As shown in the screenshots below, there are two modes of subscribing to the “master” (configurable by him in each of his strategies):
— automatic acceptance of the subscription;
— getting applications for subscription to the pool, from which they can select some and approve/reject. | https://medium.com/@exchase/what-the-exchase-project-team-is-currently-working-on-6ef4daa13d7a | ['Exchase Fintech'] | 2020-12-23 14:38:25.976000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Exchase', 'Exse', 'Exchange', 'Crypto'] |
>+𝐿𝐼𝒱𝐸’’• “New Mexico Bowl 2020” (Livestream) — Hawaii vs Houston Live NCAAF FREE, TV channel 2020 | Head coaches that have faced each other before will close out the 2020 season when Hawaii and Houston meet in the New Mexico Bowl.
It’s somewhat fitting that two teams that have been directly impacted by the coronavirus, albeit in different ways, are meeting in the New Mexico Bowl, which had to move from Albuquerque to Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas, because of state restrictions.
LIVE:: http://bit.ly/New-Mexico-Bowl-2020-Live
LIVE:: http://bit.ly/New-Mexico-Bowl-2020-Live
Houston (3–4, 3–3 AAC) has endured plenty of schedule disruptions this season because of numerous cancellations. In fact, Dana Holgorsen’s team has played just once since Nov. 14, losing 30–27 at Memphis a couple of weeks ago. Not surprisingly, the Cougars aren’t taking this game for granted.
“I think we’re just excited about having another opportunity to be able to play another game,” Holgorsen told reporters. “You get so many games canceled (this year) that the last thing I thought would happen would be bowl games… Our guys like playing and like competing. The opportunity to do this one last time in 2020 is something that we’re excited about.”
Hawaii’s (4–4 overall and in Mountain West play) story is a little different. The Rainbow Warriors didn’t lose any games because of COVID-19, making them one of a handful of teams to avoid that fate, but they are currently looking for a new home field with the recent announcement that Aloha Stadium won’t be hosting any future events due to financial hardships caused by the pandemic.
This unexpected development has only added to the obstacles head coach Todd Graham has dealt with in his first season leading Hawaii, but where the Rainbow Warriors will play their home games in 2021 takes a back seat, for now, to the program’s third straight bowl appearance and fourth in five years.
“I am so excited for our team and staff,” Graham told reporters. “They’ve worked hard throughout this entire season, under such challenging circumstances. This game is a great chance to showcase our team to the people of Texas and to a national television audience. Houston is a fine program, and we can’t wait to compete against them on Christmas Eve.”
Graham and Holgorsen have faced each other before as each’s career has featured stints at several different schools. Holgorsen is a perfect 3–0 against Graham thus far, but a win on Thursday would be extra special for the Hawaii head coach as it would be the 100th of his career (currently 99–65 across 13 seasons). Graham also has fared better than Holgorsen in bowl games, sporting a 5–4 record vs. 2–5.
And if that familiarity wasn’t enough, these two teams have met in a bowl game before. That was way back in the 2003 Hawaii Bowl, which was won in three overtimes on Christmas by the host Rainbow Warriors but is probably more remembered for the postgame brawl at midfield. Hopefully, that kind of history won’t repeat itself in Toyota Stadium on Christmas Eve.
New Mexico Bowl: Hawaii vs. Houston Live Stream
Kickoff: Thursday, Dec. 24 at 3:30 p.m. ET
Where: Toyota Stadium (Frisco, Texas)
TV: ESPN
Spread: Houston -13
When Hawaii Has the Ball
It’s simplistic but in this case, it’s appropriate. As quarterback Chevan Cordeiro goes, so go the Rainbow Warriors. A true dual-threat leading the offense, Cordeiro also has been sacked 26 times in eight games.
So it’s no stretch to say that the Hawaii backfield is where this bowl game gets decided. Houston is one of the best in the nation at getting to the quarterback. The Cougars average better than three sacks per game (22 total), which ranks them among the top 20 in FBS.
But if Cordeiro can stay away from the big losses behind the line of scrimmage and protect the ball, he should be able to put some scoring drives together. Third in the Mountain West in total offense at 300 yards per game, Cordeiro also has accounted for 18 total touchdowns (11 passing, 7 rushing). Again, when he’s good, so are the Rainbow Warriors, who averaged 33.8 points in their four wins vs. 18.3 in their four losses.
Cordeiro also will need help from his supporting cast. Running back Calvin Turner does it all, as he leads the team with 458 receiving yards and is averaging 5.7 yards per carry. He’s also scored nine touchdowns, five through the air and four on the ground. Miles Reed is behind Cordeiro in both rushing attempts (82) and yards (346) but he’s found the end zone just once and entered the transfer portal after the regular season finale versus UNLV.
Three wide receivers have logged 29 or more catches thus far with Jared Smart leading the trio in both receptions (33) and yards (287). Fellow seniors Rico Bussey and Melquise Stovall aren’t too far behind Smart in either category but the trio also is averaging a collective 8.5 yards per catch, so they’re performing more like possession receivers rather than big-play threats.
The Cougars gave up nearly 420 yards and 33 points per game during the regular season and will be without two of their best defenders in the bowl game. Senior linebacker Grant Stuard, who leads the AAC in tackles per game (8.7), and senior defensive lineman Payton Turner (team-high 5.0 sacks) have both opted out to start preparing for next year’s NFL draft. That should make things easier for Cordeiro and company.
When Houston Has the Ball
A hallmark of Dana Holgorsen teams has been the offense and it’s no different with this year’s edition of the Cougars, even if they dealt with multiple stops and starts to their season. Despite all of the schedule shuffling, Houston is averaging 32 points and 423 yards per game.
Clayton Tune is the trigger man and the junior enters the bowl game with 1,832 yards, 13 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He’s also second on the team with 269 rushing yards on 62 carries (4.3 ypc) and has scored five times on the ground.
Kyle Porter is the leading rusher with 394 yards and four touchdowns, but he’s averaging a modest 4.1 yards per carry. Collectively, the Cougars average 4.3 yards per attempt and have totaled 12 rushing touchdowns in seven games. In fact, Houston is averaging just as many rushing yards per game (155.3) as Hawaii is allowing (155.1), so it will be interesting to see if these trends continue on Christmas Eve.
Wide receiver Marquez Stevenson will not play in the bowl game and instead turn his attention to the Senior Bowl and getting ready for the draft. that still leaves fellow wideouts Keith Corbin and Nathaniel Dell, as well as tight end Christian Trahan, each of whom are averaging at least 12 yards per catch.
For its part, Hawaii has been pretty stingy against the pass, giving up 191 yards per game with nearly as many interceptions (nine) as touchdown passes (10) allowed. Sophomore linebacker Darius Muasau has been making plays all over the field. He’s first in the Mountain West and fourth nationally in tackles per game (11.9), racking up 95 (including 63 solo) in eight games. He also leads the team in sacks with 3.5.
Final Analysis
Regardless of where it’s being played, this is the first either team has appeared in the New Mexico Bowl 2020 Live Stream. Houston is playing in its 28th bowl game overall while it’s Hawaii’s 14th. The Rainbow Warriors are more accustomed to playing at home for the holidays, as this will be just their third bowl game on the mainland and first since the 2008 Sugar Bowl loss — 41–10 — to Georgia.
But that means nothing — really, neither does Hawaii’s fifth-place and Houston’s sixth-place finishes respectively in the Mountain West and AAC — especially in a season so vastly affected by the virus.
COVID-19 has hit Houston in waves, keeping the Cougars off the field for long periods of time, including just playing once (Dec. 12) since mid-November.
“I challenge (our players) to win this game so we can buy some rings that say ‘COVID CHAMPS’ on them — something to remember 2020 by,” head coach Dana Holgorsen told Houston radio station SportsTalk 790. “Let’s do something to feel good about what happened in 2020. Let’s get a ring, put it on a shelf and look at it and say, ‘I remember 2020,’ and tell your kids about it one day.”
But can Houston shake off the rust? That could be what tilts this game towards Hawaii, especially early on. Either way, expect the Rainbow Warriors to be ready come Christmas Eve.
“To have the opportunity to… compete to be a bowl champion is a big, big deal and is something that I think is going to help us tremendously,” Graham told reporters. “Our guys were shocked (to get the invite), but I know I’m excited for them.”
Prediction: Hawaii 35, Houston 30 | https://medium.com/@andit1475/new-mexico-bowl-2020-livestream-hawaii-vs-houston-live-ncaaf-free-tv-channel-5e2c02b469bb | ['Ncaa Football Bowl'] | 2020-12-24 19:45:53.488000+00:00 | ['Hawaii', 'Football', 'Houston', 'NCAAF', 'New Mexico Bowl 2020'] |
Be Calmer — Slowly Can Be Faster. Learn simple way to reduce stress | Be Calmer — Slowly Can Be Faster
Photo by Rk Preetham from Pexels
If we try harder, we will get results faster. We many have been taught this way, but this logic does not always apply and often the opposite is true.
On some issues, the more we strive, the more difficult it is for things to happen and the results may even be the opposite of what we want because of this excessive, unnatural effort.
Trying to force things to happen faster is not always a good idea and in matters like mindfulness and meditation, this often happens.
The process of getting to know each other better and learning how to deal with our emotions and thoughts takes time and requires patience to reach the results we want to achieve.
It is not because we decide that we are going to be calmer people that we immediately become calmer people.
It is not because we decide, mentally, that we will start to practice more compassion and delicacy with others that this happens immediately.
These are changes that require time and practice and that have to be carried out in a light and natural way in order to achieve the intended objective.
This idea is very well explained in this brief Zen tale(in another version of this story, the student says he is eager to attain “enlightenment”):
A martial arts student went to his teacher and said:
“I am devoted to studying your martial system.
How long will it take me to master it? “ The teacher’s replied:
“10 years”. Impatiently, the student answered:
“But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard.
I will practice every day, ten or more hours a day if I have to.
How long will it take then? “ The teacher thought for a moment and replied:
“20 years.”
This story reminds us that we must be patient and let things go their way.
In many matters, there is no point in trying to force things. Doing so can have the opposite effect of what we want and end up delaying the process instead of speeding it up.
It is best to appreciate the route and not just think about the destination — that’s what will make our journey pleasant.
Sometimes going slowly is taking the fastest road. | https://medium.com/change-your-mind/be-calmer-slowly-can-be-faster-1905adcab46 | ['Zen Michael'] | 2020-12-10 11:37:55.568000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Mindfulness', 'Meditation', 'Stress Management', 'Habit Building'] |
Solar Sails: A Far-Sailed Concept | The common person would think that sending robots, satellites, probes, and even humans throughout the Solar System is possible, and quite an outlook into the future. Any further, however, and you encounter mind-bending distances incomprehensible to the human brain. Sending anything out beyond the solar system seems outlandish as well as far-fetched as anyone would think. Or, is it? Perhaps there is a way right in front of our eyes, perhaps we didn’t think of an obvious solution? Allow me to explain to you a crazy yet simple idea, something easy to develop yet so hard to make. I introduce you to the solar sail.
The Solar Sail
A Solar Sail is a massive sheet of Mylar that uses the pressure from sunlight to propel itself to unthinkable speeds. It can carry few basic scientific pieces of equipment with it to help with the observation of exoplanets and carry that information back to Earth.
Solar Sails are around 344 square feet or 32 square meters. However, their size varies, and some can be as large as a football field! While their size may vary, the solar Sails are consistently very, very thin, comparable to that of a piece of paper.
The solar sail was made like this because it needs to absorb the energy of the photons coming from the sun as said earlier, as well as keeping the mass as low as possible for maximum efficiency. It isn’t just the sun, however. Even photons from a laser can accelerate the Solar Sails.
The Purpose
Solar Sails primarily serve as a beacon, marking the extent of human technology reaching a symbolic milestone in space travel as well as scientific progress. However, as stated earlier, the solar sails can be equipped with scientific equipment that allows the solar sails to observe any exoplanet in the given vicinity.
Interstellar travel may be the most prominent promise given by the Sails, though it isn’t the only one. They can observe many planets within our own system and small asteroids, especially the 2 ice giants Uranus and Neptune as well as their respective moons, which haven’t been observed by any other satellite besides the Voyagers, launched in the '70s.
Solar Sails can also go into close vicinity to the sun, an object so dangerous most satellites cannot go within 27 million miles of it! However, it is severely outclassed by the recent Solar Parker probe that has far better equipment for observing the sun and orbits 4 million miles from the sun!
History of The Solar Sail
The concept of a Solar Sail has been around for centuries, albeit merely a concept until recent years. Solar Sails were first made as an idea in 1608 by the famous astronomer known as Johannes Kepler, who shared it with his friend Gallileo Galilei, and from there became well known as a concept.
In 1873, a major scientific discovery by James Maxwell proved that sunlight can put pressure in the form of a photon on a given object. This discovery is the basis of the operation of a solar sail and proves that the Solar Sail concept is possible.
Solar Sails were eventually be constructed and launched centuries later. In 2005, when the companies “The Planetary Society” and “Cosmos Studios” launched the first solar sail called the Cosmos-1. The purpose of this experiment is to test if a solar sail truly worked and can accelerate using the sun’s photons.
After that launch, many other Solar Sail launches such as Sunjammer and IKAROS were launched by big companies like JAXA and NASA respectively. In 2016, a Russian Billionaire by the name of Yuri Milner invested $100 million in the launching of Breakthrough Starshot, which aims to send Solar Sails to Alpha Centauri. More on that below.
Progress
The breakthrough Starshot Seems to be the most promising project to send solar sails out into the stars and their exoplanets. A launch with these solar sails is likely to come within the 2030s and arrive in the Alpha Centauri system 4.37 light-years away in around the 2050s. However, it will be impossible to attach a human onto any of these solar sails, as it will add too much mass.
There will be an extra lazer propelling these solar sails as well, allowing them to accelerate to 20% the speed of light or a whopping 100 million miles per hour! The observational technologies that are supposed to be attached to the Sails are currently in development, as well as the lazers needed to accelerate the sails to this speed.
Conclusion
Basic Interstellar Travel may be possible, and the work of Solar Sails is proof. Science Fiction often describes travel on such scales with futuristic gargantuan ships, or through warping in space through wormholes like in the hit movie series star wars. However, none of this is necessary for basic observation of exoplanets far outside our system. Solar Sails are the most prominent form of interstellar travel with our current technology. But, the universe is vast, so vast even, that any galaxy and even most stars in our own galaxy are far, far out of reach even with this new technology. However, the universe is yet so big that there are endless possibilities, and even what seems impossible now may be normal arbitrarily far into the future. Only the power of the human brain, even yours, can make any dream come true.
Resources:
https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3#:~:text=This%20involves%20a%20ground%2Dbased,100%20million%20miles%20an%20hour.
https://www.livescience.com/32593-how-do-solar-sails-work-.html#:~:text=Inflatable%20booms%20provide%20the%20sheets,sun's%20light%2C%20according%20to%20NASA.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/31jul_solarsails#:~:text=In%201873%2C%20James%20Clerk%20Maxwell,pressure%20effects%20loudly%20and%20clearly.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/IKAROS_solar_sail.jpg
https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20190611_history-of-solar-sailing-ls2.png | https://medium.com/@auyushg/solar-sails-a-far-sailed-concept-df3542cf775a | ['Spatium Nuntius'] | 2021-07-25 01:10:49.443000+00:00 | ['Space Exploration', 'Solar Sail', 'Science', 'Space Travel'] |
How to become a better developer. | Code a little every day
If you are starting out, it’s super important that you code a little every day. It doesn’t need to be in 5 hour-long sessions, even just 10–20 minutes a day. Doing a simple coding challenge is enough, ideally the longer the better.
Find code challenges on https://www.codewars.com/ or https://www.hackerrank.com/
When I was starting out, I created a repository on my Github account, which contained all of my solutions for various coding challenges. By doing this, I was getting experience with using version control in my projects. This came in handy when I eventually landed a job and had to know how to use git.
Read up on Clean Code
You can find lots of articles on Clean Code around the internet, but I would recommend getting a copy of clean code by Robert C. Martin. or just read someone’s notes on the book (https://github.com/JuanCrg90/Clean-Code-Notes)
Understanding what clean code is when you are first starting out will put you on the right track to develop good habits. This book will teach the best practices of variable naming conventions, when and when not to write comments, how big your functions should be and much, much more.
Put your code on Github
It’s a great way to share your code and collaborate with others. It also lets employers know you are familiar with version control and know at least some basic git operations.
Another cool thing about GitHub is that you can look at other people’s code. This comes in handy when you’re trying to use a library and you’re not sure how to use it. You can just look on GitHub to see how people are using it.
Create a project
This is really important, the project doesn’t have to be amazing, just have some degree of complexity i.e Frontend + Backend, and is hosted online. Ideally on some cloud platform (cloud is all the rage these days). The goal is to have something to talk about during a job interview.
The app can be something simple, like a weather app or film/music database. I had a simple app that displayed crypto coin prices; I hosted it on AWS. The goal here is to show your ability to figure out an array of different technologies and make them work together.
If you are stuck for ideas, there is a great website https://www.frontendmentor.io/ that allows you to solve real-world HTML, CSS and JavaScript challenges whilst working to professional designs.
Practice Test Driven Development (TDD)
It can seem like there is a lot of information to absorb when you are starting out, but remember you don’t need to be an expert, just understand enough to get going.
Testing Pyramid
When learning TDD, familiarising yourself with the Testing Pyramid will give you a head start. When I was first learning about TDD, I would practice writing tests after I had completed a coding challenge. Here is a great in-depth article on TDD.
Keep yourself updated.
Technology is always changing, frameworks come and go, languages rise and fall in popularity, some quicker than others. Change is the only constant in tech. Keeping up to date with technology trends is important. I do this primarily through newsletters and podcasts. Here are some of my favourites:
Podcasts
https://stackoverflow.blog/podcast/
https://www.serverlesschats.com/
https://devchat.tv/show/javascript-jabber/
Newsletters
https://javascriptweekly.com/
https://webtoolsweekly.com/
https://react.statuscode.com/
https://www.techjobinsight.com/ (My own newsletter)
Conclusion
If any of this was helpful consider signing up to my newsletter for weekly insights on the tech industry, the latest tech trends, and advice on how to get into the industry | https://medium.com/@techjobinsight/how-to-become-a-better-developer-2254e11b44b7 | ['Tech Job Insight'] | 2021-09-07 18:35:20.503000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Software Development', 'Tech', 'Developer Tools', 'Software'] |
Advance your tech career with a mentor | The status of your career
If you started in a medium plus size tech company, a typical promotion path will look like (grade names may be different):
- After 1 year from junior engineer to engineer
- Additional 1–2 yr to senior engineer
- Additional 2–3 yr to staff engineer
- Additional 2–4 yr to team lead
- Additional 3–5 yr to manager
To get to a team lead will typically take 5–10 years, and a manger 10+ years.
If your career path is similar to the above you are just doing average. You can do much better, but how?
Finding advice
We can find a lot of advice. From many books, videos, lectures, notes, phrases, friends, family and all these provide a wealth of knowledge and experience. So why are we not sure what to do next?
There are many reasons, among them:
- Knowing the rules does not translate easily to our specific situation. I need to increase my visibility in the organization, but how exactly do I do it in my situation?
- We are creatures of habits. Changing behavior is difficult and is a long term process.
- Our actions are significantly determined by our emotions, not our thoughts. Our reasoning is used many times to justify our decision and not to make it (we first make the decision and justify it later).
- Lack of feedback and follow-up. Follow-up and feedback enable us to better implement, internalize and strengthen our new mode of behavior. Many are moved by a powerful presentation for change, just to return to the old self several days or weeks later.
Training versus Mentoring
Training can provide you with the rules and guidelines and some examples that will help you understand how to implement them. That will work well for technical areas, but is not very effective when you need to change your behavior.
A mentor will follow you for a long time and provide, in addition to the rules, the exact actions and feedback that you need for your specific situation and goals. The majority of the items you need to change to improve your career are behavioral, not technical. A mentor is more effective in helping you achieve that.
What can a mentor do to help your career?
- Analyze your situation and goals
- Analyze your goals in relation to your organization and help you identify opportunities
- Prepare a plan based on your strength, weaknesses and the organization opportunities
- Prepare specific actions that are clear and concise. You know exactly what to do next.
- Periodically monitor your progress and update your actions based on performance and new developments.
Examples
So everything sound great, but where are the details? I selected a few examples that are common to many.
Visibility — I need to increase it but how? There are many people who have more experience, more knowledge or better skills, what do I do?
Surprisingly it is quite easy and here are some specific actions:
- Ask questions in a company wide or group wide meetings. Do not wait for the Q&A time to come up with a question, prepare several questions in advance. Talk to your peers and get feedback on the questions or areas that are of interest to them, check recent company news, upcoming events etc. Ask questions that are intelligent, open ended (does not require a one phrase answer), and will make the person who answers look good (never ask a negative question). Do it consistently and you will be surprised how many people will know your name. For example ask: “can you elaborate on how improving our customer relationship improved our sales, and if possible provide some examples so we can take these lessons to other areas? “
- Speak in meetings, every meeting. If you have nothing to contribute simply summarize and repeat other people ideas in your own words. For example: “so to increase the performance we need to redesign the interface between module A and module B?” If everyone else is talking too make sure that you sound different, lower your voice, slow pitch etc.
Improve your status
You have only a few years experience and you need to improve your image with many people in the group having more years of experience. Sound familiar? Looks difficult? Shall you just wait in line for your turn?
Perception is reality, and luckily there is a lot you can do to improve your status perception and with time it will become your reality.
- Become the go to person in your group. The one that everyone goes to ask questions and get help. The easiest way to do that is simply say “yes” to whatever people are asking you. Very quickly anyone that needs help, especially people from other groups, will come to you first for help (if you are an engineer your product manager, project manager, operation manager will love you). Your status will rise and that will positively impact your career. Even if you do not know the answer say “yes but it will take me some time” and find who can help you solve the issue. This is powerful technique; just make sure that you are not overwhelmed.
- Train other people. Volunteer to train the new hire and other groups. Whoever you train will look at you as the senior and that will improve your status. It will also help you significantly in your performance review.
- Present your work; prepare presentations to your team members, management, other groups etc. The more you present the better. Presentations are important tool so learn how to do them effectively (they are not information dump but a story).
Performance review
We all hate it. We need to prepare, fill forms, remember what we did half a year ago, ask for feedback and fear what the outcome is. So what can you do?
Your performance review is the most important single event in the year. It is the time when management evaluates you and decides on your future. It is not something you want to do as a passive side activity but thoroughly prepare and get the maximum out of it.
- The first thing to understand is that your performance is measured in multiple areas. If you are in a technical field you may think that your technical accomplishments are the most important and anything else is insignificant in comparison. This is a common mistake that can carry a high cost. Typically performance is measured in multiple areas, and although some areas may have higher weight they are all equally important, that is a low score will have high negative impact.
- Begin with understanding what areas you are measured at. Typically you will have your direct responsibility and some soft-skill areas like team work, leadership, communication etc. Take all of them very seriously and make sure you have a lot to say and demonstrate in each. During the year take notes of all your accomplishments in each area and make sure you have several in each. Do that periodically, every week or two. If you see that some areas are missing spend the time to find opportunities to fill them or talk to your manager for recommendation.
Why so few examples?
Your raises and promotions are decided by comparing you to your peers. The details are important, and you need to tune your actions to your specific circumstances. To be effective you need to find the opportunities in your position and organization that will set you apart.
How much of a difference can a mentor make?
Everyone is different, but an entry level engineer with a career development plan and a mentor was able to reach a team lead position in three years. That is about half the typical time.
What to do next?
Check my other posts and articles for additional career development insight.
If you are a tech engineer with 0–5 yr experience, you are invited to join my career development mentoring group. Contact me for more details. | https://medium.com/@ranedelman/mentoring-26208c2cf37a | ['Ran Edelman'] | 2019-06-15 16:41:37.308000+00:00 | ['Promotion', 'Mentoring', 'Management', 'Improvement', 'Career Advice'] |
Austria enabled | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/blockchain-academy/austria-enabled-14f46a1231a2 | ['Blockchain Architect'] | 2016-11-26 23:46:24.266000+00:00 | ['Sidechains', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain'] |
Algorithm: Palindrome. For the Javascript Coding Interview | For the Javascript Coding Interview
Where the real fun begins
Teaching you common interview questions that you’ll see in a coding interview, and give you the tips and tools you need to ace your next coding interview.
Today's blog will be on a question that comes up from time to time in an interview setting. For those who prefer video, I made a video version of this blog. Let’s jump straight into it.
Directions
Given a string, return true if the string is a palindrome
or false if it is not. Palindromes are strings that
form the same word if it is reversed.
--- Examples:
palindrome("madam") === true
palindrome("abcdefg") === false
palindrome("racecar")
Fun right? There are many ways to tackle this problem and many directions this problem can go. Before you even touch that keyboard and begin to code out a solution, the first thing you will want to do is ask your interviewer clarifying questions to make sure you guys are on the same page.
What is considered a palindrome?
What about strings that contain spaces, casing, special characters?
Could I use built-in methods?
These types of questions are completely valid to ask and to be quite honest, the interviewer is hoping you ask these questions. Make no assumptions! If you were asked this question and jumped straight to coding, you aren't giving your interviewer insight or a chance to see what that beautiful noggin of yours is thinking.
Pseudocode
Now that you’ve asked some questions and got the gears turning, it is important to talk and list out the steps of how you're planning to write this algorithm.
- Going to accept the string
- clean the string if needed
- reverse the string in some way...
If you’re like me, the 3rd step usually is what requires the most brainpower! My thought process usually goes a little something like this: “Man I need to reverse this string but how do I do that exactly…if only there was a reverse method…oh, wait!”
Solution One
function palindrome(str) {
const reversed = str.split('').reverse().join('') return str === reversed;
} // palindrome("steven") --> false
// palindrome("racecar") --> true
This is probably one of the more straightforward compact ways to solve this. Reverse is not a valid method of the String.prototype but it is on arrays. The easiest way to convert a string into an array is by using the split method to split each character into its own element in an array. Once that is done, all you got to do is just call the reverse method on the array and join each character back together. Once that is done, we can do a simple equality check to see if the now reversed string is the same as the original string that was passed in.
Wrote out a working solution, now what?
Now that we got the first solution out the way, the interviewer may say in some fashion, “Could you solve this in another way?.” What they really mean is could you solve this problem without using the split, reverse, join methods.
Solution Two
function palindrome(str) {
for (let i = 0; str.length - i > i; i++) {
if (str[i] !== str[str.length - 1 - i]) return false;
}
return true;
}
This iterative solution loops through the string with essentially two-pointers and compares each letter individually. The loop will break when two characters don’t match.
Breakdown: str[i] !== str[str.length - 1 - i] We loop through the string
as we are looping, does the first letter match the last letter? if so, does the second letter match the second-to-last letter? etc...
I believe this solution is a good way to show your interviewer good control flow, and flex your handle of knowing which pieces of data you want when it logically makes sense.
Note:
The two solutions above ignore casing, spaces, and the like so dependent on your interviewer or what the question is specifically asking, sanitize the string to meet your needs.
Example: If a palindrome ignores spaces, casing, or punctuation.
//ignores just spacing
function palindrome(str){ const reversed = str.split('').join('') return str.replace(' ',"") === reversed.replace(" ","") } palindrome('taco cat')
OR //ignores casing,spacing, punctuation using a regular expression str.replace(/[^\w]/g,'').toLowerCase()
Hope this helps you on your next coding interview, good luck out there! | https://medium.com/@stevenpaulino1/algorithm-palindrome-6d0763c2f47c | ['Steven Paulino'] | 2020-02-14 20:54:14.549000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Palindrome', 'Algorithms', 'Coding Interviews'] |
A Holiday Full of Cheer and Dread | A Holiday Full of Cheer and Dread
November 24th, 2020
Families around the world are preparing for the upcoming holidays. Instead of making airline reservations and borrowing additional chairs for the dinner table, they are learning how to negotiate a Zoom call while timing their gift deliveries via Amazon. In many states, family dinners have been banned in the interest of our national health.
2020 will be remembered for many unpleasant things, including the loss of beloved family holidays.
For the two and one-half million men and women incarcerated in our nation’s jails and prisons, the bitter prospect of spending a holiday alone has been contemplated long before the onset of the coronavirus. As I’ve written before, major holidays behind bars are not a time of festivity and joy for inmates, but rather a grim reminder of how much of life has been lost through one’s incarceration.
While many men and women in prison have close families on the outside, it is often impossible for those families to visit their loved ones, due to distance and/or the expense of visiting. If a family can manage a visit, it is generally not a warm, intimate occasion, but rather a cold, distant affair, celebrated within a depressing building dimly painted, patrolled by angry corrections officers (wouldn’t you be angry if this is how you had to spend your holiday?) who are charged with ensuring no one touches an inmate, for any reason.
For perhaps the first time, those who’ve never done time are getting a taste of what it feels like to be cut off from loved ones during the holidays. They are reading up on recipes that detail how to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for one or two in just one pan, one pan more than enough to handle the one drumstick that will feed the table.
In prison, such a holiday dinner would feel like a feast. There, an inmate can expect one piece of rubbery chicken — donated, perhaps, by a food company eager to dispose of its past-due inventory. Sides might include powdered potatoes and a slice of white bread.
But the bounty served is never the point of the holidays. Rather, it’s a time to share with loved ones, as we welcome into our clan young additions, argue over politics and nap during football games. It’s a time to reflect on all there is to be thankful for and express hopes for a happy and healthy new year.
For men and women deprived of their freedom, it’s instead a time to wonder if the person sitting close by might already be infected with the coronavirus, and if his or her cough might have just then sealed one’s doom. It’s a time to reflect on how one’s life sped out of control in the blink of an eye, and how friends and family deserted them, just as quickly.
For incarcerated mothers, holidays are times to wonder not if her kids are eating their vegetables and getting good grades, but whether they’ve joined a gang and will live out the week.
And for those women whose husbands are behind bars, it’s another night spent sobbing in bed, wondering how the rent payment will be met, wondering where she’ll take her kids when the landlord forcibly evicts her.
Many behind bars will be comforted in the knowledge that this may be their last holiday season spent incarcerated. Some will be released, and if they are lucky, they will negotiate their reentry successfully and enjoy many holidays to come.
But for many — so many — there will not be another holiday dinner with their cellmates to come because they have become infected and will die, because they won’t be given the latest miracle treatment and would likely be among the last to receive the new life-saving vaccination.
Instead, they will die, far from peacefully, alone and lonely. Some of their prison friends may miss them. We can only hope they will be rejoined in heaven with their loved ones, for the next holiday dinner.
— Richard Bronson
Founder/CEO of Commissary Club & 70 Million Jobs
Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/70MillionJobs
Follow us on Twitter: @70MillionJobs | https://medium.com/@70millionjobs/a-holiday-full-of-cheer-and-dread-e8d5c754ba29 | ['Second Chances', 'The Million Jobs Blog'] | 2020-11-25 01:17:28.830000+00:00 | ['Thanksgiving', 'Criminal Justice', 'Criminal Justice Reform', 'Prison', 'Prison Reform'] |
Keeping the Sports Business Alive | As most people are aware, all sports competitions, no matter how big or small, have been cancelled until at least the fall. This includes the NBA, the NFL, college NCAA divisions, most notably the cancellation of March Madness, and also the high school organizations like NFHS and MHSAA. Due to the rapid spread of COVID-19, the spirit of sports have been taken away from people who are either playing or just watching it on the TV. Because of the cancellation and demonetization of professional sports, the sport business is losing both the interest and the money needed to keep the grand-scaled events that are so popular to everyone around the world. In order to keep the business alive, big sport companies are depending on a platform that spreads faster and to more people than the virus, social media. They are dependent on the power of the marketing, advertisement, and on the effort that their players put on to keep the fans interested and excited for the return of sports.
One of the worries that comes with the hiatus of sports events is the deterioration of the bodies of athletes. With no access to practice fields, players share the common concern with an average person that their bodies won’t be able to handle the physical requirement that sports will demand once they return. Even with the money to buy an entire gym in their backyard, because the season is uncertain and far away, it is hard for seasoned athletes to keep up the motivations to work out and keep their body fit. A tactic that the athletes are using to keep up the motivation is by engaging and interacting with their fans. Famous athletes, like LeBron James and JuJu Smith-Schuster, have been very active on their Instagram social media pages, broadcasting live almost daily. In a lot of their lives and stories, these athletes are working out with their fans and showing them around. Not only is this good for the teams’ business because it’s keeping the fan engaged and excited, it is also keeping the athletes motivated and working out.
LeBron James working out on his Instagram.
Another trend that has been going around Instagram is the #See10Do10. In this challenge, a person records themselves doing 10 push-ups, and then uploads it to their Instagram story, nominating 3 other friends to do the same thing. These 3 friends do the same thing, and then each nominates 3 other people to do the same thing. This challenge is very popular, and is a very good way to get more people involved in being active. Even famous athletes and celebrities are participating, which makes even more people, keeping the motivation and activeness in people up.
Tottenham U18 players delivery food to fans.
Professional sport leagues are hit the hardest, as that is the players’ and staff’s most reliable source of income. So, to cope with the losses and maintain interest, the leagues had to be creative and active on social media to interact with fans. For example, the Premier League, arguably the most popular soccer league in the world, has done many things to keep fans from losing their spirit. Big clubs, like Manchester United and Liverpool, are keeping their Instagram and Twitter very active, while also posting videos and updates on Youtube. Smaller clubs, like the newly promoted Norwich, have a smaller and more localized fan base, and they are interacting with them by having the players call specific fans from a list to check on their well-being, per The Independent. Other clubs, like Tottenham, are actively helping out their local community, with players and coaches delivering food for fans. Because of this, the soccer spirits in these fans are still raging on, especially when their favorite players are calling and spending time with them.
Other leagues, like the NFL, are helping the fans remain calm by trying their best to maintain business as usual. Even though the upcoming season still hangs in doubt, they are still planning to still have the Draft this week, perhaps in a more distanced format. This helps the fans stay positive, and still hoping that league will start as planned in the fall.
MLB, on the other hand, is tackling this issue by adapting to the circumstances and coming up with alternate ways to resume the season as soon as possible. It has devised a new plan, called the Arizona Plan. This plan states that all players and staff of the 30 teams will be housed in the stadium in Phoenix for the next 4 months to play at the empty stadium. Although the plan has been rejected and criticized by the players and staff, as they don’t want to be away from their families for that long, fans are excited that the organization is putting in a lot of effort to resume matches as soon as possible. Independent sources, like the Chicago Tribune, even pitched its own plan, offering alternatives to the Arizona Plan, where the teams are divided into smaller geographical divisions to limit traveling, and to temporarily replace the World Series with a new MLB Championship title. If these plans were to happen, not only would baseball fans be enthusiastic, but sports fans in general would also be glad to have a sport playing on their televisions. | https://medium.com/@nammdh/keeping-the-sports-business-alive-10c6dd2a52c7 | ['Nam Duong'] | 2020-04-23 04:53:37.274000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'Covid 19', 'Premier League', 'MLB', 'NFL'] |
You Need This Scheduling AI. Do you have an assistant? Perhaps you… | Photo by Owen Beard on Unsplash
Do you have an assistant? Perhaps you should.
In the world of bots and messengers and AI, something like scheduling and calendaring is actually something you should consider. What if 20–50 minutes a week were given back to you by a scheduling bot always helping you keep your calendar straight?
I have been watching x.ai for years now and have been a paying subscriber. It’s a valuable tool for any digital worker, leader, or executive.
You should sign up, now that the free service has expanded — don’t get left behind when the revolution comes (psst. its already here)
I do not work for or make any money from x.ai, I just like their service and know that more people who use it makes my service better. | https://medium.com/connected-well/x-ais-awesome-scheduling-ai-is-now-free-a00744838819 | ['Robert Merrill'] | 2019-09-12 20:02:34.343000+00:00 | ['Future Of Work', 'Calendar', 'AI', 'Scheduling', 'Bots'] |
Can Kids Transmit the Coronavirus? | Can Kids Transmit the Coronavirus?
Please, please can we have camp?
Photo: Kawee Wateesatogkij / EyeEm/Getty Images
Pulled from my May 4 newsletter, ParentData
Full disclosure, I spend about 73% of my time obsessing about whether there will be summer camp in Rhode Island. I send borderline appropriate emails to people I work with on virus response, nagging them about this.
I’ve expanded my obsession to neighboring states. Maine seems promising! Maybe we can move there for the summer?! I’m perusing Airbnb like it’s my (fifth) job.
The concerns with opening camps relate to the concerns with opening schools: If we get a bunch of kids together, they’ll spread the virus. As a result, I was pretty excited when I saw a bunch of headlines last week implying that kids can’t spread the coronavirus.
But on the flip side, you have other researchers saying, no, in fact, kids do transmit Covid-19 and opening schools is dangerous. So what is it?
Kids and Covid-19 illness
I’ve already covered kids and Covid-19 a lot and noted that they do not seem to get very sick. There is a Chinese study saying this, there is data from the CDC, and there’s more data from the Netherlands and Italy. Basically, we are pretty clear at this point that serious Covid-related illness is just really, really rare in children.
Kids and viral spread
More complicated is the question of whether kids are viral spreaders. One possible view is that, actually, many kids are infected but they just do not have serious infection. But, of course, they could infect others. So when you get kids together, they’ll spread the virus without you knowing it, and then go home to infect parents, grandparents, and others. I like to call this the “asymptomatic viral bomb theory.”
Another view is that kids are very unlikely to contract the virus at all, and perhaps because their symptoms are mostly mild, they are also unlikely to spread it.
We are uncertain about this because of limited data. And it is clear that kids can spread the virus. There is work, for example, showing that children who are infected have viral loads similar to adults.
But, increasingly, the data points to the second view above: that children are not being an important source of viral spread, largely because they are simply not very likely to be infected.
That data takes largely two forms. First, evidence on the overall risk of infection in kids (not how serious it is, but prevalence). And, second, evidence on whether kids are frequently the source of infection for other people. (In technical terms, are they the “index cases.”)
Let’s start with the first. The key question is whether kids are less likely to be infected than adults. From the data on cases in China and elsewhere, we know they are less likely to be seriously ill. But that’s not the same thing as not being infected. To figure out if they are less likely to be infected, we need to look at a population overall and either test everyone or a random sample of people. If we do that, we can learn what the infection rate is in kids. (Random sample testing is really important!)
There are a few studies like this. One early one was in Iceland. Researchers there tested about 13,000 random people, including 848 kids. Among the whole population, 0.8% of people (so, almost 1%) tested positive for Covid-19. Among children under 10, though, there were no positive cases. This difference was very unlikely to occur by chance.
Data from a single town in Italy which did very widespread screening shows basically the same thing. Kids are much less likely than older people to be infected at all.
It’s not quite as good, since it’s not a random sample, but data from the Netherlands shows that among people who visited their doctor with flu-like complaints over the course of the epidemic, 6.5% of them tested positive for Covid-19. This was as high as 30% in some weeks. However, they detected no cases in people under 20. When kids came in complaining of flu-like symptoms they… had the flu. Not Covid-19.
These three pieces of data suggest that it is not just that kids don’t get seriously ill, but also that they are unlikely to be infected. This is inconsistent with the kids-as-walking-virus-bomb theory.
The other way to understand this is to look directly at whether kids seem to be spreading infection. How? There are a couple of options. One is you could look at cases where a child was known to be infected and see if they seem to spread the virus. Another is you could look in affected groups (say, families) and try to figure out whether kids are often the ones who introduce the virus.
(A third option would be to see what happens when you reopen schools, if that is a big source of infection — we’ll probably see studies like this, but schools are only just starting to reopen in Europe so we do not have that yet).
There isn’t a ton of research on this yet, but where we have it, it again downplays the role of children. In one case, very early in the epidemic, researchers identified a set of cases in the French Alps (all linked to one set of travelers) and the cases included one kid. During the infected period, this kid visited three different schools (it is completely unclear to me why) and had 112 school contacts. None of these contacts were infected.
Obviously this is a single example, but it is worth noting that in the case of adults we have a number of examples (such as the Biogen conference in Boston, some family gatherings in Chicago, one epic party in Westport, Connecticut) where one infected adult spread the virus very widely.
Although it is not yet peer-reviewed, data from Australia is showing similar patterns. In those data, 18 people (nine adults and nine kids) had Covid-19 and were in school contact with others (735 other students and 128 other staff). No staff or teachers developed Covid-19. One primary school and one high school student may contacted Covid-19 from these initial cases. This represents a very low spread rate.
Finally, researchers in the Netherlands have also been shedding light on this. They’ve been following families — preliminary data has 54 families with 239 people — and looking at infections. They have so far found no cases in which the child was the first one in a family to be infected.
The bottom line
Some people have taken the above data to mean “kids cannot spread Covid-19.” This is not right. In principle, they can. They have viral loads, just like adults. Viruses do not know they are carried by kids! If a kid is infected with Covid-19 and they put their hand in their mouth and then they put it in your mouth, there is no reason to think you couldn’t get the virus. (Not that you necessarily would, but that you could.)
However, in practice it seems that infection among kids is simply very unlikely. It’s not that they are infected and don’t know it, it seems like they are just not infected very often. And when they are, it may be that the mild symptoms limit their viral spreading (like with the kid in the French example).
What does this mean for policy, and for families? Opening schools and daycares and camps (PLEASE!!!) is still very complicated since these all involve congregations of adults. But on the plus side, these results indicate that in those contexts, our primary concern should be adult-to-adult transmission, which may be easier to limit.
For families, I think it’s even more helpful. I know many of us are spending a lot of time worrying about spreading the virus from kids to grandparents. The data doesn’t go so far as to say that can’t happen or we shouldn’t be careful, but it dials that down a lot, in my mind at least. This is, in the end, a personal decision for all of us. Good luck with yours.
You can read the original version of my newsletter here. | https://elemental.medium.com/can-kids-transmit-the-coronavirus-c9934a8e1f02 | ['Emily Oster'] | 2020-05-04 18:28:39.165000+00:00 | ['Kids', 'Health', 'Science', 'Parenting', 'Coronavirus'] |
March 10: The Tibetan National Uprising Day | March 10: The Tibetan National Uprising Day
How a story of a minority among minority is a global concern
I think I am speaking for the majority of Tibetans — or at least to me when I say that March 10 of every year, brings me a generational pain — a pain of my grandfather who starved to death in a prison for being a Tibetan, a pain of my mother who was looted of all her property and was forced to beg for food, and my own story of family separation. I think there’s not a single Tibetan family who does not share a story like mine or even worse.
On March 10,1959, thousands of Tibetans took to the streets in opposition to the illegal occupation of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC used their military forces to kill 87,000 civilians that day. Seven days after the protest, His Holiness the Dalai Lama escaped to India. Since then March 10 has been known as Tibetan National Uprising Day.
Photo by Simon Fitall on Unsplash
Every year, on March 10, Tibetans in New York rally around Time Square, the Chinese Embassy, and they end with a candlelight vigil in Jackson Heights, Queens. We wave our bright national flag, wear our traditional dresses, and chant slogans such as Human rights in Tibet, United Nation Stand Up for Tibet, and many others. In those moments of our peaceful, yet the heightened intensity of soaking in this collective energy of solidarity, resilience, and pain — it’s not uncommon to see protesters cry. I have on multiple occasions. For many Tibetans and its supporters, this isn’t their first or 10th time, we have commemorated March 10 for 60 years now.
For many Tibetans and its supporters, this isn’t their first or 10th time, we have commemorated March 10 for 60 years now.
The reason I called Tibet: A story of a minority among minority is that Tibetans within Tibet are a minority — and Tibetans across the globe are a minority too. In 2016, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reported the population of Tibet to be 3,310,000 with an area of 1.22 million sq km. Tibet also called as Xizang in Chinese is considered among the other minority ethnic groups such as Uyghurs(Xinjiang in Chinese). About 122,078 Tibetans live in exile across Asia, Europe, North America, and other places. To give you a perspective, New York has approximately 19,542,209 residents according to Census Bureau.
The reason I called Tibet: A story of a minority among minority is that Tibetans within Tibet are a minority — and Tibetans across the globe is a minority too
One might ask: you guys are a minority; I get it but what do I have to do with it? The answer is one word: Environment. Tibet is the largest source of freshwater in Asia, serving over a billion lives from the 46,000 glaciers. Hence, Tibet is also called “Asia’s water tower” and “the third pole.”The uninhibited exploitation of natural resources including mining, and damming major downstream rivers such as Mekong river and Brahmaputra tributaries has caused rising concern among environmentalists. In fueling the economic power by mining, around 1.5–2 million Tibetan nomads were deprived of their century-old livelihood, forcing them to flee to India to escape financial hardship. The implications of disrupting the ecosystem in Tibet, expand not only within Asia but also Europe, North America, and Australia. Tibet has been cited as a “large contributor to the rise of global sea levels”. There’s also scientific speculation whether “Tibetan Glacial Ice Core May Hold Clues About Climate Change.”
One might ask: you guys are a minority; I get it but what do I have to do with it? The answer is one word: Environment.
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama had asserted his environmental stance saying, “This is not a question of one nation or two nations. This is a question of humanity. Our world is our home”.
Source: Freetibet.org
Aside from the environmental issue, the story of Tibet, broadly speaking has two versions of “truth”: Tibetans like me and a large number of non-Tibetans across the world, and the second one, is through the lens of the Chinese in China. A writer name Peter Hessler has published an article on The Atlantic, titled Tibet Through Chinese Eyes. In his article he wrote, “ From the Chinese perspective, Tibet has always been a part of China. This is, of course, a simplistic and inaccurate view, but Tibetan history is so muddled that one can see in it what one wishes. The Chinese can ignore some periods and point to others; they can cite the year 1792, when the Qing Emperor sent a Chinese army to help the Tibetans drive out the invading Nepalese, or explain that from 1728 to 1912 there were Qing ambans, imperial administrators, stationed in Lhasa.”
The Chinese-born writer Jianglin Li explained on The New York Times, “the roots of Tibetan unrest in China’s occupation of Tibet”. She says, “ Like everyone in China, I was raised on the party line. I never thought to question it until I came to the U.S. for graduate study in 1988 and discovered how differently people here think of Tibet.”
Probably, the strongest justification offered by PRC for their annexation of Tibet was that it was materially backward with 95% of the Tibetan population being “serfs” in a feudal system. American anthropologists like Franz Michael and Beatrice Miller, who extensively researched on Tibet pre-1959 believe that the word, “serf” is a politically motivated term. They explained that the word “commoner” or “subject” are a more accurate representation of Tibetan before the annexation than the word “serf.” They said, “ because of ample evidence that a large number of Tibetans were able to moderate their obligations to their lords by paying off some of their dues, and so could move from place to place.”
Another scholar, W. M Coleman also added that in reality, the Tibetans had more freedom than appears in the documents, and that “Tibetans could equally well be described simply as peasants with particular kinds of debts and taxation responsibilities, rather than using a politically and morally loaded term such as serf. “
So is it true that Chairman Mao, a founder of the PRC out of the goodness of his heart wanted to “liberate” Tibetan “serfs” –the same man who sits in the history of mankind as “the greatest mass murderer “?
After 60 years of occupation, how liberated are Tibetans today?
Over 100 Tibetans self-immolated as of December 10, 2018. A publication called Storm in the Grasslands: Self-immolations in Tibet and Chinese policy reported the motivation of self-immolators. Based on their statements and the last conversation, they reject the current state of repressive policies set against fellow Tibetans, protection of Tibetan cultural identity, freedom of self-determination, and to allow the return of the Dalai Lama.
All in all, it’s up to you whether my story of a minority among minority moves you to think or act in any shape or form.
Meanwhile, I will be on the street on March 10, 2019 with my fellow pro-justice, and pro-environmentalist fighters. I hope you can join us too. | https://health-cyberpolicy.medium.com/march-10-the-tibetan-national-uprising-day-9e63ed7bb216 | ['Rinzin Wangmo'] | 2019-12-23 04:29:18.967000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Protest', 'Tibet', 'Environment', 'Uighurs'] |
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The Baltimore Ravens are poised to follow a bizarre training camp with a season opener shrouded in mystery.
They’ll be playing Sunday in an empty stadium, facing a Cleveland Browns team with a new coaching staff that’s provided no clue how they plan to employ a revamped offense.
“A lot of unknowns,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh acknowledged.
About the only thing for sure is that Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson, the multi-faceted reigning NFL MVP, will be the focal point of an offense that last year set a league record with 3,296 yards rushing. That helped the Ravens win the AFC North with the best regular-season record in the NFL.
Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess how this game plays out in a barren stadium during a world-wide pandemic.
“The unknowns are there (were) no preseason games. So, nobody has had any live tackling action, other than practice when we’ve had it,” Ravens running back Mark Ingram said. “With no fans, everybody is going to wonder how the game-day atmosphere is going to be without fans and stuff.”
The Browns will make their debut under first-year coach Kevin Stefanski, hired in January after Cleveland stumbled to a 6–10 record in 2019. Without the luxury of mini-camps or August football games, the Browns haven’t had the kind of preparation befitting a team that’s undergone a radical change in leadership.
“That could be an excuse if you wanted to use it, but we are not doing that,” quarterback Baker Mayfield said. “We know what we have to do. We have installed everything. We are putting together a good game plan, and we will have that ready to roll. Everybody just has to go out there and execute it.”
After getting run over in a playoff loss to Tennessee, the Ravens worked this offseason to fortify their run defense. General manager Eric DeCosta traded for Calais Campbell, signed free agent Derek Wolfe and drafted linebacker Patrick Queen, who will play in his first NFL game Sunday.
The new front will be tested by Nick Chubb, who last year ran for 165 yards and three touchdowns in Baltimore to lead the Browns to a 40–25 upset.
“This is a game where you have to stop the run,” Campbell said. “If I’m a coach, I’m going to see how the guys’ tackling is going to be. I’m going to run the ball at them downhill.”
This is a huge season for Mayfield, who stumbled in his second year and finished near the league’s bottom in numerous statistical categories.
His 22 touchdown passes were offset by 21 interceptions, and now the №1 overall draft pick in 2018 knows it’s time to step up his game.
“Out to prove I’m much better than what I’ve shown the two years prior,″ Mayfield said this week.
The Browns are counting on Mayfield to bounce back, and his teammates have noticed his renewed commitment and focus.
“Baker has always been a competitor,” center JC Tretter said. “That has always come out of him. He looks great and super dialed in.”
LAMAR FACTOR
Jackson set an NFL record last season for yards rushing by a quarterback, and he also tossed 36 touchdown passes. Obviously, stopping him is the №1 priority for every defense facing the Ravens.
“He is dynamic. He can run it and he can throw it,” Stefanski said. “They have designed runs for him, and then he can take off on a pass play. I just think he is a great player.”
Jackson understands the pressure associated with having to come up with an encore to last year’s MVP season — and dismisses it.
“I really don’t care about the hype or what people expect,” he said. “I expect for myself and my teammates to go out there and produce and win games.”
BACK IN TIME
The Ravens usually draw a boisterous throng of around 70,000 fans. Without them, they’ll have to generate their own energy against a division rival.
“It’s going to be something like a high school scrimmage,” Ingram said. “You get off the bus and you usually meet a team on their field, or they meet you on your field. There weren’t that many fans, but pads were clacking, whistles blowing, and (you’re) making plays. I feel like our team, the offense is going to have to be rooting the defense, the defense rooting the offense. Both offense and defense, we’re going to have to be rooting the (special) teams.”
Manufactured crowd noise will be pumped over the loudspeakers in an effort to restore some of the typical atmosphere.
“It is going to be unusual. It is going to be a little eerie,” Stefanski said.
TWO-BACK ATTACK
In addition to Chubb, the Browns have a top-tier running back in Kareem Hunt.
“They have, by their own account, the two best backs in football,” Harbaugh said. “Not just this year, but going back historically, that’s been said in their camps. I can see why.”
Despite gashing the Ravens last season, Chubbs has turned the page. | https://medium.com/@womikav889/-d3dc6a767318 | [] | 2020-12-24 21:06:04.764000+00:00 | ['Live', 'Nfl Live', 'Live Stream Online', 'NFL'] |
10 Ways to Explore Art | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2020
Many of us might feel a little out of sorts when faced with trying to understand modern and contemporary art. A little bit of knowledge can go a long way. Knowing about the artist’s motivation or the quality of the technique might make you think differently. Sometimes just looking closely at the details in the work can grow your appreciation. If nothing else, these short experiences are a nice diversion.
Here are ten bite-sized nuggets of info to give you something to think about when looking closer:
Wilson’s largest and most complex assemblage, Retrospective summarizes and celebrates the many different types of objects that she incorporated into her work over the course of more than fifty years.
2. Joseph O’Sickey believed “The subject doesn’t matter… what the artist brings to it is the important thing.”
Tasman Sea, Ngarupupu, Hiroshi Sugimoto, (Tokyo, 1948 — ), 1990, Selenium toned gelatin silver print, 16 1/2 in. x 21 3/8 in. (41.91 cm x 54.29 cm), Knight Purchase Fund for Photographic Media, 1998.18
3. The photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto asked himself “What would be the most unchanged scene on the surface of the earth?”
4. In this mysterious image, a lone figure draped in a flowing white garment seems to press into the wind as an ocean wave breaks in the background. Her bent pose is unusual and it is unclear why she has her hands clasped behind her head. Is she injured? Is she trying to take off her dress?
5. Realizing that works of art do not always need to be complicated or laboriously constructed, Richard Tuttle instead celebrates delicate slightness.
6. As a prominent participant in the Regionalist movement, Thomas Hart Benson portrayed scenes of rural America in a manner that appears visually stylized yet reflective of everyday reality. background. Her bent pose is unusual and it is unclear why she has her hands clasped behind her head. Is she injured? Is she trying to take off her dress?
7. A longtime favorite across Northeast Ohio, William Sommer absorbed ideas from Cubism and other modern European art movements, adapting them to his distinctly Midwestern subject matter of farm scenes, landscapes, and portraits.
8. In this scene from the Great Depression, a street vendor selling melons, pears, and other fruit contends with a dissatisfied customer.
9. Honoré Guilbeau had early aspirations as a dancer, but soon after enrolling in classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, she shifted her focus to printmaking. Her thoughts were never far from dancing, however, and she often featured dancers and theater scenes in her works.
10. This painting by French artist Gaston La Touche is an ode to dusk (“crépuscule” in French) and its subtle beauty of color and light. | https://akronartmuseum.medium.com/10-ways-to-explore-art-208a8c24e601 | ['Akron Art Museum'] | 2020-10-30 12:45:01.423000+00:00 | ['Contemporary Art', 'Modern Art', 'Akron Art Museum'] |
Steps to Setup Masternode on XinFin MainNet. | Steps to Setup Masternode on XinFin MainNet.
Setup a Masternode with XinFin MainNet in 8 Simple Steps
Step 1: Host the Masternode either by downloading the One-Click Installer (recommended) or by using a Docker Compose file.
Download the One-Click Installer (Recommended),
Or
Setup Masternode using Docker Compose.
Step 2: Once downloaded, run the One-Click Installer on the server.
On successful installation, you will get the Coinbase address as shown below.
Step 3: View the active node at by clicking here.
Step 4: Create a new account address from the XinFin wallet. An exclusive address will be generated.
The new address generated would contain the balance required to propose the Masternode.
Step 5: Log in to the Masternode app using the private key.
Step 6: Become a candidate and upload the Know Your Community (KYC) certificate in PDF format.
This KYC certificate needs to be signed by one of the following personnel:
Company Secretary,
A Notary Public,
Chartered Secretary,
Consulate, or
A lawyer with Seal.
For INDIVIDUAL format, click here.
For ORGANIZATION format, click here.
Note: It’s mandatory to upload the certificate in a PDF format.
Step 7: Once the KYC is uploaded, enter the Coinbase address and lock 10 million XDC tokens before running the Masternode.
Step 8: The proposed node will be added to the Masternode randomly through the Round-Robin method. On successful addition to the Masternode, the reward will be sent to the assigned XinFin Wallet.
For Masternode Setup FAQ, please read: GUIDE TO SET UP XINFIN MASTER NODE. Also check Bounty page for Updated Bounty for latest bounty offer for the community: https://xinfin.org/bounty.php
For how to file Click Here.
Watch the video to Setup XinFin Masternode with One-Click installer
Live Masternode Setup Support
Join us at our Telegram Development Community.
Or
Talk to our team at the Slack Public Channel.
We always love to hear from our community members. Feel free to drop us a line or share feedback at any of our community channels.
About XinFin:
XinFin is an open source enterprise-ready Hybrid Blockchain for Global Trade and Finance. It combines the power of Public and Private Blockchains with interoperable smart contracts and is fully EVM compatible. For more information on XinFin, please visit XinFin.org or learn more about XinFin in this video.
Useful link for XinFin Masternode
Steps to Setup Masternode on XinFin MainNet
XinFin Mobile Wallet
XinFin Web Wallet
Steps to resign master node
Step by step guide to issue your own token on XinFin network
Step by step guide to swap token on XinFin network
Guide to setup node with one click installer
Follow XinFin on:
Twitter: @XinFin_Official
LinkedIn: XinFin Hybrid Blockchain
Telegram: XinFinTalk | https://medium.com/xinfin/steps-to-setup-masternode-on-xinfin-mainnet-bf66dda3ea1c | ['Xinfin Xdc Hybrid Blockchain Network'] | 2019-11-15 13:36:54.310000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Xinfin', 'Docker', 'Masternodes', 'Mainnet'] |
6 Easy Ways to Set Up Ads on LinkedIn | Did you know that you can advertise on LinkedIn? Yes, you can market yourself and your profile to the right audience and effectively grow your network! If you are interested in knowing how to do that, read on to discover the six easy steps to set up ads on LinkedIn.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is considered the world’s largest professional network that you can find online. It is a networking platform that allows employers to post job offers. As such, through LinkedIn, you can find a job or connect with other professionals, especially those that belong to your industry or niche.
LinkedIn also provides you with tips on how to improve your skills so that you can succeed in your chosen career. In addition, it allows you to showcase a professional profile, including your work experiences, skill sets, achievements, educational background, and more. The goal is to create a unique profile that would enable you to land the right job.
How to Set Up Ads on LinkedIn
Get Started with Campaign Manager
You can use LinkedIn’s all-in-one advertising platform, Campaign Manager, to create either a self-service campaign or a managed campaign. However, you need to create a LinkedIn Ads account first to be able to use the platform and set up ads on LinkedIn.
Through Campaign Manager, you can set a budget and select goals, such as clicks vs. impressions. You can also gain complete control over your campaign’s timeline. Campaign Manager also allows you to create and manage your campaigns, view analytics and performance reports (clicks, likes, shares, comments, and follows), and manage account assets, including conversion tracking and Matched Audiences.
So, how do you use LinkedIn to advertise your professional services? Check out the six ways to set up ads on LinkedIn:
ONE: Choose Your Objective
When creating a campaign, the first step is to choose your campaign objective. What would the campaign be for? LinkedIn Campaign Manager provides you with three options: you can either choose to build your brand awareness (Awareness), increase site visits, engagement, and views (Consideration), or stimulate the lead generation and site conversions (Conversion).
The goal or objective you choose will determine what will happen next in creating your campaign.
TWO: Determine Key Metrics
The next step is to determine the key metrics based on the campaign objective or goal you selected in the previous step.
If you want to have more people know about your brand, you should aim for the following metrics: Clicks, Impressions, Click-through Rate (CTR), and Average Engagement.
Image Source: LinkedIn
Clicks refer to the number of clicks on your ad. Impressions, on the other hand, refer to the number of times people saw your ad. Meanwhile, CTR is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. Finally, average engagement is the total engagement, including free and paid clicks, divided by the number of impressions. When we say engagements, these may include social actions such as post likes, comments, and shares.
However, if you want to drive leads and increase conversions, you should focus on the following: Conversions, Conversion Rate, Cost Per Conversion, Leads, and Cost Per Lead (CPL).
Conversions refer to how many times users performed an action after seeing or clicking on your ad. The conversion rate then refers to how often your ads lead to conversions on your website. Then, the cost per conversion is your ad spend divided by the number of conversions. Finally, leads refer to how many leads you got from your ads, while the CPL refers to your ad spend divided by the number of leads.
THREE: Select Your Target
After choosing your objective, Campaign Manager will require you to select your targeting criteria. This step will determine whom LinkedIn will display your ads. If you target your ads, you increase the chances of engagement and, ultimately, conversion.
As such, you will have to choose the attributes of your targeted audience. These attributes may include the following: company name, company size, member interests, member groups, member schools, job title, skills, and more.
FOUR: Choose Your Ad Format
In this step, you need to choose your ad format. You have the following options: Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, Text Ads, or any mix of the four.
Sponsored content (image ads, video ads, carousel ads, or event ads) will appear directly on the feeds of LinkedIn users. It would be best to promote your already top-performing post as it has already proven to have worked with your existing followers. As such, this content is most likely to entice more followers from a larger market.
Message Ads allow you to connect with prospective employers through the LinkedIn Messaging feature. As such, through message ads, you can directly send messages to your prospects, increase engagement, and see which roles and companies respond to your ads.
If you choose to create Dynamic Ads, you can personalize your ad by using profile data such as photo, company name, and job title. Further under dynamic ads, you can choose to create a Follower ad, a Spotlight ad, or a Jobs ad.
Finally, LinkedIn will display Text Ads at the top, on the side, or at the bottom of the LinkedIn user’s feed. These are pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) types of ads. Because it will only display text, you need to keep your copy short but engaging. Doing so would help guarantee that they click your ad and check out your profile.
FIVE: Set Your Budget and Schedule Ads
When setting your budget, you have three options to choose from, namely: cost-per-send (CPS), cost-per-click (CPC), or cost-per-impression (CPM). Message ads campaigns utilize CPS, wherein you pay for every message delivered to your target. Campaigns that require an action from the target, such as registration to an event or generating leads, use CPC. Lastly, CPM is used for campaigns that delve into improving brand awareness.
Campaign Manager will then ask you to enter a suggested bid, your daily budget, your campaign’s start and end dates, and your total budget. Take note that you can cancel your campaign anytime. Now, you can finally set up your ad and have it published.
SIX: Set Up Conversion Tracking and Lead Gen Forms
After determining the key metrics to measure your LinkedIn campaign performance, the next step is to set up Conversion Tracking and Lead Gen Forms.
Conversion Tracking allows you to quickly measure conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. However, before you can create a conversion, you first need to define conversions by choosing from the following:
Page Load Tracking (Sitewide Insight Tag)
For this, LinkedIn will count conversions if users visit your web pages. Thus, you need to set URL parameters to determine which page conversions LinkedIn will measure.
Event-Specific Tracking (Insight Tag)
LinkedIn will count conversions if users take an action on your site. To track conversions for this, you need to add an event-specific code to a button or link on your site.
Event-Specific Tracking (Image Pixel)
LinkedIn will also count conversions if users take an action on your site. However, to track this type of conversion, you need to install an event-specific image pixel that loads whenever the user performs an action.
Meanwhile, Lead Gen Forms let you measure leads and cost per lead. You can create Lead Gen Forms by selecting the Lead generation objective (in STEP ONE).
Image Source: LinkedIn
However, you can also create it from the “Account Assets” tab on the account homepage of your Campaign Manager. Select “Lead Gen Forms,” complete the sections that you want to include in your form, and then click “Create Form.”
BONUS: Measure and Optimize Your Campaign
As with everything you do online for your business, you also need to monitor your campaigns. If you do this, you will be able to see if your ads are performing as expected. However, if they are not, you should be able to determine what they lack and improve them in the next campaign cycle. If you see a low-performing ad, then it would be best to stop it and improve it as needed.
Fortunately, through Campaign Manager, you can analyze the performance of your ads and campaigns. There, you can see your campaign’s overall clicks, impressions, budgets, social actions, and more. With this analytics feature, you can quickly determine which ad is performing best and which one is not, thereby allowing you to make the necessary adjustments.
Set Up Your Ads on LinkedIn Now!
With PPC management services, you can have someone managing your LinkedIn ad campaigns for you! If you need help setting up ads on LinkedIn, please feel free to contact us through email or leave us a message in the comments section below. | https://medium.com/@pamsalon/6-easy-ways-to-set-up-ads-on-linkedin-6741a88ce74e | ['Pamela Salon'] | 2021-12-27 00:36:01.950000+00:00 | ['Pay Per Click', 'Linkedin Marketing', 'LinkedIn', 'Ppc Management', 'PPC Marketing'] |
How to Write Clean Code | Everybody loves clean code, but have you ever wondered what constitutes it? After reading Clean Code: A Handbook for Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin, I have a better picture of clean code.
Why Clean Code
Have you ever rushed to get tasks done, intending to clean up the code later, but those future days never come?
Over time we gradually build the mess. The mess becomes so large driving the team productivity slowdown. Management team step up and plan to have the application redesigned. Now we have two teams in a race, one team maintaining the old system, and the new one building a new system that does everything the old system does and keeping up with the changes. The race might take years and hinder the productivity. In the worst case, the new design becomes another pile of mess and cannot be of use to the company.
Desperate, isn’t it? No one ever wants this. Developers swear having to work on bad code. Management team hates to see the decrease in productivity.
It is therefore fatal to avoid having such a mess and keep the code clean — easy to understand and ready for change
How to Write Clean Code
There is no consensus what are needed for clean code. But, from my experience so far, I believe these points are a must for having clean code.
Meaningful Names
Use the name that expresses its intent, and replace magic numbers by constants with good naming. In the below example, it is hard to reason about what the function does.
public void foo(Account a1, Account a2, double x){
if (a1.b == a2.b) {
a1.x -= x;
a2.x += x;
} else {
a1.x -= x;
a1.x -= 50;
a2.x += x;
}
}
After renaming it appropriately, we know that it is the function to transfer amount between accounts.
public void transfer(Account senderAccount, Account receiverAccount, double amount){
if (senderAccount.branchId == receiverAccount.branchId) {
senderAccount.balance -= amount;
receiverAccount.balance += amount;
} else {
senderAccount.balance -= amount;
senderAccount.balance -= TRANSFERRING_FEE;
receiverAccount.balance += amount;
}
}
Formatting
Formatting is important. Readers can benefit from indentations, blank lines and spaces. Grouping the same concepts together and separating each of them with blank lines also helps.
One example is when writing a test. We can separate into 3 parts: given, when and then.
// Given
Account adamAccount = Account.create("Adam", 5000.00);
Account ernestAccount = Account.create("Ernest", 1500.00); // When
underTest.transfer(adamAccount, ernestAccount, 1000.00) // Then
assert(adamAccount.getBalance() == 4000.00);
assert(ernestAccount.getBalance() == 2500.00);
Consistency
We should have descriptive name and also consistent naming convention. For instance, get functions are normally implemented without side effects. Implementing a get function with side effects makes an application error-prone.
private long branchId;
public long getBranchId() { // without side effects
return branchId
} private long uniqueId;
public long getUniqueId() { // with side effects
return uniqueId++;
}
Having Tests
Tests reflect the ability to change code. Dirty tests imply that we have less ability to change code with confidence that nothing will break, because it is hard to understand what the test tries to verify. It is therefore necessary to have readable and maintainable tests, allowing a team to complete tasks more confidently and quickly.
Single Responsibility
Single responsibility states that a class or module should have one and only one, reason to change
Single responsibility concept encourages clean code. It helps readers understand what it tries to achieve as it does only one thing. It is also easy to change because developers can find with ease where to work on to satisfy the requirement. This concept should be applied to not only class levels, but the following:
Testing — Each test cases should verify only one concept.
Function — Each function should do one thing.
Class — Each class should have one responsibility and has one reason to change.
Although the concept is straightforward, it is hard to identify when it is doing too much. One way to check is to describe in our own words what tests, functions and classes do. The word “and” signals that it is possible to have it refactored.
In our transfer method above, we can make a tiny change to improve readability and maintainability.
public void transfer(Account senderAccount, Account receiverAccount, double amount){
senderAccount.balance -= amount;
senderAccount.balance -= getTransferFee(senderAccount, receiverAccount);
receiverAccount.balance += amount;
} private double getTransferFee(Account acc1, Account acc2) {
if (acc1.branchId == acc2.branchId) {
return SAME_BRANCH_TRANSFERRING_FEE ;
} else {
return DIFFERENT_BRANCH_TRANSFERRING_FEE;
}
}
Isolation from Change
This is similar to Dependency Inversion Principle, which says that our classes should depend upon abstractions, not on concrete details. Codes can change often according to business’s demands. If a client class depending on those concrete details, it is at risk that when the details changed.
In the following example, we define AccountRepository that have findById method. It is unnecessary to know how it is implemented. We need to believe that it can findById correctly. This way we can change how to find an account by id from the repository without affecting the code below.
interface AccountRepository {
Account findById(long accountId);
} private AccountRepository accountRepository; public void closeAccount(long accountId) {
Account account = accountRepository.findById(accountId);
account.close();
}
Don’t Repeat Yourself
Duplication in code discourages maintainability because changes, if any, have to be applied many places instead of one, which to some extent bring bugs to applications. It is advisable to extract common logics into functions and reuse them.
Separate Constructing a System from Using It
The application should have no knowledge of the construction process. The lazy initialization of AccountRepository below should be avoided since it violates Single Responsibility Principle and complicates testing. We might leverage Dependency Injection to separate the process.
public class BankService {
private AccountRepository accountRepository; private AccountRepository getAccountRepository() {
if (accountRepository == null) {
accountRepository = new AccountReposiotory();
}
return accountRepository;
} ... }
How to Achieve Clean Code
Now we have a sense of how clean code looks. It has not been paid much attention to though, as we care more about making it work quickly. Clean code, quite the opposite, requires time and attention.
Plan
When we plan to complete any tasks, the time spared tidying the code should be considered properly.
Refine
Clean code comes with effort. Like writing an email, you have a draft. You read through it, make sure there is no typo and it is understandable by the audience. Writing code has no difference. You have your first draft and you need to polish it until it reads well.
Improve
Leave the campground cleaner than you found it. — Boy Scout Rule
Most of the time you modify existing code instead of writing new one, and that existing code is nothing but clutter. What you can do is to always make it better. For example, Before you change the code, you spend several hours to understand the logic. By making it more readable, other developers (including yourself in the future) that need to read or update the code can learn more easily about the logic, saving them multiple hours. | https://medium.com/@krantharat-k/how-to-write-clean-code-e46d987a6c8a | ['Krantharat Krongsiriwat'] | 2020-12-04 16:09:14.550000+00:00 | ['Clean Code', 'Software Development', 'Software'] |
The Most Impressive Thing in Bitcoin’s Success Is the Incredible Work of Its Developer Community | The Most Impressive Thing in Bitcoin’s Success Is the Incredible Work of Its Developer Community
Take time to think about it for five minutes.
Everyone knows that Satoshi Nakamoto is the creator of Bitcoin. Even people who are not interested in Bitcoin have already heard the name, Satoshi Nakamoto. The reason for this is simple: no one really knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is.
The mystery surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity is something that has always served the interests of Bitcoin.
It has prevented governments from attacking him or her to harm Bitcoin. Without a leader to sue, Bitcoin is much more resilient than systems with a single leader. Satoshi Nakamoto understood this perfectly.
Satoshi Nakamoto offered his or her unique invention to all the inhabitants of the Earth
That is why Satoshi Nakamoto decided to stay away by offering his unique invention in the history of mankind to all the inhabitants of the Earth. Bitcoin is a magnificent gift that can change the history of mankind, but its success depends entirely on its users.
If we know that Satoshi Nakamoto finalized the creation of Bitcoin at the end of 2018, we do not know if he or she worked alone. Nor do we know if there is an entity behind this mysterious pseudonym.
In any case, Bitcoin was officially launched on January 3, 2009.
Cypherpunks from all over the world came to test this open-source electronic payment system which was announced as revolutionary.
The code of Bitcoin being open source, more and more developers then came to join the Bitcoin community to contribute to this software capable of changing the world of the future in terms of money.
Bitcoin is an awesome store of value
Many people realize that Bitcoin is here to stay in 2020.
Attitudes are changing, and Bitcoin is increasingly seen for what it really is in 2020: the best possible store of value. Bitcoin allows you to protect your money over time in a way that is resistant to censorship.
While Bitcoin is often described as a digital version of gold, it is actually objectively superior to gold in many areas. Bitcoin is accessible to the greatest number of people. All you need is a smartphone and an Internet connection to buy Bitcoin.
With its exceptional divisibility, you can buy Bitcoin so regardless of your fiat money wealth. Gold is totally outdated.
Every day, hundreds of developers give their time and intelligence to keep Bitcoin a success. I feel that many people underestimate how exceptional the Bitcoin developer community is.
The importance of its developer community in the success of Bitcoin is underestimated
The success of Bitcoin is largely due to some of the most talented developers in the world.
Well aware of the importance of their mission, they sacrifice everything so that Bitcoin remains a success. If Bitcoin has never been hacked since its creation, it is thanks to them. If Bitcoin has an uptime of 99.985% since its launch, it owes it to its developers.
Of course, Satoshi Nakamoto is the one who started it all. He or she is the person who created a unique invention that is Bitcoin.
However, it was then all those extraordinary developers in the Bitcoin community who made sure that Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention progressed over time, respecting the spirit of its creator.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin has a market cap of $210 billion. The success of Bitcoin is incredible when you consider that it has never received financial support from private investment banks or governments.
The 10,634 full nodes currently present on the Bitcoin network can guarantee the security of the Bitcoin network thanks to the work of the developers from the Bitcoin community :
Most impressive is the way Bitcoin’s developers collaborate
The success of the developers in the Bitcoin community is all the more impressive because all development work is done collaboratively around the world without any leaders imposing their vision.
Imagine Apple developing the software code for its iPhones in a public way, taking into account thousands of development proposals from all over the world.
All this without financial support and a single leader. Consensus should be the rule to adopt network evolutions. I don’t think Apple is in a position to do that. This is something that only a project with the great ambition of Bitcoin can achieve.
Bitcoin is a true democracy at all levels.
Anyone can become a Bitcoin network developer and contribute to the building that is going to revolutionize the world of the future when it comes to money. All written source code is published in open source. Everything is decentralized even at the development level of the Bitcoin Blockchain.
This allows more people to contribute, and it also makes it easier to detect possible bugs.
Bitcoin evolves at the pace at which it must evolve to guarantee the security of the network
Some criticize Bitcoin saying that it does not evolve fast enough. These people do not understand that Bitcoin evolves at the rate it needs to evolve to keep the network safe.
The slightest bug introduced on the network in production by overhasty production could have disastrous consequences.
Billions of dollars could be lost, but even worse, trust in the Bitcoin network could be lost. The Bitcoin revolution, and especially the better future world that this revolution is trying to build block by block, would be threatened.
Under these circumstances, you can better understand why it is essential that Bitcoin evolves at the pace it needs to evolve. The stakes are too high at all levels.
Conclusion
Next time you buy Bitcoin or think about Bitcoin, remember to think about its community of developers who are at the heart of the phenomenal success of this project. Even better, if you wish to contribute directly to Bitcoin Core, I invite you to visit the official website of the organization:
Whether you are a developer or not, you will see that there are many different ways to contribute to Bitcoin and participate in building a better world for the future.
It’s up to you because Bitcoin needs you as much as you need it. | https://medium.com/in-bitcoin-we-trust/the-most-impressive-thing-in-bitcoins-success-is-the-incredible-work-of-its-developer-community-2c27fb140260 | ['Sylvain Saurel'] | 2020-10-16 16:29:52.766000+00:00 | ['Open Source', 'Blockchain', 'Programming', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
From Malta to Madrid — My Model ASEM Journey | I was 30 years old when I participated in the 22nd ASEF Summer University (ASEFSU22) in Croatia and Slovenia in 2018. It was an amazing experience, though I thought it would be my last ASEF ‘youth’ experience. So when I received the invitation to be involved in the 9th Model ASEM last year, first to be trained as a Model ASEM Mediator in Malta and then as a 9th Model ASEM Moderator in Madrid, I was thrilled to know I was still qualified to be a ‘young’ leader. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to stay young and join a group of talented students and young professionals from across Asia and Europe through an amazing five-month journey all the way from Malta to Madrid in 2019.
The author, Ms Beibei JIANG (left) moderating a Senior Official Meeting, with rapporteur Mr Tobias SCHOLZ (right)
In August 2019, following some well-targeted training along with 13 other young leaders, I was Vice-Chair for the Model ASEM Spin-off on the beautiful campus of University of Malta. Thanks to the Spin-Off, I had the opportunity to get comfortable with hosting discussions with a diversified audience and to test and practice all the skills I learnt during the Mediators Training. From October onwards we immersed ourselves into the online learnings, helped draft thematic papers and led the online discussions until we gathered with over 140 participants in Madrid in December. I acted as Moderator for one of the simulated ASEM Senior Officials Meetings themed ‘Multilateral Cooperation in ASEM on Agenda 2030 & the SDGs’. However even though I was ‘trained’ as a moderator, I did not feel that I was more knowledgeable or ‘superior’ to any other participant — on the contrary, I was learning a lot from them, and thanks to the intense experience in both countries I deepened my understanding of Asia-Europe relations and more importantly, how to be a good ‘facilitator’ between the two continents.
Be ‘nobody’ and open to everything
Every participant selected by ASEF is top notch in their home country with impressive exposure and interest in global affairs. In both Malta and Madrid there were student presidents, campaign leaders, international volunteers, and national champions. But during our meetings it was time to forget about our titles and glamourous past — be humble and stay foolish. Learn from everyone because they have amazing stories! Get to know people and be ‘present’ for them. I also found the times I learnt most about my fellow participants were not during formal scheduled meetings but through light conversations during the coffee breaks, lunch hours, or free time in the evenings.
I remember vividly how impressed I was when a Romanian lady, who is 10 years younger than me, told me that the first time she came to China was when she was the lead singer in her national choir and did an international tour to Beijing when she was ten (she even showed me the digital album with her own picture on the cover)! It feels magical how naturally we can connect with people of such different backgrounds, age, and nationality. In a way we are all ‘diplomats’, in our profession or in everyday life. In China, it is not unusual for big deals to be negotiated and agreed on dinner tables. And I think this is something universal — even for the most experienced diplomats, sometimes informal conversations and social interactions are the secret and most effective way to reach some important government to government agreements. At the end of the day, it’s all about people, and connecting with others.
Friendship matters — have fun and learn!
To me Model ASEM is a stage for every participant, a platform to exchange views between Asia and Europe without bias or being judged, and it should not be political per se (of course we have to represent country positions when simulating ASEM meetings and that’s different). More broadly ASEF gives young people and civil societies opportunities to see the commonalities between us and to become friends not enemies. We were together to debate or discuss about how we could collaborate to achieve ‘multilateralism’ through cultural, economic, infrastructure, and technological connectivity — and I believe we all learnt from real Foreign Ministers and senior diplomats in Madrid that we can only achieve positive outcomes by offering mutual trust and inclusive solutions, by embracing differences and abandoning biases.
ModelASEM9 participants at the Cultural Evening
I still very much appreciate those participants who came to me with big smiles on their faces sharing their connections with China and Asia, whether it was an Irish girl speaking to me with fluent Mandarin (turned out she’s the champion in her national Chinese-speaking competitions), or an English lady sharing her experience of working at the Japanese embassy (she was going to happily marry her Chinese fiancé — congratulations!); whether it was an Italian girl who told me her best friend is Korean and she felt she was an Asian in her ‘former life’, or how touched a Spanish boy said he was when he was lost in one of Beijing’s very many narrow Hutongs[1] on a cold Winter night and some kind ‘Chinese auntie’ invited him over and he experienced an authentic Chinese New Year with her family (YES I want to remember all of them!).
Be yourself and be an ‘authentic’ leader.
Needless to say, what a special experience when 140 young, talented, diverse persons are brought together. But we can be good at different things and that’s great! You don’t have to be that final winner of ‘Best Delegate’, and it’s equally valuable to be someone who sings best or dances best, someone who can write thematic papers best or act as rapporteur best, or someone who can speak out loud and speak up, or even someone who tells the funniest (or dullest) joke! If you are not an expert in a specific subject it’s okay — don’t pretend to know everything, nobody does. You contribute to the group in your own unique way, bring your own characters, your own life stories, and you are your own Ambassador. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’, just that we are different and that’s what we should celebrate.
When I was in Malta, I knew almost zero about ASEM processes and it was quite challenging to debate on unfamiliar global political topics while representing a foreign country in a foreign language. But I knew I could learn fast and stick to what I am good at to confidently express my views. The ASEM process and ASEF’s projects bring us together and they bring out the best in all of us. Somehow we share the same vision, and that’s the most important thing — we are complementary to each other. And I believe this is also ASEF’s spirit — ‘Diversity Creates’, doesn’t it?
In the margins of the meetings I was asked a number of times what it feels like to work at a British Embassy as a Chinese. Here is my answer: I take pride in connecting the UK with China, in particular by working on a meaningful mission of supporting UK and Chinese organisations to build climate-related capacity to fight against climate change through green finance. I don’t see any difference whether you are British or Chinese when it comes to threats from climate change. It’s the same for ASEM — how can you stay out of it when we are all confronted by violence, inequality or digital disruption brought about through globalisation, no matter where you are? | https://medium.com/asefedu/from-malta-to-madrid-my-model-asem-journey-c685a1c24efd | ['Asefedu', 'Editor'] | 2020-03-26 03:12:52.106000+00:00 | ['Malta', 'Asem', 'Sustainable Development', 'Spain', 'Modelasem'] |
ThunderCore Tokenomics: An Update | I am very excited to share some big news with you that will benefit all token holders.
As of July 1st, ThunderCore will make the following changes:
Token Release Schedule Change: The Token Release Schedule will be modified so that, rather than tokens being unlocked on a monthly basis, tokens will only be unlocked every 6-months (January and July).
The Token Release Schedule will be modified so that, rather than tokens being unlocked on a monthly basis, tokens will only be unlocked every 6-months (January and July). Team Lockup: The 375 Million Thunder Tokens that were unlocked in May following the initial exchange offering will be returned to the genesis block pool in the “Team & Advisors” wallet and locked-up until February, 2020.
Why Are We Doing This?
To better align the incentives of our community, our early contributors, as well as our employees.
To use this opportunity for the ThunderCore team to show our clear support and confidence for the project and the community.
To capture further value for the community in order to incentivize the growth of a healthy ecosystem.
With these changes, we greatly improve our tokenomics. With a stable supply and plenty of partnerships, product releases, and exchange partnerships coming up, we are confident in the growth of our token price.
For the numeric geek, these changes mean, along with our confirmed annual Staking Pool Service participants, an immediate 10.1% circulation reduction this month and at least an average of 18.5% reduction for the rest of 2019.
More details on our changes to the token release schedule and lockup plan are below, but I want to take this moment to thank our community for the support and patience they have given us as we bring a complicated and robust piece of technology to the market.
From all of us here at ThunderCore — Thank you.
Team Lockup
To date, 375 million Thunder Tokens have been released to founders and employees. As we are confident in ThunderCore’s future, 100% of our team has volunteered to participate in token lockup. All 375 million tokens will be returned to the “Team & Advisors” wallet in the genesis block and locked until end of February 2020. This means no employees or founders will receive tokens from the genesis block before our early contributors.
Any employee tokens sold will be bought back from exchanges by ThunderCore and returned to the “Team & Advisors” wallet in the genesis block. By July 30th, 2019, the wallet balance will be 1,500,000,000.
The wallet address for the Team & Advisors pool is:
0x7DcbD3F649f10521CEAFcd5fe389AE67b40020d6
Please see the appendix for more details.
Release Schedule
The Token Release schedule will be modified on July 1st, 2019 to unlock tokens every 6 months rather than every month, alleviating selling pressure.
Moving forward, reserve and incentive tokens will be unlocked to ThunderCore every July and January. This release schedule will continue until July 2022.
Current vs New Token Release Schedule | https://medium.com/thundercore/thundercore-tokenomics-an-update-19dd8764f930 | ['Chris Wang'] | 2019-07-02 02:01:01.169000+00:00 | ['Proof Of Stake', 'Thunder Announcement', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
100 Days to RASA Chatbot — Tech. I think I can safely assume that you… | RASA Chatbot implementation in Cashify
I think I can safely assume that you have come here to know what lies ahead in the remaining 90 days of our RASA based Chatbot development.
And in case if you have not, then I’d request you to have a look at the Product & Business side of this RASA based Chatbot Development. The first 10 days of our Chatbot development were really important as we were focusing on understanding the problem statement right and drawing out the expected flow basis the discussions with our Business Unit.
Click here to know what went around in the first 10 days.
Day 10 to Day 15
Designs | New API Development | Events, Analytics & UTM Tracking Setup
I will refrain from sharing the designs here. How about check the new bot yourself? Just go to https://cashify.in and scroll to the bottom of the webpage and click on “Chat with Us”. Voila!
Talking of New API Development, there were a couple of new APIs that we got created to serve some of our use-cases.
(i) Field Agent Logistics API: This API basically provided us the Field Agent’s customer leads data for a day, which was basically also required to calculate the Agent ETA for showing it to the customer who enquired for it. There are a couple of important data attributes that we get from this API. Agent’s shift start time, his current lat-long coordinates, last lead served time etc.
(ii) Generic API for is_Logistics information: This was a generic API that was created to basically provide us a True/False value against the “is_Logistics” key through this API. This API basically tells us whether a certain Buyback order will be served by Logistics or from Partner?
“Events” was another important thing to take care of. As the name suggests, “Events” are basically the instances of user engagement, mostly in the form of clicks, messages typed, user’s selection and various other types of interactions.
What do we do with these events? — These events importantly need to get saved in our databases so as to draw insights from them.
What kind of insights do these events majorly give? :-
- What are the dialogues that the customer is majorly executing or interacting with?
- At what all instances are fallbacks occurring?
- Which stories (use-cases) are mostly executed?
- Let’s say if we have buttons in our dialogue flow, then which ones are those that were majorly clicked by the customer?
- Similarly, we also get to look at all those use-cases/stories that were relatively less performed/executed by the customers.
Why do we exactly need these events?
The insights that these events provide, essentially create the scope of improvement for us that we can later go and include in our Product Roadmap.
How did we plan to track/save the events?
We are simply pushing our event logs into MongoDB. We are maintaining a dedicated collection for all the conversations that are now taking place on our Chatbot. Every single conversation (chat session) has been given a unique object ID.
Let’s show you how a sample event looks like :-
{
“_id” : ObjectId(“*********************”),
“sender_id” : “default”,
“active_form” : {},
“events” : [
{
“event” : “action”,
“timestamp” : *****************,
“name” : “action_session_start”,
“policy” : null,
“confidence” : null
},
{
“event” : “session_started”,
“timestamp” : *****************
}]
}
I’ve masked the critical information for some compliance reasons. However, you get a decent idea of how RASA provides event logs in general. You can explore more about RASA’s Event Broker.
We also did a bit of UTM tracking. In one of our flows of the Chatbot, when we convey it to the user whether we provide Sell/Repair service in the user’s location or not, we also provide a link, clicking which the user can land on the Cashify’s product listing page, and search for their particular device variant / model that they want to sell or get repaired.
Day 15 to Day 75
NLP Model Creation : Stories | Intents | Actions | API Endpoint Integrations | Front End (ReactJS) Component Creation
Now comes the part, where I feel a lot of RASA enthusiasts would have quickly fast forwarded to. This anyway basically defines the most integral part of any RASA based chatbot development.
Here, we (primarily, the Developer) define Intents, Stories, Domain, Config, Credentials files, etc.
Let’s take a quick tour through each of these files and their significance:-
Intents file: This is where the developer defines all the possible intents of the user that the bot can be subjected to. For instance, in the case of our Chatbot, we can majorly identify two broad level intents. One is “Awaiting Pickup Specialist” and the other is “Service Availability”. What is done in an Intents file is that the user provides some sample messages/utterances that the bot can receive from the customer, for each of the defined intents.
A sample intents file would look like:-
## intent:awaiting_pickup_specialist
- When will the Pickup Specialist come for pickup?
- I have other concerns. ## intent:service_availability
- I want to sell my mobile phone
- I want to get my phone repaired
What’s shown above is obviously a sample intents file. Our actual intents file looks more verbose for obvious reasons. Can’t share the details here for compliance reasons.
Stories file: This is the file where the developer defines all the stories (flows) anticipated in the chatbot, to happen. A story is basically a representation of a conversation between a user and an AI assistant, converted into a specific format where the user inputs are defined as intents (and entities where necessary) and the assistant’s responses and actions are expressed as action names.
*Please assume the indents at your end.
## fallback
- utter_default ## awaiting_pickup_specialist_story
* awaiting_pickup_specialist
- utter_awaiting_pickup_specialist
- return ## service_availability_story
* service_availability
- utter_service_availability
Domain file: This is the file where the developer defines the 5 key parts for RASA NLU and RASA Core to function, namely, slots, entity, intent, actions & templates. You can read more about them here. A sample domain file looks like:-
*Please assume the indents at your end.
slots: PERSON:
type: text
entities:
- sell
- repair intents:
- awaiting_pickup_specialist
- service_availability actions:
- action_restart
- utter_service_availability
- utter_awaiting_pickup_specialist
- utter_bye
- utter_default templates: utter_service_availability:
- text: Hey {PERSON}! Do you want a Sell or Repair service?
- text: Hello {PERSON}! May I know what kind of a service are you looking / for? utter_awaiting_pickup_specialist:
- text: Hey {PERSON}! Please let me know what’s your pickup specialist / related query?
Similarly, there are config and credentials files too.
Config file is a yaml-formatted file that contains environment variables and command line arguments.
Credentials file contains the API endpoints, auth/login credentials of most of the voice/text chatbots, or other third party platforms or message streaming services that we want to integrate with our Chatbot.
You may visit RASA’s official website and read their documentation to know more.
Day 75 to Day 80
Bot Simulation on Local | A/B [Audience Split] Test Setup
This was the time when we were regularly testing the bot on our developer’s local machine and suggesting any flow improvements, right there. A lot of google meet/phone calls happened, emails were exchanged, just to ensure that we move forward with a stable chatbot build, when we proceed to the staging environment.
A/B (Audience Split) Testing was another important piece that was done during this time. We used GTM to control the audience split as the plan was to expose this new RASA Chatbot to a limited set of users and gauge the performance on this limited audience.
As we progressed, we ended up using GTM to also control the size/dimensions of the iframe that used to load on the website. GTM is a swiss-army-knife, I tell you 😎
Just to give you a quick idea of how a normal GTM script looks like (assume the indents at your end):-
<script>
function getRandomInt(max) {
return ######;
}
function testVariant() {
var ##### = document.getElementById(“########”);
var ##### = document.getElementById(“########”);
variantElement.children[0].innerText = “#######”
var styling = document.createElement(“style”);
styling.innerHTML = “div######## > div{width:##### !important;height:##### !important;”;
document.body.appendChild(styling);
########.style.display = “none”;
########.style.display = “block”;
window.localStorage.setItem(‘######’, ‘true’);
}
</script>
Day 80 to Day 90
Bot Testing on Staging | BugFixes | Pre-production API & Flow Tuning
We didn’t do anything departing from the normal testing theories of various companies. Just like other companies, it was important for us to deploy our Chatbot on our staging servers and test the end-to-end flows.
It is generally this stage where the Product Manager conducts thorough testing of his product feature, with the help of the QA. Smoke Testing, Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Automation Testings, etc. are some of the popular QA techniques that you normally would be accustomed to.
As expected, there were a couple of bugs that were discovered and fixed on time.
There were also some API level changes that were done, for a larger fine-tuning objective.
Day 90 to Day 95
Bot Testing on Beta | Load / Stress Testing | Server Consumption Analysis
Once, the stable stage Chatbot build was confirmed, we pushed it to our beta environment. The idea was to publish our chatbot on the beta website of Cashify which essentially used production DB and APIs to serve the front end. We placed real orders and performed chatbot conversations with a real production-like sentiment.
Tech Lead also conducted load & stress testing via Jmeter & Postman.
Day 95 to Day 100
Crowd Testing on Beta | Pre-prod final cosmetic & logic fixes
The chatbot was now offered to the internal audience for crowd testing.
As already anticipated, we had a lot of entries from the co-PMs and other internal staff for cosmetic improvements and logic enhancements.
We tried to cater the most critical ones and parked the remaining for future releases.
Day 100 :
And, we go LIVE! — NOV 20, 2020
Let me not share any images of how our RASA bot looks like. Rather, I shall ask you to visit https://www.cashify.in and quickly scroll down to the bottom of the page. Clicking “Chat with Us” will take you to our new RASA Chatbot.
And yes, don’t forget to sell your old phone!
Now that you will be visiting India’s leading consumer <> seller second hand gadgets marketplace, check out some really cracking price quotes for your old phones.
And our repair services are niche in the domain too, FYI :)
Thanks for reading! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/100-days-to-rasa-chatbot-tech-b26f960a67a5 | ['Shivam Dutt Sharma'] | 2020-12-06 10:57:43.081000+00:00 | ['Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Rasa', 'Rasa Chatbot', 'Cashify', 'Chatbots'] |
Letter from the Chairman | April 2021
Dear Veteran,
I grew up in a family that holds deep respect and admiration for our Veterans. I remember hearing about my grandfather’s service in World War II and about the heroism and courage he displayed serving our country and defending freedom across the world. These stories always inspired me, and they made me respect my grandfather even more than I already did. It also instilled the same respect and admiration for our Veterans that I had witnessed my entire life.
I never fully grasped just what it means to serve in the United States Armed Forces until I experienced it myself. I was attending UT law school when radical terrorists struck the twin towers. I felt a strong calling to do something, to take action.
Several years later, I joined the Naval Reserves and became an Intelligence Officer, later deploying on an eight-month tour of duty at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom.
Before serving our country, words like honor, sacrifice, and duty were terms I thought I understood. Now, these words hold a different meaning to me. When I visit with Texas Veterans in our nursing homes, often seen sporting a WWII, Vietnam, Korean war, or Desert Storm Veteran baseball cap, I instantly feel deep respect and connection. These men and women had that same sense of calling that I did after 9/11. They did not wait for danger to come to them; they walked right into the line of fire and defended our country.
Although you can never fully understand the weight of these words unless you’ve lived them, we all have a duty to try our very best. Our Veterans have sacrificed for each one of us in ways that are hard to fathom. It is our responsibility to honor those sacrifices to the best of our ability. Whether that means volunteering our time to help Veterans dealing with challenging circumstances, helping to raise awareness of the need for more Veteran services, teaching our kids about their sacrifices, or even just reaching out to a Veteran to say thank you. This is the very least we can do for these heroes that have given so much for our country.
During my time in the military, I was surrounded by some of the most incredible leaders and public servants I have ever met, and because of their examples, I am the man I am today. I will spend the rest of my life honoring these heroes, fighting for them, and dedicating my time in public service to their benefit.
Thank you all for everything you do for our Veterans.
God bless Texas,
George P. Bush
Texas Land Commissioner
Veterans Land Board Chairman | https://medium.com/texas-veterans-blog/letter-from-the-chairman-4c2a46974c12 | ['Texas Vlb'] | 2021-04-23 13:43:22.177000+00:00 | ['Vlb', 'Veterans', 'Letter From The Chairman', 'George P Bush', 'Texas'] |
How To Find Your Best Debt Relief Options? | On the surface, you’re hanging in there. After all, you are making your monthly credit card payments. The problem is they’re minimum payments, and your debt is not only not decreasing it’s increasing due to interest. You need help. But what to do? Here is how to find your best debt relief options.
What is Debt Relief?
Debt relief could mean erasing your debt completely, getting your interest rate lowered, or having your payment schedule modified to reduce your payments. You can also see if credit card issuers will agree to accept less than what you owe to clear debt.
When Should You Pursue It?
You should think about using debt relief when you know you can’t pay off your debt in five years, even if spending is cut to the bone. You should also consider the strategy if the sum of your unsecured debt — credit cards, personal loans, medical bills, and the like — is half or more of your gross earnings.
However, if you do feel like you can get out from under your debt within five years, perhaps some combination of belt tightening, debt consolidation, and appeals to creditors would work.
Bankruptcy
If you know you’re not likely to stick with a debt management or debt settlement plan, then bankruptcy may be for you. First, speak with a bankruptcy attorney to see if you qualify. Initial consultations are usually free.
Chapter 7 is the most common form of bankruptcy. If you’re way behind on bills and can’t handle payments or living expenses, such a filing could be a last resort to give you a fresh start. However, you may have to relinquish some assets, and your credit will be damaged.
Chapter 13 is more about finance reorganization. It generally requires you to make a monthly payment to a trustee for 36–60 months. Afterward, the trustee distributes the funds to your creditors who have filed claims.
Debt Management
You’ll pay your debts in full using this approach, but often at a lowered rate or with fees waived. You make a monthly payment to a credit counseling agency, which allocates it to your creditors. You’ll have to close your credit card accounts while you’re in the program. You won’t be able to apply for new credit until you’re done. You also can be dropped from the plan if you miss a payment.
Debt Settlement
Here, a credit card debt relief agency will negotiate with your creditors to accept a partial payment to “settle” the debt. The main reason debt settlement to choose is to avoid bankruptcy — a debt solution that will follow you for a long time. After the company negotiates on your behalf and you’ve paid your settlement, you’re basically debt free in less time and at a lower cost than if you attempted to erase your debts on a conventional repayment schedule.
What You Shouldn’t Do
If you’re feeling overly burdened with debt, there are some things you shouldn’t do:
Don’t be late with secured-debt payment in order to pay secured debt such as credit card or hospital bill. You don’t want to risk losing your collateral.
Don’t take money from your retirement fund or workplace retirement account to pay off unsecured debt. The penalties aren’t worth it.
Don’t borrow against your home’s equity. Rather than putting your home at risk of foreclosure, pursue other options.
Now you know how to find your best debt relief option. Look over your choices carefully and make the decision that’s best for you. The most important thing to do is — get started today. | https://medium.com/@theenterprisew/how-to-find-your-best-debt-relief-options-a6a2ffc81488 | ['The Enterprise World Magazine'] | 2021-06-17 10:22:33.325000+00:00 | ['Best Debt Free Options', 'Debt', 'Debt Free'] |
What is Ethereum? | To start Fetch’s Ethereum 101 Series, here’s a primer to get you started and explain the basics of Ethereum.
Ethereum is an open-source platform for decentralized applications.
That’s quite a mouthful. Let’s break down the terminology to simplify what Ethereum is and is not.
Open Source
This one is pretty simple. The source code of Ethereum is freely available for anybody to inspect or modify. Official changes allowed to be contributed back are managed by an authorized group of software developers as well as the larger Ethereum Foundation.
Want to take a look at the code yourself? You can download the code today.
If you’re a developer interested in digging into tools and knowledge for the Ethereum codebase, take a look at the Ethereum Foundation’s developer intro.
Decentralized
Ethereum is a decentralized system, meaning it is not controlled by any single entity. Nobody “owns” Ethereum, everybody does. For example, a company, a centralized system, is a single entity that is owned by shareholders. The company could be shut down by a government regulator or the board of directors.
Ethereum has no board of directors or single point of failure that can be exploited in the same way.
How It Works
Ethereum runs on thousands of computers simultaneously , called nodes. Some are provided by volunteers as a contribution back to the ecosystem, while many are operated by companies in the business of providing computing power to blockchain based systems for profit potential.
In either case, all nodes are created equal and allow the applications and data on Ethereum to be processed simultaneously. Shutting down one or many of the nodes does not shutdown Ethereum. It simply continues to operate on the remaining nodes or new ones contributed to the network.
Applications
Each node supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The EVM allows applications to be run, similar to how your iPhone supports apps to be installed and run. EVM applications are called Smart Contracts.
While Smart Contracts could power any type of application (games, betting, etc…), their primary purpose has been to create financial applications. Everything from lending, borrowing and trading has been created thus far. The possibilities for more applications are endless.
Some interesting examples today include:
MakerDao — Collateralized Debt
Compound — Money Market
dy/dx — Derivatives
Ethereum vs. Bitcoin
As the two largest cryptocurrencies, Ethereum and Bitcoin are often compared. However, they have very different goals. Bitcoin is a money transfer and store of value cryptocurrency built on a distributed public ledger, a blockchain. You can think of it like digital gold.
Ethereum runs on a blockchain as well and expands the capabilities to enable applications to live and run on the blockchain. This creates a digital money that can be held on the blockchain and programmed or controlled via applications.
Next
Now that you’ve got the basics of Ethereum down, check out part 2 of our guides, What is Ether (ETH)? | https://medium.com/hello-fetch/what-is-ethereum-17cf35c0cf18 | ['Hansmeet Sethi'] | 2019-07-17 12:30:32.556000+00:00 | ['Fetch101', 'Ethereum', 'Crypto', 'Blockchain', 'Eth'] |
HELP IS ON THE WAY — EMERGENCY CORONAVIRUS RELIEF AGREEMENT REACHED | Article Highlights:
Emergency Coronavirus Relief Act of 2020
Stimulus Payments
Unemployment Assistance
CDC Eviction Moratorium
Paycheck Protection Program Loans
Earned Income Tax Credit & Child Tax Credit
School Funding
Child Care
Transportation
Tax Alliance Consulting Info
After months of political bickering, Congress has reached an agreement on an emergency coronavirus relief bill and the President has said he would sign it. Although not all the details are fully available yet, the following provides a good overview of the provisions affecting individual taxpayers and small businesses.
Stimulus Payments — Another round is included, but only $600 will be sent to each eligible adult this time, down from the $1,200 per adult authorized by the CARES Act in March. However, this time it also includes $600 per dependent child. Also eligible this time is so-called “mixed-status” households, for example where one of the spouses is a noncitizen, which were previously excluded from getting payments.
Maximum Payment Amounts:
Each eligible adult: $600
Married couple (both eligible) filing jointly: $1,200
Each dependent child under age 17: $600
Payment Phase-out — The payment is phased out when the taxpayer’s AGI exceeds…
CREDIT PHASE OUT THRESHOLD
Filing StatusThresholdUnmarried Taxpayers (as well as Married Filing Separately)$75,000Head of Household$112,500Married Taxpayers Filing Joint$150,000
At the time this article was published there was no specific date for these payments to be made, but since everyone agrees the need is urgent and the IRS has done this once before, it should be sometime in January. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has indicated some direct deposit payments may be made as early as in the last week of December.
Unemployment Assistance — All Federal supplemental unemployment insurance benefits, which had already expired or would end on December 31, will be extended through March 14, 2021. However, the supplemental amount will only be $300 per week instead of the $600 that the CARES Act authorized.
Rental Assistance — The legislation establishes the $25 billion first-ever emergency federal rental assistance program to be distributed by state and local governments. These funds will be targeted to families impacted by COVID that are struggling to make the rent and may have past due to rent compounding on itself. These families will be able to utilize this assistance for past due rent, future rent payments, as well as to pay utility and energy bills, and prevent shutoffs. Each state will need to establish its own system for distributing the funds. Of the $25 billion, $800 million is reserved for Native American housing entities.
CDC Eviction Moratorium — The legislation also includes an extension of the existing CDC eviction moratorium through January 31, 2021.
Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Loans & Small Business Support — The legislation includes $284 billion for first and second forgivable PPP loans. Unlike the prior loan program, this round will truly be limited to small businesses that incurred a loss of revenue. Eligibility is expected to be limited to:
Businesses with 300 or fewer employees that have sustained a 25% revenue loss in any quarter of 2020 as compared with the same period in 2019.
Small 501(c)(6) organizations that are not lobbying organizations and that have 150 employees or fewer, such as local chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, and tourism offices.
Forgivable Expenses — will be expanded to include:
supplier costs,
investments in facility modifications, and
personal protective equipment needed to operate safely.
In a rebuttal to the IRS’s interpretation of the original PPP legislation, the business expenses paid for with the proceeds of forgiven PPP loans will be tax-deductible, consistent with Congressional intent in the CARES Act.
The loan forgiveness process is simplified for borrowers with PPP loans of $150,000 or less.
Set-Asides — $41 billion is set aside to ensure that smaller borrowers and underserved communities get the help they need, such as:
Small businesses with 10 or fewer employees,
Small community lenders,
Independent live venue operators, including eligible independent movie theaters and museums, affected by COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.
Earned Income Tax Credit & Child Tax Credit — These credits are, to some extent, based upon income and earned income (income from working). Because families may have had reduced income during 2020 that would adversely affect the amount of these credits, the legislation allows the 2019 incomes to be used to compute the credits for 2020.
OTHER ISSUES THAT DO NOT DIRECTLY IMPACT TAX RETURNS
School Funding — $82 billion of funding for states, K-12 schools, and institutions of higher education that have all been significantly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. This is similar to the CARES Act emergency education relief funds.
Child Care — $10 billion in emergency funds for the child care sector through the Child Care and Development Block Grant funding program. These funds maintain the flexibility given to states through the CARES Act and can be used to provide child care assistance to families, and to help child care providers cover their increased operating costs during the pandemic. This emergency relief will help stabilize the child care market and allows states to expand child care assistance to essential workers and working families who are in great need of child care services. The bill also includes $250 million for Head Start providers to ensure they are able to continue to safely serve low-income children and families throughout the pandemic. This program is administered by the individual states.
Transportation: Provides funding for transit agencies, airlines and airline contractors, airports, state DOTs, the motorcoach industry, and Amtrak to keep the U.S. transpiration system functioning. Specifically: $15 billion for airline payroll support, $1 billion for airline contractor payrolls, $14 billion for transit, $10 billion for state highways, $2 billion for airports and airport concessionaires, $2 billion for the private motorcoach, school bus, and ferry industries, and $1 billion for Amtrak.
If you have any questions related to these issues, please give this office a call(818–434–3997)
You can check our services here at https://www.taxallianceconsulting.com/services
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TAX ALLIANCE CONSULTING INC | https://medium.com/@taxallianceconsulting/help-is-on-the-way-emergency-coronavirus-relief-agreement-reached-be7fb858ccfb | ['Tax Alliance Consulting'] | 2020-12-22 21:32:24.610000+00:00 | ['Payroll Services', 'Taxes', 'Tax Preparation', 'Accounting', 'Tax Services Usa'] |
Letters to Mrs. Claus | A poem.
Letters to Mrs. Claus
Greetings! Mrs. Claus I wonder
Why no one writes to you
Child, she said, ponder
More and you
Will find the same reason why
People say Mankind instead of Womankind
The same reason why
People say Father, Son and The Holy Spirit
Instead of Mother, Daughter and The Holy Spirit
Truly I try
My child
But sometimes
I
Sike.
Written by Parishi Bachkaniwala | https://medium.com/@parishibachkaniwala/letters-to-mrs-claus-ea44364c7ef0 | ['Parishi Bachkaniwala'] | 2020-12-27 16:49:35.151000+00:00 | ['Christmas Poem', 'Christmas Poetry', 'Letters', 'Mrs Claus'] |
The Write Plan. Plan on writing a novel in one month… | The Write Plan
To Draft Your Novel, in One Month
Plan on writing a novel in one month? It’s easy to dream, and much harder to achieve. My suggestion: go into this with a goal and a plan. Maybe you want to participate in NaNoWriMo. Or maybe you have a vacation, a chunk of free time, and want to finally write that book. Fine, but how? Before I wrote my first novel, I had no clue where to start, and had only ever written short stories up until then. I dreamed about writing a book. There was a goal, but no plan. Need structure? No matter where you’re starting today, follow these tips. Your writing will be the better for it.
I recommend considering 2 important factors, before jumping into a fiction project: 1. Set an end goal, and 2. Develop a plan.
Set an end goal
NaNoWriMo begins on November 1st, with a target of 50,000 words. This can be a good approach, but can also be scaled up, or scaled down. Only have one week? Shoot for an average length short story of 7,000 words. Don’t have a lot of writing experience? Start with smaller incremental goals, and build up stamina over time.
Develop a plan
In a “pantser” approach, writers draft freely, without a clear goal where the story is headed. But if your time is limited, consider not wasting that valuable asset. Have a system, and there is no need to invent one. Years ago I stumbled on Book in a Month by Victoria Schmidt quite by accident. I go back to it time and time again. Start with the section on creating an outline. Create scenes, character maps, turning points, generate backstory and identify potholes. Write the whole damn first draft, or as much as you can muster, straight through from the opening sentence to the last line. Don’t write and edit at the same time! If you aim to reach the full 50K word count goal, I recommend setting up the outlines, characters and plot points in October — ahead of time.
The limitations
No, you won’t end the month with a complete novel. It won’t be ready to “hit send” to agents or publishers. You might pull that off with a short story, but probably not if it’s your first time.
What will you have? A first draft; which must be shared with critique partners, and rewritten based on their feedback. Perhaps by that point it will be ready to self-publish or submit to publishers. Don’t skip professional editing if you’re going to independently publish.
It’s not easy to write a fully complete novel, but it can be done. Who knows? If you have a good hook, well-paced plot, and put in the work, it might even be a great novel. You’ll never know until you try. | https://medium.com/nanowrimo/the-write-plan-to-draft-your-novel-in-one-month-4967f46a6085 | ['Chad Schimke'] | 2020-11-14 23:12:58.684000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'NaNoWriMo', 'Writing', 'Nonprofit'] |
Europe is losing competitiveness in global value chains while China surges | Alicia Garcia Herrero, Natixis Asia Pacific Chief Economist, Bruegel Senior Fellow
COVID-19 has led to the transmission globally of value chain disruptions originating in China and the scarcity of critical medical goods, not helped by an increase in export restrictions imposed by producing countries. These developments have prompted a debate on the resilience of economies in dealing with such challenges. For the European Union, this discussion poses major questions: how has the world’s most industrially-integrated area and largest exporter become so dependent on China for a large number of products, and which sectors are most affected and why?
To answer these questions, we look in this blog post at the EU’s role in global value chains and, more generally, its external competitiveness. The EU is the region with the greatest degree of participation in global value chains, but that participation — in the EU’s regional value chain as well as globally — is shrinking fast, a phenomenon that may have significant relevance for the integration of the EU single market. The EU’s decreasing role in value chains is linked to technological innovation and human capital. On both fronts, we find preliminary evidence that China is catching up very fast.
GVC integration with China at the expense of the single market
The most extended technical definition of GVC participation is the sum of foreign value added incorporated in an economy’s exports (FVA) and the domestic value added that is subsequently re-exported by a third country (DVX) as a percentage of gross exports. This indicator represents the position of an economy in global trade networks. The first component (FVA) captures an economy’s reliance on imports for its exporting activities, while the second component (DVX) accounts for an economy’s capacity to generate income through trade integration.
Following this definition, Figure 1 shows the level of participation in GVCs, and the change from 2014 to 2018, for the United States, the EU, China and Asian economies excluding China. The EU is the region with the greatest degree of participation in GVCs, but is also the region where participation is declining fastest. Most notably, a good part of the reduction in the EU’s participation in GVCs is within the single market. In other words, EU intra-regional trade integration (RVC in Figure 2), at least when measured in terms of value added, is shrinking, while the level of trade integration between EU countries and the rest of the world remains stable (GVC with RoW in Figure 2), although at a much lower level.
Source: Bruegel based on UNCTAD-Eora database, Natixis.
Stable integration with the rest of the world is mainly explained by the increasing trade linkages between EU countries and China, which is shown by the increasing exchange of intermediate goods. However, the benefits of such integration accrue mostly to China. In other words, EU exporters integrate into their products an increasing volume of intermediates from China (captured by the increase of DVX in Figure 3), while the EU’s exports of intermediate goods that go into China’s exports has fallen (represented by the decline of FVA in Figure 3).
Source: Bruegel based on UNCTAD-Eora database, Natixis.
We can conclude then that Chinese inputs into the EU value chain are increasingly predominant, but EU exporters are losing out because China’s reliance on them is declining. This however does not mean there might not be welfare gains if China’s products are more price-competitive for the same quality.
What is particularly worrying for the EU is that China’s vertical integration seems to be impacting the EU’s ability to export intermediate products to a greater extent than it impacts the US or the rest of Asia (as shown by changes in DVX shares in Figure 4). Given that the EU is a massive exporter of intermediate products, this should be a major concern for the EU, and particularly for countries that continue to run an export-led model, such as Germany. China’s vertical integration will increasingly challenge such export-led models.
Loss of competitiveness as a key explanatory factor
The most obvious explanation for the EU’s declining global trade integration is its relatively smaller size in the world economy. However, this seems to be not the only reason. While most of the diminishing global role of the EU in manufacturing value chains is a consequence of much weaker EU domestic demand growth compared to the rest of the world, almost 25% is explained by other factors (see here and here, using a broader concept of GVCs than we have used in the blog post). This is captured by the decline in EU market shares at different production stages in manufacturing value chains, and may be associated with a loss of competitiveness. In employment terms, the decline of EU participation in manufacturing value chains accounted for the loss of around 1 million EU jobs between 2000 and 2014. The United States and Japan have experienced similar changes, contrasting with the significant participation gains of China in all manufacturing value chains.
A more detailed analysis shows how EU competitiveness has changed relative to China across different sectors. Figure 5 compares the contribution of changes in market shares to changes in the EU’s and China’s global shares of value added for different manufacturing value chains. The size of each bubble represents the value added generated during all stages of production of the final product.
Figure 5 shows a strong correspondence between those manufacturing activities in which China has gained more competitiveness (ie positive value chain participation effects) and those in which the EU has lost the most. The EU food and pharmaceutical sectors remain competitive relative to China, but the EU has lost out in respect of most other sectors, regardless of their technological intensity.
Loss of EU competitiveness has been especially dramatic for textiles and electronics. While this trend should be expected for the textile industry in face of the competitive advantage low-wage economies have, the situation with electronics should concern the EU. Increasing competition from non-EU economies, primarily China, has resulted in a significant rise in the share of imported electronics, while the share of EU electronics exports in non-EU demand has decreased. These developments mean EU manufacturers have benefitted less than they might have done from the dramatic increase in the use of electronics globally, as both input for other industries and for mass consumption.
Moreover, value added from EU business services that contribute to the electronics value chain has also declined. The redistribution of value added triggered by the relocation of electronics supply to non-EU economies and, especially, China is very clear in the data (Table 1). This finding is not unique to the EU; similar situations can be found in the United States and Japan.
The ingredients of Chinese success
In responding to the trends we have outlined, some analysts point to potentially unfair Chinese cost-price competition, and the importance of improving the competitive environment and access to the Chinese market. This, however, might only be a partial answer as long as there is also an issue with Europe’s relative competitiveness. In fact, Chinese wages and labour costs more generally have been increasing for years, meaning the price-level gap with developed economies has shrunk significantly in the last two decades, with no sign that China has lost major market share. In addition, the price argument becomes less relevant for high-end sectors. While it can probably explain the EU’s loss of competitive advantage in the textile industry, it is harder to explain the same loss for the electronics sector.
Human capital and innovation are undoubtedly major factors in China’s increasing ability to compete with European exports. In education, China has clearly been converging with other countries, and certainly with EU member states. In particular, the average number of years of schooling in China has risen, and in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), the absolute number of graduates in China now equals those in the US, Japan and the EU together. The Penn World Tables index of human capital shows China quickly approaching the level of EU countries (Figure 6). China remains further behind the US, Japan and Korea by this measure.
Meanwhile, Chinese business expenditure on research and development has reached levels above 2% of GDP (Figure 7), in line with that in the EU. China’s income per capita is still not even half that of the EU, which makes the doubling of R&D expenditure all the more impressive. The global share of Chinese patent applications has also steadily increased since 2000, with those granted by the European Patent Office amounting in 2019 to a 6% share in artificial intelligence and 11% in information and communication technologies.
A key additional ingredient in this story is the expansion of global market access for Chinese products. When China joined the World Trade Organization at the end of 2001, the EU already had 13 regional trade agreements in force. Since then, China has signed 15 of these agreements and the EU has added 29 more. However, the EU’s deals tend to be with smaller economies. China clearly outperforms with 30% of world economic size and population covered by new trade deals, as opposed to 15% for Europe. In addition, countries covered by Chinese agreements are mostly located in the fast-growing and densely populated Asia-Pacific region, where middle classes are booming (Figure 8). The massive regional agreement between China and other Asian countries, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, further tilts the scales in China’s favour.
Source: Bruegel based on WTO. Note: red = signed only with China; blue = signed only with the EU; green = signed with both.
Conclusions
The European Union owes a good part of its economic weight to the creation of a large and efficient regional value chain, while it continues to integrate into the global value chain. But the EU’s role in the global value chain is declining. A good part of this can be explained by the EU’s shrinking share of the global economy, but that is clearly not all. In fact, the declining trend is particularly strong within the single market, while EU trade integration with China is increasing, though this is mainly to China’s benefit, putting at risk the EU’s external competitiveness.
In response, individual governments and the European Union have room in a number of areas to support competitiveness gains without distorting fair competition. For instance, they should reorient education, lifelong learning and active unemployment policies to build the knowledge capacities and skills for technological adoption and innovation, and to increase resilience to shocks. Other non-distortive policies should include improving the assessment of returns from, and coordination of, projects in the fields of research, innovation and digital infrastructure, while providing a solid legal and financial framework to develop these activities.
Eventually, China’s transformation into a market economy should be the best answer to these distortions generated by state capitalism. Unfortunately, prospects for China’s reform toward a true market economy look gloomy. If no change can be achieved on that front, more protectionism is the likely direction of travel. Unfortunately, this is not welfare-enhancing in the long run either for China or Europe.
* This article was originally published by Bruegel at
https://www.bruegel.org/2020/11/europe-is-losing-competitiveness-in-global-value-chains-while-china-surges/ | https://medium.com/@1556865737385/europe-is-losing-competitiveness-in-global-value-chains-while-china-surges-95bdb4b89adf | ['Alicia Garcia Herrero艾西亞'] | 2020-11-30 03:37:03.792000+00:00 | ['European Union', 'China', 'Competitiveness'] |
Facebook: No, COVID-19 Vaccines Won’t Require You to Get Microchipped | As the public waits to learn more about the upcoming COVID-19 vaccines, Facebook is working to prevent baseless conspiracy theories from mucking up the discourse. Can the company pull it off?
By Michael Kan
Facebook is preparing to remove misinformation about upcoming COVID-19 vaccines, including conspiracy theories that claim the treatments will require people to get microchipped.
“Given the recent news that COVID-19 vaccines will soon be rolling out around the world, over the coming weeks we will start removing false claims about these vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts on Facebook and Instagram,” the company announced.
According to Facebook, the crackdown will target false claims “about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects,” of the new vaccines. “For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn’t on the official vaccine ingredient list,” the company added.
The conspiracy theory has its origins with the anti-vaccine movement, which accuses Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates of funding COVID-19 vaccines to secretly microchip the world’s population. However, there’s no evidence to support any of this.
“No. There’s no connection between any of these vaccines and any tracking type thing at all. I don’t know where that came from,” Gates told CBS News in June. Nevertheless, the conspiracy theory has persisted on social media for months now.
Another conspiracy theory Facebook plans on removing covers false claims that certain groups of people are being exploited to test the COVID-19 vaccines without their consent.
The impending crackdown will face complaints from the anti-vaccine movement and free speech advocates. However, Facebook said it’s removing the misinformation out of fear it’ll put people in “imminent physical harm.”
Indeed, the upcoming COVID-19 vaccines hold the promise of ending the ongoing pandemic once and for all. On the flip side, the public is still trying to understand the efficacy and potential side effects of the treatments as the FDA prepares to approve them for mainstream distribution.
To keep users informed, Facebook plans on promoting “authoritative sources” on the coming vaccines through the company’s official COVID-19 information center. “We will not be able to start enforcing these policies overnight,” the company added. “Since it’s early and facts about COVID-19 vaccines will continue to evolve, we will regularly update the claims we remove based on guidance from public health authorities as they learn more.” | https://medium.com/pcmag-access/facebook-no-covid-19-vaccines-wont-require-you-to-get-microchipped-be8504f8d52a | [] | 2020-12-04 14:06:44.006000+00:00 | ['Conspiracy Theories', 'Disinformation', 'Facebook', 'Technology', 'Social Media'] |
Justice League Dark: Apokolips War | in Eudaimonia and Co | https://medium.com/9paneles/justice-league-dark-apokolips-war-73d105550ddc | [] | 2020-05-06 18:57:04.429000+00:00 | ['Justice League', '9paneles', 'Medium En Español', 'Animación', 'Cine'] |
No such thing as Strong and Stable data | Data is now at the centre of so much that we do. For organisations across the board, data is the main asset. It is how they consider investment programmes, design marketing strategies and then review and refine. However, are we letting data be our primary driver or does it remain a part of the mix? Are there any lessons we can learn for marketing?
In the United Kingdom, we have just seen one of the most high-profile failures of data usage — the June 2017 General Election. This was a campaign where it appears that none of the main parties saw the result coming and neither did the polling companies (except YouGov). Following 2015, there was a much talked about data analysis based Social Media advertising campaign that helped deliver a Conservative Party majority that no one had expected.
In 2017, that same data operation was expected to be key to delivering an increased majority. The Labour Party’s in house pollster even produced a poll on the eve of the election saying that the Conservatives would win by 13%. In fact, they won by 2.4% and lost their majority.
So, much as the polling pointed towards a Clinton win in 2015 and a Conservative win in 2017, this did not happen — the question is why.
Are your data sources complete?
Well, here is the first problem. It appears that none of the political parties had complete data about who was intending to vote and how they were going to vote. Therefore, their retargeting efforts were focused only on those who they knew would vote and we have evidence through monitoring of social media channels. Labour were very unfocused in their get out the vote strategy and the Conservatives did not see what has happening in constituencies they expected to hold.
We do know that YouGov predicted this with their new model. They did find the data needed to more accurately model the outcome.
Some even laughed at YouGov’s projections. The problem was these were people involved in one of the campaigns. They did not know what was coming.
Where do you get your data?
Political parties obviously need to find innovative ways to look for the right data sources to make the most informed choices.
For marketers, much of our data now comes from the platforms we buy through. When they make mistakes, we are basing our decision making on incorrect information. There have been hi-profile cases including Facebook video views and continual metric issues. Twitter have had issues and even Google Analytics has seen problems. In some cases, you can now have third party verification of the data you are receiving. Make sure you use that.
What is important is to look at all your data, run comparisons and look for discrepancies or anything that does not appear right. Make sure you check that it makes sense and then look to stress test that with new data series:
Look at how you came across the data you hold on your targets. Can you discern patterns in them that will allow you to expand your reach to similar personas? More data can drive more results and give your insight into any issues with your current data.
Think tangentially. Look at sampling new data in segments that you do not normally look at.
Look to randomly sample new data that you may not have previously considered.
Use data to inform, not control
We know that data can deliver greater efficiencies, however we all need to ensure that it is not the only reason we make certain decisions.
Focusing only on the data you hold can leave you ignoring potential expanded targets or worse, making bad decisions and not understanding your customers and competitors. So, your quick checklist: | https://medium.com/musings-on-marketing/no-such-thing-as-strong-and-stable-data-6bf1d4800641 | [] | 2017-06-13 12:08:08.021000+00:00 | ['Marketing Strategies', 'Marketing', 'Data', 'Analytics'] |
Tomorrow is My First First Day of Work in Over 10 Years | Tomorrow, I’m doing something I haven’t done for a long, long time: going to a place of employment to work in a position that isn’t for a business I own.
I had a lawyer job over a decade ago. Since then, I’ve been:
A yoga teacher
A stay-at-home-mom
A solo attorney
A freelance writer
A freelance web designer
Now, I’m heading to work in a full-time writer position. There are a lot of reasons I am heading back to work in a traditional space at this particular moment.
Why I’m Going Back to Work Right Now
First, I’m reevaluating my relationship with the person who has been the breadwinner all these years: my husband. His steady income allowed me to parent full-time and take more risks.
But now, almost 15 years too late, I need to learn to take care of myself. Financially and emotionally.
Second, I need to widen my circle.
I love working at home. Freelancing has been an especially rewarding way to work. And who doesn’t want to be able to work in yoga pants at Starbucks or Panera?
“person taking picture inside of restaurant” by Clifford Yeo on Unsplash
But, many of the problems I’ve had during the last decade were due in part to isolation. I’m an introvert and a homebody. Sticking close to home comes naturally.
But what it also does is make it more and more difficult for me to strike out on my own into the world where basically all the other people have to go every day. As I write this, I feel sort of like a ridiculous, privileged cartoon royal who wants to spend a day living like the normal folk to see what it feels like…
A New Adventure
Anyway, lately, I am wildly devoted to living my life on purpose — not just letting life “happen” to me. So this is a big deal.
And I’m extremely proud of myself for taking all of that time I used to feel was wasted to put together a body of experiences that has equipped me to go back into the workplace in a completely new field. It wasn’t easy, and I worked hard. Even if I’ve felt like a loser for years because I wasn’t bringing in a big-ass salary.
Now, I will plan my outfit and settle in to get some sleep before my first first-day-of-work in a long time. I hope the other kids like me. | https://medium.com/the-second-act/tomorrow-is-my-first-first-day-of-work-in-over-10-years-cbdf5fcd3fe7 | ['Courtney Stars'] | 2019-11-27 06:38:47.692000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Careers', 'Personal Development', 'Self Improvement', 'Life'] |
My emails module | When this code is executed, after all methods and (global) module-level attributes are define, main() function is called with args=None.
On lines 44–46 I’m making temporary logger initialization, when all logs with level INFO and above are redirected to stderr, all warnings are redirected to stderr. This will be effective till we’ll parse log’s configuration and reinitialize logger. This is done, in order to see log’s output, especially warnings. See Integrating Python’s logging and warnings packages for more details.
On line 48 we makes relative path to file to work.
On lines 50–53 we’re parsing configuration files. See My major init_app_conf module for details.
On line 55 we’re passing it to _log_config() function. Their we’re poping general.log part from the dict config and we’re calling logging.config.dictConfig() to reinitialize logger. We’re initializing (global) module-level attributes logger (standard logger) emailLogger (this logger will be used to send e-mails; this has configuration in logger.emails in configuration file above). At the end we’re pretty-print parsed configuration. Uncommented line uses ymlparsers.as_str() as convenient method to print logger configuration to the logger. Commented-out line us pretty-print pprint module (it is available in standard Python). It has caveat, though.
Note: Actual type is OrderedDict and not dict, but it is mainly for historical reasons… Side note: Up to (not included) Python 3.6 the order in which key/value are stored was undefined. In Python 3.6 it was stated that this is implementation detail of CPython (and best practice is not to relay on this behavior). Started from Python 3.7 dictionary order is guaranteed to be insertion order. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/58676384/1137529 for the differences between dict and OrderedDict .
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/my-parser-module-429ed1457718
pprint was written way before 3.6. In order to produce consistent result, it sorts out dict by key. I have found this unappropriated, I want to see the configuration in exact same order as it defined in the configuration file. In Python 3.8, however, you can specify sort_dicts=False in order to disable this sorting functionality. So, if you’re using Python 3.8 or above this will also works.
On line 39 we just remove general.log from parsed result. You can change remove this line, if you want to keep log configuration.
On lines 56–57 we’re calling run() inside EmailStatus context-manager function where actual business logic should be put. I will get back to EmailStatus below.
On line 20 we’re logging “run()” message to regular log.
On line 21 we’re buffering “Start-Python Process” message in our emailLogger .
On line 22 we just get our application configuration for the usage in the application code.
On lines 23–24 we’re simulating some computation, buffering in the emailLogger our progress.
On line 26 we’re buffering “Done Successfully — Python Process” message in our emailLogger . | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/my-emails-module-3ad36a4861c5 | [] | 2020-11-17 15:16:56.033000+00:00 | ['Email', 'Python', 'Logging', 'Python3', 'Libraries'] |
Customer-segmentation for differentiated targeting in marketing using clustering analysis | Understanding the Dataset
We will use the famous shopping mall dataset (refer data here )— https://www.kaggle.com/vjchoudhary7/customer-segmentation-tutorial-in-python.
Let’s say you have data for 200 customers regarding their gender, age, income, spending score. Spending score is a proxy metric here used on a scale of 1–100. Higher spend score means customer has a higher affinity towards purchase of items and thereby higher revenue for the shopping mall. Our Goal is to best group these customers the best we can so that similar customers are grouped together and no 2 groups are similar.
source — kaggle
How would you do this ? You basically have 4 attributes of a customer and you need to decide the best segmentation you can achieve. Let’s say you had only the Gender attribute. Then, naturally you would group females and males into 2 different groups. or let’s say you had only the customer’s age — you would probably create age brackets (something like <18, 18–25, 25–35,35–50,>50 etc. )that would make business sense depending on the type of products your business sells to the customers. But what happens when you need to group customers basis multiple attributes (4 in this case). Let me explain you why the problem might get complicated. Let’s take a peek at the data and understand this.
Age vs Income — Male/Female
If a human see’s the above graph (Age vs Income graph by ‘Gender’), he would probably group basis some intuition on separation boundaries and some business context as follows :
clusters1
What about ‘spend score’ vs ‘age’ graph —
clusters2
Or may be Income and spend score like the graph below ?
clusters3
Or maybe something in the 3D space as it entails all the features in the dataset ?
3d scatter plot — age,income,spend
The dilemma in selecting the right segmentation method :
Marketing teams might choose cluster3 over cluster1 or cluster2 because they seem to be better separated. It also depends how many segments do we actually want to have ? More segments would mean more content creation for different groups. Too less segments can lead to over — generalization
This is just with 4 customer attributes. Real world problems would have 100s and 1000s of customer events and purchase data. The problem gets even more tougher then. Let us understand how we can approach this using machine learning algorithms. We will look at 3 common approaches (below) and compare results to the human labelled clusters : | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/customer-segmentation-for-differentiated-targeting-in-marketing-using-clustering-analysis-3ed0b883c18b | ['Debayan Mitra'] | 2020-01-15 09:01:30.127000+00:00 | ['Clustering', 'Machine Learning', 'Marketing Analytics', 'Customer Segmentation', 'Unsupervised Learning'] |
Creating the Front End in Laravel using Jetstream, Livewire, Sanctum, and Tailwind | This tutorial would be the last part of our laravel-news application. We have already completed the migrations and models, relationships among models, and creating and consuming RESTful API. To create the user interface for admin users I have planned to use Jetstream, Livewire, Sanctum, and Tailwind.
The admin dashboard needs to be secure. Laravel comes with Laravel Jetstream which provides login, registration, email verification, two-factor authentication, session management, API support via Laravel Sanctum, and optional team management. Jetstream is designed using Tailwind CSS and offers your choice of Livewire or Inertia scaffolding.
We have already used Laravel Sanctum to secure RESTful API in the previous tutorial.
If you like Vue.js as a templating language then choose the Inertia.js stack provided by Jetstream.
I am sticking to Blade as the templating language so I will use Livewire provided by Jetstream.
Laravel Livewire is a library that makes it simple to build modern, reactive, dynamic interfaces. When using Livewire, you may pick and choose which portions of your application will be a Livewire component, while the remainder of your application can be rendered as the traditional Blade templates you are used to.
Now let’s dive into code. There is make:livewire command which creates two files, one in app\Http\Livewire directory and another in resources\views\livewire directory.
Different versions of this command are as follows:
php artisan make:livewire foo
# Creates Foo.php & foo.blade.php
php artisan make:livewire foo-bar
# Creates FooBar.php & foo-bar.blade.php
php artisan make:livewire Foo\\Bar
php artisan make:livewire Foo/Bar
php artisan make:livewire foo.bar
# Creates Foo/Bar.php & foo/bar.blade.php
php artisan make:livewire foo --inline
# Creates only Foo.php
Before we start with our planned application, let us make few required edits in registration and profile update files provided by Laravel as there are first_name and last_name in our users table instead of the default name .
If you have not changed the default migration for users table then you may skip this step.
Open resources\views\auth\register.blade.php
<div>
<x-jet-label for="name" value="{{ __('Name') }}" />
<x-jet-input id="name" class="block mt-1 w-full" type="text" name="name" :value="old('name')" required autofocus autocomplete="name" />
</div>
and replace the above code with the following code
<div>
<x-jet-label for="first_name" value="{{ __('First Name') }}" />
<x-jet-input id="first_name" class="block mt-1 w-full" type="text" name="first_name" :value="old('first_name')" required autofocus autocomplete="first_name" />
</div> <div>
<x-jet-label for="last_name" value="{{ __('Last Name') }}" />
<x-jet-input id="last_name" class="block mt-1 w-full" type="text" name="last_name" :value="old('last_name')" required autocomplete="last_name" />
</div>
Open resources\views\profile\update-profile-information-form.blade.php
<!-- Name -->
<div class="col-span-6 sm:col-span-4">
<x-jet-label for="name" value="{{ __('Name') }}" />
<x-jet-input id="name" type="text" class="mt-1 block w-full" wire:model.defer="state.name" autocomplete="name" />
<x-jet-input-error for="name" class="mt-2" />
</div>
and replace the above code with the following code
<!-- First Name -->
<div class="col-span-6 sm:col-span-4">
<x-jet-label for="first_name" value="{{ __('First Name') }}" />
<x-jet-input id="first_name" type="text" class="mt-1 block w-full" wire:model.defer="state.first_name" autocomplete="first_name" />
<x-jet-input-error for="first_name" class="mt-2" />
</div> <!-- Last Name -->
<div class="col-span-6 sm:col-span-4">
<x-jet-label for="last_name" value="{{ __('Last Name') }}" />
<x-jet-input id="last_name" type="text" class="mt-1 block w-full" wire:model.defer="state.last_name" autocomplete="last_name" />
<x-jet-input-error for="last_name" class="mt-2" />
</div>
Then open app\Actions\Fortify\CreateNewUser.php and replace the create() with the following code:
public function create(array $input)
{
Validator::make($input, [
'first_name' => ['required', 'string', 'max:255'],
'last_name' => ['required', 'string', 'max:255'],
'email' => ['required', 'string', 'email', 'max:255', 'unique:users'],
'password' => $this->passwordRules(),
])->validate(); return User::create([
'first_name' => ['required', 'string', 'max:255'],
'last_name' => ['required', 'string', 'max:255'],
'email' => $input['email'],
'password' => Hash::make($input['password']),
]);
}
After that open app\Actions\Fortify\UpdateUserProfileInformation.php and replace update() and updateVerifiedUser() functions with the following code:
public function update($user, array $input)
{
Validator::make($input, [
'first_name' => ['required', 'string', 'max:255'],
'last_name' => ['required', 'string', 'max:255'],
'email' => ['required', 'email', 'max:255', Rule::unique('users')->ignore($user->id)],
'photo' => ['nullable', 'image', 'max:1024'],
])->validateWithBag('updateProfileInformation'); if (isset($input['photo'])) {
$user->updateProfilePhoto($input['photo']);
} if ($input['email'] !== $user->email && $user instanceof MustVerifyEmail) {
$this->updateVerifiedUser($user, $input);
} else {
$user->forceFill([
'first_name' => $input['first_name'],
'last_name' => $input['last_name'],
'email' => $input['email'],
])->save();
}
} protected function updateVerifiedUser($user, array $input)
{
$user->forceFill([
'first_name' => $input['first_name'],
'last_name' => $input['last_name'],
'email' => $input['email'],
'email_verified_at' => null,
])->save();
$user->sendEmailVerificationNotification();
}
At this point, we are ready to go with Laravel’s default registration and profile update functionality.
Now move on to create pages to manage Categories, Tags, and Posts of our News Application.
Our Category page will look like the following and have the functionality to list all categories, edit a category, show all posts of a category, delete a category, and create a new category.
Admin Dashboard — Category Management Page
Admin Dashboard — Create Category Model
Admin Dashboard — Edit Category Model
To create this page follow the below-mentioned steps:
php artisan make:livewire Categories\\categories
It will create Component and View files as discussed before.
Open app\Http\Livewire\Categories\Categories.php and write the following code
<?php
namespace App\Http\Livewire\Categories; use App\Models\Category;
use Livewire\Component; class Categories extends Component
{
public $categories, $title, $color, $category_id;
public $isOpen = 0; public function render()
{
$this->categories = Category::all();
return view('livewire.categories.categories');
} public function store()
{
$this->validate([
'title' => 'required',
'color' => 'required',
]); Category::updateOrCreate(['id' => $this->category_id], [
'title' => $this->title,
'color' => $this->color
]); session()->flash('message', $this->category_id ? 'Category Updated Successfully.' : 'Category Created Successfully.'); $this->closeModal(); $this->resetInputFields();
} public function delete($id)
{
Category::find($id)->delete();
session()->flash('message', 'Category Deleted Successfully.');
} public function edit($id)
{
$category = Category::findOrFail($id);
$this->category_id = $id;
$this->title = $category->title;
$this->color = $category->color;
$this->openModal();
} public function create()
{
$this->resetInputFields();
$this->openModal();
} public function openModal()
{
$this->isOpen = true;
} public function closeModal()
{
$this->isOpen = false;
} private function resetInputFields()
{
$this->title = '';
$this->color = '';
$this->category_id = '';
}
}
In the above code all the public properties are available to the view returned by render() method. List of all categories are passed to categories view by $categories variable.
To create or update a category the store() method is wired in the view. In this method after validation a category is added or updated in the database and accordingly message is flushed.
To delete a category delete() method is wired to delete button of view. The id of category to be deleted is passed to delete method from view and the same is deleted and message is flushed.
The edit() method is wired to edit button of the view. It passes id of the category. Then the category data is fetched by this id and all the public variables are populted with that data which will now be available to model form.
Then open resources\views\livewire\categories\categories.blade.php and write the following code
<x-slot name="header">
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">
Categories
</h2>
</x-slot> <div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<div class="bg-white overflow-hidden shadow-xl sm:rounded-lg px-4 py-4">
@if (session()->has('message'))
<div class="bg-teal-100 border-t-4 border-teal-500 rounded-b text-teal-900 px-4 py-3 shadow-md my-3" role="alert">
<div class="flex">
<div>
<p class="text-sm">{{ session('message') }}</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
@endif <button
wire:click="create()"
class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 my-3 bg-gray-800 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-gray-700 active:bg-gray-900 focus:outline-none focus:border-gray-900 focus:shadow-outline-gray disabled:opacity-25 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Create New Category
</button> @if($isOpen)
@include('livewire.categories.create')
@endif <table class="table-fixed w-full">
<thead>
<tr class="bg-gray-100">
<th class="px-4 py-2 w-20">No.</th>
<th class="px-4 py-2">Title</th>
<th class="px-4 py-2">Color</th>
<th class="px-4 py-2">Action</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<?php $count = 1; ?>
@foreach($categories as $category)
<tr>
<td class="border px-4 py-2"><?php echo $count++; ?></td>
<td class="border px-4 py-2">{{ $category->title }}</td>
<td class="border px-4 py-2"><span style="background-color: {{ $category->color }};"> </span> {{ $category->color }}</td>
<td class="border px-4 py-2">
<button
wire:click="edit({{ $category->id }})"
class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 bg-gray-800 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-gray-700 active:bg-gray-900 focus:outline-none focus:border-gray-900 focus:shadow-outline-gray disabled:opacity-25 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Edit
</button>
<a href="{{ url('dashboard/categories/'. $category->id .'/posts') }}" class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 bg-gray-800 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-gray-700 active:bg-gray-900 focus:outline-none focus:border-gray-900 focus:shadow-outline-gray disabled:opacity-25 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Show All Posts
</a>
<button
wire:click="delete({{ $category->id }})"
class="inline-flex items-center justify-center px-4 py-2 bg-red-600 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-red-500 focus:outline-none focus:border-red-700 focus:shadow-outline-red active:bg-red-600 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Delete
</button>
</td>
</tr>
@endforeach
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Create one more view resources\views\livewire\categories\create.blade.php which will act as model to create and edit the category
<div class="fixed z-10 inset-0 overflow-y-auto ease-out duration-400">
<div class="flex items-end justify-center min-h-screen pt-4 px-4 pb-20 text-center sm:block sm:p-0">
<div class="fixed inset-0 transition-opacity">
<div class="absolute inset-0 bg-gray-500 opacity-75"></div>
</div> <!-- This element is to trick the browser into centering the modal contents. --> <span class="hidden sm:inline-block sm:align-middle sm:h-screen"></span> <div
class="inline-block align-bottom bg-white rounded-lg text-left overflow-hidden shadow-xl transform transition-all sm:my-8 sm:align-middle sm:max-w-lg sm:w-full"
role="dialog" aria-modal="true" aria-labelledby="modal-headline"><form>
<div class="bg-white px-4 pt-5 pb-4 sm:p-6 sm:pb-4">
<div class="">
<div class="mb-4">
<label for="exampleFormControlInput1" class="block text-gray-700 text-sm font-bold mb-2">Title:</label>
<input type="text" class="shadow appearance-none border rounded w-full py-2 px-3 text-gray-700 leading-tight focus:outline-none focus:shadow-outline" id="exampleFormControlInput1" placeholder="Enter Title" wire:model="title">
@error('title') <span class="text-red-500">{{ $message }}</span>@enderror
</div>
<div class="mb-4">
<label for="exampleFormControlInput2"
class="block text-gray-700 text-sm font-bold mb-2">Color:</label><textarea
class="shadow appearance-none border rounded w-full py-2 px-3 text-gray-700 leading-tight focus:outline-none focus:shadow-outline" id="exampleFormControlInput2" wire:model="color" placeholder="Enter Color"></textarea>
@error('color') <span class="text-red-500">{{ $message }}</span>@enderror
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="bg-gray-50 px-4 py-3 sm:px-6 sm:flex sm:flex-row-reverse">
<span class="flex w-full rounded-md shadow-sm sm:ml-3 sm:w-auto">
button wire:click.prevent="store()" type="button" class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 my-3 bg-gray-800 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-gray-700 active:bg-gray-900 focus:outline-none focus:border-gray-900 focus:shadow-outline-gray disabled:opacity-25 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Save
</button>
</span>
<span class="mt-3 flex w-full rounded-md shadow-sm sm:mt-0 sm:w-auto">
<button wire:click="closeModal()" type="button" class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 my-3 bg-white border border-gray-300 rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-gray-700 uppercase tracking-widest shadow-sm hover:text-gray-500 focus:outline-none focus:border-blue-300 focus:shadow-outline-blue active:text-gray-800 active:bg-gray-50 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Cancel
</button>
</span>
</form>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
To show all the posts belonging to a category create app\Http\Livewire\Categories\Categoryposts.php file and write the following code
<?php
namespace App\Http\Livewire\Categories; use App\Models\Category;
use App\Models\Post;
use App\Models\Tag;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
use Livewire\Component;
use Livewire\WithPagination; class Categoryposts extends Component
{
use WithPagination;
public $title, $content, $category, $post_id;
public $tagids = array();
public $isOpen = 0;
public $cid; public function mount($id)
{
$this->cid = $id;
} public function render()
{
return view('livewire.posts.posts', [
'posts' => Post::where('category_id', $this->cid)->orderBy('id', 'desc')->paginate(),
'categories' => Category::all(),
'tags' => Tag::all(),
]);
} public function store()
{
$this->validate([
'title' => 'required',
'content' => 'required',
'category' => 'required',
]); $post = Post::updateOrCreate(['id' => $this->post_id], [
'title' => $this->title,
'content' => $this->content,
'category_id' => intVal($this->category),
'author_id' => Auth::user()->id,
]); if (count($this->tagids) > 0) {
DB::table('post_tag')->where('post_id', $post->id)->delete();
foreach ($this->tagids as $tagid) {
DB::table('post_tag')->insert([
'post_id' => $post->id,
'tag_id' => intVal($tagid),
'created_at' => now(),
'updated_at' => now(),
]);
}
}
session()->flash('message', $this->post_id ? 'Post Updated Successfully.' : 'Post Created Successfully.'); $this->closeModal(); $this->resetInputFields();
} public function delete($id)
{
Post::find($id)->delete();
session()->flash('message', 'Post Deleted Successfully.');
} public function edit($id)
{
$post = Post::with('tags')->findOrFail($id);
$this->post_id = $id;
$this->title = $post->title;
$this->content = $post->content;
$this->category = $post->category_id;
$this->tagids = $post->tags->pluck('id');
$this->openModal();
} public function create()
{
$this->resetInputFields();
$this->openModal();
} public function openModal()
{
$this->isOpen = true;
} public function closeModal()
{
$this->isOpen = false;
} private function resetInputFields()
{
$this->title = '';
$this->content = '';
$this->category = null;
$this->tagids = null;
$this->post_id = '';
}
}
In the above code we are doing pagination as there might be many posts belonging to a category. To do so use Livewire\WithPagination then use paginate() method to get paginated records.
In the above code block we have used mount() method, we use mount() method to intercept parameters. To get the id of category from URL we will use this method.
This time we are passing posts, categories, and tags to view so we will pass these as an array in the second parameter while returning view.
Rest of the code is mostly repetative. So I am ignoring for now.
Now lets work on Posts. Posts page will look like this:
Admin Dashboard — Post Management Page
Admin Dashboard — Create Post Model
Admin Dashboard — Edit Post Model
Once again run make:livewire as follows:
php artisan make:livewire Posts\\posts
Open app\Http\Livewire\Posts\Posts.php file and paste the following code:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Livewire\Posts;
use App\Models\Category;
use App\Models\Image;
use App\Models\Post;
use App\Models\Tag;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;
use Livewire\Component;
use Livewire\WithFileUploads;
use Livewire\WithPagination; class Posts extends Component
{
use WithPagination;
use WithFileUploads;
public $title, $content, $category, $post_id;
public $tagids = array();
public $photos = [];
public $isOpen = 0; public function render()
{
return view('livewire.posts.posts', [
'posts' => Post::orderBy('id', 'desc')->paginate(),
'categories' => Category::all(),
'tags' => Tag::all(),
]);
} public function store()
{
$this->validate([
'title' => 'required',
'content' => 'required',
'category' => 'required',
'photos.*' => 'image|max:1024',
]); // Update or Insert Post
$post = Post::updateOrCreate(['id' => $this->post_id], [
'title' => $this->title,
'content' => $this->content,
'category_id' => intVal($this->category),
'author_id' => Auth::user()->id,
]); // Image upload and store name in db
if (count($this->photos) > 0) {
Image::where('post_id', $post->id)->delete();
$counter = 0;
foreach ($this->photos as $photo) {
$storedImage = $photo->store('public/photos');
$featured = false;
if($counter == 0 ){
$featured = true;
} Image::create([
'url' => url('storage'. Str::substr($storedImage, 6)),
'title' => '-',
'post_id' => $post->id,
'featured' => $featured
]);
$counter++;
}
} // Post Tag mapping
if (count($this->tagids) > 0) {
DB::table('post_tag')->where('post_id', $post->id)->delete();
foreach ($this->tagids as $tagid) {
DB::table('post_tag')->insert([
'post_id' => $post->id,
'tag_id' => intVal($tagid),
'created_at' => now(),
'updated_at' => now(),
]);
}
} session()->flash('message', $this->post_id ? 'Post Updated Successfully.' : 'Post Created Successfully.'); $this->closeModal(); $this->resetInputFields();
} public function delete($id)
{
Post::find($id)->delete();
DB::table('post_tag')->where('post_id', $id)->delete(); session()->flash('message', 'Post Deleted Successfully.');
} public function edit($id)
{
$post = Post::with('tags')->findOrFail($id);
$this->post_id = $id;
$this->title = $post->title;
$this->content = $post->content;
$this->category = $post->category_id;
$this->tagids = $post->tags->pluck('id');
$this->openModal();
} public function create()
{
$this->resetInputFields();
$this->openModal();
} public function openModal()
{
$this->isOpen = true;
} public function closeModal()
{
$this->isOpen = false;
} private function resetInputFields()
{
$this->title = null;
$this->content = null;
$this->category = null;
$this->tagids = null;
$this->photos = null;
$this->post_id = null;
}
}
The above code follows the same pattern as previous codes. Here I am uploading multiple files. To upload file use Livewire\WithFileUploads. Read more here about Livewire file upload.
Open resources\views\livewire\posts\posts.blade.php and paste the following code:
<x-slot name="header">
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">
Posts
</h2>
</x-slot> <div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<div class="bg-white overflow-hidden shadow-xl sm:rounded-lg px-4 py-4">
@if (session()->has('message'))
<div class="bg-teal-100 border-t-4 border-teal-500 rounded-b text-teal-900 px-4 py-3 shadow-md my-3"
role="alert">
<div class="flex">
<div>
<p class="text-sm">{{ session('message') }}</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
@endif
@if (Request::getPathInfo() == '/dashboard/posts')
<button wire:click="create()" class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 my-3 bg-gray-800 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-gray-700 active:bg-gray-900 focus:outline-none focus:border-gray-900 focus:shadow-outline-gray disabled:opacity-25 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Create New Post
</button>
@endif @if ($isOpen)
@include('livewire.posts.create')
@endif <div class="grid grid-flow-row grid-cols-3 gap-4">
@foreach ($posts as $post)
<div class="max-w-sm rounded overflow-hidden shadow-lg">
<div class="px-6 py-4">
<div class="font-bold text-xl mb-2">{{ $post->title }}</div>
<p class="text-gray-700 text-base">
{{ Str::words($post->content, 20, '...') }}
</p>
</div>
<div class="px-6 pt-4 pb-2">
<a href="{{ url('dashboard/posts', $post->id) }}"
class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 bg-gray-800 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-gray-700 active:bg-gray-900 focus:outline-none focus:border-gray-900 focus:shadow-outline-gray disabled:opacity-25 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Read post
</a> <button wire:click="edit({{ $post->id }})"
class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 bg-gray-800 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-gray-700 active:bg-gray-900 focus:outline-none focus:border-gray-900 focus:shadow-outline-gray disabled:opacity-25 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Edit
</button> <button wire:click="delete({{ $post->id }})"
class="inline-flex items-center justify-center px-4 py-2 bg-red-600 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-red-500 focus:outline-none focus:border-red-700 focus:shadow-outline-red active:bg-red-600 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Delete
</button>
</div>
</div>
@endforeach
</div>
</div>
<div class="py-4">
{{ $posts->links() }}
</div>
</div>
</div>
Then create file resources\views\livewire\posts\create.blade.php to be used as model for post create and edit and paste the following code:
<div class="fixed z-10 inset-0 overflow-y-auto ease-out duration-400">
<div class="flex items-end justify-center min-h-screen pt-4 px-4 pb-20 text-center sm:block sm:p-0">
<div class="fixed inset-0 transition-opacity">
<div class="absolute inset-0 bg-gray-500 opacity-75"></div>
</div> <!-- This element is to trick the browser into centering the modal contents. -->
<span class="hidden sm:inline-block sm:align-middle sm:h-screen"></span> <div class="inline-block align-bottom bg-white rounded-lg text-left overflow-hidden shadow-xl transform transition-all sm:my-8 sm:align-middle sm:max-w-lg sm:w-full" role="dialog" aria-modal="true" aria-labelledby="modal-headline">
<form>
<div class="bg-white px-4 pt-5 pb-4 sm:p-6 sm:pb-4">
<div class="">
<div class="mb-4">
<label for="title" class="block text-gray-700 text-sm font-bold mb-2">Title:</label>
<input type="text" class="shadow appearance-none border rounded w-full py-2 px-3 text-gray-700 leading-tight focus:outline-none focus:shadow-outline" id="title" placeholder="Enter Title" wire:model="title">
@error('title') <span class="text-red-500">{{ $message }}</span>@enderror
</div> <div class="mb-4">
<label for="content" class="block text-gray-700 text-sm font-bold mb-2">Content:</label>
<textarea rows="10" class="shadow appearance-none border rounded w-full py-2 px-3 text-gray-700 leading-tight focus:outline-none focus:shadow-outline" id="content" wire:model="content" placeholder="Enter Content"></textarea>
@error('content') <span class="text-red-500">{{ $message }}</span>@enderror
</div> <div class="mb-4">
<label for="category" class="block text-gray-700 text-sm font-bold mb-2">Category:</label>
<select name="category" id="category" wire:model="category" class="shadow appearance-none w-full border text-gray-700 py-3 px-4 pr-8 rounded leading-tight focus:outline-none focus:shadow-outline"><option value="" selected>Select Category</option>
@foreach ($categories as $category)
<option value="{{ $category->id }}">{{ $category->title }}</option>
@endforeach
</select>
@error('category') <span class="text-red-500">{{ $message }}</span>@enderror
</div> <div class="mb-4">
<div x-data="{ isUploading: false, progress: 0 }"
x-on:livewire-upload-start="isUploading = true"
x-on:livewire-upload-finish="isUploading = false"
x-on:livewire-upload-error="isUploading = false"
x-on:livewire-upload-progress="progress = $event.detail.progress"><div class="flex">
<label for="photos" class="block text-gray-700 text-sm font-bold mb-2">Images:</label>
{{-- <div class="px-2" wire:loading
wire:target="photos">Uploading</div> --}}
<div x-show="isUploading" class="px-2">
<progress max="100" x-bind:value="progress"></progress>
</div>
</div>
<input type="file" multiple name="photos" id="photos" class="shadow appearance-none border rounded w-full py-2 px-3 text-gray-700 leading-tight focus:outline-none focus:shadow-outline" wire:model="photos">
@error('photos') <span class="text-red-500">{{ $message }}</span>@enderror
</div>
</div> <div class="mb-4">
<label for="tagids" class="block text-gray-700 text-sm font-bold mb-2">Tags:</label>
<select multiple name="tagids[]" id="tagids[]" wire:model="tagids" class="shadow appearance-none w-full border text-gray-700 py-3 px-4 pr-8 rounded leading-tight focus:outline-none focus:shadow-outline">
@foreach ($tags as $tag)
<option value="{{ $tag->id }}">{{ $tag->title }}</option>
@endforeach
</select>
</div>
</div>
</div> <div class="bg-gray-50 px-4 py-3 sm:px-6 sm:flex sm:flex-row-reverse">
<span class="flex w-full rounded-md shadow-sm sm:ml-3 sm:w-auto"><button wire:click.prevent="store()" type="button" class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 my-3 bg-gray-800 border border-transparent rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-white uppercase tracking-widest hover:bg-gray-700 active:bg-gray-900 focus:outline-none focus:border-gray-900 focus:shadow-outline-gray disabled:opacity-25 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Save
</button>
</span>
<span class="mt-3 flex w-full rounded-md shadow-sm sm:mt-0 sm:w-auto">
<button wire:click="closeModal()" type="button" class="inline-flex items-center px-4 py-2 my-3 bg-white border border-gray-300 rounded-md font-semibold text-xs text-gray-700 uppercase tracking-widest shadow-sm hover:text-gray-500 focus:outline-none focus:border-blue-300 focus:shadow-outline-blue active:text-gray-800 active:bg-gray-50 transition ease-in-out duration-150">
Cancel
</button>
</span>
</form>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
To show single post create file app\Http\Livewire\Posts\Post.php and paste the following code:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Livewire\Posts;
use App\Models\Post as PostModel;
use Livewire\Component; class Post extends Component
{
public $post;
public function mount($id)
{
$this->post = PostModel::with(['author', 'comments', 'category', 'images', 'videos', 'tags'])->find($id);
} public function render()
{
return view('livewire.posts.post');
}
}
Now create view for the single post resources\views\livewire\posts\post.blade.php and paste the following code:
<x-slot name="header">
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">
Post
</h2>
</x-slot> <div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<div class="bg-white overflow-hidden shadow-xl sm:rounded-lg px-4 py-4">
<div class="grid gap-4">
<div class="font-bold text-xl mb-2">{{ $post->title }}</div>
<div class="flex">
by <span class="italic">{{ $post->author->first_name . ' ' . $post->author->last_name }}</span>
in <a href="{{ url('dashboard/category/' . $post->category->id . '/posts') }}" class="underline">{{ $post->category->title }}</a> on {{ $post->updated_at->format('F, d Y') }}</div> <div class="grid grid-flow-col">
@foreach ($post->images as $image)
<div class="px-6 py-4">
<img src="{{ $image->url }}" alt="{{ $image->description }}" width="300" height="200">
</div>
@endforeach
</div> <div class="grid grid-flow-col">
@foreach ($post->videos as $video)
<div class="px-6 py-4">
<img src="{{ $video->url }}" alt="{{ $video->title }}" width="300" height="200">
</div>
@endforeach
</div> <div class="text-gray-700 text-base">
{!! $post->content !!}
</div> <div class="flex">
@php
$tags=$post->tags->pluck('id', 'title');
@endphp
@if (count($tags) > 0)
Tags:
@foreach ($tags as $key => $tag)
<a href="{{ url('dashboard/tags/' . $tag . '/posts') }}" class="underline px-1">{{ $key }}</a>
@endforeach
@endif
</div> @if ($post->comments->count())
<div class="text-base">
<p class="text-gray-900 pt-2 pb-4">{{ $post->comments->count() }}
@if ($post->comments->count() > 1) Responses @else Response
@endif
</p> <div class="bg-gray-100 overflow-hidden shadow-xl px-6 pt-4">
@foreach ($post->comments as $comment)
<div>
<p class="text-gray-500 font-bold">
{{ $comment->author->first_name . ' ' . $comment->author->last_name }}</p>
<p class="text-gray-400 text-xs">{{ $comment->created_at->format('F, d Y g:i a') }}
</p>
<p class="text-gray-500 pb-4">{{ $comment->content }}</p>
</div>
@endforeach
</div>
</div>
@endif
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
{{-- https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.format.php --}}
This completes Categories and Posts. Please check out the GitHub repository for Tags, Navigation menus, and routes.
The source code is available at https://github.com/mdutt247/laravel-news for you to refer to.
Read the previous part, Creating and consuming RESTful API in Laravel of this tutorial.
Connect: Twitter, GitHub, Linkedin
You can support by buying a coffee ☕️ here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mdutt | https://medium.com/@madhavendra-dutt/creating-the-front-end-in-laravel-using-jetstream-livewire-72d140c6c946 | ['Madhavendra Dutt'] | 2020-12-23 11:54:39.807000+00:00 | ['Tailwind Css', 'Laravel', 'Laravel Sanctum', 'Laravel Jetstream', 'Laravel Livewire'] |
Whoever Wins the Presidency, This Is the Victory Speech We Need to Hear | Whoever Wins the Presidency, This Is the Victory Speech We Need to Hear
It’s time we embrace the better angels of our nature.
Photo by Ashton Bingham on Unsplash
To the American people:
Thank you for the honor of electing me to serve as your president.
The last year has battered us with a storm of pandemic and civil violence that none of us foresaw, a tempest that contributed to an ugly and dispiriting election campaign. The hardships and challenges we’ve faced have forced us to confront problems that for too long we’ve tried to ignore. Now we have an opportunity not to point fingers and lay blame, but to seek enduring solutions.
To you, the members of my party, I say: Do not look at these election results as a license to wield power, but as a trust to discharge honorably; not as allowing us free rein to pursue ideology but imposing a duty to restore balance and civil discourse. Do not to interpret this electoral victory as a sword to subdue political adversaries but as a plowshare to turn over the fertile soil of collaboration and partnership.
And to you, members of the opposition party, I ask you not to view this new administration as beginning yet another four-year-long exercise in trench warfare, but as the opportunity for rational debate and constructive disagreement. I challenge you to challenge us on the battlefield of ideas by employing the weapons of logic and reason and intellectual integrity.
Some of us believe in idealism and visionary progressivism, others in pragmatism and traditional values. Either way, the time has come for us to agree that those concepts and ideals can coexist. Indeed, each will flourish by walking hand-in-hand with the other.
We need to agree that meritocracy is not at odds with charity, that capitalism is not incompatible with social responsibility, that compassion is not antithetical to justice. We need to agree that our nation is strongest when we listen respectfully to positions that our minds and hearts resist while articulating our own positions clearly so we can earn the respect of those who disagree.
My fellow Americans, I ask that you devote the same passion you invest in defending your own rights toward taking responsibility for defending the rights of others. I ask you to remember that change takes time, and that the arc of history has guided us forward to a more just and equitable society than could have been imagined. Despite our shortcomings and the hard work that still stands before us, the need for improvement does not diminish the grandeur of how far we have come.
We are a nation truly blessed with resources and opportunity, if we choose to make the most of our blessings. That means that it is the obligation of those who are disadvantaged to look first to themselves to improve their fortunes, and it is the obligation of those who enjoy good fortune to look for ways to uplift those who yearn for a better life.
History provides us with a call to greatness by remembering the foundations of freedom on which our country is founded. History also reminds us of the danger of human failing when we exploit freedom to deny others justice, no matter how pure our intentions, and when we allow our prejudices and biases to corrupt the institutions necessary for a free and fair society.
There are times when individuals must set aside, at least temporarily, even their legitimate grievances to allow the system to do its job. And there are times when the many must set aside their comforts and their rights to ensure the welfare of individuals. That will always create an awkward and inconvenient tension, but it speaks to the heart of our humanity.
As we look forward to a new decade, I pledge to do my best to navigate the ship of state through the uncertain waters that lie ahead, to tack sometimes right and sometimes left as the winds and currents demand, to listen to all good counsel, regardless of party, and look always toward the heavens so we can keep our bearings and stay true to the course our forebears charted for us.
In this way, together, we may weather the stormy passages we will surely face and find our way to the safe harbor of justice for every person, prosperity for every community, and a brighter future for our children. | https://medium.com/the-apeiron-blog/whoever-the-winner-this-is-the-victory-presidency-speech-we-need-to-hear-cb88befbd782 | ['Yonason Goldson'] | 2020-10-27 10:02:53.954000+00:00 | ['Presidential Campaign', 'Election 2020', 'Politics', 'President', 'Civil Society'] |
HacktheBox — Postman. This is a write up on how I solved… | This is a write up on how I solved Postman from Hack the Box, which is an online platform where you can play various CTFs and practice your penetration testing skills.
TL;DR
Postman from Hack the Box is an easy-rated box which includes exploiting a misconfigured Redis service, allowing you to drop your public key to ssh in the box. It leads to an encrypted SSH private key which is easily crackable through John to get user. For root, I exploit a authenticated vulnerability using Metasploit.
Scanning
I first run an nmap scan with -sV (determine service/version info) and -sC (run default nmap scripts on ports), saving it to all formats (-oA), calling it initial:
nmap -sV -sC -oA nmap/initial 10.10.10.160
The results show that port 22 which is running OpenSSH 7.6p1, port 80 running Apache httpd 2.4.29, and port 10000 running MiniServ 1.910 (Webmin httpd). Note that it mentions that the box is Ubuntu. I won’t bother with SSH as the version is recent and there are no recent exploits for OpenSSH that are useful in this scenario.
I also run a scan for all TCP ports with the -p- flag. Note that nmap only scans the top 1000 ports(not in order, but really the top 1000 common ports).
nmap -p- --max-retries 1 -oA nmap/allports-tcp 10.10.10.160
It shows that port 6379 is open, which is missed by my initial scan.
Port 80
Visiting the page, it mentions that it is under construction.
Scrolling down mentions a “postman@htb”, and a thing about cookies.
I then run Gobuster to check for interesting directories:
The results shows an upload folder:
Visiting /upload, I can see images that are used in the website. I found nothing interesting in the other directories.
Port 10000
Since nothing is interesting in port 80, I visit port 10000 and it mentions that the web server is running in SSL mode.
I also add an entry to my hosts file(/etc/hosts) since I’m using Kali when I solved this box. Visiting the page shows login page to the server postman.
Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more.
I try to login using basic credentials like admin:admin, but it doesn’t work:
Since it is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix, I check searchsploit for any exploits I can use:
Since Webmin is running version 1.910, only a few exploits is available. One exploit that is an RCE for version 1.910 requires a valid login when inspecting the exploit.
Port 6379 — Redis
I now try to dig in with the Redis service.
Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache and message broker. It supports data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes with radius queries and streams.
I first look for ways to interact with the Redis service. Common ways are using telnet, and using the redis-cli. When I initially solved this box, I used telnet but for this writeup I used redis-cli. Using the redis-cli is much easier in this scenario but it is good to know that you can interact with it using telnet.
I first check if I connected properly:
Then I check the current directory I am in:
Finding out that I’m at /var/lib/redis, I try if I can change directories. I did this to find out if I can guess which directories are available/accessible as this Redis user.
I then run config get * to list all the supported configuration parameters. One thing that stands out is “authorized_keys”. I usually come across this in an SSH directory. An authorized_keys file contains the public keys of the users who can login through SSH using key-based.
There is also an entry for /var/lib/redis/.ssh:
I tried to change my directory to it:
Knowing that a /.ssh directory is inside the redis folder, I then looked for write ups on how I can leverage Redis with a /.ssh and came across this page: http://antirez.com/news/96. I suggest you read it to learn more about Redis security misconfigurations.
I then generate a ssh key pair using the ssh-keygen command:
I then save the contents of the public key using with new lines to make sure the format is consistent:
(echo -e "
"; cat sifo.pub; echo -e "
") > foo.txt
I then pipe the contents to the redis-cli command and dump it into its memory:
cat foo.txt | redis-cli -h 10.10.10.160 -x set crackit
I then save what’s in memory to a file called authorized_keys
I then try to SSH using the Redis user, and is able to do so.
Redis → Matt
Checking the files in the current directory, I tried to read what’s inside its bash_history file.
There is an entry of “su Matt” in the bash_history file, a mention of an “id_rsa.bak” and a mention of the sshd_config.
I check the passwd file and see that there is a user Matt.
I then check for files owned by the Matt:
redis@Postman:~$ find / -user Matt 2>/dev/null
/opt/id_rsa.bak
/home/Matt
/home/Matt/.bashrc
/home/Matt/.bash_history
/home/Matt/.gnupg
/home/Matt/.ssh
/home/Matt/user.txt
/home/Matt/.selected_editor
/home/Matt/.local
/home/Matt/.local/share
/home/Matt/.profile
/home/Matt/.cache
/home/Matt/.wget-hsts
/home/Matt/.bash_logout
/var/www/SimpleHTTPPutServer.py
It seems that there is backup of an id_rsa file(usually a private key use for SSH) stored in /opt. I move the file to my machine using netcat:
Checking its contents, it is encrypted:
I then try to crack it using John. I first have to convert the file in a format that John accepts. This can be done using ssh2john.py:
ssh2john.py id_rsa.bak > id_rsa.enc
I then crack it using John:
john --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt id_rsa.enc
The password is computer 2008.
I then tried to login using the private key, and when asked for the password, use computer2008:
The login is unsuccessful, and prompts me to the root login, asking me for a password. I tried to just switch to the user Matt, using the password computer2008, and it works.
I can now read user.txt:
Matt@Postman:~$ cat user.txt
517ad0ec24....
Matt → Root
I then check for running processes, and find that Webmin is running as root:
I tried to login using the credentials Matt:computer2008, and it works!
I then comeback to the exploit mentioned earlier which requires credentials. The vulnerability allows a user authorized to the “Package Updates” module execute arbitrary commands with root privileges. Details of the vulnerability and exploit can be found here: https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2019-12840/
I then run Metasploit and use exploit/linux/http/webmin_packageup_rce. The options that were set can be seen below:
Running the exploit leads to a root shell:
And now I can now read root.txt..
cat /root/root.txt
a257741c5bed8b....
I checked into the /etc/ssh/sshd_config and found out that Matt was denied to login using SSH, hence it not working.
I also tried to get a shell, which I am able to by using bash -c:
I checked the files under root’s home directory, and found that bash_history is not empty and its size is 14350 characters, which means that maybe I can see how the box creator made the box:
Checking the first few commands, it shows how the user installed ssh, installed net-tools, and added the user Matt 😺
And that’s how I solved Postman from HacktheBox! It was a very long journey but definitely worth it! Thanks for reading! 🍺 | https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/hackthebox-postman-2f539f63aa | [] | 2020-03-15 11:39:58.337000+00:00 | ['Information Security', 'Ctf', 'Redis'] |
Five Keys to Money Mastery | Money management is simple, right?
We all know what to do: spend less than you make, invest 15–20% of your income and avoid debt like the plague.
Simple in theory, yes.
In everyday life… not so much.
Our relationship with money is hard coded into our identity, as research shows that our money habits are established by age 7. The good news is that if you have young children, you can start teaching them about money early on, as they are able to grasp money basic money concepts by age 3.
(I tried this with my 18 month old and told her: “Zoe, money comes from work. If you can remember that,life will be much easier. When I test her with the question: “Where does money come from?”, she shouts “work!” without thinking. If only we all had this lesson before we could dress ourselves!)
This is at the core of unraveling our current tenuous relationship with money — the roots are hidden deep in our subconscious. We can mentally assent to all the things that we know we should do with money but until we connect our hearts with our heads, we will continue to see the perpetuate the same frustrating and self-sabotaging behaviours with money.
There is some work involved in digging deep beneath the surface, to assess what we’re really believing about money — and then to test whether those core beliefs are helping or hurting us.
Know yourself
How did you arrive at your current financial reality? What are the key factors dictating the way that you work with money? If our parents never talked about money but we knew it was a source of tension in the home, it has build in the prevailing financial approach. Your personality, culture, religious beliefs and repeated experiences also have strong influences in your beliefs about money, work and worth.
What you spend your money on is a good indicator of what you currently value.
2. Connect your head with you heart
There are four money scripts that dictate the role of money in our lives: a) money avoidance, b) money worship, c) money status and d) money vigilance. For example, if you really believe, at your core, that rich people are bad, or evil, then you will subconsciously prevent yourself from falling into the ‘rich’ trap. Also, riches are relative, depending on where you live. You might not count yourself in the rich category, but compared with other economic environments around the world, you might be surprised at where you end up on the prosperity spectrum!
Becoming clear on what we’re really believing about money requires time and intention. These are hard wired beliefs that have ‘served’ us up to this point, so we need to build alternate possibilities before we can consider revising our current patterns.
3. Get a vision for your life
We’re told as we grow up: finish school, get a degree and get a job. The goal with this process is financial stability, yet this rite of passage into adulthood fails to help us identity our ‘why’: why am I here? What kind of work makes me come alive? What if work was not just a means to an end (earning an income) but the end in itself (doing meaningful work that will leave a lasting legacy on the world?).
People who experience a deep sense of fulfillment in life, are those who are invested in close relationships (less time at the desk, more time with those who matter).
4. Connect your financial goals to your vision
“If I just make more money, then all my money problems will be over.”
We’ve all indulged in this form of magical thinking at some point in our lives and then when we do earn more money, we’re baffled by the persistent challenges of keeping our money in check (pun intended).
What is the amount of money that you will need in order to be financially independent? Let me ask this question another way: how much money do you need from passive income that can cover your basic expenses, so that you can choose the work you’d like to do?
Imagine if we pose this question to high school students and help them discover out what kind of work they’d live to pursue and what they would need in order to do that. Imagine if we teach them about the cost of debt versus smart saving and investment options? There will obviously be a stage when work is necessary to build a sustainable income — but imagine if we all started out with this end in mind?
5. Build strong financial habits
Tapping into our true selves to create meaning in our lives will require practical steps. We need to be brave enough to face the stark reality in black and white (and yes, the red too). Once we know where we are and can dream of where we want to be, we need to devise a plan to get there.
This will be a unique (and challenging) journey to reset our financial ‘set point’. Ultimately, we want to establish healthier patterns for our children (and their children) and in order to change vicious cycles into virtuous cycles, we need to start with ourselves. Our daily habits have to change to shift financial patterns in the long term.
We could start to shift things today — and see a massive change in our future. Or we can delay facing the financial truth — and regret not acting sooner. | https://medium.com/@cherylbenadie/five-keys-to-money-mastery-26d4338eee6c | ['Cheryl Benadie'] | 2021-06-17 08:35:33.427000+00:00 | ['Personal Finance', 'Money Mindset', 'Money Management', 'Personal Development', 'Money'] |
On Organized Democratic Conflict | DSA is for many members a space of enormous joy, of social connection and community, of collective self care. Our work is often deeply engrossing, even exhilarating. The tedious aspects are made so much less tedious when we do them with and for our comrades. You make new friendships, some of us fall in love. In short you experience a true community in a country where organized communal spaces have been systematically eliminated from public life. It is understandable that for many of us these social joys gain elevated importance, but there is work that is not always joyful, that often, superficially, appears to threaten our social bonds. This is the work of organized democratic conflict.
For this article’s purposes, “organized democratic conflict” is when issues are not just brought to a vote of the general membership, but when supporters and opponents of a resolution or candidate are speaking to membership ahead of the vote, building lists, testing commitments, writing statements, and so on. Not all debates call for this organizing work, in many debates it is normal to have each member come as an individual, but we are not an individualist organization and should not treat this as the only legitimate form of democratic expression.
The fact is that if we want this community to survive and to win power this work simply must be done. For some in DSA this work is called conspiracy or an abuse of power against a minority, and even for its practitioners it is rarely pleasant. Yet while individuals can amass power inside DSA without engaging in this form of organizing work, DSA as a whole cannot win power without it. If we do not win power our community will perish, if nowhere else then under might of the state, which will crush the life out of us as individuals and as an organization.
Most DSA chapters have not reached this stage of maturity. Ask yourself whether your chapter holds contested votes, I’m sorry to say at this stage at least half of our chapters fall off. Examine those votes, did people speak for and against them? Do people make endorsements or run slates in your elections? Do people argue for one candidate as the better of those running, and were all candidates mature enough as aspiring leaders to listen to these debates? How frank do you think those conversations were, when they got frank was this frankness (or the reaction to it) comradely? Did this frank conversation encourage members to speak their mind and trust their comrades to not attack them personally and socially? Or did the organic leadership of the chapter, with their actions, demonstrate that a critical voice is an unwelcome attack on the community?
When we speak about “building a democratic culture,” the use of endorsements and all the rest described above are critical. However, when groupings organize around an internal conflict this expresses power in the chapter, and our chapters harbor (recovering) liberal¹ elements who view this type of power as deeply illegitimate and unfair. The project of rehabilitating this form of liberalism among DSA members is a long one, for the most part it is a problem of growth and something to celebrate. However, without their recognizing the legitimacy of organized democratic conflict, liberal elements of DSA chapters can form a toxic minority bloc² that hampers and confuses the political development of our membership as a whole. I expect many chapters struggle with this given the rapid surge in membership, but we should not be complacent about old members either. DSA doesn’t get its membership from revolutionary heaven, it gets them from our atomized/individualist, traumatized, late-Neoliberal excuse for a society. None of us are above reproach or beyond the need for re-education. To carry out this re-education we need more than words, we need our organic leadership to take responsibility for carrying it out in deed, even when it is intensely uncomfortable to do so.
In a plurality of chapters groupings which engage in organized democratic behavior will receive intense flak, sometimes in the form of public denunciations. Given their distaste for internal organizing work, anti-democratic groupings will tend towards minority status, but in some chapters there is a more widespread reflex to circle the wagons to defend the community, something we naturally have come to prize. So long as this holds true, that community is weak, it is vulnerable to collapse at any moment. Those who defend this superficial community against democratic process ultimately sacrifice both on the altar of weak informal social groups which will themselves come apart when the pretense of togetherness is broken.
Far from a threat to community, democratic conflict, and especially organized democratic conflict, is our route to a more stable and survivable community, to a powerful community. Democratic conflicts are what DSA members (and the labor movement) would call a “structure test.” As an abuse survivor often arguments and conflict of any sort are quite difficult for me to process, and this part of my brain does not shut off at DSA meetings. Even a hint of conflict can consume my mental life very quickly, and the fear that comes with it doesn’t leave me for weeks. But DSA has shown me that political conflicts can occur in a comradely manner, where so few of us leave our common project behind, where friendship (and comradeship) persists despite hard political division, and through this survival grows stronger. Such conflicts are transformative in their reassurance. It is our work to build a culture that gives our members this reassurance: your opposition to a measure will not lead to your being shunned, instead your comrades will rejoice in your political maturity and courage, in your concern for even mundane details of the organization’s life and work. Experienced DSA members need to take this to heart, and set about modeling it for new members in word and deed. It is in fact one of our highest responsibilities to the organization. We do our comrades no favors by trying to shield them from these conflicts, in doing so we fail to prepare them for far worse in the years to come. The fact is that without this democratic conflict there is no decent survival for us as an organization, and organizing space for it needs to be the priority of all DSA members.
Footnotes
1: This “liberalism” exists among every ideological tendency. It is not an ideological liberalism but rather a set of behaviors and assumptions that we all at some stage inherited from our upbringing and radicalization inside a liberal society.
2: Older Columbus DSA members can confirm that I myself led one of these minority blocs in the chapter for some time, in practice working against the establishment of functioning democratic procedures, so I am not speaking as someone who is above or outside this tendency! | https://medium.com/@aleknielsen/on-organized-democratic-conflict-b40d09083171 | ['Alek Nielsen'] | 2021-02-11 13:19:36.219000+00:00 | ['Dsa', 'Democratic Socialists'] |
UX interview questions to ask during research | You’re tasked with completing a UX/UI research project. Whether for a cloud-based application, communications website, or other interfaces, you need to sit down in a room and talk to real users.
Real users can provide unique insights into what motivates them and how they interact with products and brands. This insight, in turn, can fuel your UX/UI strategy and leave you with an evidence-based digital product plan.
Coming up with engaging questions can be a challenge, which is why we’ve taken the following questions directly from our team’s UX/UI handbook. We hope these questions shape your UX research and presentation.
UX Interview Questions — Motivations
Tell us a little about yourself and your background.
What is your relationship with BRAND? (If you are an employee, how long have you worked at BRAND?)
What are the general goals you’re trying to solve with our website/application?
Before this product, how did you feel?
Once you started using this product, how did you feel?
What do you like about BRAND?
What do you dislike about BRAND?
If BRAND ceased to exist, what would you use instead and why?
UX Interview Question Examples — Current Use
What were your first impressions of BRAND’s app/website?
Do you regularly use the website/app? If so, what for?
Which existing pages on the website/application do you find useful or visit frequently?
What do you like about the existing site/application? What parts of it are most useful for your role?
What pain points do you experience while using the website/application?
How do you currently navigate the website/application when you are looking for something? (i.e. Google, search bar, menu, etc.)
What other resources do you use to find information about this product/industry?
Is there anything you think the website/application is missing that could make it more useful for you?
UX Interview Question Examples — Future Use
What do you believe are a few of the most important components of a new website/application?
Which websites/apps do you expect to spend most of your time this year and why?
Do you prefer using a mobile device, tablet, or desktop?
Where are you when you access this website/application?
What would make you stop using this website/app?
There are many questions that will depend heavily on your product or industry, so don’t forget to brainstorm with two-three designers, business analysts, or product managers when creating this list of questions.
Tips for Conducting a User Interview
Don’t forget to ask open-ended questions, for example, “is there anything else that you’d like us to know about your experience?” This gives your users the opportunity to share information that you might have missed — which can help you refine your questionnaire for the next round of user interviews.
Don’t lead the witness. Asking leading questions won’t get you an honest answer. Most of the time, your user will respond in the way you phrased the question which only adds to personal biases.
Whether you want to send these questions ahead of time is up to you. There is as much benefit to off-the-cuff answers as there is to allow users to think before they respond.
For additional conversation, consider holding a multi-person interview or focus group. Ask your UX questions the same way, but let the group brainstorm and play off each other’s answers. This can help you dive deeper into their core motivations.
Additional Reading
Five questions UX/UI designers should be asking themselves before a project.
To create a UX/UI report for stakeholders/clients, consider using this template. | https://uxdesign.cc/ux-interview-questions-to-ask-during-research-de8a32897c5 | ['Allan Wintersieck'] | 2020-08-20 14:09:11.969000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'UX Research', 'Cx', 'UX Design', 'User Research'] |
Two Topics Into One: | Two Topics Into One:
Purge: The process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another. “ Definition from the dictionary". During this pandemic have anyone felt the need to purge? I know 2020 has been a year we as a whole would like to get thrown out , HOWEVER I’m purging it good to cleanse from the old to a newer version of you. Purging is NECCESSARY it shows signs of growth. Growth is needed in life it shows you going from one phase to another, you can use wisdom in every aspect of life. We must cleanse our beings . Life is like a breathe of fresh air,that’s what purifying you being should be like !!! Get rid of what’s not giving you purpose! Going forward what bring you reciprocity (universal law) don’t add it ,it’s toxic to your being and the earth! She (earth) needs love, peace,joy and hope! Make the world a better place ,she has been polluted .
Transition: The process or a period of changing from one state to another. Perfect example of this is a baby growing from diapers to pull ups, this is a example of transition. I believe in life as we get older things needs to change. Change is inevitable but we must embrace it. Personally I’ve experience growth and it’s messy but neccessary for you, it’ll help your character and bring you into the person you need to be.
In this pandemic I’m learning, relearning myself. I’ve learned I’ve neglected a big part of me attending and doing the most. This is a new era I want to heal let go of what doesn’t serve my destiny and be free!
the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to ano | https://medium.com/@shymisses_32711/two-topics-into-one-6a764795e65a | ['Shaquilla Anidobu'] | 2020-12-18 13:44:31.704000+00:00 | ['Purpose Driven Life', 'Purpose', 'Freedom', 'Purge', 'Growth Mindset'] |
SMOKED PEAR SALAD WITH GORGONZOLA | Ok, to the melody of Simon & Garfunkel’s classic “Bridge Over Troubled Water” —
When You’re craving salad, feeling tired,
When boring options are in your eyes
This recipe will feed your senses
SmokinLicious® is on your side…
All kidding aside, here’s a flavorful blueprint that will take salad to another taste stratosphere- Smoked Pear Salad with Gorgonzola!
This is a very simple salad once you’ve followed our segment on smoking fresh pears. With pears in season during the colder months, it’s a great time to get your serving of greens. So, let’s get started with what you will need for Smoke Pear Salad with Gorgonzola:
Ingredients:
• 2–3 smoked pears (see our previous series on smoking pears)
• 1/2 cup of Gorgonzola cheese
• 1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar — I prefer a flavor infused one — I am using Tangerine balsamic vinegar but anything in the citrus line would work well
• 1 head of lettuce in my case, I am using Boston lettuce
• Fresh pepper
• ½ cup of SmokinLicious® Minuto® Wood Chips Size #6
Preparing the Salad:
Taking your previously smoked pear halves, time to remove the skin and prepare to cut these for the salad. Now, this is where you need to make some decisions on how you want your salad to look. You can either slice the pears to add to whole Boston or Romaine lettuce leaves or you can cube them to add to chopped lettuce. I will be chopping my lettuce and cubing my smoked pears. Ideal sizing is ½ inch thickness for your pears to provide the right balance between the boldness of the smoked pear and the savory bite of the gorgonzola. I’ll be balancing the two out with my vinaigrette.
Boston lettuce is ideal for forming its own bowl and is an ideal choice for this pear salad. If you want to use the leaves whole, lay 1–2 for a good personal size salad. I am chopping my lettuce for a full side dish platter. Be sure to clean the lettuce and pat dry prior to using. The lettuce, if cut, should be rough cut in order to hold the pears and hold the vinaigrette.
Assembling the Salad:
Once the lettuce is cut or laid in whole leaf form to the plate, it’s time to add the cubed or sliced pear. Be sure you try to keep the pears in a single layer. Now it’s time to add the gorgonzola cheese. Depending on your preference for this very strong cheese, begin sprinkling it all around the salad or if using the lettuce as a bowl, providing an even layer of cheese. It’s that simple! Now you’ll see just how well these colors all work together. Pleasing to the eyes and mouth!
Making the Vinaigrette:
Now that the salad components are plated it’s time to prepare the vinaigrette. I like to mix my dressings in a 2-cup measuring cup in order to make it easy to add to the salad. You will need a small whisk as well. First, add 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil to the measuring cup. Then add 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar — I am using a Tangerine Infused Balsamic vinegar for a citrus flavor to this salad. To the liquids, grind some fresh ground pepper and then whisk until combined and thickened. Do not mix the vinaigrette unless you’re ready to serve the salad otherwise you’ll get a breakdown and thinning.
The Finish:
Here is the final component to this great salad — drizzling a tangerine vinaigrette over the smoked pears, Boston lettuce and gorgonzola. It’s your choice how much to add but just be sure you get most of the components coated with a bit or you’ll be missing out on the fantastic balance of all the flavors. Smoky depth of the pears, bite of the gorgonzola, crisp freshness of the lettuce and the tang of the oil and vinegar. A perfect way to get heartiness in a salad while enjoying the benefits of healthiness.
You know, the more I think of it, I just bet Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel would be big fans of this dish! Heck, in addition its great taste, ‘Gor-GON-zo-LA’ offers quite a syncopated rhythm opportunity! Bon appetito!
Dr Smoke
Follow us on: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Flipboard, Google+, Reddit, Medium, Blogger, BuzzFeed, Bloglovin’ | https://medium.com/cooking-with-dr-smoke/smoked-pear-salad-with-gorgonzola-af5dbaa3e266 | [] | 2017-02-22 14:57:27.721000+00:00 | ['Salad', 'Recipe', 'Pears', 'Food', 'Dr Smoke'] |
Get in the Game: Writer Tools to Help You Flourish | You’ve worked hard to get where you are. You’ve put in your time, diagrammed sentences, completed mind maps, and learned the (often torturous) intricacies of the English language. There have been classes, experimental styles, and good (and painful) critiques. You’ve typed until your fingers ache, and you’ve created characters, killed villains, and resurrected heroes to be even better than they were before. You’ve blown up buildings, brought gods to tears, and derailed trains.
Whew! Now you’re ready to publish. What’s next?
Spoiler alert: the decisions you have to make won’t suddenly start getting easier.
Thought it was tough killing off your favorite character? Think again. It’s really hard to decide who trust now that your book is ready to go through the rigorous pre-publishing demands.
Do you go Indie or do you go traditional? Not to add undue weight to this decision, but choosing the correct publishing path for you is a decision that will affect the entire trajectory of your writing career. (No pressure.)
Creativity Used to Be Enough
And it IS enough if what you want to do is get a story onto paper. If you want to write your book and stash it in the cabinet for future branches of the family tree to peruse at their leisure, creativity is absolutely enough. But if you want to publish, you need to be prepared for a brand-new world. Gone are the days when publishing houses handled everything from marketing to travel to author appearances. Now, they expect authors to handle much of these necessary things on their own — in addition to continuing to write. That means, in addition to creativity, it’s time to hone your organizational and people-ing skills. (This is what ends up biting some of us in the butt.)
Your high school English teacher may have taught you techniques like meditation and mind-mapping to clear your head and help you get your thoughts on paper. But what about now? What if you’re getting paid to write? Or what if you’re on a major deadline? What your English teacher failed to mention is that IRL, you’ll have calendars staring back at you and bosses who breathe over your shoulder demanding creativity and inspiration…before the meeting that starts in five minutes. When your paycheck depends on delivering genius-level creativity, things get incrementally more complicated for your muse. (It tends to get a little performance shy.)
As a creative, you have several skills and traits you should leverage. Here are Seven Mega Skills you have and how they can help you turn ordinary words into magic on the page:
1. You get bored easily. You need new scenery, new activities. This is great because it means you’re always up for a challenge or an adventure. If start to feel stifled or antsy — or if you write yourself into a corner and feel stuck — you’ll know it’s time to do something crazy, wacky, different to help you stretch your creative muscles.
Trait Superpower: You aren’t afraid to speak up if things don’t make sense. This gives you the chutzpah reach out to people you don’t know, learn new things, and push yourself outside your comfort zone. Getting bored is awesome if you channel that feeling into positive forward momentum.
2. You’re spontaneous and impulsive. Have you ever heard that you’re flighty or unfocused? Ever put the car keys in the refrigerator while writing stories in your head? Let’s talk due dates. Have you ever faced a 24-hour countdown, and instead of putting your butt in the chair, you ended up at alpaca farm for “creative inspiration”? If these scenarios sound remotely plausible, we get you.
Trait Superpower: You’re highly creative with thoughts and colors and emotions and ideas flying at you 100 miles per minute. It’s really no surprise the car keys are in the freezer, because you have WAY bigger things on your mind. This trait makes you inquisitive, flexible, and able to see things from different perspectives. Lean into that!
3. You’re brave. Your mom knew it in Kindergarten when you told the stranger his cigarette was gross. Your writing teacher knew it when you chose to document your trip to Dachau instead of writing about your summer vacation to Florida. You make mistakes, but you learn and move forward. You’re good, and even better, you want to keep learning.
Trait Superpower: You’re able to shove your fears and doubts behind you, which is cool in the publishing world, because you will get good feedback, interesting feedback, and eventually, scathing feedback. You’re a kickass writer, so keep on believin’…and keep on writing fearlessly.
4. You’re a thinker and a doer. You don’t sit by the sidelines and wait for others to show you how things are done. You roll up your sleeves, get to work, and pour all of your energy into whatever project you’re currently tackling. You’re a leader, and you love innovative ideas. This means you’ll come up with story ideas that are fabulously outside the box, and you’ll take them on without hesitation.
Trait Superpower: You don’t follow the flow of traffic. Instead, you find a new way. Your stories are innovative, and you find ways to say things from different perspectives. Your energy and determination will push you even during the rare times when your creativity muscle gets tired.
5. You’re curious and tenacious. Try to dissuade you from your fact-sniffing trail? No way. Convince you to back down from building a juicy plotline? Don’t think so. On the lookout for the latest insider news? Bet your bottom dollar you know about it.
Trait Superpower: You’re always up for a new twist or book idea, and most things intrigue you enough to at least do a little digging. You’re a learner, and your internet browser will likely confirm that by revealing searches on everything from murder weapons to sunken ships. What’s that mean? You’ll never run out of ideas!
6. You break the rules. Rules, schmules…am I right? Let’s talk tradition. My 5th grade teacher would have become apoplectic if our study group had re-enacted Romeo and Juliet in modern rap. But how bad is that really? Out of everything that could happen to modern literature, rapping about Romeo seems fairly harmless. Same thing with grammar; there are worse things than breaking a rule to support the voice or tone or a character. Ain’t nothin’ but a thing!
Trait Superpower: You know the rules, but you’re flexible and creative. You sang the preposition song as a kid, you were traumatized by spelling bees, and you know the difference between there, their, and they’re. BUT you’ve reached a point in your professional and creative life where you can BREAK THE RULES and LOVE LIFE! You know you can have fun with words and make them work for you — and that’s a hella superpower.
7. You’re an Independent worker.
This one might be a bit controversial, but we’re gonna go there right now. Ask a few creative people how they feel about breaking into teams for a project. I’m guessing a majority of them will give you one of three responses:
· Many of them will immediately pretend to have an aggressive outbreak of hives and scratch violently until they are able to prematurely exit the meeting. Or possibly even until you offer to call an ambulance. This whole group work thing is no joke to people who breathe into paper bags at the thought of interactions with several people at once.
· Your entire team will claim an unprecedented and unfortunate food-poisoning incident — the likes of which no company has ever endured. While there may be no group Chipotle orders for the next several months, your team will be spared the dreaded spaghetti-tower-building project. (Karen, no one wants to do this. Also, Karen, the trick is to sit there chatting the entire time, then turn your table on its end longways just before the timer goes off. Then stick the damn spaghetti to the uppermost portion of the table. Boom, tallest in the room. Can we get back to writing now?)
· Your office organizer will immediately begin trying to assemble teams, and colleagues will make a game of escaping that person via circuitous routes through the cubicle maze you all call home.
Trait Superpower: It’s ok to lean toward being an independent worker — as long as you stretch your muscles and collaborate with others on projects that need lots of brainpower. Of course, writing tends to be a solo project, much like bathing and going to the bathroom. No other writer, designer, or creative planner is going to have the same vision as you, so it can get complicated when it’s time to meld your visions. Your superpower will help you here, because you are open new ideas, and you tend to give most processes, people, and plans a chance.
Authors are a special breed of creative + analytic + sensitive + intelligent. We like to call it eccentric. (It sounds a lot better than ‘crazy.’) Take a good, hard look at all of the traits you possess and the superpowers they give you. You’re basically only lacking a cloak of invisibility and the ability to fly. So there’s nothing stopping you from writing your book — and EVERYTHING pointing you toward getting it done.
It’s time to summon all your superpowers and author a book that’s gonna rock the world. Get outta here. Go write something. | https://medium.com/@tiltedwriter/get-in-the-game-writer-tools-to-help-you-flourish-f78ae00b235e | ['Tilted Writer Musings'] | 2020-12-19 14:06:03.845000+00:00 | ['Writers On Writing', 'Creative Process', 'Writers On Medium', 'Fiction', 'Writing'] |
COVID-19 and The Workplace: Why Purpose Driven Leadership is More Important than Ever | In just a short time, Coronavirus has had a major impact on the world.
Ushering in a new normal of social distancing, unprecedented unemployment records and leaving people everywhere unsure of what comes next.
People are having a shared experience of anxiety surrounding their well-being and financial futures. And those concerns don’t disappear at work.
COVID-19 is challenging businesses like never before.
As in any time of uncertainty, companies across the world are naturally concerned about the impact to their financial performance.
Employees are now looking to leaders and executive teams to take actions that protect both them and the business. The pressure and urgency make it tempting to act quickly, without thoughtful consideration of all potential consequences.
How companies respond to COVID-19 today will impact their business well after public health and the economy recovers.
Now more than ever, leaders must do what’s best for their people and the organization, while keeping core business values top of mind.
Here are a few ways you can guide your teams through COVID-19’s impact on your workplace:
1. Consider how COVID-19 impacts everyone
Purpose driven leaders think about the emotional, psychological and physical well-being of every employee as well as their families, friends and pets.
To come to a set of decisions on how to proceed, seek out the most comprehensive factual information from reliable sources such as cdc.gov.
2. Mitigate financial concerns
Purpose driven leaders make sure people can keep working safely and comfortably in a manner that keeps them financially secure.
The key here is to ensure health benefit costs can be minimized and reduce worker hours only as a last resort. Leaders should be looking for ways to put money into their employee’s hands. The majority of Americans don’t have $400 at their disposal for emergencies (reduced working hours, covid-19 tests, childcare, eldercare costs and so on).
If pay reductions are necessary, then what’s good at the bottom is good at the top. The executive team at NBCUniversal donated 100% of their salaries
3. Get prepared for the economic downturn
Purpose driven leaders run financial models with recession assumptions to assure the business is prepared. They refine recession and post-recession strategies and determine the people that will be required to drive innovation by all.
Ensure that any advancements you’ve made in the last five years to create a diverse and inclusive workplace are not erased due to layoffs or reorganizations.
Research proves that diversity drives innovation.
Companies who ensure key frontline groups have a consistently positive experience thrive in recession, while others fail.
4. Adjust sick leave policies
It’s critical that employees minimize their risk of infection. An immediate review of sick leave policies can help you encourage them to do the right thing and stay home when they are ill — both for their own safety and for the safety of their colleagues.
This is critical to slow the spread of the virus and to assure that people are well cared for.
5. Exhaust your options
It’s hard to talk about point number three with employees because it can make them feel less psychologically safe due to financial insecurity. But it is best for leaders to ensure a profitable future for the good of all employees.
Purpose driven leaders work to make layoffs the absolute last resort.
Review costs and debt levels, so the business can be prepared to finance its way through the recession. Keep in mind the money not being spent — money in the travel and events budget for example — and get creative on how to cut costs while retaining the business’ most valuable asset: the people.
Workforce reductions should be made only when you have no other option, and they must be handled equitably and fairly.
6. Communicate often and openly
Leaders should share the why and how behind decisions whenever possible.
As the business changes rapidly, frequent and authentic communication will preserve employee engagement and boost truth within the organization.
7. Double down on listening
Communication is a two-way street.
Purpose driven leaders ensure that management and HR are in sync, with multiple messaging channels to make sure they know what is going on in the minds and hearts of the people.
We’ll get through this.
However long COVID-19 impacts the workplace and our lives, eventually we all will have to adapt to the new normal waiting on the other side.
And the world will understand that we are all connected and better together than apart.
With thoughtful purpose driven leadership, your company and your people will thrive both during and after this time of uncertainty.
For more support and advice on how to manage and lead in these times, visit our COVID-19 HR resources. | https://medium.com/@greatplacetowork/covid-19-and-the-workplace-why-purpose-driven-leadership-is-more-important-than-ever-7e5f5c7b0f5b | ['Great Place To Work'] | 2020-04-22 16:51:24.547000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Workplace Culture', 'Corporate Culture', 'Leadership', 'Coronavirus'] |
How to Change Mouse DPI (Sensitivity )On a computer | DPI (dots per inch) is a measure of the sensitivity of a computer mouse. The higher the DPI, the longer the onscreen cursor moves on the screen each time we move the mouse.
This is why many people choose to change DPI on a computer mouse. Decreasing DPI can help with fast and precise tasks, like drawing with a mouse. DPI boost is also ideal if you need the mouse to move quickly while playing a game or a few applications.
Many high-end mouse models also include sliders or buttons that allow you to customize the DPI yourself. Some desktop applications also have this option.
However, if your mouse doesn’t have the above features, you can still adjust the DPI through your computer’s settings menu. While this is safe, sometimes it will cause the on-screen pointer to be a bit leggy and inaccurate. This is especially true in cases where you try to force a low-performance mouse to move too quickly.
This way users can apply on versions of Windows from Win XP to Windows 10 with very simple steps.
How to change the DPI of the mouse on Windows 7
Step 1:
Readers access the Control Panel on the computer and then click on Hardware and Sound .
Step 2:
Switch to the new interface in the Devices and Printers section, click on the Mouse section to change the mouse on the system.
Step 3:
Mouse Properties interface appears. Click the Pointer Options tab and then look down at the Motion section , adjust the drag speed in the horizontal bar below. By default, the mouse drag speed will be medium. To speed up the mouse drag when playing the game, you just need to drag the mouse bar towards Fast to finish.
Adjust gradually to fit when playing game, avoid too fast mouse drag. Finally click OK to save the new changes.
In addition, many gamers also encounter slow right-click menu opening. If so, you can refer to the article How to speed up the display of right-click menus on Windows 10 .
How to change the DPI of the mouse on Windows 10
1.Press the Start menu and select the Settings icon .
3. On the Devices page , select Mouse .
4. On the Mouse page , click Additional mouse options under Related settings .
5. In the Mouse Properties pop-up , select Pointer Options .
6. Use the slider in the Select a pointer speed section to adjust the DPI. Swipe left to decrease DPI and swipe right to increase DPI.
7. When you adjust the slider to the correct speed, select Apply at the bottom. When the Apple button turns gray, meaning there are no more changes to confirm, press the X in the right corner of the screen to close.
How to change the DPI of a mouse on a Mac
1. Open System Preferences . The easiest way is to click on the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the screen, then select System Preferences …
2. In the menu that opens, select Mouse .
3. You will see a lot of sliders and options. The mouse’s DPI control slider is Tracking Speed . Move the slider to the position you want and experiment. When it’s done, just close the window to save it.
Read More : | https://medium.com/@tridevcomputer/how-to-change-mouse-dpi-sensitivity-on-a-computer-4e3d20d74ff6 | [] | 2021-03-22 05:41:18.305000+00:00 | ['Windows', 'Mouse', 'Dpi'] |
One thing to do before signing off for the holiday | ✅ Today’s tip: Ease your return to work by writing your to-do list now for the first day back.
The first workday after a long holiday weekend is like a regular Monday turned all the way up to 11: You’re grumpy, you’re moving slowly, and it takes all the energy you have just to shock your vacation-sleepy brain back into work mode. It’s no wonder that, as Emily Underwood explains, post-vacation burnout is a very real phenomenon.
To lessen the re-entry pain, take some of the mental burden away from your future self: “Write a detailed, not-too-ambitious to-do list for your first day or two back,” Underwood writes. That way, when the time comes, you can just follow the steps you’ve already outlined — no need to think too hard. | https://forge.medium.com/one-thing-to-do-before-signing-off-for-the-holiday-f85e95276740 | ['Cari Nazeer'] | 2020-12-18 12:02:08.217000+00:00 | ['Vacation', 'Self', 'Productivity', 'Advice', 'Work'] |
The Paradox | Photo by NASA on Unsplash
Sirens are heard, loud, just like something is going to explode. An astronaut opens her eyes; a blurred vision tricks her to not get a clear picture of her situation. The sound of the alarm and hisses of gases from the appliances fills the chamber. She somehow gains her senses back, trying to float through one chamber to another inside the space station. The astronaut reaches the control chamber. A red flash is everywhere on every screen. Her blurry vision tends to come back in an interval of a few seconds as if she was hit by a large object before the explosion. She moves towards the ring-like, filthy windows of the station to check the status on the outside. She could sense the silence on the outside. She floats back to the computers just to find out that the connecting capsule is on fire and her colleagues aboard the station, are trapped between the two capsules as the systems have short-circuited.
‘FAILED’, is what the screens flash whenever she tries to extinguish it remotely. “Oh Lord, this is going to be a memory for a lifetime!”, she murmurs in a tense tone to herself. With her blurred vision, she somehow finds her way back to the first chamber, passing by the floating equipment, packed soaps, packed carrots, bread, etc. The spacesuit is out after a struggle. She puts it on & opens the emergency door. “Aaahhhh….!!”, she leaps like a tiger in a jungle, but without friction and gravity, she could only float herself to the capsule. Her colleagues look at her through the window, as the animals peeking through their cages. The hope can be seen on their faces as she approaches the capsule to extinguish the fire manually. As she tries to reach out to the emergency button on the outside of the capsule, she loses consciousness.
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
Loud bangs on the transmitter are heard as she gains her senses back, once again. She quickly remembers the task at hand & moves to reach the button. A loud hush & after a few seconds the fire is down. She takes a breath of relief as her colleagues are happy inside the capsule. The colleagues find their way inside the capsule, through the rescued path. It seems a happy ending; the astronaut floats her way back to the main capsule. They celebrate their rescue, as suddenly her vision sees few small crow-like objects, flying towards them. It’s the asteroids; she turns to tell everyone. But it’s too late, the station explodes. | https://medium.com/the-purple-pen/the-paradox-deb62794e7d6 | ['Abhinav Bhatnagar'] | 2020-10-21 22:55:27.486000+00:00 | ['Survival', 'Storytelling', 'Life', 'Fiction', 'Space'] |
Let’s be Adults About This | Courtesy of Calvin Lupiya
Look. this isn’t going to be one of those breakup stories that embody Chantay Savage’s dreary rendition of “I Will Survive,” because that’s not who I am. Let’s start with you, Stephanie, the only friend I had throughout my unstable upbringing in and out of foster homes. At school, I was Tatiana, more beautiful than my name, the roundaway girl, always chased for my phat ass and smooth dark skin, the Naomi Campbell of the North Side of Chicago. Like Naomi Campbell, I had a bad attitude, and fought a lot, but you were my ride or die, a pretty yet plain brown skinned girl who was loyal and trustworthy, two qualities not found in the hood. We promised to grow old together, to support each other in escaping our neighborhood; that it was money over dick. As cliche as this is, we broke up over Patrick’s dick.
I knew you liked him when we first saw him at that bookstore in Evanston reading An Autobiography of Malcolm X. That’s why I cracked the joke about a white boy reading such a righteous book, and he corrected us that he had an Irish mother, black father. It was senior year of high school. We were a happy threesome, flopping in Patrick’s house as he rolled up joints on album covers and did homework. You desired him for his green eyes and olive skin although I laughed about wanting someone as awkward and lanky as him. Looking back on it now, perhaps I told myself that as a lie, because I didn’t want to betray you. Then again, I told myself I wouldn’t betray you because I believed that it’d be easier for me to replace you than for you to replace me. I figured, you’d have more to lose.
But things changed, or in my case, clarified. During the autumn, you were called in for a last -minute shift at your grandmother’s chicken shack when Patrick and I were left alone at his house, with dime bags and munchies from the corner store. I ignored the homework and boys calling to go out because I told myself that Patrick had the best chronic, and I liked Omar, his white fluffball of a cat. While we laid on our backs in the middle of the living room floor, Patrick shared his recipe for black bean brownies. At first, I laughed as he cracked the eggs and made the batter. He offered me a spoon, but I dipped my finger into the mixture. I licked it off and taunted him with a come hither motion, a gesture so over the top I expected Patrick to laugh. He didn’t. He kissed me. Like most boys, Patrick was enamored with me, but when his fingers caressed that space behind my ear, it unlocked my passion. It told me that he wasn’t a booty call. When his hand slipped underneath my sweater, I stopped him. We snapped out of it. He put the brownies in the oven and sat on opposite ends of the couch. Our fingers still interlaced, we sat in silence until I smelled the brownies.
“This is difficult,” I began. “Stephanie likes you. Do you like her?”
“I like you both,” he replied.
“Who does your heart belong with?”
“You.”
“Are you sure it’s not just a fuck? Steph and I promised each other that we’d never lose our friendship over dick.”
“Am I just dick to you?” he asked, and I laughed a bit. He turned towards me, stared at me with those green eyes that I now adored, despite never being into light skinned guys. “Running up in girls has never been my style. I have to honor my white side. Can’t get random girls pregnant.”
“I’d risk our friendship for you. She’s sensitive, she may not recover from this. We promised each other loyalty.”
He pulled me to his side of the couch. I laid my head on his chest, inhaled his scent of olive oil and lavender despite the ganja in the air. “You won’t marry and have kids with her,” he said. “Be loyal to your feelings.”
“I want you,” I said, “but I have to tell her. Can we wait until I do that?”
He responded with a kiss.
***
Patrick and I didn’t want to be messy with our beginning. I would’ve told you that if you hadn’t friend dumped me. Instead, I’m reading articles in Essence on the cure for heartbreak: do a non-romantic activity, rearrange furniture, and change your appearance. I took an African dance class after work but dropped out when the instructor said I had no rhythm. I rearranged the furniture, but I got tired of bumping into it and then remembered Patrick and I had sex on it when we’d first moved in. I dumped the old brown couch for a mossy green one. I relaxed my hair again and wore a side part, hoping to see a non-lonely woman who hadn’t been left, but I didn’t see it. I can’t who I see in the mirror now, and the only living thing with me is Baby Princess. That Essence article was wrong. The only cure for heartbreak is Sauvignon Blanc, and what we would’ve talked about now.
I imagine you’d ask, why tell me the news then? And I’d tell you that it wasn’t all my choice. Patrick and I thought the best time to break the news was at Asia’s Christmas party, because the winter break would give you time to cool off, and the holiday might put you in a good spirit. It’s like an old fashioned mouse trap versus the glue ones, less suffering.
I was stupid enough to think this way as a teen.
You and I entered the party at eight. We pointed and laughed at the couples bumping and grinding to R. Kelly’s self titled album. Perhaps you noticed that I stopped letting dudes grab my ass or hold onto me too tightly, but I whisked you away to the kitchen where Asia and her homegirl Tammy were smoking a blunt as she offered you a dime bag. You lit up. Smiled. For a moment, I saw the joyful seventh grader who I’d met at the skating rink.
“I’m high as a kite! My grandma’s going to kill you,” You said to me.
I took a long drag on a joint. “She doesn’t need to know all that.”
“Drugs are a part of growing up,” Asia said laughing. “So’s fucking!”
“We can return to childhood for a minute,” Tammy said. She reached over and grabbed an empty coke bottle.
She walked into the living room, cut off the CD player and turned on the lights. “Before we all start hittin the skins, let’s take it back to sixth grade. Let’s play spin the bottle.”
“Shut up!” someone shouted.
“No!” she shouted back and laughed, dipping her shoulder to one side. “You might find a better lay this way.”
With that logic, we all gathered around, nervous like the times when we played this same game at day camp, grumpy that we couldn’t afford to go to sleepaway camp. I didn’t think you’d kiss anyone until I saw Patrick walk through the door. Tammy waved him over and he sat down when it was your turn. You know this part. Your spin landed on Patrick. Instigating ass Tammy sang about kissing him, because if you liked him, and y’all were both single, what’s the problem? Years later, I’d tell myself that you must’ve known, because you looked to me with anxiety in your eyes. Perhaps your stare was saying that you didn’t want to do it. Or it could’ve been saying embarrassment. But now, I realize those were my thoughts. I wanted you to be embarrassed because I was falling in love with him, and I didn’t want to share him with you.
So, you partially made it easy by leaving, and walking around outside in the snowy alley. This didn’t go as smoothly as I thought it would’ve in my head. I played it cool until you declared you loved him, and I blurted it out. I waxed poetic about it, said that Patrick and I loved you, but we also loved each other, that I needed to be loyal to my feelings. Then, you said it didn’t matter, because you were moving to Atlanta.
I couldn’t let you leave, walk out of my life for good. So I braved the bus trip to the Southside and your grandmother’s disapproving stare and went to the chicken shack. The joint was only popular because it was in the sea of liquor stores and no one could get to a Jewel’s without the bus trips. Ugly-ass neon lights, teen moms with their crying infants and toddlers in diapers with bottles full of pop stood in front of me. When you asked me what I wanted, I dropped a single red rose from Walgreens onto the counter.
“Your friendship,” I said.
“That’s not on the menu,” you responded.
“Please hear me out,” I pleaded.
I bought you a bucket of drumsticks so we could sit down to talk. I rambled as you ate.
“I know your grandmother thinks I’m a fast ass bitch who’s fixing to pop out a bunch of kids any day, but it’s not like that with Patrick. I wouldn’t risk us unless it was big. Patrick and I fell in love.”
“When did this happen?”
I looked down. I didn’t want to tell you it was in the moments you were gone, because I was ashamed. “It doesn’t matter when. It was kismet. You know what I mean?”
I reached out for your greasy hand, but you jerked away.
“I don’t know what you mean. You know that,” you said. You looked away and out the window at the busses passing by, dropping off more teens with kids. “I’ve never been the chosen one, and to lose the first person I’ve loved to you? I tutored you. I held your coat when you got into fights. I let you stay with me when you got kicked out of foster homes.” You looked down. “You can’t even be fucking loyal to your ride or die. And, you know that Patrick was the closest I might ever get to kismet. All them dudes asking you to go out, and you couldn’t pick one of them?”
“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.”
You shook your head. “Doesn’t matter. You stole my future from me,” you said. Your voice cracked. You paused, and looked at the half eaten bucket of drumsticks. “But I don’t want to throw our friendship away. I’m going to Atlanta on Tuesday. We can say goodbye at the bus station, and we’ll keep in touch. My aunt set up an AOL account.”
The greyhound station smelled of poor life choices, of piss, vinegar, and dirty needle. Each bus was a parade of broken down people shifting from nowhere to nowhere safe. As the buses unloaded more forgotten people, I found solace in the radio, with Xscape’s “Who Can I Run To?” playing softly in the background. I smiled, remembering that we’d sung to it in the mirror during a sleepover. At that time, we reminded each other that we’d always have each other to run to when things got tough. I shifted in the seat as I watched several busses pull up and drive off.
I pulled out the change from my bomber jacket, and called your house from a payphone. “When’s she coming?” I asked your grandmother.
“She left last night,” your grandmother replied, and hung up.
I felt tricked and betrayed. That night, I ranted to Patrick that you embarrassed me. You should’ve been honest with me, like I was with you. The nice part of senior year is that everyone is heading in different directions — community college and the military to get the hell out of Chicago, a retail job if you could find it, or pregnancy or the streets if you weren’t so lucky. I tried to revise my version of the story. I told myself that I’d freed myself from a friendship to meet the love of my life. I wanted to believe that your heartbreak was temporary and you’d blossom at Spellman, meet a boy at Moorehouse, and forget all about Patrick. At the time I wasn’t sorry. I lavished in the attention of attending our proms and graduations. I loved kissing him on the cheek when Asia took our picture for the after dinner commencement at Soul by the Pound, because I’d made it. I was that fine ass dark skinned girl who nabbed a light skinned guy. But sometimes I caught his green eyes as they scanned across rooms at parties or when we went to the beach. Those lovely green eyes that I’d loved for over a decade, but I’d never forget that you loved them first.
***
Patrick and I wanted to be adults about our breakup. We weren’t going to set books on fire, bleach clothes, slash tires, or make false domestic violence charges, like some hoodrats from the South Side or Terry McMillan characters. We were mature, urban professionals with a cute one bedroom in Roger’s Park, the enclave now gentrified with hipsters and college students, instead of the criminals and Latinos who used to live here. Let’s be adults about this, Patrick texted me. No arguing or yelling, just talking like two friends. It was a rainy Friday evening, and I was on my third glass of wine, with a romance book in my hand and Baby Princess in my lap. I wasn’t desperate, but I agreed. We should be mature. I replied back, Come on over. We can still be friends. I believed that we should salvage a relationship despite the breakup, and I wanted to see him. We weren’t going to sleep together.
I heard the keys jingle, then stop. I’d changed the locks, so I let him in. He surveyed the different layout of the living room, his eyes stopping at the moss green sofa.
“You’ve moved on,” he said.
I wanted to tell him the truth, that I was trying. Instead, I smirked at the small victory. “Want a screwdriver?” I asked.
We settled into the kitchen where I served him. He talked about his recent culinary conference in Atlanta, how sprawling and annoying the city was. He reached out for my hand like we were still together, enjoying a spot of takeaway after a long day at the hotel for him, at the law office for me. He reached out like we were still together, but I pulled away. I smirked again.
“How’s your life been without me?” he asked.
“I learned to cook,” I replied. “You hungry?”
“I’ll pass.”
“I’ll ask you the same.”
I thought Patrick would’ve smirked, bragged about the hits he’s been getting online dating, about girls who could carry his children. I wasn’t prepared for his response.
He rubbed his forehead and then his face. “I miss who I was with you. We should’ve grown old together.”
I let it slip out. “We still could.”
He came to my side of the island. We embraced. I inhaled his scent of lemons and olive oil, which I hated admitting that I missed so much. “We shouldn’t be separated in this universe.” I stroked his face. He kissed me. I touched him, and led him to the bedroom we’d once shared.
Before Patrick I’d been fucked, in bathrooms at house parties, in back alleys, and motel rooms, where the focus was on the thrill, for money and gossip, but Patrick was the only man I was intimate with for pleasure. I felt his lean hips rub against mine and caressed his smooth skin. His body was my body’s home. He knew that from the kiss on the side of his neck, his body was saying, you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re all mine.
In the still silence of the moment, I laid my head on his smooth chest and listened to his strong and slow heartbeat, reassuring like Lake Michigan’s waves. He ran his fingers through my now straight hair. “You’re my herbal tea,” I whispered to him. I expected him to say it back, but there was a pause, a dangerous quiet which loomed something bigger.
“We need to talk about handoffs,” he said. “I found a couple with a male Sokokae.”
I sat up. “Is that why you came over? To talk about that damned cat?”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he pulled on his clothes and headed to the bathroom. I followed him, covering wearing the bedsheet as a toga. “Answer me,” I said.
He turned around. “No, that wasn’t the only reason. I came here wanting to work it out, but something changed.” He stuttered. “Why can’t I have her anyway? You don’t even like cats.”
“She’s mine now. And what changed? After all that shit you just talked, you just care about that cat. That’s why we broke up.”
“No, it’s not. We broke up because you lied about a bunch of shit, and what’s stupid is that I should’ve known that from how we got together. Even from the first kiss, I knew you’d betray me.”
“We just fucked! That didn’t mean anything, you can’t get past something that happened when we were teens. We’ve grown up since then.”
He shook his head. “I made the wrong choice, and I didn’t see it then. Steph was a cat person. She was honest, never betrayed us, and I chose wrong. That’s why we can’t get back together. That’s why I saw her.”
I threw my wine glass at him, the glass shattering close to his head. He picked up the rest of his things and left.
***
Patrick was right. You two had more in common than me and him. You were into reading comic books, and you loved his cat Omar, a fluffy Persian his mother bought after her divorce, a female cat they realized later wasn’t a boy. You were a cat person, and in our pre-Patrick days, when we snuck out to Tower Records or Navy Pier, you said you’d hope to own a cat when you grew up. I laughed, saying it was a white people thing to invest in an animal that wasn’t a meat, and you replied I was a savage. Perhaps you were right. My mother gave me up at four to an aunt, too strung out to care for me, so it was various homes, and squandering. I was savage for survival. I did what I needed to get what I wanted.
Yes, I lived that ho quote before we heard it in Playas Club. I witnessed your innocence as you attempted to flirt with Patrick outside the theater. It was that survival which propelled me to smile and wrap my arm around his after you left. It led me to building a friendship with Asia after you left, becoming a godmother to her four children. But it was your innocence I hoped to see in my own daughter. An innocence my mother robbed from me, and made me ruthless.
So Patrick and I waited for children. In the circle you left behind, we were the hip, childless couple others envied. No kids meant freedom to work on our careers. I became a paralegal and supported Patrick through culinary school. No kids meant that we were the favorite aunt and uncle who spoiled our friends’ kids with gifts their parents couldn’t afford to buy from their dead end jobs. No kids meant we could focus on our living situation. After graduation, we moved into a dump basement apartment where white, fluffy Omar chased waterbugs and flying roaches, and gunshots lullabye us to sleep. But it was worth it when we moved into our swanky Roger’s Park one-bedroom walking distance from the lake, and he landed an executive chef gig at a hotel in the Loop. Then, I stopped taking my pills, convinced that my fast ass would get pregnant in a season.
That didn’t happen. Instead the heavy periods, the dizzy spells, and the anemia happened. The late nights and holidays alone started. Patrick only took a day off when Omar died of kidney disease, and we got Baby Princess, an African Sokoke from a Danish seller. The arguments happened. He worked late, wine kept me company. He hung up on me, I went to happy hours. I asked him where he was, he stopped coming home. So when I met Asia’s cousin’s friend at Happy Hour, I fucked him as a one night stand, but we exchanged numbers.
I justified my cheating, even joked around with my side piece that God protects me from the dirt I’m doing, because I hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. I held that secret when Patrick and I cuddled and he ran a single index finger down my nose, saying that he hoped our daughter would be as beautiful as me, with skin darker than midnight waters, coarse hair good for cornrowing, and those full, soft, kissable lips. That secret started to spill when I finally had a doctor’s appointment.
“It’s fibroids,” she said, looking at the ultrasound. “They’re huge. I recommend surgery, but one is very close to your fallopian tube. You may not be able to have children. Do you want children?”
I touched my midsection. “I’m not sure. I don’t want to die.”
“Then let’s schedule it. Who’s going to pick you up and drop you off?”
The night before the surgery, Patrick and I argued again. He wouldn’t drop me off at the hospital. He was quitting me when I needed him. The next morning I called the sidepiece, who offered to drop me off and stayed the whole surgery for me. I was in a vulnerable state; starving, sleepy and weepy from the fear of anesthesia. My mind drifted to the white ceilings as the doctor put me under, and I thought for a moment. Was this why I couldn’t get pregnant? Was I lucky in my teens or had I been cursed? How could a man I’d loved for over a decade leave me like this?
When I came to, the side piece sat by my side with blue Irises in hand. I started to relax until I saw Patrick, also with Stargazers in hand entered my hospital room. His green eyes told me that he was alarmed, but he just apologized. Said he had the wrong room, and walked out.
Being at home was awkward afterwards. He helped me use the bathroom and heated up soup before he left for work. He massaged me when I asked, and we watched television in silence. For once, I lost the words to explain what happened, and how sorry I felt. But I didn’t know where to start.
Patrick stared at the television. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We haven’t gotten along for ages. I needed affection.”
“I needed you when Omar died. Then, I had to prove myself at work. I needed your emotional support, but you only cared about yourself. And it’s embarrassing no less, to see some scrub in that room. It should’ve been me.”
“You didn’t want it to be you, remember? I can kick him to the curb.”
“I thought if we had a child it would solidify us, because we’d done the right thing. We waited until we were stable in our careers and our desires. But the operation, and seeing him with you, it changed me.”
“I love you. It’s kismet for us to have each other. The universe wants us together.”
“When I saw you all bruised up from the surgery, I thought I’d stand by you forever. I didn’t care if we adopted, if we needed IVF, I would’ve stuck by you. We were supposed to be loyal to each other. But I was in the wrong room.” He looked down, then he looked at me. “Tatiana, I think it’s best if we split up.”
That night, Baby Princess slept with Patrick on the couch.
***
It took over a year for Patrick and I to be adults about the breakup. We bred Baby Princess with other Sokokes, and sold two litters to rich Afrikkan cat enthusiasts who missed the colonized homeland. I thought it’d get easier when I started dated a righteous brother from the National of Islam. He wore dark suits, called me his queen, and took me to poetry readings, but it wasn’t the same. I stopped calling him.
I’d convinced myself that Patrick and I were friends now, and Baby Princess’s custody was for money, but that wasn’t the whole story. I wanted to salvage a friend from our partnership because I felt alone, because you were distant from me. You were smoke, a haze that hung in the air from his smiles to fidgeting with his phone — he was nervous and excited to hear from you. You called when we were in a cafe, dividing up the money from our most recent sale.
“Just in time, babe,” he said as he answered. “Guess who I’m with?”
“The devil,” you said, then laughed. “Your dad?”
“No, Stephanie.”
“Hey girl!” I said.
“So many memories,” you replied. “Perfect timing! Patrick and I have great news.”
“I’m moving to Atlanta,” he said.
I stopped mid action from putting the money in my purse. “Really?”
He shook his head, excited. “We’re moving in together.”
“It’d also be cheaper to open up a restaurant here than Chicago,” you chimed in.
“We’re having a going away party at Piece. Stephanie’s coming into town,” you said.
I took a twenty and paid for our coffees at the register. When I returned Patrick handed me my share of the money. I wanted to scream and throw the coffee in your face, although it wasn’t rational. We’d split up, Patrick had moved onto someone else. I didn’t have the right to be upset and possessive, because we’d been mature about it, except who he moved on to. I wanted to ask why you, but that wasn’t a fair question. It was teenaged Tatiana surfacing.
Instead I sat down. “Congrats,” I said. “What about Baby Princess?”
“I’ll give you five hundred for her.”
We shook hands. “Deal.”
***
Piece was a microbrewery, one of those gentrified, white-people places we never went to. I didn’t want to go. It was a Friday night, fit for comfortable pajamas, wine, and a romance novel, but I wanted to see you. I wanted to see how you grew, how you’d changed. I wanted you back. I wanted that time in our heyday back, and wore the outfit which sparked that Tati. I wore a red bodycon dress and herringbone printed pumps. My thick, natural hair wavy from a braid out, natural makeup and pearl earrings. My look was on point. Seeing you again was almost like high school.You floated to me, a big smile on your heart*shaped face. Except now, you’d shed the tomboy, ugly duckling image of a baggy t-shirt and jeans which hid your splendid figure. Tonight, you showed that figure off in a snug tea dress and teal heels.
“Tati!” you screamed. “You look amazing!”
“Stephanie!”
We embraced like the long lost relatives we were. We balanced the drinks we were holding. Me a glass of Cabernet, while I guessed yours was a screwdriver.
“No, you look wonderful,” I said. “How’s Hotlanta?”
“Everything smells like ass. How have you been?”
“The law office is crazy, so normal. The real tea is, how have you been since you friend dumped me?”
“I believe it was you who friend dumped me,” you replied. “I got into Mary Jane to cope with losing you both, but my aunt got me help and I’ve been clean for seven years. I’m an executive assistant, so a glorified secretary. I was really sad when I found out about your breakup.”
“There’s other puppies in the pound, right?”
“For serious. I couldn’t forgive myself for leaving you at the bus station. You deserved it, but it shouldn’t have happened.”
“We were kids then. We’re grown now. Do you forgive me?”
“I already have. I came to town to be with Patrick and help him move, and to visit my grandmother. We’ve got some great news.” She put my hand on her midsection. “I’m pregnant.”
My heart dropped, my hands clammy. I felt hot despite the cool air conditioning. I was having another moment where I wanted to scream, to break glass, because she’d given Patrick the one thing I’d be uncertain about ever giving him. Instead I downed the glass in one swallow. “Are you sure?” I stammered.
“Doctor’s visits don’t lie, hence the orange juice. When I found out, you were the first person I wanted to tell, even before Patrick. I wish we could’ve shared this moment, but life happened.”
“We could,” I said. But I know we won’t.
You shrugged. “Yeah, life happened. When you came to my job the morning after you told me, I was so pissed. But it turns out, our connection was deeper than the Great Lakes. It was kismet, you know what I mean?”
You hugged me tighter than the first time, and I knew it would be my last. It would be the last time I’d see you, and whatever friends you had in Atlanta would be there for your new season. I felt stuck, confused, and lost. Who could I run to now? I knew you’d chosen kismet over me when you walked back to Patrick and your fingertips danced before he turned toward you for a kiss. I didn’t say goodbye. I ghosted.
I took a cab home and called a rich divorcee in San Diego who’d wanted Baby Princess. I left a voicemail that she could have her, papers and all for free, as long as she covered my travel expenses. She called back an hour later with a flight itinerary for the weekend.
***
In the eighth grade we had our first school dance. Several boys asked me to be their date while no one asked you. A few even laughed when you asked them. We talked about it at your grandmother’s house during a slumber party. You’d cried about how no one liked you, no one wanted you. And I laughed that our mothers hadn’t wanted us, we had that in common. But I held you as you cried, unsure of what you were feeling. At first, I thought it was embarrassing that you were the plain girl while I was the concrete runway beauty, but as an adult, it was deeper than that. It was guilt for wanting something that you felt was your birthright, but still prevented from getting. It was a shame for not meeting that need. Back then, I didn’t understand how you felt, and secretly hoped I never would. But now, I did, and I wished I could unfeel it.
I didn’t mention Baby Princess until I was with Asia. It was the middle school graduation of her oldest child. Perhaps that’s why I thought of you. I thought about us and the child you’d have. How, if she looked like you and Patrick, she would be the popular girl. How lucky she’d be for the parents she’d have. How behind I felt because I wasn’t sure if I’d have children or anything of my own.
Asia poked me about it at Olive Garden. “Why do you look like somebody just died?”
“I sold the cat,” I confessed.
“Why the hell did you do that?” Asia asked.
“I wanted to get him back,” I said. “I thought he’d care. I’m just in my feelings about Stephanie,” I replied. “I want my youth back, when we were happy.”
She forked through the house salad. “You stole her man, Tati. She just took what was rightfully hers.”
“What kind of friend are you? I’ve always thought I could repair anything I do.”
“Is that why you do whatever you want? Because you know others will forgive you.”
“I’m not a bad person. All of them loved me, and I thought love would liberate me.”
“Maybe love isn’t liberation, but an obligation. I love my kids, and even though I’m not with their fathers, I’m still tied to them. Kids are an irreversible decision. Maybe love is that way too.”
I twirled my fettuccine alfredo with my fork and spoon as I watched Asia’s kids laugh and play video games with their phones. Perhaps being an adult was love, and Asia was right. Love wasn’t liberation, but an irreversible decision. I had treated you and Patrick like love was liberation, and lost you both. I thought selling Baby Princess would’ve settled the score, but Patrick didn’t care. He’d kissed me on my forehead and wished me luck, said his own pending fatherhood made him feel like an adult. He had to go, because life wouldn’t wait.
And that’s what I’d tell you, Stephanie. Despite my actions, despite the waiter’s stares, my body house regrets upon regrets. All this time, I thought I wanted to catch up. But now, I’d tell you good luck to you, because life couldn’t wait anymore. | https://medium.com/lets-be-adults-about-this/lets-be-adults-about-this-44fc3ee370d5 | ['Christina Marable'] | 2020-06-17 20:45:03.263000+00:00 | ['Chick Lit', 'Chicago', 'Relationships', 'Short Story', 'African American Lit'] |
4 Benefits Of A Customer Data Platform For The Telecommunication Industry | The global telecommunications industry has around 800+ service providers spread over 6 continents, out of which 80 rakes in over 1 Billion USD each annually[1]. Each country has dozens of regional service providers, making it one of the most competitive industries in the world.
In such a market, it becomes imperative for telecommunication enterprises to establish a strong connection with their customers in order to drive acquisition and retention goals. To increase brand awareness, organisations spend heavily on marketing and advertising through traditional channels and platforms. However, this doesn’t necessarily lead to an increase in sales.
With the explosion in media and technology, telecommunication companies are now faced with the challenge of interacting with customers through various modes and platforms. Either via email, Social Media, SMS, postal, voice calls or video-chat, the industry has been shoved into an era of cross-functional marketing and outreach. Every touchpoint comes with its own set of exclusive customer-oriented datasets. If utilised intelligently, this data can be used to create targeted campaigns and services for customers.
In today’s world, customers tend to side with brands and services that offer stellar customer experiences. In a global case study by Wunderman Thompson, it was observed that 76% of individuals choose to purchase from brands that demonstrate awareness and concern about its customers [2].
Retention of existing customers is also a pressing need. An Accenture study shows that more than 80% of organisations spend less than 30% of their total marketing budget on customer retention and engagement based initiatives [3]. It has also been observed that the total cost of acquiring a new customer is 5x more than the total cost of retaining existing ones. Hence, holding onto existing customers becomes a profitable exercise.
So, what can a Customer Data Platform (CDP) do in this context?
A CDP provides the ability to create a consolidated view of each and every customer. Telecommunication service providers are able to flesh out the requirements, concerns and motivations of each of its subscribers in a nuanced manner, at a level of detail that was not possible through traditional ways of managing data.
Here are 4 different ways through which telecommunication enterprises are leveraging CDPs.
User Monetization through content data
Marketing experts have become familiar with the concept of targeted content marketing over the last couple of decades. Experts have highlighted the fact that since the overall consumption of digital content has increased exponentially over time, the way people now consume content has changed as well. Up until the year 2000, an average human lost interest in 12 seconds. Today, marketing content and visuals need to be able to grab a customer’s attention in just 8 seconds. [4] Most Telecommunication companies offer the quintessential services that are similar and familiar to the average subscriber. Therefore, to stand out from competitors, these companies need to realise that the term ‘average subscriber’ doesn’t exist anymore and that each subscriber comes with their own unique preferences. Hence, specific content is targeted to each and every subscriber.
Telecommunications giant Telefonica had partnered with multiple retailers and fashion brands to provide subscribers with customized offers and deals. Yet, it was difficult to measure the ROI. Hence, in 2017, they purchased the geolocation data startup Statiq. Statiq had the ability to process billions of location data signals, which allowed Telefonica to monitor the places visited by subscribers and track if or not the subscriber visited a store after seeing a targeted advertisement. [5]
2. Capturing of cross-selling/up-selling opportunities
Telecommunication companies possess a multitude of avenues to either upsell existing products or cross-sell their services. CDPs harness crucial insights about the customer from their location data, network data, Social Media data, browsing actions, Registration Information (BSS) and other such interactions. These insights are then used to create opportunities to either upsell existing products or cross-sell with the help of affiliate partners.
Imagine a customer, who is using a 4G handset, is searching for 5G devices on various online sites or eCommerce portals. A CDP is able to successfully marry the data associated with the device at hand and the risen demand, and subsequently trigger a response that offers a 5G device that comes bundled with 5G services.
3. Hyper-Personalization
Most telecommunication enterprises either store customer data in individual silos or disconnected data storage systems. The absence of a unified data software system makes it difficult to consider diverse datasets in order to produce critical insight. This has also been a leading cause of friction between telecommunication companies and subscribers.
CDPs enable telecom companies to merge data from different interactions, taking into account metrics related to brand affinity, campaign uptake and multichannel adoption rates. This provides them with the ability to create hyper-personalised outreach initiatives for better impact. It was observed that emails with personalized content led to a 20% direct increase in sales. [6]
4. AI-assisted campaign discovery
One of the many roadblocks on the journey towards creating a campaign is discovering what works and what doesn’t. Timing is everything. With the arrival of the digital age, the total volume of content consumption through various channels has increased 10x, making it imperative for telecommunication service providers to create marketing campaigns for subscribers in real-time. This could be using a relevant piece of news, media or trending content to help sell better.
On a similar note, FMCG giant Unilever was able to harness the power of AI to create slogans and ad-jingles based on what they believed to be the most frequently consumed content: movie songs. Their AI-platform was able to isolate as many as 50 songs that referenced the idea of ‘eating ice-cream for breakfast’, which helped them produce noteworthy slogans, campaigns and jingles for their ice-cream vertical, Ben & Jerry’s.[7]
These are just a few of the many applications of intelligent CDPs.
Cadenz, an intelligent CDP, uses Artificial Intelligence to equip telecommunication service providers with all the necessary data and insights to create a 360-degree view of every single customer.
Built by TheDataTeam, Cadenz understands customer behaviours and purchase patterns to give intelligent recommendations for business excellence. A leading telecommunication company in the ASEAN market managed to track over 500+ behaviour based attributes of over 90 million customers, thereby simplifying their customer retention endeavours.
Visit http://cadenz.ai/ to learn more about how we can help your business achieve the same output through an intelligent CDP. | https://medium.com/@cadenz/4-benefits-of-a-customer-data-platform-for-the-telecommunication-industry-b8b34d4e9927 | [] | 2020-12-24 12:41:45.525000+00:00 | ['Telecom', 'Customer Success', 'Customer Experience', 'Customer Service', 'Customer Data Platform'] |
Scalable Microservice Architecture Using RabbitMQ RPC | Introduction
Microservices are the hot thing, in the past few years microservices have seemed to gain momentum as a very common architecture. Innovative and successful companies like Netflix and Amazon have adopted it, and for a good reason.
The main idea of microservices is to separate the application logic into loosely-coupled services, while each service has its own independent business domain. This concept, if performed accurately, solves a lot of problems that less modern architectures, such as monoliths, didn’t manage to solve: services that are easy to scale, easy to deploy, easy to test and the list goes on…
Even so, if I had to pick one reason why this architecture is so popular, I would bet that the reason is the impact on the daily routine of programmers and executives alike. For example, microservices goes hand in hand with the agile methodology. It’s easy to make changes in a single component, which is significant in the way that a programmer can even decide that he is using a different programming language than another developer working on the same system. From the eyes of the executive easy integrations are guaranteed, and in the end everyone is happy.
Microservices & Queues
We’ve talked enough about microservices, let’s talk a little about message queues. Services can communicate with each other in different ways, and we will not review them all. There is no doubt that the use of queues to communicate is also very popular, again for a good reason too. Many times, when I start the task of designing the architecture for a product or a component, I look at the whole stack. I will be a little romantic for a moment and tell you that I believe there is a reason that certain technologies connect with each other, like a chemical interaction that develops over time. A Specific programming language and a database? A particular operating system and a web server? I’m sure you can think of some!
In my humble opinion, this is the very case between message queues and microservices. Queues have a lot of benefits. They make it possible to deal with a temporary downtime of a service — in case there is no consumer messages in a queue will not be consumed, support multiple architectures and can even provide additional features like load balancing and monitoring of the load on each service.
RabbitMQ as a Message Broker
RabbitMQ is a great message-broker, it’s reliable, built for performance, supports multiple protocols, and has a strong community that makes it easy to find documentation and support.
In this article, I will explain how to build a solution based on microservices and queues using the RPC pattern. This is just a one way to do it, and in fact the RabbitMQ website has excellent documentation of 6 different patterns in which you can communicate. Why this pattern? Because I have used it with a real-time system that receives hundreds of thousands of requests per hour and found it elegant, fast, and easy to maintain. Let’s get started!
Remote Procedure Call with RabbitMQ (RPC)
While designing a microservice system, the best practice is to keep each service independent, by means its not dependent on any other microservice.
But in real life the reality is often far more complex. Imagine that you want to build a complete system made entirely out of microservices that communicate with each other via queues (due to all the benefits described above), but in addition, your system needs to provide a Web API that externalizes all the capabilities of your system using HTTP. This need could be necessary for a good architectural reason, like a front-end application that is designed to communicate with the backend through HTTP. That means that this Web API needs to get HTTP messages, hold the connection, trigger one or more microservices by sending a proper message to the RabbitMQ server, wait for the specific response and then send it back to the waiting HTTP client.
Basically, the above example describes a situation where one service has a direct dependency on another service in order to complete its job.
Now that we have understood how the RPC Pattern can be useful, I will explain how to implement it using RabbitMQ built-in features.
Message Properties
Every RabbitMQ message has a properties section that combines the message metadata. This section contains a list of optional properties, although most of them are rarely used, for our purpose we will use two of them:
reply_to — carries the response queue name.
— carries the response queue name. correlation_id — carries the identifier of the sender message.
(message properties example)
It is possible to think of it like sending a letter. In a situation where we do not want to receive a reply to the letter we have sent, we do not have to indicate our address. However, if we want to receive a reply, we must indicate our address. In addition, if we do receive the letter but the letter does not start with an explanation that it is a response letter to the letter that we have sent earlier, we will not know what to do with its content. In this case the “response queue name” is our mailbox address and the Correlation ID is the explanation that it is a response letter to our first letter.
(RPC flow example)
Sample Code
One of the things I like to do the most when I recognize that there is a well-defined set of logic, which once implemented and tested can be used by me or others, is to pack it as a package. That way, I know I do not have to implement this logic over and over, and instead I can just use it with no concern in any project I work on in the future. Therefore, we will implement this functionality as an independent Python package.
The purpose of our package is to provide a single function that allows the user to send an RPC request and receive a response asynchronously as one liner.
Let’s make it reusable — aka package
Note that all the code snippets below (I have named this package “TornadoBunny”) are available on my GitHub account under: | https://medium.com/swlh/scalable-microservice-architecture-using-rabbitmq-rpc-d07fa8faac32 | ['Oded Shimon'] | 2020-10-05 15:23:08.864000+00:00 | ['Microservices', 'Software Development', 'Python', 'Software Architecture', 'Rabbitmq'] |
World Aids Day: The ‘blue box’ clinic bringing hope in Mozambique | HIV prevalence among long-distance truck drivers here is 15.4 percent — the national figure is 12.6 percent. This is due to connected factors such as the absence of appropriate accommodation and resting time, limited access to safe health services at key points along routes, as well as unprotected sex.
Tonderai is a truck driver from Zimbabwe who has been working along the Corridor since 2003. As assistant secretary-general of Zimbabwe’s Truck Driver Union, he explains that truck drivers have little time to stop on journeys. So mobile clinics like the blue box that are easily accessible provide fast services — an HIV test takes less than ten minutes.
Mary is a sex worker living in the community of Inchope, near the blue box, where she moved to from Zimbabwe with her son.
She learned about the clinic from Adelaide and goes regularly. Adelaide frequently visits and calls Mary and other female sex workers in the community to check in on them and to remind them to get tested for STIs. Mary likes the dialogue groups targeted at female sex workers offered at the blue box.
At one of these, she learned she could be tested for HIV free of charge; now she goes every three months. Thanks to the intensive focus of the blue box around HIV prevention, Mary has access to condoms and has been taking Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), an HIV prevention medication, since it opened.
“I used to go the hospital in Zimbabwe to get tested, but there I never heard about PrEP, here at the blue box I did,” she says. “It is thanks to PrEP medication that me and other female sex workers here we feel more protected from getting HIV. The blue box helps.”
Mary’s story testifies to the cross-country impact of this intervention, which is crucial due to the mobile nature of the target groups accessing the clinic.
A medic prepares to administer an HIV test at the blue box clinic. Photo: WFP/Rafael Campos
After only four months of implementation and despite the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic poses mobility, the number of people visiting the blue box has exceeded expectations.
This is thanks to additional awareness-raising efforts by lay counsellors, such as Adelaide, who play a key role in encouraging key target groups — truck drivers, female sex workers and adolescent girls — to access its services. | https://medium.com/world-food-programme-insight/world-aids-day-the-blue-box-clinic-bringing-hope-in-mozambique-39a993b83273 | ['World Food Programme'] | 2020-12-01 09:31:11.445000+00:00 | ['Africa', 'Sexual Health', 'Hunger', 'Mozambique', 'AIDS'] |
Autism Spectrum Disorder: Fact and Fiction | Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that manifests in the form of difficulties in social interaction and communication, as well as restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour. ASD is considered as a ‘spectrum’ disorder because individuals on the spectrum vary greatly with regard to the range of symptom and the severity of the disorder.
ASD usually manifests in the early years of life, and is usually apparent by age 5. The WHO estimates that 1 in 160 children falls on the autism spectrum. Because the profile of those diagnosed with individuals varies so greatly, as well as lack of awareness, there are many myths about autism.Some of these prevalent myths will now be deconstructed.
Myth 1: Vaccines Cause Autism
The growing anti-vaxxer movement has contributed to this myth, with allegations that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes Autism. However, no rigorous large scale study has given credence to this myth.
Myth 2: People with autism are also have intellectual disability
This myth is not entirely untrue. While some individuals with autism do have an intellectual disability, others have IQ’s that fall in the typical or above average range. What is true is that for many children with autism, typical procedures for measuring IQ are not applicable, which may cause difficulties inIQ testing or misreporting of scores.
Myth 3: Autism is a condition that can be outgrown or cured
There is presently no cure for autism spectrum disorder, and once diagnosed, people will remain on the spectrum throughout their lives. However, with early intervention, most individuals with autism can lead a full and successful life.
Myth 4: All people with autism have the same skills and difficulties
As mentioned previously, autism is a spectrum disorder, which means that those diagnosed with autism show a wide range of symptoms at varying levels of severity. Every individual with autism is unique, and has their may have their own special topic of interest.
Myth 5: People with autism do not experience the full range of emotions and cannot build strong relationships
While people with autism may experience difficulties in expressing emotions, it does not mean that they don’t experience the full range of emotions. Individuals with autism show affection and emotions in different way, and often have strong bonds with people who are important to them.
Moreover, it is important to remember that rather than focusing on the so called limitations of ASD, autism also brings with it certain positives. People with autism often show enhanced attention to detail, observational skills, creativity, and recall than the general population. Additionally, individuals on the spectrum may often take novel approaches to address problems and may also be more accepting of differences (Bennie, 2019).
To conclude, ASD is a complex and nuanced disorder, and no two people with ASD are alike. With the help of love, support and timely intervention, individuals with ASD can develop the social and behavioural skills to live fulfilling lives.
References:
Bennie, M. (2019). The Positives of Autism. Retrieved from
https://autismawarenesscentre.com/the-positives-of-autism/
Common Misconceptions. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.autism.org.au/what-is-autism/common-misconceptions/
WHO. (n.d.). Autism spectrum disorders. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/autism-spectrum-disorders | https://medium.com/@socialmedia-ywp/autism-spectrum-disorder-fact-and-fiction-945bc331fc46 | ["You'Re Wonderful Project"] | 2021-02-09 07:13:10.750000+00:00 | ['Autism', 'Facts', 'Mental Health', 'Autism Spectrum Disorder'] |
5 Ways to Improve the Performance of C# Code for Free | Avoiding Implicit Linear Searches
Linear search is one of the simplest search algorithms that iterates through all the elements of a collection one by one until the specified element is found.
Although developers do not usually implement linear search explicitly, it still often causes performance degradation.
In this example, Any method uses a linear search algorithm to check if the specified user ID is in the collection.
Developers don’t necessarily need to know the implementation of every one they use. It’s just important to know the basics: In .NET, List<T> collection is based on arrays. And when it comes to finding a value in an unsorted array, its complexity is O(n). Regardless of which LINQ method is used to find a value in the array Any, Contains or Where, the complexity remains the same.
The solution to our particular problem would be to use a data structure suitable for a specific task.
In our case, we have user identifiers which are always unique. It allows us to convert the collection to HashSet<T>.
What happened? HashSetTest is 5x slower than LinearSearchTest. This is because we are also measuring the time to build the HashSet<T> collection which is a time-consuming operation for large sets.
Developers will benefit from converting to HashSet only if they plan to frequently call the Contains method on it.
If we move the collection creation out of the performance tests and measure only time to find the element, the results will differ drastically. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/5-ways-to-improve-the-performance-of-c-code-for-free-c89188eba5da | ['Sasha Mathews'] | 2021-06-06 12:44:25.496000+00:00 | ['Software Engineering', 'Programming', 'Csharp', 'Software Development', 'Dotnet'] |
🎛 Manager Updates: Token exchange, unique tokens (NFTs), support for multiple languages & the addition of Trezor Wallet | We really appreciate the work StevenJNPearce did on this.
🐱 Crypto Kitties, Unique Tokens or “Non-Fungibles”
We love our kitties and really dislike the acronym NFT (Non-Fungible Token). Crypto-assets are already confusing enough. When I first heard the term fungible I thought the topic of conversation had moved to mushrooms. 🍄
We need to use clear language to help people grasp these concepts and acronyms seriously suck. We like the term collectible but that doesn’t work well for tokens that represent debt, insurance and options. We have decided to call them Unique Tokens. Although the community understands what NFTs are, our customers do not. People understand the concept of unique tokens a lot more easily. They grasp the underlying concept quickly and see how exciting these unique digital assets are.
A huge thank you to Palevoo and Igorline for their time and effort. We connected with them through Gitcoin and they have been great.
🗣 Managing Multiple Languages
The Balance Community has translated Manager into 🇪🇸 Spanish, 🇩🇪 German, 🇷🇺 Russian and 🇮🇹 Italian.
We have open issues on GitHub for 🇰🇷 Korean, 🇯🇵 Japanese, 🇵🇹 Portuguese, 🇵🇱 Polish, 🇧🇷 Brazilian and 🇨🇳 Mandarin. If you would like to help us translate the product into your native language, please get in touch.
💻 Contributors & Collaborators
Now that Balance Manager is open source, we welcome any open source contributions from the community. If you would like to collaborate with us and earn money, we would love to work with you. We are using Gitcoin to help us attract and reward remote collaborators. As Gitcoin matures and Balance starts to generate free cashflow we plan to deploy a lot of capital very quickly to help us design the best user interfaces for promising protocols. If you want to earn tokens, check out: https://gitcoin.co/profile/balance-io
Forgive the typo. Gitcoin needs to pull in my correct spelling of the word #BUIDL.
🤓 How can I help if I am not an engineer?
The biggest non-technical things we need help with are in community buidling. The only moat in the world of open economic protocols is the community of people who believe in the code. We need to widen that moat as quickly as possible as people start to move their assets out of closed source banks and into open source ones.
Never fork with the community.
If I forked Bitcoin and called it Burtoncoin, no one of you would support it. In the open source world the community has to be earned; it cannot be bought. That is what makes this movement so hard for traditional entrepreneurs, economists, bankers, politicians, investors & journalists to understand. Economic protocols are digital religions that people can believe in and benefit from.
A lot of the discussion goes on in our forum. We would love to welcome you to the Balance Community: https://spectrum.chat/balance
We really need help with our Clothing. If you can help us, we would love to talk.
📈 Better Beta Data
Nearly all of the customer support requests we have received have fallen into two categories: feature requests and data issues. We are working incredibly hard on getting clean data out of Ethereum. It turns out that counting all of the tokens within an Ethereum wallet is not an easy task. We are partnering with The Graph Protocol to get an open interface for token balances specified and shipped as quickly as possible.
We also have lots of issues with the price data. This is a really hard problem to solve. Lots of tokens trading in lots of places makes it hard to find a good provider. Lots of people refer to CoinMarketCap.com but they have a bunch of issues. We hope that a combination of efforts in this space from projects like Messari and MakerDAO will help us improve our pricing information.
When we are happy with the quality of our data sources, Manager will finally lose the Beta tag and we will call it a 1.0.
😍 Thank you for all of your help
We really appreciate all of the people who are helping us buidl Balance. Your friendly tweets, feature ideas, thoughtful links and recommendations really motivate us.
Onwards 🖖 | https://medium.com/balance-io/manager-updates-token-exchange-unique-tokens-nfts-support-for-multiple-languages-the-2c20601a9cc0 | ['Richard Burton'] | 2018-06-15 09:45:49.896000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Startup', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
The “Not Tom Steyer!” Blues | Billionaire dreams
a hole in his head.
Leaks like a sieve.
Brain matter drips.
Gray drops pool like rain.
He smiles. I cringe.
“More old rich men”
—his guiding mantra.
How’s that for wrong?
He will save us?
How will he hear us,
ears clutched in hand?
Throws weight around.
Dollars in the wind.
Money rules, right?
Real faceplant, dude.
Think. Learn. Start smaller.
Earn it. Respect.
Be cool. Team play.
Show, don’t tell with scratch.
Plug your leak first.
Deal with your why.
Your true deep down why.
Not greed? You sure?
Seen you before.
Antebellum weird.
Nightmare waking.
Backlash making.
Old pale face centered.
You know best. Psych. | https://medium.com/no-crime-in-rhymin/the-not-tom-steyer-blues-b0e7c9229a2e | ['Ré Harris'] | 2019-07-09 23:50:22.541000+00:00 | ['Tom Steyer', 'Poetry', 'Milk Carton Haiku', 'Presidential Candidate', 'Politics'] |
8 Tips to Make Writing Fun Again | Write with the help of a writing prompt
Sometimes you just need a little prompt to get the ideas flowing in your brain. Those of us who let writer’s block take control of us need to do two things.
First, do a quick Google search. Find some good ideas that interest you.
Second, don’t let writer’s block affect you in the first place. Keep a journal of ideas and prompts at hand. Whenever an idea strikes, write it down. You may think you’ll remember it, but you probably won’t.
Illustrate your writing
Your readers are people, and people are very visual creatures. We like to have some sort of aid to show us what a piece of writing is about. Without a photo or drawing to go with it, your writing isn’t as interesting. Potential readers will move on to other writing.
Try adding in a colorful and eye-catching photo with all your writing. It’ll draw readers in and give them an idea of what to expect.
Tell a story
Personal experience always makes up the best stories. For example, if you’re writing about programming, you should have some experience.
Personal experience can also make you more credible when writing. Would you rather read a story about writing that’s by a writer or one by a football player? Probably the one by the writer, because they have experience and can tell a personal story.
Write, write, write
With practice comes better results and a better experience. If you have a lot of practice with writing, you’ll end up enjoying it more. You’ll also end up with better results. Just keep writing.
As the old saying goes, “practice makes perfect,” and the only way to practice writing is to write.
Write about something new
Try writing about something you haven’t written about before. What experiences have you had in life? Share them with the world!
Don’t just keep your experiences to yourself. There’s someone in the world who wants to read about them.
Get inspired by others
There’s some amazing stuff out there. Whether it’s other writing, a video, a book, or something different, get inspired.
Don’t be jealous of others, learn from their work. It’ll make your life a whole lot easier, and then someone else can learn from you.
Re-write previous works
Once you’ve written something, don’t leave it for the rest of eternity. Try re-writing it.
Add some more detail and fix some things up. You don’t even have to publish it. It’s good practice either way.
Write about what you enjoy
If you write about things you enjoy, writing will become more fun.
If you like dogs, write about dogs. If you like the holidays, write about them.
Write about whatever it is you enjoy and writing will be more fun. | https://writingcooperative.com/8-tips-to-make-writing-fun-again-8653838c232b | ['Ben Soyka'] | 2019-11-17 12:01:01.999000+00:00 | ['Writers On Writing', 'Inspiration', 'Writing', 'Hobby', 'Writers Block'] |
Kubernetes Just Deprecated Docker Support. What Now? | Kubernetes Just Deprecated Docker Support. What Now?
Kat Cosgrove tweeted this on December 2:
Let me transcribe the whole thread for you here if you’re not a Twitter user:
“So, Kubernetes is deprecating Docker support and you’re either nervous or confused. That’s okay! I would like to help you understand what’s happening. A thread! 1/10
From Kubernetes v1.20, you will receive a deprecation warning for Docker. After that, you will need to use a different container runtime. Yes, this will break your clusters. You might think that Docker == Kubernetes. Not so! 2/10
The thing we call Docker is actually an entire tech stack, which includes a thing called containerd as well as some other stuff, like some fancy UX changes that make it easier for humans to interact with. Containerd is a high-level container runtime by itself. 3/10
Kubernetes doesn’t need all of that fancy UX stuff, though. It just needs the container runtime. Using Docker, the whole stack, as your container runtime means Kubernetes has to use something called dockershim to interact with the parts it actually needs. 4/10
This is because Docker isn’t CRI (Container Runtime Interface) compliant. Dockershim allows us to get around that, but it also means we have an entirely separate thing to maintain just so we can use Docker as our runtime. 5/10
This kind of sucks. It’s inconvenient. The solution is to cut out the abstraction and just use containerd as our container runtime in Kubernetes. Because, again, Kubernetes isn’t a human — it doesn’t need the UX enhancements. 6/10
So, you don’t need to panic. Docker isn’t dead (yet), and it still has its uses. You just can’t use it as your container runtime in Kubernetes anymore. After the next version, you need to switch to containerd. 7/10
Yes, you COULD just stay on an old version of Kubernetes. No, you absolutely should not, or else @IanColdwater will haunt your clusters. Ghost 8/10
The Kubernetes docs for container runtimes are here, with info about using containerd or CRI-O: https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/container-runtimes/… 9/10
Anyway, I hope this helped allay some anxiety or misunderstandings. If you’re still confused, that’s okay! Ask questions! This is REALLY complicated. Your questions aren’t stupid, even if they’re simple! 10/10
BONUS TWEET: Yes, Kubernetes will still run images built by Docker! TL;DR not a whole lot will change for devs, those images are still compliant with OCI (Open Container Initiative) and containerd knows what to do with them.” | https://medium.com/better-programming/kubernetes-just-deprecated-docker-support-e86d2327afad | ['Edgar Rodríguez'] | 2020-12-07 18:29:27.416000+00:00 | ['Kubernetes', 'Docker', 'Container Orchestration', 'Programming', 'Containerd'] |
WHY NOSQL- PART 2 — OVERVIEW OF DATA MODEL,RELATIONAL & NOSQL | This is part 2 of Why NoSQL series. You can view the first part here. In this post we will have an overview about various data model been which upon NoSQL databases been build and compare it with RDBMS data model.
All through the post we can examine different data model with famous employee data. Typically in an office employee will have following records,
empid
emp_name
department
designation
and consider the company has different department.
Let us examine the relational database model first.
Relational Database model:
Relational database model first been proposed by Edgar F. Codd in late 1969. The fundamental assumption of the relational data model is that the data is represented as a mathematical n-ary relation which is a subset of Cartesian product. The data been accessed by means of relational algebra using set theory and the consistency been achieved by applying constraints like primary and foreign keys.
So the typical data model for employee problem will be,
NoSQL data model:
The NoSQL databases taken a completed different approach and implements day-to-day data structure based solutions. There are different types of data models been implemented.
1. Column Families or wide column store
2. Document Store
3. Key/ value Store
4. Graph Data store
1. Column Families or wide column store
Examples: Cassandra, HBase
Typical usages : Distributed data storage.
The column families basically extends the typical key/value pair storage and provide two level of nesting. The nested key/value pair is called column in column family storage. Each column can be grouped with a key and thus provide super column functionality as well. The typical use case will be the application with extensive read/write operation. Facebook messenger uses Hbase. Typically the employee data model will look like below,
2. Document Store
Examples: CouchDB, MongoDB
Typical usages : Web applications.
Document based data model used to store and retrieve document oriented or semi-structured information which is common on web-based applications. Typically all the modern document based data models follow the XML,JSON or BSON model that is easy map with the data model. It is also enable APIs easily interact with the databases as most of the modern-day languages support these formats in build. The data model of Employee will look like,
Id = “001”,FirstName=”Ananth”, LastName=”Durai”, Department=[{Id:”DIT”,DeptName:”IT”}],Designation=[{Desig=”Software Programmer”, Salary:0}]
3. Key/ Value store
Examples: Membase, Redis
Typical usages : Distributed Hash table, caching
Key / value store function as typical Hash table where it will store the value against a key. This will enable to create schema less storage. It will be best in use when we have excess read operation than write operation. Say for example we have to display Latest post on forum on every 2 minutes, It makes sense to run a background job on every 2 minutes and store as key value pair and read data from there. Lot of content intensive websites using in memory key / value pair storage system.
4. Graph Databases
Examples: Neo4J, InfoGrid
Typical usages: Social networking, Recommendations
Graph data model typically follows the Graph algorithm to store data with nodes and edges. Graph databases are best suit where we face recursive data model. Each an every node will have the following attributes
Node
Property
Relationship (Edges)
We can map it to the our Employee object.
Here
Node : Employee
Property: first name, last name, designation and department
Relationship : Employee part of a department
We can see more like eventual consistency and best use cases on the next series. | https://medium.com/allthingsdata/why-nosql-part-2-overview-of-data-model-relational-nosql-2bfba2ffefb1 | ['Ananth Packkildurai'] | 2017-07-23 02:16:48.882000+00:00 | ['Cassandra', 'Column Database', 'Couchdb', 'Document Database', 'Graph Database'] |
What Do You Need to Know About Gradient Descent Algorithm | Optimization is an integral part of machine learning. Almost all machine learning algorithms have an optimization function as a crucial segment. As the word suggests, optimization in machine learning is finding the optimal solution to a problem statement.
In this article, you’ll read about one of the most widely used optimization algorithms, gradient descent. The gradient descent algorithm can be used with any machine learning algorithm and is easy to comprehend and implement. So, what exactly is gradient descent? By the end of this article, you’ll have a clearer understanding of the gradient descent algorithm and how it can be used to update the model’s parameters.
Gradient Descent
Before going deep into the gradient descent algorithm, you should know what cost function is. The cost function is a function used to measure the performance of your model for a given dataset. It finds the difference between your predicted value and expected value, thus quantifying the error margin.
The goal is to reduce the cost function so that the model is accurate. To achieve this goal, you need to find the required parameters during the training of your model. Gradient descent is one such optimization algorithm used to find the coefficients of a function to reduce the cost function. The point at which cost function is minimum is known as global minima.
Source
The intuition behind the Gradient Descent algorithm
Suppose you have a large bowl similar to something you’ve your fruit in. This bowl is the plot for the cost function. The bottom of the bowl is the best coefficient for which the cost function is minimum. Different values are used as the coefficients to calculate the cost function. This step is repeated until the best coefficients are found.
You can imagine gradient descent as a ball rolling down a valley. The valley is the plot for the cost function here. You want the ball to reach the bottom of the valley, where the bottom of the valley represents the least cost function. Depending on the start position of the ball, it may rest on many bottoms of the valley. However, these bottoms may not be the lowest points and are known as local minima.
Source
Read: Boosting in Machine Learning: What is, Functions, Types & Features
Gradient Descent Algorithm- Methodology
The calculation of gradient descent begins with the initial values of coefficients for the function being set as 0 or a small random value.
coefficient = 0 (or a small value)
The cost function is calculated by putting this value of the coefficient in the function.
Cost function = f(coefficient)
We know from the concept of calculus that the derivative of a function is the slope of the function. Calculating the slope will help you to figure out the direction to move the coefficient values. The direction should be such that you get a lower cost(error) in the next iteration.
del = derivative(cost function)
After knowing the direction of downhill from the slope, you update the coefficient values accordingly. A learning rate (alpha) can be selected to control how much these coefficients will change in each iteration. You need to make sure that this learning rate is not too high nor too low.
coefficient = coefficient — (alpha * del)
This process is repeated until the cost function becomes 0 or very close to 0.
f(coefficient) = 0 (or close to 0)
The selection of the learning rate is important. Selecting a very high learning rate can overshoot the global minima. On the contrary, a very low learning rate can help you reach the global minima, but the convergence is very slow, taking many iterations.
Source
Variants of Gradient Descent Algorithm
Batch Gradient Descent
Batch gradient descent is one of the most used variants of the gradient descent algorithm. The cost function is computed over the entire training dataset for every iteration. One batch is referred to as one iteration of the algorithm, and this form is known as batch gradient descent.
Stochastic Gradient Descent
In some cases, the training set can be very large. In these cases, batch gradient descent will take a long time to compute as one iteration needs a prediction for each instance in the training set. You can use the stochastic gradient descent in these conditions where the dataset is huge. In stochastic gradient descent, the coefficients are updated for each training instance and not at the end of the batch of instances.
Mini Batch Gradient Descent
Both batch gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent have their pros and cons. However, using a mixture of batch gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent can be useful. In mini-batch gradient descent, neither the entire dataset is used nor do you use a single instance at a time. You take into consideration a group of training examples. The number of examples in this group is lesser than the entire dataset, and this group is known as a mini-batch.
Best Practices for Gradient Descent Algorithm
Map cost versus time: Plotting the cost with respect to time helps you visualize whether the cost is decreasing or not after each iteration. If you see the cost to remain unchanged, try updating the learning rate.
Plotting the cost with respect to time helps you visualize whether the cost is decreasing or not after each iteration. If you see the cost to remain unchanged, try updating the learning rate. Learning rate: The learning rate is very low and is often selected as 0.01 or 0.001. You need to try and see which value works best for you.
The learning rate is very low and is often selected as 0.01 or 0.001. You need to try and see which value works best for you. Rescale inputs: The gradient descent algorithm will minimize the cost function faster if all the input variables are rescaled to the same range, such as [0, 1] or [-1, 1].
The will minimize the cost function faster if all the input variables are rescaled to the same range, such as [0, 1] or [-1, 1]. Less passes: Usually, the stochastic gradient descent algorithm doesn’t need more than 10 passes to find the best coefficients.
Check out: 25 Machine Learning Interview Questions & Answers
Wrapping up
You get to know the role of gradient descent in optimizing a machine learning algorithm. One important factor to keep in mind is choosing the right learning rate for your gradient descent algorithm for optimal prediction.
upGrad provides a PG Diploma in Machine Learning and AI and a Master of Science in Machine Learning & AI that may guide you toward building a career. These courses will explain the need for Machine Learning and further steps to gather knowledge in this domain covering varied concepts ranging from gradient descent algorithms to Neural Networks.
This article originally published on upGrad blog. | https://medium.com/@upGrad/what-do-you-need-to-know-about-gradient-descent-algorithm-917576d49db9 | [] | 2020-09-26 05:01:53.760000+00:00 | ['Ml Algorithm', 'Gradient Descent', 'Machine Learning Ai', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
One Particularly Annoying Downside of Working Out Everyday | Two solutions to this
It’s like chocolate. The best way to get rid of the struggle is to surrender. I can’t stay long with my restless legs. At some point I know I’ll have to do something.
Working out
My body asks me to move, so I obey. When I feel like that, I love to go running. Usually 30 to 45 minutes.
From the first few steps, I can feel relief coming over me. My legs carry me almost effortlessly and gradually release the accumulated tension. I can usually run between 3 and 5 kilometers before I feel the energy start to decline.
After that, I feel good. I have tired my body. Now I will be able to tire my brain. It’s often after sport that I am best able to work intellectually.
I am at peace until tomorrow.
Going for a walk
I have implemented a new habit in my daily life. I wonder how I could ever do without it. I start each day with a coffee and 30 minutes of reading. Then I get dressed and walk around my neighborhood for 20 minutes, with no music, no one, just me and my thoughts.
I can already feel that my legs needed this exercise. Plus, it allows me to start the day calmly, being fully present, listening to my thoughts. I still feel them a little restless in the morning, but less so than before. It’s perfect while waiting for the late afternoon jog.
Sometimes you don’t feel like doing a real workout in the middle of the day. Walking is good for both body and mind. | https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/one-particularly-annoying-downside-of-working-out-everyday-3949ba7f6930 | ['Auriane Alix'] | 2020-12-22 14:56:11.123000+00:00 | ['Restlessness', 'Walking', 'Running', 'Fitness', 'Workout'] |
Why You Should Invest In Female Artists Now | Jenny Saville’s Propped (1992) sold at Sotheby’s for $12.4 million; Sotheby’s
Female artists are the biggest bargain on the market! What will your art collection be worth?
That there are gender disparities, and a gender (pay) gap in the art market has been widely reported. The most expensive work ever sold by a female artist is Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower №1 (1932), which sold for $44.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2014. This amount is less than a tenth compared to the $450.3 million paid for Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. Da Vinci’s painting in November 2017 shattered the record for the highest known price ever paid for a painting. With $44.4 million, O’Keefe’s art does not yet make it in the list of the 160 most expensive paintings, even when adjusted for inflation. Similarly, the highest price for a living female artist paid was set in 2018 by Jenny Saville’s Propped (1992), with $12.4 million. This price was a fraction of the $91.1 million paid for Jeff Koon’s Rabbit (1986), which sold at Christie’s in May last year.
Adams et al. wrote a joint paper in 2017 analysing 1.5 million auction transactions in 45 countries, documented a 47.6% discount for female artists in auction prices for paintings. Even when they adjusted the data set for outliers by removing the ‘superstar artists’ — works that sell above 1 million dollars — a discount factor of 28.8% remains (Adams, Kräussl, Navone, & Verwijmeren, 2017). Also, the Art Market Report 2019 highlights gender disparities all over the art market. Despite more women entering arts education and working as a visual artist, they are still vastly underrepresented in global exhibitions, as well as in galleries, collections, and at auctions. A recent study of artist diversity in museums in the U.S. concludes that out of over 10,000 artists, 87% are men, and of that total are 85% white (Topaz, et al., 2019).
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower №1 (1932) sold for $44.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2014; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2014.35
What explains the prevailing inequality that is demonstrated in the prices that artworks created by women can achieve? One hypothesis could be that art created by women is altogether of lesser quality. Therefore, these works sell at a lower price. Tylor Cowen calls this the genetic theory (Cowen, 1996). To make a comparison, this is similar to the biological belief that genetic gender differences are the primary factor influencing the top performances. The consequence being gaps in world records we observe between women and men in many competitive sports disciplines (Thibault, et al., 2010).
Cowen does not see the genetic hypothesis in the arts as entirely refuted. Moreover, he seriously doubts its validity as he observes artistic areas, such as in the needlework and embroidery arts, where the “achievements of women exceed the achievements of men”.
A more recent look at the genetic hypothesis comes from the same study that documented a 47.6% discount factor for a female artist. Setting up a simple experiment, Adams et al. showed survey participants paintings, asked them to guess the artist’s gender, and rate how much they liked the art on a scale from 1 to 10. As expected, participants were not able to systematically correctly infer the artist’s gender from the paintings. However, when they thought a female artist produced an art piece, they appreciated it less. This study makes it difficult to consider the genetic hypothesis as a possible explanation for the difference in prices we observe in the art market. Instead, this gives credibility to what Cowen calls the discrimination hypothesis. In this theory, social norms, gender bias, and culturally determined gender roles explain the different outcomes we observe in the art market.
That the discrimination hypothesis is more plausible is not a new idea. This premise has not only been highlighted in several papers (Nochlin, 1971) (Cowen, 1996) (Miller, 2016) but also by the National Museums of Women in the Arts, the feminist activist group Guerrilla Girls, or the #5WomenArtists social media campaign. Further evidence comes from a second experiment conducted by Adams et al., where they used the neural network algorithm of deepart.io to create computer-generated paintings. After randomly assigning those artificially generated paintings to fake female and male artists using phoney male and female names, they asked participants to rate the pictures. As before, the participants appreciated works less that were attributed with a fake female name. The authors see this as evidence that price differences are the outcome of a culture determined by gender roles and not biology.
Cindy Sherman Untitled Film Still #21 (1978). Cindy Sherman is the highest-ranking female artist and ranks number 6 on Artfacts.net Top 100 Artists Alive; Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
From this analysis, we can conclude that the difference in prices we observe for female artists stems not from biological factors. On the contrary, it can mainly be attributed to discrimination against women in our society and especially in this instance against the female artist in the art market. This conclusion in itself is very lamentable. While it is imperative to overcome such differences, it can be used, at least in theory, to guide the decision to invest in art successfully.
In a perfect world, i.e., a world where there is no gender bias and no discrimination exists, the art of equal quality should, on average, sell at the same price. In their research Adams et al. look at how gender inequality is related to gender discount factors. They conclude that the discount factor is higher in countries with greater gender inequality as measured by the United Nations Gender Inequality Index and the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index. This conclusion suggests that in the real world, the higher the discrimination against women/female artists and the higher inequality between men and women in our society/art market, the higher the price difference should be.
One of the oldest and probably most famous pieces of advice for making money states “buy low, sell high”, and it applies to all kinds of investment. There seems to exist the possibility of buying art by female artists that are of equal, or of at least indiscernible quality as the art by male artists. However, at a considerably discounted price due to the gender gap. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Iwan Wirth, owner of one of the world’s most prominent art galleries Hauser and Wirth, called female artistic works the “biggest bargain of the century”. At the same time, we can observe all over the world and especially in the art market, a trend towards higher gender equality. The four most influential countries in terms of art sales volume — the U.S., the U.K., China, and France — show a clear downward trend in the UN’s Gender Inequality Index indicating that differences between men and women become smaller over the last decades and will most likely continue to decrease in the future.
Copyright © Guerrilla Girls, courtesy guerrillagirls.com
In recent years there has been a trend towards a more excellent representation of women and greater gender equality in the art world. The 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 achieved for the first time gender parity with 53% women artists, while in 2017, only 35% of solo participants were female, and in 2015 only 33%. In 2018, 40 of the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world, according to ArtReview’s Power 100 list were women, compared to 38 in 2017 and 32 in 2016. Similarly, the Art Market Report 2019 using data from Artfacts.net shows substantial progress over time of women in global exhibitions, which grew from 4% in 1900 to 25% in 2000, and up to 33% in 2018. All these numbers show a clear trend towards higher gender equality, not to mention the increased awareness for gender discrimination in the art market thanks to ever more exhibitions and galleries focusing on female artists and to activist movements like the Guerrilla Girls. As it seems very likely that those trends will continue, the gender pay gap should diminish over the next years. Therefore, as long as the prices are considerably low, we can make use of those gender equalizing forces to invest now in female artists at a low price and sell high in the future.
Source: Art Agency, Partners Where Women Outpace Men in the Market
To the conclusion that investing in female artists is a smart thing to do also comes Sotheby’s Mei Moses Art Index. They state that works by female artists bought in 2012 and then sold in 2018 would, on average, have increased in value by 72.9%, clearly outperforming male artists.
Apart from the possibility of making sizeable profits, and increasing the worth of your art collection, when investing in female artists, there is another reason why you should invest now. You not only make use of the current gender gap to have higher returns. Also, investing sends a signal that supporting the female artist is the right thing to do. These circumstances will reinforce the confidence of investing in female artists, increasing the prices. This confidence should not only decrease the gender pay gap and but also help to make the art world an equal one. And to be honest it’s about time. | https://medium.com/art-direct/why-you-should-invest-in-female-artists-now-8bfd7a031e27 | ['Tristan Post'] | 2020-07-18 14:53:32.464000+00:00 | ['Female Artists', 'Art Market', 'Art Investment', 'Art', 'Feminism'] |
Here’s an insight into building a clean and sustainable Beauty Company in 2020. Hint: It’s not easy. | We’re living in an age where environmentally sustainable practices should be as critical for businesses as finding a path to profitability, or else we’ll be missing the wood for the trees. This is all the more important for the beauty industry where the bulk of packaging used is unsustainable. According to a study by Zero Waste Europe a whopping 142 billion units of packaging are produced each year globally, most of it non-recyclable.
But the industry’s massive carbon footprint doesn’t stop there: a lot of products are filled with micro-beads and micro-plastics, most sunscreens are not safe for coral reefs, synthetic fragrances in sprays contribute to air pollution, and the overuse of natural resources, without finding ways to replenish them, is harmful to the environment — for example palm oil, which 70% of cosmetic companies use worldwide, has resulted in mass deforestation.
In light of Earth Day, I wanted to address some of the ways in which we’re approaching sustainability at Yours (my startup, A personalised a skincare brand), and our clean beauty vision which we’re in the process of building. When I set out to create Yours, I tried to reimagine every single aspect of the skincare business — from ingredients to packaging, all the way to product delivery. I wanted to build a brand that puts our customers and the environment at the heart of everything we do.
A whopping 142 billion units of packaging are produced each year globally, most of it non-recyclable.
Enabling product-customer fit to cut product waste
First, this meant leveraging technology to personalise skincare at scale, and in the process, reduce product waste by eliminating skincare trial-and-error. With the right skincare regimen in place, people no longer have to buy products that do not work for their skin, and throw them away as a result. This product-customer fit is achieved by mapping the right ingredients and formulations to their skin, lifestyle, and environment.
Love for skin, love for the environment
Next was in assessing how ingredients were being sourced. As a brand, it’s important to us that we only work with suppliers we trust, with full visibility into their supply chain. In the beginning, this meant visiting dozens of laboratories over months, until we found the perfect one in Switzerland that aligns with our brand values.
I wanted to find the right balance between nature and science. All-natural products are not always good for the skin — for example, walnut and sugar scrubs can cause micro-tearing and early signs of ageing! — so, we always look for synthetic alternatives that are rated safe and sustainable by the Environmental Working Group (EWG rating).
We always look for synthetic alternatives that are rated safe and sustainable by the Environmental Working Group (EWG rating)
Reducing product waste with smart packaging
Lastly, when it comes to packaging, recyclability is a bare minimum requirement for Yours; all of our current packaging and shipping boxes are fully recyclable. A personal goal of mine is to reduce our current packaging waste by 50%. This is something we’re working on day and night with our creative and communications team to come up with more sustainable solutions.
We also challenged the way formulations were being delivered in standard bottles or droppers (which contributes to high product wastage). After much research, we opted for a fully recyclable airless pump bottle, which is designed to extract every last drop of product, making it ready to recycle straight after use. These bottles were also designed to be refillable, and we’re working on putting a plan in place so our customers can reuse their original bottles each time they want to replenish their orders. This would help us further reduce the cost of the products and we’ll be able to pass on those savings to you, our customers.
Our Vision
While we’re making every effort to be as eco friendly as possible, we’re always exploring more sustainable options. For a while, we looked into biodegradable packaging, but I quickly found out that 1) they are extremely hard to find, 2) there are limited options, 3) it’s incredibly expensive, and 4) there are very high MOQs (Minimum Order Quantity) involved. We explored sugar cane tubes, but the MOQ for that was a whopping 70,000. As much as we would love to invest in that, for a small startup, it’s practically impossible!
So while it’s an uphill battle, we’re making it our mission to be more sustainable in every which way we can, and make eco-friendly packaging easily accessible and the norm for other small startups like us. We would love to connect with, and support, more manufacturers who are invested in this type of environmental research, and work together to make a positive impact on the beauty industry as a whole — reach out to me at navneet[at]lovefromyours.com, if it’s something you’d like to discuss!
The environment matters, and it’s on every one of us to make the decision to live more sustainably and be more conscious with what we put out in the world.
-Navneet | https://medium.com/@navneet_k/heres-an-insight-into-building-a-clean-and-sustainable-beauty-company-in-2020-c4a323fe4811 | ['Navneet Kaur'] | 2020-04-23 12:17:22.910000+00:00 | ['Skincare', 'Environment', 'Beauty', 'Startup', 'Sustainable'] |
Overnight delivery of Tramadol is scam or Real | Tramadol is a synthetic opioid drug sold under the brand name Ultram. Tramadol is prescribed by doctors for mild to moderate narcotic pain which brings quick relief to the patient. Tramadol is the best alternative to narcotic drugs.
However, though declared as a controlled substance by FDA, tramadol is still addictive in nature; hence if you run out of stock, you would need to refill it in no time. When the urge is high then can Tramadol get delivered by the same or next day? Let’s find out.
Since obtaining the drug was easy, and considering the rate of abuse, with not much alarm rose against it, the generic version of the drug came into existence. The generic version of Tramadol became cheap and widely available in the USA.
With the advent of online sales and usage of online payment methods, it has become far easier to reach the doorstep faster, because by now it has become the most prescribed medicine for moderate pain relief. See More | https://medium.com/@belladsouza154/overnight-delivery-of-tramadol-is-scam-or-real-6704281c23e0 | [] | 2020-12-21 10:51:01.432000+00:00 | ['Joint Pain', 'Back Pain', 'Pain', 'Chronic Illness'] |
6 Most Exotic Hotels In The World You Cannot Miss!!💃🏻 | It is not an easy task to handpick the worlds most exotic hotels. Our world is diverse and diverse is its culture. From petite and slick to sprawling and magnificient, the world holds thousands of mind boggling hotels.
selecting the absolute best isn’t solely subjective, however a broad task. We’ve targeted on 6 favorite luxury exotic hotels, chosen for its diversity, uniqueness, and exotic virgin locations. Do Enjoy.. And Do Visit them at least in your lifetime
Katikies Hotel-Oia, Greece
Fans of luxury and elegance will adore Katikies Hotel in Santorini, Greece. The rooms have been decorated in stark white, with crisp white linens, minibars, Nespresso coffee machines and terraces that offer views of the cobalt blue sea. Outside your room, you’ll find 3 infinity pools encompassed by a sun deck furnished with lounge chairs, and two Jacuzzis (one indoor, one outdoor).
The Cambrian Hotel, Adelboden, Switzerland
From the playful parade of boots that encircle us inside the front entrance to the minimalist masterpiece walls and fireplace beyond, We realized that the Cambrian was a design hotel with a feeling of fun. The lobby is a sea of grey and natural timber — with a black-and-white cow-print piano. Next to the elevators, the luminaire controls your attention: It’s an lit pillow-size bundle of white that resembles a cottonball suspended from the ceiling, gradually bending and hammering on your head.
The Scenery from the Hotel Window?… The Picture Below Will take Your Mind and Heart Away
The Hanging Gardens of Bali
This fivestar resort is best known for its spectacular main pool, which sits dramatically over jungle treetops and offers vistas of the gorge below. With a location about half an hour from Ubud, the resort offers a peaceful, rain forest getaway, complete with a spa and dining options that range from an on-site restaurant, bar, and cafe, to romantic private dining adventures.
Read More In Next Page
Continuing the Worlds Most Exotic Hotels List..
#travelworld #lovenature #BeautifulWorld Click To Tweet
Ascher Cliff, Switzerland
Ascher Guesthouse is located next to the Wildkirchli caves and beneath the Ebenalp cliff (Ebenalp is the northernmost summit of the Appenzell Alps in Switzerland) the was Guesthouse carefully built into the side of a mountain throughout the nineteenth century. The Swiss call ldquo & it;Berggasthaus&rdquo.
Hotel Kakslauttanen, Finland
Imagine spending the night in a glass igloo where one can lie on your own soft palate bed and look throughout the thermal igloo glass as you wait around for a peek at the magical Northern Lights. Picture log cabins dotted around the forest. Snow covered trees glisten and you’ll be the envy of your mates. You step into your cabin where one will odor the roaring log fire and listen to the crackle of the wood.
The Manta Resort, Zanzibar
Manta Resort is located on the southern tip of Pemba Island, on a fantastic white beach overlooking the crystal clear waters of the Pemba Channel.
https://www.buzzgrab.com/6-most-exotic-hotels-in-the-world/ #buzzgrab #trendingnow #latesttopic #news #usa #global #world
Article Originally Published On : www.buzzgrab.com
©BUZZGRAB | All Rights Reserved | https://medium.com/@buzzgrabofficial/6-most-exotic-hotels-in-the-world-you-cannot-miss-5c8f1f5e4b93 | ['B U Z Z G R A B'] | 2017-11-23 04:43:16.118000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Hotel', 'World', 'Adventure', 'Trends'] |
Schrödinger’s cat in Typescript | We are tech nerds because we believe in reinventing the world with the power of Technology. Our articles talk about some of the most disruptive ideas, technology, and innovation.
Follow | https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/schr%C3%B6dingers-cat-in-typescript-37b835598962 | ['Bing Ren'] | 2020-12-01 01:38:17.998000+00:00 | ['Typescript', 'Any', 'Object'] |
How Battlelands Royale built one of the most engaged communities on mobile | How Battlelands Royale built one of the most engaged communities on mobile
And 10 tips to help you emulate their success
Battlelands Royale was named one of the Google Play’s Best Games of 2018.
This article is also published on Futureplay’s blog
If you’ve worked on a multiplayer game, you’ll know that community engagement forms a massive part of your marketing strategy. I’d even argue that the most important thing for a game development company are the players. They keep the game alive and the people working on it motivated.
We learned this much through our experience growing Battlelands Royale and realized, despite the great initial organic growth we had, what’s more important is your long-term growth strategy. The goals are simple — make the players engaged, make them enjoy the game on multiple levels, make them support the developers and make them tell their friends.
If you’ve ever wondered how to grow a thriving player base, here are ten tips to take away!
1. Live stream to build your player base and company core
When we released Battlelands Royale, we already knew we had a great game on our hands. The excitement we had while playing the game at the office was something we wanted to share with players around the world. One Friday afternoon, one idea led to another and we found ourselves sitting around a single laptop in a meeting room, live streaming.
Though it was probably quite awkward at first, and extremely low-key, we and everyone joining the stream had a blast. It was also a way for the players to put a face to us as a company, and the Battlelands Royale development team, further improving their engagement.
“Customers always trust individuals more than companies or brands.”
What started off as a low-key Friday afternoon happy hour with the players and developers has turned out to be a consistent tool for engaging players on a weekly basis. Openly interacting with players around the globe has helped us shape an image of our product, company, and values for the players and for ourselves too. What you are to the players is what you are as a company. Here are some best practices we’ve learned to help you build an engaged community via live streaming:
Know your audience
Set the tone for the stream and the way you communicate with the players. Aim for consistency in the way the game and the live stream looks and with how you communicate with the players through social media.
Set the tone for the stream and the way you communicate with the players. Aim for consistency in the way the game and the live stream looks and with how you communicate with the players through social media. Start small and build from there
You don’t need to go all in from the get go. A laptop, webcam, USB microphone and a sense of adventure will take you a long way.
Dev Streams in their early stages. Start small and build from there!
Overcome the fear factor
Putting yourself on the line for everyone to see can be quite nerve-racking if you’re not accustomed to being in front of the camera. Be honest and true to yourself, make mistakes, let your personality shine through and don’t be afraid to be a little bit silly if you feel like it!
Putting yourself on the line for everyone to see can be quite nerve-racking if you’re not accustomed to being in front of the camera. Be honest and true to yourself, make mistakes, let your personality shine through and don’t be afraid to be a little bit silly if you feel like it! Grow with your audience
Payers will vote with their comments and views and you’ll know quite soon if something is worth doing on a regular basis. If there’s a demand for it, take the necessary steps to keep improving the quality and content of your videos.
Payers will vote with their comments and views and you’ll know quite soon if something is worth doing on a regular basis. If there’s a demand for it, take the necessary steps to keep improving the quality and content of your videos. Improve the gear you’re using
Having a decent camera and lights made a world of difference for us, not to mention getting better mics and room acoustics. There’s no reason to go overboard with your setup though, as you can get decent quality content out without building a massive professional studio for it.
Having a decent camera and lights made a world of difference for us, not to mention getting better mics and room acoustics. There’s no reason to go overboard with your setup though, as you can get decent quality content out without building a massive professional studio for it. Plan ahead
Writing short scripts for the streams or creating short video clips to show during the stream can help you hone the tone, consistency and feeling of the videos, making your YouTuber personality more distinguishable and memorable.
Writing short scripts for the streams or creating short video clips to show during the stream can help you hone the tone, consistency and feeling of the videos, making your YouTuber personality more distinguishable and memorable. Get your team members involved
Invite the coders, designers, artists and office dogs to join the live streams. It keeps the videos fresh and is a great opportunity for the players to ask questions about certain aspects of the game, as well as introduce new faces from the development team.
“Whatever you choose to do, make sure to always enforce a positive, excited atmosphere.”
Our Dev Streams have evolved from a Friday afternoon happy hour to a consistent engagement tool.
2. Deeper engagement: Community Challenges
YouTube is not only great for live streams, dev diaries, trailers and update announcements. It’s also awesome for pushing the players to create their own content while finding fresh new ways of playing and enjoying the game. In came Community Challenges, where we made rules for the players to follow and they’d upload videos of themselves completing the challenge. We’d select, announce and reward a few winners who had the best editing, best gameplay or other aspects of the video that made watching it worthwhile.
“Investigate the trends set by your competitors and go beyond them!”’
What started off as a six-second fast-forwarded gameplay clip has evolved into five to ten minute scripted videos with professional makeup, props and gameplay. Our 17 challenge videos have over 200,000 combined views and have helped create hundreds of awesome videos on YouTube. Here’s some key takeaways from our experience:
As with live streaming, it’s best to start small
Make the format known to the players by starting off with easy challenges and building up from there.
Make the format known to the players by starting off with easy challenges and building up from there. Keep improving
Develop the format into a more structured, consistent version over time, as with the live streams.
Develop the format into a more structured, consistent version over time, as with the live streams. Every video matters
Players uploading videos of the game onto YouTube is a great way to build presence there and gain some organic uplift for the game.
Players uploading videos of the game onto YouTube is a great way to build presence there and gain some organic uplift for the game. Showcase your product
Challenges are a great tool for showcasing new features and the most exciting aspects of the game.
Challenges are a great tool for showcasing new features and the most exciting aspects of the game. Involve the players
Drive the players not only to participate in the actual challenges, but to ideate new ones. Polls for new types of challenges are a great way to get the players involved on multiple levels. Remember to involve your super fans and moderators too. You can, for example, let them vote for the winning videos.
Start small and grow with your audience! Don’t be afraid to be a bit silly at times.
Community Challenges are a great way to get creative and engage your community!
3. Get active and be the advocate
Discord has played a massive role in building the Battlelands Royale community. Created during the soft launch period of the game, the server has grown to over 130,000 members in a year and a half. While our numbers are even bigger on Instagram for example, the combination of active community members and the possibilities provided by the customisable server on Discord make it a brilliant hub for our most active player base.
Instead of doing a deep dive into everything you should know about setting up your Discord server, which I might actually do someday, here are some tips for what we’ve learned so far in the process.
Start early
Create the server at a very early stage of the game development. Try to get the community to start building and forming an identity already during soft launch.
Create the server at a very early stage of the game development. Try to get the community to start building and forming an identity already during soft launch. Get to know the players
Acknowledge the super fans and evangelists. Spending time with your core player base will help you pinpoint the true fans of the game.
Acknowledge the super fans and evangelists. Spending time with your core player base will help you pinpoint the true fans of the game. Involve the players
Make polls, giveaways and challenges to the players. Ask for their feedback. Build a system for recruiting the super fans and evangelists to help you maintain and organise the community as volunteer moderators.
“What you are to the players is what you are as a company.”
Be the advocate of the players
As a community manager, I take great pride in being the voice of the players and so should you. Our active community has helped us shape our game into something greater than what we had even imagined with their feedback, suggestions and enthusiasm.
As a community manager, I take great pride in being the voice of the players and so should you. Our active community has helped us shape our game into something greater than what we had even imagined with their feedback, suggestions and enthusiasm. Not everything can or should be automatised
Self-sufficiency is a pretty thought, but not necessarily always a viable option. Even if you build a solid foundation for the moderators and how the server operates, you’ll still need to find the time to interact with them. The moderators are players too, and while they have a better understanding of how the development team works, burning questions or issues beyond their jurisdiction are always likely to pop up. Also you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to get all that feedback, spread the excitement and share all that information to the community!
“Be very open to collect and discuss feedback whenever possible”
4. Stay close to the product
Hosting multiple social platforms for a growing online multiplayer game community while maintaining a feeling of togetherness, effortlessness and fluidity in the user experience is no easy task. Once the community has started taking shape, there’s a constant demand for things to operate, improve, grow and information to flow. All the social platforms require quite an amount of effort from the marketing and community team on a regular basis, and with some luck, the demand will just keep on growing.
Whether it’s a Facebook group maintained by the players, an official Instagram account, YouTube channel, Discord server or subreddit, they all should be tied to one common thing as tightly as possible — the end product. While the goal is to have as big and engaged community as possible, it’s all for naught if you don’t keep the product right at the very core of everything you do.
“Every time you push players away from the game, there’s a possibility they might not come back.”
In order to keep our community growing and close to the game, we added links to all of our social channels to the main frame of the game UI, as well as to the in-game Settings menu. To be a bit more precise, we tried different placements for the links and adjusted them based on the traffic data we collected. We don’t track the data of whether for example a player opening our YouTube channel from within the game would actually go and watch a video or subscribe, but so far we’ve been able to prove that the traffic from the in-game links has a significant effect on the member flow of our community platforms. Key tips for ensuring your product stays at the core of your social activity:
Create your community hub
Think of different ways to crosslink the social platforms from inside the game, and the game from inside the social platforms.
Think of different ways to crosslink the social platforms from inside the game, and the game from inside the social platforms. Monitor the traffic
This will help you make adjustments later down the line.
This will help you make adjustments later down the line. Keep the game at the core
Be mindful that every time you push players away from the game, there’s a possibility they might not come back. It’s important to find the balance for how much to push players away from the game and into social platforms and vice versa.
Be mindful that every time you push players away from the game, there’s a possibility they might not come back. It’s important to find the balance for how much to push players away from the game and into social platforms and vice versa. Find what works for you
We took it one step further and designed a global news feature where we share our freshest YouTube videos, update change logs and more from inside the game. As an example, our 40-second announcement video of a new feature got hundreds of thousands of views quickly after we added a link to it from inside the game. It’s since been a popular meme and topic of discussion within the community.
Battlelands Royale has an in-game News and Inbox feature and links to social channels.
Videos advertised through the News feature get a massive boost in their views.
5. Use influencers, the kings and queens of YouTube
YouTube content creators are a great way of reaching different people around the world. There are tons of channels out there focusing on a specific topic, such as mobile games, battle royale games and even Battlelands Royale. Depending on your product and your marketing budget, there are many different approaches you can take to reel in some content creators. Here are our best practices:
Go after the big fish
They might bite even without a massive lure. If you have an awesome game or a product that you’re genuinely enthusiastic about, don’t be afraid to spread the excitement to some targeted bigger content creator channels. If you don’t have a marketing budget, think of other means to get them interested. The goal is to get them excited about the game — everything else will follow.
They might bite even without a massive lure. If you have an awesome game or a product that you’re genuinely enthusiastic about, don’t be afraid to spread the excitement to some targeted bigger content creator channels. If you don’t have a marketing budget, think of other means to get them interested. The goal is to get them excited about the game — everything else will follow. Don’t forget the small channels
That’s usually where you’ll find your super fans and the players who have started their YouTube content creator journey solely for the purpose of making videos of your game. Spread the love and show your support to the smaller growing channels as much as possible.
“Acknowledge the super fans and evangelists.”
Don’t be afraid to fail
We blew $10,000 on a marketing campaign that didn’t really work. What we did in the end was donate the money to charity and stood fast behind our decisions.
We blew $10,000 on a marketing campaign that didn’t really work. What we did in the end was donate the money to charity and stood fast behind our decisions. Share content
Create a group of the most enthusiastic content creators and give them your attention, in-game rewards and sneak peeks. Discuss the game with them, collect feedback and make them understand their core role within the community.
Create a group of the most enthusiastic content creators and give them your attention, in-game rewards and sneak peeks. Discuss the game with them, collect feedback and make them understand their core role within the community. Share more content
Make some of your game assets free for everyone to download. This will greatly increase the quality of the content shared by the players on YouTube and social media.
We create personalised in-game Battle Flags for YouTube content creators we collaborate with.
Looking for more tips? Keep reading!
6. Know your audience
Different game genres attract different audiences that naturally tend to favour different platforms. Knowing the basics of your player base will help you determine which platforms to use and for which purpose for each given community.
As an example, older hyper-casual gamers are more likely to be active on Facebook, but aren’t likely to be very active on Discord. On the other hand, younger, more active gamers are more likely to be active on Discord or Instagram, rather than Facebook. Investigate the trends set by your competitors and go beyond them.
On a deeper level, having an idea of what the players are really into, what they dislike, how they communicate amongst themselves, and what they expect of the game developers can really help you determine the tone used in communicating with the community. It’s not all about age, gender, retention and ARPDAU, but instead something much more human.
Someone wise once said that customers always trust individuals more than companies or brands. I fully agree, and letting your personality shine through when interacting with the community makes you, your company and your brand appear more trustworthy and approachable in the eyes of the consumers.
7. Be excited. It’s infectious!
There’s nothing worse than building something new and great for a product you’re not enthusiastic about. Always convey genuine enthusiasm and excitement when interacting with your players: if you literally can’t wait to get your hands on the latest update and play with the community in your live stream, the players will notice for sure. Not only does it make your day to day work life much more pleasant, it spreads the excitement and hype amongst the players.
Be excited and proud of what you do!
8. Stay open… To an extent
Most players don’t really have a solid idea of how game development companies actually operate. It can be super exciting for them to get sneak peeks of the game development, what plans the development team has for the game’s future and why certain decisions affecting the players are made. Sharing too much too detailed information can have its fallbacks though, so be mindful of what is relevant to the players.
We decided to use Trello (Battle-Plans) as our main tool for giving the players a better understanding of what we’re working on and what can possibly be expected of the game in the future. My three tips are to keep it vague enough, stay honest and always preferably underpromise and overdeliver than the other way around.
Trello is a nice tool for sharing roadmaps and development progression to the players.
9. Interact, interact, interact!
The players love to get noticed, especially by someone special like the developers of their favourite game. Having random discussions with each willing individual is not really a feasible solution though, so make sure to keep your presence in the community known by other means. Be very open to collect and discuss feedback whenever possible, arrange challenges, competitions, polls, giveaways, live streams, give shoutouts, drop in on a random live stream or just pop by to say “hi” and complement a winning screenshot of a player on Discord. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to always enforce a positive, excited atmosphere.
“Self-sufficiency is a pretty thought, but not necessarily always a viable option.”
10. Bonus — things we haven’t done
Growing too fast and for the wrong purposes? Stop it right there! This is what we try to avoid here at Futureplay Games.
Starting from a company of five guys and growing to a group of 34 enthusiastic game developers in a period of a bit over five years is quite impressive for sure. However, each and every step we’ve taken or a new recruit we’ve made has been for a specific need and role, making our growth smart and purposeful. Not only does it mean that we’ve been able to keep our company core humane and our values intact, growing smart has helped us further improve our values and tighten our core.
This also means that we don’t have huge marketing and community teams handling all the tasks related to our current five game titles (Battlelands Royale and four Idle Empire series games). Having a marketing & community team of four people for games with millions of players means harsh prioritising with everything you decide to do on a daily basis.
Whether you’re either growing as a company, scaling as a marketing team or upgrading your live streaming gear, make sure you’re always answering a demand. Trust yourself, listen to the players, monitor and analyse the market and you’ll know what to do. | https://medium.com/ironsource-levelup/how-battlelands-royale-built-one-of-the-most-engaged-communities-on-mobile-2b7eff71137b | ['Sami Rahko'] | 2020-03-05 15:23:48.905000+00:00 | ['Community', 'Mobile Gaming', 'Game Development', 'Community Engagement', 'Growth Strategy'] |
Data Visualisasi dengan Matplotlib | Hi! I am kenisya. I like to share my new journey. I interested to design and data. Hope my article can helps you to solve your problem. Thank you ^^ | https://medium.com/@kenisyaafudikaa/data-visualisasi-dengan-matplotlib-78c6a691f8bd | ['Kenisya Fudika'] | 2020-11-20 11:22:54.295000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Jupyter Notebook', 'Datascience Training'] |
That’s a wrap! | End of spring quarter/final grad school wrap up.
A small sampling of our MURP 2021 graduating class since not everyone joined the in-person event
I know it’s cliche, but I really can’t believe I’m already done with grad school. Last year felt so long, but this last quarter went so fast! It’s also weird to have spent 2/3 of the program remote and then have many of these in-person celebrations the last week. But I’m glad we were able to get together at the end.
Here’s a little summary of my final quarter and some parting thoughts to round things out.
History of the Built Environment
This was my last required class for the Design & Development concentration, which covered the history of a wide range of typologies like garden cities, data centers, Chinatowns, retirement villages, trailer parks, etc. For our midterm, Carolyn Chu and I wrote about Airports and LAX. I am most proud of the fact that I was able to work in a reference to the Backstreet Boys in this paper.
Screenshots from the Backstreet Boys music video for ”I Want It That Way,” which was shot at LAX
For the final, we had to write an “obituary” for a space that has been erased from our material world. I wrote about Skeletons in the Closet, a kitschy gift shop that used to be in the LA County Coroner’s office.
Advanced GIS
The previous GIS class was focused on Python and open source options. This class was focused more on learning GIS using the “classic” ESRI tools, specifically the old ArcMap. From a user experience perspective, there are so many things about this software that make it very painful to use. I know ESRI is planning to sunset this app and has been pushing people to use ArcPro instead. But still, ugh!!
“The annoying thing about ArcMap is that…there are A LOT of annoying things about ArcMap.” — our professor, Maddy,
Nonetheless, I think our group put together a pretty nice final project. Ellie Troxell, Alejandro Gonzales, and I worked on a project about Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) in Seattle, and Los Angeles called Much Ado About ADUs.
One of the slides in our final presentation.
Urban Data Science
This is the first time the program offered this class, which was taught by Adam Millard-Ball. It focused on using Python and other open-source tools for “scraping, processing, and managing urban data, and using tools such as natural language processing, geospatial analysis, and machine learning.” A lot of buzzwords in there, but basically cleaning and formatting data to look for interesting trends.
Shinah Park, Zack Zeilman, and I analyzed Airbnb listing and review data (from InsideAirbnb). We were trying to see if the listings and reviews contain common keywords in the text that could serve as indicators of gentrification (as defined by the Urban Displacement Project). We weren’t able to find any conclusive results but did make a few interesting charts and maps like the ones below.
Percent of Airbnb listings with mobility keywords in the top 10 gentrifying neighborhoods
Percent of Airbnb listings with the keyword “walk” in the neighborhood description, by neighborhood.
Capstone
I wrote up the summary of my capstone project earlier, and I’m still planning on writing up a little how-to guide at some point. One exciting development, though, the project won the inaugural “Excellence in a Transportation Equity & Justice Capstone Prize,” so that’s nice! Thanks to all the alumni and friends of the program who crowdfunded these awards.
Reflections on the program
So that’s it, after two years, it’s finally done! Was it worth it?
From a financial return on investment perspective, I suppose we’ll have to wait and see how my job hunt pans out! From a personal development perspective, I think it was really nice to spend the time diving into topics I’ve been curious about while leveling up my quant and writing skills. Also, despite the mostly virtual environment, I think I was able to meet a lot of interesting folks who I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Before deciding on grad school for urban planning I was also considering business or computer science programs. I think I managed to incorporate a little bit of both interests through planning. So much of my identity has been tied up in “Being A Designer” that it feels a little…weird to venture into this other territory, but in a good way. I feel a little more balanced or something.
I also have a very long backlog of ideas for random silly side projects now, inspired by the things I’ve encountered the past 2 years. And now that I’m done, I finally have time to experiment with these ideas. | https://medium.com/coburb/thats-a-wrap-c9c8f9ae16c2 | ['Jayne Vidheecharoen'] | 2021-06-18 18:18:18.328000+00:00 | ['Urban Planning', 'Graduate School', 'Data Science', 'UCLA', 'GIS'] |
Introducing: the Trading Engine 2.0. | We always try to make automated investing as intuitive as possible for our users and the release of our Trading Engine 2.0 brings us even closer to this goal. For Bot Creators, this means putting flexibility centre stage and providing them with the tools they need to create the most advanced bots.
Let’s go over some of the changes and explain how we are striving to improve.
“With the release of our new trading engine, we focused on areas that caused the most pain for our users such as creating and tracking complicated order types or checking whether individual positions or the portfolio is profitable and why. By integrating these features directly in our trading engine, we enable our creators to focus even more closely on their idea for a trading algorithm rather than boilerplate code. This brings us closer to our ultimate goal of maximum flexibility in terms of what you can do on our platform.” Christopher Helf, CTO of Trality.
Improvements
With the Trading Engine 2.0, we really thought about the best adjustments we could make to maximize flexibility for our Bot Creators. Here’s how we’ve done that:
New order types
We have introduced a range of new order types such as Trailing Stop Loss, Stop-Limit or Stop-Market and they are supported on all our available exchanges. That means, even if exchanges themselves don’t have that order type, there’s no need to worry as we will take care of everything under the hood for you. Furthermore, we now also support creating orders by value or a target percentage and not only amount. To build on this even more, soon you’ll be able to create your own order types! This long list of additions will allow you to get very creative when developing your next trading strategy.
Please familiarize yourself with the new orders in our documentation.
Order flow
Algorithmic trading is rarely a straight line and sometimes you need to connect several different orders logically to properly execute your strategy i.e. “This order cancels this order” or “Make this order when that order is complete”.
To facilitate that, we have introduced an order flow function. These connections between orders work for all new order types, all available exchanges and also across different trading pairs. Read up on the new functionality in the documentation.
Position management
The most crucial information that you need when trading is whether or not you are profitable so we’ve made some tweaks to let you know when you are profitable and when you are not. We’ve included a full-fledged position management system that tracks a number of key metrics automatically for you, such as realized , unrealized PnL or individual offsetting trades so you get a better picture of the bot’s current performance. Read more about that in the documentation.
Portfolio Management
We’ve added a new feature that allows you to have a clear, aggregated view of how your trading bot is doing over multiple symbols. You can see markers such as your average position profit, the number of winning trades among other important metrics to help you and your bot have a successful day of automated trading. Read about it in the documentation.
More…
In addition to the features we’ve highlighted above, we introduced a range of new indicators and candlestick patterns to augment the already existing list and give you the flexibility you come to expect when using Trality. We also spent a long time restructuring and optimizing our documentation to cover all these new features. Plus, we added a handy search function to help you navigate through effortlessly.
You can have your first trading bot up and running in under ten minutes. Sign up or sign in to get started and have a bot do your work for you. 🤖 | https://medium.com/trality/introducing-the-trading-engine-2-0-960eedc40516 | ['Igor Chernysh'] | 2020-12-22 17:03:57.800000+00:00 | ['Trading Engine', 'Updates', 'Portfolio Management', 'Algorithmic Trading', 'Trailing Stop Loss'] |
The Show Must Go On: Empathetic Research Practices during Covid | The second step of gaining empathetic insights of target users, is wearing others’ shoes, such as through bodystorming.
The term “bodystorming” was introduced in the early 90’s to identify what was working and what wasn’t at the early stage of the product development process. Bodystorming simulates the roles of users by testing out a product in a similar situation that your users may be in. While bodystorming seems similar to role play study which also requires you to play the role of target users in a simulated situation, low-fidelity mockups or props (products that you are targeted to design) are a key requirement in bodystorming.
✔︎ Why this matters
When researchers and designers encounter challenges doing mock-up testing during Covid, they can consider conducting bodystorming. This helps your team fuel empathy by letting you act, feel, and think like your users without meeting them in person. In addition, it helps the design team continue to gain insights on possible problems and issues that could occur from the designs.
✔︎ Tips for panning bodystorming during Covid🤞
Accounting for the data you gathered in the step of observing others’ shoes, you can facilitate this activity remotely with your team:
Plan guidelines that help your team have a clear idea on how to perform the activity in their own place:
Define roles of users based on your preliminary research data: Who are they? Are they elderly people? What kind of characteristics do they have?
based on your preliminary research data: Who are they? Are they elderly people? What kind of characteristics do they have? Set limitations to replicate the role: Do your users have specific physical limitations? How will you help bodystormers to act out the limitations?
Do your users have specific physical limitations? How will you help bodystormers to act out the limitations? Write scenarios for what to perform : What do they need to accomplish? And in which context would your target users use your product and services: (E.g. When this happens? Where are they at?)
for : What do they need to accomplish? And would your target users use your product and services: (E.g. When this happens? Where are they at?) Reflection guide template : What do you want to measure from the test?
: What do you want to measure from the test? Video recording guide: Ensure the right angles of video cameras to capture their acting of users’ roles
2. Perform bodystorming remotely: Set deadlines. Collect videos and reflection guides from bodystormers.
3. Mapping out the findings (e.g. empathy map): Gather your team to share their experiences of the users’ role and integrate the shared understanding via mapping tools such as empathy map.
✔︎ Examples — to act, feel, think like your users
The 55 Minutes team conducted a bodystorming to understand “how the elderly people who are limited in their movements would act, feel and think when they get dressed from their caregivers.”
Set limitations to replicate users’ roles: The knees of the bodystormer who act out the role of elderly care receivers, are wrapped by cardboards and tapes in order to simulate limitations caused by knee pains in the scenario of getting dressed/undressed.
Replicating Scene of Elderly Care-Receiver’s Knee Pains
Mapping out the findings: An empathy map is a great tool to synthesize bodystorming experiences by summarizing what bodystormers do, think, feel, see, hear, and say.
Example of Empathy Map, designed by event design collective. Source
Step 3: Walking together | https://medium.com/55-minutes/the-show-must-go-on-empathetic-research-practices-during-covid-5b8508762e05 | ['Hye Yoon'] | 2021-02-09 05:00:55.193000+00:00 | ['Covid 19 Crisis', 'Empathetic Design', 'Projects', 'Human Centered Design', 'UX Research'] |
[Linux] Play a warning sound when your laptop battery is low | When working on a big project or when watching a movie or a TV series in an extended display, all of a sudden you might have ran out of battery and your laptop got shut off or goes to sleep or hibernation. This is very bad for the battery in terms of its lifetime and if your laptop has a mechanical hard drive (not SSD) sudden power off could damage the data in it.
What if your laptop could give you a warning sound when your battery drops a certain value,continuously ( ex: every 5 minutes) so that you can plug in your laptop at your earliest. Well this is very easy and will take about 5min to configure 😍.
Download a short warning sound from anywhere on the Internet. (if you like you can even play a whole song 😀 but remember, that could drain your battery even more if you are not near it to plug it back). Install the command line music player `mpg123` by running the following commands in your terminal.
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y mpg123
3. Create a script file to play the downloaded music if your battery percentage is less than 20 (you can customize this value to anything you want 😀 ) and save it in a desired location with executable permission.
#!/bin/bash # You need to export this environment variable in order to play sound from cron
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/user/1000" currentBatteryPercentage=$(upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0 | grep "percentage" | awk '{print $2}') currentBatteryPercentage=${currentBatteryPercentage/\%/} if [ $currentBatteryPercentage -lt 22 ] then mpg123 /home/kasun/Music/apx_battery_low_aler.mp3 -l 2 fi
Note:
If upower is not installed in your system run the following commands for installing upower .
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y upower
Replace mpg123 ‘s argument with the path to your downloaded music file (mine is located at `/home/kasun/Music/apx_battery_low_aler.mp3`)
4. Open your crontab file for editing by running the following command in terminal.
crontab -e
Fill in the following to execute our script for every 5min.
*/5 * * * * bash /home/kasun/Documents/Scripts/battery-low.sh
Note:
Provide the path to your script file after the sh command (mine is located at `/home/kasun/Documents/Scripts/battery-low.sh`)
command (mine is located at `/home/kasun/Documents/Scripts/battery-low.sh`) You can change the scheduled time to anything you want.
Please refer https://kb.iu.edu/d/afiz for more details on the crontab .
5. Save the crontab file.
It’s done 😊
Cheers !!! | https://medium.com/@kasunsiyambalapitiya/linux-play-a-warning-sound-when-your-laptop-battery-is-low-4aa23d5b279e | ['Kasun Siyambalapitiya'] | 2021-06-16 06:03:28.750000+00:00 | ['Laptop', 'Linux', 'Ubuntu', 'Battery', 'Laptop Battery'] |
C by GE 4-wire Motion Sensing+Dimmer review: GE stuffs this smart switch full of features | C by GE 4-wire Motion Sensing+Dimmer review: GE stuffs this smart switch full of features Russell Sep 25, 2020·4 min read
C by GE C-Start Smart Switch? Say that five times fast!
GE’s C-Start lineup was announced at CES in 2019, extending the lighting-focused sub-brand from bulbs to in-wall switches (the company has since dropped the C-Start branding from its marketing materials). These switches work with any type of bulb, but one of the big selling points is that if you use C by GE smart bulbs, the switches can also control those bulbs, even if they aren’t physically wired into the switch. In other words, if you have multiple bulbs controlled by multiple switches, you can control them all with a single C-Start switch (provided you’re using C by GE bulbs).
From a hardware standpoint, the C-Start Switch is designed much like any other Wi-Fi connected smart switch on the market. Four pigtails emerge from the rear of the switch, and you wire these into your existing receptacle wiring with the included wire nuts. As is typical, the presence of neutral and ground wires is required. The company recently introduced 3-wire variants of these products that don't depend on the presence of a neutral wire in the electrical box in which they're to be installed. link-asin="B082LK4X4X" data-amazon-ajax-link-subtag="US-003-3340386-000-1444726-web-20">This link will take you to the 3-wire version of the C by GE Motion + Dimming at Amazon.) The company says you can use these switches with a three-way or multi-way circuit through some creative wiring, but both switches on the circuit must be C by GE Smart Switches for this to work.
[ Further reading: The best LED smart bulbs ]GE offers a small booklet of instructions for those doing a simple (single-pole) installation. I encountered no real issues here and was able to get the device installed in about 15 minutes. In fact, the block of electronics on the back of the switch seems a bit smaller than the one on most smart switches, which is incredibly helpful when it comes time to shove everything back into the junction box.
From here, configuration is done through the C by GE app, which is the same app used to control C by GE bulbs. Once you’re logged in, you simply hit the + icon to add a device and walk through a few simple steps, including connecting the switch to your Wi-Fi network. Helpfully, the setup process also walks you through connecting the switch to Alexa or Google Assistant, if you’re planning on using either of these systems. Again, I had no trouble with any of this, with only a minor hiccup that took the app a bit of extra time to find my Wi-Fi network.
C by GE A blue LED ring around the C by GE C-Start Smart Switch Motion Sensing+Dimmer power button acts as a nightlight.
Once configured, user options are limited but largely easy to understand and operate. Devices—including multiple switches and bulbs—are organized into rooms and can be controlled together. As well, you can create mood lighting scenes to control multiple devices simultaneously in multiple locations. Either rooms or scenes can be automated based on schedules, including tying actions to sunrise or sunset. If you want lights to slowly fade on or off, this can be configured for any automation rule, with fade times ranging from 10 seconds to 30 minutes.
Mentioned in this article Belkin Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Dimmer Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $79.99See it The switch hardware includes a dimmer as well as two sensors, a motion sensor and an ambient light sensor. The dimmer function is obvious: Either use the slider in the app or use the paddles on either side of the power button on the switch face to brighten or dim the light. Click-and-hold to dim in real time, or double-click to quickly reach maximum or minimum brightness. The motion sensor (which is on by default) is similarly simple: When the sensor detects movement, it turns on the light (to the last dimness level), and lights remain on for five minutes.
Similarly, the ambient light sensor (off by default) detects the light level in the room. If the ambient sensor is turned on and motion is detected, the lights won’t come on if there’s already enough light detected. You can set the motion sensor to deactivate during nighttime hours (so the dog doesn’t set it off), though this portion of the app is surprisingly unintuitive and requires a bit of tinkering to get to work. Lastly, a blue nightlight is built into the switch as a ring around the primary power button. This light can be turned off if you desire.
All told I was very happy with operation of the C-Start Smart Switch, but less thrilled about its hacked-together appearance, which is one reason I chose to install it in my basement rather than my living room. There’s just no way around it: This is a very homely device that looks like it was cobbled together from old hospital equipment, not something released in 2019. Next to the more sophisticated looks of devices like the Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Dimmer, the situation is even more dire.
At $75, the C-Start isn’t cheap. Compare to the aforementioned Wemo (now $50, though it lacks a motion sensor) it feels pricy. It’s also about the same price as the Ecobee Switch+, which runs $80, and includes not only motion sensing but also a speaker and an Alexa system. While the C by GE C-Start works just fine, the price will need to tick down $10 to $15 to make it truly competitive.
Updated to provide a link to the 3-wire version of this dimmer that doesn't depend on a neutral wire.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@Russell48330810/c-by-ge-4-wire-motion-sensing-dimmer-review-ge-stuffs-this-smart-switch-full-of-features-bb33d4b06b90 | [] | 2020-09-25 19:14:11.579000+00:00 | ['Gear', 'Connected Home', 'Chargers', 'Consumer Electronics'] |
LGO: Development Steps | We are happy to announce that we have raised more than 1000 BTC in only 11 days to reach the cap of 1500 BTC for Round 0 + Round 1 of our ICO !
With the public Round 2 opening on February 1st, we are on track to reach our hard cap of 3500 BTC raised throughout the whole LGO token sale.
In the eventuality that we raise this much, what are we going to do with it?
The hard cap was thoroughly thought and represents the funding needed to build an end-to-end premium exchange for institutional and private investors.
Here is, in order, what we’ll be building with the money gathered during the LGO token sale in order to deliver the final product of LGO.
Development steps
Step 1
Team 1: Build and deliver a secure and bulletproof multisignature wallet
This wallet will be at the core of LGO’s cryptocurrency custody services. We aim to offer to our users a cryptocurrency wallet which will allow them to store, in a secure way, all the cryptocurrencies that they bought on the platform. This custody activity will be completely separated from the exchange, so that the crypto holdings of the users are completely protected from any failure or hack of the platform.
The LGO wallet will also serve as the foundation for the Lightning wallet (see dedicated article), which will allow LGO to keep in escrow the funds which are placed in orders only.
Deliverable: A multisig wallet with the LGO custody service
Team 2: Development of a matching engine and a standard exchange infrastructure
LGO Markets is the first cryptocurrency exchange which is fit for institutional investors. As such, the matching engine will be coded with the highest industry standards, so as to provide the best service possible. At this stage, we will also focus on building a intuitive and complete user interface, as well as APIs and data connections to and from Legolas Exchange.
Deliverable: A matching engine directly plugable to the multisig wallet
Step 2
Team 1: Connect to LGO multisig wallet to the matching engine
The next step is to connect the cryptocurrency exchange infrastructure to the LGO wallet.
We intend to fill a (very large) gap in the crypto-exchange industry, by providing the first platform usable by institutional investors and compliant with their standards (see our article on why institutional investors are not entering the crypto-currency market). To do so, LGO Markets e will partner with brokers in the traditional financial industry, which will allow an immediate go-to-market amongst several hundreds of hedge funds, family office and other institutional investors. Individual and private investors will benefit from this quality of service.
Deliverable: a “traditional” cryptocurrency exchange, with tier-one fiat and crypto custody
Team 2: Build the LGO Protocol: an order-matching protocol guaranteeing transparency and fairness in cryptocurrency trading
This is the center point of the whole LGO project : an order-matching protocol that prevents front-running and guarantees the transparency and the fairness of both the order book and matched trades. The realization that most of the exchanges were opaque at best, if not shady was the starting point of the project, which is to build a clean and transparent way to buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies.
To guarantee transparency, orders and trades are logged in a blockchain. A fully decentralized solution being inefficient (see our article on decentralized exchanges), the protocol will pool and match orders off-chain. This hybrid protocol allows LGO to bring the best of both the centralized and decentralized world to order matching.
LGO has established a technical partnership with CertEurope, one of the leading Certification Authorities in Europe. We are thus already able to have a portion of our algorithm accredited by the ANSI (the French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems). This is a first and major step towards full accreditation and insurance for our platform.
Deliverable: A front-running proof matching engine directly plugable to the multisig wallet
Step 3
Team 1: Integrate the LGO Protocol between the exchange infrastructure and the multisig wallet.
Once both the LGO Protocol and the cryptocurrency exchange infrastructures are built, we will integrate both technologies in order to bring to the market the first cryptocurrency exchange with a demonstrable and transparent anti front-running matching engine
Deliverable: A front-running proof cryptocurrency exchange, with tier-one fiat and crypto custody
Team 2: Develop the Lightning wallet and integrate it to LGO Markets
See our dedicated article on the Lightning wallet, which will allow LGO to keep in escrow only the funds locked in orders. this will leave the cryptocurrency holdings stored on the Legolas wallet completely free from any risk jeopardizing the exchange. A Mt.Gox or bitfinex hack scenario would not be possible on Legolas Exchange, as our clients’ funds would be completely segregated and protected from any exchange failure.
Step 4 (teams fusion)
Team 1 & Team 2: Integration of the lightning wallet to LGO
The fourth step of the technical development will be to integrate the lightning wallet to the whole LGO infrastructure. This last update will deliver the final version of LGO, a new generation cryptocurrency exchange, compliant with any investors’ (institutional and individual) needs.
Deliverable: A Lightning and front running proof exchange, with tier-one fiat and crypto custody
Additional Developments
Provide Liquidity on LGO Markets
Event though we intend on spending a lot of money in building a premium next generation cryptocurrency exchange, the main cost will be linked to providing liquidity on LGO Markets. Three plans of actions have been thought to do so:
25% of all the LGO tokens paid as transaction fees will be sent to the market-maker on the transaction
a dedicated incentive plan will be available for professional market maker and liquidity providers to have them operate on LGO Markets
if needed, LGO Markets will source the liquidity directly from other exchanges with no financial or market risks.
Self Insure the funds on LGO Markets
If enough funds are raised, we’ll take LGO to another level and self-insure the funds on LGO.
LGO’s philosophy is to provide proofs of its safety and fairness. The protocol itself is a proof that no front running will ever be made on the exchange, our partnership with CertEurope is a proof that the technology and cryptography is strong and will resist cyberattacks, and a self-insurance will provide an ultimate proof that the user’s funds will be safe and sound on LGO.
It is our belief that providing such proofs considerably decreases the counterparty risk associated with using LGO Markets, to the point that the platform will be the first one to allow institutional investors to enter the cryptocurrency market.
About LGO
LGO is a demonstrably fair, bank-backed premium exchange for institutional investors. It incorporates a decentralized ledger within its proprietary centralized platform in order to guarantee the inalterability, temporality and transparency of the order book and ensure a fair trading environment.
Public Sale starts February 1st !
If you like what you read, please don’t forget to like and share the post ! | https://medium.com/lgogroup/legolas-exchange-development-steps-5513f1a3ea6e | ['Hugo Renaudin'] | 2019-02-06 21:33:30.667000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Lgomarkets', 'Bitcoin'] |
Angular Debugging Guides | The best part of coding is when something works on the first try. The next best thing is knowing how to debug errors when things don’t work the first time. As we’ve shared on our roadmap, one of our team’s top priorities is improving the Angular debugging experience.
We’re excited to announce several new projects to improve debugging and help developers solve problems faster!
Standardized error codes
The most common Angular error messages now have standardized error codes, additional details and formatting. You can identify these codes in the following format:
You will notice that Angular error messages all start with NG, which help differentiate between Angular specific errors, TypeScript errors, and browser messaging. The next number indicates its type, all runtime errors beginning with 0 and compiler issues maintaining their existing number space. If you’re interested in the current groupings, I’d recommend digging into the source code to see the categories of runtime errors and compiler errors.
These changes landed in v11.1.0 and aim to help developers recognize Angular framework errors, make them more searchable, and will help the Angular team standardize and group them by similarity. Another new addition to these error messages is a link to angular.io/errors — we prioritized the most common errors and wrote angular.io guides for them.
Angular.io/errors Guides
Angular documentation has a new section! The ten most common errors now have guides which outline details and debugging tips.
When you run into one of these issues while coding, the error message contains a direct link to this section to help you debug by providing a description, ways to debug, and recommended solutions to common issues.
These guides also include our first ever embedded docs instructional videos: the Angular Debugging YouTube series, in partnership with Fireship.io!
Debugging videos on the Angular YouTube channel
In addition to linked angular.io/errors guides in our error messages, we also have debugging videos! Our new series helps visualize how to debug these common errors. You can check out the Angular YouTube channel to watch our Debugging Playlist now, or wait until you encounter an error to watch! | https://blog.angular.io/angular-debugging-guides-dfe0ef915036 | ['Emma Twersky'] | 2021-01-27 20:10:19.722000+00:00 | ['Error Handling', 'Angular', 'Debugging'] |
The four types of leverage every entrepreneur should know about… | Photo by Adrian Trinkaus on Unsplash
“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. ” ― Archimedes
Leverage is simply the ability to use external resources to achieve your goals and objective in a non-destructive way. I think this is the most important skill for all entrepreneurs to learn and master, as this would be the single biggest factor in whether or not you would be successful. So let's talk about the 4 times of leverage…
Money
Well, it goes without saying, you “need” some form of money to build and grow a business. This could be money you saved up from your 9–5, money from family and friends, money from investors, or even a loan from the bank. Regardless of where the money comes learning and understanding how to raise and use money to make more money is a form of leverage. Having money available can allow you to capitalize on opportunities that others simply cannot.
People
Getting people to help you do any activity is a very powerful form of leverage. The whole idea of a company is to get a bunch of really smart people working towards the same goal. As an entrepreneur it's important you learn how to delegate and manage people if you want to build a big and impactful company, the sooner you learn this skill the better. People leverage allows you to multiple yourself and the time you have available to you. If you hire 2 full-time staff that work 40 hours a week. that's 80 more hours a week you just added to your time. Learn how to build and nurture great teams and support systems.
Technology
The biggest companies in the world are technology companies for a reason, technology has the ability to scaled to a billion people with just one codebase. A problem just has to be solved once and implemented into code and has the potential to be a billion-dollar company. Are you using technology in your business? Every entrepreneur needs to think about technology and how it can be used in their business. It could be as simple as using a sass product like Mailchimp or Shopify to make more sales to customers all over the world. find creative ways to leverage technology.
Media
They say content is king and I couldn't agree less. Media leverage is one of my favorites forms of leverage because it allows you to multiply your time. Let me explain, you can record a video going through a process/lesson and you can share that video with anyone and everyone in the world. They get that piece of time you created into a digital asset and can access it at any time and at any place even while you sleep. in short, start that youtube channel. — check out mines
Brand (bonus)
I have a bonus for you to thank you for reading this article to the end and it is brand, yes brand is the ultimate form of leverage and is stronger than all these combined. this is the reason Apple can release a $500+ headphone and not care if it's two times higher than the competition because they are leveraging their brand. Brand leverage is not tangible like the rest mentioned above, it lives in the hearts and the minds of those affected by a brand. You can use media to build a brand but you have to be intentional about it. building a brand takes time, building a great brand takes even more time but you have to be patient and remember the best way to build a brand it to tell emotionally compelling stories about your product/service and why other humans should care about it, what do you stand for, what do you believe in? what are your values? ( l love building brand and you can reach out for more information ) | https://medium.com/@henryikoh/the-four-types-of-leverage-every-entrepreneur-should-know-about-dcaf0ab225f6 | ['Henry Ikoh'] | 2020-12-13 09:52:15.922000+00:00 | ['Leverage', 'Creative', 'Bussiness', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup'] |
Why Too Much Self-Help Is Not Working Well for You | Why Too Much Self-Help Is Not Working Well for You
And how to stop productivity guilt from hurting your mindset.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
If you try to follow all the self-help you’ve been reading, then you must:
Wake up at 5 am.
Take a cold shower.
Drink two gallons of water.
Journal for twenty minutes then meditate.
Do intermittent fasting.
Exercise four times per week.
Read one book a week. Etc.
But here’s the thing:
Whenever you miss or don’t keep up, your mind says: “You should work harder instead of taking a day off. You’re not serious about getting fit if you skipped today at the gym.”
Consuming self-help without moderation can hurt your mental well-being. You’ll feel guilt build up whenever you miss all the expectations you’re setting for yourself.
Scott Young, the author of Ultralearning, calls it the productivity guilt.
This begs the question: how can you get better in your life and career without judging and talking to yourself harshly?
To answer this question, I want you to look closely at this quote from Sam Harris, the creator of Waking Up meditation app. He says:
“The most important relationship in your life is your relation with your mind.”
When your relation to your mind isn’t a healthy one, nothing else will work — self-help advice, your friendships, your family bonds — nothing.
The key point is this:
Go easy on yourself when reading and following all that self-help advice. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/why-too-much-self-help-is-not-working-well-for-you-fe9bcec8644f | ['Younes Henni'] | 2020-12-09 12:05:46.261000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Personal Development', 'Productivity', 'Mindfulness', 'Life'] |
Project: Room Temperature Control and Fire Alarm Using MQTT on AWS IoT Cloud | What is fire Alarm System?
Fire Alarm System is designed to alert costumers about emergency so that they can take action to protect themselves, staff and the general public.
Automatic Fire detectors are meant to imitate one or more of the human senses of touch, smell or sight. Thermal detectors are similar to our ability to identify high temperatures, smoke detectors replicate the sense of smell, and flame detectors are electronic eyes. The properly selected and installed automatic detector can be a highly reliable fire sensor.
Temperature Control in Smart Homes
In the room, the cooling/heating unit (Air Conditioner) and the Temperature sensor are interlocked so that the room temperature can be controlled automatically.
Smart Temperature Control devices
Smart Home Thermostat
Smart AC Controller
Smart Air Conditioner or Heat Pump
Smart Space Heater
Smart Fans
Project Aim:
In this project we have implemented Temperature Control and Fire Alarm System on Amazon Web Service(AWS) Cloud IoT Platform. AWS Platform supports both MQTT and HTPP Protocols. We have used the MQTT broker as a platform to provide the Internet of Things(IoT) services which monitor and control room temperatures, and sense, alarm, and suppress fire. Arduino was used as the IoT end device (MQTT Client) connecting sensors and actuators to the AWS IoT platform via Wi-Fi Connectivity. We created smart home concept and designed IoT massages for temperature control and fire alarm. We also implemented the smart some system in hardware and software, and verified the system operation. MQTT on AWS IoT Platform is very useful for Medium and Scale Industries to use in their IoT Projects.
Components Required for building this project
ESP32 based NodeMCU
Relay Module
DHT11 (Temperature and Humidity Sensor)
Flame Sensor
Buzzer for Alarm
Sprinkler
Air Conditioner
Software used
Arduino IDE
MQTT Protocol
AWS IoT
Real time Implementation
Hardware Interfacing | https://medium.com/@appletoninnovations/project-room-temperature-control-and-fire-alarm-using-mqtt-on-aws-iot-cloud-649aea89e886 | ['Appleton Innovations'] | 2020-11-23 13:34:47.733000+00:00 | ['IoT', 'Fire', 'Smart Home', 'AWS', 'Internet of Things'] |
Litentry Partners With Ontology, Strengthening Its Decentralized Identity and Credit Computation Solution | Litentry’s Integration Of Ontology’s Bespoke Products Aims To Increase Adoption By 10K Users
In a bid to further common goals of bringing about greater data privacy and transparency, Ontology, the high performance, public blockchain specializing in decentralized identity and data, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Litentry, a blockchain identity management layer based on the Polkadot network.
As part of the agreement, the two pioneers in decentralized identity and data management solutions will collaborate to integrate Ontology’s bespoke decentralized identity solution, DeID, and DDXF, Ontology’s decentralized data exchange and collaboration framework, into Litentry’s identity aggregation and computation system.
In line with this, Ontology will make its DeID solution, as well as OScore, the company’s proprietary decentralized credit-rating system, available to Litentry for the integration with its DID aggregation technology to generate new use cases. In time, the partnership will see Litentry build a cross-chain identity aggregator based on Polkadot, which includes an unique decentralized Web3.0 identity computation network and related tools. In joining forces, Ontology and Litentry are aiming to onboard 10,000 users to the DeID and OScore solutions, enriching aggregated Identities and targeting potential customers based in Europe, USA, Latin America and South East Asia.
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-62.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-60.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-59.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-58.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-57.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-56.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-55.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-54.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-53.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-52.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/videos-jp-fight-51.pdf
https://www.azwest.be/sites/default/files/webform/livestreaming.pdf
https://www.adb.org/system/files/webform/202012/Videos-Jp-fight-58.pdf
https://www.adb.org/system/files/webform/202012/livestreaming.pdf
https://www.adb.org/system/files/webform/202012/Videos-Jp-fight-56_0.pdf
https://www.adb.org/system/files/webform/202012/Videos-Jp-fight-51_0.pdf
https://www.adb.org/system/files/webform/202012/Videos-Jp-fight-59.pdf
https://www.adb.org/system/files/webform/202012/Videos-Jp-fight-53.pdf
Li Jun, Founder of Ontology, said, “The great synergy between Ontology and Litentry makes this partnership an obvious one. The need to bring about greater fairness, privacy and transparency when it comes to data is extremely important to both parties and our shared missions. Our team is really excited to see this partnership come to fruition and to leverage our commonalities to accelerate the growth of both Ontology and Litentry. In particular, we are really happy to be furthering our relationship with the Polkadot ecosystem, having partnered with Patract Labs and Parity Technologies just last month.”
Fei Liu, CTO of Litentry said, “Ontology has made a great achievement in the development of decentralized identity solutions, and in particular decentralized credit scoring solutions — a timely solution in high demand given the industry’s current focus on DeFi. We are delighted to collaborate with Ontology to integrate these solutions and to work to increase user adoption of our products and services to create a fairer world when it comes to individuals and their data.”
About Ontology
Ontology is a high performance, public blockchain specializing in decentralized identity and data. Ontology’s unique infrastructure supports robust cross-chain collaboration and Layer 2 scalability, offering businesses the flexibility to design a blockchain that suits their needs. With a suite of decentralized identity and data sharing protocols to enhance speed, security, and trust, Ontology’s features include ONT ID, a mobile digital ID application and DID used throughout the ecosystem, and DDXF, a decentralized data exchange, and collaboration framework.
About Litentry
Litentry is a decentralized identity aggregator featuring a Substrate built blockchain and a distributed DID validation network that provides decentralized, verifiable identity aggregation service for DID applications on any blockchain. It enables a trustable way for dApps to obtain real time DID data bound to one controller from multiple service endpoints that undertakes the redundant handling, code, and hassle involved in resolving agnostic DID mechanisms and serves as an identity data management layer for decentralized credit computation and Web 3.0 identity generation.
Stay in touch with us through:
Our community chat at Telegram
Following us on Twitter
Technical discussion on Github
More information on Website
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We are very happy to see that Litentry has gained a lot of community and personal attentions in this early stage, whether the attention comes from speculation or curiosity about what we do, we hope to correctly guide people to participate in the early stage construction of the project in a fair and transparent way.
Litentry’s protocol designed for decentralized identity aggregation among different blockchains, it’s also a network of distributed DID validators that provides trusted decentralized credit computation service. Litentry is going to help people build up their trustable Web 3.0 …
15 | https://medium.com/@oliviahilltondg/litentry-partners-with-ontology-strengthening-its-decentralized-identity-and-credit-computation-c30ace6252d8 | [] | 2020-12-18 11:47:23.220000+00:00 | ['Sky', 'Letters', 'Write', 'Decentralized Identity'] |
Subsets and Splits