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The Issue With Pragmatically Naming a Brand, a Product, or the Office Pet | What’s Wrong With Pragmatic Naming Processes?
Your name has to reflect your positioning and differentiation, of course. Observing these two elements is the pragmatic, correct way to approach the naming process. But you can’t only do that. You need something that’ll reach deeper into your customers’ minds to truly become memorable and dominant in your space.
Here are some of the things to keep in mind when naming your stuff with more panache than the regular go-to's of your industry.
Reach into pop culture knowledge
Sometimes, you can create an immense amount of momentum when launching your new thing by reaching into pop culture or calling upon the popular zeitgeist.
Careful here. I’m not talking about hopping on the latest TikTok trend that’s going to evaporate in 2 days. I’m talking about going deep into humanity’s shared stories. That way, you’ll come up with a name that’ll create a clear separation from your competitors who went the predictable route.
One cool example of this is IBM Watson. They didn’t call it IBM AI 3000 or IBM AskMeAnything Program. Instead, they went with Watson because it already gives everyone an idea of where this is going. Most people will get the reference to Sherlock Holmes’ acolyte. We then instantly get the gist: IBM’s product is a fancy, highly knowledgeable side-kick for any questions or troubles we might have.
Dr. Watson (left) entertaining yet another one of Sherlock’s crazy theories. By Sidney Paget — The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, page 3., Public Domain
The name represents the help, the knowledge, the support, the vibe they were looking for. To top it off, the last name of the company’s director from 1914 to 1956 was, you guessed it, Watson. Now, I don’t know about you, but I feel like both elements definitely make for a great branding asset.
Go 180 on people
Naming the issue your product or service is solving can actually work in your favor.
Take Slack, for example. The word itself immediately makes us contemplate why a company — whose slogan reads where work happens — would choose such a name.
Slack indeed holds various bad connotations:
Sitting in one’s corner waiting for it to happen — whatever it is
Doing as little as possible
In business: characterized by a lack of work or activity
But then again, why not state the issue you’re solving right in the face of your customers and users? As long as it points to your positioning and differentiating factors, you might benefit a whole lot from it. Because it’s unexpected and it’ll make people talk.
Be evocative
The final and best way to separate yourself from the pack and get people talking is conveying images and inspiring a bunch of connotations related to your activity. We saw it with our first two talking points. Watson is evocative. Slack is evocative. Virgin is evocative.
And, by the way, so is Medium. Sure, it primarily has an experiential function and definition: something in a middle position or a channel or system of communication, information, or entertainment. But its nature also conveys a more evocative function: it positions the brand as a means of transmission of information, a system of communication between entities.
Our favorite blogging company — yes, highly debatable, I know — definitely worked on that name for a while to make sure it immediately inspired its users. It chose a word that looks good, sounds good, and provides us with a truckload of positive connotations on what it’s all about. Think about it. We’re all mediums here. Pretty unifying, if you ask me. | https://bettermarketing.pub/the-issue-with-pragmatically-naming-a-brand-a-product-or-the-office-pet-d23568b44be3 | ['Stephane Egger'] | 2020-12-24 14:36:47.141000+00:00 | ['Naming', 'Business Strategy', 'Branding', 'Brand Strategy', 'Better Marketing'] |
Python for exploring the Floral Reflectance Database (FReD) | Analysis: Dimensionality Reduction
A straightforward first step to analysing this data is to reduce the data from a high dimension (reflectance spectra from 300 to 700 nm) into some optimal (and arbitrary) lower dimension. Let’s then sample 664 spectra from FReD and — after standard scaling — transform the data using principle component analysis (PCA). If you are familiar with PCA, you will be pleased to know that the first PC contains 52% of the variance, the second 77%, third 89% and fourth 93%. This method does a pretty good job and in 2-D we can right away see how different flower families have some degree of clustering, for example below: the Asteraceae (sunflower) have their top left corner cluster in orange and the Lamiaceae (mint) appear to stay in the lower part in purple. Still, the Fabaceae (legumes) family looks to be uniformly distributed in green. That is not really surprising as we don’t expect flower families to have all the same spectral characteristics — you can even have plants of the same species with different coloured flowers.
2-D PCA plot based on top 4 flower Families
What might be interesting, however, is to think about how different pollinators might relate to this cluster. What we really want to understand is what features make a pollinator decide to pollinate? Based on the same logic we can see below how bees in orange do not appear to cluster and are happy to pollinate everywhere. Flies in green seem to cover a little less of the plot, and beetles even less so. Are beetles finicky pollinators?
2-D PCA plot based on bees, flies and beetles
A Jupyter notebook example is given here:
Analysis (future): Pollinator Predictor
Unfortunately, there is not enough data in FReD yet to build any deep learning models. Hopefully the FReD community can collect more data quickly because it would be very interesting to see how well we could use electromagnetic spectra as a tool to predict pollinator type. We already know that bugs use floral cues like colour, shape, pattern, volatile compounds and even electric field, but we don’t necessarily know who the effective pollinators are all the time (as we can see from the missing data in FReD).
Besides sitting and watching flowers all day for potential pollinators — which sounds fun actually — or setting up camera traps, I suspect that we could soon be able to deploy statistical learning models to predict them in the first place.
TLDR;
There isn’t enough Floral Reflectance Data yet to build any deep learning models, though based on a preliminary analysis the field is very much ready for it.
References:
Arnold SEJ, Faruq S, Savolainen V, McOwan PW, Chittka L, 2010 FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14287. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014287
Dominic Clarke, Heather Whitney, Gregory Sutton, Daniel Robert, Detection and Learning of Floral Electric Fields by Bumblebees. Science:Vol. 340, Issue 6128, pp. 66–69. doi:10.1126/science.1230883 | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/python-for-playing-around-with-the-floral-reflectance-database-fred-b32f607bb251 | ['Nate Barlow'] | 2020-05-04 14:41:12.121000+00:00 | ['Jupyter Notebook', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Kew Gardens', 'Ds In The Real World'] |
Setting Up The Environment For Your First (or Next) Ruby CLI Application | /bin
When creating your project directory, /bin should be one of the first folders you create. Typically, this is where you’ll place your run.rb file and where you’ll dictate how the program should run. Beyond that, let’s not spend too much time here, as that’s really all there is to see.
/config
Next up, we need to create a folder to define our environment for our program and make sure that we can call on any necessary resources as the program executes. That’s typically handled within your /config folder by a file known as environment.rb . This file contains instructions on which resources to require for your application to run, as well as how to access any other functional dependencies for your app (databases, tests, etc.). This file is essential in building out an application, so don’t forget it. If you plan on using any Gems (which I’d recommend), this is the place to tie that resource into your project as well.
/lib
The /lib folder (sometimes /app folder) comes next in your project directory. /lib is where most of your code will eventually live, and where you’ll dictate how your program should function. Within your /lib folder should be a /models folder that contains all of the files for your classes. You’ll be spending most of your time in this folder, as this is where you’ll be building out the application of your dreams!
Other Files And Folders
Beyond those three main folders, there are a few other things you’ll commonly find in the directories for CLI applications.
The first of these is a /spec folder, which contains tests for the program. You should always be testing your code to make sure it functions properly in various situations. With that said, writing tests for your application is a skill that comes a bit later for some programmers, so feel free to leave this out if you’re not sure where to start.
Next comes the Gemfile. This is a file where you can require any Gems necessary for your project. “But, Max,” you might say. “I thought Gems were required in the environment.rb file?” Well, sometimes they are. But more often than not, you’ll see them required in a project’s Gem folder, which will then be compiled using a Gem called Bundler in that project’s environment file. You can learn more about that process here.
Rakefile is often found in project directories as well. Rake is a built-in feature of Ruby that allows programmers to build out their own administrative tasks, allowing them to speed up their development of an application. This might be slightly out of your reach as well, so don’t worry if you don’t see a use case for this quite yet. However, know that your Rakefile will be essential once you start building applications with ActiveRecord.
Finally, you have your readme file. At this point, you should understand the purpose of this file, but if you want advice on how to write a KICKASS readme, check out the link below: | https://medium.com/swlh/setting-up-the-environment-for-your-first-or-next-ruby-cli-application-9e970e2bb3ab | ['Maxwell Harvey Croy'] | 2020-06-17 21:45:59.567000+00:00 | ['Ruby On Rails Development', 'Ruby on Rails', 'Coding', 'Ruby', 'Programming'] |
How to Add TailwindCSS to Your Phoenix Project | Introduction
To start things off, let’s take a little bit of time to explore the nature of TailwindCSS and understand how it can find its way into a web application.
TailwindCSS is a PostCSS plugin.
For those unfamiliar with PostCSS, allow me to give you a bit of context about it. PostCSS is a tool for CSS syntax transformations. It allows developers to define custom CSS like syntax that could be understood and transformed by plugins.
PostCSS syntax transformation process
In its essence, TailwindCSS is a bunch of javascript code composed into a library and made available to the PostCSS preprocessing tool. If you want to know more about PostCSS and its architecture, you can check the resources section at the end of this blog post.
STEP 1: Install Tailwind via NPM
To add TailwindCSS to your Phoenix application, you have to install several javascript libraries from the official NPM repository.
You can do this by opening your terminal, navigating to your project’s root directory, and typing the following command:
cd assets && npm install tailwindcss postcss postcss-loader autoprefixer
STEP 2: Create PostCSS config file
Next, you need to create a file named postcss.config.js and add it to the assets directory of your project. The content of the file should be as follows:
// postcss.config.js
module.exports = {
plugins: {
tailwindcss: {},
autoprefixer: {},
}
}
That way, you are directing your Phoenix application to transform your CSS code with the help of the tailwindcss and autoprefixer PostCSS plugins.
STEP 3: Add PostCSS to Webpack
By default, Phoenix uses Webpack to bundle its javascript files. If you want to utilize TailwindCSS in your project, you must explicitly tell Webpack to run the CSS code through the PostCSS preprocessor. You can do this by adding the postcss-loader to the list of CSS rules in the webpack.config.js file, located in the assets directory of your project:
If you are using Phoenix 1.5, the code will look like this:
// webpack.config.js
...
{
test: /\.[s]?css$/,
use: [
MiniCssExtractPlugin.loader,
'css-loader',
'postcss-loader',
'sass-loader'
],
}
...
If you are using Phoenix 1.4, the code will look like this:
{
test: /\.css$/,
use: [MiniCssExtractPlugin.loader, 'css-loader', 'postcss-loader']
}
STEP 4: Create the Tailwind Configuration File
Out of the box, Tailwind provides you with a wide selection of utility classes to use as you write your HTML code. However, in many cases, those default sets of CSS classes are not enough to help implement the design requirements.
To sort this issue, TailwindCSS's creators have provided you with a neat way to define your custom configuration. All you need to do is run the following command in your terminal:
cd assets && npx tailwindcss init
This action will create a file named tailwind.config.js and put it in your assets directory. The content of the newly generated file will look like this:
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
purge: [],
darkMode: false, // or 'media' or 'class'
theme: {
extend: {},
},
variants: {
extend: {},
},
plugins: [],
}
If you want to learn more about creating your custom utility classes, you can check out the official Tailwind configuration docs.
STEP 5: Add Tailwind to Your CSS
The last step of the installation process requires you to insert the predefined TailwindCSS classes into your project. To accomplish this, extend the app.scss file located in the assets directory by adding the following three lines of code:
// app.scss @tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;
@tailwind screens;
... | https://medium.com/everyday-elixir/how-to-add-tailwindcss-to-your-phoenix-project-e2250ad31ace | ['Velina Petrova'] | 2020-12-12 21:37:22.635000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Tailwind Css', 'Elixir', 'Programming', 'Phoenix Framework'] |
Breastfeeding 6 weeks in — it takes a village, but my village are socially distancing! | It really takes a village, and to breastfeed successfully you need support of those around you.
My baby was born as COVID-19 lockdown restrictions were beginning to ease in the UK. It has been a strange time where health services have not running as usual, and access to NHS breastfeeding resources has been scarce. I was privilaged enough to be able to afford the £360 for NCT zoom classes, so I had the basics, but once my baby was born midwives could not spare enough time to support breastfeeding during my hospital stay, and there were no peer support programs running. Due to this, I have had to rely on the people around me far more than usual!
In the early days rather than offering to take my baby off my hands (which I have been wary of because of COVID anyway!), I found it most helpful for friends and family that have been able to visit to cook meals, help around the house or just bring me a cup of tea! This freed up all my time to connect with my baby with lots of naps and skin to skin. It gave us the space to learn how to breastfeed.
Advice has changed a lot since I was a baby, so I’ve found it useful to be clear with friends and family exactly how I intend to feed and how they can help.
Some of my older relatives have been confused that we’re not training our baby into a sleeping routine, or that we’re “spoiling” him by feeding frequently. The most recent evidence-based advice supported by WHO and UNICEF recommends feeding on demand, which means watching for feeding cues and feeding baby as often as they want day and night. I’ve had to explain that babies are supposed to wake through the night, and night-time milk is packed with tryptophan that builds babies’ brains. It’s also completely natural for my baby to cluster feed all evening, it’s just his way of helping boost my milk supply!
Getting used to feeding in public — our first trip to the pub!
It can be hard for dads to know how to best support a breastfeeding mum. I’ve found sometimes words of encouragement can make all the difference! My husband Chris makes me feel supported each day by bringing breakfast in bed to share while we have a big morning feed. Long evening cluster feeds can be relentless, so Chris will take our baby out for a short walk in the sling between feeds giving them time to connect, giving some upright tummy time for digestion and physical development and giving me some quiet time to myself!
Having a lactation consultant for support has really helped my breastfeeding journey. During pregnancy I suffered from wrist and hand pain and a simple suggestion from a lactation consultant to try laid back breastfeeding helped my baby latch better and made everything more comfortable. When support wasn’t available in the hospital I was able to video call my lactation consultant for help. I think it’s so important to have professional help available for new monthers whether it is a midwife, NHS infant feeding specialist or private lactation consultant — the difference between a painful experience and a comfortable one can be in small adjustments to latch or position, and it’s important have issues like tongue and lip tie ruled out early on. Breastfeeding should not hurt, and with this support I have never experienced pain or discomfort.
To build your support network there are local groups such as the NCT or La Leche League. I’ve been joining a virtual NCT breastfeeding cafe each week to share experiences with other women and get advice from breastfeeding professionals. It has been so hard not be able to meet other mums in person, but I hope we will be able to soon! | https://medium.com/@clairewg/breastfeeding-6-weeks-in-it-takes-a-village-but-my-village-are-socially-distancing-2abede29b877 | ['Claire Wg'] | 2020-08-20 10:12:19.124000+00:00 | ['Parenting Advice', 'Breastfeeding', 'Motherhood', 'Baby', 'Parenting'] |
Top 4 Ways to Potentially Fix iPhone Keeps Restarting Issue When Using Snapchat | We have come to know a new iPhone glitch that keeps restarting the phone when using Snapchat. Several iPhone users have reported this issue in the past few days and if you are one of them, then you might have been looking for a possible fix for this issue on your iPhone, right?
The process below is pretty simple and should work for any apps on your iPhone that face random glitches. But, since we are talking here about the issue where iPhone keeps restarting when using Snapchat error, let’s head to the following troubleshooting methods that should fix the restarting issue on your iPhone when using Snapchat.
How to Fix iPhone Keeps Restarting When Using Snapchat Error?
The first thing you can try that could potentially fix the iPhone keeps restarting issue is updating Snapchat to the latest version. Sometimes there are serval bugs that cause these type of issue on your device, so keep updating your app to the latest version is always a good idea to save your phone and app from getting glitches or issues.
1. Update the Snapchat
To update Snapchat on your iPhone simply follow the steps below.
First, got to the App Store application from your iPhone.
Now go to the updates tab from the bottom menu.
Now, look for any update that might be available for the Snapchat app.
If you see a new update, then click on the Update button to update the Snapchat app.
Once updated, launch Snapchat and check if you are still facing the same issue or not.
2. Uninstall and Reinstall the Snapchat App on iPhone
If the above method doesn’t work for you and if there is no update available for the Snapchat app then you should try the following method and see if its works for you. If there is no update available the then you can try to uninstall the Snapchat app and re-install it again in order to make sure there is no issue between the app version and the iOS version installed on your iPhone.
How to Uninstall and Reinstall the Snapchat App on the iPhone?
First, long press on the Snapchat app
Now you will see an X button located in the corner of the Snapchat app
Now, press the X button to uninstall the Snapchat app and tap on the delete button to confirm your action
To reinstall Snapchat, go to the app store on your iPhone
Now, search for Snapchat and after you, the app, click on the download button to download the app and install it on your iPhone
Now, go to the downloaded app and open it and see if it is working fine on your phone, or if it still keeps restarting your iPhone when using Snapchat issue.
3. Clear Cache from Snapchat App
Snapchat on your iPhone saves cache files on the device that help the app run faster by loading the app data from cheche files. But, this cache might result in creating some issue on your device. So, it's always a better idea that you clear the cache from Snapchat or other apps to make it run smoother. Clearing the cheche from the Snapchat app may also fix iPhone keeps restarting issue when using the app.
You can clear the cache if you need to free up storage space on your device or troubleshoot some issues.
To Clear Cache
Tap ⚙️ in My Profile to open Settings
Scroll down and tap ‘Clear Cache’
Tap ‘Clear All’ on iOS, or tap ‘Continue’ on Android
4. Factory Reset Your iPhone
Sometimes doing a factory reset of your device fixes several issues on the device. There might be some possible conflict between the apps and your iOS version. But, do note that this method will wipe out all of your apps and save files data from your iPhone. So, it is highly recommended that you take a complete backup of your files and data to a safe place.
Here is how to factory reset your iPhone
To factory reset your iPhone 6, 6+, 6s, and 6s+ press and hold the power key and the home button at the same time.
On iPhone 7, 7 plus hold down the Volume Down button on the left side of the device and the Sleep/Wake button on the right side of the device at the same time for 10 seconds.
Now after the screen goes dark and an Apple logo appears on the screen release the buttons and wait for your phone to restart.
To force restart (hard reset) the iPhone 8, 8 plus press and release the Volume Up button, press and release the Volume Down button, and press and hold the Side button until your device reboots, then release
These were some of the methods that could potentially help you get rid out of the iPhone keeps restarting issue when using Snapchat.
Written by Rizwan Ahmad
Syndicated from Cyberockk. | https://medium.com/cyberockk/top-4-ways-to-potentially-fix-iphone-keeps-restarting-issue-when-using-snapchat-f73f1d956f06 | ['Rizwan Ahmad'] | 2020-12-20 15:52:45+00:00 | ['Iphone Tricks', 'Iphone Tips', 'iPhone', 'Snapchat', 'Tips And Tricks'] |
Learning from Graph data using Keras and Tensorflow | Cora Data set Citation Graph
Motivation :
There is a lot of data out there that can be represented in the form of a graph in real-world applications like in Citation Networks, Social Networks (Followers graph, Friends network, … ), Biological Networks or Telecommunications.
Using Graph extracted features can boost the performance of predictive models by relying on information flow between neighboring nodes. However, representing graph data is not straightforward especially if we don’t intend to implement hand-crafted features since most ML models expect a fixed sized or linear input which is not the case for graph data.
In this post we will explore some ways to deal with generic graphs to do node classification based on graph representations learned directly from data.
Dataset :
The Cora citation network data set will serve as the base to the implementations and experiments throughout this post. Each node represents a scientific paper and edges between nodes represent a citation relation between the two papers.
Each node is represented by a set of binary features ( Bag of words ) as well as by a set of edges that link it to other nodes.
The dataset has 2708 nodes classified into one of seven classes. The network has 5429 links. Each Node is also represented by binary word features indicating the presence of a corresponding word. Overall there is 1433 binary (Sparse) features for each node. In what follows we only use 140 samples for training and the rest for validation/test.
Problem Setting :
Problem : Assigning a class label to nodes in a graph while having few training samples.
Intuition/Hypothesis : Nodes that are close in the graph are more likely to have similar labels.
Solution : Find a way to extract features from the graph to help classify new nodes.
Proposed Approach :
Baseline Model :
Simple Baseline Model
We first experiment with the simplest model that learn to predict node classes using only the binary features and discarding all graph information.
This model is a fully-connected Neural Network that takes as input the binary features and outputs the class probabilities for each node.
Baseline model Accuracy : 53.28%
This is the initial accuracy that we will try to improve on by adding graph based features.
Adding Graph features :
One way to automatically learn graph features by embedding each node into a vector by training a network on the auxiliary task of predicting the inverse of the shortest path length between two input nodes like detailed on the figure and code snippet below :
Learning an embedding vector for each node
The next step is to use the pre-trained node embedding as input to the classification model. We also add the an additional input which is the average binary features of the neighboring nodes using distance of learned embedding vectors.
The resulting classification network is described in the following figure :
Using pretrained embeddings to do node classification
Graph embedding classification model Accuracy : 73.06%
We can see that adding learned graph features as input to the classification model helps significantly improve the classification accuracy compared to the baseline model from 53.28% to 73.06% 😄.
Improving Graph feature learning :
We can look to further improve the previous model by pushing the pre-training further and using the binary features in the node embedding network and then reusing the pre-trained weights from the binary features in addition to the node embedding vector. This results in a model that relies on more useful representations of the binary features learned from the graph structure.
Improved Graph embedding classification model Accuracy : 76.35%
This additional improvement adds a few percent accuracy compared to the previous approach.
Conclusion :
In this post we saw that we can learn useful representations from graph structured data and then use these representations to improve the generalization performance of a node classification model from 53.28% to 76.35% 😎.
Code to reproduce the results is available here : https://github.com/CVxTz/graph_classification
Feel Free to comment if you have any suggestions or if you need some pointers to run the code on your machine 😉 | https://towardsdatascience.com/learning-from-graph-data-using-keras-and-tensorflow-5b54e3ddffbf | ['Youness Mansar'] | 2020-11-01 13:15:23.238000+00:00 | ['Graph', 'TensorFlow', 'Keras', 'Machine Learning', 'Neural Networks'] |
Top 5 Samsung smartphone | Best Samsung smartphone 2021 | Top 5 Samsung smartphone
Samsung is the most successful technology brand in the 21st century. Samsung has a legacy of 20 years of success in technology, Science, and R&D development. Samsung is a Korean-based electronics company.
Samsung was founded as a grocery store in 1928 by Lee Byung Chul. In this time, Samsung saw many up and down. But now Samsung is the world’s largest electronic devices producing country. Samsung has specialized in smart-phone, Laptops, LCD/LED, semiconductors, home appliances manufacturing company. Till 2019, Samsung was the world’s 2nd largest smartphone manufacturing company after Apple. So you can understand and imagine the size of the brand.
Today we will discuss the top 5 Samsung smartphones. Samsung is manufacturing the most advanced smartphone in comparison to its competitors. Samsung smartphones have next generations of chipset processors with powerful battery life. Samsung has the world’s best smartphone selfie cameras with unmatched features.
Read Full Article: Top 5 Samsung smartphone
Read also: Best Xiaomi smartphones 2021 | https://medium.com/@saudcsbhi5555/top-5-samsung-smartphone-best-samsung-smartphone-2021-6097d98dcf7e | ['Muhammad Ahmad'] | 2021-11-27 12:30:51.536000+00:00 | ['Samsungupdates', 'Samsung Galaxy', 'Samsung', 'Samsung Stock Rom', 'Smartphones'] |
Is Scalr the Best Alternative to Terraform™ Enterprise? | tl;dr Scalr is the best alternative to Terraform Enterprise if you want transparent pricing, Open Policy Agent integration or a template registry.
So you’ve evaluated Terraform Enterprise and dropped it because the cost was prohibitive? Scalr is an alternative that has feature parity with Terraform Enterprise and full CLI support. It also has some key differentiators and quality of life features that make it even better.
Key Differences Between Scalr And Terraform Enterprise
Public Pricing
For an on-premise installation of Scalr, the pricing is per workspace and a workspace will cost a maximum of $40/month. Scalr has a $25,000/year minimum spend and offers volume discounts:
0–100 workspaces: $40/workspace/month
101–500 workspaces: $32/workspace/month
501–1000 workspaces: $25/workspace/month
1001+ workspaces: $18/workspace/month
Scalr offers payment terms discounts. If you commit for 3 years, you get a 10% discount.
Example: 150 workspaces in a 3 year contract will cost (100*40+50*32)*0.9 = $5,040/month
Open Policy Agent Integration
Scalr uses OPA for policy as code instead of Sentinel. OPA is domain agnostic while Sentinel only applies to Hashicorp products. No need to have a different policy language for every service you use. OPA is the tool of choice for a unified policy framework across the cloud native stack.
Template Registry
Scalr lets users deploy preconfigured Terraform templates themselves. Users don’t need prior Terraform knowledge or going through a ticketing system.
Hierarchical Management Model
Scalr allows the sharing of objects across organizations. An object can be a VCS configuration, a policy, a variable … No need to go into each organization to create a module or a VCS provider. Scalr doesn’t charge per user per organization but per user across all organizations.
Policy Update Blast Radius
It is possible to visualize the blast radius of policy updates to your existing and future deployments with policy previews. Create a pull request against your policy code and understand the impacts in the Scalr UI. For example, admins get a list of workspaces impacted based on the policy change. Engineers have the ability to preview the impact of the new policy when deploying infrastructure.
Getting started with Scalr
Sign up for a free account on our SaaS version to make up your mind and see if Scalr meets your needs. You don’t need a credit card for that, and you can invite up to 4 team members. If you like what you see and want to move forward, reach out to us and we’ll be happy to demo Scalr to you and assist you with a POC.
Terraform™ is a registered trademark of Hashicorp | https://medium.com/@jbbeck/is-scalr-the-best-alternative-to-terraform-enterprise-ebbeaa24f887 | ['J.B. Beck'] | 2020-11-23 11:33:47.724000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'DevOps', 'Terraform', 'Cloud'] |
Bifrost vETH officially listing on Uniswap, Weekly Report 34 | Development
Merged substrate commit f73ac5eb
vToken minting incentive module development and testing
Mint Drop Wallet Connect protocol development
Voting Market & Minting Incentive Code Review Jenkins Deployment
Bifrost Asgard Nightly connects to Subscan
Bifrost official website adds risk tips
Dashboard Polkadot JS upgraded to v0.69.2–13
Hoo wallet docking with Bifrost mainnet certificate
Ecosystem
The Bifrost vETH MintDrop has successfully listeing TokenPocket, imToken, DeBank, MathWallet and AToken within a week. Search vETH in the App to directly mint vETH for BNC.
Sort out and filter out the Bifrost Meme Contest. A total of 50 people participated in the competition and nearly 350 entries were submitted. Community voting is now open, so vote for your favorite one!
On December 1, the “Witness Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 Start Online Live Summit” hosted by the Odaily invited Bifrost co-founder Lurpis to discuss the evolution of ETH 2.0 in combination with Bifrost vETH minting. Event Details: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/56uOXfB_0HPk3ItvIwGFsw
The vETH/ETH trading pair will be launched on Uniswap at 12:00 pm (UTC+8) on December 4th. Hold vETH to obtain staking reward and liquidity, without waiting for the ETH 2.0 lock-up period. Details: https://app.uniswap.org/#/swap?inputCurrency=ETH&outputCurrency=0xc3d088842dcf02c13699f936bb83dfbbc6f721ab
On December 3, Bifrost product manager Tryone accepted an exclusive interview with Lian chaguan, and expressed his views on a series of issues such as Staking and its derivatives, ETH 2.0, vETH minting and DeFi. Details of the interview: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/iONSBMS_-nSnuaZXmByIvQ
Designed Bifrost Banner and displayed it on OpenSquare. In the future, Bifrost’s newsletter will be synchronized in OpenSquare. Details:
https://og.opensquare.network/
Risk Warning: Recently, in response to the impersonation and false information of the Bifrost project in the market, Bifrost hereby reminds you: In order to maintain your own information security and ensure asset security. When you see a similar situation, please contact the Bifrost community administrator in time. We will prompt the risk and contact the other party to correct the information as soon as possible.
What is Bifrost ?
Bifrost is a Polkadot Ecosystem DeFi infrastructure protocol that aims to become an infrastructure for providing Staking liquidity, and currently offers a derivative vToken for Staking and Polkadot Lease Offering (PLO). It is also a member of the Substrate Builders Program and Web3 Bootcamp. vToken can optimise transactions in multiple scenarios such as DeFi, DApp, DEX and CEX.
vToken can optimise transactions in multiple scenarios such as DeFi, DApp, DEX and CEX. vToken can be used to realise the transfer channel of governance right such as Staking and PLO to hedge the risk of Staking assets. In extended scenarios such as when vToken is used as collateral for lending, the staking proceeds can offset part of the interest and realise low-interest lending. | https://medium.com/bifrost-finance/bifrost-veth-officially-listing-on-uniswap-weekly-report-34-557a585b71f5 | ['Bifrost Finance'] | 2020-12-05 06:39:25.979000+00:00 | ['Veth', 'Defi', 'Stakingderivative', 'Uniswap', 'Mintdrop'] |
What is R34PER FINANCE? | R34PER FINANCE is a project born from the ashes of a community left behind by a rug. The revival of the project was a must for the sake of everyone involved so we took the initiative to rebuild from scratch. We now have a new smart contract, a new website and new identity. R34PER FINANCE is not a simple erc20 token, it is now running a deflationary tax protocol after forking RFI, RFCTR and R34P this time doing it properly unlike the thieving scum that ran away with peoples ETH. R34PER FINANCE token will be deflationary at 1% of a transaction and 0.5% will be redistributed to the holders according to their wallet balances.
What are the plans?
Plans for R34PER FINANCE are quiet simple as the lead developer has worked for other projects as a anon dev he has access to a wide range of different resources to build a network around R34PER FINANCE. The first plan will be to introduce R34FRM (our farming token) alongside a Web portal to stake from. How R34FRM will work is by staking your R34PER tokens via the website no need for LP tokens etc just hit stake and you’ll start earning R34FRM based on your share of the vault. Our second plan is to launch R34PER X, which is our version of Linkswap. R34PER X will allow users to take advantage of our partnership projects as they will all be listed on there and any projects that want to list must go through KYC with the team before to build a safe network. R34PER and R34FRM holders will be given lower fees and voting rights on any tokens up for listing or delisting.
What are the Tokenomics?
100,000 R34PER — Max supply 45,000 R34PER — Presale 25,000 R34PER — Airdrop for the Rugged 30,000 R34PER — Uniswap locked Liquidity pool All unsold will be sent to the burn address.
How the presale will work?
The presale will run via a Whitelist and be set as follows: Price: 1 ETH = 1000 R34PER Min/Max purchase: 0.5-2ETH Softcap: 25ETH Hardcap: 45 ETH The full raised ETH will be locked.
Socials
Website: https://r34per.finance Telegram: https://t.me/r34pertoken Twitter: https://twitter.com/r34perfinance Github: https://github.com/r34perfinance Medium: https://medium.com/@r34perfinance
Contract
https://etherscan.io/address/0x3e207360c746414a02b6eac01961b5ddc4c9fb09 | https://medium.com/@r34perfinance/what-is-r34per-finance-c603c5ba34be | [] | 2020-12-24 13:10:45.448000+00:00 | ['Gem', 'Defi', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Eth'] |
Tierion Will Pay $250,000 Fine To SEC For Conducting An Illegal ICO | The U.S. securities and exchange Commission (SEC) fined Tierion $250,000 for conducting an unregistered ICO in 2017, during which $25 million was raised.
According to the SEC’s charges, the initial token offering organized by Tierion violated U.S. securities laws. Tierion is engaged in blockchain-based developments, and during the ICO, it sold TNT token as a means of settlements between users and Tierion. According to the SEC, Tierion sold 350 million TNT to 4,800 investors. SEC ruled that investors and holders of TNT tokens who traded them at a loss can claim damages from Tierion, along with interest, within 60 days.
SEC also ordered to stop trading of TNT, TNT are ERC-20 tokens based on the Ethereum blockchain. The Commission reported that TNT did not comply with Regulations. Tierion’s management agreed to pay the regulator a fine of $250,000. Tierion CEO and founder Wayne Vaughn said that he will continue to work on the company’s current products even without TNT tokens.
According to him, the SEC’s decision “lifted the heavy burden of regulation from him.” Vaughn added that this situation will not affect the availability of open source software, which the company’s developers worked on. In 2017, Tierion began working with Microsoft to develop a decentralized identity system that will allow users to create and validate data using distributed Ledger technology (DLT).
This week, the SEC fined cryptocurrency startup ShipChain $2,050,000 for the same reason. Since the beginning of the year, the Commission has collected more than $4.68 billion in fines, which is a record amount of fines collected in the history of the SEC. | https://medium.com/the-capital/tierion-will-pay-250-000-fine-to-sec-for-conducting-an-illegal-ico-ed94e4a5627a | ['The Crypto Basic'] | 2021-01-02 14:06:49.790000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Altcoins', 'Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency Investment'] |
70 years of the Genocide Convention — demonstrating our commitment to the promise of “never again” | By Adama Dieng, United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide
This year we will commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty to be adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on 9 December 1948, just three years after the birth of the United Nations.
Its adoption was largely the result of the tireless efforts of one man, Raphael Lemkin who, after losing most of his family in the Holocaust, was determined to do what he could to make sure that this crime could never happen again. Some six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, one of the most devastating human tragedies of the twentieth century, as well as many others whom the Nazis considered “undesirable”. The Genocide Convention represents the United Nations commitment to the often quoted “never again”; a commitment to learn from and not repeat history.
Ambassador of Brazil, left, speaks with Professor Raphael Lemkin, 11 December 1948
Regrettably, this commitment has often failed to translate into action, even when it has been most needed. We saw this in 1994 in the abject failure of the international community to prevent the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, which cost the lives of almost a million people in the space of 100 days. No more than a year later, we witnessed it again as the international community, including United Nations peacekeepers, looked away during the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Important progress has been made since — and because of — these failures. In 1998, the International Criminal Court was established, a permanent court already foreseen by the Genocide Convention in 1948. In 2005, the Secretary-General established the post of Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, a position I currently hold, to ensure that there is a voice within the United Nations system that can alert the Secretary-General and, through him, the Security Council, to early warning signs of genocide and advocate for preventative action before genocide becomes a reality.
In addition, at the 2005 World Summit all United Nations Member States made a ground-breaking commitment to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity (atrocity crimes) and to take collective action when States manifestly fail to do so, in accordance with and using the tools provided by the United Nations Charter. This has become known as the principle of “the responsibility to protect”.
Leaders Gather at 2005 World Summit
Despite these achievements and the continued commitment to “never again”, we have not managed to eradicate genocide. International crimes, including genocide, are a terrible reality faced by populations across the globe. We know the warning signs and we know how to prevent these crimes, but we often fail to act in time, or to act at all. In the Central African Republic, Iraq, Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and in so many other places, people are being targeted because of their identity — because of the religion they practice, the culture in which they were raised or simply because of their distinctive physical characteristics. This is unacceptable.
We also fail to invest sufficiently in prevention, to build the resilience needed to address the risk factors for genocide, or to take timely and decisive action when we see the warning signs.
Our commitment to the Genocide Convention must be reinvigorated. The fact that we have not eradicated genocide is not because the Convention is flawed, but rather because its potential has not been fully realised. And despite universal rejection of genocide, some Member States have still not taken the fundamental step of ratifying the Convention.
International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands
At the time of writing, 149 States have ratified the Genocide Convention. Surprisingly, 45 United Nations Member States have not yet done so. Of these 20 are in Africa, 18 in Asia and seven in Latin America.
Universal ratification of the Convention is fundamental to demonstrate that genocide has no place in our world. That no one should fear discrimination, persecution or violence simply because of who they are.
What message are the States who have not ratified the Convention sending, 70 years after its adoption? That genocide could never happen within their borders? Genocide can happen anywhere. History has shown us time and again that no region or country is immune. Yet many States seem reluctant to even consider this a possibility or to undertake a critical evaluation of their risks and vulnerabilities.
In December last year, I launched an appeal for universal ratification of the Genocide Convention, urging the 45 United Nations Member States that have not done so to take steps to ratify or accede to the Convention before its 70th anniversary on 9 December 2018. The aim of this appeal is to refocus our attention on the Convention, underline its continued importance as the legal standard for ensuring the punishment of this crime, as well as its often-untapped potential as a tool for prevention.
The Genocide Convention, together with its sister treaties on human rights and the Rome statute for the International Criminal Court, remains the most important legal standard we have to fulfil the commitment to “never again” that the world made 70 years ago. For our own sakes, and for the sake of future generations: #PreventGenocide.
Related information
70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
News Article: Scourge of genocide remains a ‘threat and a reality’ today: UN human rights chief
Follow the UN here on Medium | https://medium.com/we-the-peoples/70-years-of-the-genocide-convention-demonstrating-our-commitment-to-the-promise-of-never-again-6d97ec7ba424 | ['United Nations'] | 2018-10-29 13:35:18.842000+00:00 | ['Genocide', 'Human Rights', 'History', 'International Law', 'United Nations'] |
What is the Best Soil for the Vegetable Garden? | What is the Best Soil for the Vegetable Garden?
To grow well, your plants need a lot of effort and a good foundation. In fact, vegetable garden soil is the key to having healthy plants, lots of fruit, and crops worthy of the many hours of work. Nevertheless, most people underestimate this aspect, believing that the types of terrain are all the same.
A good growing medium should be rich in nutrients so that plants can absorb them and thrive. It should also be draining, otherwise, you risk standing water causing the roots to rot. At the same time, it must contain enough water to maintain a constant humidity. To these basic conditions, there are others, which vary depending on what you want to cultivate.
Watch Video here: “Break-Through Organic Gardening Secret Grows You Up To 10 Times The Plants, In Half, The Time, With Healthier Plants, While the “Fish” Do All the Work…”
In this article, we will see what aspects to take into account when choosing the land for your urban garden. In most cases, you can get by with universal potting soil. But to get very good results, you have to go further.
Composition
What is the soil in the garden you use made of? The answer to this (seemingly) trivial question is the first criterion to consider. Inside each bag you will find:
• clay, which gives stability and retains water;
• sand, which lightens the assembly and reduces the risk of stagnation;
• peat, obtained from decomposed plant residues. It has a dual function: lightening the soil and retaining moisture;
• compost, the result of the decomposition of organic matter. Most of the nutrients in the soil come from here.
Depending on the ratio of these elements, you will get different types of soil suitable for different types of plants. For example, the soil in tomatoes should be clayey but still draining. For aromatic plants, you need soil that is more sandy and not too rich in nutrients. Otherwise, you risk them overwhelming and losing all their aromas.
Watch the video here: The common backyard weeds that will replace ever drug in your medicine cabinet
Porosity
The composition affects both the number of nutrients and the porosity of the soil in the garden. You need soil that is soft enough for the roots to develop, but which supports them. Depending on the type of crop, you may need soil that holds a lot of water or is very draining.
To determine the porosity of the soil, you need to assess the macro and micropores. The former determines the mobility of air in the soil, while the latter retain water. If there are too many macropores, the air circulates well but the soil dries up immediately. If there are too many micropores, water stagnation is created and the roots do not breathe.
To increase the porosity, you can add sand or porous materials such as pine bark. The organic substance is perhaps the solution with the best value for money: lightens the soil, enriches it, and is more economical than sand.
pH
The pH level indicates how acidic or basic the soil is. Theoretically, the pH can fluctuate between 0 (extremely acidic) and 14 (extremely alkaline). Indeed, arable land has a pH ranging from 4 to 9: too much above or too much below these values, life becomes impossible.
Depending on the pH of the soil, plants will be able to absorb more or fewer nutrients. Most plants are comfortable in soil with a neutral pH, between 6 and 7. However, there are plants that like a slightly more acidic context, like blackberries, and others that like more soil. alkaline, like cabbage.
To measure the pH of your garden soil, get litmus paper; you can find them in pharmacies or specialty stores. Take a tablespoon of soil to a depth of about 10 centimeters and mix it with a glass of distilled water. Avoid tap water or mineral water, which could affect the results. At this point, submerge the card and wait for it to change color.
To make the soil more basic, add hydrated lime. To make it more acidic, add some blond peat.
Disclaimer: This article contains an affiliate link, If You made a purchase through this link we will earn a small commission. | https://medium.com/@millionaireminds/what-is-the-best-soil-for-the-vegetable-garden-9574bbacbfc8 | [] | 2020-12-25 05:46:34.178000+00:00 | ['Garden', 'Soil', 'Vegetables', 'Plants', 'Gardening'] |
Kotlin vs Swift: The Abstract Class | Learning Kotlin and Swift
Kotlin vs Swift: The Abstract Class
Explore Kotlin and Swift together and learn their differences
Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash
In Mobile development, the 2 major programming language to learn is Swift and Kotlin. They look very similar, sometimes one feature is available in one language but not the other one. Nonetheless, there are workaround it.
One good example is the Abstract Class.
Abstract class
In Kotlin, we can have an abstract class (e.g. something in between a class and interface, where it enforce some of its variable or function being set, but can still store its own state.
In Swift, there is no abstract class but uses protocol to imitate it, together with the help of class extension.
In Kotlin
Below is a simple example of an abstract class with
an overridable variable something (override by the child)
(override by the child) an overridable function doSomething (override by the child)
(override by the child) a state variable stateVariable
a local function baseLocalFunction
abstract class Base(private val stateVariable: String) {
abstract val abstractVariable: String
abstract fun doSomething()
fun baseLocalFunction() {
println("$abstractVariable $stateVariable")
}
} class Child: Base("SetFromChild") {
override val abstractVariable: String
get() = "Happy" override fun doSomething() {
println(abstractVariable.length)
}
}
In Swift
As there’s no abstract class for Swift, the way to work around it is by using Protocol and Extension class.
The Protocol is used to define all the variables to be set and function to be defined. Note protocol cannot have a variable state or function definition
The Extension class is used to define the default extension function. It still cannot store state variables though.
The Child class will then store all the states and defined all the yet to be defined functions.
protocol Base {
var stateVariable: String { get }
var abstractVariable: String { get }
func doSomething()
func baseLocalFunction()
} extension Base {
func baseLocalFunction() {
print("\(abstractVariable) \(stateVariable)")
}
} struct Child: Base {
internal var stateVariable: String = "SetFromChild" var abstractVariable: String = "Happy" func doSomething() {
print(abstractVariable.count)
}
}
You can get a little more detail in this article.
Summary
To make it easier to compare, the build table is provided | https://medium.com/mobile-app-development-publication/kotlin-vs-swift-the-abstract-class-f8817e5e54f | [] | 2020-10-22 12:47:50.312000+00:00 | ['Mobile App Development', 'Android App Development', 'Kotlin', 'Swift', 'iOS App Development'] |
Roku has developed a soundbar reference design specifically for Roku TVs | Roku has developed a soundbar reference design specifically for Roku TVs Steven Feb 1·3 min read
Roku has built some very good mainstream speakers and soundbars since 2018, and now the company is looking to help its TV-manufacturer partners build soundbars of their own.
The company has come up with a reference design for a soundbar that wirelessly connects to TVs operating the Roku operating system and certified as Roku TV Ready. And by wireless, I mean you don’t need an HDMI or even an optical cable. The only cords involved are the power cables for the TV and the speaker.
[ Further reading: The best soundbars ] Mentioned in this article Roku TV Wireless Speakers Read TechHive's review$199.99MSRP $199.99See iton Roku The wireless connection in Roku’s design utilizes Wi-Fi, but in a point-to-point fashion between the soundbar and the TV, instead of sending the audio from the TV to the soundbar over your home’s Wi-Fi network.
In a conversation with Roku’s VP of Product Strategy Mark Ely earlier this week, I learned that the specification uses a lossless lossy codec for streaming, but Ely wasn’t able to tell me whether the company was using FLAC or something else. I wasn’t able to learn the resolution or sample depth of the stream, either. Ely did say that the connection delivered excellent audio/video synchronization.
Roku Roku’s new reference design is intended to enable TV manufacturers that license the Roku OS to build their own compatible soundbars.
This is a two-channel design with the option of adding a wired or wireless subwoofer. There are no other inputs or outputs, and Ely said there are no plans at this time to expand to surround sound using Roku’s wireless speakers or anyone else’s. The soundbar can be controlled with the same Roku remote that comes with the TV.
A Bluetooth receiver is also onboard to accommodate customers who wish to stream music from a mobile device or other Bluetooth source to the soundbar. If you want to listen on headphones, you’ll need to have a higher-end Roku remote that includes a wired headphone jack.
Roku TV-builder TCL will be the first manufacturer out of the blocks with a new soundbar based on Roku’s reference design. The company is expected to announce more details about its new product early next week. Meanwhile, Roku is expanding its Roku TV Ready program with a new two-channel soundbar and a 2.1-channel soundbar with subwoofer from Element. Roku TV Ready products don’t necessarily require a Roku TV, but they do integrate quickly and easily with one.
In other news, Roku is crowing that the market-research firm NPD Group has named the Roku OS as the number-one smart TV operating system sold in the U.S. and Canada, with a 38- and 31-percent share of those markets, respectively. Various manufacturers, including Hisense and TCL, sell Roku TVs in size classes ranging from 24 to 75 inches.
Updated shortly after publication when Roku informed us that Mark Ely had misspoke when he said the soundbar reference design featured a lossless audio codec. The design is actually based on a lossy codec.
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/@steven19601892/roku-has-developed-a-soundbar-reference-design-specifically-for-roku-tvs-eb187e95b3da | [] | 2021-02-01 03:39:15.321000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Chargers', 'Chromecast', 'Music'] |
DEVELOPING A GROWTH MINDSET | I have been praising myself for the decision to get into AMAL as I have been learning a lot from AMAL since the first day. Today I will be sharing some good tips to develop a growth mindset which I learned from AMAL academy. I found them really useful and effective to develop an entrepreneurial or growth mindset. Let’s get to the tips without wasting any time.
1-SELF TALK Talk to yourself often and tell yourself that there is nothing you can’t do. Things may take time but you can always achieve anything with hard work, determination and persistence. Telling yourself this daily will motivate you to work on yourself for your better verison.
“Positive self talk is the key to any successful person. If you can change the voice in your mind you can do anything” — John Assaraf
2-GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE Getting out of your comfort zone means doing something which requires the enhancement or improvement in your current abilities and skills. To make one’s dreams come true he has to do more than he is doing in the routine and he should put himself in challenging situations to get the best out of himself, to get rid of his fears and to learn how to tackle the problems. To achieve something in life one must go an extra mile and learn something on a daily basis that takes him closer to his goals.
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” — Neale Donald Walsch.
3-CREATE NEW HABITS Developing new habits and getting rid of old habits really gives a tough time to individuals. But in order to change your mindset and grow yourself you need to reflect on your habits often and start developing new habits which can help you get closer to your goals and get rid of the habits which are restricting you to move forward. Making a habit of learning something new daily can do wonders and help you improve both personally and professionally. It also puts you in the process of getting out from your comfort zone.
“You will never change your life until you change something you do daliy” — John C. Maxwell
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit”
4-ASK PEOPLE HELP Everybody in life at some point or other needs help and is not able to manage everything by his own. So we need some people who can help us truly when we need it. The best people who can do the job perfectly are your true friends. These are the people who help you without expecting anything in return. And friends should be made wisely as they have a great impact on your personality. “A person can be best described by people close to him”. They can provide you with honest feedback and help you recognize your strengths and weaknesses.
“Sometimes asking for help is the most meaningful example of self reliance”
5-FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT It is my favourite tip of all. I liked this tip personally as it is a pro tip to be successful and improve yourself. Things can be hard and problematic but it’s on you how hard or problematic you want them to. Faking them to be easier and easily achieveable helps a lot. It gives you motivation and encouragement to attempt and face the problems which look really difficult. Telling yourself that there’s a solution to every problem and Allah has made man his most capable creature of all can get you through the hardest situations of your life.
“Confidence is 10% hardwork and 90% delusion” — Tina Fey
Currently I am practicing the second tip “Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone” by putting myself in challenging situations through AMAL fellowship. Recently I volunteered for presenting the overview of a course I learned to all my fellows to boost up my confidence and improve my verbal communication. And then I have put myself in the group’s leader position for which I was always reluctant as I never wanted to be responsible and show up. It feels very good after attempting something you have been reluctant to attempt, to see that many of your assumptions were wrong about yourself.
I am going to make use of every tip mentioned above as they are really helpful and important to develop a growth mindset and get closer to your goals. I am already applying some of the tips and will surely include all of them in my routine. I am going to get rid of my bad habits and develop some good habits to make the best use of my abilities and potential to make myself better everyday.
“Knowledge is of no value until you put into practice” — Anton Chekov | https://medium.com/@hamza-munawar176/developing-a-growth-mindset-30b6f8976346 | ['Hamza Munawar'] | 2020-12-25 08:54:42.746000+00:00 | ['Amal Fellowship', 'Amal Academy'] |
I numeri nella foresta | We exhibit solo and group projects by emerging or international artists who use data to create artworks that transfigure complex information
Follow | https://medium.com/wildmazzini/i-numeri-nella-foresta-c827cb8d2401 | ['Dave Fuschi'] | 2020-06-02 08:14:26.601000+00:00 | ['Wild Mazzini', 'Numeri', 'Podcast'] |
Building Spring boot Rest API using Apache Camel and PostgreSQL. | 3. Add PostgreSQL configuration and Create Classes.
Before dealing with code let’s configure our application properties in the application.properties file located in the source resource directory.
application.properties file
Note: Please change the database user name, password, and port according to your configuration. If you are not specified camel.component.servlet.mapping.contextPath value. Then it’s default value is camel.
Now We can start codding. As a first step, we can add a Book Entity class to our project. I am going to add the Book entity class under the entity package. That code will look like below.
Book.java class
The next step is creating Repository interface for the book entity. So we can create a BookRepository interface by extending JpaRepository interface. That class creates an inside respository package. It’s like below.
Then I am going to create BookService class to handle the CRUD operation. This class create inside service package.
4. Create camel routes for basic crud operations.
Now we come to the final stage of this sample project. until now we create all the required configuration and classes except the rest controller class. also, we didn't use Apache camel in any place. So I am going to create a rest controller class using camel Java DSL without using spring MVC. If we create a rest controller using camel’s route, we have to extend our rest controller class using RouteBuilder. Once we extend the rest controller from RouteBuilder we have to override configure method. We define all our routes in the configuration method like below.
Here, I create four routes to do CRUD operation. Below I include CURL request for all routes and include the postman collection in the Github with a sample project. You can use one of these methods to test this sample example.
Save Book CURL request
"id":0,
"name":"Camel in Action",
"author":"Claus Ibsen and Jonathan Anstey",
"price": 56
}' ' curl -XPOST -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{"id":0,"name":"Camel in Action","author":"Claus Ibsen and Jonathan Anstey","price": 56}' ' http://localhost:8080/rest/book'
2. Find all Books CURL request
3. Find Book By Name CURL request
4. Remove Book By bookId CURL request
Now, this sample project implementation is complete. Before running this application we need to run the PostgreSQL server. Here I am using the PostgreSQL docker version.
docker run --ulimit memlock=-1:-1 -it --rm=true --memory-swappiness=0 --name postgresql-camel -e POSTGRES_USER=user -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password -e POSTGRES_DB=cameldb -p 5432:5432 postgres:latest
If you want to know more about camel you can read camel official documentation and Camel in Action book.
Here I have only implemented GET, POST, and DELETE methods. You can try to implement PUT, and PATCH methods also.
You can find complete code in my GitHub account.
If you have any questions please put a comment I am happy to help you. | https://medium.com/@naskavinda/building-spring-boot-rest-api-using-apache-camel-and-postgresql-ead210c92503 | ['Supun Kavinda'] | 2020-10-22 21:45:06.527000+00:00 | ['Postgres', 'Java', 'Spring Boot', 'Apache Camel', 'Camel'] |
Can a Convolutional Neural Network diagnose COVID-19 from lungs CT scans? | Unfortunately, we have not got significant improvement, our model still overfits after 10–15 epochs — we can see that train loss is starting to decrease, while validation loss is starting to increase. Another problem is that since our validation loss is low from the start, we can assume that we simply got nice initial parameters and so, our model is not robust (remember that since we don’t have a test set, we want to re-evaluate our model with new split). If we check the model summary, we will see that our model has 4,987,361 parameters — a huge number for such a small dataset. Let’s try to reduce them by adding more convolutional layers with max-pooling (we will also add several dense layers to see whether this improves performance):
def create_model():
model = Sequential([
Conv2D(16, 1, padding='same', activation='relu', input_shape=(img_height, img_width, 1)),
MaxPooling2D(),
Conv2D(32, 3, padding='same', activation='relu'),
MaxPooling2D(),
Conv2D(64, 5, padding='same', activation='relu'),
MaxPooling2D(),
Conv2D(64, 5, padding='same', activation='relu'),
MaxPooling2D(),
Conv2D(64, 5, padding='same', activation='relu'),
MaxPooling2D(),
Flatten(),
Dense(128, activation='relu'),
Dropout(0.4),
Dense(64, activation='relu'),
Dropout(0.5),
Dense(8, activation='relu'),
Dropout(0.3),
Dense(1, activation='sigmoid')
]) model.compile(optimizer=OPTIMIZER,
loss='binary_crossentropy',
metrics=['accuracy', 'Precision', 'Recall'])
return model
Now our model has 671,185 parameters, significantly smaller numbers.
However, if we try to train our model, we will see next. Our model started to be too “pessimistic” and is predicting COVID for all patients. It appears that we made our model too simple.
Let’s reduce the structure to the following:
def create_model():
model = Sequential([
Conv2D(16, 1, padding='same', activation='relu', input_shape=(img_height, img_width, 1)),
MaxPooling2D(),
Conv2D(32, 3, padding='same', activation='relu'),
MaxPooling2D(),
Conv2D(64, 5, padding='same', activation='relu'),
MaxPooling2D(),
Conv2D(64, 5, padding='same', activation='relu'),
MaxPooling2D(),
Flatten(),
Dense(128, activation='relu'),
Dropout(0.4),
Dense(64, activation='relu'),
Dropout(0.5),
Dense(8, activation='relu'),
Dropout(0.3),
Dense(1, activation='sigmoid')
])
model.compile(optimizer=OPTIMIZER,
loss='binary_crossentropy',
metrics=['accuracy', 'Precision', 'Recall'])
return model
This model has 2,010,513 parameters — several times more than “not complex enough” model, but several times less than “too complex” model. It is therefore computationally cheaper and easier for the model to be trained.
Now we start seeing quite good results. During training, the model is going through “predict positive for everyone” stage, but overcomes it and gets back to proper predicting. It still starts to overfit after around 40 epochs (and we see the same picture with every resplit of our data), so, we will let our model train for 40 epochs and evaluate it after. | https://towardsdatascience.com/can-a-convolutional-neural-network-diagnose-covid-19-from-lungs-ct-scans-4294e29b72b | ['Ihor Markevych'] | 2020-05-03 02:58:25.165000+00:00 | ['Image Classification', 'Covid 19', 'Data Science', 'Coronavirus', 'Neural Networks'] |
The Loneliest Chair | The Loneliest Chair
Photo by Sam Moqadam on Unsplash
I sit in the corner of the room with you,
in what feels like the loneliest chair,
Like a hot seat made to break you down,
or cause you great despair.
I try to make some sense of it,
the shock just won’t reside,
There’s nothing I can do here now,
my hands are surely tied.
I cannot take your pain away,
or reverse your early fate,
That’s a fact I’ll have to live with,
it’s all too little, too late.
So I’ll sit in this corner,
in this lonely chair,
Hold your hands and kiss you,
this last moment we will share.
In loving memory
Author’s Mother.
SLP: All rights Reserved. | https://medium.com/genius-in-a-bottle/the-loneliest-chair-f87911bcc63 | ['Shannon Pike'] | 2020-12-20 14:09:12.988000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Love', 'Loss', 'Change', 'Death'] |
How to Decide the Right Price for Your Hotel Using Web Scraping? | The hospitality business has been continuously expanding for decades and shows no signs of stopping down. Travelers that are tech-savvy use internet platforms to plan, book, and experience their journeys.
Nowadays, customer experience has become one of the most important factors in the hotel industry’s high sales figures. While customer support and experience will always be vital in the hotel industry, the introduction of internet travel agencies has made the market more price-sensitive than ever before.
Price sensitivity is something that the e-commerce revolution brought to us, but it appears to stay for long. In e-commerce, the emphasis on the rate is gradually shifting, and user experience is expected to become a differentiator shortly.
If your prices aren’t comparable or better than your competitor's, you have a higher risk of losing the sale. In their search for the greatest deals, consumers now use price comparison portals that take data from many sources and show it all in one place for simple comparison.
To never be left alone, the hospitality sector is increasingly grasping the idea of big data and the countless ways of incorporating web data into appropriate hotel pricing may aid revenue growth and improve customer experience.
So, what will be the result? It is very simple: to stay competitive in the hotel sector, you must use web scraping to price your hotel.
Formulating Pricing Strategies
A competitive price isn’t the only factor to consider while developing a price structure. Many other factors should be considered when establishing a pricing plan for your company. Some conditions must be met before the process begins.
Recognize Your Buyers’ Personas
Buyers assist you in redefining your pricing strategy by determining your customers’ willingness to buy at a specific price point. This is critical for effectively pricing your services. Buyer profiles who are willing to pay extra as well as those who are extremely pricing sensitive should be met in your pricing approach.
Compiling the Information
In pricing, gathering useful data from the appropriate sources is critical. You can use this information to develop a real worth pricing plan that attracts different targeted categories. Cost is a difficult procedure that necessitates a large amount of data to get it right.
The most crucial data points you should be looking at are our internal information and competitive pricing data. Your price strategy will be heavily influenced by your competitor’s pricing structure. Web scraping services can be used to collect price data from competitor sites and internet travel platforms.
Factors Your Price Strategy Will Depend On
There are majorly 3 factors that you must consider while coming up with a cost policy.
Estimating the demand
Predictive analytics is a requirement for developing a long-term pricing policy that lasts for at least two years. When it comes to describing or forecasting anything, looking at historical data and understanding progressive trends is the best way to go.
It should give a good idea of the overall picture and help you to understand periodicity and how it relates to demand and reservation prices. You must also examine upcoming events as well as any external considerations. Other factors to consider are:
Patterns of demand
Seasonality and the rate of booking
Factors from outside
Assessing Market’s Reaction
Market response within industries varies greatly. As a result, it’s critical to know how your market reacts to price fluctuations and promotion strategies. The outcomes will have a significant impact on your pricing approach. To come up with a pricing structure, you should also divide your clients into several divisions.
Sub factors:
Division
Modeling and price elasticity
Response to offers
Competitive Price Modeling
As previously said, price competition is no longer an option, with competitiveness hitting new levels, thanks to comparison site engines and online travel companies.
This is where competitor analysis solutions like web crawling are useful. You may evaluate where you are competing and accurately know what it would take to defeat them by extracting rival prices from relevant web sources. Web crawling services like X-Byte Enterprise Crawling offer near-real-time crawls so that companies may see their competitors’ prices in real-time at any moment.
Price comparisons
Price in the market as a benchmark
Availability
Why Do You Need Site Data to Figure Out How Much Does a Hotel Cost?
Today’s informed buyers conduct thorough research. Before making a purchasing decision, they compare pricing from several websites. To respond to these active consumers, price comparison websites, particularly in the hospitality industry, have developed over the years. Consumers may compare costs across companies in only a few clicks using these websites. As a result, pricing pressure between enterprises becomes more intense. Dynamic pricing is used in this situation.
Pricing strategy, which may be used in a variety of industries including e-commerce and hotels, is a highly effective yet underappreciated revenue management solution. It is a proven method of boosting a company’s finance by increasing revenue and profitability. Target costing is known as a “game-changer,” particularly in competitive industries.
It’s difficult to set a price. Many hotels struggle with finding the appropriate balance between undervaluing and overpricing. They can enhance profit by adjusting room pricing daily, hourly, or even minutely using web applications from hotel price scraping.
What Factors Have an Impact on Hotel Pricing Dynamics?
The goal of a hotel pricing plan is straightforward: to optimize the bottom line. However, administering this complex pricing scheme is quite difficult. It is dependent on several factors, including:
1. Hotel Capacity
The capacity of hotels is the main factor to consider while finalizing the rates for booking. Hotel rates depend on room availability and the client’s requirement. If a hotel expects full booking for a certain event, then they can raise the price of their rooms and can still get sufficient booking to sell the rooms. Similarly, Hotel decreases the rate close to dates of arrival if they feel occupancy isn’t met. After analyzing other factors, you must check whether the pricing strategies make sense for your capacity.
2. Room Type
Normally, you’d expect a restaurant’s suites rooms to have the same price. This is not the case as each room has a distinct rating and delivers different benefits. A room with a view of a beach would be much more expensive than one with a view of the parking lot.
3. Discount Offers
Few travelers with a budget will always look for discounts and deals that save money. Promotions are a great way to boost up with and remain ahead of the competition.
4. Competitor’s Rates
Hotels frequently aim to match their competitors’ prices to boost income. It assists businesses in strategically positioning themselves in front of their clients by considering global market constraints.
5. Booking Date/Time
In previous times, hotel rates were adjusted depending on how much in advance clients made the bookings. Sometimes, clients that wait until the last month often make off with the best offers at the lowest prices.
6. Centralized Locations
There is a huge requirement for the hotels located in a city or close to famous site seeing locations. Likewise, room prices will increase if the hotel hosts conferences or seminars.
7. Change in Season
Mostly during the off-season, hotel room rates in popular destinations will also be lower. These hotels will raise prices during the high season to increase their revenue before prices drop.
8. Demand Forecasting
Fixing the “correct price” necessitates extensive forecasting. To price the hotel room properly, management must have a strong understanding of the demand level for each day.
9. Network Effects
The network effect is the rise in demand and value provided by service as more and more people use it. The network effect is a side effect of your hotel’s popularity. Consumers are willing to spend a higher price to remain in a desirable location.
10. Business Rules
Regulatory authorities such as the government keep a close eye on the hotel industry. The hotel industry’s pricing strategy should correspond to the price norms and regulations.
The above parameters will be retrieved and turned into useful, well-structured, and useable data via hotel data scraping.
How Hotels Today Use Dynamic Pricing to Deliver the Best Price at the Best Time?
Dynamic pricing has a bunch of benefits for hotel businesses.
Increase Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) and average daily rate (ADT)
Compare the pricing strategies in minutes, by analyzing competitors’ rates.
Increase the efficiency of the pricing process by automation, which makes it much easier, quicker, and more accurate.
Allow opportunities for experimentation with the “high to low” strategy, in which a hotel offers premium prices early in the day and then reduces them later if demand does not materialize. So, opposed to the “low to high” approach, wherein the price is raised dependent on the number of bedrooms reserved.
So, how do you come up with a dynamic pricing policy?
It depends on a timely, dependable supply of high-quality data scraped from various hotel websites. Thousands of web page’s real-time price factors are observed by web crawlers.
Hoteliers can use pricing web scraping to estimate when demand will be strong or low. During periods of low demand, prices are reduced to encourage guests to book empty rooms. Hotel prices, on the other hand, are higher during the peak holiday season or around important local events. Even though the original projection is incorrect, the price could be swiftly changed to account for viable market changes.
Apart from price monitoring, price data scraping is used to obtain:
Insightful analytic data
Useful reports
Data-driven approaches
Price web scraping is commonly used for competitive research. It provides actionable information that keeps you one step ahead of your competitors. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on your competitors’ prices to see how the market reacts. Companies can select between a premium business model and a premium price model based on the market trends.
A fully dynamic pricing strategy will be more tailored and adaptable. That is prices will differ from one buyer to the next depending on their purchasing behavior. Customer behavioral data, such as spending patterns and desire to shop about for a better deal, can be extracted through web data scraping.
Pricing intelligence technologies are used by a growing hotel room to help them alter their companies. You may gain more insights and understanding about customer preferences and demand curves once you have the relevant data from hotel performance scraping. Pricing settings could be altered continuously depending on this information to extract more value for your company.
Conclusion
Pricing is an important procedure for every business. The stakes of getting your perfect price in the hotel business are very high. It is a never-ending struggle that you will continuously need to fight with the support of a solid pricing policy and using competitors’ pricing data extraction tool. On the other side, as you gain a better understanding of the complexity of this procedure, the pricing process becomes easier.
Do you want to create a dynamic pricing strategy based on clear and trustworthy competitor data gathered from hundreds of flight and accommodation sites using web scraping? Contact our specialists at X-Byte Enterprise Crawling for web scraping services that are both efficient and cost-effective. | https://medium.com/@alpesh-khunt/how-to-decide-the-right-price-for-your-hotel-using-web-scraping-cb9126ec774 | ['Alpesh Khunt'] | 2021-11-25 09:43:17.784000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Hotel', 'Data Extraction', 'Web Scraping', 'Price'] |
7 Copywriting Resources for the Busy Business Owner | Source: Pixabay
Copywriting is a combination of art and science that takes years to master. Contrary to popular belief, the ability to craft a well-constructed sentence and use proper grammar does not make someone a good marketing copywriter.
Good copy makes your audience feel like your piece was written just for them. And really good copy persuades your audience to take action, but so subtly that they don’t feel like they’re being sold to. For this reason, it’s worth the cost to hire a professional copywriter.
But sometimes there isn’t time to have a copywriter create your words, or even review what you’ve written. If this is truly the case, you can use this collection of tips and tricks to write clearer, more compelling copy.
Articulate the benefits your business provides to customers
To successfully convey your message, you must communicate how you can help. By identifying readers’ needs and showing how you will help meet them, you’ll give people a real reason to get in touch with you and use your products or services.
This means you don’t start by talking about your 20 years in business or your family-owned structure. Sure these things are great, but they fall into the “So what?” category — as in your customer asks, “So what does that mean for me?” If your copy does not articulate benefits and leaves your audience asking “So what?” it’s not doing anything for you.
Now you’re saying, “Okay, but how do I do that?” It’s easy if you follow these tips!
Identify your target market and appeal to their “pain”
Determine who you are writing to, what their problem is, and how you fix it. Then write a short story about how one of your clients was experiencing this problem, how it was adversely affecting them, how you solved it, and how they’ve benefited since then. Viola!
Features vs. benefits
Always, ALWAYS write about benefits, not features. What’s the difference? Features are descriptors like “reflective yellow paint” and benefits are emotional elements like “keeps your kids safe when they ride their bikes at night.” It’s easy to find benefits — just ask yourself how each feature helps your customer and then write about that. You can also find a feature’s benefit by adding “so that” at the end: This backpack has reflective yellow tape so that your kids will be safe when riding their bikes in the dark.
Make your piece scanable
Break your writing up with headlines, graphics, and bulleted lists. These elements add visual interest and white space, making your piece look like it’s shorter and therefore easier to read.
Create an enticing hook
The first sentence’s job is to get people to read the second sentence; the second sentence’s job is to get people to read the third sentence; and so on. Create this “hook” structure by connecting your sentences with joining words like “and” and “but.” We’ve been told not to use joining word to start sentences in “real” writing, but they make it easy for readers to keep on reading!
Pay attention to your close
After the headline, the P. S. is the second most-read part of a letter. Take advantage of this by using the P.S. to reinforce your call to action. Something like “Call us within 10 days to receive a 25% discount” that has both a real benefit and a time limit works best.
Proofread
This is very important but often overlooked when people are in a hurry. A good proofreading trick is to read backwards, starting with the last word and reading back to the beginning. Or better yet, have someone else read your writing. Since they haven’t seen it before errors are more like to jump out for them.
Good luck in your copywriting! | https://medium.com/@chrisandersonwriting/7-copywriting-resources-for-the-busy-business-owner-89225b674b7c | ['Kristijan Bralo'] | 2019-11-05 16:36:01.928000+00:00 | ['Company', 'Business', 'Copywriting', 'Resources', 'Tips'] |
The fight against PM2.5 must not be seasonal but year-round [Thai Enquirer — Dec 24, 2020] | By Pornphrom Vikitsreth
It is not surprising that December has been a month that many have longed for. The festivities and bright colourful lights, the gathering of family and friends was something rather absent in the epidemic-struck 2020.
In addition to short glimpses of decent weather, Christmas-themed events, and the joyous build-up to the New Year; these last few years saw Bangkok welcoming two more seasonal traditions: 1) the occurrence of PM 2.5 and 2) the government actions on the matter.
The new normal
An important question to ask is why the two new ‘traditions’ are specific only to the winter months but not the rest of the year.
The answer is quite obvious. While the culprits of PM 2.5 — ranging from diesel combustion, industrial pollution, and open-air burning — are of course, abusive and detrimental all year round, the reason why it appears solely during these months is a matter of meteorology.
Dubbed as “radiative inversion”, the phenomenon occurs when a ridge from the high-pressure system dominating over China extends to Thailand during winter. The ridge brings cooler air and pollutants, which after a few days stabilizes and creates stagnant air conditions, limited vertical motion, and calm winds. The stillness accounts for the visual phenomena of PM2.5.
The second tradition is a more curious subject. While it doesn’t take an environmental guru to comprehend that our exorbitant polluting habits transpire throughout the year, not merely in winter months, it is astonishing to see that government actions are only being implemented during this period.
While the occurance of PM2.5 has its scientific reasons for happening when it does, this does not apply to the second.
Are there any reasons to loiter around in futility until we are besieged by the dark, grey sky before we decide to wake up and act? Surely not.
Or do policymakers need to wait until the issue reignites as a hot debate topic before actions can take place? Admittedly, only in these months can one could spectate the avalanche of news coverage and a hurried escalation of public anxiety on the issue. But make no mistake, these issues are year-round.
It is fair to assume that environmental issues are not high on most people’s priority as they dedicate their core focus towards economic well-being and other sources of personal happiness.
Attention is paid only when it poses an apparent danger to their quality of life.
But while the sudden skyrocketing of public attention is comprehensible, what is not is the corresponding seasonal display of government actions set to combat this crisis.
And the icing on this shambolic cake is for the few years since the crisis materialized, the eventual departure of PM2.5 is consistently accompanied by the swift exodus of government actions as well.
Seasonal improvisation
Government action can therefore be considered just “seasonal improvisation”, only looking to fix the problem after disaster has already struck, and without abandoning this myopic approach, we will always be cemented in the vicious cycle of this smoggy PM-filled winter months.
The problem is far too urgent for today’s temporary and seasonal approach.
Let us look at some of the past and current measures. The 2019 winter PM 2.5 cycle saw government regulations being rolled out such as expanding the “Truck-Free” zone from the Ratchadapisek ring road to the outer Kanchanapisek ring road, increasing the number of vehicle checkpoints up to 50, and prohibiting trucks from entering central Bangkok on odd-number days. While this may seem like useful measures, it comically lasted only from January to February — an elongated act covering an entire two months! When March arrived and PM 2.5 was no longer trendy, the measures vanished.
The same old trick is now replayed in this cycle. Trucks, the go-to culprits, are now banned from entering again, and there is also a sudden recollection of the need to inspect emission levels for public bus exhausts and factories.
Should the procedures remain temporary, we can expect to see these trucks return to their business-as-usual ways in two months’ time.
Fighting the tough fight with strong measures
To be fair to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), they seem sincere in their long term plans to tackle the problem. While a lot more can be done, electric feeder shuttle buses and electric passenger boats in the old town canal are adequate starting points.
Nevertheless, the short and medium-term actions need to be reconsidered and quickly. There is a necessity to introduce permanent, rather than temporary, measures.
Instead of the seasonal ban of trucks on odd-number days or other ineffective policies, a permanent Low Emissions Zone (LEZ) should be examined. Already used in many cities worldwide, this is a traffic pollution charge scheme aimed at trucks and heavy-duty vehicles where those that do not conform to various emissions standards would be charged upon entering the specified zones — while those conforming would enter free of charge. (This is different to London’s Congestion Charge as it targets only trucks and heavy duty not standard vehicles).
This permanent, market-driven measure is more lenient than a ban which allows it to last throughout the year. It is a financial mechanism that is likely to incentivize vehicles to adapt to lower their emissions.
Cities with this scheme were able to proudly boast their achievements. Parallel to a noteworthy reduction of PM2.5, Berlin LEZ also reduced its diesel particles by 58% and nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 20%. Similarly, London LEZ slashed its black carbon by 40–50% and its feasibility study predicted gains of 5200 years of life, 310,000 fewer cases of respiratory symptoms, and 30,000 fewer cases of respiratory medication.
A permanent measure can also be applied to the building sector as well. In contrast to the popular understanding, the real emissions associated with buildings are not the construction but the operation phase. This is related to power consumption or emissions from vehicles that have direct interaction with the buildings.
More stringent building standards would go a long way. Today’s timing makes it even more critical as the rapid expansion of the city’s public transport system, especially in the Eastern part of town, is vigorously driving up real estate projects. If adequate standards are not in place, these new buildings will further contribute significantly towards air quality degradation.
It is without a doubt that PM 2.5 is now a serious issue and it requires serious measures. The days of “seasonal improvisation” approaches are over. While PM2.5 and the focus of the public may only be visible in winter months, government actions aimed at eradicating this crisis must be present all year round. If not, we may very well be accustomed to a grey Christmas and a smoggy New Years. | https://medium.com/@vikitsreth/the-fight-against-pm2-5-must-not-be-seasonal-but-year-round-thai-enquirer-dec-24-2020-637ed137cf31 | ['Pornphrom Vikitsreth'] | 2021-02-01 02:52:56.653000+00:00 | ['Pollution', 'Environment', 'Clean Air', 'Bangkok', 'Policy'] |
Code Smell 05 — Comment Abusers | Code Smell 05 — Comment Abusers
Code has lots of comments. Comments are coupled to implementation and hardly maintained.
Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash
Problems
Maintainability
Obsolete Documentation
Solutions
1) Refactor methods.
2) Rename methods to more declarative ones.
3) Break methods.
4) If a comment describe what a method does, name the method with this description.
5) Just comment important designs decisions.
Examples:
Libraries
Class Comments
Method Comments
Sample Code:
Wrong
Right
Detection
Linters can detect comments and check the ratio comments / lines of code against a predefined threshold.
More info:
Tags | https://medium.com/dev-genius/code-smell-05-comment-abusers-feec3aeb926 | ['Maximiliano Contieri'] | 2020-11-03 14:31:36.495000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Code Smells', 'Clean Code', 'Programming'] |
The best feature selection technique for text classification | A simple code for feature selection!
Before we jump into the code lets first understand a few things about feature selection
What is Feature selection?
Feature selection is the process of reducing the number of input variables when developing a predictive model. It is desirable to reduce the number of input variables to both reduce the computational cost of modelling and, in some cases, to improve the performance of the model.
2. How does feature selection work?
Feature Selection is the process where you automatically or manually select those features which contribute most to your prediction variable or output in which you are interested in. Having irrelevant features in your data can decrease the accuracy of the models and make your model learn based on irrelevant features.
3. Importance of feature selection in text classification.
Feature selection is one of the most important steps in the field of text classification. As text data mostly have high dimensionality problem. To reduce the curse of high dimensionality, feature selection techniques are used. The basic idea behind feature selection is keeping only important features and removing less contributing features.
Issues associated with high dimensionality are as follows:
1. Adds un-necessary noise to the model
2. High space and time complexity
3. Overfitting
The feature selection technique we will talk about today is the Chi-Square feature selection.
The Chi-square test is used in statistics to test the independence of two events. More specifically in feature selection, we use it to test whether the occurrence of a specific term and the occurrence of a specific class are independent.
Without any further ado, let's jump into the code
# Load libraries from sklearn.feature_selection import SelectKBest from sklearn.feature_selection import chi2 # N features with highest chi-squared statistics are selected chi2_features = SelectKBest(chi2, k = can be any number) X = chi2_features.fit_transform(X, y)
The first two lines of the code are just importing the packages needed for chi-square feature selection. SelectKBest function is used for selecting the K number of top features based on the Chi-square score. K can be any number depending on the number of features you are dealing with.
For example, if you have 50,000 features(columns) after creating bag of words. In such a case, you should try keeping the K value from 40,000 to 10,000 and check which value gives the best results. Once you find the optimal number that gives the best accuracy you can finally set it as default K value.
This article is for people who are starting with NLP and are stuck with the question of which feature selection technique to use and how to implement it. Feature selection for text cleaning can be a headache in most cases. This code can help you with the most basic feature selection techniques for text cleaning and can be used straight away.
Thank you for reading; I hope you learned something new!
Cheers. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/the-best-feature-selection-technique-for-text-classification-23199b4a4f8d | ['Amruthjithraj V.R'] | 2020-10-14 12:49:38.115000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Code', 'Naturallanguageprocessing', 'NLP'] |
Debate vs Refusal of the Call | Introduction
After the Call to Adventure happens, the Protagonist’s Ordinary World is thrown off-balance and she must return to balance.
By reacting, she is forced to deal with the complication.
The Protagonist’s reaction, how she’s going to deal with this situation, is the Debate Section, sometimes called the Refusal of the Call.
How Myth works
In a Myth, the Hero (usually) refuses the call because readily accepting Change in your life is a hard thing, very hard.
The Hero, like most humans, does not consider changing and therefore, she “refuses the call.”
Because of this refusal, a MENTOR enters her life to jump-start the Journey.
Refusal of the Call
Because the Protagonist loves her Ordinary World, she refuses to leave this place she calls “home.”
Because of the Call, the Protagonist is given a Complication so pressing that she must stop what she’s doing and deal with this.
Not right now, Yesterday!
As a result, she will usually choose her known (Ordinary World) rather than the unknown (Call to Adventure).
Why Refusal is weak
This has worked for thousands of years and it’s hard for me to say it’s weak, trust me, I already know the sh$$ I’m going to hear about this.
But it’s not a weak beat, I think our phrase for this beat is weak, calling it the Refusal of the Call doesn’t quite capture the ESSENCE of this beat.
Honestly, think about it.
When you have a Complication in your life, do you refuse the complication or do you deal with it?
Debate
And how do you deal with a Complication?
You debate ways to solve it, to avoid it, and you choose the best way with the information you have on hand right now.
NOTE: That’s why screenwriters love Dilemmas because it’s such an extraordinary event, the Debate section can hold the audience’s attention for half and sometimes, the entire length of a film.
And the format is the same: the Protagonist debates between two choices, make sense?
Why Debate works
By calling this beat a Debate, it opens you to bringing richer material in your Story Design.
With richness, you bring dynamic and diversified ways of Story Design and capturing the imagination of your reader, your audience, and many times, even yourself!
Conclusion
Like the Moral Premise argument, using the Refusal of the Call only deals with half of the problem.
Sometimes, the Hero decides to accept the call.
Therefore, we just “skip” the beat, that’s not working for me and that’s shallow Story Design.
By incorporating both sides, you clarify the beat in an efficient term.
Debate.
Use it and it will bring your stories dynamic power and diversity! | https://medium.com/@miquielbanks/debate-vs-refusal-of-the-call-ea5ce6c9919e | ['Miquiel Banks'] | 2020-12-10 11:32:39.868000+00:00 | ['Writing Tips', 'Novel Writing', 'Screenwriting', 'Heros Journey', 'Miquiel Banks'] |
Introduction To My New Column: Sustainability Made Simple | Introduction To My New Column: Sustainability Made Simple
Attempting to make sustainability accessible for everyone
Photo by Sarah Dorweiler on Unsplash
2020 has forced all of us to take a long, cold, hard look at ourselves because let’s be honest — there’s not been much else to do.
2020 has been a horrendous year for all of us, however, it’s also given people time to reflect and spend more time on themselves — at least for me, that’s what it’s felt like.
I’ve worked the most I have in my life, but also I’ve watched loads of informative videos, documentaries and focused on the type of person I want to be in 2021, rather than dwelling on 2020.
Sustainability is something that admittedly, I’d turned my nose up at a lot of the time, because it always felt so far-fetched and difficult to ascertain. There are so many people on the internet who preach an “all or nothing” approach, which I think is one of the main reasons that people don’t make conscious choices to be more sustainable — because you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.
However, I became very inspired after watching David Attenborough's “A Life On Our Planet” — and decided a couple of months ago that I wanted to try and be more sustainable, which is the purpose of this column.
Every week I’m going to be sharing my learnings around sustainability, as well as things I’m doing as the “average” person to care for our planet more, and ultimately document my sustainability journey.
One thing I also want to try and do is present sustainability through the eyes of someone that lives a pretty normal life. I find it difficult to relate to influencers and YouTubers who preach about sustainability and don’t recognise their privilege.
To be sustainable is a privilege in itself, so I’ll do my best to make my pieces as balanced as possible and present multiple options based on income where necessary. There’s no judgement — I’m here to share knowledge and hopefully raise awareness of the little things we can do to be better, and look after our planet.
Hope you enjoy this column, and any feedback would be greatly appreciated! | https://medium.com/the-innovation/introduction-to-my-new-column-sustainability-made-simple-d6e305c56933 | ['Claire Stapley'] | 2020-12-30 11:05:46.188000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Nature', 'Sustainability', 'Innovation', 'Climate Change'] |
Is This the Most Important Moment in Mainstream Movie History? | Is This the Most Important Moment in Mainstream Movie History?
Read on. I just may be serious.
In 1977, we were taken on the ride of our lives … and it ended with a reward. Well, two, actually.
Beautiful.
I was done by then. As soon as the end credits rolled and my family stood up and walked into the lobby, I quickly discovered I could not follow. My legs were totally numb and I could not stand, a fact that I seem to incorporate in every article I write about “Star Wars,” the first film or the franchise in general.
Lightning struck and I was damaged — or rewarded, as the case may be — for life. I knew from there what I wanted to do — no, scratch that, needed to do — for a living.
So I became a writer-producer for film and television.
Hell, some 42 years later during “The Rise of Skywalker” I choked back a tear when Chewie received his long-overdue medal. I’m mush when it comes to these films, a 56-year-old sucker deaf to toxic fandom who will buy anything this franchise will sell me.
Discerning? Sure. I didn’t care for “The Phantom Menace,” “Attack of the Clones,” or the “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” theatrical pilot. I could take or leave the two Ewok TV movies and “The Star Wars Holiday Special” is blasphemy on a hotplate.
But who cares, really? Life gets messy and imperfect too. Despite my less than enthusiastic reaction to the aforementioned franchise entries … I admit I’ve watched them all dozens of times.
I told you. I was scarred for life in ’77.
That said, I made a big comment in the title of this piece and I meant it. I believe the medal scene in 1977’s “Star Wars” just may be the single most important moment in the history of mainstream cinema.
Read on. | https://medium.com/writing-for-your-life/is-this-the-most-important-moment-in-mainstream-movie-history-1f96fbcf3a3a | ['Joel Eisenberg'] | 2020-12-14 19:45:53.995000+00:00 | ['Star Wars', 'Movies', 'Television', 'Entertainment', 'Science Fiction'] |
Blog: MSC Collaborates with North American safety agencies | Blog: MSC Collaborates with North American safety agencies
Trip Report: Last year I spent four weeks in Canada and USA on a research trip engaging with organisations who play a role in land-based outdoor recreation safety. The trip was made possible with the generous support of the Mountain Safety Council and as a 2018 recipient of a New Zealand Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship.
Olympic National Park, Washington State
Over the course of my travel, I met with a range of organisations covering a diverse variety of land-based outdoor recreation activities, with the common theme that they were all relevant to the prevention-focused work of the MSC and my role as Partnerships and Insights Manager.
The aim of my travel was to engage with organisations who play a role in public outdoor recreation safety (prevention), with two primary objectives:
To learn about prevention strategies and initiatives used in North America, with the intention of applying these ideas in New Zealand and, To share examples of successful land-based outdoor recreation prevention strategies and initiatives used in New Zealand.
While travelling I met with representatives from organisations such as the British Columbian Wildlife Federation, AdventureSmart Canada, BC Parks, Parks Canada, Canadian Avalanche Association, Avalanche Canada, Jasper National Park, Banff National Park, US National Parks Service, Olympic National Park, North Cascades National Park, US National Forest Service and Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.
“Too often, we have a habit of spending time developing our own solutions to problems rather than looking for partners who have already developed proven techniques. In May 2018, I met with Nathan Watson of the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council to share information, best practices, and strategies related to statistics, data analysis, emerging trends in safety and visitor risk, emergency management, and communications tools. This valuable partnership has continued and as we look to update our data analysis and communication techniques to improve prevention strategies, we will continue to share best practices with the NZMSC”. — Lucas Habib, Visitor Safety and Compliance Officer, Parks Canada
Lynn Canyon Park
As well as these meetings I also had the opportunity to get outdoors and experience many iconic destinations as a visitor and recreation participant. The combination of meetings and personal experiences contributed to my research findings.
Through these experiences, I have developed 8 primary findings. My full trip report, prepared for the Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship, provides a more in-depth discussion on each of these. In summary, the 8 primary findings represent prevention strategies and initiatives that could be implemented to improve outdoor safety in New Zealand:
A participant focused track grading and communication system Track condition updates and public reporting tool School curriculum integrated learning resources Implement new ‘safety funnels’ (or refine existing) Emotive signage Game Animal classification International Prevention Symposium The ‘Red Chair Effect’
Valley Of The Five Lakes, Jasper National Park
“It is really exciting to connect with somebody who shares my vision and enthusiasm for evidence-based prevention work in outdoor recreation and I am looking forward to future collaborations.” — Pascal Haegeli, PhD. NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Avalanche Risk Management Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
I hope that those who read my report will find the key learnings and recommendations to be interesting, ideally inspiring discussion and further thinking.
Additionally, I hope that my experience inspires others to pursue a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship and I encourage everyone to consider this unique opportunity. | https://medium.com/@nz_msc/blog-msc-collaborates-with-canadian-safety-agencies-8f21598ebe42 | ['Nz Mountain Safety'] | 2019-01-15 23:50:54.001000+00:00 | ['Hiking', 'Outdoors', 'Safety', 'Environment', 'Canada'] |
A Complete Introduction To Time Series Analysis (with R):: Innovations Algorithm | The Innovations algorithm recursive computation
In the last article, we studied in depth the famous Durbin-Levinson algorithm, which allowed us to recursively compute the coefficients of the best linear predictor given by
satisfying the following
, without having to explictly invert the Gamma matrix. In this short article, we will take a look at the Innovations algorithm, another algorithm that will allow us to iteratively make predictions.
Innovations algorithm
We will now take a look at the Innovations algorithm. First, we are going to re-define the BLP of X_{n} as follows:
Next, we define the MSE as you might expect:
We define the one-step innovations as (prediction errors) as
That is,
At this point, you can already see that each “innovation” is definininf the difference by adding one prediction at the time. In order to facilitate computations, we define the following vectors:
That is, this is just a collection of the observations and the innovations, defined as column vectors.
which contains a collection of coefficients for each BLP at each timestep. We now propose the next claim without proof:
This is why if we want to use this algorithm, we will actually want our series to be stationary, or to be turned into one, and be able to assess this using statistical tests and diagnostics. Now, provided that our A_{n} matrix is non-singular (therefore invertible), we can define the matrix
Now, we define the matrix
that is
Which is the same matrix, without the diagonal 1’s. Then, we have, using some simply algebra that
So that
Now, why is this useful? Rememer that these are vectors, which means that we can use these step-predictions to make a new one as follows:
Finally, as you might expect, there is a way to compute thesre recursively. Let
Then, we can compute
and that’s it! The proof of correctness of this algorithm is rather involved, so I will not present it here, but if you are interested, you can check out these lecture slides. We will come back to this algorithm later when we show predictions for it.
How to R
For this example, we will use wine dataset , already built-in in R. First, let’s import some libraries:
Next, let’s inspect the data. It looks as follows:
From documentation: “The wine dataset contains the results of a chemical analysis of wines grown in a specific area of Italy. Three types of wine are represented in the 178 samples, with the results of 13 chemical analyses recorded for each sample.” We will perform inference on this data using the Innovations algorithm in the itmsr package. Let’s now plot the data:
This data actually has a yearly seasonality, so we will use a lag of 12. We will fit a model implictly and then check for stationarity using the tests we presented before:
According to the tests, there is a strong evidence that the residual series is stationary. as we fail to reject the null hypothesis in the majority of the tests. We can also verify this visually with the diagnostic plots:
This is still not the best, but it is a good application of the Classical Decomposition model. We can also fit an ARMA(p,q) model as follows (we will study these next!). We can use these residuals to apply an ARMA(p,q) model on top:
and we see that this one definitely looks stationary from the tests and diagnostic plots. Finally, we can use the calssical decomposition transformations and the fitted ARMA model to obtain predictions as follows:
Which under the hood, uses precisely the Innovations algorithm.
Next time
This concludes the end of this chapter! In the next article, we will begin our discussion of ARMA processes, which will allow us to combine the power of AR(p) and MA(q) processes into one. Stay tuned, and happy learning!
Last time
Durbin-Levinson algorithm
Main page
Follow me at | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/a-complete-introduction-to-time-series-analysis-with-r-innovations-algorithm-1f1e72fc4061 | ['Hair Parra'] | 2020-11-08 17:12:17.840000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Statistics', 'Mathematics', 'Forecasting', 'Time Series Analysis'] |
What Is a Belief You Were Raised With That You Now Disagree With? | What Is a Belief You Were Raised With That You Now Disagree With?
Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash
Manipulating
all for gain is path to stress;
I have found pure bliss
and reward in aligning
with currents of Universe | https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/what-is-a-belief-you-were-raised-with-that-you-now-disagree-with-c57089a954b8 | [] | 2020-12-23 07:26:38.427000+00:00 | ['Wealth', 'Introspection', 'Tanka', 'Spiritual Awakening', 'Happiness'] |
Part 2: Dynamic Delivery in multi-module projects at Bumble | In part 1 of my series of articles, I have already explained to you what Dynamic Delivery is and what API it has. In this article, I describe in detail exactly how I used Dynamic Delivery in our application Bumble and why, in particular, integration was so easy. As a result, I was able to reduce the size of the application by half a megabyte for 99% of our users, turning a function which was available only in a given geolocation into a downloadable module.
I hope this will be as useful as it was for me :)
Bumble Brew
Recently we have been experimenting with offline interaction with users and have added a new screen featuring a QR code which when scanned at the door would allow you entry into a restaurant, cafe or shop, for example. This is what it looks like:
There is no particular logic to it, but it has a very attractive background. In fact, given its maximum size it is 547-KB-attractive. The specific nature of this screen means that it’s only going to be used by a very small number of users, for example by city dwellers heading for an offline meeting venue. But all users still have half a megabyte of space taken up on their devices. Basically, this makes it an ideal candidate for Dynamic Delivery.
Preparing the Brew module
We use RIBs architecture when creating screens. Articles on this architecture will appear in the future, but for now, to make it easier to understand, we are going to consider RIB as a Fragment . This is because the underlying idea is the same: there is a self-contained screen element with or without UI, that can either be integrated into other elements or can integrate them itself.
In a multi-module app for whatever screen module it is, whether Fragment or RIB , the following is true: it has a public API which describes the interaction with this screen from outside; and an internal API which is needed for the functioning of this screen. Usually we segregate public and private API using access modifiers. However, you can go further and separate public and private API into two different modules: :components:BrewScreen:Interface and :components:BrewScreen:Implementation .
In the first module we describe how to work with this screen, and the dependencies it has.
The whole public API fits into 4 interfaces, which the application module will work with. Dependency declares dependencies needed by this screen. brewOutput acts as a callback for obtaining results from this screen; uiScreen provides information about what is needed and how to display it on-screen (the screen does not perform a network query itself, but receives the results of an external network query); hotpanelTracker is for analytics tracking. Customisation allows you to change the appearance of the screen, for example, replacing the logo and background with branded alternatives. This approach makes it much easier to adapt existing screens for other applications. Output is the result of the screen. In our case, you can only close the screen. However, in future there may be a new event, for example, for opening another screen in the application.
In the second module we implement all the logic and UI for this screen.
Practically all the classes of this module are internal , apart from BrewBuilder . BrewBuilder is a factory that will create an instance of RIB , which we can use in future.
Creating this sort of factory is extremely important for Dynamic Delivery, as it is very easy to use via reflection. All dependencies are expressed by one interface, which will be available without reflection, which means that it can be implemented inside the application module. The creation process itself also requires calling with only one previously known parameter.
DynamicDeliveryContainer
Since all RibBuilders implement a single Builder<Dependency> interface, so this means that a generalised RIB container can be created for all dynamically downloadable screens.
The implementation of DynamicDeliveryContainer does the following:
it asks DynamicDeliveryFeatureDataSource , the implementation covered in part 1, whether the childRibConfiguration.moduleName module is installed or not. if the module is installed, then it calls childRibConfiguration.build(bundle) and attaches the created RIB . if a module is not installed, then it requests installation of the childRibConfiguration.moduleName module and displays some attractive UI. once the module is installed it replaces the attractive UI with a downloaded RIB .
Identical logic can be implemented easily with the help of fragments since fragments also support child fragments being deployed inside them.
Configuration of Dynamic Feature Module
Dynamic Feature Module is an ordinary Gradle module. Based on our example let’s look at the configuration:
Android Gradle Plugin contains a new plugin for these kinds of modules: com.android.dynamic-feature . At the same time, using this plugin imposes no limitations in practical terms; it’s fine to reuse configuration scripts for your modules ( ProjectHelper.configureAndroidLibraryProject ).
Documentation states that versionCode and versionName should not be set since these values are automatically received from the application module. Yes, that’s right; only these values can be cached. I have encountered a situation where the project stopped building after these values changed in the application module. I therefore decided to manually install a version, reusing the application’s properties file.
The dependencies which you specify will be correctly handled by the plugin. Only those dependencies which are not in the main module will be included in this module. In this case, it is just :components:BrewScreen:Implementation .
At the CI testing stage, I discovered that androidTest not only doesn’t run but cannot even build. For some reason, when attempting to build a module for testing instead of behaving like a Dynamic Feature Module, it behaves like an ordinary one. For this reason, lots of errors occur at the stage when manifests and resources merge. All the tests are either in the application module or in the screen module so this means that there’s no point even attempting to run them. For this reason, I switched off completely all the tasks associated with androidTest .
This is what the manifest for this type of module looks like:
This is where we configure module behaviour. In this case, the module is not Instant App; it will be installed on-demand and has an entirely localised name: @string/dynamic.delivery.feature.brew . It is important to have an entirely localised name since this name will be shown in the Google Play dialogue.
In this case, the localised name of the module is Brew, and it will be used in its uninflected form in all languages; the size of the module was increased for the purposes of the test.
You can also configure whether this module needs to be installed, when the application itself is being installed. This may be useful when you are making a Dynamic Feature Module from the registration screens, for deleting them after completing registration. dist:fusing is responsible for whether or not you need to include this module in APK for devices on Android 4.4 and lower, but we no longer support these.
Android Gradle Plugin will set the split field in the manifest itself, to which it writes the name of the Gradle module from the project.name . It is precisely this name which needs to be used for downloading the module. You cannot change this name without changing the name of the module.
You can read up in more detail about all these possible options in the documentation.
Here is how the final structure of Dynamic Feature Module turned out:
BrewCustomisationProvider is responsible for providing the image identifier to bg_brew.webp . We will create this BrewCustomisationProvider via reflection and use it to create an instance of Dependency . Since we will be deferring the creation of the Dependency until after the module installs, we won’t have any problems.
In Dynamic Feature Module be careful with resources! Those inside the module need to be accessed via this module’s R class. Those in the application’s module, need to be accessed via the application’s R class (as I do for ic_bumble_logo ). This is very important; otherwise, you will get ResourceNotFoundException . You need to be extremely careful, since, due to the dependency on the application’s module, aapt will generate an R class along with identifiers for all the resources from the application’s module.
Configuration of application
First of all, we configure the application’s module.
A new property has appeared in BaseAppModuleExtension : dynamicFeatures , in which it is essential to list all the paths to the Dynamic Feature Modules.
We also depend on DynamicDeliveryContainer , which performs the module download and displays it on the screen, and BrewScreen:Interface , where only interfaces for working with the screen are declared.
We will create a class where we will store all the constants for working with the Dynamic Feature Module. These constants include: the class name for the factory creating RIB , the class name for the customisation factory and the name of the module as in Gradle.
Since these classes are used via reflection, we add them to proguard.
All that’s left is to do is to create an instance of DynamicDeliveryContainer , send the necessary parameters to it and connect it to Activity .
The code given above can be made lighter by moving the creation of dependencies to Dagger. However, describing Dagger components and modules here would make the code more complicated, so, in the interests of simplicity, I create all the dependencies in place.
Bumble Brew is not available to all users, only to those who live in the city where a given event is being held. Also, users are included in a special user group. The application receives the list of groups which a user is part of when it first connects to the server. And that means that at this moment we can say whether or not the button for opening the Brew screen will be displayed. And at this time we can request deferred installation of the module using SplitInstallManager.deferredInstall .
How I broke tests
In our team we use fully-fledged Е2Е tests. The testing toolbox (in my case Appium) installs the application and simulates the user touching the screen. At the same time, the application itself uses an up-to-date version of the back-end. To install the application, we use the following function:
For tests we use AppBundle , from which we create APKS and install it on the device. Installation of APKS takes place using the install-apks command. And if you also use bundletool for your Е2Е tests, don’t forget to add the —-modules _ALL_ parameter, in order to add all the Dynamic Features straightaway. We didn’t have this parameter so all the tests for Brew started to fail.
As I mentioned earlier, unless a given application is installed from Google Play then it is unable to install modules. Either they will all be installed straightaway — or none will be at all. For this reason, the approach with —-modules _ALL_ does not cover scenarios for installing this module. At the present time we use Internal App Sharing for testing Dynamic Feature.
However, Google recently released a new version of com.google.android.play:core , in which FakeSplitInstallManagerFactory appeared. It is still not entirely equivalent to the ordinary SplitInstallManager , but it can nevertheless increase the quality of automated testing. It has 2 parameters for setting its behaviour:
setShouldNetworkError — after installing this, any installation will terminate with an error. modulesDirectory for setting the folder on the device from which you need to install requested modules. The modules themselves are copied into this folder in the form of APK.
You can obtain the necessary APK for installation using the following command:
As a result, the APK files obtained need to be sent to the device via adb and the folder needs to be identified in FakeSplitInstallManagerFactory .
Even though this approach is closer to what really happens, to use it you need a separate application build, using FakeSplitInstallManagerFactory . You also need to introduce changes to the testing toolbox. So, it is probably worth doing it when there are more dynamic models.
To verify that reflection is correct, use ordinary unit and integration tests. In my case these are Е2Е and the integration test, which simply navigates from the main screen to the Brew screen.
Conclusions
The Google technology, Dynamic Delivery, allows you to download and delete modules while the application is actually working.
If you have a multi-module project, then it’s possible that all the modules are clearly segregated into public and private API. Creating separate modules for each of them makes it easier to use Dynamic Delivery in the project. Given this structure, you only need to use reflection for creating instances of public API classes.
When all the application screens have a similar architecture and have clearly designated dependencies, you can create a universal container for downloading and displaying Dynamic Feature Modules. Using this container, you can very quickly convert those application screens which users rarely use to Dynamic Feature. And, thus, you can reduce the size of the application even further. | https://medium.com/bumble-tech/part-2-dynamic-delivery-in-multi-module-projects-at-bumble-2220ad097ced | [] | 2020-03-19 16:01:01.011000+00:00 | ['Kotlin', 'Dynamic Delivery', 'Android App Development', 'Programming', 'Android'] |
Using Rick and Morty To Solve An Agile Estimation Dilemma | Agile is great. Agile is wonderful. Agile is the savior of all things related to Software Engineering.
On paper.
In practice, classic Agile is difficult, confusing, frustrating, and just downright hard to implement. Because of knowing that many people would argue the preceding statement, we need some contextualization here. Therefore, a clarified statement reads:
At a small company with less than 10 software developers and a handful of hardware engineers, where the projects change constantly and the number of people working on any single project can change from week to week, classic Agile is difficult, confusing, frustrating, and just downright hard to implement.
Some aspects of Agile are awesome for small teams at small companies. This is doubly true when the current projects closely follow the needs and opportunities for the business. Smaller companies do not have the luxury of buffers between the Engineers and the opportunities. Often new opportunities require new features or tweaks to existing products to land the deal. This places the development group immediately in the middle of the uncertain and ever-changing sales cycle.
Photo by Alejandra Ezquerro on Unsplash
When this happens, the development team feels like a rudderless ship in a storm with the winds of change blowing them around onto different projects whenever a big gust comes through.
This manifests in constantly shifting development groups and continually changing projects. At the surface, an agile method seems to be ideal for attacking these changes.
However, two of the big issues with using Agile in this environment are regarding calculating velocity and doing project estimation. We could consider these tightly coupled aspects as two sides of the same coin. The problem that arises, as stated above, is that when projects fluctuate often and the people working on the project vary week to week, it is nearly impossible to calculate group velocity and therefore no metric data exists to support a validated estimation technique.
Basically, without a consistent means to measure velocity, estimation stays rooted in the realm of the WAG (Wild Ass Guess). In classic Agile, removing a key metric like velocity initiates a breakdown of the whole process. Instead of moseying along in this manner while the process crumbles around us, why not be proactive and deconstruct the whole method first and then rebuild it with solutions for the gaps and issues so that the overall process is stronger and geared towards the people, team, and company using the system?
The following explains how our team built success in a custom agile process and created one solution to the challenges around the estimation of use cases.
Photo by Phillip Larking on Unsplash
One of the key challenges for agile in this environment concerns how to present apples-to-apples comparison and prioritization for the overall effort required to complete business targets and features. This covers both the prioritization needs of the development team while also considering the customer needs for the organization.
The show Rick and Morty actually provides an amazing and simple answer to this conundrum and in doing so, for a small team and that team’s process, solves a critical Agile dilemma.
The Problems with Agile
A “point” to one person is not the same “point” to another person, both in terms of estimation understanding and in terms of actual output. In this scenario, static development teams do not exist. Therefore, the classic agile team modeling is not valid. It predicates velocity as a metric upon a LOT of assumptions that the articles and instructional books and videos never really get into. Classic agile teams necessitate the removal of a lot of variables:
Static Teams — The prototypical team is 3–5 people, and it does not change. That allows the team to estimate effort together and for measured velocity as a predictor for future effort.
— The prototypical team is 3–5 people, and it does not change. That allows the team to estimate effort together and for measured velocity as a predictor for future effort. Individual Contributions Are Minimized — The classic team approach minimizes discrepancies in what points mean to individuals and applies that logic to a team. That is great when there are static teams. It is not great when people move around and the whole calculation starts over each time a change occurs.
— The classic team approach minimizes discrepancies in what points mean to individuals and applies that logic to a team. That is great when there are static teams. It is not great when people move around and the whole calculation starts over each time a change occurs. Team Effort Maximizes Output Against Skill Level — When planning and estimating for future projects, having a team velocity allows for reliable and higher-confidence estimation. When attempting to apply individuals against future projects when there are a wide range of skills (beginner, intermediate, expert) and pacing (slow vs fast). These variables make this planning difficult, if not outright impossible, without assigning people to future projects upfront.
— When planning and estimating for future projects, having a team velocity allows for reliable and higher-confidence estimation. When attempting to apply individuals against future projects when there are a wide range of skills (beginner, intermediate, expert) and pacing (slow vs fast). These variables make this planning difficult, if not outright impossible, without assigning people to future projects upfront. Past Metrics Drive Future Planning — The velocity calculation is key to a lot of the classic agile modeling. It is only possible after some period of work where velocity measurements average out to a reasonable confidence level. At that point velocity measurements are available to predict future projects. When changing teams and priorities, this cycle starts all over again and never gets to where this data can drive the process forward.
So how do we get around these issues and provide reasonable estimations for future projects? How do we standardize what a “point” means in a way that we can apply it in a general sense for planning? How do we remove as many of the variables as possible?
Rick and Morty provides an amazing and simple answer to this conundrum and in doing so, for a small team and that team’s process, solves a critical Agile dilemma.
Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay
Meet Mr. Meeseeks
What is an average Software Engineer? They seem to always initially have a friendly and helpful demeanor, willing to assist anyone who asks. They like to solve problems and complete the task in front of them. If that task is outside their abilities to solve, they will stay on it like a dog on the hunt.
As time goes by and the task remains unfinished, their attitude and mental state begin to worsen dramatically. If the task goes long enough, they are even prone to violent behavior and outright insanity. Software Engineers asked to pair program are known to distrust and attack one another as their sanity decays, although they will continue to work on finding any possible solution to the task at hand, including collaborating with other Software Engineers. The psychological and physical symptoms of this painful existence can manifest in less than 24 hours.
The funny thing is, the description above is the description of Mr. Meeseeks, a character from Rick and Morty. I simply replaced “Mr. Meeseeks” with “Software Engineer” and voilà! The reflection of the fictional character against an average Software Engineer is frighteningly accurate.
In the show Rick and Morty, Mr. Meeseeks appear when someone presses the button on a Meeseeks box. When this event occurs, Mr. Meeseeks springs into existence and exists only long enough to fulfill a singular purpose. After they serve that purpose, they expire and vanish into thin air. Borrowing from the show, their motivation to help others comes from the fact that existence is painful for a Meeseeks, and the only way to remove the pain of existence is to complete the provided task. Physical violence cannot harm them. The longer Meeseeks stay alive, the more sanity they lose. In the show, the main character Rick warns the Smith family to keep their tasks simple.
Unfortunately, life does not always follow along with the recommendations of uber-smart characters on the small screen. Just as the Smith family in Rick and Morty gives increasingly complex tasks to their growing collection of Meeseeks, we define ever more complex problems for Software Engineers every single day.
Image by Shutterbug75 from Pixabay
Using Meeseeks for Project Estimation
The concept of Mr. Meeseeks is being used in an attempt to minimize the variables as much as possible. The descriptions and setup above serve an important purpose. When pressed, the button on the Meeseeks box produces a clone of the same ability. Every time the number grows beyond one or two individuals there is additional complexity which highlights the fact that adding a second person to a project does not linearly scale up the output to 2x the current output. This idea of diminishing returns is even more apparent and influential the longer a project goes on.
Therefore, the concept of a Meeseeks serves to provide a simple framework for project estimation. This framework seeks a reduction of the open variables and normalization of the metrics used for estimation. We accomplish this through the following effort:
We defined a “resume”, skill set, and ability expectations for Mr. Meeseeks. The goal is to define a generic and average member of the team . This definition of a Mr. Meeseeks is used to estimate projects and feature additions to existing products
. This definition of a Mr. Meeseeks is used to estimate projects and feature additions to existing products We estimated in a vacuum . This means that project estimation disregards current or future projects or personnel. It does not consider people’s movement between projects, interruptions, or any other external influences.
. This means that project estimation disregards current or future projects or personnel. It does not consider people’s movement between projects, interruptions, or any other external influences. While many variables are being removed by estimating using the Meeseeks approach, we minimize additional variables through assumptions . We assumed that all Meeseeks will work on the project from start to finish. We assumed that no support issues, vacations, or changing business needs will interrupt the project.
. We assumed that all Meeseeks will work on the project from start to finish. We assumed that no support issues, vacations, or changing business needs will interrupt the project. Project estimation targets an “ideal project” . This means that using the Meeseeks assumptions we will estimate for the most efficient way to finish a project. This does not mean the fastest or least amount of Meeseeks to get there. This will target the ideal, most efficient group to get the job done.
. This means that using the Meeseeks assumptions we will estimate for the most efficient way to finish a project. This does not mean the fastest or least amount of Meeseeks to get there. This will target the ideal, most efficient group to get the job done. We created a “fudge factor” metric for each project to add buffer time to the estimated project timeline. This metric attempts to define risk and potential unknown roadblocks for the project.
Implementing The Estimation Solution
We are NOT attempting to provide an accurate representation of how long a project will take. We ARE attempting to provide a consistent measure of the effort needed for this project against that needed for another project. When estimating, we don’t know how many people will be available to work on the target project or the skill level of those people. So we eliminate those variables while striving to provide a consistent measure of one project against another.
We should recognize that these look like timelines. We are trying to be agile and timelines and agile often appear to be concepts at odds with each other. There are also concerns that perceived timelines drive measurements against the development team. Noted. Please move on.
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
A process has to start somewhere, and requirements at hand concern an evaluation of scope for projects or targets. This process attempts to meet that goal. This also requires revisiting the collected data against the current known variables present at the project kickoff. This provides a chance to both revisit the numbers and adjust them as needed.
Therefore, we are shooting for the following goal:
Estimation Planning generates the Meeseeks-based “ideal project” metrics. This also allows a review of the requirements and use cases for the intended work. The primary goal is to provide consistent data from project to project and target to target so that prioritization provides more value for roadmap projects and general release planning.
For implementation, we have defined five metrics for estimation to provide a sense of scope for the target being estimated. These are also used to compare different projects or features against each other.
Remember — the Meeseeks concept defines a generically average member of the team! | https://medium.com/swlh/using-rick-and-morty-to-solve-an-agile-estimation-dilemma-773d39ff814 | ['Kevin Wanke'] | 2020-05-29 02:39:45.858000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Project Management', 'Development', 'Agile', 'Programming'] |
Camping is the answer. | Camping is the answer.
To whatever the question is.
“The wilderness holds answers to questions we have not yet learned to ask’’ said Nancy Wynne Newhall. And what better way to experience nature than to head out into the unknown and camp for a while!
But come on… Let’s face it. How many of us can go camping with full confidence? I, for a fact, certainly have my doubts.
“Where will I get food from?!” “What if a wild boar attacks me?!” And most importantly, “WHERE WILL I POOP?!”
To me camping was all about an unhygienic lifestyle; wiping yourself with a leaf sort of style. Well, not anymore, thanks to The Campper.
When a few friends got together and decided to set up a platform where they could share their love for camping, things turned out pretty great for aspiring campers everywhere. Now,The Campper has become one of the most unique and well received travel partners of the youth.
Now I know there are a few of you guys who are still not convinced about the idea of camping as a whole. So might as well list out a few reasons why spending time outdoors, away from the fuss and bother of city life, might be good for you.
1. Just Breathe
You know that feeling of happiness you get when you take in a deep breath of fresh air? Nope, you are not imagining it. Taking in more oxygen induces the release of Serotonin, giving you the feeling of happiness. The fresh air also boosts your overall immunity, improves your digestion, and even improves your blood pressure.
2. Improved Mood.
Do you feel tired and exhausted often? Then a few days camping is just what you need. The feeling of being tired or depressed is caused due to a chemical called Melatonin, and spending time outdoors can reduce the levels of the chemical in your body. That’s right folks. Camping brings out your happiness!
3. Rise and Shine!
Obviously, when you are outdoors, something that you get on serious abundance is sunlight. And that’s a good thing! All the Vitamin D you soak in, is going to do wonders to your overall health. More Vitamin D implies you absorb more calcium and phosphorous, and this makes you feel more energised.
4. Hut, Hut, HIKE!
One of the most exciting things about camping is all the exercise that we’re getting. Hiking, fishing, or any other outdoor activity burns more calories than most indoor activities, and thus gives you a sense of well being. Not to mention the fact that you work up a good appetite.
5. A good night’s sleep
After a long day at work, most of us just want a good night’s rest. But amidst the city buzz, our brains have been trained to constantly be on guard. Sound sleep is no longer easy to come by. However, camping is found to improve the quality of sleep in most people. A night outdoors can bring about a pleasant and relaxing sleep, thereby enhancing your metabolism and health.
CAMPING MADE BETTER!
The Campper provides an exclusive and private camping experience, complete with every facility you might need. Be it a place to park your car, or maybe a place to freshen up, The Campper has it all. It provides you with a comfortable tent with a bed, and even accounts for all your meals! And all this at an affordable price!
Totally great, right?!
And that’s not all. The Campper has some amazing offers that’ll make your eyes pop off. One of their super cool initiatives with an agenda to remove all the hinderances in the way of youth who dream of camping, provides students from colleges with an opportunity to experience camping for free!
Don’t believe it? Well, ask anybody who attended Govt Model Engineering College’s Excel 2019. They’ll tell you how they’re all eligible for 1000 rupees off at The Campper just because they participated in Excel!
Super cool isn’t it? When you’ve got offers like this, you just can’t refuse, can you? So what are you waiting for?! Get your gear, catch some friends and get out of here! | https://medium.com/paperkin/camping-is-the-answer-7e50fe9dbaef | ['Lakshmi Sreekumar'] | 2019-11-15 14:14:56.732000+00:00 | ['Fun', 'Travel', 'Wildlife', 'Outdoors', 'Camping'] |
Oct.04 Bybit Analysis：The BTC triangle, where to set your price this week? | You are reading Solomon’s analysis of the first week of October. We analyze the price of BTCUSD and ETHUSD to help you make the best trading decisions.
BTCUSD
BTCUSD came into a very limited consolidation area recently, and is still under the suppression from the downtrend line. My previous trading advice of setups is still effective.
Looking at the 4H chart, we will see that the price is now in a triangle. As it went down, the price touched the uptrend line and went back up. This is probably a signal of short term recovery. Therefore, we can make a short term long position here with a SL at 6430 , and a TP at 6820.
ETHUSD
ETHUSD has been getting increasingly less volatile over the last two days, and the price on the 4H chart is testing a downtrend line resistance. If the price goes up to 240, a short position is recommended, with a SL at 260 and a TP at 186.
This was Solomon’s analysis, we hope this helps you in your daily trading, and thank you for reading.
Where to Find Us:
Website: www.bybit.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Bybit_Official
Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/Bybit/
Youtube: bit.ly/2Cmuibg
Steemit: steemit.com/@bybit-official
Facebook: bit.ly/2S1cyrf
Linkedin: bit.ly/2CxHGcz
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bybit_official/
Telegram: t.me/BybitTradingChat | https://medium.com/bybit/the-btc-triangle-where-to-set-your-price-this-week-e572e328ef7 | [] | 2018-11-13 08:49:09.184000+00:00 | ['Eth', 'Market Analysis', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Btc'] |
Bose QC 35 II noise-cancelling headphone review: A great value, with personality options in spades | Bose QC 35 II noise-cancelling headphone review: A great value, with personality options in spades Yesenia Nov 25, 2020·8 min read
With its place at the top of the Bose line supplanted by the sleeker Bose Noise Cancelling 700, and increasingly competitive rivals nipping at its heels, Bose has been cutting away at the retail price of its QC 35 II, the bread-and-butter entry in its over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphone lineup.
I spotted a pre-Black Friday sale on the Bose website that knocks the price of these cans down from $350 to $200 if you order by Sunday, November 8. Drop another $50 and you can customize several elements—including the exterior of the ear cups and the inside of the headband—with various finishes. This adds a bit of wait time to your order, as you might expect, but I found it to be great fun. More on that later. Late reading this? The same sale price will be in effect from November 22 to December 1. Bose also offers a gamer-oriented variant—the Quiet Comfort 35 II Gaming Headset—that comes with a boom mic and a PC desktop controller.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best headphones, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.It’s bargain-hunting seasonBargain hunting comes to me naturally. As I kid, I remember my father would only ever buy a car at the end of the model year, when the dealer was anxious to clear out the “leftover” inventory. When it came to sound gear, dad would counsel me to either look for a last year’s model or else “the second from the top” in a line of receivers, turntables, or speakers, arguing that the first “step down” piece shared virtually all the same features and performance-tuning components as the line’s standard-bearer—minus only an extra input, maybe fitted in a smaller enclosure, or lacking the words “Elite Series” on the cabinet.
Jonathan Takiff / IDG These ‘phones look pretty good on me, if I do say so myself.
With the QC 35 II, a case can be made that these headphones are just as good if not better than the NC 700 also in my review collection. Yes, those newer, pricier headphones boast cleaner styling, they have more “sensing” microphones to shush unwanted noise and clarify your voice when making phone calls in a public setting, and the NC 700s also offer more finite gradations of noise cancelling: 10 levels versus just two (plus “off”) on the QC 35 II.
[ Further reading: The best high-res digital audio players ] Mentioned in this article Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 Read TechHive's reviewMSRP $399.00See it Sound presentation is neutral, natural, and quite fine on both models, although higher frequencies are extended a tad more on the NC 700. Neither Bose model will bust your ear drums with bombastic bass, but that’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. I was thrilled almost to tears by the QC 35 II’s sweet sonorities, even-tempered balance, and depth of presentation on my favorite Keith Jarrett (+ Euro group) originals album My Song beaming in Qobuz “CD-quality” resolution (and then AAC) from an iPhone 12 Pro. So sad to learn this amazing pianist/composer/improvisor has suffered two incapacitating strokes.
Later, I earned a surprisingly big-screen impression of the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit even watching on an 11-inch iPad. The Bluetooth-connected QC 35 IIs whipped up a 3D-ish sound field in my head, marked with crystal-clear dialogue, weirdly effective directional audio cues, sometimes thunderous orchestral scoring, and snappy throwback hits from the 1960s (think Kinks, George Fame, Shocking Blue). Who knew a story about a brilliant (and troubled) young female chess wiz could provide such rousing and riveting fun?
The new Tom Petty Wildflowers & The Rest collection digging deeper into his dark, twang-rock divorce sessions likewise held my attention for several hours with no fatigue. With windy string charts and balmy bossa nova rhythms, fragile chanteuse Melody Gardot’s new Sunset in the Blue album buffeted my brain like a billowy cloud. C’est Magnifique! And while I ain’t the biggest hip-hop fan, I could appreciate the clarity of expression, musical invention, and bubbly bass depths plumed on a Tidal mix of hip-hop hits from the likes of Jeezy and Yo Gotti (Vroom, Vroom) and Anderson.Paak (a sparkle-plenty Jewelz).
Jonathan Takiff / IDG This reviewer went for a Euro-mod color combination, with parts assembled to order in matte copper, sage and two tones of gray.
Both Bose headphones support the standard SBC and better AAC Bluetooth codecs, the latter the top act on iOS products. Neither model can handle the higher-res LDAC, LDHC, aptX, or aptX HD mobile codecs, which might disappoint Android users and folks who own some models of high-end digital audio players. That said, I detected negligible sonic differences during A/B listening tests with the aforementioned Keith Jarrett set wirelessly and then wired with a 3.5mm cable to a Sony CD portable.
The QC 35 II show their age with Bluetooth 4.1 support, versus the NC 700’s support for Bluetooth 5.0, but the elder model still managed to pick up a stable signal from my new iPhone one floor (and at least 30 feet) away. Both sets of Bose headphones swiftly charge in 2.5 hours for 20 hours maximum Bluetooth playback (40 hours on the QC 35 II if ANC is switched off). With just 15 minutes of fast charging, you can pump up the QC 35 II’s battery for 2.5 hours of play (you’ll get an additional hour on the NC 700).
Some will grouse about the old-school micro-USB jack (and cable) used to charge the QC 35 II, as compared to USB-C on the NC 700s; the latter is easier to plug in and is the favored connector on modern Android phones. The supplied cable in both cases is merely 12 inches foot long, which might be a restriction imposed by the limited interior dimensions of the carrying cases provided with each.
Jonathan Takiff / IDG There’s no fumbling or confusion with these old-school physical controls on these headphones.
I actually prefer dealing with the QC 35 II’s mechanical volume and control buttons (located on the right ear cup) to swipe track, volume and phone call operations than I do working the conductive touch panel on the NC 700 (ditto for the arch-rival Sony’s WH-1000XM4). A right-hand-cup-mounted power/Bluetooth connection slider switch on the QC 35 II is likewise easier to locate and use.
As with some of Bose’s portable wireless speakers, two pairs of Bose’s 35-series headphones can “audio share” one Bluetooth stream, a trick that’s not possible with NC 700. The QC 35 II can also simultaneously connect to and interact with two smart devices, which is useful for pausing music or a video playing on one to then answer an incoming phone call on the other.
Then there’s the whole comfort thing. While the sturdy, sculpted aluminum band on the Bose NC 700 would probably bounce back better if you sat on it, the “impact-resistant materials, glass-filled nylon and stainless steel” parts in the QC 35 II make it lighter (by almost an ounce), more adept at cup swiveling and tilting, and—as I mentioned earlier—wonderfully customizable. I’ve also found the cushioning on the inside top of the QC 35 headband to be wider and plusher and its “synthetic protein leather”-wrapped ear cups are a tad more charming and soft than the harder clamping (and better gripping, if you’re active) cups on the NC 700.
Jonathan Takiff / IDG I can’t say that Bose’s noise cancelling totally squelched this outside activity, but it did tamp down the street roar to a distant din.
In sum, this set of phones still lives up to its “Quiet Comfort” billing. Not only does the noise cancelling (active and passive) help create a private cocoon of calm—even tamping down some major street-dig disturbances outside my door—it does so with a physical and sound-contouring comfort level that lasts and lasts. Most headphones eventually start squeezing the arms of my reading glasses into my temples. Not these. Most headphones make my ears sweat. That happens only on really hot days with these.
Most troubling is the way other headphones with exaggerated bass and treble response eventually make my inner ears itch. These don’t. The bottom line is that Bose has finessed a pair of headphones that are suitable for wearing and listening (or just background ambient-noise blocking) for large chunks of your day—four or five hours straight at least. That’s a special gift.
Make them your ownThere’s some truth to the so-called “Ikea effect,” the notion that you’ll value something more if you have a hand in its creation. I feel an extra jolt of fun very time I put on my custom-built QC 35 II, because these things are mine, just mine.
Go onto Bose’s website and you can choose the individual color you’d like for each of these component parts: Ear cups, outer headband, inner headband, and spacers. As you make your selections, an on-screen image of the assembled headphone shifts to show how it comes together. Options include an array of bright colors (royal blue, poppy red, bright yellow, bright orange, light green, pink pop gloss, purple, and plum), a bunch of neutral colors (jet black, star gray gloss, smokey white, aquatic teal, night navy, spring sage, and dark green), and several matte metallic colors (asteroid, black, silver, gold, rose gold, and copper.) Bose calculates you can put these together in more than five million combinations.
Jonathan Takiff / IDG Your personally color-toned edition of the Bose QC 35 II noise reduction headphones arrive in a special box and feature a “Bose Custom Edition” imprint on the carry case.
I went for a combo of copper caps (the end pieces), spring sage cups (the surrounding trim pieces), a star gray outer headband, spring sage inner headband, with asteroid metallic-gray spacers. ‘Twas a gleeful, pop-art color combo evoking a long-gone Sharp boom box I once treasured, and daringly mod Euro-brand TVs I used to ogle at the IFA electronics fair in Berlin. Now festooning my noggin, these customized music makers are a statement that still jumps out of the crowd and will never be mistaken for anybody else’s boring black headphones. Does that make the music sound better? You bet!
A cautionary note: Don’t be surprised if the colors on the actual product prove a tad hotter than they did on your computer screen, popping especially under halogen bulbs and direct sunlight. I forgot that I’d turned down the brightness on my iMac screen. Under some illumination, my copper-tone caps could pass for rose gold. I still like ‘em, though.
Also, if you’re thinking about ordering a customized pair for a holiday gift, don’t delay. In late August, I got my order processed, assembled (in Mexico), and shipped to the east coast in just nine days—that’s pretty darned fast. As of this writing, delivery time is five to seven weeks.
Other options exist if you’d like to spruce up the Bose QC 35 or QC 25 you already own. Check out decal cover-ups available from the likes of SlickWraps and Skin Sticker, the latter of which were selling for a bargain $9.14 as of this writing. I also found a company called ColorWare that sells custom-painted pairs of QC 35 II for $429, with a promised two-week delivery. All attest to the popularity of Bose’s standard-setting noise cancelling headphones.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@yesenia33884539/bose-qc-35-ii-noise-cancelling-headphone-review-a-great-value-with-personality-options-in-spades-631e08bd5b9c | [] | 2020-11-25 08:45:30.681000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Connected Home', 'Gear', 'Lighting'] |
Custom Blade Directives in Laravel | Blade Directives provides a convenient and clean way to display data in View. There are various Blade Directives available like @if, @for, @foreach, while which have similar syntax as their PHP Counterparts. Also, we have slightly more robust Directives like @auth, @guest etc.
It is entirely possible to create your own Custom Directives as well. Suppose you want to display the Date in a particular format through-out your App. You can easily do so using a Custom Blade Directive.
You need to register all your Custom Blade Directives boot method of the AppServiceProvider. We can call the directive method of the Blade. First parameter is the name of the Directive. This should be unique. And Second would be a callback with the parameter and we would return PHP expression which will format the parameter.
Blade::directive(‘datetime’, function ($expression) {
return “<?php echo ($expression)->format(‘jS M, Y’); ?>”;
});
Now, within our View we can simply use this Directive as below
The parameter $post_created_at will be available as $expression and then we are simply returning a particular Format. This way if we need to change the Format, we only need to make change in our directive.
We can even use other Classes like Str in our Directive. Take the following example:
Blade::directive(‘padLeft’, function ($expression) {
return “<?php echo Str::of($expression)->padLeft(10, ‘-’) ?>”;
});
This is using Str Class and we are using its padLeft Method which will pad the Left of the String with ‘-’ if its length is less than 10. We can use this Directive as below:
Another cool feature while creating Custom Blade Directive is to create a Directive using Blade::if. Lets say we create a PaidSubscriber Blade Directive like below
Blade::if(‘PaidSubscriber’, function () {
//Some Logic which returns boolean
});
Now we can use this Directive like below to display content to user based on the Value returned by Directive.
@PaidSubscriber
Display Paid Content Here.
@else
Subscribe to our Plans to access Paid Content.
@endPaidSubscriber Display Paid Content Here.Subscribe to our Plans to access Paid Content.
We can perform more complex check like accessing the Logged in User inside our Directive.
Blade::if(‘PaidSubscriber’, function () {
if ($user = auth()->user()) { //If Logged In
if ($user->subscriber == 1) { //If Subscriber.
return true;
}
}
return false;
});
Now, if you have a lot of Custom Directives, your AppServiceProvider could become unnecessarily large. You could easily extract all your Custom Directives into a Trait. We will extract our Directives in a Trait at App\Http\Traits\BladeDirectives.php
<?php
namespace App\Http\Traits; use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Blade; trait BladeDirectives
{
public function setupCustomDirectives()
{
Blade::directive('datetime', function ($expression) {
return "<?php echo ($expression)->format('jS M, Y'); ?>";
}); Blade::directive('padL', function ($expression) {
return "<?php echo Str::of($expression)->padLeft(10, '-') ?>";
}); Blade::if('PaidSubscriber', function () {
if ($user = auth()->user()) {
if ($user->subscriber == 2) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
});
}
}
You can of course create a different method for each Blade Directive to improve the Readability further. Then inside our Service Provider, we just need to include this Trait and call the setupCustomDirectives() inside our boot method like below
use App\Http\Traits\BladeDirectives; class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
.
.
.
public function boot()
{
//
$this->setupCustomDirectives();
} }
Blade Directives are a great way to remove complexity from your Views and refine your Logic. Anytime you find yourself writing complex or repetitive code you should consider extracting the code to Blade Directive. | https://medium.com/@100r0bh/custom-blade-directives-in-laravel-1b2509188781 | ['Saurabh Mahajan'] | 2020-12-21 04:49:13.700000+00:00 | ['Tutorial', 'Blade Directives', 'Laravel'] |
Starting an Editing Business | Internal workings
The question I get a lot as an editor is how did I get started. Did I go to school for it? Was it through a college or certificate program? While there are a lot out there that are great like University of Washington’s, Simon Fraser University, and UC San Diego, I did not attend one. I’ve met some editor’s who have and say that it was helpful at giving them the skills that they needed to do the work.
My education to get into the work was honestly just reading and studying grammar on my own. I read through style guides and attempted to learn them to the best of my ability by selecting articles online and editing them in the style of AP or Chicago — the two more popular standards. I’d do that a few times a week and work on grammar and syntax exercises for the rest of the week in-between my other writing projects. After I felt comfortable and confident enough to tackle texts and edit them, I started reaching out for volunteer positions.
Those volunteer positions were vital at giving me something to put on my resume and in my portfolio when I finally started reaching out for gigs and more work.
I suggest people just starting out and veterans in the trade get grammar workbooks. I know it sounds childish, but it works. If you end up getting them and feeling as though what you are learning is stuff you already know, then graduate to adult grammar workbooks. Stay as sharp as you can on your skills and knowledge of grammar usage.
Follow the Chicago Manual of Style and AP websites for updates, which do happen. Like with writing, study it like a heart surgeon. Your knowledge on the subject is crucial to landing you work over other editors.
Not all editors are the same. There are different types that do different things. I read as a way to learn how to do developmental edits and content edits. I learned how stories work and what readers look for in them. I specifically read work from places that I wanted to work for so that I could learn how they view stories. That helped me a lot in landing my first couple of volunteer editing roles.
Like with starting a writing business, the main things you need to have to get yourself going is the knowledge, persistence, and willingness to search out clients until you build up enough of a reputation to have them search you out.
Get good at deadlines and meeting them. As someone who’s trying to become an editor and figuring out how deadlines work, you’ll want to understand that editing deadlines are sometimes really short, like a couple of hours on a hundred page document.
So, start timing yourself as you do projects through the grammar workbooks, reading stories or books, and editing through random articles you find online. See how long it takes you to copy edit a page of text or read and critique a page of a story. Later this will help out in interacting with clients and setting your rates.
The faster you are able to turn back error free copy, the higher you can charge for your
services.
Common Types of paid or career Editors
Copy Editor
Proofreader
Developmental Editor
Substantive or Content Editor
Acquisition Editor
Associate Editor
Chief Editor
Editor in Chief
Finding Clients
This article is more geared toward the person who wants to start their own editing business as either a copy editor, proofreader, developmental editor, or substantive/content editor. You don’t need anyone’s approval to start working as one of these and accepting clients outside of working for magazines.
To find the clients that you would want to work with, pinpoint who your ideal client is by spending sometime thinking about what a perfect project looks like. How will you deal with issues? Do you want to work with others or do solo work?
Once figuring out your ideal clients and projects, find where those types of people hang out and share their work. Personally, I’ve found work through sites like Upwork, Fiverr, Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook.
You don’t need a business site or profile anywhere to start reaching out to people and advertising your services. What having a business site will do for you is give people a place to go to find you if they are outside of the places that you are advertising. It also makes you look more professional when you have a site to direct people to for your services and past work. My revenue increased when I got a site, so it is something that I recommend that you do, but you don’t need it to start making money.
If you want to work as a copy editor at a magazine or online periodical, you’ll need to narrow down which ones you want to work for by reading through their backlist and getting to know the staff behind the magazine. Follow them on social media and keep an eye out for any mentions of job openings. For developmental and substantive/content editors who want to work for publishing houses, you need to know someone that works in the department that you want to or start out at the bottom as an editorial assistant or reader.
There are some publishers that hold interviews for developmental editors, but they are hard to get into, and in my experience, I’ve found that they usually go with someone who is big in the community and has a large backlist of clients and books that they have worked on.
Proofreaders can find themselves work in a lot of different industries like government, business, entertainment, and insurance. For this, check job boards like Indeed or Google and see who is looking for work. It is much easier to get a starting position as a proofreader than it is to get one as a developmental editor sometimes.
Chief editors, acquisition editors, and editor-in-chiefs are all career roles that usually take a lot more than just knowledge and skill but lots of experience. If you don’t have any of that, then you’ll need to either start your own publishing company or magazine or know someone who would appoint you to that role in their organization.
Figuring Out what to Charge
Another common question that I get is setting rates for your work and understanding what is to little or too much to charge. A lot of people will tell you not to work for pennies or nothing, but sometimes doing that work leads you to the bigger contracts. Use your best judgment when it comes to working with a client.
Industry medians for pay as of today are*:
Copy editor: $2,892/project
Proofreader: $31/hour
Developmental Editor: $46-$56/hour
Content/Substantive Editor: $6,538/project
*These numbers come from the EFA and Writer’s Digest.
What you charge doesn’t have to be to industry standards especially if you have more experience, knowledge, and are faster with your projects. This is why knowing how fast it takes you to turn around a clean draft is important because a client isn’t going to pay you thousands of dollars to edit a 120,000-word book in a week if you can’t actually turn that book around in that time.
If you are just starting out and are slow, aim to have a lower hourly and project rate until you build up your chops. While on the other hand, if you are faster and more experienced, you can pretty much set your price with clients as long as you have a portfolio or past clients to back up your experience.
My advice for figuring out your rates is to set the amount of money you need or plan to earn from editing each month. It’s a lot easier than figuring out how much you want to take home in a year and doing the math to figure out how much you have to…..
Sticking to one month at a time in the beginning is an easy way to get started. Once you have an idea of how much you want to be working on editing projects than branch out to how much you want to be making in a quarter or year.
Say for example you want to earn $1,500 next month from editing. Then you’ll have to break that down into either hours or projects depending on what you want to work on.
Fresh out of the gate, you might see yourself working long hours just to get that $1,500 if you’re not careful with who you decide to work with. Let’s say you charge the beginning rate for copy editing $16/hour or $2,000/project. You’d have to work on one big project during that month or log 94 hours.
Knowing how long you take to finish a project will let you know what types of projects you need to be looking at to make your desired earnings in the amount of time that you need it. If an hour of work only gets you 2 pages completed, then you’ll know how much time you’ll need to devote to a project that would net you the $1,500.
At 2 pages an hour working at $15/hour, you’ll have to work on about 47,000 words or 188 pages worth of writing to bring home $1,500.
Moving forward
I’m not a one stop shop of advice for starting your editing business. Find other resources, some I’ve listed below, and figure out what works for you. If something in here doesn’t make sense to you, let me know in the comments. I want this to be easy so that anyone at any age can start an editing business and make money.
If you’re wondering what you can do today, right now to get started on setting up your business, I suggest you figure out how long it takes you to complete a project. Find an article or piece of writing from a client or type of client that you would want to work with and edit it to the style of editing that you want to get into while timing yourself.
After that, figure out your rates and who you want to work with. Then write yourself a cover letter and resume highlighting your editorial skills. If you have nothing to add to a resume for editing, then don’t worry about writing that one. But do write the cover letter explaining what type of editor you are and how you like to work. This’ll be a starting template for when you begin reaching out to clients and advertising your gigs.
Further Reading
Editorial Freelancers Association
The Write Life: Becoming an Editor Guide
Chicago Manual of Style
AP Stylebook
Elements of Style
Perfect English Grammar Workbook
Copy Editor’s Handbook
Developmental Editing
English Grammar Workbook for Adults
If you’re curious on how to get started at freelance writing, this article points you in all the right directions. | https://medium.com/swlh/starting-an-editing-business-7515c31ee95b | ['Aigner Loren Wilson'] | 2020-12-15 21:04:34.519000+00:00 | ['Freelance', 'Editing', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Freelancers'] |
Case Study: The Evolution of Google Maps & Colour Picking Methodology — Raw.Studio | Since Google Maps launched 15 years ago, they have revolutionised the world of digital maps and now help over one billion users get from A to B (and so much more)
It’s almost impossible to think of a time before we could enter an address into our smartphones and just go. Since its release in 2005, Google Maps have evolved and adapted to the wants and needs of our fast-paced and ever changing society.
One of the continually iterated aspects of the product has been Google Maps’ colour system. When we look at the current interface, we can see that colours are kept to a minimum, with slight changes in gradients providing a minimal yet effective sense of depth. But it wasn’t always this way. Last year, Google undertook a 1 year expedition to complete the incredible feat of gradually refining their colour palette from 700+ colours down to 25 major and minor tones whilst increasing usability. In this article we’ll delve into the transition to this innovative palette.
How it Started
In Google’s blog post, Alex Vallis mentions how the initial colour configuration assigned a specific colour to every detail (e.g. a particular colour for shrubs and another for a deep forest.) This in turn created such minute differences in colours that it was almost impossible to distinguish important elements like roads, text, and borders.
David Cronin (UX Director) said he remembered his “jaw dropping because there were so many colours.” According to Dana Steffe (Visual Designer), they began venturing into their hypothesis on whether the colour palette could be reduced into a smaller number of swatches that aligned more to Material Design, whist maintaining the smallest of details.
Reassessing the current design
The team at Google Maps began by experimenting with distinguishing map details, improving accessibility and reducing the range of colours. They questioned underlying assumptions and asked why these colours were the way they were.
Below is one of many examples. The Sahara Desert features a varied topography, shaped over time by the wind. Geographical features include sand dunes, sand seas (ergs), barren stone plateaus, gravel plains, dry valleys, and salt flats. However, this variation was not reflected in Google Maps’ previous design, with majority of the region represented by a common light beige tone.
It was evident that the implementation of colours weren’t depicting the true nature of landscapes across the globe. It was decided that this project, if undertaken, would be able to uncover the inconsistencies and unnecessary aspects of the current legacy system in order to create a structure that was far more reflective of the Earth’s details.
Emotion behind colour
While different colours can evoke different emotions in each individual, depending on geographical and cultural context, they can also assist in drawing an emotional connection to a particular landmark or earthly feature.
A resident of the Amalfi Coast could immediately associate a body of water with a clear and blissful baby blue or turquoise, whilst an Amsterdam local would think fondly of their brown-toned canals that would mirror the vibrant surrounding architecture when still. To fully understand the importance of emotional connection to an earthly feature, the design team at Google shared personal memorabilia of bodies of water they had witnessed across the globe.
The most intimidating part of this is the weight to accurately represent people’s worlds. How do you do that well, and how do you do it globally? If you’re choosing colours for desert, or forests, we all know that these regions don’t look the same everywhere. Dana Steffe, Staff Visual Designer
This product was being designed for users across the globe, so it was important to consider a multitude of perspectives when considering colour. They wanted to reflect back to users and the world that they live in by capturing that worldly vibrancy in a way that feels meaningful.
Experimenting and refining colour
The team started off with baby steps by making small iterations at a time which instilled them with the confidence to proceed into a larger scale piece.
What made this collaboration really magical was our conversations around what types of questions we were trying to answer and when: What are we trying to help users learn about the world? How do we entice them to explore the Map a little bit more? That’s how we started to refine the hierarchy to communicate that there’s more to find out. Sarah Needham, Senior Interaction Designer
This refinement didn’t come straight away. There were hundreds of sketches and iterations over colours and hierarchy, as you will see below in the explorations for water.
So how does it all work? Google Maps has high-definition satellite imagery for over 98 percent of the world’s population. Google’s new “colour-mapping algorithmic technique” is able to take this satellite imagery and translate it into comprehensive and easily distinguishable map elements — from busy roads to lush green forests to varying types of blue for lakes, oceans and ravines.
To accomplish this, Google analysed advanced satellite imagery and assigned more detailed colours from their HSV colour model to different types of areas. Matt Simpson (Staff UX Designer) stated that “We were able to do more with less.”
The Result
The team at google managed to limit their colour palette down to 25 major and minor tones — drastically reducing complexity and aligning closer with Material Design.
Once the changes were implemented in the next update, users were able to fully understand what they were seeing and comprehend the contrast between elements. You will be able to see below a before and after of Mt. Rainier National Park. Now the snowy peaks are evidently visible and effectively detailed, reflecting the true nature of that particular landscape.
Below is another brilliant example- a before and after of Iceland. Sujoy Banerjee (Product Designer) added that “Iceland’s rich landscape is now much easier to visualise. You can see the varying densities of greenery throughout the country and more easily spot Vatnajökull — the largest ice cap in Iceland, which is now depicted in white.”
Google have managed to:
Effectively experiment and test in a collaborative manner different colour concepts in order to find the best options for the redesign.
Reduce a complex colour palette to something far more minimal yet simultaneously more detailed and accurate.
Create a more accessible and usable product that kept billions of users in mind.
This calculated and validated minimalism has unlocked the potential to create a more accurate representation of the world. Stripping it down to basics has truly benefited the team by creating a clean, accessible and informative product that also acts as an opportunistic canvas to build upon for the future. | https://medium.com/rawstudio/case-study-the-evolution-of-google-maps-colour-picking-methodology-raw-studio-5d2faf92740c | ['Philippe Hong'] | 2021-04-07 04:35:36.031000+00:00 | ['UX', 'UI', 'Maps'] |
Forest Feature: Wildlife Sightings With Red Earth Tadoba Resort | Every day at Red Earth Tadoba, the isolation of our property and the proximity to the Zari Kolas gate give us wildlife sightings that are nothing short of breathtaking. With such unhindered access to the true wild, it made sense to us that these stories deserve sharing. With that in mind, we decided to start a series called Forest Feature! | https://medium.com/@redearthpnjxn/forest-feature-wildlife-sightings-with-red-earth-tadoba-resort-8260fd3f9cbf | ['Redearth Pnjxn'] | 2020-12-02 04:46:39.207000+00:00 | ['Redearth', 'Redearthtadoba', 'Tiger Safari', 'Wildlife'] |
(A) and (I) games in career | Introduction
There are many ways to classify career development strategies at a high abstraction level. I find the most helpful classification is to split strategies to individual contributor(IC) route and management route. This is how most companies distinguish their career ladders. However, I find the term IC and management are misleading because
The terms failed to capture the essence of the two strategies, but are more about the difference between the roles
Many people in management roles actually adopted IC’s mindset
Manager is a very unpopular word. Also traditional view on management doesn’t fit in 21st century’s company anymore
In this post I will introduce a more concise definition of the two classes of strategy and show the extreme difference between them. After careful thought and reading many books, I find career growth strategy can be classified as (A) Achievement-based and (I) Influence-based. While it’s possible and an advantage to have the ability to play both roles, one must decide what is her core game. At the end of the day, (A) and (I) are mutual exclusive.
Notice that (A) and (I) are strategies, not IC or management routes. ICs could be a strong leader while managers could focus on achieving rather than influencing.
High achiever(A)
Achievement based strategy is typical for IC routes and is the choice of most people in the early stage of their careers.
The basic idea is to be the operational critical player in impactful projects, then justify their impact by the projects they participated in. The keywords are critical and impactful. The more critical are their roles, the more impactful the project, the better.
I know some folks get really far with this strategy. However, most people begin feeling headwind after 5–7 years. The reasons are:
(i) The position in a company is highly correlated to one’s impact rank(like top x% employee)
(ii) Achiever’s impact is dominated by very few skillset, mainly technical capacity and domain knowledge
(iii) To advance one position in any single skillset in a company’s rank, you need to advance by a constant time of absolute capacity. Mathematically, the relation between your skill rank and your absolute skill merits is power law. So after a while, it gets exponentially harder to advance your rank in any given skill.
The net result is many achievers, after reaching senior level, have very similar skill sets and capacity. For them, who can advance in their career largely depends on pure chance. That’s why many ICs who struggled with promotion complain that there’s no good projects for them.
Influencer(I)
Influencer is the correct strategy for the management route.
The basic idea is to enable as many co-workers, as deeply as possible so that team productivity is unlocked and enhanced. Influencers justify their impact by the incremental productivity others achieved under their influence or leadership. The keywords are ‘many’ and ‘deeply’. That’s why most managers are very eager to hire and ‘grow’ their teams. Many use team size growth as their performance indicator and proof of leadership capacity. Sadly, far less cares as much about the ‘deeply’ part.
It’s worth noting that many managers don’t realize that they are playing the influencer game and hold the achiever’s mindset. In their view, the subordinates are their helpers for their bigger achievement. Having a manager like that is common in a fast growing industry and it’s the dominant reason for stalled careers.
The (vast) difference
It’s interesting to see how different the two strategies are.
Many of us will have to make a conscious decision to switch from (A) to (I). This will be a revolution in our mindsets as it changes almost all of our prioritization and decision at work. To mention a few:
Approaching a project
Because (A)’s path to excellence is by being an expert on impactful projects, people under this strategy are motivated to evaluate a project by:
What’s the perceived potential impact in long term and short term?
How much ownership I can have?
How can I solve the problem?
How will it help building my image as a domain expert?
They are incentivized to not care about:
Will this project be helpful for the team and company?
Who is the right owner?
(I)’s motivation is by definition closer bound with the company so under this strategy, people will think about:
What’s the long term benefit of this project to our roadmap?
What’s the reward and cost?
What other projects and teams can benefit from it?
Who is the best person to drive it and who should we collaborate with?
Who are the stake owners and their expectations?
How will this project benefit the people working on it?
Core competence
If you can choose a single area of capacity to reach excellency, for example, communication skill, domain knowledge, general intellectual level, what’s your choice?
While neither strategy can be successful with one skill, I think domain knowledge is most important for (A) and empathy is the most important for (I). So as a software engineer playing the (I) game, you are much more likely benefited from reading How to win friends and influence people than reading Designing Data-intensive Applications. (For these two, you should read both since you don’t really have to choose only one.)
Growth path
In whichever industry, (A) games require a significant amount of raw talents to even enter the game. Most bodybuilders, you may think their physiques are insane, are seriously constrained by their genes. While coaching others to prepare interviews for junior engineering jobs, I constantly found people struggled at Leetcode problems that were very straightforward for me ever since I finished algorithm classes in college. They too are constrained by their raw talents.
The good news is that those folks can choose to play the (I) game which virtually requires no talents. Yes, everyone can be a good leader as long as they are willing to accept their flaws and work hard to fix them.
Unlike high achievers who perfect one or two skills, high influencers need to be good or great at dozens of skills. No one out of school reaches the bars for everything. Leadership development is a process of recognizing the bottleneck flaw and finding ways to fix it, at every stage of the career. In this sense, I think 95% of people have the potential to be a great leader or influencer with proper mentorship and self-development mindset. In reality, far less percentage actually became one. The reason is a combination of a big ego and the lack of guidance/education.
The ego and infinite game
With (A), it’s perfectly OK to have mediocre human skills. But with (I), one’s influence is constrained by his human skills. While there are tons of books teaching this topic, it all boils down to ego. How much are you able to promote others’ ego? How much can you comfortably reduce your own ego? Strategy (I) can hardly be in good shape if the player is self-centered.
This is what Dale Carnegie means by the dominant desire of everyone: the desire to be great. This is also what Buddha means by anattā.
Another harmful mindset for (I) is playing a finite game. Typical finite games are getting promoted to the next level, having a pay raise of 30% in this year, or doubling the size of my team. If (I) players commit to such finite goals, they will find various difficulties down the path including:
(a) People won’t respect them because they largely work for themselves
(b) They are easy to get defeated and frustrated because those goals are very specific thus prone to failure
Strategy (I) requires an infinite goals like:
Bring peace to the world
Feed everyone with enough nutrition
Unite the society
Cure cancer
By playing an infinite game, the power of (I) will be fully unlocked. Both (a) and (b) won’t be an issue anymore. You will continuously win support from people under your influence. More importantly, you can never be defeated with an infinite goal. Instead, you will be humbly making small and steady progress everyday, which is the stereotype for long term success. | https://medium.com/@luanjunyi/a-and-i-games-in-career-23c718e83116 | [] | 2020-12-11 15:49:06.248000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Career Paths', 'Leadership', 'Career Development', 'Careers'] |
How Hashmap Works Internally in Java | In this post, we will discuss the internal working of hashmap. Being the famous question in the interview lets discuss the internal working of hashmap.Before discussing how the hashmap works let discuss some of the important terminologies which will be used further in the blog.
Hashmap is a java class which stores the object in the form of key, value pair. Each key is associated with a value. We can understand this as each person can be identified using the unique mobile number. Here, in this example, the phone number is the key and person object is the value. So, in java we can define the hashmap in the following way :
Map<String,value> map = new HashMap<String,value>();
Terminologies related to hashmap –
1. Hashing Principle –
The hashmap works on the principle of hashing. Hashing is nothing but transforming the given entity to some number. So basically hashing depends upon the function which returns the integer value. This integer number is known as hashcode.
2. Bucket –
Bucket in hashmap is nothing but the entry of multiple singly linked list. These LinkedList are registered as an array of Entry.
3. Collision –
The collision occurs when we try to add different keys with the same hash. So, in simple terms collision in hashmap will occur when hashmap finds two objects have the same hashcode.
4. Load Factor –
It is the measuring unit which decides on exactly when the hashmap needs to be resized. Resizing hashmap means increasing the size of the bucket. The default capacity of hashmap is 16 and to that of default load factor is 0.75.
5. Threshold –
The threshold is the next size value of the hashmap to which it needs to be resized. Resize will happen once the hashmap is full. The threshold value will be calculated based on the below formula:
Threshold = CurrentCapacity * LoadFactor
For example :
If the hashmap is created with the initial capacity of 16 and a load factor of 0.75, then, the threshold will be 16 * 0.75 = 12.
So, these were some of the important terminologies which relate to the hashmap. Now, one more important thing or rule that we should discuss while discussing hashmap. The rule is The contract between hashcode and equals method. The contract states that:
1. If two objects are equal based on the equals method then their hashcode will be equal.
2. If two objects have the same hashcode then they may or may not be equal.
Now, after becoming familiar to these terminologies we are good to go with the interview questions. Let’s discuss them.
Q1. What is a hashmap in java?
Hashmap is a java class which stores the object in the form of key, value pair. Each key is associated with a value. We can understand this as each person can be identified using the unique mobile number. Here, in this example, the phone number is the key and person object is the value. So, in java we can define the hashmap in the following way :
Map<String,value> map = new HashMap<String,value>();
Q2. How hashmap works internally in java / Explain the internal working of get() in hashmap?
Internally hashmap works on the principle of hashing. Hashmap provides put(key, value) for adding the values in the hashmap and get(key) to get the object which corresponds to the specified key.
While inserting the object into the hashmap we call put(key, value), hashmap internally calls the hashcode method on the key object to apply the hashing mechanism. This hashcode returns the integer value which is known as hashcode. This hashcode is then can be used to find the bucket location for storing an Entry object. Hashmap will store both key and value pair in the form of Map.Entry.
Q3.What will happen if the two objects have the same hashcode?
This is the case of collision. In this case, before answering we should remember the contract between hashcode and equals method. Since hashcode is the same bucket value will also be same and collision will occur. Hashmap internally uses LinkedList to store objects. Hence, this entry will be stored in LinkedList.
Q4. How we can retrieve the object if two keys have the same hashcode?
Hashmap handles this case by using the mechanism called Channing. Hashmap uses LinkedList to deal with collision and store the objects into the bucket. It will be better understood by the below:
Q5. What is the difference between hashmap and hashtable?
The main difference between hashmap and hashtable are as follows:
Hashmap is non-synchronized. It is not thread-safe hence, we should not use it in case of multi-threaded environment whereas Hashtable is synchronized. Means it is thread-safe and hence we can use hashtable in a multi-threaded environment. As hashmap is non-synchronized the performance is much faster whereas Hashtable is synchronized which makes it slower as compare to the hashmap. Hashmap allows one null key and multiple null values whereas Hashtable does not allow any number of null key and null values. To make hashmap synchronized we can use this code Map m = Collections.synchronizedMap(hashmap) whereas Internally hashmap is already synchronized Hashmap can be traversed using iterator whereas Enumerator an Iterator can be used to traverse the hashtable. Iterator in hashmap is fail-fast whereas Enumerator in hashtable is not fail-fast.
Q6. Why string is used as a key in hashmap?
Since the string is an immutable class in java, its hashcode can be calculated at the time creation and it does not need to be recalculated. Hence, its processing is faster than other hashmap key objects. All the wrapper classes in java are eligible for hashmap key.
Q7. Can we create a custom key in hashmap? If yes, how?
Yes, we can create the custom key in hashmap. To do so there are some of the rules that we need to follow:
1). The class which we will be using as the hashcode key, that class should be immutable.
2). The class should implement equals and hashcode methods. Hashcode will be used when we insert a key object into the map and equals method will be used when we retrieve the object.
Below is the example of a sample class which is eligible for hashmap key:
<script src=”https://gist.github.com/sourabhrai235/e470a94df5b36a3853b50a28eec1efa6.js"></script>
Q8. Can we store the null key in hashmap?
Yes, we can store the null key in hashmap. Only one null key is allowed in the hashmap. This entry will be stored as the first location on the bucket array. The Hashmap does not call hashcode() on the null key as it will throw NullPointerException. Hence, when the user calls get() with null, then the value of the first index is returned.
Q9. Can we store null values in hashmap?
Yes, hashmap also allows null value. We can store any number of null values in the hashmap.
Q10. Which data structure is used to implement hashmap?
HashTable is the based implementation of HashMap. HashMap also uses Array and LinkedList. The array data structure is used as the bucket while LinkedList is used to store all mapping which lands in the same bucket. Java 8 onwards, LinkedList is replaced by binary search tree.
Q11. What will happen if we use hashmap in a multithreaded application?
If you use HashMap in a multidimensional environment in such a way that multiple threads structurally modify the mapping by adding, removing, or modifying the map, then HashMap’s internal data structure may be corrupted as if some links are missing. , Some may indicate incorrect entries, and the map itself may be completely useless. Because of these drawbacks, we should not use HashMap in such environment hence, we can use ConcurrentHashMap or HashTable which ensures thread-safety.
Q12. What is ConcurrentHashmap?
ConcurrentHashMap is synchronized. As HashMap does not provide thread-safety so, ConcurrentHashMap can be used in the threaded environment. ConcurrentHashMap is fail-safe and it returns ConcurrentModificationException during iteration. ConcurrentHashMap does not allow null key/value. It will throw NullPointerException. ConcurrentHashMap is slower than HashMap.
Q13. What are the different ways to iterate over hashmap?
Here are the ways using which we can iterate the HashMap, By using
keyset and iterator
entrySet and iterator
entrySet and enhanced for loop
keyset() and get()
That’s about some of the important questions from the Java HashMap interview. I’ve also tried to answer them, but if you disagree with an answer, feel free to comment. HashMap is a very important class in java, so I suggest everyone go through HashMap and its features in-depth.
Related Articles:
1. Core java interview questions.
2. Java 8 interview questions.
3. Abstraction in Java.
4. Encapsulation in Java.
5. Compile time polymorphism in java.
6. Runtime Polymorphism in java. | https://medium.com/@sourabhrai235/how-hashmap-works-internally-in-java-952206717924 | [] | 2020-09-21 09:54:47.664000+00:00 | ['Core Java', 'Hashmap', 'Internal Working', 'Maps'] |
IRIS SECURITY | It is Monday morning. Everyone’s preparing to get into the office to begin work for the week but notices some of the company’s devices have be carted away.
THE QUESTION: WHO DID THIS, becomes the talk of the day.
Our everyday activities involve a lot of risks, and it is expected that we do all we can to ensure these risks don’t cause harm. One major way of mitigating our everyday risks is being security conscious. The lack of being conscious of our properties and valuables can put a lot of us in harm’s way both at home and offices.
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Contact us today: +234 9038040734 | https://medium.com/@irisengineeringservices/iris-security-224806243ed9 | ['Iris Engineering'] | 2021-03-22 08:34:40.853000+00:00 | ['Security Services', 'Security', 'Cctv', 'Security Camera'] |
Day Seven (of Seven) | I frequently use writing prompts in my teaching and coaching. In fact, when the pandemic lockdown began in the Northeast, I had a regular weekly group and later developed a course under the umbrella of Prompted Expression. In the spirit of sparking my own creativity and getting ideas for my students and clients, I’ve decided to write from a prompt for seven consecutive days and share the results. The prompts are from a deck of cards called Actually Curious.
Writing Prompt Seven: What’s one thing you would change about the way you were raised?
I don’t think there’s much that’s more important than nurturing self-esteem in a child. It sets the tone for everything else to come.
I was raised by two people I think the world of. They consider their children their biggest accomplishment in life. But neither of them has self-esteem worth a damn.
So do the math.
There’s so much I’ve learned in adulthood about this topic. How insidious it is. How withering criticism can be. How it impacts what you think you deserve. How it breeds a bit of paranoia about others’ intent. How it tamps down dreams and lowers expectations.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s I explored this in therapy. It was life-altering. I had to grow my confidence, be comfortable and then some with my life choices instead of making excuses for them. Stand up taller in my gifts and use them to their fullest. Accept myself as is rather than consistently wondering why I didn’t want conventional things.
I am proud of being intellectually curious, using my “good” china every day, not settling for a mediocre relationship, unabashedly revealing my age, putting myself out there in my art. Surely I still have my hang-ups like everyone else, but I’ve acquired an acute awareness of my own emotional intelligence and am open to being better and smarter.
If I could go back and change something, it would have to start in past generations of my family tree so that the self-esteem would ripple right on through to my parents. I think their lives would have been enriched and uplifted. | https://medium.com/@nancy-colasurdo/day-seven-of-seven-e905f34887c3 | ['Nancy Colasurdo'] | 2020-12-24 17:46:02.724000+00:00 | ['Series', 'Parenting', 'Self Esteem', 'Life Coach', 'Writing Prompts'] |
Early 2021 Bulls Offseason Preview | Early 2021 Bulls Offseason Preview
Even though the 2020–21 NBA season isn’t over yet, the Bulls front office knows they will enter the 2021 off-season with a lot of work to do. Ryan Borja Follow Apr 26 · 9 min read
NBA.com
The Bulls made a major trade before the 2021 trade deadline to acquire All-Star center Nikola Vucevic, who is under contract for the next two seasons. Chicago traded two 1st round picks to make the deal happen, and have seemingly committed themselves to becoming a winning basketball team sooner rather than later. But the Bulls haven’t found immediate success, and they need to continue to reconstruct the struggling roster if they want to find such success.
The trade will wind up a dud if the Bulls can’t at least make the play-in tournament. The upcoming offseason could be pivotal in the success of this team the next couple of seasons.
Chicago Bulls Players Under Contract:
Guaranteed: Zach LaVine, Nikola Vucevic, Patrick Williams, Coby White, Troy Brown Jr, Al-Farouq Aminu(player option), Ryan Arcidiacono(team option)
Non-Guaranteed: Thaddeus Young($6 million guaranteed), Tomas Satoransky($5 million guaranteed)
Chicago Bulls Players Eligible for Free Agency:
Restricted: Lauri Markkanen, Javonte Green, Adam Mokoka, Devon Dotson(two-way contract)
Unrestricted: Cristiano Felicio, Daniel Theis, Denzel Valentine, Garrett Temple
Chicago Bulls Extension Eligible Players:
Zach LaVine: The most the Bulls can extend LaVine to is 4-years/$104.8 million.
To extend higher Chicago will have to renegotiate LaVine’s 2021–22 salary so that he can be eligible to receive more in an extension. To understand that more I recommend reading the attached article.
Nikola Vucevic: The most the Bulls can extend Vucevic for this offseason is 3-yreas/$85.5 million. Extension must be agreed upon by the start of the regular season. If not Bulls must wait until the next offseason.
Troy Brown: The Bulls can extend Brown up to his max. They have until the start of the regular season to get one signed.
Thaddeus Young: If Chicago guarantees Young’s 2021–22 salary, he will be extension eligible. He can sign up to 4-years/$76.2 million. Bulls would have until the day before 2022 free agency begins to sign Young to an extension.
Tomas Satoransky: If Chicago guarantees Satoransky’s 2021–22 salary, he will be extension eligible. He can sign up to 4yrs/53.7 million. Bulls would have until the day before 2022 free agency begins to sign Satoransky to an extension.
Al-Farouq Aminu: If Aminu accepts his player option, he will be extension eligible. The most he can sign for is 4-years/$54.7 million. He would have until the day before 2022 free agency to sign an extension.
I would not expect any player here to reach an extension with the Bulls this summer.
NBA.com
7/29/21: The NBA Draft
Unless the Bulls end up with a top-4 pick, they will be without a 1st rounder for the 2021 draft. They traded their 2021 pick with the top-4 protection to Orlando for Nikola Vucevic. The Bulls at this point seem lottery-bound, so it is possible they can move up into the top-4 during the NBA lottery. But for now, let’s assume the Bulls will be operating without a 1st rounder.
What the Bulls do have is a 2nd round pick. They will also have the rights to swap that pick for New Orleans’ 2nd round pick if the Pelicans 2nd round pick ends up better than the Bulls.
That was a right Chicago acquired years ago when they traded Nikola Mirotic to New Orleans in 2018. As of the time of this article, the Bulls’ 2nd is projected to be better than New Orleans because the Pelicans have the better record. But it is close and it will go down to the last game(s) of the season to see who will end up with the better record. It seems the Bulls will be drafting anywhere from 37th to 41st in the 2nd round.
7/31/21: Qualifying offers and Ryan Arcidiacono/Al-Farouq Aminu’s Option Deadline
The Bulls will have some decisions to make by this date. Qualifying offers for Lauri Markkanen and Javonte Green must be submitted by this date. To have restricted rights on a player, you must submit their qualifying offer.
The qualifying offer is pretty much a one-year contract, and the player can accept and play under the qualifying offer. Lauri Markkanen’s qualifying offer is worth $9,026,852, and Javonte Green’s qualifying offer is worth $1,897,476. I would expect the Bulls to give Markkanen his qualifying offer, for Green I would not expect them to.
The Bulls also have to decide on Ryan Arcidiacono’s team option by this date. His team option is worth $3,000,000. Unless the Bulls have a trade offer they need Arcidiacono’s salary for, I would expect the Bulls to decline this option and make Ryan an unrestricted free agent.
Al-Farouq Aminu also has to decide if he wants to test free agency by this date. Aminu is under contract but has a player option for 2021–22. His option is worth $10,183,000. Aminu is unlikely to decline this option and will likely take his $10.1 million.
8/1/21 and 8/2/21: Thad/Sato guarantees and free agency begins
Thaddeus Young and Tomas Satoransky must be waived by August 1st to avoid their contracts becoming fully guaranteed. As of right now the Bulls are only committed to paying Young $6 million, and Satoransky 5 million. But if they are on the roster past August 1st, then the Bulls are committed to paying Young $14,190,000 and Satoransky $10,000,000.
I’ll get more into the significance of this later but just understand for the Bulls to have significant cap space they will likely have to let go of one of the two.
On August 2nd, 5 pm central time NBA free agency will begin.
The Path to Cap Space and the Consequences of That:
For the Bulls to create significant cap space, significant being greater than $15 million, they will have to renounce bird rights on certain players. Bird rights in short are what allows you to re-sign players over the cap.
And too rid of some of these cap holds, the Bulls will have to give up that right on certain players. The obvious ones are Felicio, Valentine, Green, and Mokoka.
Renouncing these players is not a hard decision. And necessary to get under the cap. Those are easy decisions if you are trying to get under the cap. Another one would be Arcidiacono’s team option. That is an easy decline in my opinion. All these moves would only get the Bulls to negative $20.7 million in cap space. To have significant space the Bulls will have to make tougher decisions. And two of them begin before free agency begins.
The Satoransky/Young guarantee deadline decisions will have a significant impact on what kind of space the Bulls can have. Thaddeus Young has had a significant part in the little success the Bulls have had this season. And Satoransky is a solid role player.
The idea of having cap space and keeping both though is unrealistic. At the very least one has to go. For the Bulls keeping Thad is probably more ideal, and there is a way to keep him while having cap space. What the Bulls could do is waive and stretch Satoransky, taking the $5 million they owe him and spreading it out over 3 years. That would help clear about $8.4 million in salary. Bring the Bulls to about negative $13 million in cap space. The next biggest hurdle is clearing Markkanen’s cap hold worth $20.7 million.
The path to cap space will cost you Lauri Markkanen.
Ridding of his cap hold will remove enough salary to where the Bulls can think about having significant cap space. It is possible the Bulls can stay over the cap and use Markkanen in a sign and trade to acquire a free agent they desire, and we will discuss that route later.
But if that isn’t a possibility, moving on from Markkanen is necessary if getting under the cap is your goal. Renouncing Markkanen would bring the Bulls under the cap by about 5.8 million.
To get to above $15 million, the Bulls would then have to renounce their rights to Garrett Temple. Ridding of his cap hold worth $5.7 million. Then Bulls could waive and stretch the remaining of Aminu’s contract.
All this would get the Bulls to about $16 million in cap space. You were able to retain Thaddeus Young and keep bird rights on Daniel Theis. If extra cap space is needed you then might have to consider renouncing Theis or moving on from Thad. Or you can trade Coby White and/or Troy Brown and take back as little salary as you possibly can to create extra space.
Basically what I tried to show you is that creating cap space will come at a cost. But there is at least a way to keep key contributors while creating cap space.
This isn’t exactly what has to be done. Could always renounce Theis and waive Thad instead of waiving and stretching someone like Aminu. But I tried to show you a way to open up cap space while trying to keep key role players around. The Bulls though could go another route, and that’s staying over the cap.
The Athletic
Why Would the Bulls Want to Stay Over the Cap?
As I just discussed, creating cap space comes with consequences. To do so, the Bulls will have to rid of certain players. In a perfect world though, the Bulls don’t have to get under the cap. They can stay over keeping Bird rights on their free agents which allows them to go over the cap to re-sign them. The problem with this scenario is the Bulls don’t have the space to sign other teams’ free agents. But there is one way to get it done, and that is sign and trade.
The Bulls would choose to do this if they could work out a sign and trade with another team’s free agent for one of the Bulls' very own, and that is Lauri Markkanen.
For example, let’s discuss Lonzo Ball, a player who has been heavily rumored to be on the Bulls’ radar. If New Orleans had a mutual interest in Lauri Markkanen, the Bulls wouldn’t need cap space to get Lonzo Ball.
Instead, the two teams can work out a sign and trade that would send both players to the other team. The Bulls can then stay over the cap, and re-sign players like Theis/Temple. While retaining players like Thad and even Satoransky if they desire.
Or at the very least maybe trade Satoransky elsewhere for something else. But at the very least, staying over the cap won’t require the Bulls to gut their roster to get someone like Lonzo. As long as they could work out a sign and trade with Markkanen to the team of the free-agent they are pursuing, staying over the cap probably makes the most sense.
This scenario would also allow them access to the non-tax paying exception, which is worth 9.2 million, versus the room exception(4.9mil) they would have while creating cap space.
Other Things to Keep In Mind:
Marko Simonovic: The Bulls drafted Marko last year with their 2nd round pick, and stashed him away overseas. If the Bulls desire to bring Marko to the team next season, they will need to get him under contract. Ideally, Bulls do this with either cap space or the non-taxpaying exception(MLE). The reason being that will allow the Bulls to sign him to at least a 3-year contract, allowing them full Bird rights at the end of his contract. If the Bulls used the room exception or the minimum exception, the Bulls would be limited in only offering 2 years.
Top-4 pick: If the Bulls end up with a top-4 pick, then that would add at least $7.2 million to their team salary. That could be a factor when making cap space decisions.
Zach LaVine: While Zach is eligible for an extension, the reports say that he will wait until his contract runs out before signing a new contract. Which for the Bulls is great if he is willing to wait it out. But if that isn’t true or he changes his mind, remember they are limited in what they can extend him at. They will need cap space to offer him a higher extension. | https://bullsconf.com/2021-bulls-off-season-preview-bc840ef89ffc | ['Ryan Borja'] | 2021-07-09 21:03:25.119000+00:00 | ['Basketball', 'Chicago Bulls', 'Cap Space', 'NBA', 'Bulls Offseason'] |
How to Maximize Reusability for Your React Components | The Component
Let’s build a List component and try to expand its capabilities from there.
Pretend that we’re building a page where users are redirected after they register to become part of a community of medical professionals. The page should show lists of groups that doctors can create that newly registered doctors can view. Each list should show some type of title, description, the creator of the group, an image that represents their group, and some basic essential information like dates.
We can just create a simple List component that represents a group like this:
Then we can easily just render it and call it a day:
Obviously the component isn’t reusable, so we can solve that issue by providing some basic reusability through props by children:
But that doesn’t make much sense, because the List component isn't even a list component anymore nor should it even be named a list because it's just now a component that returns a div element. We might as well just have moved the code right into the App component.
But that's bad because now we have the component hardcoded into App . This might have been okay if we're sure that the list is for one-time use. But we know there will be multiple uses because we're using it to render different medical groups on our web page.
So we can refactor List to provide narrower props for its list elements:
This looks a little better, and now we can re-use the List like so:
There’s not much here to the styles, but here they are to avoid confusion:
A small app constrained to just this web page can probably just get by with this simple component. But what if we were dealing with potentially large datasets, where the list needs to render hundreds of rows? We would end up with the page attempting to display all of them, which can introduce issues like crashing, lag, elements being out of place or overlapping, etc.
This isn’t a great user experience, so we can provide a way to expand the list when the number of members hits a certain count:
It seems like we got a pretty good reusable component for rendering lists of groups now.
We can absolutely do better. We don’t really have to use this component specifically for groups of an organization.
What if we can use it for other purposes? Providing a prop for the label (which in our case is Group ) can logically make that happen:
You can then use it for other purposes:
When thinking about how to make React components more reusable, a simple but powerful approach is to re-think how your prop variables are named. Most of the time, a simple rename can make a huge difference.
In our App component, we can also provide a custom prop for the Members part:
Now if we look at our component and only provide the members prop, let's look at what we get:
I don’t know about you, but what I see here is that the list can actually be used for anything!
We can reuse the same component to represent patents waiting in line for their next appointment:
Or we can use it on bidding auctions:
Do not underestimate the power of naming variables. A simple naming fix can become a game-changer.
Lets go back to the code. We did pretty well on expanding its reusability. But in my perspective we can actually do a lot more.
Now that we know our List component can be compatible to be reused for totally unrelated reasons, we can decide to break up pieces of the component into subcomponents to support different use cases, like so:
Functionally it works the same way, but now we split different elements into list subcomponents.
This provides some neat benefits:
We can now test each component separately.
It becomes more scalable (maintenance, code size).
It becomes more readable, even when code becomes larger.
We can optimize each component with memoization using techniques like React.memo .
Notice that the majority of the implementation details stayed, the same but it’s now more reusable.
You might have noticed that the collapsed state was moved into ListComponent . We can easily make the ListComponent reusable by moving the state control back to the parent through props:
Knowing that ListComponent became more reusable by providing the collapse state management through props, we can do the same for List so that developers that use our component have the power to control it:
We’re starting to see a pattern emerge here. It seems like props has a lot to do with reusability — and that's exactly right!
In practice, it’s not uncommon that developers want to override an implementation of a subcomponent to provide their own component. We can make our List component to allow for that by providing an override from props as well:
This is a very common but powerful pattern used in many React libraries. In the midst of reusability, it’s very important to always have default implementations in place. For example, if a developer wants to override the ListHeader , they can provide their own implementation by passing in renderHeader . Otherwise, it will default to rendering the original ListHeader . This is to keep the list component staying functionally the same, and unbreakable.
But even when you provide default implementations if an override isn’t being used, it’s also good to provide a way to remove or hide something in the component as well.
For example, if we want to provide a way for a developer to not render any header element at all, it’s a useful tactic to provide a switch for that through props. We don’t want to pollute the namespace in props, so we can re-use the header prop. That way, if they pass in null , it can just not render the list header at all:
We can go further still with our reusable List component. We aren't constrained to providing overrides for the ListHeader and ListComponent . We can also provide a way for them to override the Root component like so:
Remember that when we provide customizable options like these, we always default to a default implementation, just as we defaulted to it to use the original ListRoot component.
Now the parent can easily provide their own fashionable container component that renders the List as its children:
Sometimes developers also want to provide their own list rows. Using the same concepts we went over throughout this article, we can make that happen. First, let’s abstract out the li elements into their own ListItem component:
Then change the List to provide a customizable renderer to override the default ListItem :
And slightly modify the ListComponent to support that customization: | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-maximize-reusability-for-your-react-components-d9607c04f2aa | [] | 2020-04-15 15:19:46.311000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Vuejs', 'Nodejs', 'React'] |
Testin 7 Prensibi | 7 Principles of Software Testing: Learn with Examples
There are seven principles of Software Testing. 1) Testing shows presence of defects, 2) Exhaustive testing is… | https://medium.com/@alirizaavcibasi/testin-7-prensibi-dabebd0f7db6 | ['Ali Riza Avcıbaşı'] | 2020-12-18 15:23:35.420000+00:00 | ['QA', 'Istqb', 'Software Testing', 'Qa Testing', 'Testing'] |
The most creative website solution provider in Adelaide. | Websites are vitally important tools for any sort of modern business in many ways such as boosting sales, helping clients management, perform specific functionalities and etc. Nowadays, even a freelancer can make a website by his/her own but in various qualities. At YNW Web and Apps, we talk about the real custom-built website design and development base on your specific business needs and marketing scenario. You will not waste your money on building your website and doing SEO with us. We have many success cases and project experiences in our area. If you haven’t been familiar with us so far, you will. We are confident about the quality of services and works we have done for our clients. Perhaps, you are going to talk about or being taught about ‘YNW’ soon.
We provide professional web design services at an affordable price. No project is too big or too small for us. We have teams to do photography, Graphics Design, front end design, back end development. A website with full functionalities which is able to help your business not only in marketing but also in many other aspects is not that far from you. All you need to do is to sit with us and tell your ideas, then we can do all the rest works for you. Isn’t it easy enough? We guarantee our customers’ happiness on the services they have been offered, and we care about if you are happy to bring your friends back to our door.
We provide premium SEO and digital marketing services to Adelaide business owners at a fair price. We know how a website works and also know how Google ranks all the websites. If you are our Web Design customer, then congratulations, you have already done the first step of SEO — On-page SEO. All of our website design works are made to SEO friendly which means you can easily get SEO works done with fewer efforts being paid. Every of our customer will get an On-page SEO report from us which shows how good your On-page SEO score is.
One of our Customers — Basic Trailers, selling the best trailers in Adelaide. They add an additional 2-year contract with us after we have ranked their website onto the first page of Google Search Results by their most important keyword “trailers for sale” in 20 days. Now they get 600+ clicks every day and more than half of the visits are from organic searches by keywords. So, just think about it how much money they can save from being a client of Google Ads. They would pay $10K a month for the visit flows from Google Ads.
We also do photography jobs for our website design customers by the needs of their website building. We design websites, so we know exactly what kind of pictures going to fit best on our customers’ website to make a stunning looking. We do 4K resolution drone photo and video for our specific customer group(farms, wine companies, outdoor living and travel etc.). If you have checked the websites we have done, you will be surprised by how beautiful photos we have taken.
At YNW Web and Apps, We offer visual design and printing services at a very good price. If you going to take a large order from us, we guarantee you will have the lowest price within South Australia. We have creative employees to give stunning designs with freshest ideas. If you are our web design customer, all the graphic design works will be included to the website project, in another word, it is totally free for you.
Try us and be prepared for what we going to surprise you and the belief we going to present to you. | https://medium.com/ynw-web-and-apps/the-most-creative-website-solution-provider-in-adelaide-cbb91afeaeb4 | ['Zhang Wei'] | 2019-02-17 13:15:49.234000+00:00 | ['Photography', 'Website Design', 'Website Development', 'Web Development', 'Web Design'] |
Weekly Centina Prompt: Cold | Weekly Centina Prompt: Cold
Photo by Bill Adler
For this week’s centina prompt, write a 100-word story about cold temperature.
If you’re in the northern hemisphere, now in winter’s frosty grip, conjuring cold won’t be hard at all. If you live in the southern hemisphere, where spending the weekend at the beach may be on your agenda, don’t worry, cold weather will be back.
The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F) in Antarctica.
The coldest day in the lower forty-eight states in the United States was a brisk -44 °C (-47 °F), in December 1934. It was at the summit of New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington.
Space is even chillier, a frosty -271 °C (-455 °F).
Some people hate cold weather, while for others there’s nothing better than standing outside in a short sleeve shirt while the mercury hovers above freezing. The Japanese language even has words to describe cold-weather people: atsugari (somebody who’s sensitive to hot weather.) The opposite in Japanese is samugari, somebody who hates the cold.
Of course, in real life, people who like cold and hot temperatures always end up marrying each other.
I do think that regardless of where you come down on the cold versus hot battle, everyone can agree that watching dry ice sublimate from a solid to a gas (which it does at −78.5 °C, −109.2 °F) is fun to watch.
Remember to write a descriptive subtitle (instead of just writing something like a “100-word story.”) Make good use of the subtitle space. | https://medium.com/centina-pentina/weekly-centina-prompt-cold-828e2aced0c9 | ['Bill Adler Editor'] | 2020-12-18 14:03:08.284000+00:00 | ['Winter', 'Cold', 'Pubprompt', 'Fiction Prompts', 'Writing Prompts'] |
How Quarantine Led to a Foursome | How Quarantine Led to a Foursome
Thoughts of an Untimely Demise Led to a Wild Night
Image from timesofindia.indiatimes.com
When the world shut down momentarily and everyone went into self-isolation my partner and I found ourselves sharing our space with two of our closest friends. We were out in cottage country when our workplace switched to a remote option and on a whim, we decided to extend our stay out in the country a little while longer. We live in tiny condos in the city, so it made sense for us to stay put and enjoy a little distance from the hustle and bustle.
Sharing a 2 bedroom cottage was not a concern as we had previously lived together while in college. The first couple of weeks went on without any surprises. Each of us spent the work hours pouring over our laptops and spent the evenings enjoying each other’s company while making and sharing a meal together. The unknownness of everything was quite stressful so after that first week of drowning ourselves in COVID-19 news we decided that we will no longer discuss it or watch any content pertaining to it in the shared spaces.
The whole point of staying out of the city was to not get caught up and overwhelmed with the current state of the world, so it seemed counterproductive to spend our cottage time discussing it the whole time.
As time went on, we came to one of the long weekend holidays so it gave us some time to truly disconnect from work and get back into enjoying our little countryside abode. The day started as any with each of us fending for ourselves in terms of breakfast and lunch. For dinner, we decided to grill some meat and have ourselves a little barbeque along with copious amounts of alcohol. When it got a little cooler we decided to move inside and continue to enjoy each other’s company.
Inadvertently the topic of discussion moved on to the pandemic and a whole slew of what-ifs were being thrown out. What-if we never go back to normal? What-if the virus is unstoppable? So on and so forth we kept talking about it until the mood was quite dark and gloomy. It felt a bit like being suffocated until my partner leaned over and kissed me. This wasn’t the type of kiss you give someone in polite company, it was a desperate and hungry kiss, one that spoke of how helpless the situation made them feel.
When we finally came up for air, it was two sets of eyes wide open. The looks on our friends' faces were of genuine surprise, but there was a bit of intrigue and perhaps arousal. After the kiss, we went back to our discussion although the vibe was a lot sultry now. My friend took to being a lot more touchy than she was before and to be honest it wasn’t unpleasant or unwanted.
The casual caresses grew to be more lingering until finally she brought up the topic of group sex.
Much like most millennials, we aren’t particularly shy or prudish. Our sex lives have been topics that were discussed for years and being former roommates we have all seen each other naked a few times. There have even been instances of walking in on the others being intimate. What surprised me was the new layer to our well-explored friendships. Is group sex something we want to bring into now especially with us self-isolating together? After having a discussion about the pros and cons, we decided it was something we were all interested in exploring with each other. So we decided to go ahead with it.
First was setting some ground rules such as being able to put an end to it at any moment should you feel uncomfortable, everyone gets to orgasm at least once and finally, condoms will always be worn during penetrative sex. Our partners went in search of condoms while my friend and I decided to set the mood. It was a night of firsts from watching my partner with another person to being shared between two men but ultimately it became a night that unlocked a new part of my relationship. Both between a long-time friend and my partner.
It was also a night where most of our actions were fueled by the vulnerability brought on by the pandemic.
The night ended with each of the couples heading to their own rooms where the intimacy continued. One would think partaking in a foursome would wear us down but I think we were more energized than ever simply on what just happened. The erotic-ness of what we each saw turned us on that even after the main event we still wanted to continue with each of our partners. The next morning it was business as usual and there was no awkwardness.
The main thing that helped us avoid any weirdness was discussing it like adults and setting those ground rules. At the end of the day, humans are finicky creatures and unless everyone involved in a foursome feels safe and secure it would always lead to awkwardness. As much as we want sex to be just that, that never is the case. | https://medium.com/sexography/how-quarantine-led-to-a-foursome-b7dbc81a9ac6 | [] | 2020-10-10 16:18:18.496000+00:00 | ['Relationships Love Dating', 'Sexuality', 'Sex', 'Relationships', 'Love And Sex'] |
Change In The Outlook Of Indian Smartphone Space | The highs and lows of India’s relationship with the Chinese manufacturers
India is one of the most popular destinations for smartphone companies with as many mobile users as the entire population of the United States. The number of smartphone users in India is estimated to increase to about 442 million in 2022. Being the second-largest market globally for smartphones after China, India is a very attractive market for foreign vendors. As tensions between India and China escalate, Chinese smartphone brands — which control over 80% of the market — are looking to bolster their Indian credentials. Domestic brands, on the other hand, see an opportunity to return to their halcyon days of 2014 when Micromax ruled the roost.
The Xiaomi Story — quest to become an ‘Indian’ Brand
On 21st May, in the wake of a series of Sino-Indian border skirmishes, Chinese electronics brand Xiaomi quietly added a new page to its Indian website, titled ‘Made in India’, it did it’s best to paint Xiaomi, India’s best-selling smartphone brand, as an Indian success story. It touted the scale of Xiaomi’s manufacturing in India, the number of Indian employees, and Indian investments, including social media platform ShareChat. Further highlighting the company’s philanthropic activities like donations to the families of martyred soldiers and PMCares fund set up to help fight Covid-19. Xiaomi also highlighted its inclusion of Hindu calendars with kundli (horoscope) compatibility and even its India-specific beard trimmers. As far as offline was concerned, Xiaomi stores across the country changed external branding replaced with large Made in India banners, while Xiaomi India’s MD, MR. Manu Kumar Jain went on to say the company is ‘global’ rather than Chinese.
Its festive season ads featuring former Indian Cricket captain and current BCCI president Mr. Sourav Ganguly is another proof of its strategy. The Boycott China movement affected the company’s social media presence adversely.
Over the past half-decade, other Chinese brands cast their shadow over the Indian smartphone space with their feature-packed yet inexpensive offerings. In India, the top four Chinese brands — Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, and Realme — sell close to 100 million smartphones, valued at $16 billion. Except for Xiaomi, the remaining three belong to China’s BBK group.
Rekindled hopes of Indian smartphone brands
For Indian smartphone companies like Lava and Micromax, who have been obliterated by their Chinese counterparts, there is finally a silver lining. In 2014, they controlled around 40% of the market which is now less than 1%. A lack of innovation and strategy saw them left behind.
OnePlus, Oppo, Xiaomi must push their launches mainly due to the pandemic and boycott China movement. This presents a rare window of opportunity for Indian companies who are hoping for a return to the days of 2014, when a young Micromax dethroned Samsung as the country’s top-selling brand. In 2015, Indian brands controlled 45% of the country’s smartphone market, whereas Chinese brands were at 9%, according to data from Counterpoint Research. Their failure to adapt to the advent of 4G, however, caused a stunning reversal in fortunes. Even as Chinese brands hesitate or struggle to launch new models, both Lava and Micromax are hoping to blitz the market. Noida-headquartered Lava’s promotion on social media has also leaned heavily on nationalist sentiments. Lava boasts a network of 120,000 retailers in India and the company announced a plan to shift its R&D, design, and manufacturing from China to India, in the process investing Rs 800 crore.
Current smartphone segment scenario
During the second quarter of 2020, all major companies like Apple, Samsung, OnePlus recorded substantial growth. Apple grew by 67% YoY to 800,000 units, whereas Samsung grew four times, and OnePlus recorded a growth of 104% YoY. According to IDC, the premium handset segment grew by 91%. Mid-segment handsets shrank and at entry-level, despite new launches sales couldn’t match the premium segment growth. The average selling price has decreased by 2%. Experts state that two major factors are responsible for this shift, economic slowdown due to the pandemic which in turn has reduced income of low and mid-income households, and e-learning, work from home forced everyone to shift to smartphones.
Current political scenario
India is slowly moving towards becoming a hub for manufacturing on which the government has launched various schemes like the ‘Make in India’ initiative & ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. One of the major schemes which will help the Indian smartphone market is a production-linked incentive for Large Scale Electronics Manufacturing launched in October 2019. If the companies coming under this scheme are meeting their target, then rewards are attractive. Top mobile phone makers like Foxconn, Wistron, Lava, etc. have committed investments worth Rs 11,000 crore under the PLI scheme and will surpass manufacturing estimates by 2 to 2.5 times.
With the Chinese brands moving up the value chain as they look to drive margins up, Indian brands could move into the wallet-friendly sub-Rs 15,000 segments. Micromax under the Atmanirbhar Bharat scheme has now decided to make a comeback with its new range of handsets which will be a direct competition to Chinese handsets. On 15th November 2020, 15 Asian nations signed a powerful free trade agreement which will help China regain its position after the pandemic, however, India opted out of this agreement in 2019 with concerns over low priced Chinese goods entering the country and remained absent for the virtual signing.
India’s overt dependence on China is clear from the fact that total imports declined by 48% in April-July YOY in which the Chinese component saw a decline of 29%. India’s trade deficit with China continues, where exports have risen by 31% in the first quarter with a value of $7.3 Billion which led to increase in China’s share in total Indian exports from 4.5% to 9.7%. Experts suggest that India’s dependence on China for items like active pharmaceutical ingredients for medicines and electrical equipment will continue in the near future, though India may be able to cut back on imports of non-essential items like toys and plastics.
Our Opinion
Since the COVID pandemic, we have seen the world shift from offline to a virtual space. Consumer durables especially smartphones are the need of the hour and the Indian smartphone market is growing at a rapid rate.
For India, being self-sufficient is an arduous but necessary step. With the help of newly launched schemes for both foreign and Indian companies, allowance of increased share in FDIs, India is likely to excel internationally along with a rise in per capita income of the country. A blanket ban in China would not serve India’s purpose, rather the Government should look to work closely with Taiwan or Vietnam and attract foreign companies to manufacture locally.
Co-author: Kirti Mahajan, MBA-IB IIFT’22
References:
1. https://www.statista.com/topics/4600/smartphone-market-in-india/
2. https://the-ken.com/story/smartphones-anti-china-wave/
3. https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/mobile-handset-market-sees-a-widening-divide-as-mass-segment-suffers-120111400002_1.html
4. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/15-asian-nations-sign-huge-china-backed-trade-pact-2325363
5. https://www.theindianwire.com/business/production-linked-incentive-scheme-attracts-major-mobile-manufacturers-to-india-per-capita-income-expected-to-rise-296779/
6. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prAP46764220 | https://medium.com/@souvikkk/change-in-the-outlook-of-indian-smartphone-space-ac1e088be34 | ['Souvik Das'] | 2020-11-27 11:53:14.269000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'Analysis', 'Smartphone', 'India', 'China'] |
From Risk to Resilience | Recently, there have been many natural disasters and man made risk which has impact the industry of risk management and insurance. Moreover, individuals, families, businesses and communities continue to be impacted by the unforeseen circumstances stemming from catastrophic risk. These risk include the Earthquake Today, Wildfires, Tropical Storm Fred and Flash Flood occurring around the globe. The frequency in the 2021 Hurricane season is considered to be at the peak based on historical frequency occurring in the August and September time line. The IPCC, FEMA, and the American Security Project are organization particular concerned about the rise in weather related events. The World Economic Forum, EVIA and USGS are study and report on these events.
The purpose of this video is to provide a general level of awareness as it relates to Disaster Resilience, Disaster Risk Management, and Risk Financing. Catastrophe bonds and resilience bonds are financial vehicles that could be used in order to mitigate and reduce the impact to communities whom impacted by such event(s). Although cliche, in my opinion the Build Back Better initiative is of the utmost importance. Even if we have insurance to cover us for such events, there are still limitations and coverage gaps that might cause individuals, families, businesses, and communities to be without complete insurance protection.
Discuss your insurance policy with your insurance agent and/or insurance company to ensure that you have the appropriate insurance coverage limits, endorsements, and that you understand your insurance deductible.
References
“Global Risk Agility and Decision Making” written by Daniel Wagner and Dante Disparte. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/global...
Record hurricane season and major wildfires — The natural disaster figures for 2020 — Record hurricane season and major wildfires — The natural disaster figures for 2020
Financing infrastructure through resilience bonds — https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-av...
A new impact investment vehicle may hold a key to addressing the West’s growing wildfire problem. — https://ssir.org/articles/entry/inves...
Future Global Shocks; Improving Risk Governance — https://www.oecd.org/governance/48329...
World Economic Forum, The Global Risks Report 2021 — http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_...
The Global Risks Interconnections Map 2020 — https://reports.weforum.org/global-ri...
Dante Disparte addresses the shift from natural to man-made risk, including cyber, climate change and sociopolitical challenges. — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ftUb... | https://medium.com/@larrynic/from-risk-to-resilience-c56d55bd7d84 | ['Larry Nicholson'] | 2021-08-16 14:59:11.879000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Insurance', 'Risk', 'Resilience', 'Natural Disasters'] |
Understanding 2021’s Rebranding Spree: Pfizer, Kia, Burger King and GM | Why Would A Company Change Its Logo?
As a rule of thumb, four significant scenarios require a company to change its logo. Those are:
1. When the company changes its name (very rare)
2. When two companies merge (rare)
3. When the company wants to reposition and renew its brand (often)
4. When the company wants to revitalize its identity or make it more consistent (frequently)
All four re-branding projects -Burger King, Pfizer, Kia and GM- fall under the third category. What those global giants are saying, in a nutshell, is this:
“The public has an antiquated perception about who we are and what we do. We now have cutting-edge products. But we look behind the times.”
While those companies’ objectives are more or less the same, their re-branding projects’ level of success varies quite a bit. So, here are our thoughts on all four of them — ranked from most successful to least successful.
PFIZER
Most brands want to keep things fresh all the time. Sometimes they change for the sake of changing. By doing so, they stay up-to-date and salient. That trend is more visible, particularly among those brands, which appeal to a younger audience. | https://medium.com/thegobranding/understanding-2021s-rebranding-spree-pfizer-kia-burger-king-and-gm-bf0e9c7882ff | ['The Go Branding'] | 2021-01-28 22:40:35.762000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Logo', 'Marketing', 'Logo Design', 'Brand Strategy'] |
Tesla Ruling The Automotive Industry. | Tesla Ruling The Car Market.
Tesla Model S
Tesla launched its new electric car which was the Tesla Model S in the mid 2012 and it began its deliveries in 2013. Tesla Model S ranked the top selling Car in North America with over 4900 units sold in just the first quarter of 2013 which is ahead of the Nissan Leaf. The Model S alone ranked the 5.1% shares of all the new cars sold in 2013 becoming the first ever electric car to rank the new car sales ranking in any country. If you go to North America, you may spot more Tesla’s than a motor car. As i saw in a YouTube video, any direction you turn, you are only going to see The Tesla’s.
Tesla then unveiled the launch of their new Tesla Model 3 in March, 2016. With pricing starting at $35,000 and a range of 345 km or 215 miles in a single charge, everyone had their mouths open. After the Launch Event of the Model 3, there were over 115,000 people lined outside the Tesla dealership to make an reservation on their Tesla.
Tesla Model 3
One week after the event, Tesla motors reported over 325,000 reservations on the Model 3 which was more than triple of units sold of Tesla Model S. The reservations alone presented the potential sales over $14 Billion. With the Tesla charging Stations All-Around the world with free charging and auto-pilot in all cars which helps car drive on its own and the lighter weight body with no engine helps the car to go from 0–60 in less than 2.5 seconds, Tesla gets a great customer feedback. And the sensors the cars is equiped with helps to prevent accidents.
Tesla Charging Station
And with The New version of the Tesla Roadster, the world went crazy. With a price tag of $200,000 and range of 1000 km with 0–60 in less than 1.9 seconds, the Tesla Roadster will be the fastest electric car in the world with putting the supercar companies like Lamborghini, Ferrari and Mclaren in a big question tag . This has forced most of the automotive companies towards making an electric car. And some have already made some whereas some are under the production. Popular automotive companies like Hyundai and others have put a stepping stone towards the electric cars market. | https://medium.com/@pratiikk71/tesla-ruling-the-automotive-industry-47ee17243d7a | ['Pratik Kapse'] | 2020-09-04 10:50:31.759000+00:00 | ['Automotive', 'Tesla Motors', 'Tesla Roadster', 'Electric Car', 'Tesla'] |
“Two Old Feisty Broads” | TWO OLD FEISTY BROADS
For once in our lives
We don’t care what
They’re thinking
Now that we’re
Feisty old broads.
For once we can eat Krispy Kreme’s
Without blinking
Cuz now we’re ok
With our bods
Once we could reach for
Our toes
Without groaning
It was so e-e-e-aasy before
Now our boobs
Just touch
The
Floooor…
We are WOMEN
Hear us ROAR!!
For once in our lives
We wear shoes that don’t hurt us
Not like high heels did before
For most of our days we choose to
Wear slippers
Even to drive to the store
For once in our lives we can stop
Hiding wrinkles
We can laugh at our hormones
And Untimely Tinkles!
For once
We can cheer
Cuz we’re
Two
Old
Feisty
Broads.
For once we can go
To bed
With our sweats on
Not lingerie like the past (Screw Victoria Secret)
For once
We can go
Paint the town
Without makeup
Now we are comfy
At last
For once we can throw off our bras
Cuz they’re too tight,
We now proudly
Call our grey hairs
Wisdom HIGHLIGHTS!
For once in our lives
We don’t feel
That we are
Frauds…
(Becaaaause…)
We’re happy to be
Two
Old
Feisty
Saucy
Spicy
Sassy
BROADS! | https://medium.com/immersed-in-verse-from-dr-suess-to-emily-dickenson/two-old-feisty-broads-7129f1dcef1e | ['Michelle Monet'] | 2019-10-26 10:12:45.627000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Musical', 'Music', 'Songwriting', 'Women'] |
The Problem With Instant Gratification | You might ask, what’s wrong with a little gratification? Absolutely nothing! We all look for it, crave it. That acknowledgment from someone else that we did something good. That we succeeded. It’s a perfectly natural human desire to want to be recognized — it’s the ‘instant’ part we need to work on. This brings me back to yet another country song lyrics (not sorry): “Nothing worth it’s ever gonna be easy.” by Paul Brandt. And that goes hand in hand with the now-famous quote, “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” by John C. Maxwell.
I’ve found this to be true, regardless of what you’re trying to achieve in life. Whether you’re trying to lose weight and not seeing any results on the scale, or you’re writing a manuscript that seems to be crawling along. You could be trying to save for a rainy day, but the numbers are only climbing by pennies, or maybe you’re building a business and it feels like you’re always taking one step forward and two steps back.
Understand one thing: life is a constant work in progress, just as we are as humans. We’re continuously evolving, growing, learning, and although things might sometimes appear to stay the same, nothing ever truly does. As long as you’re putting in the work, things are moving forward even if you’re not seeing the kind of progress you’d like to see. Life doesn’t happen instantaneously, but rather, it moves forward one small step at a time. If you keep putting one foot in front of the other, eventually you’ll get to where you’re going. It’s a lot more interesting to experience the journey — if we could just automatically jump to the destination, we would have learned no lessons when we got there.
I know I’m not repeating anything new when I say that what we think of as failures are simply lessons we needed to learn. As long as we’re trying, we’re not failing, we’re learning. We’re growing.
At the beginning of this year, one of my best friends and I decided we would start our own writing and editing business. We’re both passionate about words, we’re practically carbon-copies of each other and agree on practically everything, and there’s nobody in the world I would rather do this with. So we took the first steps, and we’ve been continuing to take steps ever since. Six months later, are we a fully successful company bringing in a constant stream of income that will allow me to quit my day job? Of course not — not yet!
But in those six months, I have learned so much — not only about myself and what I’m made of but about how dreams evolve, how they never stay exactly the same, and how we, as dreamers, evolve along with them. Daryl and I have been watching our ‘baby’ bloom and grow and seeing that although it doesn’t happen overnight, all of our efforts and hard work is beginning to pay off.
Instant gratification is something we all wish for, but it’s not something that would benefit any of us in the long run.
I’ve come to realize that I don’t want automatic. I don’t want instant. Over the past six months, as we’ve worked towards building and growing this business, something else has happened. Something magical that wouldn’t have happened if we could have just snapped our fingers and had a million bucks and a fully-stocked client list in 1.5 seconds.
Our friendship has grown, and evolved, and deepened to become something I never could have even dreamed of. It’s been almost a year since I joined this platform, and ‘met’ this amazing man. A year of growing, slowly and steadily, a bond and a friendship that I know will remain with me for as long as I live. And the gratification I gain from it is better than anything instant I could have ever asked for. | https://medium.com/imperfect-words/the-problem-with-instant-gratification-83a2da7de598 | ['Edie Tuck'] | 2020-06-23 18:07:01.477000+00:00 | ['Patience', 'Journey', 'Hard Work', 'Instant Gratification', 'Dreams'] |
Edie’s Three | I’ve Stopped Taking My Phone To The Bathroom
By: Jon Peters
This piece hit me hard, like a slap in the face really. I don’t go anywhere without my phone, it’s always in my back pocket (or tucked in my bra — come on ladies, I know I’m not the only one!) And although it’s always on silent or vibrate-mode, it’s always within arm’s reach. Thankfully it’s never been dropped in the toilet (yet), but really, it’s only a matter fo time.
Addicted? I don’t know if I’d use the term ‘addicted’, but I definitely depend on it much more than I should, so it’s probably the same thing, just a different term. I’m not proud of this — I grew up in a time when cell phones and the internet weren’t a thing! It wasn’t until after I graduated high school that the internet really exploded, and I had my first cell phone. A heavy ‘pay as you go’ Motorola flip phone with an antenna you had to pull out. I thought I was cool.
Now we live in a different world and we’ve become so accustomed to it that just the thought of being without can send some of us into a panic attack. I wonder how the world would function if we all unplugged for just one day…or even an entire week. Hmm…now there’s an experiment!
I’ll Never Stop Insisting Santa is Real
By: Rachael Hope
I’m a hopeless cryer. An emotional hot mess without the ‘hot’ part, on a regular day, so I was really glad that I read this piece at home on my lunch break, and not sitting at my desk at work.
I didn’t cry because it’s sad or sappy, but because it really hit me right in the feels.
As someone who’s been trying in vain to achieve that elusive “Christmas Spirit” for the best part of the last twenty years, this piece is a little reminder — a little much-needed kick in the pants — that the ‘feeling’…the MAGIC is there all along, we just have to believe to see it.
Children are so open-minded that they have no trouble believing in the magic of Christmas, but as we get older and stop believing in the entity of ‘Santa’, the wonder of it all starts to seep away slowly until we suddenly realize it’s all gone, and we’ve no idea where it went.
Santa — that Christmas magic-maker that brings the feelings of joy to all the little children — it’s still there inside all of us. And it’s very real, indeed! We just have to choose to see it again, and to believe it, and to BE it!
Back to the Land
By: Alan Asnen
This topic always hits home for me. We’ve become so engrossed with technology, enterprise, industry…that we seem to not only have forgotten about our roots. A way of life where we’re embracing our union and partnership with the earth.
It’s terrifying to think that the government wants to completely eradicate this part of life that means so much to so many people. Squashing the little guy to make more room for big business. Grow grow grow, bigger bigger bigger! Make more money!!! And yet some of us watching from the sidelines are seeing the carnage with tears streaming down our faces.
Generations of people working the land…loving the land, are now going to be replaced by corporations and machines to support the ever-expanding populations of cities. And now we have to feed more people so we have to produce more food at a faster rate, so let’s help it along with hormones and chemicals…the hell with consequences! | https://medium.com/top-3/edies-three-db4183b48dfc | ['Edie Tuck'] | 2019-12-10 19:54:38.924000+00:00 | ['Top 3', 'Agriculture', 'Christmas', 'Tech Addiction', 'Time'] |
Keeping The Fire Alive | It’s the last 12 months of a two-year push to roll-out The Bike Scouts Project at a scale that allows it to do what it was designed for — to give people a place to come together as a community and passionately change the world around them in a very human way.
Starting in 2013 with a crowdsourced idea for a Volunteer Bicycle Messenger service that provided an alternative means of communication and supply for people that were isolated by Typhoon Yolanda. In six years, the Bike Scouts grew from that simple idea into a social platform for people who believe in the difference that a genuinely-involved community can make.
A lot of people think that The Bike Scouts Project is about chasing after a goal, and it’s probably why a lot of people are always concerned about what it will do tomorrow, the next week, or the next month. What nobody understands is that The Bike Scouts Project is not meant to attain a goal — it is meant to exist.
The work and the unimaginable sacrifice that has gone into building the Bike Scouts for the past six years hasn’t been to chase after a goal. Everything has been about building something that will outlast all of its builders, designers, doubters, and its believers. It’s why it has been challenging, and it’s the reason why it isn’t as simple as what most would like it to be.
The real benefit of the Bike Scouts is its foundation. It isn’t just the technology that makes the community possible, it’s not about programs or goals, the bedrock of the Bike Scouts is its unseen architecture. The Bike Scouts community is built on an actual achievement, everything about it is based on the actual practice of what it stands for.
You can strip away the technology, engagement, data, marketing, and the branding of the Bike Scouts and you will end up with a genuine core that stands on its own value. The Bike Scouts Project is about people, it’s about the belief that there is inherent good in everyone, and that a community that believes in that good can generate the drive to bring out a better version of ourselves as human beings.
It sounds too idealistic, of course, if only it isn’t actually happening every day on a massive scale in a community that’s separated by over 7,000 islands but connected by the belief in a shared sense of humanity. This is what the Bike Scouts community is all about. It won’t look fancy when you see it because we’ve been working on the people side of things, we did the work of building the community. We connected offline before we even started going online, and this is what makes it strong.
Technology provides convenience, and nobody has ever considered that it’s the greatest weakness of connecting with machines and devices. The world is a physical place and there is nothing that will change that — even if we learn to upload ourselves to the web, or the cloud, weather can wipe all of us away with one category five typhoon. We know this because we’ve been there, and when that happens it’s the physical community that will remain.
The Bike Scouts community exists online, it runs on technology, the people that make up the community connect with devices but even if the world goes dark it’s one of the very few communities that will still be online, through a very human network that serves as its foundation. It’s easy to make people like, share, or fill up a survey but proximity and participation alone does not make people neighbors, or actual friends.
You can join a social platform where you can have thousands of virtual friends, or you can sign up for the Bike Scouts community and have fewer friends, though, they will be the kind of friends who will actually show up at your doorstep when you need somebody to ride a bicycle with, or when the strongest typhoon in human history washes away your home and you think there is nobody that will find you. The Bike Scouts will, we are the only community that can actually claim we’ve done it before.
We are Bike Scouts.
Visit us online: bikescouts.org | https://medium.com/@mylesdelfin/keeping-the-fire-alive-dd101a257c4b | ['Myles Delfin'] | 2019-10-17 14:10:51.143000+00:00 | ['Cycling', 'Social Good', 'Community', 'Disaster Response', 'Social Media'] |
Bose Sound Link Micro Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker “ Best Mobile Accessories | Product Knowledge :
The Bose Sound Link Micro Bluetooth speaker conveys sound so useful for a speaker its size, you’ll never desert it. Restrictive Bose innovation creates boisterous, clear solid even outside gratitude to its exclusively mounted transducer and uninvolved radiators. All from a speaker that is at home in your grasp. It’s additionally waterproof from the back to front, has a delicate however rough outside and tear-safe silicone lash, so it’s prepared to take with you on the entirety of life’s undertakings. Append it to your rucksack or cooler, and don’t stress in the event that it falls on the walkway or in the sand. What’s more, on the off chance that you drop it in the pool, simply get it dry and continue playing. Appreciate as long as six hours of play time with a battery-powered lithium-particle battery. Pair your cell phone or tablet remotely and effectively with Bluetooth network and voice prompts. Press a catch and accept telephone gets for all to hear legitimately through the speaker with fresh, clear Bose sound. The inherent speakerphone likewise gives you voice access to your telephone’s Siri or your Google Assistant-straightforwardly through the speaker. It even works with the Echo Dot for sans hands voice control. Need considerably increasingly stable? Utilize the free Bose Connect application to match more than one good Bose Bluetooth speaker for Party Mode to play a similar music through each. Or on the other hand utilize Stereo Mode to isolate both ways channels. Accessible in Black with Black lash, Midnight Blue with Smoky Violet tie or Bright Orange with Dark Plum tie.
Included: Sound Link Micro Bluetooth speaker; USB cable.
Product Features :
(1) Waterproof speaker
(2) Easily portable with a Tear-resistant strap to bring it wherever you go
(3) Wireless Bluetooth pairing with up to 6 hours of play time
(4) Built-in speakerphone for taking calls out loud and voice access to your phone’s Siri or your Google assistant | https://medium.com/@hotgrabdeal/bose-sound-link-micro-waterproof-bluetooth-speaker-best-mobile-accessories-3e04a02e0352 | [] | 2020-01-11 16:28:48.768000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Headphones', 'Laptop', 'Microphone Accessories', 'Mobile Accessories'] |
Counseling the Nursing Mother: A Lactation Consultant’s Guide full_acces | Counseling the Nursing Mother: A Lactation Consultant’s Guide, — ->>> Written from a teaching perspective, Counseling the Nursing Mother: A Lactation Consultant’s Guide, Sixth Edition presents topics within a counseling framework with practical suggestions and evidence-based information interwoven throughout. Completely updated and revised, it includes new research on milk composition, the importance of the gut microbiome and skin-to-skin care, Affordable Care Act changes, and the latest guidelines from the World Health Organization for breastfeeding with HIV. Also explored and expanded are discussions on cultural competence, working effectively and sensitively with LGBTQ families, addressing disparities in health equity, milk banking issues, and social media trends for lactation information and support.Additionally, the Sixth Edition also serves as a significant teaching tool for students, interns, and other healthcare professionals. With an extensive glossary and bulleted lists at the end of each chapter, it is an ideal study guide for International ……. MORE …… Visit link : https://playbookworldwide.blogspot.com/?book=128405263X
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Go check it out and see what great deals you can find! | https://medium.com/@wm7349y/counseling-the-nursing-mother-a-lactation-consultants-guide-full-acces-44aa84616fbf | [] | 2019-08-27 04:05:16.773000+00:00 | ['Breastfeeding'] |
El estímulo de una amiga | Mom working on writing, Spanish and growing. Impromptu family dance parties make me happy. | https://medium.com/@impromptudancing/el-est%C3%ADmulo-de-una-amiga-6a53216545e8 | ['Impromptu Dancing'] | 2020-11-18 17:41:53.815000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Self Improvement', 'Español', 'Friendship', 'Life'] |
Amal Totkay | A growth mindset is very essential in daily life If you want to succeed in this world. I want to emphasize the following 5 tips that are useful for a developing mindset
1.Stop seeking approval.
2.View challenges as opportunities
3.Self-talk
you have to know first what you are, and what you want to do
4. Place effort before talent
5.Learn from other people’s mistakes
Reflection on these Totkay:
I found these tips from the online course provided by Amal. I learned how to find myself first then to put effort and never say that I am not able to do this because nothing is impossible. My favorite tip is self-talk. Seeking the challenges as opportunities to learn something from everything. We just have to take the first step towards something that we want to do by self-reflection than hardworking in that field will ensure a growth mindset | https://medium.com/@muhammad-shahbaz165/amal-totkay-8d6e541190f3 | ['Muhammad Shahbaz Qadir'] | 2020-12-25 18:12:38.379000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Blogging', 'Amal Totay', 'Self Esteem'] |
The Benefits of Doing Nothing | Learn mindfulness of mind and body
Living a mindful life is a broad statement. It encompasses many things, such as learning to relieve stress and gain some level of control over anxiety, become grounded, and more in touch with your own emotions and intuition, as well as a more in-tune connection not only with yourself but also with others around you. You’ll also be in a generally better mood, which is a benefit for everyone!
The concept was originally derived from a Buddhist tradition, but it’s something we could all benefit from.
When you never stop, never pause the hustle, there’s no time for your mind to wrap itself around anything but what you’re doing. Thoughts may come and go, but they’re fleeting, and ‘getting back to it later’ doesn’t usually happen, because ‘later’ is still full of the busy.
“In today’s rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much, and forget about the joy of just being.” -Eckhart Tolle
It’s really important to find that place of quiet and escape for a little while. Lately, especially since I began writing in earnest, I’ve almost lost touch with that part of me. It’s not that I don’t know how to stop, it’s more that I now feel guilty if I do. I always think that if I’m not doing something to advance myself in my writing career, then I’m wasting precious time.
I need to shift that way of thinking because the only thing I’m going to achieve from that is burnout. Between a full-time job from eight to five, and then hiding out in my home office any other spare moment I have until well past my bedtime every night, it’s bound to happen if I don’t put the breaks on.
Less is more
These days, I’ve been running on the premise that I’m not doing enough. I just need to do more and more and more, or I’ll never reach my goals. But I’ve got it backwards. Doing more doesn’t necessarily equate quality. Often, it can end up just being a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that’s been mass-produced to fill the impending void.
I’ve come to realize that less really can be more. Low-quality work at a high-production rate will not give you the results you’re looking for. Sometimes, a lower and slower production rate, which ultimately allows you to produce better content, will have a much bigger payoff, both financially and emotionally. The gratification of knowing you’re doing good work that people are actually engaging with is a reward on its own.
Move at a slower pace. Take more time to process your thoughts. Work through problems methodically and calmly. And most importantly, take time for yourself. Whether meditation is your thing, or you just want to enjoy a hot bath with no distractions, make doing nothing a priority. Schedule it in if you have to! Your mind will thank you.
Recharge your creative battery
Unplug. Literally. Are you feeling depleted of your creative juices? Dried up, stuck? I’ve been feeling that way a lot lately. But it’s been said that putting our phones and tablets away, and turning off all electronics really, will force your brain to do what it does best. Think. Imagine. Create.
We’re always scouring the internet for ideas of what to write about, and most of the time we’re coming up empty because it’s all been done a million times, right? But your life hasn’t been done a million times, it’s been done once, and by you. So you’re the only expert, and I’m sure if you think back to the beginning as far as you can remember, you’ll be able to come up with countless stories and life lessons worth sharing.
Sitting with our own thoughts allows us the stillness required to bring back the memories and experiences we’ve had. Then when you’re done doing nothing, write them all down to revisit soon! Some of them might be just for you; a private moment that will make you smile. But some of them could be your next big story.
So go ahead and unplug your phone, close your laptop and turn off the TV. Shoo the kids to play, or lock yourself in the bathroom (let’s face it, sometimes it’s the only room where privacy is still a thing), and just… be. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/the-benefits-of-doing-nothing-eb55d41d2e01 | ['Edie Tuck'] | 2019-11-05 17:26:00.027000+00:00 | ['Relaxation', 'Life Lessons', 'Nothing', 'Time', 'Mindfulness'] |
The Letter | Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash
She sat down on the bench, for the first time noticing how much her feet ached. Glancing down, she saw the beginning of a blister beginning to appear where her boots touched bare skin. With a sad smile, she pressed her hand to the heart necklace wrapped around her neck. Slowly, she turned her attention to the letter in her hand. She turned it over and over again as if she could somehow change the contents through the movement.
The letter was sealed, but she knew exactly what was inside. The name on the front blurred as her eyes filled with tears. Angrily, she scrubbed them away with one ungloved hand. She clenched the letter until the tears subsided. As if with great agony, she opened her handbag and placed the letter deep inside. She closed the bag, then opened it again. Once she confirmed it was there, she stood up, put her handbag over her shoulder, and began to walk.
The woman trudged through the snow, simultaneously pulling up the hood of her long winter jacket. It got cold, she thought to herself. Continuing on, she checked her phone to confirm the address. She was getting close to her destination. Just a few more minutes and she would be in front of the big, white house with the French doors. Stumbling slightly on a rock made slippery by snow, she took a moment to steady herself, realizing she was also trying to steady her mind. After a moment, she continued to walk, clutching her bag like a life jacket, as if she could internalize the letter once more. As if she could take back the thoughts inside, the comments that threatened to make her heart skip a beat.
A soft street lamp signaled she had arrived. Just as she suspected, the only lights on were the red ones that lit up the bedroom. She knew those lights well. A breeze whipped by and the sheer black curtains inside the bedroom rippled, causing her to realize the window was open. She shouldn’t have been surprised. “That window is always open”, she thought to herself.
She let herself stand there for a few minutes, contemplating if she was really going to do what she had set out to do. Deep inside, she knew she must. Deliberately, she opened the bag. She reached in and tenderly held the letter in her hand, noticing a smudge from a tear that escaped her eyes. “Oh well”, she thought, “there’s nothing I can do about that now”. She held the letter until it was as chilly as her chapped hands.
When she could hold it no longer, she looked up at the window again. She saw a figure move slightly. It was of no matter. No one seemed to sleep anymore anyway. The French doors held a fancy metal box, meant for exactly this purpose. She slid the letter inside, holding on until the very last second. Forcing her fingers to let her release the letter, she stumbled backward. She caught herself, just like she always did. She began to breathe easier. In and out. She turned her back and walked away from the house, not sneaking a glance behind her until she was a mile away. | https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/the-letter-13b21be6bf50 | ['Elyse Wright'] | 2020-12-19 09:49:41.114000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Short Story Writing', 'Writers On Medium', 'Mystery', 'Love'] |
New Okcash Blockchain explorer + OK Nodes health map | OK blockchain explorer @ coinzen
New OK Blockchain explorer and OK nodes health map [Iquidus+Coinzen] — Happy Holidays, Share the OK with your loved ones!
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Remember to join the OK holiday giveaways over Okcash community Discord, have fun and celebrate. https://discord.gg/grvpc8c | https://okcash.news/new-okcash-blockchain-explorer-ok-nodes-health-map-205204e8575e | [] | 2020-12-24 19:05:03.443000+00:00 | ['Okcash', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Services'] |
Afghanistan: A Possibly Unimaginable Community | Photo: Unsplash
Benedict Anderson provided us with the standard post-structuralist definition of a nation as an “imagined community.” While most nations are more substantive than this, it’s a useful concept when we consider the West’s “nation building” project in Afghanistan over the past 20 years.
Most of the discussion on nation building focuses on assistance programs, which makes sense as they’re tangible, measurable, and channel untold billions to international organizations, development agencies, and the like. These programs fall into two broad buckets — concrete infrastructure and procurement (roads, military equipment, sanitation, schools) and capacity building (cultural exchanges, legislative assistance, training for security forces and government officials, etc.)
Ideally, a second kind of nation building is happening behind the scenes, a coalescence of diverse groups into a single national identity outweighing local or tribal loyalties. In other words, people see themselves (and others) as primarily members of the nation, and only secondarily as members of ethnic or religious subgroups.
National identity formation is not a linear process — sometimes it’s quick and other times fails entirely. And it is very subject to historical vagaries. A few quick examples:
The United States began as a loose confederation of states, with strong local and state loyalties. The Civil War was absolutely about slavery, but conflicting Northern and Southern views on nationalism were also a key driver — Yankees supporting a strong Union, Confederates giving individual states their first loyalty. Four years of war oriented the country firmly on a centralized national identity.
began as a loose confederation of states, with strong local and state loyalties. The Civil War was absolutely about slavery, but conflicting Northern and Southern views on nationalism were also a key driver — Yankees supporting a strong Union, Confederates giving individual states their first loyalty. Four years of war oriented the country firmly on a centralized national identity. Ukraine had distinct cultural and linguistic roots going back a millennium, but Russian (and other) colonialism delayed formation of a modern national identity into the 19th century. It grew quickly in the late 1800s as linguists and historians discovered their past, but waxed and waned under the Soviets. When independence came in 1991, Ukraine was a gradient, ranging from the strongly nationalist West to an East that either saw itself as Russian, or viewed Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Great Russian as ethnic subsets of a unified “Russian” nation.
had distinct cultural and linguistic roots going back a millennium, but Russian (and other) colonialism delayed formation of a modern national identity into the 19th century. It grew quickly in the late 1800s as linguists and historians discovered their past, but waxed and waned under the Soviets. When independence came in 1991, Ukraine was a gradient, ranging from the strongly nationalist West to an East that either saw itself as Russian, or viewed Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Great Russian as ethnic subsets of a unified “Russian” nation. This led to years of oscillation between pro-West and pro-Russia parties, but behind the scenes, Ukrainian national identity (and Western orientation) was strengthening, helping spark the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution that overthrew a pro-Russian authoritarian president. Putin’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas finalized the divorce, moving public opinion decisively toward Ukraine as a distinct, multiethnic nation.
In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere transformed the country from loosely tribal to strongly national in just 24 years (1961–1985), an example of how an autocrat can fast-forward the process. (Juxtapose this with neighboring Kenya, which is still riven with tribalism in 2021.) Nyerere used a wide variety of tools: forced, disastrous socialized farming; Swahili as a unifying language; repression of tribalistic speech and expression; and nationalization of services and industry. The process “worked,” though at a terrible human cost.
Nationalism is a slippery, unpredictable beast. Wars can advance the process or hinder it. A leader may unify a people or shatter them. Imperial repression can alternately stoke or stamp out the nationalist flame.
The map below illustrates just how fragmented Afghanistan was in the early days of our nation-building endeavors. It was never going to be simple.
Photo: Central Intelligence Agency, 2005
The process becomes even more daunting when you consider that 74% of the population is rural, and deeply traditional. That’s a huge obstacle. Urbanization brings plenty of social pathologies, but you need a lot of cosmopolitan, atomized city-dwellers if you want to hyper-speed a country from premodern to postmodern in two decades.
Next, most of Afghanistan’s people groups have co-ethnics across the various borders: Pashtuns and Balochs in Pakistan; Turkmen, Tajiks, and Uzbeks in the various Central Asian “Stans”; and so on. Porous borders and transnational loyalties are powerful centrifugal forces.
Now add in chronic warfare, with its inevitable ethnic and religious enmities, and constant disruption of movement and communications.
Lastly, have Pakistan use its intelligence service and military to destabilize the fledgling nation and provide limitless support to the Taliban.
We could list a dozen more factors, but the upshot is that Afghanistan never cohered into a unified, durable nation-state, as evidenced by its Jenga-like collapse. And part of the reason was that too few people imagined themselves first as Afghans and secondarily by tribal or local affiliations.
Was nation building doomed from the start? I can’t say. But it was always going to be an uncertain and maddeningly difficult endeavor.
When we debate future commitments, our experience in Afghanistan could serve as a cautionary example. | https://medium.com/postmodern-clog/afghanistan-a-possibly-unimaginable-community-17f54716c6ca | ['J. Wesley Bush'] | 2021-09-02 21:32:27.731000+00:00 | ['Afghanistan War', 'Foreign Policy', 'Afghanistan', 'Nation Building', 'Culture'] |
9 React Testing Library Tips and Tricks | What Is React Testing Library? And Why Is It Different?
Note: This is not a “Getting Started with RTL” piece. This article assumes you already have a pretty good understanding of how to use the testing framework. My aim is to show you some additional tricks to make writing (and debugging) tests easier.
With that said, I will give a brief overview of the whys and hows of React Testing Library before I dive into the meat of this article.
The why
Kent C. Dodds created the React Testing Library to address one problem: Other testing libraries encouraged developers to write tests that were too tightly coupled to the implementation details of the components they were testing. Dodds believed that the tests should only verify the end results (the behavior) of the components.
It makes sense when you think about it, right?
Why don’t we write integration tests closer to the way we write end-to-end tests? Tests that focus on the user’s perspective (how the component looks and behaves in the DOM). Because that’s what ultimately matters in the end: Do the components do what they’re supposed to do when a user interacts with them?
We don’t necessarily care if it stores something in the Redux store or makes a particular API call to fetch data. Users don’t know or care about that — they care about if the screen shows the info they clicked on or the item they ordered is being shipped to them. And as developers, RTL’s stance is that we should care about that too.
To that end, Dodds recommends approaching testing in the following way:
Avoid dependencies on the implementation details of your components.
Make testing easy to maintain (i.e. refactoring the component implementation does not break the tests).
Avoid shallow mounting, as we want to test that the components integrate to solve a user problem (such as editing data in a form).
And this leads me to…
The how
The React Testing Library is a very lightweight solution for testing React components. It provides light utility functions on top of react-dom and react-dom/test-utils in a way that encourages better testing practices.
Here are some interesting aspects of React Testing Library:
It focuses on verifying actual DOM nodes rather than verifying instances of rendered React components.
It provides utilities for querying the DOM in the same way the user would.
It finds elements by their label text (just like a user would).
It finds links and buttons from their text (like a user would).
It provides a way to find elements by a data-testid as an “escape hatch” for elements where the text content and label do not make sense or are not practical or available.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff: the hot tips. | https://medium.com/better-programming/9-react-testing-library-tips-and-tricks-5cce3e458282 | ['Paige Niedringhaus'] | 2020-04-09 21:38:33.360000+00:00 | ['React', 'React Testing Library', 'Tdd', 'Programming', 'JavaScript'] |
Treat Yourself: Announcing Our Collaboration with the Partnership for a Healthier America | At Mars, we’re proud of the products we make. But we also know that chocolate is a treat — not a meal or snack. That’s why we’re so excited to join together with the Partnership for a Healthier America to purposefully position chocolate and candy as a treat, and lead the industry forward with the evolving needs of today’s consumer at the center of our progress.
At PHA’s Building a Healthier Future Summit, the National Confectioners Association and participating companies — including Mars Chocolate North America and Wrigley U.S. along with Nestle, Lindt, Ferrera and Ferrero — officially announced the partnership to more than 1,000 attendees. Under the “Always a Treat” banner, America’s top chocolate and candy makers are coming together to give consumers the information, options and support they need as they choose how to enjoy their favorite treats.
You can read more here | https://medium.com/under-the-wrapper/treat-yourself-announcing-our-collaboration-with-the-partnership-for-a-healthier-america-eed0ee972088 | ['Tracey Massey'] | 2017-05-12 17:31:10.358000+00:00 | ['Health And Wellness', 'Food', 'Thought Leadership', 'Chocolate'] |
What would you say to the man who broke your brain? | (This photo is called Self Compassion. It’s me at the end of my struggle with PTSD.)
I was asked a version of this question yesterday during an interview with the big-hearted guys at the Obstacle Course podcast.
As we approached the end of our lengthy chat, Andrew asked what I would say to “Gary,” the man who sexually assaulted me and left me with post-traumatic stress disorder when I was 18.
My answer was that I have nothing left to say to Gary.
I have nothing left to say to him because a kind police officer asked me the same question before he knocked on Gary’s door.
When the officer had me come to the station to ID Gary from a photo lineup he had compiled, he also asked for any words I would like him to pass on to Gary on my behalf.
I contemplated his offer and worked into the night on my response.
This was on July 27/28 of 2016, while my brain was still quite sick and while my body was thrashing of its own accord.
At 12:12 am, I emailed the officer everything I wanted Gary to know.
Here is my response to Gary, in full and unedited with the exception of redacting another person’s name.
The message I would like to pass on is this:
Fifteen years ago, you hurt me so badly that it derailed my life. You raped me and wrapped your hands so tight around my throat that I nearly died. While you assaulted me once, my healing has required that I relive what you did literally hundreds of times. You’ve made it hard for me to trust, and as a result it has been difficult for me to have relationships.
It has taken a lot of work to recover, and I am still not fully healed. But I have a good life now. I have kind friends, a good family, a skilled therapist, a career I enjoy and a measure of financial stability. I have learned to trust myself.
I want you to be a better person now. I want you to take accountability for your actions and tell the police what you did to me that night in March 2001 on the carpet in the spare room at “Amber’s” apartment.
I imagine you being someone who learns from his mistakes, apologizes when he hurts others and chooses to make things right. I imagine you having a garden and a dog you allow up on the couch. I imagine you being someone worthy of forgiveness.
The kind officer told Gary what I wanted him to know, gave voice to my words and in so doing set me free.
I have no words left that haven’t been said. | https://medium.com/@daunamae/what-would-you-say-to-the-man-who-broke-your-brain-b0b214a5a3e2 | ['D. M. Ditson'] | 2019-05-17 01:32:30.560000+00:00 | ['Post Traumatic Stress', 'Mental Health', 'Sexual Assault', 'Police', 'PTSD'] |
Functional JS: Creating a Command Loop | Alright that wasn’t so bad. Now we have the pieces we need to create our Sum Type constructor. Let’s do that now:
Defining the Sum Type constructor.
More heavy duty stuff. Let’s break it down once more. register_type is an internal function that modifies the REGISTERED_TYPES object to include the names of variants registered to a specific type. SumType is a special constructor that builds extensible Sum Type variant objects and registers their names to the central registry. SumType is fairly complicated so let’s go through it in detail.
SumType takes two parameters, the name of the type that we’re creating, and the constructors object which will hold the definitions for our Sum Type variants. The first thing that we do in the SumType function is declare a few const type variables. T will be our result’s namespace. Each variant constructor that we create will be placed inside of T , which will eventually serve as the return value of SumType . tags is an object which simply aggregates the tag names for each variant to make it easy to pass them to register_type . We deconstruct our constructors object with Object.entries . Then we iterate over the results. This is the bulk of the SumType function. We place the tag name of the constructor into the tags object (aggregating the tag names). Then we create a constructor function called result to serve as the real constructor that gets called when we instantiate a variant of a Sum Type. It’s this result constructor function that we mix-in Matchable to, allowing us to sink the private data from our constructors definition into the final instance MATCH call. Finally, we place a function at T[tag] that returns a new result and set that function’s prototype to result 's prototype. Phew! Let’s see how we use it to create Sum Types!
The Result Sum Type.
Finally, we can build a Sum Type that has match ing capabilities. Now we can see the beauty of what we’ve just enacted. We can construct our Sum Types using our newly defined SumType function. We specify the shape of our variants’ data with simple arrow functions that return objects. Then when we call match , that private data is injected into our pattern’s selected function.
Way back at the beginning of this article I was discussing impurity in code. Let’s imagine a Sum Type whose variants represent the impure actions that we can take in our code:
The Command Type.
I call this type Command. It consists of variants to represent things like getting and setting local storage (Retrieve, Cache), generating a Random number, sending an asynchronous request (Fork), and receiving a Response. We also have the ability to set an Interval and perform a general side Effect (like logging to the console).
This guy is going to be the backbone of our Command Loop. Let’s finally start thinking about how to define the Command Loop. There are two aspects to account for — sending and receiving. We will want a way to push Commands into the loop, and a way to subscribe to the responses of the loop.
We have defined some internal functions for our command loop, two of which will be available on the returned object ( command and subscriptions ).
command — this function is a part of the Command Loop’s exposed interface. It allows us to push a command into the internal queue and trigger a call to process the queue. It accepts a Pair of [tag, cmd] which are a string and Command object respectively.
— this function is a part of the Command Loop’s exposed interface. It allows us to push a command into the internal queue and trigger a call to process the queue. It accepts a Pair of which are a string and Command object respectively. subscriptions — the other publicly exposed function of Command Loop. It allows us to pass a configuration object to define what types of responses we will be listening for on the ‘pure’ end of the application
— the other publicly exposed function of Command Loop. It allows us to pass a configuration object to define what types of responses we will be listening for on the ‘pure’ end of the application process — this function is internal only and is the meat of the Command Loop’s functionality. It pulls the last item off of the internal queue and sends it through an internal constant, the CMD_PATTERN which we have yet to define. CMD_PATTERN will be the pattern that match will match our Command instances against. When the match is complete and has yielded a result emit is called, letting the listeners know that their request has been answered.
— this function is internal only and is the meat of the Command Loop’s functionality. It pulls the last item off of the internal queue and sends it through an internal constant, the which we have yet to define. will be the pattern that will match our Command instances against. When the is complete and has yielded a result is called, letting the listeners know that their request has been answered. listen — sets up the internal listeners object with an entry. When emit is called with a tag that’s registered on listeners , the function located at that key will be called with emit’s data parameter.
— sets up the internal object with an entry. When is called with a that’s registered on , the function located at that key will be called with emit’s data parameter. emit — iterates through listeners at the provided tag and calls registered functions with result .
We’re getting close to our goal now. But we have another hurdle — we still need to define the match pattern CMD_PATTERN that we’ll be sending our Commands through. Remember Result that we defined earlier? We’ll be using it heavily here.
Cache and Retrieve are simple enough to implement. We just call the impure code as we normally would. Except its all neatly separated on it’s own impure track. Everything that we return is neatly wrapped up in a Result type. We also handle the default case using _ . Now let’s implement some others
Interval Random and Effect are all very simple as well. Interval sets an interval and returns a function to clear it. Random gets a random number and gives it back to our application. Effect takes any impure, non-returning function and calls it.
Now the tricky ones, Fork and Response . We’re going to have to go back to the drawing board for this one. Let’s define a type to encapsulate an Asynchronous action:
I’m not going to explain Async in detail because it’s beyond the scope of this article, but know that it’s like a Promise, except to make it start its internal process, you must call its .fork method, providing an on-error function and an on-success function as parameters. You can use chain to wrap other Asyncs into the call or transform the expected result with map . I’ve also included a function called fetch that wraps an XMLHttpRequest into the Async’s internal fork . That’s the function that I’m concerned about for implementing our Fork Command.
Now we will be expecting that the data passed into Fork will be of the Async type. We can now fork it, calling command again to send the value back to the pure side of the application as a Response variant. Since we’re wrapping the result of our Async call in a Result (look how we have Response(Ok(x)) and Response(Err(x)) for the success and error paths of .fork ) we can just return the result. Response only gives us a convenient way to give back the result of our impure asynchronous code to the pure side of the application in a controlled fashion.
Now the moment of truth. Will it work?!
We isolate our impure actions within the configuration object passed to subscriptions . The keys of the object correspond to the tag passed to command . When emit is called internally, it passes the result of our impure code (if any) back to our pure application, where we can handle it within subscriptions . As seen in the Interval example, you can nest commands within commands. IntervalIter will log to the console and increment iterations using Effect . In the subscriptions portion, we can check when iterations is beyond a certain point and respond to it by cancelling the interval call.
Using the Fork Command, we can make an asynchronous HTTP request, and on the subscriptions side, we can respond in the Response function. In this case we fire a new Effect command to log the results. Notice how we omit the String parameter of the (String, Command) pair using the , . We can do this for commands that we don’t care about subscribing to — they simply wont emit a result.
Now whenever we want to separate our effects we can use this tiny bit of code to do so. It doesn’t seem that tiny, but I call it tiny because we’ve managed to include all this functionality, including the Async type and several others, in just about 200 lines of code. That’s really not a lot considering how useful match and SumType can be together. Using just this code and vanillaJS we could accomplish a pretty polished separation of pure and impure code. But since it just separates side-effects from your code, we could probably toss the Command Loop into something like a React application, too.
Here’s a pen to hack at:
Hope you enjoyed another Functionally oriented article, and until next time FP on! | https://medium.com/swlh/functional-js-creating-a-command-loop-f82b12a1fbdb | [] | 2020-10-26 06:13:49.046000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Data Science', 'Programming'] |
Expanding Awareness | Good Word, Season 1 Week 2
Have you ever noticed how different the positioning of the bocce balls looks from the far end of the court versus at the middle? Like when you toss a stone that lands in front and it’s completely obvious that it’s closer than one way off to the side… Until the referee call that side ball “still in” and you incredulously walk to center court to argue. That’s when you see it… Yeah, that side ball is definitely closer, by a lot.
Perspective is extremely important, but can do funny things. It allows you to see situations in different ways, though it always depends on where you stand. Awareness, on the other hand, is different. It goes beyond perspective… incorporating it, utilizing it, and then ultimately surpassing it. True Awareness is next level and sees from all sides at once.
When looking at balls on a court, perspective would tell you, “if I throw from this angle, I can knock that other ball out and I’ll be good.” It’s a simple, straight-line mentality. Where as Awareness takes other things into account, and would say, “if I take that path, I may get my ball in, but I’ll be left wide open and my opponents still have two stones to throw and could pick mine off and capitalize for a casino. Maybe I should throw a safety ball that’ll be hard to beat, and positioned so that if they try to knock me out, they could easily bust into my other ball laying behind.”
Sure, it’s a lot more complex. It requires imagination, and consideration of multiple perspectives at once. And it remembers that no action exists without some kind of consequence. But it’s absolutely worth it. Awareness is better informed, always more useful, and ultimately more successful. And not just on the bocce courts! Interacting with the rest of the world around you is made infinitely better by Awareness… it helps you accomplish your goals while still considering the needs of others. It anticipates the potential actions of those around you, and allows you to adjust accordingly.
So, I would encourage you, my sisters and brothers, to practice a little awareness this week! Even if it’s something as simple as laying down a smart defensive ball to limit your opponents’ scoring chances, or paying attention to where you’re standing so as to not block someone’s view, or cast a shadow on the court where another player is aiming. You might be amazed at the benefits of expanding your Awareness… both on the courts and off.
Lovingly Yours,
-The Reverend Bocce Spomer | https://medium.com/@danspomer_86671/expanding-awareness-3824684b05d7 | ['Daniel F. Spomer'] | 2020-04-23 02:49:23.813000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Social Sports', 'Community', 'Critical Thinking', 'Philosophy'] |
12/3 Evensong | 12/3 Evensong
Photo by author
There are days when nothing seems to go right. These are the ones that test your mettle, especially in the midst of a pandemic.
I didn’t rise to the challenge today, and I’m sure some of you didn’t either. We can feel bad for ourselves, that’s okay. It is a perfectly normal reaction to not meeting our expectations of ourselves.
What is even more important is that we wake up tomorrow knowing that our failure of today has been washed away overnight. Tomorrow gives us another chance to rise to the challenge of the day. It may test our mettle, but we are a day older, a day wiser, and a day more experienced.
Sleep well, friends. | https://medium.com/@matthewwoodall/12-3-evensong-5f5ec6323dd8 | ['Matthew Woodall'] | 2020-12-04 05:25:00.643000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Short Read', 'Family'] |
End of an era | It’s nearing the end of misfits. The misunderstood and misinterpreted. We only needed the internet and a ton of understanding. Finally you may Witness our ascension and the proof of an existence beyond us.
“Praying for TIME to disappear". It may not be the end you want it might be the one we need though. At least at first.
Often we need to see the devil first to vobfrint him and turn away. Now, I am NOT saying Trump is a devil, he us far from it. He us in fact a propagator of a typical feminine value; emotion based leadership. It’s SO nice to see and feel and follow in close relations, and SO dooming in complex systems. Oh well, we need a good portion of emotion in office as well. Stone cold Hillary with an almost purely masculine value platform would not have been better and the devil that is here already sound more easily hide until it was too late.
No, it’s good that Trump is steering us straight for the cliff, then we may discover our course and change it *I (just barely) in time.
End if an era. Hopefully not the end of time. | https://medium.com/@TheOddy/end-of-an-era-aae80c863527 | ['Øyvind Helland'] | 2018-12-24 06:30:47.065000+00:00 | ['Hillary Clinton', 'Religion And Spirituality', 'History', 'Donald Trump', 'Time'] |
A Look At Medical Billing Profits In 2021. Who Earned & Who Suffered? | The healthcare business is continuously changing. How hospitals and health systems respond to these changes can make all the difference in their ability to maintain a healthy bottom line and continue serving their communities.
The factors that will drive revenue cycle market momentum in 2022 and beyond are technology, investments, efficiency, patient experience, underpayment recovery, and coding automation.
We are witnessing a new surge of consolidation, inventiveness, and innovation following a lengthy period of struggle due to COVID-19 and an already challenging economic situation for hospitals and healthcare organizations.
Here are some critical medical billing statistics –
75% of patients are searching up the cost of medical treatments online.
62% of patients said knowing their out-of-pocket expenditures beforehand of service impacts the possibility of pursuing care.
49% of patients said having accurate information on expected out-of-pocket costs before receiving treatment affects their decision to use a healthcare provider.
According to a new study, patients’ average out-of-pocket expenses increased by 11% in 2017, advancing from $1,630 in 2016 to $1,813 in 2017. The analysis also showed that in 2017, on average, 49% of patient out-of-pocket expenses per healthcare consultation were below $500, 39% were $501-$1,000, and 12% were more than $1,000. In addition, the entire hospital revenue of patient financial responsibility after insurance rose 88 percent between 2012 and 2017.
69% have a budget process that takes over three months from initial implementation to board presentation (the methodology takes more than six months for 9% of these institutions)
41% use rolling forecasts to supplement or to substitute an annual financial plan (31% have plans to implement rolling forecasts)
50%+ CFOs want access to more straightforward report creation, better dashboards and visuals, and enhanced ability to delve into reports to understand innate details (2/3 struggle to pull data from multiple resources).
If you have an in-house medical billing team or are looking for help in a specific area of expertise, we at 24/7 Medical Billing Services are here to assist you. We recognize the hectic schedules of medical professionals and services, which is why we are committed to taking on duties to assist you in maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
COVID-19 pandemic has altered the dynamics of the healthcare industry; here are some highlights of who is profiting and who is losing on margins:
Omnichannel payments are impacting healthcare.
68% of consumers prefer electronic payment methods to pay their medical bills
80% of consumers prefer online payment channels to pay their health plan premiums
20% of online healthcare payments are made on a mobile device
Healthcare data is under attack.
2016 saw more healthcare data violations and breaches than any other year on record
90% of providers report that payment security is critical when collecting patient payments
59% of consumers have significant concerns regarding the security of making payments for both their medical bills and health plan premiums
Consumers are demanding more from healthcare.
92% of consumers want to know payment responsibility before a provider visit
74% of consumers are confused by EOBs and medical bills
73% of providers report that it takes one month or longer to collect from patients
Let’s look at 2021 profit earners who benefited from the pandemic and earned the top spot in the latest trends –
According to forecasts, the medical billing outsourcing market will reach almost $16.9 billion in 2021. As a result, many significant business groupings, including healthcare software businesses and other companies that service the healthcare industry somehow, are invited to participate in the multibillion-dollar merger. Regardless, many organizations adopt an offshore business strategy through captive centers or partnerships, either directly or indirectly.
Most healthcare professionals are willing to outsource their revenue cycle management services because of the ability to maintain and circumvent changes in healthcare revenue payment regulations and the ability to hire and train office staff; compliance issues, in addition to operational factors, are too risky.
There will be an increase or growth in regulatory compliance as patient responsibility increases. Therefore, medical billing businesses should take on the task of acquiring the ability to detect and remedy revenue leakage.
It generates and gives the optimum performance ecology using KPI, essential in revenue cycle management. Medical billing trends for 2021 aim to build a strong path for revenue reimbursements while also encouraging collections service.
Let’s take a look at the processes that suffered in 2021 –
By the end of 2021, according to Kaufman Hall, hospital operating margins will have fallen by 80% from pre-pandemic levels. With hospitals operating on razor-thin margins, forecasting cash flow and the ability to maximize revenue cycle efficiency is more important than ever. As revenue cycle executives and managers strive to improve business outcomes, key technological and process innovation will be driven.
Finally, Some Key Takeaways:
Reduced patient appointments and walk-ins due to apprehensions of catching COVID-19 in the waiting room cause lower patient service revenue in medical practices.
It makes sense to outsource medical billing services to a third party if you compute a higher flow of revenue by leaving the task to experts.
to a third party if you compute a higher flow of revenue by leaving the task to experts. While it can cost more for Revenue Cycle Management Outsourcing than for the work in-house, the more increased success rates on insurance claims offset the higher fees.
than for the work in-house, the more increased success rates on insurance claims offset the higher fees. Healthcare organizations can concentrate on their core competencies to deliver high-quality healthcare by taking their billing functions beyond the office to third parties.
The conclusion regarding whether to outsource your healthcare billing services to a third party deserves careful consideration.
Read more : Medical Billing Services In 2022 — Changes To Expect | https://medium.com/@smithjorden54/a-look-at-medical-billing-profits-in-2021-who-earned-who-suffered-ccde4ed7e8e4 | ['Jorden Smith'] | 2021-12-25 10:47:38.455000+00:00 | ['Outsourcing', 'Healthcare', 'Health', 'Medical'] |
Hadoop/HBase on Kubernetes and Public Cloud (Part I) | Authors: Dhiraj Hegde, Ashutosh Parekh, and Prashant Murthy
At Salesforce, we run a large number of HBase and HDFS clusters in our own data centers. More recently, we have started deploying our clusters on Public Cloud infrastructure to take advantage of the on-demand scalability available there. As part of this foray onto the public cloud, we wanted to fundamentally rethink how we deployed and managed our HBase clusters. This post outlines how we ended up using Kubernetes and the challenges we had to overcome in this transition.
For many years Salesforce has been running HBase on a static set of bare metal hosts in our data centers. Operating system updates on these hosts were managed by Puppet, and HBase/Hadoop deployments were managed using Ambari. These tools were geared towards mutable infrastructure where you modified binaries and configuration “in place” on the hosts. Such upgrade processes can result in partial changes to hosts when failures occur, resulting in a more complicated recovery process. While robust idempotent deployment mechanisms can overcome such issues, the more common issue seen in such environments is a temptation for engineers to apply manual fixes for urgent issues. These fixes are often forgotten, resulting in lingering config drifts.
In public cloud, Virtual Machines (VMs) and Containers provided us with the opportunity to embrace a more immutable form of deployment where the set of binaries and configuration are part of the VM or container image itself. If one tried to modify the image with a local change, it would be reset to the original image the next time the Container or VM is restarted. This kind of immutable environment enforces good engineering discipline.
In the virtualized environment of public cloud, we also found resource usage advantages like
Software-driven infrastructure deployment that could be elastically adjusted based on usage. Right-sizing of virtualized hosts for specific needs in terms of CPU, memory, and network bandwidth.
VMs vs Containers
We had to address the question of whether to deploy HBase/HDFS directly on VMs or within containers. At first glance, there were several factors that seemed to favor VMs:
The dominant container management system Kubernetes started with stateless application management with subsequent enhancements to work with stateful applications like DBs being added as an afterthought. This did not inspire confidence. Containers brought with them their own approach to networking, which seemed to add unnecessary complexity. For an application that has been running primarily on bare metal hosts, containers seemed to suggest additional OS level indirection, whereas using a VM provided an environment more similar to the existing one. On VMs, one could perhaps reuse existing (mutable) deployment tools for bare metal and gradually evolve to a truly immutable approach.
However, as we dug deeper we found some of the pros and cons changed.
While Kubernetes added support for stateful applications much later, the additions were pretty well thought out. In addition, we found Kubernetes to be very extensible. Any limitations in the features could be overcome by making our own enhancements on top of Kubernetes APIs. Salesforce embraced an immutable approach for OS updates across all teams. Layering a mutating application deployment approach on top of this OS layer (with a plan of gradually making it immutable) made little sense. The binaries would have to be reinstalled every time the OS was updated. Containers are very lightweight constructs (essentially a jailed process), and the OS level performance implications in using them turned out to be negligible. Container management systems might be prescriptive about how networking among containers works (as mentioned above in cons), but with Kubernetes, all major cloud providers had built plugins that made communication between containers and the outside world as seamless as that between VMs and the outside world. Kubernetes provides a powerful standard mechanism for application deployment and management across cloud providers.
The last point is one of the more significant insights. Cloud infra deployment tools like Terraform supported management of disks and VMs across different cloud providers. However, each cloud provider resulted in very different manifests, as there was very little abstraction and reusability in the manifests. Kubernetes, with its opinionated approach to managing compute, storage, and networking of containers, provided a much more consistent deployment and management interface across cloud providers.
Kubernetes and Stateful applications
We will cover some Kubernetes concepts here that will help in understanding the rest of the blog.
Pods as Containers
Kubernetes manages deployment of containers, monitors their health, and restarts them in case of application failure or relocates them to new hosts in case of host failures. Hosts in Kubernetes are called Nodes. In Kubernetes, a container is wrapped inside a construct called a Pod. A Pod allows multiple containers that need to be co-located on the same host to be deployed together. Typically, most applications have multiple supporting processes (log forwarders, cert/key refreshers, etc.) so a Pod makes it convenient to wrap these containerized processes into a single deployable unit. Each Pod has a unique IP address associated with it, which basically allows it to behave like a pseudo host. All containers within a Pod share that IP address and can also use the loopback address (127.0.0.1) to communicate among themselves. This gives them the same environment that processes in a single host have. The main difference is that each container within the Pod has a distinct view of its file system and of the processes running inside it. The containers can still share storage within a Pod, but they would have to explicitly mount the same volume in each container of the Pod to do so.
Since creating each Pod individually would be laborious for users, higher level constructs called Workload Resources are provided, which define a template for a Pod and the number of instances of the Pod needed. The rest is left to the controller of that workload resource, which automatically creates and manages the Pods in Kubernetes cluster.
Persistent Volumes (PVs) for Storage
Kubernetes provides a simple abstraction called Persistent Volume (PV) to represent storage volumes. This storage can be local volumes on the nodes or network attached volumes like EBS volumes in AWS. For the purposes of this blog, we are only considering network attached volumes. When a Pod needs a volume, it specifies a PV Claim (PVC) in its Pod manifest that describes the type and size of storage desired. Kubernetes responds by creating the volume and represents it with a PV instance. The PV and PVC are mapped to each other in a 1-to-1 relationship called a binding. When the Pod is created on a host, the PVs bound to its PVCs are mounted on that node as a volume and hence made available to the containers. Containers within that Pod can then mount that volume into their file systems.
A PV continues to be retained by Kubernetes as long as the PVC is present. The PV mounts wherever the PVC goes. In the diagram below, you can see that a Pod can be removed in one node and then later recreated in another node, and the PV will follow it as long as the Pod manifest refers to the same PVC. To recycle the PV, both the Pod and the PVC have to be deleted.
Pod and State
Pods in Kubernetes are inherently stateless; when they are updated or moved from one node to another, they are destroyed and recreated. Any persistent state should be kept in attached PVs. However, early workload resources in Kubernetes only created Pods with temporary and randomized names (like http-nmx8). So when a Pod is deleted and recreated, it gets a new name. This worked great for applications whose instances were totally stateless and could be placed behind a load balancer (called a Service in Kubernetes) as shown below.
The clients only need to know the virtual hostname (or VIP) of the load balancer; there is never a need to know the actual Pod’s hostname. But when you look at HDFS and HBase, the above model does not apply. In these applications, each application instance (Pod) needs to be individually addressable by the clients directly. The client typically contacts the specific Pod expecting to find some specific data in its PV to read or modify. If the Pod changes its identity, then the client is forced to error out or refresh any cached metadata, which is disruptive to the system. In the HBase architecture diagram below you can see there are a number of components that are intertwined by this pattern of communication among them. Each arrow indicates a specific instance of an application talking to another instance of another application with a well-defined hostname.
For applications like HBase (and others like Cassandra, Redis etc.) Kubernetes eventually introduced a workload resource called StatefulSets. This creates Pods with a well-defined name (and hostname). For example if you define a StatefulSet named zookeeper with three instances, then the Pods get created with the names zookeeper-0, zookeeper-1 and zookeeper-2. The number that keeps increasing in the names is called the ordinal number. If PVs are required, then PVCs with a similar ordinal based naming convention are specified within each of these Pod definitions (for example Pod zookeeper-0 can have a PVC named zk-data-0). Each PVC is bound to a different PV and that PV will be mounted wherever the uniquely named Pod lands. So now we not only have state (a PV) but also state that is permanently associated to a Pod with a fixed hostname. The fixed hostname allows all the Pod’s clients to cache information about it and locate the state associated with it.
As you might have guessed from the HBase diagram above, all key components were deployed as StatefulSets in our clusters. The components are tabulated below. They are classified as master if they are meant for coordination, management and metadata components. The worker components are the ones carrying out the actual data processing.
Availability Zones (AZs)
In public cloud one can choose to run replicas of the components across fault domains to limit the impact of catastrophic failure in one domain. This usually translates to choosing to run your replicas across regions (geographically widely dispersed locations) or across availability zones (AZs), which are located within a region, but perhaps in separate buildings. Typically, latency between regions is too great for spreading replicas across them, so AZs with their low latency are the best choice for a database like HBase. We designed the component to run across three AZs.
Spreading Across AZs
Public cloud Kubernetes nodes have labels that identify the AZ and the region in which the node exists. This is leveraged while scheduling Pods on them. Two mechanisms were used in Kubernetes to guide the scheduling of Pods:
Affinity and anti-affinity rules defined as annotations in Pod manifest. One can define the rules as preferred or required depending on how strictly they need to be enforced during scheduling. The rules specify either to attract (affinity) a Pod to a given label or repel it (anti-affinity) from the label. The target label can be on nodes or other Pods, so Pod scheduling can get influenced by the labels that are on a node or labels that are on Pods already scheduled on that node.
Node selector allows a Pod to be scheduled only on a node or nodes that have a specific label. This is very much like the required affinity feature above, but uses much simpler syntax.
Using these mechanisms, the following rules were defined for the Pods
Require a Pod anti-affinity that prevents Pods of the same component being on the same node. This prevents failure of one node impacting multiple Pods of a component. Prefer distribution of Pods of a component across AZs using AZ label anti-affinity. This is a preference and not a requirement as there are only 3 AZs and most components had more Pods than that. Use nodeSelector to run DataNode, RegionServer and Yarn NodeManager Pods on separate groups of nodes (more on this below).
In public cloud you can pick from nodes of different sizes (varying size of CPU and memory). You just have to define a node group with certain cpu/memory sizing and all nodes in that group would share those characteristics. One could have gone with a single standard sized node for the whole cluster (a single node group) and let Kubernetes handle allocation of Pods to the nodes. However, there were a couple of factors to consider
We wanted worker components to have guaranteed network bandwidth for their tasks, and Kubernetes did not account for bandwidth needs while placing Pods on nodes, only CPU and memory needs. By scheduling worker Pods on dedicated nodes of a particular group you could provision bandwidth for them much more predictably. For Yarn NodeManagers, we wanted to be able to grow and shrink the number of nodes aggressively based on activity, but for DataNodes (and RegionServers, to a lesser extent) we wanted to be very cautious about shrinking node counts. Separate node groups allowed us to choose which components experienced more turbulence in node counts. We wanted Pod replicas of a given component to be on separate nodes to reduce the impact of node failure and also to have predictable bandwidth on each node. But if this were combined with a standard node, then the number of standard nodes would increase as data in the cluster grows (even if it’s cold data). This, however, would have resulted in wastage, as the DataNodes have relatively light CPU/memory requirements. By putting the Pods in nodes that are right sized for that component, we ensure that a new node is created in a size that is needed by that component which is growing in usage and hence minimize wastage.
Data replicas and AZs
DataNodes hold multiple replicas of data (three replicas, typically) for high availability. It is important to make sure that these replicas are spread across fault domains (AZs in our case) so that failure in one AZ leaves the other replicas safe. It was also important for availability reasons to make sure that the software upgrade process does not upgrade more than one replica of the same data. HDFS has topology awareness which takes feedback from a script to understand where the DataNodes are located in terms of fault domains. This was typically used to ensure that replicas ended up in DataNodes on different racks in a data center. In public cloud, we implemented a script that provided the topology of DataNodes in terms of AZs and ensured that the three replicas were across three AZs.
We also defined three separate StatefulSets for DataNodes. Each StatefulSet was responsible for Pods of a single AZ. Each StatefulSet used nodeSelector to ensure its Pods ran in nodes of a specific AZ. We did this so that we could be certain that while doing software upgrades of Pods of a particular StatefulSet, only one replica of the data is disrupted. The other two data replicas would be safely under two other StatefulSets. The diagram below shows how all the components are spread out across AZs.
In this first part of the blog we have covered introduction to concepts in Kubernetes and Public Cloud that are relevant to stateful application management. We also covered how we leveraged features in Kubernetes and Hadoop/HBase to build a highly available service. In the second part of the blog we will cover some of the shortcomings we ran into while using these technologies and how those were overcome. | https://engineering.salesforce.com/hadoop-hbase-on-kubernetes-and-public-cloud-part-i-1a85a77c64ec | ['Dhiraj Hegde'] | 2021-03-18 15:24:49.163000+00:00 | ['Hbase', 'Hadoop', 'Kubernetes', 'Big Data', 'Public Cloud'] |
COVID-19 is bad. Dirty air makes it worse. | COVID-19 is bad. Dirty air makes it worse.
New research should spur us to redouble our efforts to reduce air pollution
New evidence suggests exposure to air pollution increases the death rate from COVID-19. Photo: Baiterek Media via bigstockphoto.
Several recent studies have suggested that air pollution may make coronavirus (COVID-19) infections more severe. These findings fit with previous research documenting how air pollution damages our bodies and makes us more vulnerable to infectious diseases. This new research should spur us to redouble our efforts to reduce air pollution.
Evidence from several countries suggests that exposure to air pollution increases the death rate from COVID-19. A Harvard study found that areas of the U.S. with higher levels of fine particulates had higher death rates from COVID-19. The study’s authors estimate that even moderately higher long-term levels of fine particulate pollution correspond to an 8 percent higher death rate from COVID-19. A study in England observed a correlation between levels of nitrogen oxides and ozone and COVID-19 mortality. (Neither of these two studies has yet been peer reviewed.) Researchers studying COVID-19 in Italy observed that regions where COVID-19 has been most lethal are also places that suffer from some of the worst air pollution in Europe. They point out that air pollution inflames the lungs, which may leave patients more vulnerable. Based on observations like these, the World Health Organization has cautioned countries that polluted areas may be hit harder by the COVID-19 outbreak and to prepare accordingly.
Findings that air pollution increases COVID-19’s severity are in line with existing information that air pollution generally increases vulnerability to respiratory infections. A 2003 study found that patients from regions of China with higher levels of air pollution were more likely to die from SARS, another disease caused by a coronavirus, than were patients from regions with better air quality. More generally, common air pollutants such as particulates, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide make people more susceptible to catching respiratory viruses and make infections more severe.
Other research shows that people with health conditions that may be caused or worsened by air pollution seem to experience worse COVID-19 outcomes. An analysis of COVID-19’s impact on patients in China found that people with severe cases were more than three times as likely to have cardiovascular disease than people with mild cases. Patients with severe cases were also more than twice as likely to have respiratory disease. Both cardiovascular and respiratory disease can be caused by or exacerbated by air pollution.
Even before the novel coronavirus was a threat, a deep body of research confirmed that air pollution has devastating impacts on our health. Fine particulate matter from sources such as vehicles and power plants was responsible for an estimated 107,000 premature deaths in the U.S. in 2011. Air pollution is linked to health problems including respiratory illness, heart attack, stroke, cancer and mental health problems.
We also have known for years that burning fossil fuels produces air pollution and that to reduce pollution we need stronger emission rules and cleaner sources of energy. Though car traffic fell dramatically at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, ozone pollution hasn’t dropped nearly so much. According to an analysis of air pollution data by NPR, that’s because of fossil fuel combustion from other sources. Trucks, industrial facilities and power plants have continued to operate at close to normal levels, contributing to air pollution in communities across the country.
Unlike so many aspects of the threat from coronavirus, air pollution is a problem we know how to solve. Passenger vehicles today are as much as 99 percent cleaner than they were in the 1960s, because policymakers have insisted that automakers produce cleaner cars. Similarly, emissions from buses are dropping as leaders require that diesel buses be replaced with electric buses. Renewable energy standards, energy efficiency improvements and falling prices for wind and solar energy have helped to hasten the retirement of coal-fired power plants, reducing the amount of pollution released for electricity generation. Comparable policies can cut air pollution from other sources.
There were already plenty of reasons to seek to improve air quality. The coronavirus has just provided one more reminder of why we must do so urgently. | https://medium.com/the-public-interest-network/covid-19-is-bad-dirty-air-makes-it-worse-frontier-group-1df60507d884 | ['Elizabeth Ridlington'] | 2020-06-09 03:02:43.915000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Coronavirus', 'Environment', 'Pollution', 'Covid 19'] |
How To Build An Effective Business Intelligence Dashboard In React? | The automation of business processes is increasing rapidly with huge corporate needs. To manage every department of an organization, every process of manufacturing to supply chain and every employee in-house, every activity from payroll to marketing, an organization needs an Intelligent System. The technological advancement has presented a solution in the form of Business Intelligence. It is a technology-driven solution to analyze data, deliver actionable information that helps executives, managers and workers make informed business decisions.
A BI helps make marketing, sales and customer service more efficient and effective. It helps to speed up the decision-making process by identifying ever-changing business and market trends. It also helps optimize internal business processes, increases operational efficiency and drives higher sales and revenues.
One of the main focuses of BI is to provide everything in one place, which is called a ‘Dashboard.’ In this article, we will learn how to build a useful Business Intelligence Dashboard.
First, we will learn more about a BI Dashboard and why a business needs one.
What is BI Dashboard and Why Do You Need One?
A BI Dashboard is an information management solution that helps to design and track KPIs of the business and employees, metrics and other useful information related to a business, department, or specific process. By gathering all the data, a BI dashboard helps to visualize and simplify complex data sets to provide users with at a glance awareness of business, department or individual performance.
For businesses having a lot of data is always a hassle, but if the data is logically grouped, sorted and filtered, then it can help businesses to make a firm and sound decision more quickly. The data should also be easily accessible and maintainable. The entire job of gathering, sorting, filtering and grouping the data is done by BI dashboard.
Now, you would be wondering if there are different kinds of BI Dashboard. Well, yes, there are different types of BI Dashboard as per client needs and requirements. These types are:
Operational Dashboard Analytical Dashboard
What is an Operational Dashboard?
A dashboard which is designed to monitor frequently changing business processes and track performance of key metrics and KPIs is called ‘Operational Dashboard.’
Unlike other types of BI Dashboards, an Operational Dashboard is designed to record and monitor data updates on a very frequent basis. In some cases, the data changes or is updated in minutes. The Operational Dashboards are viewed by executives and managers many times throughout the day. Usually, the Operational Dashboard monitors the progress towards a specific target.
One of the most common examples of an Operational Dashboard is a ‘Daily Web Overview.’ It tracks hourly web performance against predetermined objectives for a digital marketing team.
What is an Analytical Dashboard?
A dashboard designed to analyze a massive amount of data and allow its users to investigate the trends, predict outcomes and monitor insights is called an ‘Analytical Dashboard.’
The Analytical Dashboard is very common reporting tool as it is designed to perform very basic analysis and designed by data analysts. The data on Analytical Dashboard collected infrequently, and it should be 100% accurate and up-to-date. These dashboards also offer advanced BI features like drill-down and ad-hoc querying.
One of the most common examples of an Analytical Dashboard is MRR/Accounts.
Not all Business Intelligence Dashboards can be trusted. Let’s have a look at some of the factors which make a BI Dashboard more effective.
What Makes A Business Intelligence Dashboard Effective & Useful?
The purpose of a BI Dashboard is to simplify a detailed analysis of huge amounts of data to avoid missing any trend or pattern. A useful BI Dashboard can provide graphs, charts, and other meaningful and presentable visualization instruments to empower a team or department to interpret the data and transform it into actionable insights that will benefit the organization in many ways. Apart from visualization, many other factors matter a lot. These factors are:
Real-Time Access to Key Metrics
BI Dashboard is mainly focused on tracking KPIs and Key metrics for a specific target or the entire organization’s goals. With real-time access to the key metrics, it is easy to amend the strategies to meet targets more quickly than expected.
Trend Identifications
BI Dashboards helps businesses across different sectors to identify and analyze changing trends. It empowers the business to respond to positive trends related to a wealth of business activities while isolating and correcting negative trends for improved organizational efficiency.
Quick Fixes
A useful BI Dashboard must have the flexibility and freedom to monitor derivations, analyze them, and fix the issues quickly without giving any command in the programming. It should be designed to make small fixes itself.
Overall Performance
A BI Dashboard should have the ability to observe departments, employees, and company performance on both the individual level and overall performance basis.
Real-Time Tracking
A BI Dashboard should have the ability to track time-sensitive actions and target progress frequently.
Analytical Approach
A useful BI Dashboard is designed to find a weak point in the company management system and notify the management.
What features a BI Dashboard should provide to its users? Let’s discover them.
The list of Must-Have Features
The most important BI Dashboard features include:
Customizable Interface
A BI Dashboard interface should be customizable to be mould as per the team and department needs. The customization is also important for the type of data collecting over the dashboard.
Interactivity
Interactivity is one of the most important features of a BI Dashboard. Interactive reports help executives and managers to condense the vast data into a wide variety of views. Through interactivity, users can take advantage of statistical analysis and regression to identify trends, anomalies, and outliers in the data.
Ability to Pull Near Real-Time Data
The data on the BI Dashboard updated frequently, and this feature makes it possible for the organization to pull near real-time information anytime.
Real-Time Monitoring of Key Metrics
Another most important feature of a BI Dashboard is real-time monitoring of Key metrics by providing an at-a-glance view of pertinent data and analytics with visualization. Areas where urgent attention is required to become ‘Call-to-Actions.’
Single View of the Truth
Single View of the Truth (SVOT) is a concept of having a centralized database. It is better than a diffused system where data are kept in multiple databases or files. A centralized database helps organizations to integrate all channels, including sales, CRM, warehouse, inventory, and supply chain, via a single system.
Ranking Reports
A BI Dashboard allows you to generate reports to learn about your business’s best- and worst-performing facets. These ranking reports help companies to view rankings across multiple dimensions and specify various criteria to focus your results.
Flexibility
A BI Dashboard provides complete flexibility and freedom to view trends, performance, and track metrics 24/7 from anywhere. You cannot provide admin rights to every team member. Therefore a BI dashboard should be flexible and aligned for different departments and user levels such as managers, executives, and analysts.
Identifying Goals
A BI Dashboard can work on different key metrics. A user must identify the goals before starting creating metrics. You should know your target audience, what kind of data you will pull in, who will have access to this data, and what level. Every question should be answered correctly.
Solving Business Problems
The reports generated by the BI dashboard should be problem-solving oriented. The dashboard should be flexible to adjust and customize based on user type.
Attractive & Simple UI/UX
The UI/UX should be detailed and straightforward at the same time. Clutter should be avoided because less is better when it comes to the analysis of massive data. Don’t pack too many visual elements into one dashboard.
How to Build BI in React?
React is a super-fast JavaScript library. It allows for creating modular and interactive UIs. React efficiently update and render components whenever data changes. This makes it a perfect choice for real-time data visualization.
React works exceptionally well with common data visualization libraries such as d3 or high charts.
Our Case Study
Selleo has recently worked with Accelerated Digital Ventures — a UK UK-based company to create a platform that sits at the heart of the venture ecosystem connecting leading early-stage companies with funds like Seedcamp, Episode1, or Techstars. ADV has managed to help 54 companies operating in 13 business sectors, mostly in a Pre-Seed, Seed, or Seed Extension stage.
ADV’s mission is to increase the flow of investor capital to the back of the startups. They aimed to connect top 20% institutional investors with leading 20% tech companies. To make it happen, ADV wanted to develop an environment that would serve that purpose and improve their business processes.
The ecosystem should serve the needs of:
Leading tech companies who are ready and motivated to pursue their long-term ambitions
Early-stage investors looking for capital supply
large institutional investors by enabling them to engage with the early-stage venture ecosystem
Accelerated Digital Ventures itself by optimizing their business processes, making them more comfortable, practical, and less time-consuming
To support ADV’s vision, two platforms were built.
The Business Connect platform provides a complete environment for startups and investors to establish connections between those parties. Notable features that were implemented include:
Tracking time-sensitive actions
Tracking every step of a multi-step procedure
Allow collaboration between experts
Managing the company’s portfolio
Generating reports to track company performance
Feedback sharing
Why Should You Choose Selleo?
BI Dashboard is not only about data visualizations but also using the right tools in the right place. At Selleo, we use BDD to better understand customer processes, products and needs in order to suggest the best solutions. We share our experience from multiple markets to help grow our clients fast. By creating dashboards that are also focused on the best user experience, we design a powerful and intuitive tool for experts and common users.
If you are looking for an expert BI Dashboard developer team to make your dreams come true, contact us. | https://medium.com/@k-korczynski/how-to-build-an-effective-business-intelligence-dashboard-in-react-2aebc8deb45a | ['Kamil Korczyński'] | 2020-11-27 15:13:36.176000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Dashboard', 'Business Intelligence', 'Business', 'Business Analysis'] |
The deep holes in the ground, the scorched earth all from acid falling from the sky. | Acidity
The deep holes in the ground, the scorched earth all from acid falling from the sky. Around 3 months ago black clouds starts consuming our unsuspecting world in darkness. No one knows where it started exactly, but China usually comes up in suspicion. A natural problem proclaimed the news, a fondly known cover up for the rich and the evil. Many lives taken from a not so natural disaster. People went to shelter only for the homes and stores to collapse on top of them. The only real shelter being glass domes that started being sold wide spread by big businesses. The small ones tried, but couldn't due to the government closing them down for safety concerns. The glass domes protected the majority, but killed the dumb. People who whined about their lack of breath, the fogged up glass, how it "looked stupid". Lucky enough those who complained are gone now. Alot less noisy now. The government proclaimed a glass dome over the US in order for people to be able to resume their lives. All talk no show as usual. Some buildings however have their own glass domes. Some restaurants as well. Homeowners were not as lucky. There are more homeless than ever, and less homes than ever. You may wonder where I fall in line to this hell storm. I was lucky enough to live in an apartment complex that invested in glass domes. Making my only social interactions made with special product delivery people until I get the glass dome I ordered of of wish. Months have passed with me listening to the drone of acid rain pittering off of the dome. Bored I turn on my TV to religious propaganda proclaiming gods fury of our tarnished ruin. I roll my eyes and flip my input to play on my console to kill a couple hours, my dome is supposed to arrive within the week so I can finnaly go out and get more groceries without online ordering. As great as the service is the left off the most importantly item. Chocolate milk mix. Without being able to get my fix I've been going a bit mad. Well I guess that's more of an overstatement, but I still miss my daily pleasures. Days pass with and finnaly a knock at the door that greets me with an oblong box. I rip it open to reveal a dome of my own. I immediately put it on and head outside. Halfway along my walk to the store I notice a drop of acid fall right in front of my face. Fear spiked as I felt the material of my dome. This wasn't glass. The material I just put my life in was measly plastic the was being eaten up by acid. I pick up my pace into a dead sprint. Time was ticking. Drops of acid started eating at my clothes, moving to my skin. Then the most unbearable pain hit me and as it does I realize im too far from safety. This is how I die. Ignorance in my trust of a wish product. Then it hit me, it was no accident. Wish was behind the rain the whole ti.. | https://medium.com/@horresaustin/the-deep-holes-in-the-ground-the-scorched-earth-all-from-acid-falling-from-the-sky-9f18613e4040 | ['Novice Words'] | 2020-12-19 21:20:47.173000+00:00 | ['Prompt', 'Rain', 'Entertainment', 'Pandemic', 'Acid'] |
Pair Push Notifications with your Email Campaigns | Unified marketing strategies can boost engagement across all channels. While email is still the best channel in terms of ROI and engagement, it’s not always the best method of communicating with customers. For example, a flash sale relies upon speedy responses from your customers. Just 21% of emails are opened within the first hour of receipt. The average email opening time is 6.5 hours. That’s where integrated campaigns that utilize other channels — social posts or push notifications for example — to support email comes in. Adding additional touchpoints to your marketing campaign is a great way to increase the engagement and conversion rates across your entire campaign. Pairing push notifications with your email campaigns can increase engagement by 3 times.
Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash
From awareness to action
At the beginning of your campaign, when the first email, ad, post or other communication goes out, it’s unlikely to convert the viewer into a customer or sale right away. People just don’t work like that. We need to be reminded. This is true even when it’s something that we want or have been looking for. An average of three views is needed before your ad gets noticed.
The idea is that the first time your message is seen by an individual, it’ll get a ‘What was that?’ response from the viewer. The second time a ‘What of it?’ response, and the third time the viewer actually becomes engaged with the message. That’s if you’ve targeted correctly, and hit the right tone for the demographic.
Once you’ve hit the three impressions mark for a lead, you might get a click. Other individuals in the group you’ve targeted may take a little longer, and, of course, some just won’t be interested at all. When you do get the initial engagement you’re able to collect some information. This allows you to purposefully begin moving leads through the sales and marketing funnel. The initial engagement and impressions stage could be social media ads, cold emails or direct mail. The three impressions mark is a general rule across all advertising forms.
It’s a little like fishing. The initial hook needs to be recast several times in the pool of ideal customers (your segmented audience). Once you get a bite, you employ further tactics to reel them in and make a conversion.
Customers, who have already engaged with your brand, often need reminders about promotions too. This is where push notifications come in for them, as well as the new leads you generate.
The action plan
Once potential customers have shown an interest in your brand, you’re able to begin engaging with them in a more meaningful way. That can involve sending emails about your latest promotions, new content or ads on the platforms you know they use. Pop-ups on blog posts, social ad clicks, whatever you’ve used to capture data are just the beginning of the ride.
There are a couple of different types of push notification. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Web push notifications are, by necessity, short and sweet. Excellent for delivery notifications, order updates or time-sensitive messages, web push notifications can be used to prompt leads and customers to check their inbox for your offer. They’re used mostly for short alerts that direct the receiver to a specific action. The downside to web push is that they need an app and can only be used for smartphone users or web browsing on a desktop or other mobile device. If your ideal customer doesn’t have these, they won’t receive your web push notifications.
SMS messages, on the other hand, don’t require a smart device to be received. You can also include links in SMS to send customers to landing pages, blogs or even social channels if they are on a smart device. The advantage of SMS messages over web push is that there’s no need to have an app built for them. They are covered by TCPA and GDPR though, just like web push. This means you need to be aware of the times you’re sending SMS messages and allow people to opt-out from future communications.
Whichever you settle on — or even if you use both — push notifications are an ideal way to keep your campaign in front of mind with customers. Don’t overdo it though, you don’t want to be getting in their face and become annoying rather than helpful.
Combining email and push notifications
70% of customers prefer to engage with brands via email. However, 72% of customers want an integrated marketing approach that allows for multiple touchpoints. Considering these facts, using email as the main artery of your campaign makes sense. Supplementing emails with push notifications and/or SMS makes even further sense. So how do you do it? | https://vicwomersley-42664.medium.com/pair-push-notifications-with-your-email-campaigns-f2b36cefc776 | ['Vic Womersley'] | 2020-06-03 07:34:34.577000+00:00 | ['Integrated Marketing', 'Email Marketing Tips', 'Marketing', 'Push Notification', 'Digital Marketing'] |
UI Trends for 2077 | As a designer, when playing a video game that has user interfaces inside of it, I can’t help but to think about how they’re made and how they fit the lore and time of the game. So whenever a game has a computer in it, that you can interact with, I sit down and play around with it.
Hello, 2077!
Cyberpunk 2077 has inspired me to take a look at the interfaces in the year 2077, and what I think would be the directions UI’s will take. But before we start going theoretical, here’s a super brief analysis of the in-game UI’s. There’s more but I want to focus on just two elements here.
The 2077 internet
Apparently, the internet in 2077 is a homage to the late ’90s. I remember making my first website back in 1998 and the websites seen on computers in Cyberpunk are following the exact same design patterns. That means navigation that was made to fit a 640x480 px, CRT 4:3 display.
This is how most websites looked back in 1997.
Nearly all websites from that era had a horizontal, very visual header spanning all the way across. Then below they rocked horizontal, full-width navigation, leaving the rest of the space for the content. Mostly one-column.
So I was surprised to see the exact same thing in 2077 on displays that were definitely a lot wider. I’m not going to mention the uneven spacing, and an overall sloppy look of these websites, because it may actually be part of the lore as well.
Toggle much?
The other thing is that the in-game UI’s have some pretty obvious patterns put on their heads. Take a look at this in-game toggle. In most modern UI’s nowadays when a toggle is on the left side it means it’s off. Move it to the right and it’s on. This in-game screen actually had me guessing what to do :)
Because here turning off means moving the toggle to the right. Very unintuitive.
Minority Report movie futuristic UI
The future?
But why are screens so ubiquitous in the future? Especially given the fact that even now, many different input methods are in their early (but growing) stages. Let’s go through them one by one. Especially as I believe that by 2077 most of them would be even more refined and polished. So a need for a bitmap screen showing a traditional UI may not be that high in the future.
Let’s assume a version of the future that still uses visual UI’s for interaction. Most sci-fi movies usually portray them as holographic, semi-transparent objects that we can manipulate with our hands. Of course, most of the reasoning behind this portrayal is due to the fact that it simply looks cool in a movie. Some Glassmorphism is also present in them to show the hierarchy of objects in a 3d space.
Most of that UI relies on very low contrast with text possibly blending in with the real world beyond good readability point.
The future is not accessible
But what’s most apparent is that nearly no futuristic UI considers any accessibility. The interfaces usually don’t have enough figure-to-background contrast, the controls are hard to understand and there are not enough visual cues to guide the user.
But let’s look at how we’d interact with those UI’s.
Virtual reality
VR still has many problems, but the quality of those interfaces made one of the biggest leaps in UI’s in history. They went from barely usable, nausea induced novelties, to something that can actually work. Even if some of the implications of shutting off from the world completely are a little scary, I cannot be unimpressed by it.
There are two main types of controller-based VR interactions:
Simulated touch version
Aim and click (this also can be done without controllers on some headsets)
As you can see here, you need to move your hand physically to touch a menu option.
Simulated touch
Most controllers enable you to simulate making a fist with an option to leave your index finger pointing out. You can then use that “virtual” finger to tap on the floating menus in 3D space. The controller often adds a bit of haptic feedback on touch, so it feels a bit more natural than “touching air”.
With Aim and click you can activate menu options without moving your hand closer.
Aim and click
Aim and click assumes a beam that emmanates from one or both controllers with hit-scanning dot at the end. You simply move the beam to align the dot in the right place and then press the trigger on the controller to activate a button.
This option can also be done with just your hands being tracked with headset cameras. Hand movement is tracked in a similar way, and you use a pinch gesture to click on where the target dot is.
How to improve?
The main problems with VR currently have all to do with haptics and visual quality. The lenses and displays are still not perfect (often to bring the cost down) so there are screen-door effects, pixellating and blurry parts to be expected from time to time.
But headsets and displays are getting better every year, so this is definitely something to be expected in 2077.
Source: Sony. The Dual Sense controller is a leap in haptics compared to the previous generations.
Another thing is better haptic simulations. Most controllers simply vibrate on touch, and while it “kind of” works, it’s a suboptimal solution. One revolution in this area is already here with the PS5 DualSense controller, so by 2077, I imagine it would be refined to be indistinguishable from real touch.
Hololens — source: Microsoft
Augmented Reality
AR, or mixed-reality is simply adding 3d objects on top of our existing world. They can be interacted with the same way, but we don’t shut ourselves off from the world, only add things to it. Same principles as in VR apply to the actual interaction and potential UI patterns. If we’re to interact with objects, the UI should likely resemble the patterns we have and successfuly use right now. Back and forward buttons, progress indicators, sliders and more.
The Microsoft Hololens has been a prime example of this, but while really impressive, it’s far from being mobile and lightweight.
We’re still waiting on Apple’s AR glasses, but the technology is definitely improving with better processing, Lidar sensors and more.
Authentication
Right now to authenticate online, we usually need to enter stuff into a set of text fields. It’s a cumbersome and long process that often results in failed authentications and user drop-off. This problem is being addressed by no-password logins, social-media sign-ins and more.
But in the future, I believe biometry will completely take over the need to manually sign-in to anywhere.
We already have fingerprint scanners and face-IDs that in many cases replace entering the passwords. But they only work for the subsequent attempts. If you’re creating an account for the first time, you always need to use a form.
In the future, privacy is a commodity that barely anyone can afford, and we see this happening all around us even today. So the reality of giving up your face, biometry, and details to “The Great Authenticator” is not that far off.
Most sci-fi movies actually predicted this to be the thing, so computers you never used greet you with your first name when you approach them and doors magically open for you — if you had the clearance that is.
In 2077 there will definitely be no privacy, so traditional login-forms would be a long-forgotten relic of the old UX days. | https://uxdesign.cc/ui-trends-for-2077-5ed729d8e981 | ['Michal Malewicz'] | 2020-12-13 22:27:54.594000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Gaming', 'Cyberpunk', 'UX', 'UI'] |
42. On A Rooftop In Brooklyn | The Year Of Paying Attention
photo by Alex Simpson/Unsplash
How long since my horrible fight, instead of a nice lunch, with daughter Lizzie? I studied my datebook — it’s been three silent months of pressing my thumb into that bruise. I haven’t seen her since, but I will tonight, to celebrate her sister Ellen’s 30th birthday. I imagine Lizzie feels awkward like I do, waiting to see me. I know any further preparation is a bad idea. Show up at the restaurant with a positive attitude and a functioning credit card, and be present for a nice meal with my my children and their mother. Not complicated.
Sarah told me I seemed unbothered lately, unlike herself, she said, waking up agitated about her art practice and the social justice program she runs and her own family relations. Maybe it’s because I’m not working anymore, I said. Fewer people to bother me. I’m looking for patterns to make sense of my life, but I can’t get up high enough for a proper perspective. When I imagine this November in New Orleans, it feels more like a chore than an adventure. I have to bring my unfaithful Subaru back to my Queens mechanic this morning, to see whether the goddam catalytic converter can be replaced under warranty. My life seems more like that cursed car than the single-mast sailboat I can see through my window, gliding up the East River.
It’s a beautiful day, a little blustery, chilly enough to herald autumn. The hurricanes ruining the lives of Texans and Puerto Ricans today are leaving me alone. The Republicans in Washington are spiking the insecurity of immigrants, but I’m a pale faced native son. I listened to Ben Carson, the ridiculous head of Housing and Urban Development on the radio yesterday, and was reminded that ineptitude, malfeasance and a willful disruption and dismantling of government service to those in need is the order of the day. There’s a new Calvin Trillin article in the New Yorker, so it’s not all bad.
***
I visit my auto mechanic so frequently that I might as well as be driving an ancient and volatile MGB-GT. After I handed Laz the keys I wandered into a Queens coffee shop. It felt like Santa Monica, lots of trim young people lolling in the sun streaming through the windows with laptops and no sense of urgency. I ate a donut and read a magazine profile of a quirky TV show runner. I felt content. I can do this, I thought. I can drop the car at the mechanic’s, find a bakery, and stroll home to Roosevelt Island. I can stop in at the Noguchi Museum and read about the artist’s decision to voluntarily join imprisoned American citizens of Japanese descent in a scorching detention camp in the Arizona desert, after FDR signed Executive Order 9066.
Walking through the museum, I remembered the modest Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, which Sarah and I visited during our trip to Seattle a few months ago, erected to commemorate the American citizens of Bainbridge who were locked up for their Japanese ancestry. I could have easily strolled from the Noguchi Museum to Four Freedoms Park, on Roosevelt Island’s southern tip, to see inscribed there FDR’s stirring words about freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and from fear, “anywhere in the world,” a speech he gave about a year before signing his executive order to imprison innocent American citizens, but it was a mile more than I felt like walking.
***
Like the PJ Harvey song goes, I was on a rooftop in Brooklyn last night, for yet another 40th birthday party, talking to one of the birthday boy’s artist friends. I asked how he became an artist. He said as a college freshman he was surprised to learn that making art was something one could choose as “work,” after a professor invited him to his downtown studio. “Later, he asked me if I was going to be a painter, and I say, ‘Yup.’ So that was that.” After earning his undergraduate degree, this guy flew with slides of his paintings to visit five schools in England, which he picked out of a thick directory in the school library. “There was no internet. I was very interested in the London School painters, and it didn’t occur to me that they weren’t painting anymore. They were art history by then.
“The airline lost my bag, so I had the clothes I was wearing, and I went to the last of the five schools wearing the clothes I’d had on for five days. I probably stank, and I introduced myself to a guy doing administrative work who looked at my slides. I told him how I worked, and I think I fulfilled his idea of the wild cowboy artist from America, and he said, ‘I think we can work something out.’ It was more formal than that, but that’s pretty much how it happened.”
As the sun set and the rooftop temperature dropped, our host lugged up pasta and salads and coats for everybody who was underdressed, and I sat opposite the wild cowboy artist’s wife, who works for the New York Times Book Review. I didn’t know this until after I’d popped off about once working for TV networks, which were going through hard, possibly terminal, changes, like all the big media industries, newspapers for example.
The Book Review editor talked about the painful changes she was experiencing at the Times, and about the struggle to maintain the Book Review while everything was being challenged and squeezed at the paper. Everybody on the roof but me was 40ish. Some had moved to New Jersey — kids. One was starting a new job. The birthday boy was going to Hawaii to do art stuff, and his painter friend had an opening in a few days in Los Angeles. When it got cold and dark enough to leave the roof, we trooped down to the apartment, and I stood in the kitchen with a grad school colleague of Sarah’s, a photographer who lives and takes pictures in Queens. I looked at his website on my cellphone. His photographs were wonderful. We sang Happy Birthday and ate delicious cake from a Brooklyn baker, said goodnight, and walked to the subway.
In my twenties I was figuring out what I could do that would be interesting and pay the bills. In my thirties I was in New York, getting married and having kids. In my forties I was newly sober, trying to be a good parent and a successful working stiff. In my fifties, I’d succeeded, and wasn’t very happy, and I got divorced, got cancer, and got canned. In my sixties I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I know this is all just a story I tell myself.
Next week: Keep It Short!
The Year Of Paying Attention begins here. | https://medium.com/@timwarfield2020/42-on-a-rooftop-in-brooklyn-9e04061e10dd | ['Timothy Warfield'] | 2021-09-06 23:23:02.042000+00:00 | ['Birthday', 'Aging', 'Racism', 'Fatherhood', 'Memoir'] |
Trans People Need Your Allyship, Not Your Understanding | A white person with a nose piercing and long brown hair holding a slip of paper across their eyes. Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
The catered coming out story
For three-and-a-half years now, I’ve known that I am trans. Back then, when I started writing about gender, I was crafting the first narratives that would help me integrate my emerging identity into my established self-concept. These stories found roots in dissonance with childhood toys, with my body during puberty, and with the roles I was expected to perform as an adult woman. If only I hadn’t been born in the wrong body, this and similar narratives imply, I would have grown up content with my assigned gender.
Speaking from experience, trans people may be compelled to repeat this narrative not because it is accurate or fulfilling but because it is easy. Easy, at first, for ourselves, but also for the cis people in our lives from which seek acceptance. Especially when initially coming out, there is so much pressure to project a legible new identity, one powerful enough to replace years-, or even decades-old, habits. Coworkers and bosses, friend networks, and families are all relationships in which trans people often have to articulate their identities in order to even be tolerated, much less accepted and supported.
Because of the cis-dominant settings in which I was (and, to some extent, still am) living, one of the biggest pieces of coming out involved gauging how I could situate myself within established transgender representation. As long as I could point to others like me, I reasoned, even if cis folks thought I was choosing a strange path, at least they would be able to see that I wasn’t alone.
But, with these years of perspective, I can see that seeking out cis peoples’ understanding has never led anywhere important. It’s time to ask for something else, something more impactful.
Limitations of understanding
The downfall of connecting to established stories about transness is that they are massively reductive. In sticking to the simplest terms, we continue to cater to cis people who would rather marvel at what they see as absurd than actually be challenged by our complexity and intra-community diversity. I mean, seriously, the Queer Eye episode that features a trans man begins with footage from his top surgery procedure. From the opening moments, trans people are defined by medical procedures and by struggle. (See Dr. Devon Price’s recent piece for a more extensive discussion of this topic).
On a personal level, the simplification of situating myself within established and ‘acceptable’ trans narratives masks the truth that my body was never the main source of my discomfort. Nor was the problem that I was assigned the wrong gender. No, the root of the issue is that I was prescribed a gender at all. I could explain further. I could write an entire essay creating a new, more complex narrative about my gender. But that is not the point. This essay is more about you than it is about me.
The experience I’m referencing — which is one I know other trans folks share — is more difficult to digest because it points to structural problems instead of individual flukes. I don’t believe there was any divine accident in my birth, nor (as medical essentialists argue) any gender-related brain abnormality. And yet, cis researchers keep recruiting trans people for fMRI scans, and the majority-cis public continues to inhale objectifying transition timelines and coming out stories.
While I’m sure most attempts to learn about trans people are well-intentioned, in the long-run they do us more harm than good. At their best they allow consumers to feel self-congratulatory about curiosity, and at their worst, they facilitate dehumanizing voyeurism. What’s missing here is any motivation to change, any recognition that much of discomfort (and danger) many trans people face is not a result of being trans, but rather of being trans in this society.
Writing about the federal anti-trans memos in 2018, Frances S. Lee explains that relying on allies’ empathy to spur them into supporting marginalized folks creates “prerequisites of relatability and deservedness.” Just like the notion of respectability politics tells us, it’s only when we are at our most palatable that mainstream society might consider treating us with basic human respect. But if we must seek approval to gain acceptance, the established channels of power are only reified. Our survival, and quality of life, cannot remain conditional on giving the oppressive system what it wants.
So, do you see the problem? If I try to make myself understood, I am not telling the truth. But if my truth is deemed unintelligible, I will be further ostracized. I ask now: What if my humanity was enough? What if you understood that I am more human than spectacle? What if I asked you to take action and you didn’t ask for a performance in exchange?
Beyond voyeurism, into action
Becoming interested in understanding the “trans experience,” in whatever simplified version it is being presented to you, is not going to help us. Maybe, after reading/watching/listening to a story about trans people, you might think about how they are “brave” to “live their truth,” you may be momentarily thankful for your comfort with your own assigned gender or wonder if you should be worried about that one time your son wanted to buy a doll.
I can’t speak for all trans people who choose to share their experiences, but now, when I write essays, it is not because I need you to understand me. I don’t need more claps on my posts, I don’t need more followers or supportive messages (though those are fine as long as they are accompanied by action). Rather, I write because I want you to see problems in yourself, and in the world around you, that you hadn’t noticed before. And then I want you to make changes.
Because what is the point of all of this writing if I still have to live in a world where I rarely see anyone besides trans people striving to educate others about the harms implicit in upholding the gender binary? Your marveling at my existence, my eloquence, and my body isn’t going to make my life any easier. If you’ve learned anything from what I’ve ever written here, it’s long-past time that you start applying what you learn. Do what’s within your power, even if the steps, and their impacts, feel small.
Your action may come in emailing/calling your elected officials to urge them to support policies that will support and not harm trans people. It might involve showing up to protests in solidarity with Black trans people. It could also mean challenging yourself and those around you to move beyond a reliance on regressive gender norms, in small but important ways.
Is your pregnant friend inviting you to a gender reveal party? Shut that shit down. Did you overhear a colleague separating their students into teams of boys and girls? Talk to them about why they shouldn’t do that next time (for starters, it reinforces a false gender binary). Is your friend posting about abortion as solely a women’s rights issue? Comment that reproductive organs should not be gendered. Is a trans person asking for monetary support? If you have money to spare, give it! If you don’t, you can still share their post. And, if you can’t do anything else, at least share your pronouns during formal introductions, put them in your bio, add them your Zoom-call name, etc. Not everyone lives with the comfort of automatically being referred to correctly, and it helps when trans people don’t have to attract extra attention when making this request.
As a trans person, I have to navigate situations like these on a daily basis. I speak up for myself, and for any other trans folks that may be affected, because it’s rare that anyone else does. All of this is a serious energy drain. It’s exhausting to be reminded — on a near-daily basis — that cis people either willfully don’t care, don’t know that they’re doing anything wrong, or are too timid to speak up.
I’ll conclude with a brief anecdote. I once showed up at work and noticed my coworkers had stopped misgendering me. One cis person had the awareness to ask about my pronouns a few days prior. Evidently, they had taken it upon themselves to say something to everyone else. And it mattered. It was a relief not to have to do the work myself for once. Sure, maybe I am congratulating someone for doing the bare minimum, but that is so much better than nothing.
***
For this article, I am spotlighting the Washington Black Trans Task Force, “an intersectional, multi-generational project of community building, research, and political action addressing the crisis of violence against Black Trans people.” Please donate if you are able. | https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/trans-people-need-your-allyship-not-your-understanding-3221acbc86d8 | [] | 2020-12-06 20:22:59.732000+00:00 | ['Gender', 'Transgender', 'LGBTQ', 'Equality', 'Activism'] |
Top Modern Data Science, Data Engineering, Machine Learning Tasks to Learn in 2021 | Top Modern Data Science, Data Engineering, Machine Learning Tasks to Learn in 2021 Uniqtech · Oct 22, 2020
It used to be mandatory to be a statistician to be a data scientists. While stats knowledge is still helpful, these practical data science tasks are now must-haves for job applications and data analytics interviews. How many do you know? No worries, keep this list in mind. We will have tutorials that address each of these categories. Subscribe and follow us for updates.
Supervised Learning: classification tasks, probabilities, expected values, maximum likelihood, most likely outcomes.
Unsupervised learning: clustering, grouping similar demographics or behaviors together, segmentation
Similarity: similarity metrics, distance functions, identify similar customers, groups, characteristics, demographics
Regression: best fit line, estimation, forecasting, projection, quantitative
Tree based algorithms: decision tree
Boosting algorithms: XGBoost, CatBoost
Compression: information theory, minimize, quantizationm, reducing data size
Optimization for models, optimization search
Co-occurance, co-variance, adjacency matrix, grid
Deep learning, convolutional neural network, generative networks GANs Generative language models
Recommendation systems, collaborative filtering
Neural search, search, indexing
Network analysis, link prediction, graph algorithms
Reinforcement learning
Causal analysis: randomized controlled experiment, A/B testing, statistical testing, remove confounding factors, isolating important factors
Machine learning fairness, ethics, privacy: facial recognition technology fairness, ethics, also data imbalance. Machine learning privacy, local machine learning, data leak through queries.
Did we miss anything? Write your suggestions below, request content for 2020–2021! | https://medium.com/data-science-bootcamp/top-modern-data-science-data-engineering-machine-learning-tasks-to-learn-in-2021-e94c7962b1d2 | [] | 2020-11-12 21:49:24.179000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Technical Interview'] |
The Fourth of July to the Descendant of the American Slave | My perspective on the holiday in today’s climate
“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim” — Frederick Douglass
That is a snippet of some of the famous words delivered by Frederick Douglass a quarter-century after the founding fathers declared independence from Britain. He delivered this speech as Black people across the south languished in the bondage of slavery, no taste of the glorious freedom white Americans were celebrating. This quote then and now encapsulates the reality of what it is to be Black and American, watching civil liberties promised to you because of your nationality dangled just out of reach because of the color of your skin. Now the obvious fact of the day is that in 2020 Black people are no longer a formally enslaved race; we have the right to vote and Jim Crow laws have been disassembled, but like a poisonous gas, America’s racism shifts to fill the shape of the container it’s in, leading to voter suppression, continued housing and school segregation, police brutality, a prison industrial complex that profits off Black lives akin to slavery, and so many other ways Black people to languish under the heel of America’s white supremacy.
So what does the Fourth of July mean to the descendant of the American slave?
I can only speak to my experience so here’s what it feels like- every other day. Yup, that’s right to me the Fourth of July is another Saturday at home with my family (especially since I haven’t left much during the pandemic). Now sure in years past without a pandemic on our heels my family would’ve piled into our too cramped car (my siblings are really tall) and traveled to an aunt’s, grandparent’s, or cousin’s house to grill, swim, dance, pop fireworks, and fellowship, but even with all this, there was no particular or purposeful patriotism. Sure, my mom loved buying coordinated Old Navy T-shirts and donning my siblings and me in red, white, and blue barrettes and hats, but the woman just loves a theme and color coordination. There was never a message of “we do this because we feel so free in the good ole USA.”
Nope, like any other day being Black in America, we were navigating a gray space. We recognize our Blackness. We recognize our Americaness. We recognize our Americaness was shackled to us, not freely given or chosen. We recognize that the holiday was both built by us — but not intended for us. So we experienced it in a way that reflected that. If my family was going to be off from work, if meat, sodas, and snacks were going to be on sale, if the pool was going to be ready, well we were going to gather in the name of having a good time.
But this year… this year feels different I’ll be honest. Fourth of July coming on the heels of a reignited Black Lives Matter Movement, (not that it ever completely died out) a mishandled pandemic, and my eye-opening first year in college, well even for someone who had never particularly espoused a patriotic love of Fourth of July, celebrating full force right now feels like a spit in the face to my values in a way it never has before. Again what is the Fourth of July to the descendant of the American slave except for a reminder that I feel closer to the bondage of my ancestor than I am to the freedom of my white peers?
I realized that this year that for my values an acknowledgment of the Fourth of July as a legitimate holiday in any capacity felt like a compromise I was no longer willing to make. I’m not explicitly judging anyone who does decide to celebrate it in some capacity, Black or not. However, for me giving legitimacy to the Fourth of July while marginalized groups are still clamoring for rights felt like legitimizing the uncomfortable gray space I inhabit as a Black American. Due to slavery, I have no tangible roots outside of American soil, but that soil is wet with the blood and tears of my ancestors and my peers today. Black and American are like parallel lines running alongside each other — never touching.
So the Fourth of July is like any other day to the descendant of American slaves. Another day of balancing the gray space. Another day where a part of my identity- American- is toxic to another part of my identity- Black woman. Since I can’t change who I am and where I am from, I’m forced to address the toxicity, and I guess if it won’t change I will be forced to dismantle that part of myself and build something new in its place. | https://liyah-allen.medium.com/the-fourth-of-july-to-the-descendant-of-the-american-slave-2fba40815143 | ['Aaliyah Allen-Coleman'] | 2020-07-13 17:46:48.279000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Independence Day', 'America', 'Black Women Writers'] |
Crypto Market Intel: Exchanges receive 3.5 billion XRP | RIPPLE (XRP)
Crypto Market Intel: Exchanges receive 3.5 billion XRP
Almost 10% of the free float supply of XRP headed to exchanges to take advantage of a massive 114% price increase
One thing is for sure — there’s never a dull moment in Cryptoverse. At the same time, the volatility that digital assets exhibit is not for the faint of heart either. The volatility that I am talking about was completely on showcase today. The most striking pullback was seen in the premier digital asset of Bitcoin, which had been on a relentless bull run for the past many weeks.
Acting much like a mainstream financial asset, BTC reversed hard from the all-time high — technically getting rejected at the long-term resistance charted back in 2017. So far, it has moved down from $19,500 to $16,200 (or an almost 17%) correction. Similar moves were seen in almost all Alt. coins. Ethereum dropped almost 23% whereas Ripple’s token XRP, saw an even bigger drop of almost 42%.
Although most of the coins have bounced from their earlier lows, significant corrections seem to be taking shape. The confirmation will come in the days ahead. Knowing how financial markets behave, this shouldn’t be a surprise for traders and investors. Coming back to XRP, it has been a trade to watch in the last week or so — with the third-largest crypto gaining 114% over the week.
According to Chainalysis Market Intel, The 114% price increase was accompanied by huge XRP inflows to exchanges. Exchanges have received 3.5 billion XRP since Saturday 15 November. This is 10% of the free float supply — not locked up in escrow. Tuesday alone saw 1.14 billion XRP rushed into exchanges (left chart above), a larger one day inflow to exchanges than during the mid-March price fall across cryptocurrencies.
This selling pressure meant that on Tuesday the price closed 20% lower than the intra-day high and it fell further on Wednesday before rebounding a little Thursday. Talking about XRP moving to exchanges, just six exchanges received 80% of the 3.5 billion XRP received by exchanges since last Saturday. The right chart above shows the amount of XRP received by each of these six exchanges, shown by their rank in terms of the amount they received.
Analyzing the breakup of the XRP that flowed into exchanges — 57% came directly from services such as exchanges, while 43% came from self-hosted wallets. While a large amount of XRP has flowed between a small number of exchanges and a few large self-hosted wallets, Only a limited amount of XRP to exchanges appears to have come directly from the parent company Ripple.
Whatever the case may be, the massive inflow indicated that traders were looking to book come hefty profits after the vertical ascent that we have seen in XRP recently. Today certainly felt like a day in the late 2017 bull run, when we saw large prices increased outside of Bitcoin & Ethereum. Will history repeat itself? We will find out soon…
Stay informed with the content that matters — Join my mailing list | https://medium.com/technicity/crypto-market-intel-exchanges-receive-3-5-billion-xrp-bc80d02838b7 | ['Faisal Khan'] | 2020-11-27 00:20:17.466000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Finance', 'Bitcoin', 'Investing', 'Business'] |
GitHub Repositories for programmers | Free Programming Books
It is safe to say that you are figuring out how to code and searching with the expectation of complimentary assets (books, digital recordings, courses, designer instruments, etc..)? On the off chance that your answer is true, at that point this Github archive has an assortment of free learning assets where you can instruct yourself a great deal of specialized stuff. You will discover assets, for example, information structure, calculations, programming dialects, AI, working frameworks, systems, programming designing, and a ton of fields are incorporated. Prior the rundown was on StackOverflow, later it was moved to Github by Victor Felder for shared refreshing and support.
Free CodeCamp
A non-benefit association and outstanding amongst another online open-source network where you can figure out how to code and help other people.
Public APIs
In the event that you are a designer, at that point certainly, you should manage APIs for your application. This archive makes the designer errands simpler by introducing a rundown of regularly refreshed assortments of public APIs. These APIs are free and isolated into various classifications to investigate them without any problem. Star mark this archive and get its advantage while building your application.
Developer Road Map
An excellent designer guide control made by Kamran Ahmed. A lot of understudies and beginners in programming get confounded about what innovation they ought to realize and what way they ought to follow bit by bit to turn into an engineer. He has arranged a total graph remembering the innovation for every class of development(frontend, backend, DevOps..) that will give you an away from what you ought to realize straight away. Bookmark this store in the event that you like the manner in which he guided you to turn into a designer.
Gitignore: A Collection of .gitignore Templates
This is GitHub’s collection of .gitignore file templates. We use this list to populate the .gitignore template choosers available in the GitHub.com interface when creating new repositories and files.
For more information about how .gitignore files work, and how to use them, the following resources are a great place to start:
Terraform
Ruby on Rails
Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.
Understanding the MVC pattern is key to understanding Rails. MVC divides your application into three layers: Model, View, and Controller, each with a specific responsibility.
MAPS.ME
MAPS.ME is an open source cross-platform offline maps application, built on top of crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap data. It was publicly released for iOS and Android.
Material-UI
React components for faster and simpler web development. Build your own design system, or start with Material Design. | https://medium.com/@girish-kotte1/github-repositories-for-programmers-74c409cf5ede | ['Girish Kotte'] | 2020-12-08 01:56:50.733000+00:00 | ['Github', 'Repositories', 'Ruby on Rails', 'Programming', 'Programmers Life'] |
Should Anyone be Buying Stock? | Should Anyone be Buying Stock?
Why Investing in Individual Stocks is Not a Smart Bet for the Everyday Person
There was a time when individual stock investing dominated the investment world, but with changing times and changing needs, individual stock investments have become increasingly questionable for the everyday person’s portfolio.
Image by William Ive from Pixabay
Quite naturally, you are putting money into an investment in the hopes for high returns (which can be compelling with individual stocks. However, individual stocks also expose an investor to high levels of company-specific risk. All risks taken should be compensated with higher returns, otherwise, they are neither optimal nor rational. The Modern Portfolio Theory (which is generally well respected in the field of Finance) hypothesizes that a portfolio with a minimal number of different company’s stocks exposes the investor to high amounts of company-specific risk of which they are not compensated for with higher returns. A better approach is investing in diversified securities like Mutual Fund or ETFs (more on this later).
Individual stock investments can work for some people, and this article is going to tackle both the pros and cons of individual stock investments. But first, we need to talk about the differences between investing in individual stocks and investing in diversified securities like ETFs.
What’s the Difference?
Individual stock investments are simply buying a share, or multiple shares, of a single company’s stock (for example buying 5 shares of Apple stock). These investments are tied to the company’s growth, earnings, and perceived value.
Mutual Funds or index funds involve investing in a pool of multiple companies at the same time. You can pool your investment with other investors and buy hundreds or thousands of stocks in a wide range of companies and sectors. This investment style is different in the sense that individual stock investments focus on a single company and a single stock. Mutual Funds or index funds like ETFs offer a very cheap way for the average person to achieve a well-diversified portfolio.
Why Should You Not Invest in Individual Stocks?
There are multiple reasons why I discourage investing in individual stocks. One of the primary reasons is that the stock market is volatile. Prices can rise and fall very quickly. If a company that you’ve invested in has bad news or a bad earnings report, the price will likely fall substantially before you can react.
The market moves very quickly, and most large financial institutions already have systems installed that make buy-sell transactions almost instantaneously. The average person has a minimal chance of beating them to the sale, and the company’s share price will fall almost instantaneously.
On the contrary, if you are instead invested in an index fund that contains 500 different stocks, bad news from a single stock will hardly affect your portfolio because your exposure to any individual stock is negligible.
There Is Significant Uncertainty for Any Individual Company
The average person generally does not know what the future holds and what internal or external factors will cause a company’s stock price to fluctuate substantially. Our hunches can often feel infallible with regards to a company’s future success. But consider that 90% of traders have historically failed at outperforming the benchmark index, and they at one point considered their hunches to be infallible as well.
Diversifying your investment minimizes the risks you face in the sense that other stocks can now cover up for a bad investment, and this helps in significantly minimizing your losses. With a diversified stock investment portfolio, you will generally see your investments rise and fall with the overall stock market.
Individual investors with diversified portfolios will be minimally affected by major losses of any single company. However, diversifying your stock portfolio by buying huge volumes of individual stocks of different companies is too costly for the average person. Therefore, many investors turn towards index funds (like ETFs) which allows them to pool their money together and purchase a huge basket of different stocks at a low price.
By Pexels.com
Trading Individual Stocks Takes Time to Learn
Most people cannot become successful stock traders without significant hands-on experience as this domain takes time to learn. Often, successful traders of individual company stocks have learned from past mistakes and initially sustained large losses before improving to get to where they are today. If you want to partake in individual stock investment, you should dedicate significant time to understand and study the companies you are trading and the overall stock market. Most people find it difficult to dedicate the time it takes to be successful in this competitive endeavor because they have lives outside of trading.
Individual Stock Investment Can Be Expensive
To make individual stock investments you will be required to go through a brokerage, and most brokerages charge you for each time you make a buy or a sell transaction. If you’re buying and selling shares in large quantities, then the fee is less significant, but if your buy-sell is in small quantities, then you will lose a significant portion of your returns by just conducting sell and purchase transactions.
You can get emotionally attached to the companies you’ve invested in. The emotional attachment might cause you to hold on to their stock too long and negatively affect your returns.
What are the Benefits of Buying Individual Company’s Stocks?
The biggest advantage of investing in individual companies (rather than indices) is that you have the potential to experience substantial gains in returns that would be unachievable with a diversified portfolio. In the same manner that diversification decreases potential loss, it also decreases potential gain.
For experienced traders with massive portfolio sizes, individual stock investments can be used to create a diversified portfolio of only the desirable stocks in an index. However, if you are reading this article, I assume you do not fall into that category.
In conclusion, individual stock investments are not an optimal investment choice for the average person because they carry a large amount of risk that you are typically not compensated for through higher returns. You will likely have a better performing portfolio, and spend significantly less time managing your money, by simply buying into index funds (like ETFs). For more info on how to get started in ETF investing, click here for my beginner’s guide.
Note: The information provided must not be taken as investment advice. Not all information is correct. The information is presented “as is” for informational purposes only. | https://medium.com/money-clip/should-anyone-be-buying-stock-3658a339d67d | ["Ryan O'Connell"] | 2020-11-23 23:57:20.856000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Investment', 'Finance', 'Investing', 'Stock Market'] |
How to Talk About Mental Health at Work | “Burnt out” is the status quo for over a quarter of today’s workers. How did we get here? And, more importantly, what can organizations do to normalize looking after mental health at work?
The Sunday Blues: we all get them sometimes. And you might feel reassured to know that those Sunday afternoon waves of lethargy, anxiety and even panic have neurological backing, too.
According to Dr. Linda Straus, it’s the neocortex that’s responsible for Sunday Blues; an evolutionary response to upcoming negative experiences, like a 6am alarm clock, that email you left unresolved on Friday afternoon, or a client you can’t seem to gel with.
And with the neocortex being almost half the total volume of the human brain, it’s hardly surprising those Sunday Blues can feel overwhelming at times.
But as important as it is to isolate the root causes of work-related stress and anxiety, there’s another essential piece of the puzzle: talking about how you feel.
As the old saying goes: “A problem shared is a problem halved”. But some workplaces are more welcoming of these conversations than others. “I’m feeling stressed”. “This task is making me anxious”. “I think I’m close to burning out”. While these comments should be seen as marks of bravery, they’re too often stigmatized; considered signs of weakness, or workflow interruptions, instead.
And although from a purely project management perspective, a team member taking a “mental health day” may bring productivity to a pause or potentially threaten a deadline, this is just a momentary blocker. If we allow our teams to keep slogging on, ignoring signs of ill mental health, the ramifications will be far worse indeed.
For the sake of ourselves, our colleagues and our business’s long-term commercial success, we all need to talk about mental health at work.
Here’s where we should start…
Understanding mental health (and its many, many guises)
How do you define ‘mental health’?
If you ask the World Health Organization, they’d say it’s not just the “absence of mental disorder”, like stress, anxiety or depression. Instead:
“It is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.”
That’s a powerful definition — and it’s one we can all connect to in some way.
Maybe, for you, burnout manifests itself in working unproductively. That altogether unfulfilling experience of tapping away at your keyboard for hours on end, but not really having much to show for it.
Or maybe stress looks like underperforming against your potential — feeling like you’re falling short of your personal and professional goals. Perhaps the opposite is true, too; where from the outside-in, it might look like you’re nailing it… but in your own mind things are crashing down all around you.
Equally, you could feel just as stressed and drained because you can’t see meaning in your work. “What’s the point?”, “What am I contributing by doing this?”. Those are damaging and de-motivating thoughts for anyone to overcome.
The point is: we need to open up our understanding and interpretation of mental health, because it’s different for everyone. In the same way we have different pain thresholds, we have different tipping points for ‘good stress’ (which is a thing) and ‘bad stress’, too.
We all show healthy and unhealthy mental states in different ways, as well.
Some colleagues might exhibit stress via high energy discussions, but not a lot of action. Others might hide away in their office, or work from home, in a state that’s close to total shutdown. Some individuals wear their heart on their sleeve; others try for a ‘stiff upper lip’ approach.
So if there’s no one way of identifying a happy, healthy co-worker from someone who needs support, how do managers intervene?
The answer, as with many management challenges, comes down to communication.
It’s good to talk. Here’s why…
Let’s pause for a moment to consider the importance of mental health conversations at work.
In a recent research study by Gallup, 28% of employees agreed they felt burnt out either “always” or “very often”. For 48% of the sample, the answer was “sometimes”. Add these figures together, and we learn that as few as 24% of the workforce experience a 9 to 5 free from running on empty.
Those stats are totally back to front.
Stress, tired and burnt out should be the exception, not the rule.
And this isn’t just an ethical argument to have — although that’s an essential way to look at it too. While it simply isn’t fair to work employees down to the ground, a tired workforce has serious implications for commercial potential as well.
In the same study, Gallup found that burnt out employees are 63% more likely to take sick days. And illness-related lost productivity costs US businesses $530 billion per year. Depression can result in 200 million lost work days alone.
And keep in mind, this study was conducted prior to proliferation of Covid-19, which has only exacerbated the issue. While it’s still too early to make definitive conclusions, there are numerous ongoing studies investigating the impact Covid-19 has had on impacting psychological well-being, and early indicators are pointing to a marked uptick in cases of sickness caused by stress, depression and anxiety.
And with the vast majority of workers still to start talking about mental health at work, could communication be part of the solution?
A manager’s role in promoting mental health at work
We mentioned before about isolating the root cause of ill mental health at work: is it mounting deadlines? Is it disengagement with goals, colleagues, or the overall mission? Is the expectation to work longer, harder and more flexibly at the same time?
Any of the above could be true. But there’s another contributing factor, one that’s a little closer to home: managers.
Gallup calls ineffective managers “the cause of burnout, rather than the cure”. And writing for Harvard Business Review, workplace expert Jennifer Moss says something similar:
“We tend to think of burnout as an individual problem, solvable by “learning to say no,” more yoga, better breathing techniques, practicing resilience — the self-help list goes on. But evidence is mounting that applying personal, band-aid solutions to an epic and rapidly evolving workplace phenomenon may be harming, not helping, the battle […] Leaders take note: It’s now on you to build a burnout strategy.”
But if managers can’t rely on their own interpretation of other people’s mental health — as we all show our levels of coping in different ways — nor rely on employees to tell them themselves that they’re feeling unwell…how do we figure it out?
In a shared study by Mind Share Partners, SAP, and Qualtrics, 86% of employees agreed that a company’s culture should support mental health. And that sort of commitment has to start at the top. So let’s hone in there: what steps can leaders take today, to set the scene for more meaningful workplace mental health discussions?
How to talk to your team about mental health
If you’ve ever embarked on a serious, but impromptu, conversation with a friend or family member, you’ll have quickly realized that a little groundwork can go a long way.
The same is true at work. Before you can expect employees to open up to you, you need to create the right atmosphere for disclosure…
Reassure on psychological safety
Before anything is verbalized, you need a culture of psychological safety — where colleagues feel confident to be themselves, take risks and to ask for help.
Remember the stigma that’s too commonly attached to mental health issues? That’s what we must work to overcome. In many ways, this comes from the leaders themselves; being seen to be vulnerable, open and, well, human encourages others to do the same, and to welcome it from other people.
Help colleagues find their purpose
Work commitments can be demanding, there’s no denying (or avoiding) that truth.
Some people thrive under that pressure: “That fight or flight response can kick us into gear sometimes” explains Kathleen Gunthert, a professor of psychology and leader of the The Stress and Emotion Laboratory at American University. But too much stress — or distress? — brings everything to a halt, for some people sooner than others.
There’s a reason that the WHO puts importance on “contribution” in their definition of mental health. Because when an employee can see how their extra effort translates into a greater good for the business or community, that’s a tonic for one or two late nights.
For managers, the task is this: learn and understand what motivates your employees, what gives them meaning, and what will likely stress them out. This becomes difficult when you’re managing tens, or hundreds, of people but the message remains: mental health is individual, so you need to know the individual before you have the conversation.
A word of warning for remote teams though: don’t let it be out of sight, out of mind. Check in with anyone working away, or working from home, as often as you would if they were in-house — more often, if you can! Why? Because these workers may struggle especially to connect with their purpose, day in and day out.
Once your teams feel psychologically safe and you’ve helped them identify their purpose, then those valuable conversations can really begin.
Help them reach their potential
…and you can try to stretch (not stress) them further.
Focus on their learning and development. Agree goals that will help them grow, not just get the job done. And commit to on-going performance catch-ups, to see how they’re getting on.
Ask open ended questions
“Are you okay?”. It’s a well-meaning query, but it doesn’t get you very far.
Open ended questions — “How are you feeling today?”, “How does this week compare to last?”, “What can we do to help?” — are the ones that empower people to let you in.
It takes time, effort and a whole lot of trust to get employees to talk to you about their mental health. And when given the option of a closed answer, “Yes, I’m fine”, they may just take it.
As a manager, it’s your responsibility to start these conversations (uncomfortable as they may be at first). But if you lean into the challenge — and take the good stress as the motivating force that it is — you could entirely redefine your company culture for the better, improving the employee experience for managers and workers alike.
Just make sure you’ve got someone you can talk to, too. | https://medium.com/duuoo-io/how-to-talk-about-mental-health-at-work-8d50de99d051 | ['Michael Sica-Lieber'] | 2020-11-13 13:02:27.657000+00:00 | ['Leadership Development', 'Remote Working', 'Mental Health', 'Mental Health Awareness', 'Leadership'] |
Day 5 of Self Love Challenge | Day 5 Love Yourself More challenge
… alright so y’all know I’m diving in deep on this healing your inner child journey and it’s been quite a magic carpet ride!
I found this photo of me … mmmm I must be around 4–5 yrs old here.
I saved it on my Phone as my screen saver. When I fall out of flow state its a reminder that the trigger is simply my younger inner child calling to be loved. So I pause go inside n give her that love.
Nothing external can fill the void only you can fill yourself. No partner no amount of money no car or jewelry can love you but you.
So I’ve been enjoying my time giving me what I need and want first. Not looking outside myself for another to complete me or nourish me or protect me or love me.
It’s a magic carpet ride of synchronicity, deep peace, relief, dancing, singing … presence grounding, beauty and abundance.
So my challenge for you today if you find yourself complaining or projecting out there on the external for what’s missing in your life find a picture of yourself as a kid put it on your screen saver and anything you fall out of flow go inside, take the time to give yourself what you’re looking for outside.
Then watch your life reflect back your wholeness.
#MagicCarpetRideForLife
Comment here below, post your pic | https://medium.com/@secretwealthcreator/day-5-of-self-love-challenge-bd9a3b75272f | ['Secret Wealth Creators'] | 2020-12-22 14:15:47.993000+00:00 | ['Mindset', 'Love', 'Self Care', 'Mindset Shift', 'Mindfulness'] |
Eight is too young for self-hate | Last night we suffered another Chernobyl-grade meltdown.
It always begins innocently enough; a small exchange of words which quickly build into a medium-size misunderstanding which, suddenly, erupts into an all-out screaming fit complete with put-downs, punches, and eventually physical restraint.
Such is life with a passionate, fiery 8-year-old boy we once named Eliot.
Last night, however, was different.
Last night, I witnessed something scarier than any tantrum and more painful than any tiny-fisted punch to the chest.
Last night, for the first time ever, I saw true self-destruction.
The setting was our backyard pool. The spark being a wager the tweens of the house had started to see who could “polar bear it” the longest.
In this instance, to “polar bear it” means to wade into water that is well beyond uncomfortably cold up to your necks and then squat there, waiting for the weaklings to be weeded, or rather, waded out.
In retrospect, we should have seen it coming. After all, one of Eliot’s biggest triggers is being told he’s not old enough or big enough to follow his three older brothers. This is seconded only by a deep-seated aversion to being left out (which, let’s face it, who doesn’t have).
“Eliot, you can’t get in right now!” the well-meaning adults yelled from the balcony. “The older kids all have a bet going to see who can stay in the longest.”
The words “You,” Can’t,” “Old,” and “Kids,” are all fighting words for Eliot; starter fluid for his emotional bonfires.
Was the pool big enough for Eliot to jump in? Absolutely.
Would it have hurt anyone to have him participate in a non-compensatory fashion? Not at all.
Why, then, did we feel the need to restrict access?
I have no clue, but such is the life of imperfect parents.
Sure enough, within seconds of our proclamation, Eliot was totally lit up and literally scaling outside walls to get to the balcony.
“You are all liars!” he screamed, his expression twisted in rage. “You’re nothing but losers, big, FAT LOOO-SERS!” Liars and losers are his favorite go-to slurs when he’s exploding.
Now trembling in his eight-year-old frame and entirely unable to cool down, Eliot ricocheted around us, the source of all his life frustration, like a mosquito drawn to the bug zapper until, finally, “Zap!” I had to physically restrain him, carrying him over my shoulder to his room while everyone around awkwardly watched him scream, scratch and swing punches.
As those more perfect in the art of parenting will undoubtedly notice, I’m not a child psychologist. In moments such as these, I wish dearly that I was.
As is typically the case, the isolation period with Eliot always starts out like a scene cut from The Shining. He bounces off walls physically and emotionally with all internal gages whistling well-past capacity until his tiny frame can’t take it anymore.
Finally, collapsing on the bed, floor, or whatever flat surface is closest, his internal temperature begins to dip and, with it, reasoning slowly comes back online.
It’s normally at this point that Eliot collects himself and we’re able to talk through the blow-up, recognizing the pain points, and soon life is once again bearable if not much better.
Last night, however, something else leaked out at the point of exhaustion.
“I’M A BAD BOY!” Eliot sobbed as rage turned to tears. “Nobody should like me. Nobody should be my friend. I just hurt everyone I’m around!”
“Oh buddy,” I said, my dad-heart swelling to overflow with love and pain.
“You’re not a bad boy,” I tried to reassure him. “You are passionate and yes, you are fiery, but you’re not a bad person.”
“No! no! no!” he shook off my words like a wet dog after a bath; his eyes puffy and red, filled to overflowing with tears streaming down cheeks that, like his soul, was quickly losing their cute pudgy innocence.
“You’re way too young for this buddy,” I thought as I watched the emotional train wreck smoldering before my eyes.
But there was little I could say to stop the pain; little I could do to convince my com-passionate little man that he was perfectly normal in his flaws.
Eventually, the emotional tidal wave receded and the boyhood urge to get out and play returned. Responsive and repentant, we quickly mapped out a game plan for redemption and, as per usual, Eliot played it out to perfection.
He might have regained his freedom, but I could sense that a boulder had been added to the backpack of his tiny soul. How I wished desperately that I had the power to reach in and throw it down the pool drain, but unfortunately such powers far exceed my pay grade.
Calm and recomposed, Eliot bounced out his bedroom door while I stayed glued to his floor in an upright fetal position, wasted from the 20-minute emotional roller coaster ride we had just endured together.
With my back resting against the side of his bunk bed and my knees holding up my chin, I silently prayed Eliot would soon understand lessons that I’m only beginning to grasp at age 40:
…that we’re all deeply flawed humans, trying to convince ourselves that we’re good enough to be loved most days
…that when we fail to express ourselves, we repress ourselves which inevitably leads only to friction, discomfort, and self-destruction
…that we’d all be better off spending more time embracing the best parts of our beautifully complex humanity as opposed to trying in vain to strip them away.
… that the more we choose to love ourselves, the better off we will be for ourselves, our loved ones, and the entire world
I resigned myself to the fact that, for now, the best I can do is love Eliot through the hugs and punches and remind him that being perfectly imperfect is the best thing he can be.
That, and keep him from killing his older three brothers. | https://dave-smurthwaite.medium.com/eight-is-too-young-for-self-hate-8b7204312121 | ['Dave Smurthwaite'] | 2020-02-11 10:20:44.655000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Self Improvement', 'Parenting', 'Self', 'Faith'] |
Как Mental Health программы помогают компаниям становиться эффективнее | in In Bitcoin We Trust | https://medium.com/@ponimau/%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BA-mental-health-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BC%D1%8B-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%8E%D1%82-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F%D0%BC-%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%8C%D1%81%D1%8F-%D1%8D%D1%84%D1%84%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B5-e41ccc130a83 | [] | 2021-01-05 13:49:57.489000+00:00 | ['Well Being', 'HR', 'Eap', 'Ппс'] |
Elements of design: The wows and hows of abstract art | Don’t worry, I am not trying to fool you with hypnosis. When I first started this design with just a leaf shaped element, I had no idea where it would lead me. I was amazed by the outcome of this design knowing that only a single element is used in different sizes. They are arranged in a kind of hierarchy and catches the eyes of the observer in just one second. To me, the design looks a road in one perspective filled with puddles. They also look like a group of spaceships in space. The same composition when rotated looks like frequency waves. The composition represents proximity, similarity, figure-ground, continuity, and common fate.
“When trying to make sense of the world, we do not simple focus on every small component. Instead, our minds tend to perceive objects as part of a greater whole and as elements of more complex systems.” — Gestalt
Parallel universe
Image courtesy: Gallery
I believe the design looks scary. What do you think? As soon as I created the design, my immediate instinct was fear. After I started analyzing the design, I thought of the big white circle also the focal point as a white bright sun who is trying to radiate its positive energy towards the giant black circle which I interpreted as a different face of the sun. This composition is a perfect example of focal point, proximity, similarity, common fate and continuity.
Out of the box
Image courtesy: Gallery
The composition might look similar to you if you’ve ever played pinball. Although it has some elements which are alike, my perception of it might not be. Apart from looking like a game, it also looks like someone standing in solitude. Usually, we consider people who are distinctive crazy as artists are often called. But here the arrows represent pressure from society that an individual has to bear. And there is 1 in a hundred chance that a unique person falls off who is free of such burdens. You’re probably wondering “Wow, that is not what I thought of.” This is my personal view. This composition includes almost every single principle of closure, proximity, similarity, common fate, focal point and continuity.
Creepy crawlies
Image courtesy: Gallery
I know the composition looks mystifying but isn’t art all about expression? You wouldn’t believe me when I say that this composition is made out of heptagons. Isn’t it remarkable how our mind can understand the use of space and elements to form compositions beyond our skillset and yet perceive them exclusively? The smaller elements are considered far from our sight, probably on the horizon. As per my understanding, the design can be deemed as space debris or germs in a stomach or t might also look like animated ladders. | https://uxplanet.org/elements-of-design-the-wows-and-hows-of-abstract-art-33809c88b7e0 | ['Hiloni Shah'] | 2021-09-12 06:40:28.360000+00:00 | ['Principles Of Design', 'Ui Ux Design', 'Design Principles', 'UI Design', 'Gestalt'] |
Memoir :: Chosen by the cat. My weekends begin with her arrival. She… | It is not unusual to find someone who loves you without expectations. However, it is rare to find yourself returning that love because it’s at this point a story begins or rather ends.
Photo by Phú Mai on Unsplash
My weekend mornings begin with her arrival. She would ring the bell, to which I would instantly climb out of my bed to welcome her in. I would make tea and sit by the door, the warm liquid waking up my senses while she walked around the house before plopping down next to me.
As I gently stroked her hair, she would stare out of the door. I could see a longing in those hazel eyes, looking for something out of reach, like a prisoner waiting for a door to unlatch. Our mornings like these were quiet and peaceful. We talked less but said more in between these conversations.
Although it seemed like only yesterday, I first met Bella a few months ago. After work one day, I returned home and found her sprawled like a royal, right before my front door. I have not been much of a feline person in my life, so when she hollered, warning me not to hop over her into my apartment door, I unwittingly dropped my pursuit mid-flight. From that point on, no amount of cajoling and sweet talk helped her move. I gave up effortlessly after a long day and retreated to the ground across from her. We stayed put for an entire hour, glowering at each other until her human came and rescued me.
That is how the showdown happened with my neighbor’s cat, when we first moved to an apartment next to theirs.
Bella is a Siamese cat, actually named Mimi by her human. Yet the name Bella suited her aptly, for she would ring the tiny bell around her neck quite liberally, at times to intimate her arrival, and at other times to scrape away an itch or two. A shorthaired, large ball of fur which looked fierce on the outside with her sharp nails and a gaze she could continue to hold.
We started on the wrong foot, and our subsequent meetings were more for establishing territories than trying to bond. Whenever I opened my front door for fresh air, she used to walk regally into my house while we positioned ourselves out of the other’s way. I used to rant about my day, and she attended to it with no apparent interest.
With every visit, she spent more time than the last, and as days passed by, we surprisingly got used to each other’s presence — both in the living room and our mundane lives. If I have to pin all of this into a single moment that changed our dynamic, it would be a one lazy afternoon when I decided to take a day off from work. The afternoon when she nestled closer but still at a safe distance from me, with her paw slightly kissing my feet.
She was sleepy but wary of my company; she kept an eye open for a lookout. With each clock tick, her eyelids drooped slowly. Unable to resist the growing invisible weight, she gave in to the imminent dreams. The moment she dozed off, it occurred that this was the first time a cat chose me. I admit her trusting me meant more to me than her.
I have envisioned my life with a pet someday but never pictured it with a cat. Now it is ominous to think I could live without one around. | https://medium.com/@swesree/it-is-not-unusual-to-find-someone-who-loves-you-ee85fb15d803 | ['Swetha Pujari'] | 2020-12-15 04:35:17.891000+00:00 | ['Memoir', 'Cats', 'Catlover', 'Stories', 'Short Read'] |
Livepeer GPU Miner Update | Test Miner at the Livepeer Office
A key component for the upcoming Livepeer Streamflow update is new software that allows GPU crypto miners to concurrently run the Livepeer video transcoding software. The video transcoding software takes advantage of the idle video processing ASICs on most commercial GPUs, thus effectively transcodes video while causing minimal disruption to the GPU’s hashrate. This enables GPU miners to participate in the Livepeer network without any additional capital expenditure and dramatically increases the reliability and affordability for the Livepeer network. Since our initial research, the engineering team has made significant progress towards this goal. We would like to share some initial benchmarking results with the Livepeer community.
Hardware Spec
To test the software performance, we built a basic test mining rig with the following spec:
GPU: 1xNvidia 1080ti (Pascal encoder/decoder)
GPU Connection: PCIE
CPU: Intel Pentium 3.1GHz
RAM: 16GB
Note that we used a single GPU card. Usually miners can fit 6–12 GPU cards per node. The Livepeer software can do basic load balancing across multiple GPU cards on the same node, but the optimal load balancing mechanism remains an active area of research.
Performance Baseline
Before benchmarking, we established our performance baseline by running a live stream transcoding task without also running the mining software. The transcoding task is from a 720p 24fps input video to a {720p 30fps, 360p 30fps, 240p 30fps} multi-bitrate output video. We used H264 as the video codec and HLS as the video communication protocol. This is a common setting for live streaming on the web today.
Baseline Transcoding Performance For a Single 1080ti GPU
We can see in the performance baseline, that the software running on a 1080ti starts to drop video segments when attempting to transcode more than four concurrent streams.
Benchmark
The first benchmark we attempted is simulating an HD live video transcoding workflow while running Ethminer. In this workflow, a live video stream is segmented into 4-second video segments. These segments are streamed into the transcoder in real-time while the mining rig is running Ethminer in a separate process. As we can see from the test result, there is minimal disruption to the hashrate. This is because the GPU can do mining and transcoding on separate resources, thus causing very little resource sharing between the mining and transcoding process.
Benchmarking result for HD live transcoding + Ethminer
Note we really only care about results with input streams less than 4 because the transcoding tasks start to drop segments after 4 concurrent streams. But it’s nice to see hashrate disruption increases linearly even after 4 concurrent streams.
Load Testing
After getting this preliminary result, we wanted to know how much we can push the GPUs. So instead of simulating a live transcoding workflow, we fed video as quickly as possible to the GPUs, aiming to utilize 100% of the transcoding capacity. The results we got shows under full video transcoding load, the hashrate remains at around 80%. We suspect the 20% reduction in hashrate is due to a combination of software factors such as the driver serializing the jobs, and hardware factors like resource sharing on the memory and I/O of the GPU. Note that our benchmarking setup is quite naive — running the video transcoding and mining tasks as separate processes and completely relying on the driver to determine resource allocation.
We also observed an interesting behavior — the power consumption went down slightly when mining and transcoding happened simultaneously. We suspect this is due to lower overall GPU utilization caused by serialization across mining & transcoding jobs, and see this as a hint for future improvement in the transcoding / mining software.
Conclusion
Building a decentralized video transcoding network is an ambitious undertaking. We have observed some encouraging data around the video mining opportunity, but clearly there is still much more work to be done. We encourage the community to help us benchmark in their own environment following these instructions, and we would love to hear your feedback in our Discord channel or on the Livepeer forum.
If you would like to follow our progress with video mining, or would like to learn more about participating as a video miner, please sign up to the Livepeer transcoder mailing list.
Special thanks to Michael Ira Krufky for the benchmarking work, Josh Allmann for authoring much of the transcoding software, and many other Livepeer engineering team members for their contribution. | https://medium.com/livepeer-blog/livepeer-gpu-miner-update-663a3e19de56 | ['Eric Tang'] | 2019-10-04 21:33:36.696000+00:00 | ['Mining', 'Livepeer', 'Ethereum', 'Live Streaming', 'Gpu'] |
COMPREDICT Platform Architecture — Part 2: in-car logging software | Co-written by Simon Sander
Nowadays, collecting data from every kind of components and systems has already moved in the focus of several industry areas. The automotive industry is one of the pushing sectors accelerating the data logging of millions of cars. This data can contain information about the electrical, mechanical or thermal state of several different vehicle components. The challenge is to not only log and store this data but rather to log the big amount of information over a car’s life without information loss and with high sampling rate. Further challenge is to extract the right information from this large amount of data.
in-car logging hardware
We at COMPREDICT are able to not only collect data from vehicles in an accurate way but also to pre- and post-process, stream, save, analyze and visualize it. To demonstrate our real-time algorithms to our customers, we applied our Tesla Model 3 with our in-car logging hardware and some additional analog sensors. In the following, we will give an overview of the software parts which are running on our in-car logging hardware. Starting with the overview of the software services, a short introduction to our engineering capabilities like virtual sensors, load spectra computation and damage prediction follows. Then, we will explain the real-time visualization and analytics interface which is used to showcase our proprietary algorithms. Finally, we will introduce the connection to our datalake and analytics platform.
Pipeline
Our in-car logging software distributes the measurements of physical conditions in a vehicle over an inter-process communication mechanism to process the data, visualize the outputs of our algorithms in real-time and upload the data to our datalake. The following picture describes the basic flow of our in-car logging software.
in-car logging software overview
At the beginning of the logging process, physical conditions of the car are recorded from different sources, in our case the Control Area Network (CAN bus) and some additional analog sensors. Therefore we built small software packages (logging services) which collect these data and distribute them over an inter-process communication.
We went for an inter-process communication to have a clear interface for further program parts on the one hand and not to suffer any loss of speed on the other hand. Here we use the ZeroMQ messaging library due to its high distribution and third-party bindings for many popular programming languages. Furthermore, we standardized the data structure of our distributed data with Protocol Buffers to achieve a simple and high-performance serialization and deserialization of the data records.
Since the data of the CAN bus and the analog sensors are sent at different sampling rates, the data is synchronized centrally in the logging services. This synchronization is implemented with a zero-order holding block, so that all data records belonging to a sample interval are broadcasted in an atomic step. All other services that want to process this data can subscribe to the data via the Publisher/Subscriber pattern and always receive the most current data at an evenly spaced exact interval.
The collected data is currently subscribed by three data-processing services, which are discussed in detail in the following sections.
Virtual sensors, load spectra computation and damage prediction
In the Algorithm-Module Service, we pre- and postprocess the available signals with precompiled models. These models represent the basis for our virtual sensors, load spectra computation and damage prediction. As described in detail in the previous article, we at COMPREDICT develop virtual sensors. That means that we are fusioning already available signals in order to generate additional information, which is either non-measured or non-measurable. The reason why we are doing this is simple.
Let us take an example. Cars are very complex systems, full of electronic and mechanic devices. In order to perfectly control or assess the current status of the entire system, sensors are required that measure physical quantities such as torque, force, temperature, pressure, friction, wear etc. However, due to high costs, space limitation or reliability issues, dedicated physical sensors are not implemented for every component and system in series-production cars. In most passenger cars, the signal transmission and communication between control units, sensors or actuators takes place via CAN bus. To close the gap of limited physical sensor application and to be able to have sensing capabilities on all damage-relevant vehicle components without running in above-mentioned aspects, we have developed a strong expertise in the AI-based virtual sensor technology over the last years (see an example of virtual sensor in the following figure). | https://medium.com/compredict/compredict-platform-architecture-part-2-in-car-logging-software-35a67ae5f2e5 | ['Vitalij Funk'] | 2020-09-08 14:52:25.879000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Predictive Maintenance', 'Platform', 'Machine Learning', 'Automotive'] |
Three Alternative Poems For Your Morning Commute | by Josh Lefkowitz
Greetings! Commuter!
Wherefore art thou awash
with the sticky salve of sadness?
Is it because of Brenda?
And what she said at the company-wide
lunchtime seminar yesterday?
You know what?
Brenda needs to learn to shut her mouth.
•••
When the sea is calm and green
And the sky grins in its darkened eternity
Offering numerous numinous starry winks
I feel at home in the world
and I also feel like telling you
That when you clip your fingernails on the train
We all think it’s absolutely disgusting.
You’re like Jared from those Subway commercials:
Nobody likes you.
•••
Please don’t run!
Another train’s a-comin’!
Listen — can you hear it?
It’s motorin’ and hummin’!
And anyhow, that one you missed —
It really ain’t so grand —
In fact, it just got hijacked
By a mariachi band.
•••
Photo via superamit/flickr.
Josh Lefkowitz writes poems and sometimes plays and/or essays. But mostly poems. He won the 2013 Wergle Flomp humor poetry prize. | https://medium.com/the-hairpin/three-alternative-poems-for-your-morning-commute-63fac9453542 | ['The Hairpin'] | 2016-06-02 02:58:29.115000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Commutes', 'Josh Lefkowitz'] |
How to know when you’re wrong | Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
If you answer “yes” to any of the questions below then you know you can’t trust yourself.
Your rational brain has been hijacked by extremism and you aren’t seeing the world clearly.
Questions to ponder -
Do you disagree with everything the opposing party does? Do you take one isolated negative interaction, and quickly apply it to all members of the opposing party? Do you believe the opposing party and it’s members are all “evil”? Do you disregard perspectives that challenge your view of the world?
Most situations and people aren’t a binary “good” or “bad”. It’s merely a spectrum of “pros” vs. “cons”.
We do ourselves harm when we apply arbitrary extreme morality to a situation. It prevents dialogue. It prevents consolidation. It destroys relationships.
So the first step to heal the world is to challenge yourself. | https://medium.com/@thehappydeveloper/how-to-know-when-youre-wrong-9837f929f94d | ['Erik Andersen'] | 2020-11-17 14:43:52.177000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Democratic Party', 'Politics', 'Life Lessons', 'Republican Party'] |
September 3rd 2020 | daily journal. DON’T READ THIS
Today, i was in a complete autopilot. woke up in the morning, not feeling 100%. this mouth ulcer is killing me, i mean i seriously feel tortured with the pain every time i speak or eat. bought some sort of a mouth ulcer drop from the pharmacy and it has done nothing but makes my throat super itchy. well that sucks.
Did my classes as usual and not to my maximum capacity since i am terribly jaded. looking for a new escape and new activity to do, including this blog writing, knowing that no one reads my first post, i believe no one would read this as well, so i figure this would be an interesting way to journal my thoughts.
Writing this journal while listening to Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack played by 2 Cellos is something i prefer to do late in the evening. Picked up my frozen Cassava i purchased from a friend because i forgot to bring em home last Monday, that is one thing i found out about me, super forgetful unless i write it down somewhere, that reminds me, i have to pick up my laundry before home tonight.
Noticed that my headset has a rather horrible quality, i changed my playlist from AC/DC’s thunderstruck to Yann Tiersen’s Comptine d’Un Autre Été- Die fabelhafte Welt der Amélie. Quite relaxing and gives me this hopeful aura that i can do anything i set my mind to. what a wishful thinking and suddenly i can feel the pain in my mouth ulcer again. Fuck this
source: barrio-gotico-de-barcelona
I am suddenly reminded of the time I was in Spain, Barcelona, to be exact, walking around in El Gotico area exactly 2 in the morning with no one else around, standing in the middle of a Plaza surrounded by beautiful old building and i felt that sense of freedom. I was with a friend, but i felt like i was alone. Just two people walking together with their own minds going places. Now i wonder what happened to my friend Bob whom i met there, wonder where he is and how he is during this pandemic. Beautiful places always get me, it give me the reflective moment and the feeling of melancholy. Moments like that always gives me the impression like i was in a movie with a background song.
Simple things like smell, a song, a face, can always take me back to that exact moment in my memory. | https://medium.com/@irdhanie-icha/september-3rd-2020-204e01d42be6 | ['Hide In A Chair'] | 2020-09-03 11:31:15.929000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Diary', 'Journaling', 'Work', 'Spain'] |
How to communicate IA to non-IA Stakeholders? | (Team, 2015)
Information Architecture (IA) is the system of a great design. If designers do not devote time and effort to attaining it for their users, then their design will not advance and will fail instead. Information architecture is the talent of organizing information on a website, mobile or web application, in order to make the design simple and intuitive. It is more about the organization of the whole website or application which permits the user to browse through the content easily, without much effort. IA not as difficult to understand, the hard part is, how to communicate it to non-IA stakeholders. Furthermore, some people might know what information architecture is and not its value.
Information architecture is the backbone of a whole project. It is accountable for how a user navigates through websites or applications and retrieves significant information. The way in which users utilize a website or application totally varies on how the information is presented and organized. The lacking structure of a website or application will deter users and frustrate them. Pioneers of the IA field, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville in their book “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web” have distinguished four main components: organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and searching systems (Tubik, 2017).
Organization Systems
This refers to the groups or the categories in where information is divided. The organizing system helps users foretell where they can find specific information.
Labeling Systems
It contains the means of data representation. Since a great amount confuses users, labeling is a great way to make the design simpler. This is the very reason why designers make labels that signify lots of data in a few words. An example of this would be when there is the contact tab on a website. That contact tab usually contains the email, social media contacts, phone number, and even location at times. There is no way to represent all of that information on one page, so designers use the word “contact” the attention of the users. The goal of the labeling system is to unite the data effectively.
Navigation systems
This system is a set of actions and methods that guides users to navigate a website or application allowing them to achieve their goals and successfully interact with the product. It contains the ways users browse content. It’s a complicated system that uses many techniques and approaches.
Searching systems
When users fail to find what they are searching for, there is a big chance that they will abandon the product or website. Information architects devote their time constructing information, so it is easy for users to find what they are searching for. They construct information in places users expect to discover it. An example would be when a user is searching for contact information, the first thing they look for would be a tab that says “Contact Us” or “Contact. The more information a website or application has, the bigger the role of information architecture in the User Experience design process.
Knowing how to communicate is essential when it comes to everything and the same applies to information architecture. Information Architects must communicate efficiently with other development teams. Communication can be very difficult since information architecture is very intangible and abstract. Some ways to communicate is by having designers along with their team members speaking the language of their users whenever they communicate. Designers should use models, along with informal ones, in order to speak with users and tackle bigger problems of communication. Furthermore, designers should consider their users in every conversation, constantly looking for better ways to communicate. The success of a design project varies on successful communication skills and great collaboration between team members (Morville, 2013).
Content is the main reason for people visiting websites or applications. Just like it is important to make content that users find valuable, it is equally as important to make sure that the content is easy to find. Understanding the skeletons of the design right from the very start will save a massive amount of time, work, and finances in the long term. Well-considered information architecture is vital to guaranteeing users locating information on a website or application.
Information architecture is a fundamental part of an influential user experience design. Well-organized information architecture aids users to quickly and easily browse through content and locate everything they need without struggling. This is the very reason designers are encouraged to learn the basics of information architecture. The matter of information architecture is wide and there are many interesting and beneficial aspects.
Works Cited
Morville, P. (2013, February 14). Information Architecture for the World Wide web. Retrieved from O’REILLY: https://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/web2/infoarch/index.htm
Team, U. B. (2015, December 22). Complete Beginner’s Guide to Information Architecture. Retrieved from UXbooth: https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/complete-beginners-guide-to-information-architecture/
Tubik. (2017, May 25). Information Architecture. Basics for Designers. Retrieved from uxplanet: https://uxplanet.org/information-architecture-basics-for-designers-b5d43df62e20#:~:text=Pioneers%20of%20the%20IA%20field,navigation%20systems%20and%20searching%20systems. | https://medium.com/@sbarr600/how-to-communicate-ia-to-non-ia-stakeholders-31fcb7788a1f | ['Salima Barry'] | 2021-04-25 04:09:39.230000+00:00 | ['Ux Writing', 'Information Architecture', 'UX Design'] |
Subsets and Splits