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Data Analysis with the Institute for Economics and Peace | About the author: Michelle Howard’20 is an FSI Global Policy Intern at the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) in Sydney, Australia. Michelle is currently studying Bioengineering at Stanford University.
My time with IEP ended with many hugs, Oreo cheesecake, and a toast goodbye. Working for IEP in Sydney was everything I could have asked for from a summer-turned-winter. In only 10 weeks, I transformed from a victim of CS106A scarred from the freshman year struggles of Java, to a data analyzing, R sorceress and proud member of R Ladies. R Ladies is a city-wide club of women from all backgrounds who meet monthly to learn about new R packages, hear from guest speakers, and bond with each other over the trials, tribulations, and joys of code. It should come as absolutely no surprise that last month’s R Ladies guest speaker was Talia, my IEP mentor. I leave forever thankful to her for each 9-to-5, coffee-filled day she spent inspiring me with her cleverness, persistence, and female ferocity in the pursuit of world peace.
Another bullet in the “Computer Skills” section of the resume is a great value-add, but IEP’s greater gift to me was insight. This internship taught me the process and challenges of data analysis and report writing, the mechanics and politics of an office, and the idiosyncrasies of nonprofit peace research, both general and specific to Mexico. There are few projects in my life that have infused me with as much passion as the one I engaged in at IEP on the underreporting of crime in Mexico. As a citizen of this country, I was emotionally rocked by the shocking statistics representing the lives of Mexican residents, including my aunts, uncles, cousins, and abuelita. Upon learning that 93% of all crimes are never reported to the police because public systems are perceived as corrupt or useless, I was flooded with my and my family’s testaments to this high number: the robbery of my aunt’s dentistry practice in Durango, the kidnapping of my mother in a taxi in Mexico City, the bribes I pay to Mexican border patrol to avoid harassment when I cross are silent wrongs with no access to justice. The stats I found and calculated at a standing desk in Sydney, Australia were not just digits on a screen; they were the pain caused to family, the injustices occurring in a second home, and the motivating call to someday change those numbers.
I leave happily drunk off feminism, data analysis, and inside-jokes, the ingredients of a perfect Australian winter cocktail, IEP-style. | https://medium.com/freeman-spogli-institute-for-international-studies/data-analysis-with-the-institute-for-economics-and-peace-ae08b21bc39 | ['Fsi Student Programs'] | 2019-10-09 16:50:52.630000+00:00 | ['Mexico', 'Internships', 'Fsi Students', 'Stanford'] |
Happy Holidays! | Photo by: Cooking at Home
Thank you to all my readers, viewers, and followers! I appreciate your comments and support of Cooking at Home. It has been a pleasure sharing my recipes with you this year and I am thrilled to know that you are trying them and enjoying them too.
I hope you join me for more Cooking at Home recipes in 2021! I wish you and your family a joyful holiday season -filled with food, family, and memories. Best wishes for a happy and healthy new year!
Happy Holidays from my family to yours!
Cooking at Home | https://medium.com/the-cookbook-for-all/happy-holidays-8774bf37a2b7 | ['Cooking At Home'] | 2020-12-24 00:38:52.227000+00:00 | ['Food', 'Baking', 'Dessert', 'Cooking', 'Recipe'] |
When Everyone Says, “You Need To Let Him Go,” You Know It’s True … | When Everyone Says, “You Need To Let Him Go,” You Know It’s True …
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
It’s the five-year anniversary of an emotional affair I had with a married adult child of an alcoholic. The ending broke my heart so badly it really has taken every living second of the past five years to recover from it.
Not because of him. Because of me.
Like my mother, this sweet guy was badly damaged by unhealthy parents. Like my mother, this sweet guy could have had better outcomes in his life if he’d just dig in and do the hard work to heal.
He tried hard to do some work, all right.
He just elected to do it at home with his wife — which, nine times out of ten, is the correct thing to do. Don’t get me wrong on that.
He also did it by struggling, ever and ever harder, to please the people around him. (Yet again.)
I heard from him again three years ago. He filled me in on his life, which had gone about the way I expected: She insisted on marriage counseling, but then, he said, she acted like she really didn’t want to be there. She “sort of slept through it,” he said. “It was really difficult to make any progress,” he said. “She tried, but she can only change so much,” he said.
Oh, and … “Things are pretty much right back the way they were,” he said. This is what broke my heart.
I would have treated this guy so much better. I realized I had been wayyy too controlling in our relationship and I had worked hard on accepting that and fixing that … and he wasn’t even there!
How many times did I hear, “This guy is unhealthy. He isn’t the right partner for you. You need to let him go.”
I even heard it from our horoscopes.
I read and I read and I read. You know, a ton of new stuff has been written about codependency since Melody Beattie’s golden flagship book back in the eighties.
I knew in my head that if I had let this guy back in my life when he asked to see me again, he would have dithered and dithered, and waffled back into the marriage one more time. (Thank you, astrology!)
I knew in my head that if we got together, I had fantastic chances of him “Yes, dear”-ing me for ten years or so and then, just as he had in his first marriage, exploding in resentment once he realized that a.) he was depressed, because b.) his needs weren’t being met, and c.) he had overgiven once again and was unhappy about it.
I don’t care how codependent you grew up, relationships don’t work unless you learn to identify your feelings and talk the hell up.
I knew all this in my head.
But still the fantasy hung on: One day, one day, he’d wise up and leave this woman and we would be blissfully happy.
And I knew better!!
After five years of nothing but study about What Was Wrong, I know better! I know I do!!
Because growth in that relationship doesn’t come from me.
It comes from him, in his own good time. And right now, it’s kind of looking like either the wife made an unlikely breakthrough … or “his own good time,” is never.
Why Can’t We Let Go?
So what’s happening is, I don’t get to live that dream. That big, larger-than-life dream where I get the man and the big writing career I used to dream of and everything …
… and then that hard, hard wakeup.
I’m having my wakeup now. Only, for the past five years, I just couldn’t wake up.
Why Can’t We Wake Up?
I joined the Patreon group of a wonderful psychology vlogger called Nu Mindframe. She says that if you had a childhood where your needs weren’t met — and this is important —
You look for them to be met doubly in adulthood.
Because your belief in a good world was destroyed too early, before you as a baby or very young child could handle the idea that the world isn’t a happy, wonderful place.
And we’re still stuck there emotionally … needing, needing, needing, needing whatever it is that we need, because we never grew forward from that place in our lives where we as abused or neglected young children had to have kindness and unconditional love, and we couldn’t handle what was happening instead.
I guess that would describe me.
Look how huge my dreams have been: Impossible relationship, prominent career as a writer. This kind of thing shows up in all our horoscopes, too … the husband and the wife are doing the same thing, only in slightly different ways.
And we women both use him to do this, because that is what codependents do. They ask to be used.
They’re soooo sure they’re no good and they’re soooo sure no one will ever love them that they mold themselves into whatever anyone wants, in exchange for love.
Which isn’t really love, because it isn’t really for them. It’s for the person they are pretending to be.
They demand everyone else think for them, and then they’re depressed and upset because everyone else is thinking for them!
But this kind of thing is what we’re all really doing, when we attach and attach to a dream of how it could be with someone or something, and we can’t let go, and every time Reality intrudes with the fact: This isn’t going to happen to you, babe, we’re shattered all over again.
In my case, on and on for five years.
Here’s Why We Can’t Quit:
When we’re born, and right up to age twenty-one — twenty one! — our brains are still forming. From birth up to age six or so, a child’s brain waves resemble those of a person under hypnosis! (Yes, really.)
A child is just soaking up every tiny little piece of evidence about what the world is like, what family is like, what people are like, what love is like.
Our tender young brains were getting down the very basics of what it is to be human: Am I good enough? Will people love me and care for me? I can’t take care of myself. If they won’t care for me, what do I have to do?
A baby or very young child is just getting down the essentials: How to calm and soothe oneself when upset. How to reach out for help. How to consider others and self. How to work in partnership with parents and siblings. How to feel and honor their own feelings, but still be socially acceptable to everyone else.
During that time, the developing brain needs calming, soothing, comforting surroundings and an atmosphere of unconditional love and support.
A child is resilient and can live through potty training, being yelled at for biting his sister, and being put to bed when he doesn’t want to go, if it’s done mostly in calming, soothing, comforting surroundings and an atmosphere of unconditional love and support. And when it isn’t, the parents acknowledge they did wrong and make amends with the child.
But we who cannot let go didn’t get to have that.
So our brains are stuck in looking for that calming, soothing, comforting environment, that ideal environment we needed in childhood in order for the emotional brain to develop right.
Only double.
Because we didn’t get it. We didn’t have that wide-eyed time of enchantment and wonder we all love to watch in children, when someone hangs Christmas lights outside and brings the child outside at dusk, and —
“Wowwww!”
When I was that age, my BPD mother was screaming and hitting me all the time.
My mother used to be angry with me because I couldn’t summon up that big, wide-eyed “Wowwww!” anymore. One year she was angry at me because I opened my birthday presents and “She didn’t act excited at all!”
Well, guess what? We’d just had another big blowout, probably because I didn’t want to pick up my room when she wanted me to pick up my room, and it ended up with the flyswatter. Again.
This scene happened over and over and over when I was a kid. I remember thinking, What do you think I should be so happy about? You just screamed and belted me because I didn’t want to pick up my room.
By the time I was eight, I literally wished I’d never been born. I used to sit in class with yet another bully hitting me on the back of my head with a pencil and wish devoutly that I could just dematerialize and fade into the walls and disappear.
I remember waking up early one morning and standing at the front door, wishing like anything I could just open it and walk off down the street and never come back. The doorknob wasn’t even quite at eye level, so I couldn’t have been more than four.
The fact that I knew at that age I would never get far, and that I would just get caught and spanked isn’t the point. The fact that by kindergarten age, I would start falling in love with the teacher, the bus driver, any adult I saw frequently who was nice to me, isn’t the point. Although it is the very, very sad truth.
The point is that, when we can’t let go, it’s because our brains are stuck there.
Not only that, but as adults, we build up what would satisfy the need for that perfect, comforting world ever and ever higher.
Little kids don’t know anything about sex. They still think the opposite sex is “yucky.” They may play house, but they know they’re too little to own one.
They watch TV, but they don’t understand yet that it’s someone’s job to write the script, and that person probably has a lucrative career that would finally make Mom and Dad happy with them: “My daughter lives in L.A.! She’s a TV writer!”
Wow, once we’re old enough, how big those dreams can get. And the problem is, we’ve convinced ourselves that we need them.
I see now that I have got to quit doing this.
I have to quit doing this with writing, and I have to quit doing this with this married guy.
If I don’t, I’m going to fail at a major life task and end up a very, very, sad, sad, old lady.
As a student astrologer, I can see that this is spelled out very clearly in the transits at the end of my life, his life, and his wife’s life. We all had horrible childhoods.
I just figured out that this is the major task all our charts keep talking about.
When you realize that psychology and astrology are telling you the same thing, that’s when all kinds of little shivers start icing down your spine.
All three of us in this triangle have this in our emotional makeup to recover from. My married man attaches to women like this and makes sure everyone learns their lessons by disappointing them and himself.
(Mark? This one grew up already. You don’t have to do that anymore!) | https://medium.com/the-thinking-other-woman/when-everyone-says-you-need-to-let-him-go-you-nod-your-head-and-you-still-want-to-see-him-98ee9b52f64 | ['A. Nonymous'] | 2021-01-03 13:10:16.027000+00:00 | ['Infidelity', 'Heartbreak', 'Affairs', 'Personal Development', 'Mental Health'] |
Bringing Awareness to Unconscious Bias | As part of our ongoing Diversity & Inclusion initiatives, the DockYard team recently participated in a “Hallway Talk” on unconscious bias. It was a thoughtful discussion between all of our team members to explore what unconscious bias is and how many of us have experienced it in our own lives.
Conscious vs. Unconscious Bias
When thinking about unconscious bias, it is important to first understand and define what conscious bias means:
To be aware of, intentional, and responsive.
As you can see from the definition, conscious bias is done knowingly and intentionally. It may even be in response to a specific experience. In society, there are many laws to avoid conscious bias (discrimination) from occuring.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Kansas State University Office of Diversity and Outreach defines unconscious bias as:
Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one’s tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.
Pillars of Unconscious Bias
From this definition, there are four overarching themes that demonstrate how unconscious bias occurs in our everyday lives: implicit bias, social stereotypes, physical appearance, and unconscious beliefs.
1. Implicit associations can be defined as things that are indirect, inferred, and/or suggested. These associations are developed over the course of one’s lifetime. Everyone is exposed to indirect and direct encounters that influence us (i.e. family, friends, books, TV, movies). Implicit associations are pervasive and we all have some level of unconscious bias based on one’s life experiences.
2. Social stereotypes are a fixed set of attributes associated with a social group (i.e. gender, age, color of skin). A question we can all ask ourselves is “What generalizations have been created in society about certain groups?” As human beings, we strive for belonging and feel a need to be part of a group. In doing this, we are differentiating one group from another and creating these stereotypes.
3. Physical appearance is a term that can be described as “lookism” or “beauty bias.” This is essentially appearance bias against another person based on their physique, style, etc. Some questions we can ask ourselves related to the topic include: Do you feel differently about an individual because of their physical appearance? Do you draw conclusions about an individual based on their style, before you meet them? Do you make assumptions about an individual because they exude masculinity or femininity?
A social beauty company Univia completed a study among their employees to understand how beauty bias affected their organization. One of the most interesting results from Univa’s surveyed employee group is that 73% believed appearance directly affected an employee’s competency to do their job. The survey also revealed:
Appearance influences client perception and company image (90%)
Appearance affects employee confidence (85%)
Appearance affects employee competency (73%)
4. Beliefs are the set of principles or ideologies that help one interpret reality. This can include religion, political affiliation, spirituality, and philosophy. While unconscious beliefs guide the subconscious self governance each of us has in our mind, without our full awareness. One interesting thing to note about unconscious beliefs is they may not necessarily align with our belief systems and are often directly related to implicit associations we create based on the experiences we’ve accumulated over a lifetime.
Cognitive bias
Another dimension of bias is cognitive bias, which involves using our implicit associations to categorize the world around us. By nature, our brains are trying to save energy, so we often take in information and process it according to our individual knowledge base to contextualize and understand new information, people, and experiences.
This is useful because it allows us to make decisions faster and process information accurately. However, cognitive bias can be harmful when information is processed by using social stereotypes that may not reflect the reality of an experience.
Reprogramming bias
We all have implicit associations, cognitive biases, and both conscious and unconscious biases. Together, these mental and emotional tools can help us as we strive to make sense of the incredibly diverse and complex world we live in. While it is easier to shape our conscious biases, there are ways to be more intentional about the unconscious systems that guide us, including:
Avoid making decisions based on stereotypes and try to take in each individual interaction;
Look at data/criteria rather than the person;
Reprogram associations by exposing yourself to diverse people, media, places, and things; and
Allow/search for multiple viewpoints.
Our minds are malleable, meaning it is possible to change our ideals by taking the time to create new associations and essentially reprogramming the brain. Bringing awareness to how your mind works and analyzes information is just the beginning of this process.
To understand this topic and draw on your own experiences, I encourage you to consider embarking on your own personal journey to seek out ways to proactively help our world be a better place!
Here are a few resources to help you as you get started: | https://medium.com/@quincy.louis.deshaun/bringing-awareness-to-unconscious-bias-aa2f6f6c8b33 | ['Quincy Louis-Deshaun'] | 2020-12-18 15:34:58.298000+00:00 | ['Diversity', 'Diversity In Tech', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'Unconscious Bias', 'Inclusion'] |
6 Things You Don’t Want To Miss While Developing An Effective QA Process | Are you pondering over why your application is losing customers?
Or why your application isn’t performing the way it was intended to?
If you blaming it on the QA team or the application, then probably you are barking at the wrong tree. Because we believe the answer you are looking for is- Quality Assurance process. For your team to work efficiently, the team needs to follow an effective QA process that accommodates the essential factors.
Let us explain to you what is a QA and Software Testing process.
A QA process is a systematic plan to test an application and determine the functionality it is built for. The Software Testing strategy runs throughout the testing procedure.
Now that you know what QA process is, we take the liberty to mention that only an effective QA process can lead to a bug-free product and the points to consider while developing an effective process are discussed in this blog.
1. Type of Application
To build an effective Software Testing process, consider the fact that methodologies differ from one application to another. A methodology used to test a static website is way different from the methodology used to test a mobile application or a dynamic website.
The checklist to develop a QA process varies for an enterprise application considers several specific points than the checklist to develop a QA process for a banking app.
Be well-versed with the type of application to build your ideal QA strategy.
2. Risk Evaluation of the application
A financial sector app is riskier than a static website. High-risk applications like medical or financial applications must be tested thoroughly since their accuracy may affect human life, capital or the business directly or indirectly.
Static websites primarily concentrate on their UI and functionality which makes them low-risk applications.
Assess the risk before sketching a robust Software Testing process.
3. Captive Audience
It is always beneficial to know who your end users are before developing a QA process. We know the situation when a build runs in only the particular machine and not in another.
To avoid such circumstances, it is crucial to test the application in the environment that your audience use. Knowing the target audience narrow downs the functionality or the browser or the device to test that is mentioned in the QA process.
The target audience diminishes the possibility of any unnecessary testing in the process and instead focuses on the tests to make a user-friendly app using the Usability and Accessibility testing. These methods test the usable, desirable, accessible, and findable factors of the selected audience.
The Testing stack can be added with the tools if we know the target audience of the application and the device, browser they prefer.
4. Volume of Users
The number of people using the app at the same time may create stress and load on the application. Therefore to know the load and stress an application can withhold, it is advisable to incorporate Performance Testing in your QA process to avoid a crash during its peak hours.
The Performance Testing defines the speed, responsiveness, and stability of the application during congestion or workloads and to be drafted in an effective QA process is to be ready for every situation.
A populous application must test for its performance, mentioned in a robust QA process.
5. Platforms Accessed
If the application is built to access on various platforms and browsers, Cross-browser or Cross-platform Testing is performed.
The application must work smoothly on any platform they are accessed. The Cross-platform Testing checks the working of the app on Android, iOS, and Windows while Cross-browser Testing tests its working on Safari, Chrome, and Mozilla.
Cross-platform Testing is especially vital for web and hybrid apps.
6. Tools in Use
The collective use of test strategies and the right tools to search the bugs, assist in making an application or product bug-free. The tools in the testing process are mentioned in the Software Testing strategy for test coverage.
The tools used to test a mobile application maybe Appium, but to test a web application, we use Selenium. Testinggenez recommends Burp Suite for Security testing and JMeter for Performance testing. For Cross-platform testing, we use Saucelab and Browserstack for Cross-browser Testing.
The tools are chosen and mentioned in the QA strategy according to their requirement for a hassle-free testing process.
Bottom Line
Mind that each QA process is drafted based on the above-generalized factors. But, more so by experience and requirement of the application.
Each QA process varies depending on the type of application, for example- the QA process for a Static Website and Enterprise Website may look like this.
If you still skeptic about how QA strategy enhances your productivity, there is an even more straightforward way. Testinggenez structures robust QA and Software Testing process based on the assessment of your website, mobile app or enterprise app according to your target audience, and of course considering the checklist above. | https://medium.com/@testinggenez/6-things-you-dont-want-to-miss-while-developing-an-effective-qa-process-2bf46048afc2 | ['Testing Genez'] | 2019-05-06 13:02:26.707000+00:00 | ['Qa Process', 'Software Testing', 'Qa Testing', 'Quality Assurance'] |
Two sentence horror story — Sleep | I lay at rest in my bed to hours later notice something lifeless next to me, I sit up to realize I’m floating and my somber face looking up at me appearing still deep in sleep. | https://medium.com/@caomha/two-sentence-horror-story-sleep-decabdab407b | ['Erin Lord'] | 2020-12-24 22:46:28.605000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Short Story', 'Two Sentence Horror', 'Dark', 'Horror'] |
Introduction — moving universes. my name is Cole, Cole Hectate and I was… | my name is Cole, Cole Hectate and I was born in a very different planetary system, one very different to what you call yours, I’m apart of the Hectarian species, or to my knowledge the very last of my own kind. Through all my troubles as a kid living in a planet full of crap, thugs that are all chocking with hogwash, my parents kept me safe throughout the galactic war.
Although my planet was at the brink of mass collapse my family sacrificed their lives to make sure I live in a planet full of mystery and wonder, the only memory I have of them is my gift that was carved from the blitzing chaos of Saturn, extracted from the biggest star with never ending energy and a drop of fragments in mercury, This gift is known as “runic blades”, one of the most valuable and by far the most dangerous weapons in the galaxy.
But there’s a catch, since it’s arguably the most wanted possession in the universe, every living thing from different dimensions, galaxies and universes are after these blades regardless that it could tear a hole in alternate realities. These things could come in many different shapes and sizes, but a particular short phrase said here in earth “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”.
My only priority is to protect my planet earth from these monsters that have every intention to invade and conquer this universe. In order to keep myself safe, the runic blades had to be locked up in the most deepest of all oceans where only a Hectarian could open the seal. So far, reports of dead bodies have been found in the south of Russia, where they haven't been mutilated, yet their souls have been sucked out of them and all you are left with is an ultra realistic ragdoll or a stuffed puppet. time to investigate…. | https://medium.com/@ibrahimarteee/introduction-moving-universes-b735ffddbbec | [] | 2020-12-21 18:32:18.303000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Heroes', 'Action', 'Planets', 'Si Fi'] |
Clown World Case 9252: CHAZ vs. Legitimate Business | Here is a nice piece of shit
How they’ve been treated
Legitimate Business:
· Annual License to Sell Food in Public: $1000
· Mandatory Commissary Kitchen: $600/900 per month
· Mandatory (yet unnecessary) fire suppression system: $3000 plus annual inspections and scheduled suppression system maintenance
· Random Health Department Inspections
· Applications with extensive questionnaires including kitchen equipment maps with scale measurements
· Regulations subject to the whims of city bureaucracy
· Zero assistance from traffic police/parking enforcement
· Tiny designated business zones
· Zero government accountability for failed promises/mistakes
· Enforcement based on ethnicity/nationality (unlicensed food units ignored)
· State Tax harassment
· Pay fees plus 8% sales tax, subject to infinite inspection
CHAZ:
· Allowed to form a sovereign nation undemocratically
· Extortion allowed
· Concealed firearms allowed
· Food/beverage served without permit, health department inspection
· Open racial discrimination
· Gardening on public land
· Destruction of private and public property
· Breaking and Entering
· Squatting
· Physical assault
· Theft
· Vandalism
· Hate Crimes (a white Christian beaten and choked)
· Illegal “border” enforcement
· Illegal unlicensed business, education, and health services
· Pay zero fees, subject to zero inspections
The example city #1 is Minneapolis, a city with a majority ideology similar to Seattle. Their government is easily swayed by large businesses to make it hard-to-impossible for small businesses to flourish. They hit you up for every cent they can get, then restrict you to tiny sections of the city at which a business can’t operate until “Express Busses” are done for the morning. They don’t enforce this control in Hispanic/black neighborhoods; most aren’t licensed (and nobody gets sick from their food despite being free of government paper-pushers).
It’s common for cities run by Democrats to be unfriendly to small business, and not because of their increasing shift towards Marxism: they want to rule over everything in people’s lives, and trying to do business there is proof. Why? Wealthy, established business owners (restaurateurs in my case) wield power over the government bureaucrats and help them establish regulations that will prevent competition. All of them are Democrats.
Seattle was very friendly to Tech Giants and the city grew immensely in the last two decades. It was only in the latter part of the last decade that radical leftists infiltrated city government and began to call for “equity” and create a “white supremacist hysteria.” Small businesses were regulated strictly and taxed highly and the city stood in stark contrast to it’s southern neighbor in Portland that was extremely pro-entrepreneur and anti-bureaucrat. Seattle’s income inequality grew and so did their homeless population.
Seattle’s Mayor, Jenny Durkan, was an establishment Democrat with no ideas. That is, until the Covid-19 hysteria. Durkan did as many Democrat mayors did, enacting strict laws infringing the first amendment and going further by sweeping her city’s many homeless camps not only to protect the public from the virus, but that these autonomous camps were home to “shootings, human trafficking and other crimes.” Public safety was her number one concern! Nanny states aren’t so bad!
1,400 miles away, a white police officer used an approved restraint on a man with Covid-19, Fentanyl, Methamphetamine coursing through his heart-disease ridden body, placed in that restraint after resisting arrest. The white officer was joined by one white, one half-african-American, and one Hmong officer. The officer was married to a Hmong woman, and worked with the victim at a Latino nightclub. It was not known if the Minneapolis police were aware that the victim served time for robbery and holding a loaded weapon to a pregnant black woman’s belly. Given the variance in autopsy results, we can now consider autopsies subjective, especially due to mob outrage. As in 2016, coincidentally an election year, social unrest erupted. Yes, it was obvious the victim needed immediate medical intervention. Yes, a white man died in Texas the same way (a man who called the police for help and was injected with sedatives by EMTs while officers laughed all the way through and after finding out he was dead; no protests or riots}).
Neither deserved to die in restraint. Nobody deserves inhuman treatment by police, no matter their criminal past. Also, nobody should resist arrest. I’ve been falsely detained, I’ve been legitimately detained, and neither time did I think “hey, I want to fight an underpaid, demoralized guy who has a baton, taser, and Glock.” Go to county jail (far different from a penitentiary) for a few hours or days, go see a judge, and settle with the DA who is seemingly always begging to settle. If you’re innocent (rare), shut your mouth and get a lawyer. It you’re guilty, shut your mouth and get a lawyer.
During the riots in which African Americans that weren’t on the Seahawks or Mariners (seventeen individuals) outraged that Hitler chopped off another black man’s head in “Fargo or some shit,” Seattle Mayor Durkan not only allowed a raid (tactically identical as Minneapolis) on a police precinct to occur, but the entire neighborhood, including its residents and businesses to be annexed by anarcho-communists. Within a few days, their invites to homeless people depleted their food supply, business owners had been extorted for “protection,” 12-week-too-late gardens were planed over sod and reserved for “black and indigenous peoples,” and, in the spirit of anarchism, began to elect a government that had a representative for every niche identity barring white men or women. The have strict borders, armed enforcement, racial/gender discrimination, and an unchecked, unelected government with infinite room for expansion.
Durkan, who would likely have a man selling peanuts on a corner kneecapped and put into indentured servitude to pay the fines, who would sandblast the homeless given the first excuse instead of trying to solve the growing problem…is totally fine for a segment of the city being an unlicensed, un-policed, un-taxed, un-regulated because “it’s like a big block party!” Yeah, except you’d harass and tax any block party so hard they’d never try again.
The worst thing this “CHAZ” experiment has done is let these clueless, jobless, privileged leftist ideologues think they’ve “won” something when in reality, their zone only exists because Durkan and her PR team can’t figure out how to steamroll over it without public outcry. Just like Minneapolis, in which one fifth of the current real-estate listings were listed within a week of the city council, which might have thirty thousand votes putting them in that position altogether, vowed to “Abolish Police,” expect an exodus from Seattle, even with considerable home equity losses, as well as businesses that have no expectation of being protected by their tax-funded police department.
Since Minneapolis police will be disbanded, I’ll restart my business. I’ll have my state conceal and carry permit, so when they send a “mental healthcare worker” or “community representative,” I’ll just tell them to eat the peanuts out of my shit and fuck off. I’ll never be inspected, I’ll never be forced to pay fines, and the state and fed will have no way of establishing any owed taxes. I’ll sell alcohol and cigarettes to anyone tall enough to order. I’ll provide pimps and whores a place to operate. Are these things illegal? Yes. Is some obese transsexual white woman claiming to be “indigenous and two-spirit” there to “de-escalate a possible mental health crisis” going to stop me?
If police had no unions, if politicians, especially on the city level, weren’t prostitutes, and the government were reduced 85%, we wouldn’t be here. I think police do need to be “re-thought,” mostly because they primarily collect municipal fines to fund a bloated bureaucratic government. Abolish the dead weight of the government and abolish unions for government employees: we’d have good cops, good teachers, and more money to fix our infrastructure. If you want “Autonomous Zones,” you’re about to have a crash course on naturally emerging hierarchies…for a few weeks until you’re back at your parents’ house.
Flag away, losers.
Poste Scripte: The “Black/Indigenous” garden will yield maybe 1000 calories in late September. I have 13 raised beds to supplement four people. You’re LARPING. | https://medium.com/@bob.svagene/clown-world-case-9252-chaz-vs-legitimate-business-85c202052216 | ['Adam Smith'] | 2020-06-15 10:45:49.380000+00:00 | ['Communism', 'Minneapolis', 'George Floyd', 'Chaz', 'Seattle'] |
OpenCV kütüphanesi ile Görüntü İşleme(Android)-2 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/ltunes/opencv-k%C3%BCt%C3%BCphanesi-ile-g%C3%B6r%C3%BCnt%C3%BC-i%CC%87%C5%9Fleme-android-2-9a2992b3befe | ['Pelin Tunçel'] | 2020-12-07 15:54:29.548000+00:00 | ['Android App Development', 'Opencv'] |
Keeping your integration in sync: Implementing Xero webhooks using Node, Express, and ngrok | Hello Xero developers and accounting API enthusiasts!
A recent Xero Community post inquired about our Invoice webhooks and how to use them. In this post, I’ll discuss implementing a webhook using Node, Express, ngrok, and our super helpful xero-node-oauth2-app sample app repo.
Understanding Webhooks
Need your app to keep in sync with invoices in Xero? If so, it’s likely you’ve made an initial GET request upon connecting your app, to pull all existing invoices, but then what? How do you keep your app up-to-date with Xero, without scheduling regular API calls to see if there are any new invoices? Or without making an API call per invoice in your database, just to see if something has changed? This scenario could quickly eat up your available API calls and trigger the rate limit.
Wouldn’t it be great if Xero could let you know when something was created or changed and specifically which record to request? That’s where Xero webhooks come in.
A webhook is a subscription to certain specified events within Xero — currently limited to the creation or updating of either Contacts or Invoices. In response to an event in Xero, our API will send a POST request to the URL associated with the webhook — configured in the Apps dashboard of the Xero developer portal.
We can see from the example payload below that each payload contains:
an events array
a last event sequence
a first event sequence
and an entropy
Each event includes:
a resource URL
a resource ID
an event date in UTC
an event type
an event category
a tenant ID
and a tenant type
The Events array: The details of the events that you’ve subscribed to
Last Event Sequence: The sequence number of the last event in this payload
First Event Sequence: The sequence number of the first event in this payload
Entropy: A random string to make the payload more cryptographically secure
Resource URL: The URL to retrieve the resource that has changed
Resource ID: The ID of the resource that has changed
Event Date UTC: The date and time that event occurred (UTC time)
Event Type: The type of event of that occurred
Event Category: The category of event that occurred
Tenant ID: The ID of the tenant that the event happened in relation to
Tenant Type: The type of tenant
A webhook event, as you can see from the sample payload above, does not provide the record details but rather notifies your app that an event has occurred and provides the necessary information to find out more by requesting that record from Xero.
To oversimplify it:
your app receives a webhook event
your app makes a GET request for the resource by resource ID
request for the resource by resource ID if the event was a “Create” you would add the new record to your database
if the event was an “Update” you would compare the resource returned by Xero against the record already in your database and update the relevant fields
trigger any follow up actions your app might perform
Production apps can and will receive webhook payloads containing multiple events so your code should be written to iterate through the array for such cases. Webhooks are batched at the app level, meaning a single payload could contain events for multiple tenants, multiple event categories, and multiple event types.
Steps to implement webhooks
Now we’ve got through the explanation, let’s get into how to implement a webhook in your application. If you haven’t already created an app in the Xero developer portal, go ahead and do so now following the steps in our Getting Started guide. If you’re planning to follow along using the xero-node-oauth2-app sample app, now would also be a good time to clone the repo to your machine and follow the readme to update the .env file with your app credentials.
Ok, now that we’ve got an app created in the Xero developer portal and we’ve added our client ID and client secret to the .env file of xero-node-oauth2-app, we’re going to navigate to the webhooks tab for our specific app.
Next, check “Invoices” to indicate we want to subscribe to Invoice events in Xero and specify the URL we want Xero to send webhook notifications to… but wait, what’s this? The URL must be https? But how are we supposed to test locally?
Introducing ngrok! With ngrok, developers can expose their localhost environment and set up a forwarding public URL that meets https requirements via the command line in their terminal. In addition to setting up forwarding public URL ngrok provides a web interface for developers to inspect http traffic in real time and replay any request by clicking on it — nifty.
We’ll now install ngrok by inputting npm install ngrok -g in the terminal. Next it’s time to start a session and specify the port our app server is running on by inputting ngrok http 5000 in the terminal. We’re specifying port 5000 because that’s what our sample app runs on by default. If it worked, you should see something like this in your terminal.
Copy the https ngrok.io address and paste it into the notifications URL field and specify the endpoint. Now we can test webhooks locally. Xero will send notifications to this public URL and ngrok will tunnel those requests and responses to and from our localhost server.
IMPORTANT — notice that the session will expire after 8 hours, this means you’ll need to run the command again to generate a new session and a new ngrok URL which you’ll need to update your webhook URL in Xero. You can get a stable ngrok URL if you choose to pay for an account with ngrok.io if you would prefer to not have to modulate this URL every time you’re testing your webhook.
Click “Save” and Xero will generate your webhook key. Copy and paste your webhook key into your .env file.
Now it is time to implement our webhook endpoint in our project!
Per the Xero webhook documentation, our endpoint must meet the following criteria:
It uses HTTPS on the standard 443 port It responds within 5 seconds with a 200 OK status code There is no body in the response There are no cookies in the response headers If the signature is invalid a 401 Unauthorised status code is returned
“Hold up, signature, what signature?”, you might be asking your screen right now… For added security, Xero signs its webhook requests with an x-xero-signature hash value in the request headers. In order to determine whether the signature is valid or not, the payload is hashed using HMACSHA256 with your webhook signing key and base64 encoded and then compared against the x-xero-signature header value. If the signature computed from the payload matches the signature from the headers, you have yourself a correctly signed payload and can respond with a status of 200. Otherwise, you have an incorrectly signed payload and need to respond with a status of 401.
With consideration to the requirements outlined above, let’s implement our webhooks endpoint and signature verification method.
IMPORTANT — you need to configure your body-parser middleware to accept the raw request body from the webhook event without modification. If this body is modified at all, your code will fail to verify the signature and will fail Xero’s “Intent to receive” validation.
Send it
That’s it! You’re all set to receive webhook events in just a few lines of code! Now we can test out our code by requesting Xero send “Intent to receive” validation requests. Before we request ITR from Xero, we’ll need to have at least one organisation connected to our application. If you’re following along with our sample app, the necessary code and ui are already set up — just click the button that says “Connect to Xero”.
If you’re building your own project and haven’t gotten that far yet, check out our guides on connecting via Postman or Insomnia. Once you’ve confirmed you’ve connected at least one organisation to your application, click the button that says “Send ‘Intent to receive’” on the webhooks tab of your app’s details view in the Xero developer portal and watch the ITR requests coming in from Xero. You should see something similar out in your terminal showing the console logged events and signature verification, the POST requests and our 401 or 200 responses to Xero, and finally you’ll see the Status update from “‘Intent to receive’ required” to “OK” with a timestamp in the developer portal.
Looking good
Solid
Noice
Now that Xero has validated our signature verification, we can start receiving events for when an invoice is created or updated. Let’s test it using the Xero interface to create and then update an invoice, watching the webhook events roll in, in real time. First we’ll create an invoice. Then we’ll edit the invoice we just created. You’ll receive two webhook events from Xero.
Awesome, we’ve done it! We’ve successfully implemented webhook functionality into our integration.
To bring this full circle back to the scenario I described at the start of this post, our potential next steps would be to write code so our app makes a GET request for the resource by resource ID. If the event was a “Create” you would add the new record to your db, or if the event was an “Update” you would compare the resource returned by Xero against the record already in your db and update the relevant fields, then trigger any follow up actions your app might perform, based on the changed status.
If you prefer your tech content in video form, you’re in luck!
If you’re building an integration to Xero and leveraging webhooks to deliver a #beautiful experience for your users, tell us about it in the comments below and partner with us to get your integration certified and listed in our app marketplace. | https://devblog.xero.com/keeping-your-integration-in-sync-implementing-xero-webhooks-using-node-express-and-ngrok-6d2976baac6d | ['Rett Behrens'] | 2020-11-24 01:48:28.906000+00:00 | ['Node', 'API', 'Webhooks', 'Xero', 'Developers'] |
Busy isn’t the goal | When asked “what’s going on?”, I think we’ve all said it: “Super busy.”
That response is usually seen as being a good thing, so we keep going back to it. Is that really the goal, though?
In Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism, he has a variety of things to say about busyness. His main point:
What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?
And it’s not that being busy is necessarily a bad thing. He extends the thought by saying:
Being proud of being “busy” is stupid. Granted having a busy agency is much better than a slow one, but working all hours.
That’s where it gets tricky. If we’re just bored all of the time, that’s no good, but some time to let the mind wander can be beneficial. Did you ever come up with a great thought in the shower? A lack of other “stuff” can bring out great things. Another great line from Greg relates to employees, saying that “ if his people are too busy to think, then they’re too busy, period “.
I’ve been working to intentionally develop thinking time into my day. Some days I can, some days I can’t, but it’s a goal each day. I roughly follow the idea of the EOS Clarity Break, but anything will work. Just disappear for a little while, remove notifications and distractions, and see what comes up.
Be Like Leo
Leonardo da Vinci followed this idea as well, saying:
Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation. To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment. Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen.
He wasn’t a slacker. In fact, while da Vinci is known for his vast collection of artwork, he also made an incredible number of scientific discoveries. He attributed his ability to do that to keeping a clear mind.
86,400
We all have the same time allotted to us: 86,400 seconds a day, 168 hours a week, and 365 days a year. Because of that, Rory Vaden says we really shouldn’t complain about our busyness:
It’s not even right to complain or whine to others about how busy you are. You and I have the same amount of time in a day as Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa, Michael Jordan or anyone else who has achieved greatness.
Stay active and moving, for sure, but just make sure that being busy isn’t your goal. | https://medium.com/@mickmel/busy-isnt-the-goal-3efb243f7b40 | ['Mickey Mellen'] | 2020-11-17 12:24:24.847000+00:00 | ['Eos', 'Leonardo Da Vinci', 'Greg Mckeown', 'Clarity Break', 'Essentialism'] |
I rode my first Segway | I rode my first Segway today. And rode is the right word. You don’t really drive it at all — just let it go and ride — or as they say in training think about going forward and you go forward.
I have heard they are banned in San Francisco. Can anyone verify that? Minneapolis has said that they are fine for use on its city’s sidewalks and skyways — until there are more and accidents begin to occur.
— — — — — -
This is just about the coolest bit o’ dancin’ I have ever seen. [Kottke/Vitaflo] | https://medium.com/alttext/i-rode-my-first-segway-9ded135334c | ['Ben Edwards'] | 2017-04-21 05:54:38.267000+00:00 | ['Pop Culture', 'Gadgets'] |
5 Ways to Make Your Kids Love Algebra Homework | Algebra is that branch of mathematics that comprises a lot of theories, analysis, and geometry. Students find it quite difficult to fall in love with this subject, and thus they look for algebra homework help. Most of the students are not able to grasp the concepts and start disliking it. But algebra is an important part of the curriculum, and in order to score good grades, every student needs to do well in algebra also.
In order to complete your algebra homework precisely and on time, you need to like the subject. This article includes a few ways through which parents can make their kids love algebra and perform well in their homework as well as in exams.
1. Tell them that algebra is a scoring subject — Unlike Hindi, history, or any other theoretical subject, your answer in algebra is either right or wrong. You either score full or no marks in a particular question. Thus, you can tell your child that if he clears his concepts well and learns the theorems and formulas, he can easily score good marks. Algebra is a scoring subject and can compensate for low grades in other subjects if understood well.
2. Evoke interest in the subject — Students often consider algebra as a boring subject as it deals with numbers only. They prefer other subjects like English or History, where they get to learn new things every day. It is the parent’s responsibility to evoke interest in algebra by telling them about the importance of numbers and theorems. Tell them how important is the subject for their higher studies and how they can use it in other subjects.
3. Teach them easy ways to memorize formulas — It is quite difficult as well as time-consuming to learn the theorems and formulae of algebra, especially when you don’t love the subject. Parents must help them in problem-solving and insist them to practice more so that they can easily memorize the formulas and equations and retain this learning for a longer period of time. Make them understand the working of the formulas and apply the knowledge gained in working examples. This way, they will learn things effortlessly without the need to cram.
4. Discover interesting ways of teaching — Sometimes, students fall in love even with a boring subject if the teaching style is interesting and exciting. You can either talk to the teacher or try explaining things in an interesting manner to the child at home. You can take examples or stress more on difficult topics to make the concepts clear and things more interesting.
5. Motivate the child — Last but not least, you should keep motivating your child. Children often develop a fear about a subject and then start ignoring it. You must motivate your child and tell him that he can do it. Provide him complete support and ensure that he can score good grades if he has confidence in himself and makes some effort towards it.
Algebra is a dynamic and interesting subject if studied well with interest. Hope the above points are helpful and make the child fall in love with algebra. | https://medium.com/@johnnoels/5-ways-to-make-your-kids-love-algebra-homework-e0befd10f6aa | ['John Noels'] | 2020-12-16 06:14:05.210000+00:00 | ['Math', 'Algebra', 'Mathematics', 'Writing', 'Students'] |
Image Editing to Improve Technical Illustration | Highlight Keypoint
Sometimes we want to highlight keypoint in our image. The result is below, where the number 129,758 is highlighted for easier identification.
In GIMP, we first need to select the area we like to highlight using the select tool.
Then using the color brush and select Luman/Luminance Darken only brush.
After that, you can then highlight your text as below.
Pixelize Text
Sometimes we want to hide away some irrelevant information or confidential information. We can use the Pixelate feature as shown below.
Similarly, to do so, first, we select the part we want to Pixelate using the Select Tool. Then in Filters →Blur → Pixelize
That’s it. Simple as that.
Change Background
Sometimes we want to improve the background to emphasize the portion of the image we want the reader to notice. We can add a vibrant background to the image. | https://medium.com/illumination/three-image-manipulation-to-improve-technical-illustration-6bea16c21709 | [] | 2020-11-30 15:26:33.355000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Image Processing', 'Image', 'Blog', 'Technical Writing'] |
A Numinous Sign | When the incredible happened to a non-believer
I have unfailingly believed in the power of karma, as opposed to following the trappings of customs and traditions of any religion. Misinterpretation of God and religion has discriminated against and dictated over humankind deleteriously. Akin to all mankind, my teeming questions about the purpose of our existence remain unanswered.
But on a few occasions, our rigid theories are put to test. What I experienced that particular day was numinous and not a mere coincidence. This implausible incident had completely vanished from my memory for years only to pop up now and then. It’s a jarring reminder of something that I have been unable to grasp fully.
My father, a defense personnel, was posted in Rajasthan, an arid state in India. The evenings in the cantonment were enlivened by noisy children scampering about. It was my daily routine to meet my friend, at her house, barely a kilometer away from mine. I followed a solitary route, lined by tall trees on one side, and open, vacant ground on the other. Diligently by 7 in the evening, I would be home.
That particular day, I was a little tardy to reach home. To my consternation, as soon I turned a corner, I found myself standing alone in a pitch-dark street. A power outage had turned the busy street, deserted and unlit. To add to my woes, a troop of monkeys obstructed my way home. Terror struck, and I dared not move an inch. The monkeys screeched, and the eight-year-old me stood petrified, hoping for someone to come to my aid. Minutes that passed by were agonizing. I began chanting few lines of Hanuman Chalisa, which I had picked up inadvertently, listening to my mother who prayed every day. For many, this is our last resort, turning to God in times of utter despair, even when we have little or no belief in him.
To the uninitiated, Hanuman Chalisa is a collection of devotional verses, and hymns sung in praise of Lord Hanuman, who in Hinduism, is a symbol of courage, loyalty, and devotion.
The monkey chatter grew intense, so did my fear of being attacked. With tears cascading down my cheeks, I kept up with my recitation hoping for a miracle. As I vacillated going ahead or back to my friend’s house, something glistened on the road. Instinctively, as I picked it up, I saw a batman approaching from the opposite end of the T intersection and waved frantically at him. The dog, the batman was walking had chased the monkeys away with its fierce barking.
After being dropped home safely, and still quivering with fear, I animatedly relayed my harrowing experience to my parents. In all of the turmoil, I had forgotten to look at what I had picked up from the road. I nearly plotzed. It was a locket with a picture of Lord Hanuman!
After years, when I decided to pen my experience, I knew it would sound mawkish. But it’s the absolute truth, that has baffled me every time I think about it. Thirty years on, I have no recollection of where I kept the locket. My faith In God might have wavered over the years, but my faith to find that locket remains immutable.
Ironically, Lord Hanuman is also known as the Monkey God! | https://medium.com/@priyankasharma.k/a-numinous-sign-8e6bea22c9ca | ['Priyanka Kinger'] | 2021-09-03 03:41:49.511000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Faith', 'Faith and Life', 'God', 'Hinduism'] |
Night of the Blood Moon | Vacations are for catching up on romance? Or catching up on rest? | https://backgroundnoisecomic.medium.com/night-of-the-blood-moon-bd73aead09f9 | ['Background Noise Comics'] | 2019-01-28 02:32:18.437000+00:00 | ['Comics', 'Humor', 'Moon', 'Vacation', 'Romance'] |
I Know How You Feel | — Olga, what Neurodata Lab is working on now?
— We are engaged in research and creation of Emotion AI-based solutions. Thus, we have two main directions of work: R&D and business.
We’re currently working on several projects for banking, robotics, retail, and digital HR. They are all directly linked to automatic emotion recognition but in application to the specifics of the sphere. For banking, it is customer satisfaction assessment during client-employee interaction, both live and over the phone. For robotics, it means the introduction of emotion recognition soft into a robot, as well as the ability to change its communication strategy depending on the emotional state of the person it is talking to. For retail, it is about measuring the product satisfaction score, while for HR it is a detailed emotional and behavioral analysis of candidates who record video interviews.
We can receive information about how people assess the quality of service, whether they interact with a person or a robot, by analyzing face, voice, body movements and physiological signals. It opens up a big door for the introduction of technology to a variety of industries.
At the same time, our main agenda is to learn how to work with complex emotions, to understand how they manifest themselves and how to track them, taking the context into account and analyzing inner and outer relations.
— Are all emotions “clear” for the machines?
— Most systems recognize a so-called “basic” set of emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, excitement and a neutral state. These emotions are usually intensely manifested through a happy smile or an enraged voice, what makes them easier to be recognized automatically.
Complex emotions aren’t that easy. The simplest way to teach the machine to recognize them is to present complex emotions as a sum of simpler ones. A vivid example of the complex emotion is the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa. We processed the picture via our algorithm and got interesting results: Gioconda’s face was 36.6% happy and 4.4% sad, but mostly neutral.
There are also hidden emotions that people experience but try not to show. A person can learn to control their mimics and voice to some extent but non-verbal manifestations are harder to follow. Not to mention physiology such as the pulse or rapid breathing. It is difficult to completely hide your feelings. The systems learn to recognize the subtlest manifestations.
Finally, there are so-called fake emotions when one expression is swapped with another. For example, a fake surprise. In these situations, people may reveal themselves by an atypical expression of emotions, but on this stage of technological development, it’s hard to detect.
— It’s not done just in Russia, but in other countries. Is there anyone interesting to keep in mind?
— These technologies have existed for about a decade in the U.S. If we talk about something peculiar, there is a very interesting case in the gaming industry — when emotion recognition was incorporated into the horror game Nevermind. The plot is adjusted to the player’s state of mind. His level of stress and fear are automatically detected in the video and via the heart rate monitor. Another game “Bring to Light” is also based on similar technologies, the degree of intensity of events changes for each user.
It is not a secret that posts on social networks can also be analyzed. In October 2018, U.S. researchers analyzed the posts of 700 Facebook users and found out that the algorithm can accurately predict depression three months prior to the official diagnosis.
On the other hand, there is an imitation of emotions. The company called Soul Machines creates avatars that can express a wide range of emotional states in a very naturalistic way, including in response to the emotions of the interlocutor.
— Let’s talk about how your tech can be applied in everyday life.
— It has a great potential for application, both in business, medicine, and everyday life. Such applications help to detect stress, warn about excessive nervous tension at work, and tell you when you need to rest. There are already bracelets that send an alert if the owner of such a bracelet has an epilepsy seizure to the curators and the family. Or the apps that help people with autism spectrum disorders to understand their interlocutor’s emotions better.
In summary, we can say that emotional technologies will be in demand in the entertainment, for example, in the gaming and AR/VR industries, and in more serious areas, such as security systems and digital medicine.
If you look at what the modern world of gadgets looks like, you will see a burst in popularity of devices that collect information about the human activity. Besides, the most obvious trend is more human-like human-computer interaction. Siri or Alisa are distant prototypes of how people of the future will talk to devices. Smart assistants will better understand the users who in turn will be able to solve a larger set of problems with their help. There will be robots that will be able to take care of elderly people and children. Part of business processes will become automated, including those where advanced communication skills are needed: for example, customer service centers.
— In which industries the technology is the most in demand?
— As we’ve already mentioned, the main customers of Neurodata Lab solutions are banks, robotics companies, and platforms for video interviews. Our technologies are indispensable at call centers. They help to understand how satisfied or dissatisfied a person is with the service and, if necessary, can switch them to a live employee. In stores, banks, insurance companies where high quality of service is also important, emotional analytics will allow managers to collect impersonal customer statistics in real time and then train the employees on its basis.
The request comes primarily from the businesses that are actively introducing service robotics. It is important for companies to understand how the robot should perform, what should be its functions and role, how they correlate to the needs of the customers, and how it can be improved. A robot consultant in a bank will be most often asked about particular services, and tracking the reaction to the provided information will help to understand whether the info has been useful or not. Another important area for modern robotics are personal robots and assistant robots. They must have a high level of emotional intelligence. Robots serving people with disabilities and the elderly can become not only mechanical assistants but also social workers. And, of course, emotion recognition and expression in such robots should be at a very high level.
— What difficulties do you face in your work? If we talk, for example, about human resources, about material and technical resources?
— We need a strong technical team, and we are talking not just about the coders but about the people who have the knowledge and skills to create high-precision automated systems, which have no analogs in open access. Searching for employees of such a spectrum is a difficult task which is known to every HR-specialist. The market is saturated with offers, and there are few specialists in this field… and it is a good opportunity for those who only choose a profession or a niche for development! | https://medium.com/@neurodatalab/i-know-how-you-feel-82a954fd968a | ['Neurodata Lab'] | 2020-07-17 16:35:34.035000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Robot', 'Interview', 'Emotions'] |
How to work with object detection datasets in COCO format | How to work with object detection datasets in COCO format
Image 001298.jpg from the COCO dataset visualized in FiftyOne (Image by author)
Microsoft's Common Objects in Context dataset (COCO) is the most popular object detection dataset at the moment. It is widely used to benchmark the performance of computer vision methods.
Due to the popularity of the dataset, the format that COCO uses to store annotations is often the go-to format when creating a new custom object detection dataset. While the COCO dataset also supports annotations for other tasks like segmentation, I will leave that to a future blog post. For now, we will focus only on object detection data.
The “COCO format” is a specific JSON structure dictating how labels and metadata are saved for an image dataset.
Many blog posts exist that describe the basic format of COCO, but they often lack detailed examples of loading and working with your COCO formatted data. This post will walk you through:
In order to do all of this, I’ll be using the open-source machine learning developer tool, FiftyOne, that I have been working on. It’s designed to let researchers and engineers easily work with and visualize image and video datasets with annotations and model predictions stored in various formats.
You can easily install FiftyOne through pip:
pip install fiftyone
COCO 2017 validation split visualized in FiftyOne (Image by author)
Update: A new way to work with COCO
As of 06/29/2021: With support from the COCO team, COCO has been integrated into FiftyOne to make it easy to download and evaluate on the dataset. You can now specify and download the exact subset of the dataset that you want, load your own COCO-formatted data into FiftyOne, and evaluate your models with COCO-style evaluation enhanced by the visualization capabilities of FiftyOne.
See this post or this documentation for more details!
COCO file format
If you are new to the object detection space and are tasked with creating a new object detection dataset, then following the COCO format is a good choice due to its relative simplicity and widespread usage. This section will explain what the file and folder structure of a COCO formatted object detection dataset actually looks like.
At a high level, the COCO format defines exactly how your annotations (bounding boxes, object classes, etc) and image metadata (like height, width, image sources, etc) are stored on disk.
Files on disk
The folder structure of a COCO dataset looks like this:
<dataset_dir>/
data/
<filename0>.<ext>
<filename1>.<ext>
...
labels.json
The dataset is stored in a directory containing your raw image data and a single json file that contains all of the annotations, metadata, categories, and other information that you could possibly want to store about your dataset. If you have multiple splits of data, they would be stored in different directories with different json files.
JSON format
If you were to download the COCO dataset from their website, this would be the instances_train2017.json and instances_val2017.json files. (Note: The official test set annotations are unavailable to the public)
"info": {
"year": "2021",
"version": "1.0",
"description": "Exported from FiftyOne",
"contributor": "Voxel51",
"url": "https://fiftyone.ai",
"date_created": "2021-01-19T09:48:27"
},
"licenses": [
{
"url": "
"id": 1,
"name": "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License"
},
...
],
"categories": [
...
{
"id": 2,
"name": "cat",
"supercategory": "animal"
},
...
],
"images": [
{
"id": 0,
"license": 1,
"file_name": "<filename0>.<ext>",
"height": 480,
"width": 640,
"date_captured": null
},
...
],
"annotations": [
{
"id": 0,
"image_id": 0,
"category_id": 2,
"bbox": [260, 177, 231, 199],
"segmentation": [...],
"area": 45969,
"iscrowd": 0
},
...
]
} "info": {"year": "2021","version": "1.0","description": "Exported from FiftyOne","contributor": "Voxel51","url": "https://fiftyone.ai","date_created": "2021-01-19T09:48:27"},"licenses": ["url": " http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ ","id": 1,"name": "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License"},...],"categories": [..."id": 2,"name": "cat","supercategory": "animal"},...],"images": ["id": 0,"license": 1,"file_name": " . ","height": 480,"width": 640,"date_captured": null},...],"annotations": ["id": 0,"image_id": 0,"category_id": 2,"bbox": [260, 177, 231, 199],"segmentation": [...],"area": 45969,"iscrowd": 0},...
Info — Description and versioning information about your dataset.
— Description and versioning information about your dataset. Licenses — List of licenses with unique IDs to be specified by your images.
— List of licenses with unique IDs to be specified by your images. Categories — Classification categories each with a unique ID. Optionally associated with a supercategory that can span multiple classes. These categories can be whatever you want, but note that if you’d need to follow the COCO classes if you want to use a model pretrained on COCO out of the box (or follow other dataset categories to use other models).
— Classification categories each with a unique ID. Optionally associated with a supercategory that can span multiple classes. These categories can be whatever you want, but note that if you’d need to follow the COCO classes if you want to use a model pretrained on COCO out of the box (or follow other dataset categories to use other models). Images — List of images in your dataset and relevant metadata including unique image ID, filepath, height, width, and optional attributes like license, URL, date captured, etc.
— List of images in your dataset and relevant metadata including unique image ID, filepath, height, width, and optional attributes like license, URL, date captured, etc. Annotations — List of annotations each with a unique ID and the image ID it relates to. This is where you will store the bounding box information in our case or segmentation/keypoint/other label information for other tasks. This also stores bounding box area and iscrowd indicating a large bounding box surrounding multiple objects of the same category which is used for evaluation.
Creating a COCO format dataset
This section will outline how to take your raw or annotated dataset and convert it to the COCO format depending on what data you currently have and the format it is in.
Case 1: I have annotated data
In this case, you already have a dataset with images and annotations but want to convert it to the COCO format.
If your dataset happens to follow a different common format that is supported by FiftyOne, like CVAT, YOLO, KITTI, Pascal VOC, TF Object detection, or others, then you can load and convert it to COCO format in a single command.
# Convert a COCO detection dataset to CVAT image format
fiftyone convert \
--input-dir /path/to/cvat-image-dataset \
--input-type fiftyone.types.CVATImageDataset \
--output-dir /path/to/coco-detection-dataset \
--output-type fiftyone.types.COCODetectionDataset
If your data is not stored in a supported format, then it is still easy to load it into FiftyOne using Python and export it in COCO format. The idea is to load each image and associated labels as a FiftyOne Sample and add them to a FiftyOne Dataset:
You can then export this dataset in COCO format with one line:
And there you have it! /path/to/coco-detection-dataset now contains your images and labels in COCO format. Check out the next section to see how to easily load it back into Python.
Case 2: I only have raw image data
If you only have unlabeled images, then you will first need to generate object labels. You can generate either ground truth labels with an annotation tool or provider (like CVAT, Labelbox, MTurk, or one of many others) or predicted labels with an existing pretrained model.
If, for example, you used CVAT to annotate your raw data, then you can now convert it to COCO format using the FiftyOne command just like in the above section:
# Convert a COCO detection dataset to CVAT image format
fiftyone convert \
--input-dir /path/to/cvat-image-dataset \
--input-type fiftyone.types.CVATImageDataset \
--output-dir /path/to/coco-detection-dataset \
--output-type fiftyone.types.COCODetectionDataset
Alternatively, if you want to use a model to generate predictions, you can load your unlabeled data into FiftyOne and generate predictions with the FiftyOne Model Zoo, then save your dataset in COCO format.
Loading a COCO dataset into Python
This section assumes that you have gathered images and annotated them, storing your dataset in the COCO format, either following the previous section or manually building the labels JSON through custom scripting.
In order to load your COCO formatted dataset, you could write a parser for the JSON labels file, but really you should just use one of the various tools out there that will load it for you. Two of the best tools for this are the official COCO APIs and FiftyOne.
There are official COCO APIs for Python, Lua, and Matlab. These APIs are commonly used and provide basic functionality to load and compute dataset-wide evaluation on your dataset.
If you are using Python, I would recommend trying out FiftyOne, since it provides similar functionality to the cocoapi, along with a powerful API and GUI designed specifically to make it as easy as possible for you to explore, analyze, and work with your data.
If your dataset correctly follows the COCO format outlined in the previous sections, you can load it into a FiftyOne Dataset in Python with a single command:
Visualizing and exploring
Now that your dataset is in Python, you can use the FiftyOne API to easily access all of the different information and labels associated with your data and visualize it in the App.
To visualize your dataset, launch the FiftyOne App:
COCO 2017 validation split visualized in FiftyOne (Image by author)
With the API, you can use aggregations to get statistics about your dataset, like the number of detections for each category:
The primary way of interacting with your dataset is through views. Every query you make will give you a different view into your dataset, like sorting by samples with the most number of objects:
Samples with most objects visualized in FiftyOne (Image by author)
You can also make a view that filters a label field based on a more complex value like small bounding box area:
Small object view visualized in FiftyOne (Image by author)
The FiftyOne Brain contains various methods that allow you to analyze the quality of your ground truth data. For example, you can find the most unique samples in your dataset which can help you get a better idea of what kind of additional data you should add: | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-work-with-object-detection-datasets-in-coco-format-9bf4fb5848a4 | ['Eric Hofesmann'] | 2021-06-29 14:43:32.202000+00:00 | ['Object Detection', 'Coco', 'Getting Started', 'Machine Learning', 'Computer Vision'] |
Have You Treated Life as a Competition? Let Me Help You Rethink. | I spent my childhood sitting on a motorbike with my mom. She took me everywhere — to school, English course, markets…
She is a true bold rider. My mom always wants everything to be quick. Quick, quick, quick. “Time is money,” she says all the time. Picture some macho men bringing their shoulders and back down on their huge motorbike, that’s exactly how she looked like on hers. Except she only rides a small manual motorbike.
We used to live in a small neighbourhood where there were barely any cars passing by. Whenever my mom took me somewhere, we’d have to go through some deserted roads, a cemetery, and small forests. We reached the bigger roads after 2 or 3 kilometres, and that’s where it all started.
I began to see it as a race.
And somehow it resembles how I’ve often seen my life. As a competition. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/have-you-treated-life-as-a-competition-let-me-help-you-rethink-ac78852aff7 | ['Mari Teresienė'] | 2020-05-22 13:53:20.359000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Insecurity', 'Social Media', 'Self', 'Psychology'] |
First steps with Ansible. | Ansible is one of the most recent tools released by Red Hat and one of the best choices for Developers and DevOps engineers to automate almost everything inside a new server. It is free and open-source, and trust me, configuring remote servers has never been so easy.
In this tutorial, I intend to show you how to install and start to use this powerful tool.
Installing Ansible
First, you will need an Ansible controller host to manage all your nodes. This host could be your localhost, don’t worry, Ansible will work no matter which operating system you use. I am using Ubuntu, but the installation steps for any other os are almost the same.
Let’s install Ansible using apt .
$ sudo apt install ansible
Once the installation finished, run
$ ansible --version
If the package installation was successful, you should see something like this.
Ansible version output
Ansible nodes
Now your ansible controller is working, pretty easy right?
Let’s set up your nodes, open the /etc/ansible/hosts file with your preferred editor, you should see this template
# This is the default ansible 'hosts' file.
#
# It should live in /etc/ansible/hosts
#
# - Comments begin with the '#' character
# - Blank lines are ignored
# - Groups of hosts are delimited by [header] elements
# - You can enter hostnames or ip addresses
# - A hostname/ip can be a member of multiple groups
# Ex 1: Ungrouped hosts, specify before any group headers.
#green.example.com
#blue.example.com
#192.168.100.1
#192.168.100.10 # Ex 2: A collection of hosts belonging to the 'webservers' group#[webservers]
#alpha.example.org
#beta.example.org
#192.168.1.100
#192.168.1.110 # If you have multiple hosts following a pattern you can specify
# them like this: #www[001:006].example.com# Ex 3: A collection of database servers in the 'dbservers' group
#[dbservers]
#
#db01.intranet.mydomain.net
#db02.intranet.mydomain.net
#10.25.1.56
#10.25.1.57# Here's another example of host ranges, this time there are no
# leading 0s:#db-[99:101]-node.example.com
You can add your hosts at the bottom of the file or delete all the content and replace it with your hosts. The only rule is to follow the syntax below.
# Linux host
# host_alias ansible_host=<host_ip_or_url> ansible_connection=ssh ansible_user=<host_user> ansible_ssh_pass=<ssh_password_for_user> # Windows host
# host_alias ansible_host=<host_ip_or_url> ansible_connection=winrm ansible_user=<host_user> ansible_password=<password_for_user> # I am adding two servers, both of them are Linux servers web1 ansible_host=my.webserver.com ansible_connection=ssh ansible_user=root ansible_ssh_pass=Passw0rd db1 ansible_host=my.databaseserver.com ansible_connection=ssh ansible_user=root ansible_ssh_server=Passw0rd
Now, add some groups for your servers. Groups let you run commands and scripts on multiple hosts simultaneously.
[web_nodes]
web1 ansible_host=my.webserver.com ansible_connection=ssh ansible_user=root ansible_ssh_pass=Passw0rd [db_nodes]
db1 ansible_host=my.databaseserver.com ansible_connection=ssh ansible_user=root ansible_ssh_server=Passw0rd
Save your changes and close the file.
Ansible depends on sshpass package, install it running the following command
$ sudo apt install sshpass
The only remaining step is to connect to your hosts through ssh; this is for adding your host’s fingerprints to the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file.
$ ssh [email protected]
$ ssh [email protected]
Now, try your hosts by running:
$ # Ansible has an 'all' group which contains all your defined hosts
$ ansible all -m ping
If everything is going well, you will see a similar output
Ansible Ping output
Running playbooks
Your hosts are ready to be used through Ansible. Please create a new folder in your home directory.
$ mdkir ~/ansible-tutorial
$ cd ~/ansible-tutorial
Ansible’s scripts are just YAML files. If you have worked with YAML before, this step will be straightforward.
Open a new playbook.yml file and add the following lines
- name: My playbook
hosts: web1
tasks:
- name: Runnig date
command: date
‘name’ is an alias for the playbook
‘hosts’ defines the hosts to run the playbook, can be a group
‘tasks’ is an array that holds the actions or modules to use
Save your changes and close the file, now run it with
$ ansible-playbook playbook.yml
You should see a similar output as below
Ansible playbook output
A simple, real-life example
You learned some new things so far
Install and configure an Ansible controller
Add a new playbook
Run it on your hosts
Now it is time to learn how we can use Ansible in a real-life scenario.
For this example, you are going to install and run an Nginx webserver.
Let’s create a new playbook
$ vim nginx-playbook.yml
To start to write this playbook, add a name and the host where the Nginx should be running (remember the identation)
- name: 'Install and deploy nginx'
hosts: web1
Now, add the tasks, in this case you will need to define two actions.
Install the latest Nginx version Start Nginx server
tasks:
- name: 'Install Nginx latest version'
apt:
name: nginx
state: latest
This task looks for Nginx on the target host. If Ansible finds Nginx’s latest version, the installation won’t happen.
- name: 'Run Nginx'
service:
name: nginx
state: started
And this task checks if the Nginx server is already running. If it is not, then the step is skipped.
Your complete nginx-playbook.yml should look like this
- name: 'Install and deploy nginx'
hosts: web1
tasks:
- name: 'Install Nginx latest version'
apt:
name: nginx
state: latest
- name: 'Run Nginx'
service:
name: nginx
state: started
Save your changes, and now, try it!
Since we are installing a package in your host, you will need to add the ‘-b’ flag to the playbook command.
$ ansible-playbook nginx-playbook.yml -b
$ # -b or --become grants root privileges to ansible user.
Nginx playbook output
And finally let’s check the browser!
Nginx homepage
Conclusion
Ansible is a great ally; it makes it easy to install and deploy things in all your servers. Sure, this is just an introductory tutorial, but this tool has one module for everything you need to automate. You cand find all always available here.
And I will try to show you more advanced usages in my future posts!
Thanks for reading. Every feedback, comment, or sharing is highly appreciated! | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/first-steps-with-ansible-685250ed65b5 | ['Aldo Rvv'] | 2020-12-29 13:33:43.845000+00:00 | ['Linux', 'Automation', 'DevOps', 'Ansible', 'Open Source'] |
How to Lift Up Your Productivity through Writing | Have you ever wondered about the true meaning of being productive? Most people would say it’s about achieving more in less time. Yes; that’s called efficiency and it’s an important aspect of productivity. But it’s mostly related to your work. When you think about productivity, you figure out it’s about completing your tasks as efficiently and as quickly as possible.
But the concept of productivity includes another aspect of your life: personal growth. How productive are you when you think of your personal goals? Let’s say you decided you wanted to learn more. Are you doing anything about it? Are you learning enough on a daily basis.
When people are engaged in their jobs too much, the personal growth lags behind. We need to do something to improve that aspect of productivity, don’t you think?
There’s a specific technique that can help us do that. It’s simple, but complex at the same time. It’s writing.
How Writing Can Affect Your Personal Productivity
1. Writing Helps You Figure Out Your Ideas
What’s your idea of personal growth? You may have the desire to learn deep within, but you need a trigger that will bring it to surface. When you’re just thinking about the ways you could live a more productive and prosperous life, you’re just creating a mess inside your head. When you write these things down, you’re practically organizing your thoughts into achievable goals.
Neuroscientists found that the process of writing with the purpose to vividly describe goals is strongly associated with the successful achievement of those goals.
2. Writing Awakens Your Creativity
Sometimes you just sit there, not knowing what to do with the free time you have. Sometimes you don’t even have free time. You have to work, but you’re stuck or you’re burned out. You’re facing a creativity blockade, and writing can help you overcome it.
Writing is not only about communicating with others. It’s a self-reflective process that gets you in touch with the subtle aspects of your being. It may trigger ideas from deep within. The technique called freewriting, in particular, is a powerful tool for getting your creative juices going.
3. Writing Trains Your Mind
Just as you exercise to keep your body fit, you should do exercises for your mind as well. Writing is such an exercise. It’s like a personal trainer for your mind. It stimulates activity that keeps it sharp. As you write, you activate different parts of your brain, and that alone does you a great favor.
Plus, you’re improving your writing skills. You’re becoming a better communicator. That will enhance your productivity in all kinds of business and private relations.
How to Rely on Writing to Enhance Your Productivity
1. Try Freewriting
Have you ever been in a situation when you know you lack something in your life, but you can’t realize what exactly it is? You have a job, your family seems okay, but you’re still not perfectly happy? The freewriting technique will help you touch below the conscious levels of your mind.
Just sit and write. Write anything! You can take a word and use it as a prompt. Freedom. Love. Generosity. Success. Money. Take a different word each day and write whatever comes to your mind.
Do not judge your ideas. Do not even think about the things you write while you’re writing. Just set yourself free and write. Somewhere along the way, you’ll reveal some hidden issues, desires, and flaws.
2. Try Journaling, Too
Journaling is a similar practice to freewriting, with the difference that it’s more mindful. You’ll be in a completely conscious state of mind while doing it. Just write about the situations you face every single day.
This will help you understand where you’re wasting your energy. If, for example, there’s negative energy between you and a fellow worker, it affects your job and your entire life. As you write about these situations day after day, you’ll realize you have to work towards their improvement.
So get yourself a nice journal! If you’re worried about your privacy, you may take things online. Penzu is a very secure journaling service, so you may try it out.
3. Write Down Your Goals
This simple technique has a lot to do with your productivity. Before you go to bed each night, write down the goals for tomorrow. This will get you prepared to face the next day even before it hits you. You’ll wake up in the morning with a clear plan of what you need to achieve.
Writing your goals down makes them more realistic. It gives them shape. Plus, when you add a timeframe to them, you’re convinced that you can achieve all of them within a day. That boosts your self-confidence.
- · — · -
The best thing about writing is that it doesn’t take much of your time. Five to ten minutes each day should be enough for freewriting. You’ll spend ten more minutes in journaling and five more minutes in planning the upcoming day. That’s twenty-five minutes of a daily investment in your productivity. It’s something you can do, right? | https://facilethings.medium.com/how-to-lift-up-your-productivity-through-writing-b20a4842b4f2 | [] | 2018-10-24 17:09:05.732000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Getting Things Done', 'Productivity', 'Personal Development', 'Personal Growth'] |
Plotting gridded data on a web map: Python and/or Javascript? | ‘Pure’ Javascript solutions
There’s a wide range of plotting libraries available in Javascript. Many of the fancy maps you can find online nowadays are based on Leaflet or OpenLayers. Others like D3 and Vega also do maps, perhaps more reminiscent of Python’s Cartopy and co. However, as a JavaScript newbie, I found that exploring Leaflet and OpenLayers really helped to understand some key aspects of web mapping.
With Leaflet, all it takes to draw a map on an HTML page is a div element,
<div id="map"></div>
a few lines of Javascript that attaches the actual map to the div
var map = L.map('map').setView([51.505, -0.09], 13);
L.tileLayer('https://{s}.tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png',{
attribution: 'copyright statement'
}).addTo(map);
and a tiny bit of CSS to set the dimensions (otherwise it is often set to 0)
#map {
width: 600px;
height: 420px;
}
It produces the following map
Screenshot of a basic map created with Leaflet (unfortunately not interactive on Medium).
So what’s going on here? The first line of Javascript finds the div element called “map” and attaches a map object to it that the user can interact with. The initial view of the map is set to somewhere over London at zoom level 13. Subsequently, a tileLayer is added. I was a bit intimidated by all the different layer options at first, so let’s explore it further.
The map is built up of tiles, tiny images of 256x256 pixels each. At zoom level 0, one tile covers the entire world. At zoom level 1 there are four tiles, at zoom level 2 there are 16, and so on. At very high zoom levels there are a lot of tiles, but you will never see more than a few of them at the same time. This keeps the amount of data very manageable. Smart, isn’t it?
Some of the Leaflet layers are variations to this approach, such as the older WMS layer that simply delivers one image that fits your current bounds and zoom level (see here for a nice introduction).
But what if you want to plot your own data? While there are many resources on how to use existing tile or web-map services, I struggled to find out how to make my own. Eventually, I found a nice example using GeoTrellis, but by that time I had already concocted a half-baked solution in my beloved Python. More on that in a bit.
Leaflet also has different kinds of layers. You can draw lines, markers, shapes, polygons, images, and even videos. Here’s how to draw a simple rectangle on a Leaflet map:
var bounds = [[50, 0], [55, 5]] // ymin xmin ymax xmax
L.rectangle(bounds, {color: "#ffffff", weight: 1}).addTo(map);
So if I could load my data into some that bounds array and write a function to determine the colours, that should work. Right?
According to this blogpost, Leaflet should perform well up to about ten thousand data points. However, gridded data can easily get bigger. The snapshot of ERA5 data that I used for the first example already has over a million grid cells (0.25 by 0.25 degrees, global coverage). So it seems we’re hitting a dead end there as well… Or not?
deck.gl is like Leaflet on steroids. It was designed to “visually explore large-scale datasets”. It leverages the processing power of your graphics card to do some impressive rendering magic. After using Leaflet, I found it quite easy to get up and running with deck.gl, and managed to produce this awesome visualization:
Rendering over a million grid cells using deck.gl
But still, I had to cheat a bit. And still, it was slow. For the data… was big.
Incentives for a hybrid solution
The data I wanted to use came originally in netCDF format and while it seems possible nowadays to parse that with Javascript, it’s not the oneliner I’m used to in Python. The same goes for the colour mapping. To save me some time, I decided to do some light preprocessing in Python.
Next, let’s talk about data sizes. The size of the original netCDF data for one timestamp was about 4 MB. The size of the preprocessed data in JSON format was considerably larger: almost 50 MB. For climate scientists this is nothing, but for smoothly running a website that’s quite substantial… It might be worthwhile to explore which file formats work well for both languages.
So what about the tile solutions from earlier? Could that save me some bandwidth and rendering time? And how hard could it be to make my own tiles in Python? As you could see from the first Leaflet example, it’s just a matter of creating a folder structure like baseurl/{z}/{x}/{y}.png , where the tile numbering follows the slippy tile format explained here.
Example tiles at zoom levels 0 (left), 1 (middles) and 2 (right).
To draw a tile we basically have to determine the right colour for each pixel. I already mentioned that the tiles are 256x256 pixels. My sample data is 1440x721 grid cells. Therefore, to create the first tile that covers the globe, we need to condense, or aggregate, the data. We have 5 to 6 grid cells per pixel in the x-direction and about 3 in the y-direction. The simplest way to aggregate them would be to take the mean of these ~15 grid cells. (At higher zoom levels, where we have more pixels than grid cells, we’d need to upsample, or interpolate instead). Then we’d have to map the values of temperature onto a colour scale. Finally, we’d draw the pixels on a canvas.
There happens to be a Python library that is built to do exactly this: Datashader. While it's intended for use from within a Python session, there is no reason why you couldn’t use that library to render images upfront. The developers of the package also realized this and created an initial implementation to render tiles with a somewhat hidden example notebook.
I adapted the example to my needs and started rendering some tiles. In terms of storage, the first 4 zoom levels (0 to 3) were all below 1 MB. Then it quickly went up from 2.4 MB to 6.8 MB to 22 MB for levels 4 through 6. Performance started to degrade at zoom level 6, perhaps because of the upsampling that was going on. At zoom level 7, my code crashed, though I’m sure it can still be optimized.
Now it was time to show my awesome tile layer on a Leaflet map. I struggled a bit to get the projection right, but eventually, it worked like a charm (select the tile layer on the leaflet map here).
I was happy that my tile layer worked, but it also got me thinking: zoom level 0 seemed quite redundant: why would anyone want to show the whole globe on a tiny thumbnail? The tile layer only starts to be advantageous at the higher zoom levels. But do I really need that? Indeed, with the source data resolution of 0.25 degrees, there might not be much to gain beyond zoom level 3. Consequently, for a global dataset at this resolution, an image overlay might be a better, and easier, solution.
After tinkering a bit with how to reproject and save the file, I managed to create an image with just as many pixels as I had grid cells, and project it onto my Leaflet map (select the image layer here). The image size was under 400 KB and it rendered nicely onto the map. Maybe even too nicely: at higher zoom levels, Leaflet did a great job at smoothing the edges between the original pixels, and although this provided a nice looking image, I did not like it. For scientific applications, it is more honest to show the coarse pixels of the source data. In that sense, the polygon solution was much better.
Not so bad after all?
So let’s do a quick resume. To plot data on a web map, we have several options. For relatively coarse datasets, creating an image overlay seems to be a good option, although you might lose the explicit granularity of the source data. Tile layers will be useful mostly when you go to a much higher resolution (whilst keeping a large domain). Both these options require pre-rendering of the images/tiles, which means that the colour bar will be fixed and the connection with the source data is lost.
Alternatively, rendering the data client-side is also within reach, especially with tools like deck.gl. In my experiments, it required fetching and processing substantial amounts of data, but this can be amended. Similar to the pre-rendered raster tiles I’ve explored, vector tiles have become increasingly popular. This could be a good solution when you have (much) more pixels than grid cells, whereas raster tiles work well in the opposite situation. The preferred option is thus determined by the source data resolution, and the zoom levels you want to support.
Finally, let’s look back at the very first figure I showed. It was made with the hvPlot library, which is built on top of HoloViews, which in turn uses Bokeh. I also used Panel for exporting the file. Bokeh consists of two components: BokehJS for creating interactive visualizations with Javascript, and the Python library, which makes it easy to ‘define’ visualizations that are understood by the Javascript counterpart. Simply put, these definitions are just listings of the different plot elements that constitute the visualization. When you export a visualization as a static file, all possible ‘states’ (in my case the four seasons) are written to the output file(s), alongside the definition. Depending on the plot type, the state may consist of some data, or perhaps an encoded image. At that point, BokehJS can read the definition and state data and reconstruct the visualization.
It is a great solution if you are happy with the possibilities offered by Bokeh and the libraries that are built on top of it. Personally, I’m not so keen on the “you worry about the science, we worry about the implementation” attitude that some of the high-level visualization packages sometimes tend to preach. I think it’s important to have a basic understanding of what’s going on under the hood. And while the BokehJS library seems to be quite good at what it does, I’d like it even better when the exchange formats between Python and Javascript were more interoperable.
Anyway, now that I’m starting to grasp the core principles and challenges, I’ve come to appreciate how far they have come, and I look forward to seeing how this exciting visualization landscape will develop in the near future. This exploration has been a valuable learning experience for me, and I hope it may help some of the readers as well.
Happy mapping! | https://blog.esciencecenter.nl/plotting-gridded-data-on-a-web-map-python-and-or-javascript-b38b44dd3c9d | ['Peter Kalverla'] | 2021-09-16 09:30:18.986000+00:00 | ['Hvplot', 'Python', 'Maps', 'Interactive', 'Web'] |
JavaScript Basics — Generators and the Web | Photo by Krzysztof Niewolny on Unsplash
JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. To use it effectively, we’ve to know about the basics of it.
In this article, we’ll look at how to define and use generators and web communication.
Generators
Generator functions let us create functions that can be paused and resumed.
It’s indicated by the functuion* keyword.
For instance, we can write:
function* random() {
while (true) {
yield Math.random();
}
}
We defined a random function which keeps generating random numbers as many times as we call it.
It’s paused when yield is run.
We can have an infinite loop since the loop only runs when we run the returned generator explicitly.
To use it, we can write:
const ran = random();
console.log(ran.next());
console.log(ran.next());
Then we get something like:
{value: 0.6168149388512836, done: false}
{value: 0.7733643240483823, done: false}
We called our generator function and the call next on the returned generator ran .
Also, we can create an iterator object to return a an array of numbers sequentially.
For instance, we can write:
const obj = {
*[Symbol.iterator]() {
const arr = [1, 2, 3];
for (const a of arr) {
yield a;
}
}
}
We have the Symbol.iterator method, which is a generator function that yields each item of arr .
It’s paused when yield is run.
Then we can use it with a for-of loop by running:
for (const o of obj) {
console.log(o);
}
The async function is a special type of generator.
It produces a promise when it’s called, which is resolved or rejected.
When it yields or awaits a promise, the result of the promise or the exception value is the result of the await expression.
Event Loop
Async programs are run a piece by piece.
Each piece may start some action and schedule code to be run when an action finishes or fails.
The program sits idle in between the pieces.
Async actions happen on its own call stack.
This is why we need promises to manage async actions so that they run one by one.
JavaScript and the Browser
JavaScript is used to build almost all browser apps.
Browser users the HTTP protocol to communicate with the Internet.
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
Every time we run something in the browser, we make an HTTP request.
We make them download web pages, send data to servers, and many more.
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is a protocol is the common protocol of the Internet.
It lets computers communicate with each other by having one computer listen to data and one computer sending it.
Each listener has a port number associated with it.
If we want to send emails, we use the SMTP protocol, which communicates through port 25.
We have a 2-way pipe for communication. One piece of data can flow from one computer to the other.
The Web
The browser communicates via the world wide web, known as the web for short.
We can communicate on the web by putting our computer on the Internet and listen to port 80 so we can communicate with HTTP.
For instance, we can make a request to http://example.com , which is a URL that tells us where to make the request to.
A URL is just a piece of text in a fixed format to let us locate the resources that we need.
The URL first has the protocol, which is http , then the server name, which is example.com .
It can also have a path, like http://example.com/foo.html . foo.html is the path in the URL.
Photo by Nicolas Picard on Unsplash
HTML
HTML stands for the Hypertext Markup Language.
It’s the document format for storing web pages.
It contains text and tags that we can use to give structure to the text.
We use it to describe links, paragraphs, headings, and more.
For instance, we may write:
<!doctype html>
<html> <head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>hello</title>
</head> <body>
<h1>Hello</h1>
<p>Read my work
<a href="http://example.com">here</a>.</p>
</body> </html>
All HTML documents start with <!doctype html> to indicate that it’s an HTML document.
Then they have the head tag which has some metadata like the title and meta tags with extra metadata.
The body tag has the main content.
It has heading tags like h1 and p tag for paragraphs and a tag for links to other pages.
We can change HTML with JavaScript dynamically.
Conclusion
We can create generators to create functions that can be paused and resumed.
JavaScript is useful for creating web apps. They communicate via HTTP, which communicates over TCP.
JavaScript In Plain English
Enjoyed this article? If so, get more similar content by subscribing to our YouTube channel! | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/javascript-basics-generators-and-the-web-f30f0a1d2602 | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-06-16 21:45:03.330000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Web Development'] |
How To Create a Read-Only MySQL User | Sometimes you need to create a read-only MySQL user credentials for a new team mate to prevent accidental queries being fired into your database. Here’s how you can create a read-only MySQL user.
1. Log into MySQL as an admin
Run the MySQL command-line program by doing one of the following:
a. At a UNIX prompt, run the MySQL command-line program, and log in as an administrator by typing the following command
mysql -u root -p
b. At a Windows command prompt, run the MySQL command-line program, and log in as an administrator by typing the following command from the MySQL root folder (e.g Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\bin):
mysql -u root -p
c. Run any database shell that works with MySQL. E.g, Heidisql and MySQL Workbench.
Type the password for root account.
2. Create a new MySQL user
Copy the following command and paste them into a MySQL shell. Replace $database_name, $user, and $password below with the values you will be using.
CREATE USER ‘$user‘@’127.0.0.1’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘$password‘;
3. Grant read-only permission to the MySQL user
Copy the following command and paste them into a MySQL shell.
GRANT SELECT, SHOW VIEW ON $database_name.* TO $user@’127.0.0.1′ IDENTIFIED BY ‘$password‘; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
If you want to use SSL connection, you can use the following instead
GRANT SELECT, SHOW VIEW ON $database_name.* TO $user@’127.0.0.1′ IDENTIFIED BY ‘$password‘ REQUIRE SSL; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
This creates a new read-only MySQL local user that can access your databases. If you want to create a remote user to access your database you can replace 127.0.0.1 with Remote IP. Also, you will need to enable remote access to your database. Please note, it is not a secure practice.
You can read more about how to create MySQL user here | https://medium.com/@rm-rf/how-to-create-a-read-only-mysql-user-b28dbfa3f952 | [] | 2020-12-07 05:36:25.847000+00:00 | ['MySQL', 'Database', 'Readonly'] |
Meet Justin Renken— ARK’s New Communications Specialist | We would like to introduce ARK’s newest team member Justin Renken, our new Communications Specialist. His roles as Communication Specialist include Community Management, Educational Resources, and Community Outreach.
Justin will be assisting Matthew, Rok and Travis with ARK educational resources. He will also be filling some Community Management roles like Slack chat, Reddit and other community engagement platforms.
Justin comes from a very diverse background. He has experience in infrared photonics, and is a co-author of a published patent for thermal imaging products in industrial automation and laboratory use. His experience also includes writing, developing applications in OpenG, creative media, sales and support, music production and advertising.
Some of you may be familiar with Justin’s work and community engagement already. Here are a few of his more well known accomplishments:
Contributed to the ‘blockchain concepts’ section of our documentation at ARK’s Docs.
Created and operates ArkStickers.
Contributed to ARK Directory Kits in the form of his ARK Presentation Series.
Created an ARK overview video.
Collaborated on multiple community projects with other ARK community members.
Over time, Justin is expected to become more outward-facing as new opportunities arise to hone ARK’s messaging. That may include videos, live streams, speaking at small events, and more. He will be focused on enabling new community members to get up to speed with ARK concepts quickly and efficiently.
We are ecstatic to have Justin on the team, and can’t wait to put him to work. He is very active on Slack and Reddit already, make sure to welcome him to the team. He goes by @Justin (doubled1c3) on slack, and doubled1c3 on Reddit. | https://medium.com/ark-io/meet-justin-renken-arks-new-communications-specialist-99dde3a451d6 | ['Travis W'] | 2018-08-13 17:37:28.281000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Arkecosystem', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Hiring'] |
Applying Session Based Exploratory Testing to Gaming Bring Them On! | Introduction
“Anyone can cook” was the saying that Cheff Gusteau from Pixar’s animated movie “Ratatuille”, used to mention. And that, indeed, can also be applied to testing. “Anyone can test” is something that is heard in many companies, from different actors and players. And that is true. Testing is one of those disciplines that does not necessarily need a specific background or knowledge to start working and obtain a decent performance while doing it. However, if you want to be a professional and get the best results, you need two basic things: to be prepared and to train and gain expertise in certain abilities that will help you excel in your task. When it comes to game testing, these abilities are even harder to acquire. It is easy to deviate from the true QA objective, and say “Ok you only need to play the game”. And that is a common misconception. Testing in Gaming is both hard and exciting. On today’s games, testers need to cover multiple edges, from visual hitches that are subtle to the eye to sound and graphics, without leaving playability aside. Multiple edges that easily can get lost in the middle of the passion playing an exciting game.
In this article I explore a new approach, based on Session Based Exploratory Testing to enhance the team’s capabilities to find bugs in this challenging environment.
Do you need to be special to be a game tester?
As said before, “Anyone can test”, and that is true. But when it comes to gaming, in addition to having a Tester’s Mindset, you need to be passionate about gaming. Tester’s Mindset includes having attention to detail, an unbreakable spirit to keep finding those hard-to-find bugs, questioning and interpersonal skills, among others. But if you have all these skills, in order to be a successful game tester, you also need to have a unique appeal to play the same bloody game over and over again, without losing focus in all the important aspects of the game itself, and all the multiple types of bugs that may be found in a game. We are talking about dozens and dozens of different types of bugs, which are easily overlooked if you do not have a tester mindset, in addition to having a unique appeal for playing games.
“Testing is a skill. While this may come as a surprise to some people it is a simple fact.”
Fewster, Graham: “Software Test Automation”
A special challenge: the limited human attention.
Humans have a limited ability to pay attention to multiple stimuli. And this is a key fact when dealing with games. In this article we explore a particular First Person Shooting (FPS) game. In these kinds of games, a tester needs to pay attention to multiple stimuli that are an essential part of the game while playing it. Just to mention a few: changes in the environment (while wandering around the map, user needs to pay attention to the different characteristics of the map, in order to check possible paths to follow, or parts of the map where an enemy may come or hide), sounds (player must be alert in order to detect possible enemies according to the perceived sounds), items that are fetchable from the environment (such as weapons, health kits, etc.), hidden parts of the map that may lead to hidden treasures or paths), enemies and Non Primary Character (NPC) that come across the player’s route, among many others. These stimuli may capture a player’s attention, and prevent him/her from finding valuable bugs due to not having a full attention to the different characteristics of the environment, music, special effects, movements and other types of characteristics that may contain bugs. Furthermore, as human attention is limited to a particular number of stimuli, it is important to know how attention works in humans, in order to take a good approach when defining a gaming test strategy.
Image 1 — Attention (Watterson, 2015)
So let’s start with defining what attention is:
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.” William James
Attention is an adaptive process which objective is to filter the information, given the processing limitations that human beings have. Thru history, there are two different conceptions about attention:
As a quality of perception
We cannot pay attention to all stimuli, and attention is the process to select only those relevant.
We cannot pay attention to all stimuli, and attention is the process to select only those relevant. As control mechanism
All cognitive processes need supervision in order to be adequate to an objective.
Image 2 — Sohlberg & Mateer Attention levels (Scott & McCall, 2020)
From bottom to top, we start with a focused attention where we can direct the attentional window to a unique source of information. As levels go up, the attention is more diverse and less focused. When we are in a divided level of attention, we can respond to multiple tasks or demands simultaneously. It is a limited capacity. As the number of sources of information increases, or the demands for a task are higher, the execution gets worse. The quality of the execution in multiple tasks and simultaneous, depends on how automatic those tasks are (Universidad Intercontinental — Facultad de Psicología, 2020).
So, if we consider the gaming exercise, it will really depend on the type of game we are playing. If we go back to the 80s, we may find different games that had a fixed amount of stimuli for the player, like Green Beret (see Image 3), Saboteur (see Image 4) or Ghost n’ Goblins (see Image 5).
Image 3 — Green Beret (Future PLC, 2020)
Image 4 — Saboteur (Indie RetroNews, 2020)
Image 5 — Ghost n’ Goblins (Crider, 2020)
In such games, the player used to have a limited number of enemies, with a fixed map, with only one direction to take (generally from left to right), and with the same amount of enemies to confront, and they usually came in the same moment, and following the same pattern. Today games are totally different from those original ones. Taking as an example First Person Shooter games, the player faces multiple and complex maps, with kilometer-sized structures to wander and roam into. For example the most updated Doom version (2016, see Image 6) gives the user several maps to dive into, with many different types of enemies, which are powered by Artificial Intelligence (Ortiz, 2020).
Image 6 — Doom FPS game
These types of games make attention more difficult to make, as multiple stimuli are given at the same time for the player. Now, maps are more complex, with a 360° freedom for the user to dive into, many different types of enemies which are freely wandering around the map, and many options for the player to have in hand. For example, multiple ammo to select, multiple paths to hide or run to, objects to step over and structures to climb, among others. All of these combined with multiple sound effects from the environment, makes a unique experience for the player. These visuals and sounds combos makes the player have a divided level of attention, making it difficult to focus on what to look at.
Bug Gaming taxonomy in today’s gaming industry
In today’s gaming industry, we may have a very diverse variety of bugs that may be caused by different factors. If we think of FPS, we can have more than 30 different categories for bugs, ranging from Art related bugs, UI, Sound, Stability, AI among others (see Image 7). This will easily reach 100+ different types of bugs, summing all categories.
Image 7 — Bug Taxonomy for Gaming
So if we consider that a game tester has to always bear in mind how addictive the game is, how playable it is, and therefore the player needs to get into the game with all his/her senses to deal with the adrenaline of the game. Additionally, as a tester, the player needs to focus on all the 100+ possible combinations of bugs, as stated before. Considering the limited level of attention that Humans have, as analyzed before, it is really a very difficult task to carry out. In terms of testing, this may easily lead to undiscovered bugs. Imagine you are fighting with 5 to 6 aliens that come towards you, and you need to aim them with the proper gun, take care of your health indicator, and in the path you are following to not step over a mine or some lava that is there in front of you. You may easily not notice that a particular texture of an item is not correct (Art / Incorrect/Wrong Texture UV), or that a specific box or any other item that is some inches away from the central view of the screen is actually floating instead of laying in the ground (Model / Scale Placement), and we can continue with the rest of the 100+ types of bugs. So under this scenario, we are facing a bug detection problem, not related with the tester itself, but with the type of application we are testing, and the Human capability regarding attention.
So, what do we do?
First let’s do a brief summary of the problem that we are facing: when talking about game testing, we have mainly two items in sight: as in any other testing discipline, we have a goal to find bugs. The more bugs we find, the less bugs the end user will encounter, so more robust our application will be. On the other hand, a very important part of our testing will be focused on the playability and how addictive our game is, as this is also a key element when talking about game testing. In this article we are focusing on the first item: how to maximize the use of testing time in order to find more bugs. And as said before, our main limitation is the human attention, as we have a vast diversity of bugs in sight (remember we have 100+ types of different bugs that can be extracted from Image 7).
So in order to cope with this situation, we decided to try a Proof of Concept (POC) with Session Based Exploratory Testing (SEBT). SEBT is basically a testing approach that maximizes the testing time used by a tester in a limited amount of time (called Session), where the tester focuses only in a specific part of the problem (called Charter) and uses the session time exclusively to test that charter (not logging bugs, nor testing other parts of the application). You can get a thorough understanding of SEBT by reading “Why you should use Session Based Exploratory Testing?”.
How do we implement Session Based Exploratory Testing to gaming?
One of the most important things about implementing SBET is to have a clear definition of the Charter. It is the fundamental stone where the SBET is built on. As our main problem regarding game testing is the large amount of different types of bug that we may encounter while we are testing, it is utterly important to correctly define the focus of every session, that is to say, the Charter.
As in any other testing activity, planning of every session is key to success, and we will go several centuries ago, and use a very old approach: Divide and Conquer. Imagine you have 20 levels in a game that need to be tested. And you have 100+ types of bugs that may arise in any moment, in any part of every one of those maps. Unless you have a team of testers like the one in Image 8, it will be a very difficult task to achieve.
Image 8 — The multi-eyed tester (Art, 2020)
In order to apply SBET to gaming, we need to define the Charter. Our focus will be to find bugs, and as we have plenty of bugs to consider, we need to Divide and conquer. So, in order to define our Charter, we will focus only on a certain number of bugs for a particular session. We can easily implement a spreadsheet that allows us to define a single charter, as shown in Image 9.
Image 9 — A sample Charter definition
What we define in this Charter is just one bug type, or set of bug types for a specific Area (in the sample provided, Art) and Sub Area (Physics in this case) that apply only for a specific Map (and Mode/Difficulty in this sample). So, in this session, the tester will only focus on bugs about Character Physics / Ragdoll Error. Tester will not look for any other types of bugs. And as this is SBET, the tester will only pursue bugs belonging to the charter. If tester finds a bug regarding any other bug type (see Image 7), he/she will just add a note for the next session (ie “there is a Lightning/Missing Lights error in this screen” — and will add a Screenshot), and will continue looking for bugs belonging to the charter.
By doing this, we will ensure that we have a 100% pure session dedicated to the Charter in scope.
As Managers, how do we manage these sessions?
It will really depend on the team that will be taking care of the game testing. A useful approach that has been implemented with pretty good success, is to divide the team, and assign a specific Charter grouped by similar types of bugs, in order to cover as many bug-types as possible. A sample is shown in Image 10.
Image 10 — Sample of Charter management
In this sample, we have decided to have some testers focusing on only one type of bug (like Tester 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 10), while the rest of the team would be focusing in several types of bug at the same time, as those types of bugs are easily clustered (like Text bugs, Screen Elements, or certain Physics bugs that can be checked together (as Tester 8 & 9).
Also, on Image 11 we can see all the 80+ types of bugs, and which of them are covered in a single session (in this sample we are not including bugs of type Stability and Sound as they were not covered in the selected Charters). Those covered are marked in green.
Image 11 — Session Coverage
So, are you ready?
Implementing a good and effective bug-hunting experience in gaming is not a simple task, mainly due to the vast different types of games. Furthermore, many devices make this a very challenging task (consoles, PC, mobile, etc). So the task of having a solid test management strategy with the focus of bug-finding is critical. Of course, there are many other aspects of the game that need to be attacked properly, as playability, the addictive factor, appealing UI, and many others. But, all of these will surely fail if the game has so many bugs that makes the application unmanageable, or bugs from the different key areas of the app are so noticeable that the player just gives up and finds another similar game in the store.
I have already listed many game-sections where a gamer may find bugs, and there are more than a hundred categories to check. So it is utterly important to plan a proper bug-hunting strategy. I truly believe this approach is not only necessary but also imprescindible in any game-developer’s vault.
Don’t you think it is worth it giving a try?
So run, before the game is over!
Bibliography
360 Logica. (25 de July de 2020). Game Testing. Playing Games does not define Game Testing! Noida, Noida, India: 360 Logica. Obtenido de https://www.360logica.com/blog/playing-games-does-not-define-game-testing/
Art, C. (2020). Alien with many eyes. Alien with many eyes. Cool Art, New York. Obtenido de http://www.mascotdesigngallery.com/many-eyes-alien-mascot/
Crider, M. (16 de 09 de 2020). Capcom plans to bring classic Ghosts N Goblins, Ghouls N Ghosts, Commando, and 1942 arcade games to Android. Obtenido de Android Police: https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/03/02/capcom-plans-to-bring-classic-ghosts-n-goblins-ghouls-n-ghosts-commando-and-1942-arcade-games-to-android/
Future PLC. (16 de 09 de 2020). Retro Gamer. Obtenido de Retro Gamer: https://www.retrogamer.net/retro_games80/green-beret-2/
Indie RetroNews. (20 de 09 de 2020). Saboteur! — A brilliant ZX Spectrum game gets a florinthedwarf review. Obtenido de Indie Retro News: http://www.indieretronews.com/2017/03/saboteur-brilliant-zx-spectrum-game.html
Rivero, S. (2020, July 10). Bug Taxonomy. (D. Marin, Interviewer)
Scott, C. A., & McCall, A. (16 de 09 de 2020). Cognitive Rehabilitation: We All Can Help! Obtenido de Rainbow Rehabilitation Center: https://www.rainbowrehab.com/cognitive-rehabilitation-we-all-can-help/
Universidad Intercontinental — Facultad de Psicología. (2020, 09 16). Intervención funcional para el desarrollo de funciones ejecutivas. Retrieved from Neurociencia Cognición: https://neurocienciacognicion.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/atencic3b3n.pdf
Watterson, B. (29 de January de 2015). Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for January 29, 2015. Obtenido de GoComics: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2015/01/29/ | https://medium.com/globant/applying-session-based-exploratory-testing-to-gaming-bring-them-on-a78995252ca9 | ['Diego Marin'] | 2020-12-23 13:05:36.977000+00:00 | ['Software Testing', 'Gaming', 'Exploratory Testing', 'Testing', 'Test Management'] |
Transphobia in the UK | Many of you may not know that we recently celebrated international Transgender Awareness Week, culminating on Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) on the 20th November. The event takes place close to the anniversary of the death of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was brutally murdered in her own home in 1998.
Observed annually, Transgender Awareness Week is a time to remember and honour those who have lost their lives in violent and horrendous transphobic hate-crimes and raise awareness for the plight of trans individuals in our society.
Trans issues may not be something that you think about very often and you may never have even met a transgender person or anyone who does not conform to the traditional perspectives of the gender binary. As such, the prevalence of transphobia and its associated hate-crimes may never have been apparent to you.
In the diverse LGBTQ+ community, trans individuals are, quite possibly, one of the most consistently oppressed and misunderstood minorities. It is not uncommon for public figures, such as Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, to publish openly anti-transgender opinions without even a fraction of the backlash that would be received for homophobic or sexist hate-speech. For some reason, the world’s media and large swathes of society simply do not seem to recognise transphobia as the urgent civil rights issue that it is.
WHY WE NEED TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE
According to the BBC, transphobic hate crimes in the UK have quadrupled in the last five years, with trans individuals being verbally, physically and sexually abused just because of who they are. In England and Wales alone, from 2019 to 2020, almost two and a half thousand transphobic hate crimes were recorded, that that’s just the ones that were reported to the police.
A 2015 report by the Human Rights Commission and the University of Leicester found that many LGBTQ+ individuals would not report verbal hate crimes due to the normalisation of these experiences as ‘part of the parcel’ of being LBGTQ+. Furthermore, participants in the study expressed a fear that they would be wasting police time if they reported individual, non-violent incidents of abuse.
A further, and perhaps lest often though of, concern for some participants was being officially recorded by law enforcement as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. For individuals who are not out, or are only out to a select few people, the prospect of having their sexual or gender identity on an official record is daunting. This fear of information falling into the wrong hands is also indicative of a lack of trust between the LGBTQ+ community and the police.
In 2018, the government estimated that there were between 200,000 and 500,000 transgender individuals in the UK. In the same year, a Stonewall report found that 41% of trans people and 31% of non-binary people had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity within 12 months of the survey being taken. A further 28% of trans people had experienced domestic abuse from a partner in the preceding year, and 25% had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.
To put that into perspective, even taking the governments lowest estimate for the number of trans people in the UK, that means that at least 82,000 trans people had been the target of a hate crime. To put it another way, that is a group of people about twice the population of Dover, every single one of whom has been the victim of a hate crime, just during a 12 month period. And yet, a shocking 79% of trans individuals told Stonewall that they still would not, or have not, reported a hate-crime to the police.
And things don’t seem to be getting better. The National LGBT Survey, published in 2019, found that only 34% of trans men and 37% of trans women felt comfortable being LGBTQ+ in the UK. This number plummeted amongst young trans people aged under 25, of whom only 5% felt comfortable in the UK. For a nation that is supposed to be at the forefront of equality and civil rights, this is simply unacceptable.
The fact of the matter is that our society is simply not as equal as we all like to believe. Tens of thousands of trans people are abused and mistreated, and their plight is largely ignored by the wider population and the national media.
In fact, much of the UK’s mainstream media has not even bothered to report on Transgender Awareness Week, with the notable exception of Wales Online. However, as yet, major players like the BBC have neglected to so much as mention the fact that this event is currently underway.
TRANS RIGHTS ARE NOT A ‘DEBATE’
Clearly, transphobia is rife in the UK and beyond. The fact that the UK is still one of the safest places in the world for LGBTQ+ individuals, despite all of the statistics that appear in this article, is horrifying. It is unacceptable in a ‘civilised’ liberal democracy to have tens of thousands of people living in fear and being treated like second-class citizens just because of who they are and how they identify.
Key to the problem is the behaviour of public figures and the national media towards transgender individuals. J. K. Rowling’s infamous tweets are just the tip of the iceberg, with many news outlets and television shows still holding debates about LGBTQ+ issues in which they, in the name of ‘balance’, invite individuals with damaging and archaic opinions to speak to the nation.
To be clear, healthy debate is a vital part of any democracy, and it is the right of any individual to hold and defend any opinions they may have, however heinous or misguided they may seem. The issue here is not one of censorship, but one of responsibility. If someone wants to argue against transgenderism in a non-violent and rational manner, then that is their prerogative. Their opinion may be wrong, but it is their right to hold it and argue for it.
It is not their absolute right, however, to be given public platforms on which to espouse these views. It is the responsibility of TV shows and news outlets to deliver valuable information and insight whilst doing their utmost to avoid damaging or defaming any individual or group in society. In fact, journalists and presenters are bound by a whole collection of slander and defamation laws to avoid just that situation.
Why, then, is it acceptable for a show like Good Morning Britain, for example, to invite speakers onto their broadcast who, during the course of their debate, undermine and attack the identities and characters of trans individuals?
To reiterate, these people are entitled to their opinions, but must we give them such a public platform from which to preach intolerance and hate?
Private broadcasting institutions may, within the confines of the law, invite whoever they see fit onto their programmes. Again, this right is protected by free speech and the basic principles of liberal democracy.
However, I would argue that such institutions should utilise their right to freedom of the press only after having truly considered what affect their broadcasting or journalism may have on individuals or groups in society.
After all, what value, apart from views and paper sales, do bigoted contributors add to public content? Consumers who already disagree with bigotry are unlikely to be persuaded by any argument to the contrary, so there is little value gained there. People who agree with intolerant standpoints will gain vindication from such content and will therefore be more staunchly intolerant going forward, a net negative for society. And finally, the minority group being discussed, in this case transgender individuals, will likely feel attacked and oppressed by such content, lowering their quality of life and making them unlikely to support the purveyors of said content.
So, whilst outlets are fully within their rights to give a voice to anti-trans advocates, it is likely that they will lose moral authority and business from doing so, which seems like it might be a bad idea.
WE NEED CHANGE, NOW
Given all of this, Transgender Awareness Week is just an important now as it ever was. Though things may have improved somewhat since the late 90s, when the murder of Rita Hester sparked the movement that led us to the Transgender Day of Remembrance, the living situation of trans people in the UK is far from being acceptable.
The ridiculous thing is that many people have seen the small improvements that have been made and have convinced themselves that through those tiny steps forward, equality has been achieved.
It has not. Not even close.
There is so much work still to be done by charities like Stonewall, but also by individuals like you and me, to help lift the trans community out from under years of abuse and oppression. And we can start by taking time this week, during Transgender Awareness Week, to educate ourselves and make ourselves more aware of what is going on around us with regards to our trans neighbours, colleagues, friends and family.
A society cannot in good faith call itself free and equal until those adjectives apply to all of its citizens, without exception. As it stands, the UK is not a free and equal country. In fact, to my knowledge, there are as yet no truly free and equal countries in the world.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be the first? | https://medium.com/the-political-abyss/transphobia-in-the-uk-ba9dd5252897 | ['Sean Bennett'] | 2020-11-25 18:00:18.602000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Transphobia', 'Transgender', 'LGBT Rights', 'Civil Rights'] |
Today, December 21st, marks the 2020 Winter Solstice. | Today, December 21st, marks the 2020 Winter Solstice.
Now what does “Solstice” actually mean and where did it originate? According to the Farmer’s Almanac, “solstice” comes from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). This is because during the solstice, the angle between the Sun’s rays and the plane of the Earth’s equator appears to stand still.
This Winter Solstice is extra special for several different reasons. This solstice occurs at the same exact time everywhere on the Planet. In the United States, it happened at 5:02 a.m. ET.
Now for starters, there is a rare celestial event occurring in the Northern Hemisphere. They call it The Great Conjunction. The two largest planets in our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, are in conjunction, which is something that happens to every 20 years or so. However, because of how extremely close they are, this is a very very rare phenomenon. The two planets will almost overlap, forming a ‘double planet’.
According to the Colorado Springs Astronomical Society, we haven’t been able to actually see them this close since 1226. And we won’t see them this close again for many decades. The pair will set around an hour and a half after the sun does.
The planets will then begin to separate when viewed from Earth, and will disappear completely from the sky. The pair will reappear in early 2021.
The Winter Solstice marks the longest night and shortest day of the year. The Winter Solstice marks the astronomical start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and the start of the astronomical summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
Now what is the spiritual significance of the Winter Solstice? This is obviously different for every religion, every practice, and each individual person.
For many cultures, the Winter Solstice marks a powerful energetic transition between the seasons.
According to Forever Conscious, “The winter solstice celebrates the longest hours of darkness or the rebirth of the sun and is believed to hold a powerful energy for regeneration, renewal and self-reflection. In Pagan times the winter solstice was referred to as Yule and was a celebration of the Goddess (Moon) energy. It was believed that on this day, the moon would give birth to the sun.”
Our spiritual journeys have phases, just like phases of the Sun. By celebrating the Sun, and aligning our cycles with it, our spirit is going to receive an increase of inspiring energy. There will be a raise in vibrations and Light, to help you progress along your spiritual path.
The other important part of the Solstice is to celebrate the darkness. In winter everything lies dormant. This is a necessary time of rest and reflection. The energy of winter is that of going within yourself.
Many people push away negative and dark emotions, just like they try to push away winter and darkness. However when we fear our own darkness, we are limiting our own personal power. Darkness is an important part of our journey, and it helps with transformation and growth. Experiencing and feeling our own dark thoughts, energies, and emotions, will help our Light emerge.
The Winter Solstice is essentially linked with a personal awakening.
Even if you don’t consider yourself religious or spiritual, this is still a time of quiet energy. It still gives you an incredible opportunity to look within and focus on your wants and needs.
There are many ways to celebrate the Solstice. Even if you don’t want to do a big ritual or tradition, I encourage you to spend some time reflecting. Turn the lights off, embrace the darkness, and go within yourself. Think about your past, your present, and what you want for the future.
After some quiet reflection time, light a candle and grab a pen and paper. Write down what you felt and thought.
Your thoughts, your emotions, your goals, your dreams.
What do you want to achieve? Where do you see yourself? What needs to change? What do you want for this upcoming season/year?
Don’t be hard on yourself. Let things go that no longer serve you. Be optimistic about your future. | https://medium.com/@jessithedreamer/today-december-21st-marks-the-2020-winter-solstice-36c11649ccf5 | ['Jessi The Dreamer'] | 2020-12-22 02:01:20.879000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Growth', 'Spiritual Awakening', 'Winter', 'Winter Solstice'] |
Is Social Media making us more Narcissistic? | With the Snapchat filters guarding your extrinsic values, and people sitting across dinner tables checking Facebook rather than having face-to-face conversations, we are living in an increasingly narcissistic society. This aspect of Social Media has compelled individuals to present an unrealistic portrait of themselves.
Narcissism is a term that can be used in a variety of ways — from the throwaway insult to a personality characteristic that seems to suffuse all of a person’s behaviours, to a full-blown personality disorder. A narcissist — puts forward a pathetic display of pompous self-adulation, and possess a highly inflated view of oneself. The essential question here is that: Is Social Media apposing us to Narcissism?
The answer is from a research, conducted in many laboratories is, almost certainly, “yes” — but with lots of caveats! Over the last couple of years, a plethora of research has been pouring in that makes connections between Facebook and narcissism. Studies are consistently finding that people who score higher on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire tend to have more friends on Facebook, tag themselves more often in photos and update their statuses more frequently. And, this does hold true for other popular platforms as well.
While in general, Social Media platforms encourage Self-promotion, people often utilize it “to look important, look special, and to gain attention and status and self-esteem .” Well, be it selecting more attractive photos of oneself as profile pictures, or populating our Instagram feed with the most captivating bits of our lives, individuals isolate themselves from the true sense of self.
With an overwhelming exigency for grandiose feelings of self- importance, the need for power and admiration, and dwelling on one’s achievements and appearance, individuals are quite often, mistaken with the difference between self-esteem and narcissism, the former one being regarded as a more positive and healthier trait. Not only does the lack of accomplishment and craving for a quick-fame drive an individual towards a narcissistic behaviour, but also it exacerbates the mental health.
Younger generations being easy targets, are exhibiting higher rates of hyperactivity disorders, and the petty reasons like inability to click perfect selfie leading to consternation. While “Friends” bragging about their perfect ‘social’ lives has been a headache for many, cyber-crimes and cyber-stalking have reached unbreachable heights. Studies have also shown how narcissists tend to exert more power and hence, end up involving themselves in vulnerable crimes.
Although social media and narcissism are inter-linked, it surely has served as a string that has woven the world together into a masterpiece. Also, the fact that many Narcissists are successful social media creators can’t be overlooked. They surely have played an important role in building the networks and platforms that have transformed the meaning of life. The question about social media, being the perfect connector or a clear and present danger remains unanswered.
Perhaps, we should rather focus on how we can turn back the dial and use it in a more ‘self-friendly’ way, that endorses compassion, self -esteem and respect. It is the need of the hour to focus on one’s mental well-being. The solution to fostering a less narcissistic generation is to instil a healthy sense of ‘true self- esteem’ amongst individuals, and prioritizing ‘true self–love’ and compassion.
Adore yourself, accept yourself most imperfectly, confide in yourself the deepest fears and insecurities, but don’t indulge in displaying yourself in the most ideal ways; because ‘the most ideal situation’ tends to exist only in figments of one’s imagination. Instead, work on ‘SELF-LOVE’ and not “self — adulation”.
Imbibe in you that confidence which will never fail you, the courage to accept the slightest fault in yourself and the determination to continue on the path. Media publicity can be ephemeral, that this ‘short- time glory’, might yield the worst of results, mentally and socially — and that’s the reason to invest in yourself, to showcase your inner true self, to gain that self-reliance, which might sometimes fail to impress, but will help express you in the best way!
Find out how the generation of today use social media to voice their opinions to the world!
Article Originally Published at: The Teen Pop | https://medium.com/@theteenpop/is-social-media-making-us-more-narcissistic-5aa82ef53923 | ['The Teen Pop'] | 2020-07-19 06:13:57.472000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Snapchat', 'Narcissism', 'Narcissistic Abuse', 'Social'] |
How to Change the Colour of Your Bash Prompt on Mac | How to Change the Colour of Your Bash Prompt on Mac
The syntax is different on macOS Catalina than other *NIX systems.
Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash
If you spend many hours a day working on the command line, readability quickly becomes an issue. Even for the most minimalist of users, a splash of colour can be useful for keeping track of individual commands.
Your Bash prompt lives in a variable called PS1. To see what your Bash prompt contains now, type echo $PS1 after the prompt. Mine looks like this (the default for macOS Catalina):
$ echo $PS1
\h:\W \u\$
Here, \h is the host name, \W is the current directory and \u\ is the current user. You can change the arrangement of these variables, called prompt escapes. This is what the prompt from above looks like in practice:
Machine:~ janedoe$
Now let’s change this prompt. First, save your current prompt in case you mess up and check if it has saved to the local environment.
$ oldprompt=$PS1
$ echo $oldprompt
\h:\W \u\$
To add colour to the prompt, you need to start painting a colour over your text. Bash needs to know when to start painting the colour, and when to stop. This is done by using the following syntax:
\[\033[x;ym\]FEATURE_TO_COLOUR\[\033[0m\]
Where x is the weight of the text (x is 1 for bold and 0 for regular, also 4 for underline) and y is the colour. For example, here is that the first portion of the code above should look like for these main colours:
\[\033[0;30m\] # Black
\[\033[0;31m\] # Red
\[\033[0;32m\] # Green
\[\033[0;33m\] # Yellow
\[\033[0;34m\] # Blue
\[\033[0;35m\] # Purple
\[\033[0;36m\] # Cyan
\[\033[0;37m\] # White
The FEATURE_TO_COLOUR is your prompt escape to colour, for example \u\ for user. Finally, the end portion of the code should remain unchanged. It tells Bash that you want to stop the colour there.
Be mindful of any spaces! They will show up in your prompt. Use them wisely.
For example, I will choose to colour my username janedoe from the example above red and leave everything else unchanged. Here is the command:
$ export PS1=”\h:\W \[\033[1;31m\]\u\\[\033[0m\]$ ”
Compare to what is used to look like:
\h:\W \u\$
All I did was enclose the user \u\ in the colour tags. Congratulations! Your username is now red. | https://medium.com/macoclock/how-to-change-the-colour-of-your-bash-prompt-on-mac-b06032543353 | ['Denisa Blackwood'] | 2020-11-26 06:16:39.514000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Technology', 'Bash', 'iOS App Development', 'Software Development'] |
My First Long Distant Relationship | The Proposal
One day while we were chatting, she confessed that she likes me. Hearing that was unbelievable as no one said that to me, ever. This made me thrilled. I asked,
“So what do you consider me now?”
On which she replied, “Boyfriend.”
I don’t know what went through my mind, but I texted her, “You didn’t ask me out.”
This message made her embarrassed, and well, she proposed if I want to be her boyfriend.
I cried with tears of joy and replied to her yes.
I was innocent and dumb, didn’t realize what was about to come.
Our First Call
Everything changed after she became my girlfriend. I felt happier and more loved. She appreciated me more and called me in sweetest way possible. Being in love was the best feeling ever. Now we talked on call. I was very nervous, less confident and shy as well because I rarely spoke English.
I remember it was exactly 11 am in Pakistan when she called me on Snap chat. I picked up the call instantly and there was pin drop silence. After a few minutes passed, I said “Hello.” softly. I heard an exquisite voice say, “Hey dear, how are you?”. My girlfriend’s voice was soft as silk that it melted my heart.
After asking each other how we were, we talked about how we met and relived old memories. Before our call ended, we both expressed love to each other. Our conversation lasted for an hour.
“We were together even when we were apart.” — Shannon A. Thompson
Days passed by, our long distant relationship strengthened regularly. We would talk on call all night long. If one of us wasn’t feeling good, the other would comfort and help each other feel better. If my girlfriend needed help in studies, I would help her instantly as I was a senior in education than her.
Two months passed, we had a month relationship ceremony twice. We both recorded videos in which we spoke few words and expressed our love for each other. I couldn’t believe that my relationship is of two months. Though it was an online long distant relationship, but it was my first one, I had to make sure I don’t make any mistakes and listen to everything my girlfriend has to say.
What could be better for a guy like me? Long distant relationship was working fantastic for me, I never felt so loved before. There were some important things which I didn’t realize and regretted after such as education. Even though I encouraged Mariam to study harder and helped her when she needed, I stopped studying properly like I used to as I got distracted.
I never thought of how painful love can be.
In the third’s midst month of our relationship, I received a message from Mariam’s Google Hangout. The message comprising threats and abusive language. The sender wrote to never contact Mariam again. It shocked me. It was very difficult to accept the message. I tried to contact Mariam by texting and calling her on all of her social media accounts. But there was no response.
I was out of breath.
A day passed, I stayed up the whole night waiting for her reply. Another day passed, and I was still up. By the third day, I was so exhausted that I slept while I was laying down. A week passed, and I got no response from my girlfriend. After 9 days, I got a text from a random account.
“Hey babe. It’s me. Sorry I wasn’t able to talk to you because I got caught. I am grounded for a while, I am not sure when we will talk.”
Reading her message comforted me to some extent. I texted her back. She was offline by then.
Few days after her message, I got in touch with her best friend. She connected me and Mariam on a phone call. We talked for two minutes in which she told that her parents beat her up. All I could do was support her mentally, as I wasn’t present there. That is the worst cons of a long distant relationship.
After four days, she got in touch with me and told me she secretly bought a phone. By now it has been four months of our relationship. We stayed together, and I didn’t even think of breaking up during the time she was away. We didn’t celebrate third month anniversary because of the bad time she had. | https://medium.com/@boldoli-khizor/my-first-long-distant-relationship-72c18a5f3f4a | ['Syed Zaidi'] | 2020-12-18 07:59:22.497000+00:00 | ['Breakups', 'Dating', 'Relationships', 'Online Dating', 'Love'] |
Blocking and Non-Blocking Operations In Nodejs | In this article, we try to provide you a detailed illustration of the difference between blocking and non-blocking calls in Nodejs. This blog will refer to the event loop and libuv.
BLOCKING AND NON-BLOCKING IN NODEJS
A blocking or non-blocking operating model is a process that deals with input/output operations.
Reading from a source or writing to a resource is considers as an I/O operations. “I/O” refers to the interaction with the system’s disk and network supported by libuv module.
On the other hand, the random-access memory (RAM) has the ability to access files from any location in the same amount of time irrespective of its physical location. This memory can be addressed quickly and doesn’t require waiting. So accessing memory is not considered as an I/O operation.
The most common tasks carried out by most of the developers is File I/O, this fundamental process has three processes:
Open a File.
Read its contents and print.
Executing something.
BLOCKING
A Blocking term is originally originated from the operating system process model. It is actually a multitasking operating system, each labeled process with a state depending on how ready those processes are to be put on the CPU for execution.
When JavaScript execution in the Nodejs process has to wait until a Non-JavaScript operation to complete is called blocking.
A process is labeled as blocked if it is not ready for execution. So it will wait for an event to occur. Each Input/Output event indicates either progress or completion in an I/O operation.
Performing a blocking system call forces the entire process to enter into the blocked state.
Let’s see how this can be done with blocking code in Nodejs:
Here we try to read simple files: hosts and users and printing their contents, meanwhile printing a few welcome messages.
BLOCKING/SYNCHRONOUS CODE :
Contents of the hosts file :
190.158.0.1 173.0.1.1 205.250.255.0
Contents of users file :
paul smith dog Snake var fs = require('fs'); var contents = fs.readFileSync('users','utf8'); console.log(contents); console.log("Welcome Node
"); var contents = fs.readFileSync('hosts','utf8'); console.log(contents); console.log(“Welcome again!”);
Let’s see the output down here for Blocking/Synchronous code :
paul smith dog Snake Welcome Node 190.158.0.1 173.0.1.1 205.250.255.0 Welcome again!
By relating to the output code, we may come to know about some major points:
It’s a blocking code
We see the contents of the user file, the ‘Welcome Node’ strongly support the above point.
The same happens with the next file.
NON BLOCKING
A non-blocking operation in Node js does not wait for I/O to complete. Whenever a blocking operation happens in the process, all other operations will put on hold at the operating system level. Performing such non-blocking I/O operation, the process continues to run in the non-blocking mechanism.
A non-blocking call initiates the operation and leaves it for OS to complete returning immediately without any results.
Let’s see how this can be done with non-blocking code in Nodejs:
Here we try to read simple files: hosts and users and printing their contents, meanwhile printing a few welcome messages.
Read: What is callback function in Node.js?
NON BLOCKING/ASYNCHRONOUS CODE:
Contents of the host’s file :
190.158.0.1 173.0.1.1 205.250.255.0
Contents of users file :
paul smith dog Snake var fs = require('fs'); var contents = fs.readFile('./users','utf8', function(err,contents){ console.log(contents); }); console.log("Welcome Node
"); var contents = fs.readFile('./hosts','utf8', function(err,contents){ console.log(contents); }); console/log(“Welcome again”);
Let’s see the output down here for Non-blocking or Asynchronous code :
Welcome Node Welcome again! paul smith dog Snake 190.158.0.1 173.0.1.1 205.250.255.0
By comparing with the previous sync code output, we can conclude the below points with async code :
The above-executed codes show a non-blocking output
CONCLUSION
We hope that this blog helped you in a good way. Still, confused with the process? Please Contact our Nodejs experts for more details regarding the development process. | https://ecommerce-consultant.medium.com/blocking-and-non-blocking-operations-in-nodejs-c30d5208e50 | ['Haribabu Gopal'] | 2020-08-14 09:29:47.981000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'JavaScript', 'Node Js Tutorial', 'Node Js Development'] |
Encrypted Data: The Battle for Security and Speed | As Intuit evolves into an AI-driven expert platform, solving for sensitive data at scale across organizational lines becomes more critical than ever. In this article, we will discuss the evolution of Intuit’s approach to encryption and data protection, as seen from the eyes of the team responsible for those capabilities.
Motivation
Customer Obsession is one of Intuit’s core values, and even though we are an internal team, developing platform capabilities to be used by engineers, it is still very much a guiding principle in everything we do. One method we use to truly understand our customers, their needs and wants is called “Follow Me Home”, a practice in which we simply observe the customers as they interact with our products, in their “natural habitat”. Every source of confusion or frustration, every direction that isn’t evidently clear is something that we take a note of, and make sure to fix going forward.
During our recent sessions with analysts, engineers, and data scientists, we discovered a common obstacle: oftentimes the data they were trying to use was produced by a service outside of their immediate reach and identifying the original data owner was an onerous, manual task, full of tribal knowledge.
At Intuit we take pride in being great stewards of our customers’ data, and we work hard to ensure it is used for the express benefit of powering the prosperity of those customers, which is why there is an approval process for granting access that must be followed by the data owner before a data scientist can have access.
Even after the data owner is identified, and the approval granted, there is an additional hurdle in the way when the data is encrypted, which as you can guess happens quite often. Allowing access to the encryption key protecting this data is another manual operation, ripe with errors and back and forth communication.
We knew we had to do better.
At a high level, this is the step-by-step solution we had in mind:
An analyst finds an interesting dataset, part of which is encrypted. They don’t know who generated it and therefore, who to ask for access or how to decrypt it. They send this encrypted data to a dedicated attribution service that identifies which team encrypted it, which encryption keys were used, and requests access. The identified data owner approves this request, which generates a unique access policy, and provides it back to the analyst. The analyst can now decrypt the data and use it.
Steps 2–4 can and eventually will be automated. | https://medium.com/intuit-engineering/encrypted-data-the-battle-of-security-and-speed-c682d4766fe4 | ['Gleb Keselman'] | 2020-12-08 09:48:01.674000+00:00 | ['Security', 'Encryption', 'Infrastructure', 'Platform'] |
How to do usability testing for your design | Usability Testing is also known as User Experience(UX) Testing, is a testing method for measuring how easy and user-friendly a software application is. A small set of target end-users, use a software application to expose usability defects. Usability testing mainly focuses on the user’s ease of using application, flexibility of application to handle controls, and ability of application to meet its objectives.
Why do Usability Testing
There are many software applications/websites, which miserably fail, once launched, due to following reasons -
Where do I click next?
Which page needs to be navigated?
Which Icon or Jargon represents what?
Error messages are not consistent or effectively displayed
Session time not sufficient.
Software Engineering, Usability Testing identifies usability errors in the system early in the development cycle and can save a product from failure.
Steps to complete usability testing
There are mainly five steps involved in the complete testing process.
#1 Planning:
During this phase the goals of usability test are determined. We need to decide the functionality of your website to do thetest on it. For example, it can be a login and sign up or buy a book from your website, or post content on your website. You need to assign tasks to your testers, which exercise these critical functionalities.
#2 Recruiting:
During this phase, you recruit the desired number of testers as per your usability test plan. Finding testers who match your demographic (age, sex etc.) and professional ( education, job etc.) profile can take time.
#3 Usability testing:
For this phase, you just require a room with a desk, chair, camera and microphone. A person will remain with the tester in case the tester gets stuck at the point when he/she needs help to come out of the situation. Tester needs to think loudly while testing your website. The session must be recorded so that later we can refer it in case we miss something while the session.
#4 Result analysis:
Data from usability tests are thoroughly analyzed to derive meaningful inferences and give actionable recommendations to improve the overall usability of your product. The whole design team should be involved in this phase to give their feedbacks and point out the problem they found out in testing.
#5 Reporting/Fixing:
Each problem finding are given a priority. According to the priority, we solve the problems and update the design.
Methods of Usability Testing
Laboratory Usability Testing:. This testing is conducted in a separate lab room in presence of the observers. The testers are assigned tasks to execute. The role of the observer is to monitor the behavior of the testers and report the outcome of testing. The observer remains silent during the course of testing. In this testing, both observers and testers are present in a same physical location.
Remote Usability Testing: Under this testing observers and testers are remotely located. Testers access the System Under Test, remotely and perform assigned tasks. Tester’s voice , screen activity , testers facial expressions are recorded by an automated software. Observers analyze this data and report findings of the test.
Usability Testing Advantages
It helps uncover usability issues before the product is marketed.
It helps improve end-user satisfaction
It makes your system highly effective and efficient
It helps gather true feedback from your target audience who actually use your system during a usability test. You do not need to rely on “opinions” from random people.
Conclusion
Many organizations don't give much time on usability testing or schedule it at the end of the project. It will result in the target user doesn't satisfy with your design and struggle to use your design.
What I suggest is always give equal importance to usability testing and do it every step of your design process so that it will give you enough time to work on the results of testing. At the end It will come out as a perfect design for your targeted audience. | https://medium.com/@gadhiaamish/how-to-do-usability-testing-for-your-design-44adc4ed0dc3 | ['Amish Gadhia'] | 2021-05-16 06:26:05.134000+00:00 | ['Ui Ux Design', 'Usability', 'Usability Testing', 'User Experience'] |
Bigot or Brilliant: Why I Champion Chappelle’s Comedy | Photo Courtesy of Netflix
To say that people are upset would be a gross understatement. In all of my 30 years, I have yet to witness a moment of public outrage across the board like this one. There wasn’t this much anger when Kanye West uttered his ill-fated thoughts at the TMZ headquarters and affectively severed his fading reputation with most of black America. Nor was there this much anger when scores of famous celebrities found themselves embroiled in sexual assault cases galore as time progressed. The ensuing scandals from black celebrities over the last few years have caused mini earthquakes on the Richter scale of anger from the black consensus, but none of these actions by and large have generated the anger that Dave Chappelle’s newest comedy special Sticks & Stones has over the last week and a half. A continuation of his last special, Dave takes aim at a number of issues most people let alone comedians dare to tackle, which include the cancel culture trend in our society as well as the increased scrutiny of people who don’t speak highly of the LGTBQ community. While the lines for many are clearly divided, I find myself straddling the fence for a number of reasons.
Disclaimer: I am a die-hard fan of Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy. I can appreciate the talent of Dave Chappelle but I am by no means a Stan.
First, I feel as if Dave’s decision to address the criticism he faced over his last documentary shows an artistic freedom that we must protect. Comedy used to be one of the few places where society by at large could be examined and also criticized. The blurred lines between being offensive and being introspective are what makes comedy a safe place for comics to express themselves. His fearlessness in tackling these issues and his decision to make light of people’s perception of his character is what we would praise any other entertainer for. For example,when people mistakenly assume that Serena is an aggressive black woman for her decision to be vocal on issues both on and off the court, we champion it because, in the end, she reserves the right to define herself. Obviously, the comparison I am making is tied to how public perception shapes the narrative for a person. Dave for all his problems reserves the right to say whether or not he is truly a bigot. For all intents and purpose, I believe he is a jerk moreso than a bigot. Nuisances are key.
However, I also know that artistic freedom comes responsibility. I don’t think that being brave about your art means that the art is good. I wouldn’t go as far as calling his comedy outdated in the way some people have, but I will say that the show was more shocking than funny. Alas, I am slightly biased, but I will give credit when it is due. The controversy has overshadowed the show itself and has led many to hastily proclaim it greatness without it going through the true test of time. Raw by Eddie Murphy is the greatest not only because of its numbers then but also because of how it stacks up now. Also, I think that whether people will admit it or not, there is an unspoken understanding that the jokes that he tells are only forgiven because of the cult-like status he obtained for the Chappelle show. To further explain my point, I will say this: We give people the ability to decide what’s ethical and right based on how much we personally like them, myself included. What we fail to acknowledge though is that just because it was said, doesn’t mean it was proper. It just means it was sanctioned. Nuisance once again.
While I will admit I think that the LGTBQ community has a legitimate reason to be upset, I take offense with people suggesting that if a person from this community did a special taking aim at black heterosexual men there would be uproar. I think that the statement fails to take into effect the sweeping changes our society is undergoing. We live in a time more than ever where people are forced to confront the miseducation they’ve been subjected to, a time where people are beginning to consciously shift their thinking to receive it, and a time where the new counter thought is to hold a different opinion about the LGTBQ community. Anything other than blatant acceptance is deemed bigotry. On one hand, the violence and hatred the LGTBQ community faces daily are reinforced by negative and hateful ideas. Contrastingly, how can we maintain a democracy when people’s right to express their views are limited and people are forced to be perfect in 140 characters or in a one hour special on Netflix?
Ultimately, I can see why people are angry. It’s justified. It’s not unlike the anger Richard Pryor and other comedians encountered during their day and time. Nor is it unlike the anger Tupac incurred from Dan Quayle and C Delores Tucker for their music and the violent messages they promoted. What I do know is there is a thin line between genius and insanity. We applaud whichever one favors us. | https://www.thefreedomofthought.com/bigot-or-brilliant-why-i-champion-chappelles-comedy-72e49ed156d9 | ['Solomon Hillfleet'] | 2019-09-04 13:34:58.236000+00:00 | ['Takeaways', 'Comedy', 'TV', 'Race', 'Entertainment'] |
Hackathons: Major Success. | First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Malak Abdeldayem and I am a freshman at a STEM high school in Baltimore, Maryland.
I would like to start by wishing everyone safety and security in these uncertain times. I know that TechTogether gets hackers from all over the world, and many countries are still deeply agonized by this pandemic.
My experience with hackathons.
Hackathons seemingly dropped from the sky out of nowhere. I first learned about hackathons from one of my teachers. In return for attending a hackathon, she gave us job shadow credit. At first, I was thinking “What on earth is a hackathon??”.
In the end, I decided to go through encouragement from my teacher. It was comforting to know she was mentoring at the hackathon as well.
At the hackathon, I had so much fun going to the workshops and panels. It was a memorable experience. Then I kind of slept on hackathons till I found myself getting a ticket for PreHacks New York, TechTogether new high school program for conquering your fear of hackathons and learning new coding skills. At PreHacks New York, I gained a better understanding of hackathons and gained confidence in my computer science skills. In fact, I was even more prepared for my second hackathon than my first one. This encouraged me to sign up for Tech Together New York.
What advice do you have for those thinking about attending TechTogether New York?
Give it your all. Hackathons are a wonderful (also very much free) enriching opportunity to be a better scientist, engineer, programmer, and more. The short 45-minute workshops hackathons offer could benefit you for the rest of your life.
If it’s not in you to find your teammates by reaching out, attend a team formation event! You have nothing to lose if you go, but much to gain. If you end up being in a team and making an awesome project (even if you don’t place), you will undoubtedly have made the most out of the event. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reach out to the organizers, mentors, and sponsors, connections are very beneficial to your career.
What did you learn during the program that you didn’t expect? What misconceptions did you have about hackathons that proved to be untrue?
That is a tough one, I have to say it would have to be the Ethics and Governance in Artificial Intelligence Presented by MASSMUTUAL. When I first saw that workshop, I was really surprised by the content. I would have never expected to discuss AI like that. I was glad that I attended that workshop.
Some misconceptions that I had about hackathons was about who was welcome and attended these events. What were their skill sets? What kind of education does everyone have? Will I be able to fit into everyone’s standards? Honestly, I was just plain overthinking it. Anyone can attend a hackathon and have a great time.
Did you feel like TechTogether New York was a safe space?
Yes. I can’t stress enough how safe and supervised the Discord servers were by the awesome event organizers. They always checked in on everyone and had fun interactive polls to see how everyone was doing.. Not to mention how nice and supportive all the hackers were to one another. I felt comfortable reaching out and participating in the various Discord channels!!
Did you build a project? What was that like?
Ahhh. Yes I did, my first actually! I had awesome teammates who supported me every step of the way. We split the work fairly. I had never used any of the platforms we used, so I had to try to learn as much as I can in very limited hours. Luckily, my team was very understanding of my skill sets.
For our project, I helped with writing, designing, picking color palettes, and more. For our project, we ended up making a website named Pinkie Pals. It connected senior adults to teenagers to chat and share skill sets online! Sadly we didn’t place, but we had a lot of fun making a project!
Did you form a team? How did you form a team? What was it like working with a team virtually for the weekend? Was team formation as scary as you thought it would be?
I used PreHacks New York to my advantage and formed a team then. I reached out to some people, some were already teamed up and ready to go, but I met two awesome and hard workers through some branching out and teamed up with them!
Lucky for me, my teammates were very responsive. A little tip though, always make sure your teammates respond when necessary because time will fly by. When I reached out, I had kept my mind open, knowing that I might be not suitable for some, but most definitely suitable for others. If you get rejected, it’s fine! There are many more team spots!!
Who did you meet at TechTogether New York? What was it like meeting people?
I met some TechTogether New York organizers, the Executive Director of TechTogether (shout out to Fiona for dealing with me for 48+ hours), and my wonderful teammates, Savannah and Pauline! I also attended some of the activities and got to play among us with many cool hackers! It was really fun connecting with everyone. Everyone was so kind and such sweethearts!
What did you do during the program? Did you attend workshops? Which workshop was your favorite?
I worked on our project, attended some workshops, and activities. My favorite workshop was Intro to JavaScript. It felt good to brush up on my skills in the language. I really enjoyed playing Among Us every night. I also enjoyed the movie nights!
What were your takeaways from the weekend? Do you plan on attending hackathons in the future, if so which ones?
My major takeaways were how to make mockups and how to set up myself to make successful projects. I enjoyed TTNY very much and will hope to come back every year! I am definitely attending TechTogether hackathons in the future!!! Seattle, Boston, Hobbyhacks, New York, whatever I find!
Stay safe! | https://medium.com/techtogether/hackathons-major-success-23d8645c3dd5 | ['Malak Abdeldayem'] | 2020-12-20 21:02:45.575000+00:00 | ['High School', 'Beginners Guide', 'Hackathons', 'Women In Tech', 'Girls In Tech'] |
How to deal with burnout at work | Burnout — the complete mental, emotional, and often physical exhaustion brought on by long term work related stress — is a more serious and widespread issue than you might realise.
According to a 2020 Gallup survey of full time employees, when asked how often participants experienced burnout:
48% answered sometimes.
21% answered always.
That means the majority of full-time employees — nearly seven in ten people — experience burnout because of work at least some of the time.
The pressure to address this has become so important that in 2019 the World Health Organization upgraded burnout to “ an occupational phenomenon “.
Why people burnout — the top 5 causes:
As workplaces become increasingly demanding and fast-paced, many employees feel overwhelmed by competing demands, unreasonable expectations and a tidal wave of communications.
Technology is at least partly to blame — being always on means the lines between home and work life are blurred — leading to long hours in front of screens without switching off.
Post-pandemic, with the surge in people working remotely from home, your team members are at greater risk of burnout now more than ever.
According to research by Gallup, there are five factors that correlate most highly with burnout:
Lack of manager support
Employees who feel supported by their manager are about 70% less likely to experience burnout. Your support as a manager provides a psychological buffer, which helps your team know you have their back when challenges come up or something goes wrong for them.
2. Unmanageable workload
Even high-performing colleagues can quickly shift from optimistic to hopeless when they’re struggling with unmanageable expectations and an overwhelming workload.
3. Unreasonable time pressure
Unreasonable deadlines and pressure can create a snowball effect: when people miss one overly aggressive deadline, they fall behind on the next thing on their to-do list.
4. Unfair treatment
If others get more praise or help than they do, this can make burnout more likely because it breaks trust. When team members do not trust their teammates, or do not trust you as their manager, or do not trust leadership, the psychological bond that makes work meaningful can be broken, affecting attitudes and engagement and creating more stress.
5. Unclear communication from managers
Unless you’re giving them the information needed to do the job effectively, people’s work becomes more difficult and frustrating.
What can you do about it
As a manager, the most impactful thing you can do to stop burnout happening in your team is to discuss with them which of the above factors are affecting them and work with them on how to spot the fires and put them out in time.
It may be that you’ll need to have a difficult conversation, or work on resolving some dysfunctional culture together.
It may be that you’ll need to adopt new behaviours and processes.
Here’s 3 behaviour changes that can help your team deal with burnout:
Getting clear about priorities
Saying no and setting boundaries
Changing and reframing mindsets
1. Getting clear about priorities
Sometimes we are not the best judge of what is important, but talking with colleagues can help us get clearer.
For example, you might be making assumptions about what other people are expecting:
If you don’t check when someone asks you to do something — why they need it and what the end goal is — you might miss that it might not be best met by the task they’re asking you to do.
And if you don’t ask when they’ll next be working on it — you may feel you need to do it sooner than is necessary, unnecessarily adding to your current pressure and workload.
When people are overwhelmed they are more likely just to do the task than question what is most helpful.
One way to overcome this is to do an exercise such as Project Mapping together.
Project Mapping is a planning tool that helps you work out what you all have on your plate and what to prioritise.
It is a way of tracking everything, deciding what you are not going to do, and progressing the most important things.
The idea is to capture every task and project you’re involved with on cards — one thing per card — then sort the cards into appropriate areas of focus and responsibility, and work out priorities.
Once you have decided on the priorities you can get clear on what the next steps are. We recommend you work out what the next actionable step is for each task or project and then schedule it in your calendar.
This is really helpful because:
A small amount of time upfront makes tasks and projects more manageable and much easier to make progress on.
Identifying the smallest next step makes it easier to get started.
Using upfront thinking helps you work out what to do — making work less stressful.
For more info on Project Mapping — have a look at our new e-course: Prioritising the Right Things.
Project Mapping helps you work out priorities.
2. Saying no and setting boundaries
It’s important that people know they can say no and set boundaries, for example by having clear start and end times (which can be flexible if your colleagues are clear about it), and stopping work at a set time like six o’clock and not carrying on just because you or they can.
It is also about taking breaks between tasks and meetings, making sure you take annual leave, and a proper lunch break!
Setting boundaries is everyone’s personal responsibility but you also have a responsibility as a manager to model it and empower them to do it.
Why boundaries are important
There’s a thing about work: it never ends, and there is never enough time to do it all.
This is important because until people realise it, they are at risk: trying to do everything leads to a destructive cycle of stress, letting other people down and eventually burnout.
The busier you get the less time you can devote to thinking or planning, which leads to more reactivity and overwhelm.
One part of the solution is to create some structure and plan your work. This helps you manage your capacity and provide a solid basis for agreeing to new work or not.
We recommend you use your calendar to get a visual reference of your capacity — so you can be better informed about what new things you can take on.
Another part of the solution is to schedule breaks — stepping away can help you see things more clearly.
It’s important to work out what you are and you are not going to do, and to prioritise what’s more important over what’s less so — doing this as a team, for example using Project Mapping, means you can decide what’s important and what to pause, together.
Saying No
Many people struggle with saying no. Saying no can be scary for many reasons — especially if you are junior and don’t wish to be seen as unhelpful or incompetent.
Yet you cannot say yes to everything. The consequences of that is taking on too much, unnecessary stress and burnout.
Does your team understand they can say no, and that saying no to some things means they can say yes to others? Or that overpromising and being unable to deliver causes more problems?
We are designed to do this together
At this point it’s worth pointing out that people can of course just start doing these things themselves, but some things work better when you discuss and iterate them together.
For example if you start saying no to everything without explaining to your colleagues, it might cause some issues. And sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees, someone else has to hold up the mirror (and give you permission to do it).
3. Changing your mindset and reframing your thinking
Many stress management programmes tell you to reduce the sources of your stress. That is not always possible, which can end up making you feel worse.
Another way to deal with stress is to change your mindset — the set of assumptions and beliefs that affect how you think, feel and behave. You might think you can’t choose your mindset, but you can.
Health psychologist, Kari Liebowitz is an expert in using the power of mindset to improve your health, wellbeing, and performance.
Kari spent a chunk of time in the north of Norway where it’s dark half the year, and what she discovered is that people are very happy there — the opposite of what she had expected. It didn’t seem to make any sense. Why are people happier when it’s darker? It turns out it’s because they embrace winter. They don’t see the darkness as cold and uninviting. They choose to see it as soft. It is a time for intimate, slow gatherings with friends, and for spending the long days doing craft. It is a time for sleep, rest, focus, close activity. Deciding to see it like this makes for a very different experience.
She has another example of a medical trial where the doctors gave people fake mosquito bites and then injected them with histamine. Half the trial received the injection, left and then had to report on how they felt. The other half received the injection and the doctor also said, “There you go, from now on the swelling will go down and the itching will decrease.” Which is undeniable. It’s what always happens with mosquito bites, eventually, the itching reduces and the swelling goes down. Even though this was just a spurious mollification, the people who were told the swelling would go down by the doctor experienced milder symptoms for less time than those who were just left on their own.
In both of these cases, people’s experience and their body’s physiological response was influenced by their mindset.
Reframing your thinking
Managing your mindset is not a cure-all. Some stuff is heavy going. But once you accept that you can change your mindset, and you realise that your cup of capacity is close to overflowing, you can reframe what you can in a way that is less negative.
Here’s how to do it:
Acknowledge and own your stress.
Focus on what you can control (try using the Circle of Influence tool).
Pay attention to small pleasures and emphasise the silver linings.
Don’t be over ambitious (Covid-19 may not be the time to write that novel!)
Watch what you talk about (try not to dwell on what can’t be changed or what might not happen.)
Be a ‘winter mindset’ ambassador and help yourself and others feel better.
Finally: Pressure is not all bad
This chart shows that we all get more productive with a bit of pressure.
As pressure increases, performance and productivity go up until you’re into a super-performing place. But If you keep it up for too long without any respite you can slide from super-performing into strain very easily. And then from strain, you move into burnout, and a total collapse of productivity.
This means that being stressed is not bad. Because actually, you perform better when you’re in a slightly stressed state. It’s fun. It’s exciting. You can get loads done. It’s exhilarating.
The problem is to know when you’re in strain: you have to learn the signs that it might be happening, and then don’t spend too much time there.
So just be aware that your time in the stress zone is limited. And make sure that you don’t overdo it.
Otherwise, you’ll have a catastrophic collapse of productivity.
Pay attention to yourself, and your team
As work gets more demanding it’s incumbent on managers to provide pastoral care and look out for your team — that is one of the biggest things you can do to stop your team from burning out.
Once you have an understanding of the signs, you can look out for when your’s or someone in your team’s cup is overflowing, then you can work out what to do about it.
If I start losing sleep, and wake up feeling nervous, I immediately get my notebook out and start to write things down. It helps. I discovered that by emptying my brain of all the worries and concerns, and then reprioritising, I get some sense of control back, and I sleep better.
When I’m out of control and can’t handle it anymore, writing it all down helps keep my ‘cup’ from overflowing. By doing that I’m constantly discarding things that I haven’t got room for in my cup.
You could try the same.
If you need some help with working on this — get in touch, at ThenSomehow we help you and your team build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.
If you’d like to discuss how we can help your team deal with burnout, get in touch here. | https://medium.com/then-somehow/how-to-deal-with-burnout-at-work-58aabba781ce | ['Then Somehow...'] | 2021-07-15 10:53:22.355000+00:00 | ['Wellbeing', 'Workplace Culture', 'Burnout', 'Work Life Balance', 'Saying No'] |
Fake Blood From Party City | Fake Blood From Party City
Image courtesy of Pixabay
The blank page, again. It’s so threatening because I never know if I want to speak, if my words are what I feel you’ve earned. So I only write what is an even exchange. I don’t think I’ll use the word fair — it’s too light-skinned for me.
Now, where was I?
Yesterday I cried while I was in the middle of The Nutcracker. I surrendered. I was dancing only Flowers, and everyone else had multiple roles. I just went to the bathroom and back room near the costume area and cried.
Everything became clear and in real-time in the way that real-time can be slow motion because you’ve surrendered.
Image courtesy of Giphy.com
I saw the — and won’t tell people’s lives. But I’ll just say that I felt the weight of it all. The dancers who were all in relationships, or pregnant. The dancers who were younger than me by 10+ years. Them all coming from middle class plus homes, something I never had growing up. I am not them, and yesterday, I felt like I was stuck, that I’m not seen.
The fact that I am dark-skinned and everyone else is light-skinned. This is a micro-aggression I feel from me to them sometimes, too. When I struggle to feel good enough.
I get it that I was injured and I’m still recovering. So maybe that’s it. I don’t know but I don’t fit here. It’s not my world. I cried.
So when a person comments on my poem where I bore my soul about the difficulties of getting older, and they give smiley faces and thanks for the “food for thought.” Quit the bullshit. I’m crying, and you give me smiley faces? What the fuck? | https://medium.com/@turnsofphrase_/fake-blood-from-party-city-8c14a83fde37 | ['Obinna Morton'] | 2020-12-13 05:43:27.504000+00:00 | ['Reciprocity', 'Self Improvement', 'Voice', 'Truth', 'Vulnerability'] |
Back to the Activities You Once Loved With Physical Therapy | Fitness Lab | Let Physical Therapy Help You Get Back to the Activities You Love!
Struggling To Live Life on Your Own Terms? Physical Therapy Can Help!
Your golf friends wonder if you’re ever going to join them for another nine holes. That oil painting you started way back when still awaits the finishing touches. You bought a guitar last year, but you can’t stand the thought of trying to play it. Your tennis game got rusty shortly after your elbow did the same.
Do these scenarios, or similar ones, strike a little close to home? Chronic pain, stiffness and injuries can draw strict lines governing what you can and can’t do.
It’s a situation that has been seen time and time again and that countless individuals suffer from daily. At times, the emotional pain of not being able to do the things you love with the people you love can be hurt more than the physical. Taking painkillers offers little more than a stopgap solution, while major surgery could actually set you back further instead of letting you get past your problem.
But what if I told you there is another option for returning to the activities you love and living the life you deserve? What if I told you you could skip all of the short-term solutions for your chronic pain and get to the very root of your pain and stop it in its tracks? Well, the good news is you can do all of that, and you can do it with physical therapy.
How Painful Problems Can Limit Your Freedom and Lifestyle
The human body is capable of an extraordinary range of physical actions, thanks to the muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints in your body that make motion possible. Unfortunately, this amazing structure is prone to run into problems from time to time — problems that restrict your range of motion, making even the smallest of actions too painful to contemplate.
Let’s look at how issues affecting different body parts can limit your lifestyle.
Lower extremities — Any physical activity that involves running, jumping, or even standing still can become impossible if your hips, knees, or feet are in pain. Osteoarthritis most notably affects weight-bearing joints. Another possibility could also be runner’s knee, sciatica, or plantar fasciitis.
— Any physical activity that involves running, jumping, or even standing still can become impossible if your hips, knees, or feet are in pain. Osteoarthritis most notably affects weight-bearing joints. Another possibility could also be runner’s knee, sciatica, or plantar fasciitis. Elbows and shoulders — Because of constant and repeated stress on specific parts of their bodies, athletes regularly struggle with motion injuries, bursitis, or tendinitis in the elbows or shoulders. 38 million Americans suffer from the two classic examples include golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow, two similar forms of chronic tendon damage and inflammation.
— Because of constant and repeated stress on specific parts of their bodies, athletes regularly struggle with motion injuries, bursitis, or tendinitis in the elbows or shoulders. 38 million Americans suffer from the two classic examples include golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow, two similar forms of chronic tendon damage and inflammation. Neck and back — Does your favorite activity require you to crane your neck or twist your back constantly? It may be impossible to do either if you’re suffering from a herniated disc, a strained back, overstressed neck muscles, or degenerative spinal joint issues.
— Does your favorite activity require you to crane your neck or twist your back constantly? It may be impossible to do either if you’re suffering from a herniated disc, a strained back, overstressed neck muscles, or degenerative spinal joint issues. Hands — It’s not easy to think of any artistic endeavor that doesn’t require limber hands and fingers. Arthritis can stiffen your digits to the point where you can’t play an instrument, draw, or create handicrafts. Carpal tunnel syndrome makes even holding a pen a painful and agonizing experience
The Goal of Pain-Free Function Is Attainable With Our Physical Therapists!
Physical therapy makes a natural first line of care for anyone looking to regain lost strength, dexterity, or range of motion. Many people turn to physical therapy to take away the limits imposed by chronic pain or injuries so that they can return to their favorite activities. Our physical therapist makes a point of going above and beyond physical exams and symptom evaluations, tailoring the treatment by speaking with you about your specific frustrations, limitations, goals, and hopes for relief. We can then arrange a detailed, personalized physical therapy plan that targets those ailments and objectives.
Physical therapy uses a variety of tools and strategies that work together to achieve a desired result. For example:
A combination of massage therapy, stretches, heat therapy and cold therapy can ease pain in your hands and wrists.
Strength training, chiropractic treatment, and corrective exercises may be recommended to soothe pain and prevent further injury in the neck or back.
Walking, cycling or swimming can improve the pain-free range of motion in your weight-bearing joints.
Orthotic shoe inserts can help you come back from plantar fasciitis.
With The Help Of A Physical Therapist, You Can Enjoy Your Favorite Activities Without Pain!
Chronic pain can be an unparalleled detriment to your life and the thing you want to do in it. Talking about your struggles and pain you’ve faced is the first step to taking your life back. Once you’ve taken that step, you are making a choice to not let the pain control you. Don’t settle for being a spectator where your favorite activities are concerned. Jump back into the things you love by contacting our physical therapist at the Fitness Lab for treatment today!
Sources: | https://medium.com/@hsophia848/back-to-the-activities-you-once-loved-with-physical-therapy-fitness-lab-4f2de0ec07af | [] | 2020-12-28 11:04:29.250000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Physical Therapy', 'Pain Free', 'Exercise', 'Fitness'] |
Part 2: The Fake-news Pandemic is here to stay. Can design thinking solve this issue? | by Kasturi Thakare & Aditi Bhatt
“HMW equip urban citizens of India with access, ability, knowledge, and motivation to form informed choices with a receptive mindset?”
The question is ready and intact. But another question persists.
How do we go about it?
Well, as discussed in the previous article (Part 1), we had the stark realization of how easily we are swayed by well-worded opinions and how hoards of people have risen to mutiny and violence based on fake news or half-knowledge.
But, why do people behave this way?
What makes one believe and share something?
What creates a bias in their minds? How receptive are they to different opinions?
How do they consume news? What type of news do they actually want to consume?
What drives people to take action?
Confused, eh? (Source: Google)
Our next step is to find answers to these queries.
In Part 2 of this 4 part series we discuss -
Empathizing with People — Surveys, Interviews and social experiments Analyzing Insights Transitioning to brainstorming
Empathizing with People
One of the most crucial steps in this entire study is to understand the people on a first-hand basis by taking a leap into their mindset and thinking processes with a human-centered design approach. Our primary objective, here, is the understanding of user choices and behavior regarding the type of news they consume, their belief systems, personal biases, receptivity, and motivation.
“People ignore design that ignores people.” -Frank Chimero, Designer
We use a mixture of investigative methods and tools to form an explicit understanding of the urban citizens of India. Quantitative tools are used to extract behavioral patterns of people in terms of their news consumption and sharing habits while few qualitative methods & social experiments are employed to understand the what, how, and why in rich detail that is reflective of the actual complexities of real human situations. (Cooper, Reimann, et al, 2007)
The four methods we used are:
User Surveys Personal Interviews Newspaper Experiment WhatsApp Social Experiment
User Surveys
We conducted an online survey primarily based on gaining insights into our respondents’ news consumption preferences and patterns. We received responses from 297 participants belonging to variegated age groups. The data gathered was cleaned by removal of repetitive entries and outliers prior to data visualization and analysis. The survey generated a series of insights as follows.
News Source:
It was observed that the dependence on digital news sources is more prominent in younger age groups over the older ones. The dominant role of Social media also came into the picture with 1/3rd of the respondents preferring it as the primary news source over key news sources like newspapers & TV news channels.
2. Awareness:
Source: Author
We even tried to analyze the degree of awareness of the public regarding current affairs based on prevailing news. Well, it was pretty astounding to observe that important Indian news that directly impacts the public like, the EIA Draft notification and the National Digital Health Mission were neglected during the timeline of the Sushant Singh Rajput death case (late Indian Bollywood actor). Surprisingly, very few respondents are aware of relevant news corresponding to health, employment, and social activism in the country.
3. Reliability:
Though people perceive newspapers and TV news channels to be more reliable yet they tend to use Social media as their primary source of news. Also, the old age group finds its primary news source extremely reliable and accurate.
4. Sharing behavior:
Social media has also become a major platform to share news along with availing it due to ease in sharing and wide outreach yet many people still indulge in personal discussions to share and receive news. Currently, WhatsApp forward is a chief news and info sharing platform with the 45+ age group being the most active.
5. Fake news:
Source: Author
The degree of awareness of fake news is not so satisfactory as more than 40% of the respondents assert that they have never or rarely come across fake or conspicuous news.
6. The motivation of Action:
Source: Author
A concerning insight is that over 50% of the people do not report news which they find fake or suspicious on Social media. Additionally, this behavior encompasses an age-based relationship as the tendency to report reduces with increasing age.
In-depth interviews
After having mustered a series of observations through the online survey, we delved deeper to discern the reasons behind such user behavior and perceptions through semi-structured interviews with individuals belonging to diverse age groups.
Source: Google
Interestingly, user behavior varies significantly across different age groups in terms of receptivity, awareness, reliability, and motivation. However, Social media is a major source of information across all age groups and very few of them follow the fact-checking process before sharing news on social media. Also, a salient pattern emerges in the interviews as the receptivity in people tends to reduce with an increase in age.
18–35 years
Social media is their newspaper, memes their columns, and influencers their news anchors! However, this age group is relatively more active in recognizing fake news, especially on WhatsApp. As compared to other age groups, youngsters have a highly receptive and logical mindset. They bear the desire to stay aware and create change but do not really know how to!
35–45 years
WhatsApp and Facebook are their permanent roommates who give them minute updates! However, this age group holds little receptive attitude as compared to the following. An interesting discovery is that the female homemakers heavily rely on husband and children for the credibility of news that they come across due to self-doubt and low self-confidence.
45–60 years
The most actively updated age group, this group thinks that they could host the TV news better than the anchors! They claim to be updated about anything and everything, be it religion, social issues, or politics! Active on over 20 WhatsApp groups on average, news & information passes through this age group like a wildfire. However, they are less receptive and share news based on their own judgment and bias.
60+ years
The least receptive of all, these people do not prefer holding discussions with different-minded people and strongly feel that WhatsApp groups are good platforms for gaining and sharing news. Least informed about fake news, they strongly feel that any news is always correct and fact-checking is merely trivial.
Newspaper Experiment
So far, we developed a good understanding of “what people do and why do they do it”. Now, our very next step is to discover “what people want to do”. Curious to know what people really wish to know and further share willingly, we spent hours scrolling through countless research methods only to let out a long sigh of despair! However, a few minutes later, our brains churned out an interesting experiment!
Why not let people design their own newspaper!
Source: Google
Role Play!
Well, a bunch of subjects of all age groups was selected for this experiment wherein they were asked to play the role of an editor of a daily national with a task to design the front page of the newspaper.
We provided the subjects with a blank newspaper-like sheet along with 20 news samples. The news pieces were all similar in size to avoid bias and were composed of news headlines and associated images while dummy text took over the content. All the subjects were asked to go through the given news samples and select the ones that they would like to publish for the readers and thereafter draw boxes on the given sheet as per their preferred sizes.
Source: Author
However, these participants were guided to draw larger boxes for news that they find important and place them in the center and towards the top while less significant ones can be small or/ and positioned down. We even ensured that the folks think out loud throughout the experiment while engaging them in conversations to know their thoughts and beliefs behind selecting some news and dropping others.
Source: Author
Indeed, it turned out to be an engaging and interesting exercise that generated a series of insights.
1. A common perception of almost all the individuals was their preference for positive news! To be clearer, the participants preferred the news that talked about the COVID-19 recovery rate over the one with the death rate.
2. Another major finding was that the subjects actively separated out news such as that of Kangana Ranaut or the SSR suicide case, that was not directly relevant to their life.
3. Also, age turned out to be a significant parameter of news consumption as the younger age groups were concerned with development & social issue while the elderly group was heavily inclined towards political & religious content.
A Social Media Experiment
Very often we have noticed the elders of our family succumbing to the charms of fake forwards. Some of these seem utterly harmless, advising ayurvedic remedies for incurable diseases while some are along the lines of hate speech and outright lies. Some of these aim to panic and confuse us leading to political chaos while some simply want to curtail our freedom.
In our discussions, we came across a strikingly funny point of how people may be more likely to follow something if not doing so may unleash the wrath of god! We are sure all our Indian readers would’ve noticed the goddesses painted on tiles affixed on the dingy staircase to curb the infamous Indian habit of red-paan pichkari. Is goddess Lakshmi a bigger deterrent than the good ol’ ‘Yaha thookna mana hai’ or ‘Do not spit here’?
The telltale signs of a fake forward-
Jarring bright emojis vying to catch out attention Huge consequences of danger Fake names and numbers of apparent deputy collectors of the city who have issued the message in ‘public interest and safety’ An immediate call to actions Irrelevant or blurred media inciting anger or uproar
Source: Giphy
We know this, you know this, why do we still have a mammoth problem?
Who are the people more likely to be gullible and forward?
What can be done?
To better understand this and solidify our assumptions with data and research we decided to conduct a social experiment. We formulated a fake forward of our own and forwarded it to a couple of WhatsApp groups! (Kindly note that it was soon conveyed that the message is fake so as to avoid a wildfire spread)
Source: Author
These are some scenarios that played out-
The youth better understands the tell-tale signs of a fake forward Certain sections of the youth are also action-oriented and ask for proof concerning the same Family groups are more likely to believe irrespective of their demography and education Hugely populated WhatsApp groups with a slightly elder population are filled with an influx of messages every day as they want to share good and helpful news within their circle, and be seen as the first bearer of this news. It is also a way of staying connected with relatives and acquaintances. People may choose to believe certain news depending on who the sender is. A huge percent of fake forwards in India is around politics and religion (traditions and practices)
Source: Author
Analyzing Insights
After amassing bucketloads of insights from multiple methods of user study described above we listed all our insights many of which were age-specific. Similar insights were grouped under one umbrella and this is when patterns started emerging — multiple sentences that indicated one direction
Source: Author
3. The six categories that were now apparent were- | https://medium.com/jab-jago-tab-savera/part-2-the-fake-news-pandemic-is-here-to-stay-can-design-thinking-solve-this-issue-c04e0791a120 | ['Aditi Bhatt'] | 2020-12-16 08:14:18.325000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Infodemic', 'Fake News', 'Social Innovation', 'UX Research'] |
Trump Revives Some Very Old Messaging On COVID-19 | Melbourne, Australia, where cases have been up recently
Trump Revives Some Very Old Messaging On COVID-19
In the beginning, the only hurdle Trump gave himself seemed to be showing he was doing better with the disease than the rest of the world
Update: Underscoring our point is this recent clip from Trump’s interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan, where Trump even now tries so hard to dig up COVID-19 numbers that make him look favorable compared to the rest of the world.
That concept quickly became ludicrous as U.S. infections soared. But it’s been creeping back into the President’s conversation in recent days, as some places overseas fight new flares of infection.
Leading the President to do things like point to a new spike in cases in part of Australia as evidence he isn’t doing too bad:
And Tweet this:
And Retweet this:
So let’s just look at Australia for a second: the state of Victoria, which contains the city of Melbourne, is counting 600–700 new cases a day recently. (That’s hundreds of people getting sick.) Compare that to Florida: averaging nearly 10,000 new cases a day. (That’s thousands of people getting sick.) And that’s with the number of people getting sick in Florida possibly plateauing recently.
And here’s what they’re doing in Melbourne for the next 6 weeks:
No one can go more than 5 kilometers from their home (about 3 miles).
Maximum of 1 person per household is allowed to go shopping each day. And they cannot go beyond that distance.
Exercise is OK, but only for one hour, and only within that same distance.
No restaurants.
Mandatory face coverings.
No groups bigger than 2.
Curfew from 8 P.M. to 5 A.M. every day.
Of course there are exceptions for certain types of work, home healthcare workers, shared parenting, escaping domestic violence and a few other things.
Still, it’s pretty stark, especially considering Victoria’s had 123 deaths, (about 1/2 of the total in Australia). While in U.S. states with tightened up but still far looser rules thousands more people have died: in Texas alone 7,500 people; in Florida, more than 7,000.
That’s the kind of thing Dr. Anthony Fauci was talking about in Capitol Hill testimony last week, as he described why lockdowns in Europe appear to have had so much more impact than attempts in the U.S.:
“[Europe] really did it to the tune of about 95% plus….When you actually look at what we did — even though we shut down, even though it created a great deal of difficulty — we really functionally shut down only about 50% in the sense of the totality of the country.”
Australia has less than 1/10th the population of the U.S., but like the U.S. (and unlike much of Europe), it’s big and spread out, with large distances between major population centers. Melbourne has a population of 5-million. In terms of land area, Australia is about 80% the size of the U.S., (and pretty close to the same if you don’t include Alaska).
Still, could you imagine anywhere in the U.S. putting such strict measures into place? And having people stick to them? Our friends in Melbourne are not big government worshiping automatons. And every single one of the people we’ve been in touch with there are boiling about the new rules and restrictions. But they’re doing it. Because they want to crush the virus.
The former head of Medicare and Medicaid, Andy Slavitt, who’s also been writing on Medium, has been making the point for a long time that if U.S. citizens actually commit to wiping out the virus without the resistance and elasticity we are experiencing now, we could crush it in 4–6 weeks. And then yeah, maybe we’d have to wear masks for a while, but maybe not have to do too much else. And maybe kids could even go back to school without parents feeling like they’re being forced to send them into potentially very unsafe surroundings.
But with leadership uninterested in doing anything but assert untruths about how America is doing better than other places, and cases are up only because tests are up, and anyone who says otherwise (even if they come equipped with proof after proof that that’s just not so) are just Left wing agitators out to discredit the President and bestow glory (in the form of high ratings) upon themselves, forget about it. | https://ericjscholl.medium.com/trump-revives-some-very-old-messaging-on-covid-19-2940cba3b460 | ['Eric J Scholl'] | 2020-08-04 05:46:30.735000+00:00 | ['World', 'Health', 'Donald Trump', 'Australia', 'Politics'] |
How a Pen saved me from Covid-19 | As pressure strikes as there is only one more year to study for PSAT. I asked my mom for the most important tool to study. The paper mate flair medium… This pen is a long black pen. This pen can be used for even saving a life. You can write on paper as an emergency note and be found. This pen can be used for fidgeting during period 1 algebra 1 when Medhansh asks questions to the teacher for the whole period. 😭 This pen is a pen.
One day normal day, I had woken up and brushed my teeth. As usual, my mom is teaching my brother math. My dad came to me and said I have to start taking care of myself and not be the ones to check the parent portal daily or make sure you are doing your laundry. That mindset had helped later that day.
After school as I finished my homework, I started to think about covid 19. I took a long look at my black pen. It helped me show the importance of taking care of myself and showed how people are suffering and I must be grateful. I started to make sure I went outside and took my breaks and stopped staring at the computer. I made sure that I brushed twice a day and helped my brother all the time.
After 2 months, I had learned time management. With my paper mate flair medium black pen I had made a schedule for the things I like to do and want to do. You might be wondering how it saved me from covid 19. Well, before my friends used to play soccer and I would want to go. I used to bother them daily which diverted their attention to me and from my brother. Now, I understand time management, how to take care of myself, and make myself happy while helping my brother. Without that pen, I don't know where I would be… Bringing small happiness could save someone's life maybe even yours.
¨Be happy, Stay happy¨ -a4v1nd | https://medium.com/@a4v1nd/how-a-pen-saved-me-from-covid-19-c8488d8aadfe | [] | 2021-02-02 19:21:29.027000+00:00 | ['Help', 'Happy', 'Pen', 'Covid 19 Crisis', 'Covid 19'] |
Cairo Santos’ Kicking Prowess Proving Crucial For Bears | The Chicago Bears’ recent history of field goal kicking has been, in short, brutal. From the days of Robbie Gould missing game-winner after game-winner to Connor Barth’s struggles to he-who-must-not-be-named’s infamous “double doink”, 3 points have never been a guarantee for the Bears — until now.
Due to an Eddie Pineiro offseason injury, the Bears were forced to sign Cairo Santos, a “fill-in” until Pineiro could get back to 100%. But Santos took the opportunity and ran. Sure, he missed a crucial 50-yarder against the Giants, but he has been automatic ever since, going 22/23 on field goals and 25/26 on extra points (the one “miss” was blocked).
On Sunday, his leg proved game-changing once again. With the Bears looking to put the game away, they opted to go with three straight running plays. Minnesota snuffed out all three, putting the game on Santos’ foot — a make would give the Bears’ playoff hopes a massive boost, and a miss would put the game in the hands of a defense that had struggled mightily throughout. Predictably, Santos hit it right down broadway.
“We’re in a position right now that you feel very confident in your kicker,” HC Matt Nagy said. “And he’s proven to us that he’s going to make those.”.
Santos’ contract expires at the end of the season, but with Robbie Gould’s record of 24 consecutive field goals made in sight, you can bank on him being a Bear for at least a year longer. | https://medium.com/@rahulramachandran1/cairo-santos-kicking-prowess-proving-crucial-for-bears-46375a377c49 | ['Rahul Ramachandran'] | 2020-12-22 01:00:39.058000+00:00 | ['NFL', 'Chicago Bears', 'Bears', 'Santos', 'Cairo Santos'] |
The war on science is in fact part of a bigger war of ideologies, capitalist totalitarianism vs… | The war on science is in fact part of a bigger war of ideologies, capitalist totalitarianism vs enlightened democracy. Knowledge amongst the masses gets in the way of profit. In order to win this war, one has to discount knowledge already in existence by throwing a cloud of doubt around it and of course originate and disseminate utter lies, pseudo-science written by pseudo-thinkers in pseudo-think tanks with pseudo-academic titles, that conform to the agenda of capitalist fundamentalists. We can call them neo-feudalists.
That is what this war on truth is about. They want to ensure that people do not know the truth and therefore there is no support for a course of action that will hinder wealth creation and the concentration of that wealth in the hands of the very very few. This is not just in the US. This is a global ideology shared by those that wish to rule the planet. It is the link between that tramp in the Whitehouse and Putin. It is the link between hedge fund managers and people trying to annex the UK from Europe… and destroy European unity. Why? because the only thing that can stop the neo-feudalists from having total control of the world is an international alliance of countries that can act in concert to defend itself against the inevitable trade wars that the international neo-feudalist network will launch at them. That will happen…more.
Some people call this paradigm mafia capitalism. Well, there is most certainly threats involved and there is most certainly violence. So the attack on Science is a bigger war. It is in fact a war against pretty much everyone on the planet, a war against societal evolution, a war against progress. These people will keep worshipping their false gods of capitalism and watch people die. As far as the science associated with environment is concerned, they’ll disregard it and demonize it. They’ll burn the planet until there’s nothing left to burn.
The end of the world won’t be because of a meteorite created out in deep space, it will be at the hands of the capitalist machine…created by us. | https://medium.com/@tommoriarty212_20947/the-war-on-science-is-in-fact-part-of-a-bigger-war-of-ideologies-capitalist-totalitarianism-vs-b8fd69994e84 | ['Tom Moriarty'] | 2019-09-23 14:04:28.149000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Propaganda', 'Capitalism', 'Pseudoscience', 'Corruption'] |
Comparison operators in JS | JavaScript provides 3 different comparison operators.
== operator
operator === operator
operator Object.is()
== or Abstract equality operator
Double equals or Loose equality operator which checks if only the values are equal and then returns true. In this case, if the type of the expressions is different, the expressions are converted to one common type using implicit typecasting.
Cheat Sheet for you while using == operator
NaN is not equal to anything including itself
is not equal to anything including itself -0 equals 0
equals null equals both null & undefined
equals both & The expressions are either converted to a string , boolean, or number .
, or . String comparison is case sensitive
If the two operands refer to the same object then it evaluates to true otherwise false
Always remember 6 falsy values (null, undefined, ‘’,0, NaN, and false)
=== or Strict equality operator
Triple equals or Identity operator is very similar to Double equals operator except it doesn’t do any implicit typecasting. This operator returns true if both the value and the type of the left & right side expressions are equal.
Cheat Sheet for you while using === operator
-0 equals 0
equals null only equals null
only equals String comparison is case sensitive
NaN is not equal to anything including itself
is not equal to anything including itself If the two operands refer to the same object then it evaluates to true otherwise it returns false
Object.is()
Same-value equality operator is the newest addition to comparison operators (available from ES2015). It checks if the two values are the same using the following rules.
Rule 1: Both values are undefined.
Rule 2: Both values are strings of the same length, with the same characters in the same order.
Rule 3: Both values are null.
Rule 4: Both values are objects having the same reference.
Rule 5: Both values are the same non-zero and non-NaN number.
Rule 6: Both values are either +0 or -0.
Rule 7: Both NaN. | https://medium.com/@abhayjain13/comparison-operators-in-js-22483efb7e7d | ['Abhay Jain'] | 2020-12-18 05:02:52.881000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'Web', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript'] |
#35: Adult Industry and the Blockchain | Featuring Leah Callon-Butler, co-founder of Intimate.io.
Listen Now
Show Notes
It’s been said that the blockchain is a solution crying out for a problem. In our last episode we questioned its relevance. Today Intimate.io co-founder Leah Callon-Butler, presents that case that the adult industry, with the ability to be pseudonymous for one, may be one of the most fitting applications yet: paid encounters, that yes, may include sex. We also cover the recent US government crackdown on human trafficking and how it may make people less safe.
Links:
Transcript
Coming Soon. | https://medium.com/coloringcrypto/35-adult-industry-and-the-blockchain-cd58e54176f7 | ['Kelly Mcquade-W.'] | 2018-07-04 00:05:49.045000+00:00 | ['Investment', 'Finance', 'Education', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
Today’s Hodlers are Tomorrow’s Venture Capital and Political Leaders | I don’t think enough of today’s hodlers understand just what it is they hold and what it means for their future if they continue to hold Bitcoin. Everyone generally gets Stock to Flow (S2F) now. Everyone has an idea of where the numbers are going, they understand that Number Go Up (NgU) and that they will (potentially) one day soon be very wealthy.
But let me tell you about what this actually means in practice from my perspective as a political economist. It has a lot less to do with being wealthy in the way that today’s low-level millionaires in the American middle class are (for now). It has a lot more to do with generational power, exercised on the individual, company, state, and international level.
Power and International Relations
Power is everything. Power is the crux of what moves people and modifies behaviours. In the realm of International Relations (IR) theory the science is centred around how we determine what constitutes power while studying its effects, how it can be wielded, who has it, how it is distributed, controlled, etc.
The two main schools of IR are liberalism and realism. Realism is more closely associated with what we would call realpolitik, basically that all international interactions come down to nation states acting in self interest in the preservation, acquisition, and exercising of power. The school of liberalism in IR is one that describes the cooperative system we see today in international relations; one of supranational institutions like the UN or EU, of increased free trade and security cooperation, and democratic peace theory.
There’s also the distinction between “hard power” and “soft power” — hard power is kinetic energy. It’s telling some entity “do this or else” and then forcing them to, either through that threat alone or through actual violence in the face on non-compliance. Soft power is influence. It’s parking a carrier strike group off the cost of Taiwan in international waters. There’s no implicit threat, no actual demand of any kind. Just a reminder. This would be a much harder form of soft power. Another example might be when the US Secretary of State visits a nation and makes recommendations or clarifies US policy positions. People listen because the United States is exercising soft power and spending social capital. This article is mostly concerned with soft power.
My specific discipline though is International Political Economy (IPE) and I come from the American camp as opposed to the British one (that is to say, I am much more concerned with quantitative, empirical data than I am with grand design theories). You can read a bit more about my background in Bitcoin and education here if you so wish.
While IPE and IR are greatly concerned with the framework of international anarchy and how states operate within that system, there is a lot of disciplinary overlap with general economics and political theory. Indeed, IPE is itself extremely multi-disciplinary, studying the effect of the micro upon the macro environment, technology development and diffusion, and how it relates to statecraft and the exercise of power.
Personally, I think we’re going to see a major realignment of international relations within the next decade. Whereas liberalism and its focus on shared institutions and democratic peace theory has been one of the most dominant frameworks in the 20th and early 21st centuries, I believe the realist school is going to be making a comeback in a very big way. We’ve seen numerous cracks form in the foundations of international liberalism over the last decade.¹ Bitcoin may be a part of, or maybe even the fulcrum, of this transition.
Bitcoin and IR Theory
I think Bitcoin is going to be a major real world test of IR theory in practice. Fundamentally, the international framework is anarchic — meaning that individual states ultimately answer to no higher unit of power and interact as equals within the framework. That’s not to say all states are equal, just that they may all exercise the same forms of power equally and have access to the same tools.²
Bitcoin too is an anarchic system. In fact, it may be the biggest example we have of a perfectly anarchic system in that it is extraordinarily difficult for any individual actor to exert their individual will upon the whole system. I believe that as Bitcoin becomes more and more valuable and important to individuals and companies, it is only a matter of time before nation states realise that Bitcoin represents a growing source of power in itself. Their traditional avenues of exercising power will be ineffectual to stop its spread and adoption — and this coupled with Bitcoin’s continued market capitalisation expansion will result in a realisation that Bitcoin isn’t necessarily a threat to state power in itself, but is rather a potential new source of power that can be leveraged to the state’s advantage in the anarchic international order.
As this realisation plays out, nation states are going to make individual calculations about how this relates to their own power relative to other states in the present order. All this is to say, smaller nations that are much more concerned about their present place in the international order and their ability to exercise power are likely to conclude that acquiring as much Bitcoin as possible, as fast as possible, before any other nation, will give them an outsize advantage in the future.³ The G20 or G7 may for a time try and coordinate international monetary policy against Bitcoin in an attempt to control it (again, wielding power to protect the institution), but the asymmetric advantage of a small nation state defying the G20 and acquiring first mover advantage by embracing Bitcoin will be too much to overcome.
Game Theory as it Relates to IR and Nuclear Weapons
Let’s talk for a second about the cheery subject of Nuclear Deterrence Theory and what it shows, in practice, about how systems of power function in anarchy. Under Nuclear Deterrence Theory, the more equal the distribution of power among current nuclear states, the more stable and peaceful relations are. Asymmetric advantage is itself a threat to the entire system, leading to the paradoxical need for all participants to maintain relative balance among themselves (and also exclude new entrants to the club for this very reason). Nuclear Deterrence Theory rests on the ability for a nuclear state to mount a successful secondary strike in retaliation for a first strike from an enemy. This credible threat of tit for tat destruction is what prevents a nuclear first strike from ever being a good policy to pursue.
It’s why the Bush Administration’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 was such a big deal. ABMs provide an asymmetric advantage whereby a first strike suddenly becomes a plausible policy to pursue under the assumption your own ABMs will be successful in partially or fully stopping a second strike. It’s for this reason that, while defensive in nature, ABMs are actually quite dangerous to the stability of the system as a whole.
Another point about nuclear weapons that is informative to our discussion here concerning Bitcoin is the development and proliferation of the weapons themselves. Nuclear weapons confer upon their owner enormous power. In the anarchic international order, what we saw was a whole of government all-out frenzy to independently develop nuclear arsenals as fast as possible. It was only after this first decade of scrambling to develop or acquire that we saw the emergence of the (somewhat) stable, non-proliferation focused system of symmetric power that we have today.
I hope you see the parallels to Bitcoin in the systems described above. Bitcoin is a new, sudden source of power that nations will scramble over. In the development of any system of shared power around Bitcoin, the first movers get to set the rules of the subsequent system once power is more evenly distributed.
What Does this Mean for Bitcoin and Us?
The real world test of IR theory with Bitcoin will be to see how it all plays out. Will the G20 be successful in suppressing it? Will nations scramble to grab the best pole position for a potential new monetary order bred in anarchy rather through consensus among the powerful? Either way, it is almost inevitable that this contest will happen in some form. Combine the anarchy of IR with the anarchy of Bitcoin and apply game theory (flavours of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the problem of coordination, and deterrence theory) and you get some sort of competition among nations.
The first decade of the existence of nuclear weapons is very informative to how nations behave when a new source of power suddenly becomes attainable. There is asymmetric, anarchic competition to acquire as much as quickly as possible in order to either maintain one state’s apparent present advantages or for states with less power to elevate their own standing within the system. The instability of the sudden appearance of this new source of power is quickly corrected to one of more relative stability as power is distributed.
The key difference here is that nuclear weapons are hard to acquire — there is requisite scientific knowledge and engineering knowhow that is difficult to perfect. There is the fissile material which is scarce in nature and hard to reliably create. Whereas the hurdle to acquire Bitcoin is almost inconsequential to even the smallest of nation states today. All you need are computer chips and open source code to mine Bitcoin. And, the speed with which any nation could make a concerted decision to pursue a whole of government approach to acquiring (note I say acquire, not adopt) Bitcoin will itself immediately create a vast asymmetry that will inherently need to be corrected⁴ through power becoming more balanced and evenly distributed.
Nation State Power in the Hands of Hodlers Today
Of the 21 million coins, where do they mostly reside today? With individuals, and now increasingly, with companies. Bitcoin is a lot of things to a lot of people. Sound money, a source of appreciation thanks to market inefficiencies, etc. To the nation state in respect of IR, Bitcoin is power. As the market cap of Bitcoin grows, so too does Bitcoin as a source of power grow, making Bitcoin desirable for nations not simply because it is wealth, but that it is also power.
What does this mean for today’s hodlers?
A lot of hodlers today understand and fully expect to be wealthy in the future. What I think many miss is that, perhaps more importantly, they will not only be wealthy, they will be powerful.
It means that if you have a sum of Bitcoin, acquired at a cost basis relative to the market price in dollars of Bitcoin today (let’s say February 2021 for posterity at an average price of $50,000.00 a coin), you currently posses a consequential amount of something nation states might scramble to own in the same way they scrambled to develop and posses nuclear weapons in the 1950s. There are massive implications for individual hodlers here, many of them negative, some very positive, depending on how and when one approaches dealing with their Bitcoin stack.
Ultimately, if I had one recommendation to make, is that if you control more than 10 million sats today, you need to start reading (a lot) about how individually powerful capital allocators today interface with the state at both a national and international level. Hodlers aren’t just going to be the equivalent of a newly wealthy Bill Gates. To the state, Bill Gates is just another source of tax revenue more than anything. Bill Gates, personally, never personally possessed the equivalent in importance and power of a stockpile of enriched uranium. Hodlers are going to not only be a source of tax revenue, they are simultaneously a source of potentially enormous, quantifiable power.
This isn’t to say hodlers can expect to be the personal targets of state attack (any state, say Cuba or Nepal), but rather that the possibility is not zero. The adversarial model in the “nation state” epoch of Bitcoin will very quickly start as “keep the hodlers down” which will likely need a focus on digital security and shift to “acquire the hodlers power” which may take the form of either dictating to the state or needing to physically secure yourself, depending on whichever state you find yourself in jurisdiction to. One thing is for certain, at first it will be very advantageous for no one to know you own Bitcoin.
But, more importantly, the fact is that since states very soon are likely to want to poses Bitcoin, in addition to all of the individuals and companies that are currently powerful within the existing framework, hodlers will become the target of extreme interest to many parties. People will be desperate to have Bitcoin within keys that they control. And not just a little bit. They will want to directly control, within their treasuries, a large percentage of the total market capitalisation of Bitcoin with free and clear title.
Hodlers, if they actually continue to hold large sums of Bitcoin⁵ into this new era, will have something that the most powerful institutions today will want. The question is, what price are you willing to give that up for? Ask yourself, is there any price at which a state would sell or give up its sovereign rights? The answer, is almost assuredly, no. There is no price. The ability to acquire and exercise power at the highest levels is priceless. Many people who today hold Bitcoin don’t realise just how powerful what they hold will one day potentially be. Many will be convinced to part with their coins at certain price levels — and this is the key part — that today’s powerful institutions will be glad to pay, because power is everything.
So this sets up a variety of paths that today’s hodlers can take. They can potentially set the price for which they give up their keys. As in, buyers will give hodlers whatever they ask for. Hodlers might demand cashflowing equity in businesses or assets in exchange for their sats. Hodlers may be compelled by the state to part with their coins at a set price, or they may have it seized by taxation, it all depends on too many factors that can’t be accurately foretasted at present.
Hodlers may also choose to exercise their power. To me, this is the most interesting. In order for this new system to function, capital will need, necessarily, to become more diffuse and utilised. So then a hodler might play the role of today’s venture capital, identifying worthy institutions or causes to lend capital to, or themselves deploy directly in support of.
Hodlers will also become, necessarily, the kind of people who are organs of the state themselves, either as politicians or as policymakers and statesmen. Power can be deployed this way within the framework of the state itself. The ability for Bitcoiners to shape the policies that will govern their power will be a valuable thing indeed. In fact, today we already see existing politicians are becoming hodlers themselves, so the process is not simply a one-way transfer, but rather a diffusion.
At the very least, today’s hodlers (if they are planning to truly hold rather than sell at some arbitrary future dollar amount) need to study and understand how capital structures work, how the wealthy physically protect themselves from blackmail, threats, and other sources of power that may attempt to take their own power away (either the state or other individuals or companies), both under the law and by other means.
The idea that you will be able to simply unplug and exist anonymously as a whole coiner is only possible if you have Bitcoins you have acquired organically (either through solo mining or through the exchange of goods and services). Any coins you have ever acquired via KYC are potentially known to the state (and subsequently cannot become unknown to the state, not even by coinjoin as the state will still know you acquired the coins in the past and you will thus be made to account for them). So you must plan accordingly to interact with the state as a newly minted powerful person.
All of this is only possible if you hodl though. If, and I truly mean this, you feel that the burden of being a powerful person does not interest you, you should identify your exit price and sell your coins at that point (and always keep your eye on what nation states are doing in relation to the price, it may change how quickly you wish to “get out”).
Otherwise, if you like the idea of being a venture capitalist, a statesman, or some other sort of person who exercises power, all you need to do is hodl. Many will try to convince you to part with your coins, but remember, there is no price at which the state would sell its sovereignty, and thus you too might adopt the position that there is no price, monetary or otherwise, that you might be paid to part with your keys.
Learn how venture capital works. Learn how wealthy people physically secure their persons and property. Learn how powerful people interface with the nation state. All of this may, in less than a decade, become the most important information you posses for your life in this new paradigm.
Or maybe Bitcoin will go to zero, what do I know.
Footnotes
[1] Think of the cooling of relations among Western powers and the rise of China. In fact, China is a fascinating case of publicly being one of the fiercest proponents of international liberalism with their words while working behind the scenes the most to dismantle that system and rebuild it to their own structural advantage (a very realist mode of operation).
[2] A perfect example of this is the Bolivian Navy. Bolivia is a landlocked country, but it hasn’t always been. In the early 1880s, Chile seized Bolivia’s coast during the war between their nations and the Bolivian Navy functionally ceased to be a fighting force capable of putting ships to sea. Yet, Bolivia still maintains a “Navy” by fielding a disproportionately large number of patrol ships on lake Titicaca while maintaining a force of about 2,000 personnel who keep their naval traditions and skills alive. The recovery of Bolivia’s coast is still today a point of national honour. And so, Bolivia maintains a Navy despite having no access to the sea. Only an independent actor in an anarchic international system in which power is everything would do this.
[3] As a thought exercise, think in gooey terms about the relative power of Singapore or Qatar versus say Belize or Antigua and how they acquire and exercise power. Also related, I had a recent thread on Twitter about the subject of first mover advantage in a whole of government approach to Bitcoin mining at the state level.
[4] If you haven’t picked up on it yet, this is incredibly good for NgU.
[5] For the sake of this exercise, let’s assume 10 million sats is a “large sum” of Bitcoin. | https://medium.com/@hodlingonward/todays-hodlers-are-tomorrow-s-venture-capital-and-political-leaders-bbd405b75b9d | ['Hodl Onward'] | 2021-02-18 13:51:11.416000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Ipe', 'Political Economy', 'International Relations'] |
Jim Carrey as Joe Biden SNL has Stopped; will Anyone Replace? | Jim Carrey as Joe Biden SNL has stopped, but the question is that will anyone continue this role?
It seems that Jim Carrey has quitted playing Joe Biden’s role on SNL. He tweeted on Saturday to announce that he will no longer impersonate Joe Biden’s role, which he played during the first six episodes of the sketch comedy show’s 46th season.
“Though my term was only meant to be six weeks, I was thrilled to be elected as your SNL President…comedy’s highest call of duty,” Jim Carrey wrote on Twitter. “I am just one in a long line of proud, fighting SNL Bidens!”
Jim hasn’t appeared in SNL’s last two episodes, and neither has Alec Baldwin, for that matter, who portrayed Donald Trump over the previous four seasons, as well as the beginning of Season 46.
SNL hasn’t shared any news about the role ending or continuing. During the last episodes, former cast member Maya Rudolph had been making the impression of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Jim Carrey as Joe Biden SNL has Come to an End
Jim Carrey’s impersonations of Joe Biden included a 13-minute opening sketch, him tousling with Baldwin’s Donald Trump, working with Rudolph’s Harris, or being supplemented by Heidi Garnder’s Dr. Jill Biden.
Jim Carrey, who lives in Los Angeles, traveled to New York City for six “Saturday Night Live” episodes.
After the election is certified and even Joe Biden selected his communications team, now is the best time for the popular series to find a new Biden. Critics haven’t been in love with Jim Carrey’s mugging-heavy take anyway.
With Biden’s four-year run as president, it would make plenty of sense to have a fixed cast member adopt the high-profile job.
“Saturday Night Live” airs at 11:30 p.m. on NBC. This week, Kristen Wiig has returned as host. Dua Lipa will be the musical guest.
Who Should Replace Jim Carry?
Now a question arises here; Who Should Replace Jim Carry?
Jason Sudeikis?
John Mulaney?
Jack Nicholson?
Or what if Leslie Nielsen was still alive?
Jason Sudeikis used to play Joe Biden’s role on SNL. Now he lives on the west coast. If Jason Sudeikis returns to play Biden, he and Wiig may also reprise their “Two A-Holes” characters. Fingers crossed.
Sudeikis is the co-creator and star of the Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso,” a surprise hit.
John Mulaney has also previously played Joe Biden on “SNL.” Mulaney has a regular gig in the same building as “Saturday Night Live’s” Studio 8H. He is now a staff writer on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
Jack Nicholson could have some free time on his hands if there weren’t any in-person Lakers games for the foreseeable future.
Imagine if Leslie Nielsen was still alive! With his overconfident, gaffe-prone old white guy would be absolutely the best choice for Biden. | https://medium.com/@admin-68852/jim-carrey-as-joe-biden-snl-has-stopped-will-anyone-replace-3bdb41cf2d7e | [] | 2020-12-27 09:37:13.567000+00:00 | ['SNL', 'Jim Carrey', 'Joe Biden'] |
Hit Sync to Reach Your Creative Goals | The new year is upon us. You could say it’s inevitable. After a topsy-turvy 12 months that shall remain nameless, you’re probably feeling a bit like me: A little out of tune, wondering how to get your bearings.
Hopefully, you’ve got some goals. Maybe it’s writing that screenplay, publishing that manuscript, finishing that story, creating that trailer, taking that series of photos, or starting that podcast.
If not, that’s OK too. I’m here to say it — you don’t have to know yet, you just have to be ready to explore.
In the Tip section of The New York Times a few weeks ago, contributing writer Malia Wollan (@mwollan) wrote about “How to Get in Sync with Someone.”
What stood out to me was the idea that synchronicity equals unity. Not talking — just making the same movements — can put you in rhythm and get you on the same frequency. You can even get this feeling by closing your eyes and visualizing walking together in lockstep.
Now I if this could apply not just to people but to things. To goals.
It’s a challenge, for sure, for so many creatives to get out there and experience community. To connect. Worries crop up. We might wonder what will happen if they don’t like our work or, even worse, if they’ll steal some brilliant idea we plan on having (someday). We’ve probably also been taught that creativity happens in a vacuum. That the true artist is a lone wolf.
Here’s my suggestion. Insert yourself. Maybe through a course, digitally — one that has other people in it (those other courses have their time and place, but this is not the time and place!). Maybe volunteer at a journal or publication. Maybe join an organization like Literary Cleveland (or whatever the equivalent is in your city).
Challenge yourself to give a Zoom reading or promote your work in some way. Or call up that collaborator you used to work with in college. Sign up for your trade’s publication and see what others are doing. I, for one, am renewing my subscription to Poets & Writers magazine.
But, for a moment, indulge me. Close your eyes and imagine how you can get in sync via creative community.
Don’t keep them closed for too long though!
Get out a pen and jot down all your ideas. Post them somewhere. Start ticking them off one by one. And tell me about it! I want to improve my creative habits by hearing about yours. | https://medium.com/@coyscribbler/hit-sync-to-reach-your-creative-goals-7a61d5f36075 | ['Charles Parsons'] | 2020-12-16 00:04:42.888000+00:00 | ['Creativity', '2021', 'Creative', 'Community', 'Synchronicity'] |
Software Through the Ages | Software Through the Ages
A product in the past, a service in the present, a tool in the future
Software is becoming more and more crucial to modern life. Companies are using software to be global superpowers that redefine almost every aspect of society. That’s why it is worth taking some time to look at the history of the software business, to see how it has evolved, and to think about what may come next.
In this analysis, we are going to look at the way software is packaged and distributed, skipping over the technical details of programming languages, operating systems, and architecture paradigms. We expect the reader to be familiar with software to a certain extent, knowing how to use software on a laptop and mobile device. While we may get a little technical about some of the jargons and product names, they are not necessary for understanding the overall evolution of software distribution; including the way distribution channels impact the type of software that is created, plus the places where value and power are accrued.
Here’s a quick outline of what we are going to discuss, as we talk about the software distribution paradigm; the order of discussion points is roughly chronological to the peaks in market power.
Software-as-a-Product (SaaP): peaked in 1995 with the launch of Windows 95 and Microsoft Office 95, then again in 2005 with the launch of the App Store by Apple Software-as-a-Quote (SaaQ): peaked around the start of the millennium with Web consulting and offshoring, then transformed into agile software development Software-as-a-Resource (SaaR): peaked in 2005 with Google Search Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): currently peaking with Zoom / Slack / Salesforce, etc. Software-as-a-Tool (SaaT): an emerging pattern enabled by open-source development, including shared developer tools and packages
We will talk about how each of these patterns evolved into the next one, which problems each successive evolution solved, and which downsides they introduced.
Before we jump in, it is worthwhile to look at the word “software” and contrast it with the word that came before it, which is “hardware”.
For the most part of the computer revolution, companies that created the actual computer hardware, timeshare machines, and mainframes — dominated by IBM, UNIVAC, and NCR — sold their hardware with the anticipation that the software was something you would write yourself. That means people used punch cards to automate certain types of business processes; and you didn’t really sell those punch cards, just like you wouldn’t sell your index cards or notebooks.
As computers became smaller, hobbyists started to buy them in order to play with them. The computer that got Bill Gates started was the MITS Altair 8800 — a computer you programmed by flipping switches at the front of the machine. That was the software for Altair — the sequence of switch flipping that began the software revolution.
In 1975, young Bill Gates created Altair BASIC, an interpreter for the BASIC programming language to run on the MITS Altair 8800, together with Paul Allen. BASIC allowed personal computers like the IBM PC to be more easily programmed for special tasks, as it used English words to give instructions to the computer, thus didn’t require a deep understanding of the machine code or assembly language.
Software as a Product
There is no doubt Bill Gates was a great programmer, being able to make BASIC run on computers that had no more processing power than a pocket calculator. But what was most brilliant and radical about Bill Gates’ vision for computing was that the programs you wrote (using programming languages like BASIC) could become products you could sell in a tangible way. The software was packaged into boxes, including manuals, and sold in retail stores, where you could purchase them the same way that you bought a toaster or a book. In exchange for your money, not only did you get the actual media (which started out as floppy disks, then became CD-ROMs and DVDs); you also acquired a license to use the software. What you were buying was not actually the program, but the right to use the program, along with the method to install it on your computer.
When you distributed software using physical media like floppy disks and CD-ROMS, you needed to create a final version of the software (a golden master or GM) to be replicated for retail copies. This means that any updates to the software, which were made after the product had been manufactured, would require another product, sometimes called an “upgrade edition”. That upgrade contained the full program, so that you could install the next version; at which point you only had the license to use the new version. This full-version upgrade cycle drove Microsoft’s growth from a small software company based in Redmond, Washington, to one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world.
GETTY IMAGES/AFP/TORSTEN BLACKWOOD
The peak of this model was in 1995, when Windows 95 and Microsoft Office 95 were released with great fanfare around the world, causing lines to form outside computer stores that were not seen again until the launch of Apple’s iPods and iPhones.
The model of Software-as-a-Product faded away for about a decade, as people used the Web for downloads. But it became resurgent when Apple — with their iTunes e-commerce model, where you paid per download — introduced the app store. In no time, thousands of apps were released for the iOS platform, with some of the nicer ones requiring you to pay $2.99 to $9.99 to use them. Steve Jobs’ obsession with user happiness eliminated the cumbersome and extractive upgrade business model Microsoft had pioneered and profited from for all those years.
Instead, the idea was: You buy an app from the app store once; then you are guaranteed to get free updates to all future versions of the app. This was lovely for consumers. But it created a real dilemma for software developers, who had to maintain these iOS apps, making sure that they were compatible with the latest version of the operating system and could take advantage of new features on people’s hardware devices. As a consequence, most developers moved away from selling their software as digital products on the app store. They began to use the app store as a distribution channel only, so as to get the icons of their free (because advertising-supported) or paid (because subscription-driven) products into the users’ devices.
Software as a Quote
In parallel to the consumer adoption of desktop software (and later mobile software), enterprises began to take advantage of the cost efficiency of moving their processes to an electronic workflow. More and more off-the-shelf software became available for purchase (e.g. accounting, HR, and IT management software), starting with Windows-based enterprise apps and then moving to Web-based versions of the same apps.
However, as it turned out, these off-the-shelf apps only worked well if they were connected with each other, integrated with the company’s existing system, and customized for the specific needs of the business or vertical industry. Software-as-a-Product, however polished and complete, was not enough to transform a business; multiple products had to be integrated to fit those unique requirements.
As a result, to roll out a new business application, companies often spent 50% of their budget on licensing software products from companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, while allocating another 50% of their budget for software consultancy and system integration (offered as a staffing service).
Within this paradigm of software being created based on a quote, there was an evolution away from the waterfall model, where the requirements were specified upfront, after which several sequential steps — system design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance — had to be completed one after the other in a fairly rigid step-by-step manner.
Later, this evolved into a more iterative, agile software development model, where the software did not need to be defined and quoted upfront. Instead, you just quoted the amount of resources needed (e.g. the number of developers on the project) as an ongoing cost; then, you planned the feature development, which was based on the continual analysis of what had been built thus far and what the business stakeholder liked to see extended or modified. You fixed the time and resources and flexed the scope.
For the purpose of our understanding of the distribution model, it doesn’t matter whether the Software-as-a-Quote approach was carried out according to ISO standards or agile techniques. What we need to know is that the proliferation of custom software integrators created a new software distribution channel, where new products and services could only gain a foothold in the enterprise market if they came with a trained pool of consultants who knew the product and its capabilities well. They needed to come in to not only sell the software and licenses as a value-added reseller (VAR), but more importantly, to make it work in the real corporate IT environment of big or small companies in the US or around the world.
The main drawback of Software-as-a-Quote was the huge cost of building the same thing over and over again. As companies became more cost-sensitive towards these custom system integration projects, they started looking for cheaper development resources offshore. That gave rise to companies like Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, who grew tremendously with the large pool of technically competent individuals in India.
But as anybody who builds software knows, adding more people to a software project doesn’t necessarily make it go faster. In fact, the more people you add, the more communication overhead you introduce. Finally, these customizations that were touted to solve all business problems turned out to be counterproductive. Almost instantly, they became legacy code — which was software that, once built, was not easy to maintain, e.g. because it had been built on a version of a product that was no longer supported, or worse yet, it had been built by a team that had since moved on to different projects and could not provide any long-term support beyond the minimal effort of keeping the software running.
It was in this climate of frustration with proprietary software — and its endless cycle of statements of work to build and extend this so-called off-the-shelf software — that a former executive from Oracle, the kingdom of enterprise software salespeople, Marc Benioff, left Oracle to start Salesforce.com. His mantra was “No Software”, which memorialized how frustrated enterprise customers were at this time, feeling trapped by the combination of Software-as-a-Product and Software-as-a-Quote. His insight was that the World Wide Web, though still nascent (with primitive graphics and responsiveness, due to the browser technology at the time), would be able to replace millions of dollars of companies’ investments in the previous generation of client-server applications. We will return to a deeper analysis of Software-as-a-Service in a later chapter.
Software as a Resource
Before the Web became a distribution channel for software, enabling a whole generation of Software-as-a-Service businesses, it was a distribution channel for content.
At the core of the concept of the Web is the construct of a hypertext document. The markup language for creating these hypertext documents is HTML, which literally stands for Hypertext Markup Language. To access and read one of these hypertext documents, you use a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Interestingly, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, originally proposed something called Universal Document Identifier (UDI); but after he circulated the idea in the Internet engineering community, he realized that he was wrong with all three words:
It can’t be “universal”, but it can be “uniform”, because the way to construct this pointer follows a very systematic process.
It is not really a “document” you want to access, but a “resource”. A resource could be a document, but it could also be an image, a video, a machine, or a record in a database.
Instead of being an “identifier”, which requires some sort of scheme for registration and lookup, it should just be a “locator”, which allows someone to simply find something through the connectivity of the Internet.
The concept of the URL enables users to specify an instruction for a computer, which then points to resources that are not just simple HTML documents in a file system.
One of the first versions of software-generated resources was the CGI-BIN technique, which stands for Common Gateway Interface. A Web server, instead of fetching an HTML document based on the matching file name, could forward the request of that URL to a binary program (hence the “BIN” in “CGI-BIN”). That binary application could do whatever was necessary — access a database, run a computation process to generate images, or call another network protocol to fetch some remote data. In turn, a resource that looked like it was created by hand, using HTML.
CGI-BIN turned the Web into a software distribution platform; but instead of accessing the software directly, you were accessing the resource generated by the software in this open network of the Web. Early content management systems used CGI-BIN and its future iterations, like PHP, to create dynamic, Web-accessible resources, which hid the often complex software that was running in the background to create these linked hypertext document representations.
In early-Web software, there was often no gatekeeping between the resource generated by a dynamic program and a file that was just posted on the Web; which means that most resources were publicly accessible. To find these resources, people surfed the Web and followed links that had been curated by webmasters like Jerry Yang and David Filo, who had created Yahoo!. This hierarchical link directory now allowed people to access resources that hadn’t been available in electronic form before. But quickly, these directories became difficult to navigate. They were often incomplete or led to broken links, because a resource had been moved to a different location, which had changed the precise locator called the URL.
Because of that, people started relying on search engines, which displayed all the links they could find on the Web and provided an up-to-date index of where everything was, based on keywords. All the resources brought to the Web via software become available through one entry point: Google Search. That put Google in an extremely powerful position. Now, they could decide which of the thousands (or millions) of resources containing certain keywords would be presented as the top results on the first page.
Since all resources were publicly accessible, the only real business model for Software-as-a-Resource — where traffic was largely generated through Google’s referrals — was advertising. Each visit from a user was worth a certain amount of advertising dollars. Recognizing this opportunity, Google introduced its own advertising products, such as Google Adsense, which displayed contextually relevant ads on a Web page and paid the publishers based on traffic. Google also purchased DoubleClick, which was the leader in display advertising (more commonly known as banner ads); now, brands who wanted to get their products and logos in front of users could pay a premium on websites that had the right audience.
One of the great characteristics of Software-as-a-Resource was that all resources became archivable, which allowed Google to show a cached copy of a Web page, even if the website was down temporarily. The same mechanism could be used by non-profits like Internet Archive, where they could keep snapshots of this rich array of content in the library for posterity.
While this idea of links as resources came with the great properties of findability and archivability, it suffered from the perception of slowness, as each resource required you to load the entire Web page. After all, these were the early growth spurts of the Web. Compared to the desktop software of the day, Web-based applications were significantly inferior in terms of user experience.
Therefore, developers who were looking to improve Web-based apps needed to find a way to emulate the elements that made desktop software so smooth, bringing those elements to the Web. The solution was the scripting language (JavaScript) that was part of the Web browser; some of the responsibilities for rendering the user interface were shifted to this client-side programming language. So, instead of loading a new Web page resource with every single click, you loaded a Web page that contained this JavaScript program — which stayed on screen as a single page, then fetched the various resources in the background and updated a portion of the Web page dynamically, as soon as the request was fulfilled.
This led to the creation of single-page applications (SPAs) with frameworks like Backbone, Ember, Angular, (and now) React and Vue. These provided a way to emulate desktop applications within the Web browser runtime. The idea that these were resources you could fetch became more of a back-end concept. Instead of software returning a hypertext-linked Web page, it merely returned some data structure; initially in XML format and later as JSON, which stands for JavaScript Object Notation. Thanks to this method, data from the cloud could be loaded into these increasingly sophisticated, JavaScript-based applications.
With the advent of SPA, we saw the bifurcation of front-end development (which focuses on how the application looks and feels within the browser) and back-end development (which focuses on delivering data-only resources from the cloud). In a way, Software-as-a-Resource was still the predominant pattern for back-end engineers, whereas front-end engineers basically reverted back to Software-as-a-Product — where the app (in this case a JavaScript-based Web app) was created and downloaded to the browser once, then ran for a while, as it fetched new data or resources over time.
A good example of that transition is one of the most successful products Google ever launched, which is Gmail. Unlike Google Search, Gmail has a rich, long-running application that takes anywhere from 2 to 10 seconds to load; but, once loaded, it continues to refresh, bringing in new emails (aka resources) without reloading the entire page.
Now, Gmail is largely free. However, this paradigm of rich front-ends, which are connected to a universe of data, made way for the growth of the current dominant software distribution model: Software-as-a-Service or SaaS.
Software as a Service
The basic idea behind Software-as-a-Service is that users don’t need to install a software application on their computer. Instead, it relies on a lightweight runtime, such as the Web browser and the JavaScript capability inside the browser, to access a plethora of software services — without having to manage and maintain the infrastructure, such as the Web server’s database or storage. For the user, the value proposition of Software-as-a-Service is extremely high. It is very easy to get started and get value out of Software-as-a-Service.
Here are some of the qualities that make SaaS so compelling:
Salesforce.com’s “No Software” badge
No software installation: (Remember the “no software” marketing badge of Salesforce.com?) Users can start using a piece of software quickly and easily, just by providing an email address and setting a password. They can use the current version, but they will also automatically get access to new versions, without having to go through an upgrade process. No custom development: Most SaaS products are preconfigured for a certain use case. Users can cover most of their needs by using the admin panel to upload a logo or configure some rules. Only users who need a much deeper connection between the software and their current systems have to install special plugins or do an integration via API. For most users, there is no lengthy period of set-up and customization. No upfront payments: Software-as-a-Service adopts a rental model. Instead of licensing software via an upfront capital expenditure (CapEx), then paying a maintenance fee of 15–25% per year or buying an upgraded version at a slight discount when it is released a few years later, businesses can pay a steady monthly subscription fee as operating expenditure (OpEx). Not limited to one OS platform: Most users use multiple operating systems in their work and home life. It is very likely that a user uses both Mac and Windows, iOS and Android, as well as many surfaces on the Web within a single day. In this multi-platform world, the idea of purchasing a product that runs only on a single platform seems antiquated. SaaS is delivered on top of the operating system. Once you have established a subscription, you can use any of the apps (that were created for each platform and that are offered by that particular service provider) as an onramp to the service. For example, as a Slack user, you can download the Slack app from the app store, so that you can connect to your Slack organization. But the app store doesn’t actually sell that Slack software as a product. This shifts the power of monetization to the SaaS platform and leaves the app store not much more than a curated catalog, where you can download the official version of the onramp.
SaaS brings benefits for service providers too. If you offer a useful service to a segment of customers, while managing churn through reasonable prices and steady streams of new features, you can create real stickiness; your customers will continue to pay the subscription, thus providing a steady stream of revenue. This is very different from the Software-as-a-Product approach, where each release had to be a hit in order for you to maintain your topline revenue. In that sense, SaaS can be compared to investing in real estate. Once you get a renter into a property, you can expect a reliable stream of income; you just have to offer a decent product at a decent price.
As a result of these dynamics, SaaS is eating the software that ate the world. It has become a money printing machine for many companies (such as Zoom, Salesforce, Slack, and Stripe, plus many more in vertical industries). Consequently, every possible software feature is now becoming a new SaaS startup. Each vertical market that has some differentiation based on unique needs (like doctors’ offices or barber shops) spawns a new SaaS competitor, who is trying to convert potential customers into a consistent revenue stream.
Not all Software-as-a-Service needs to be subscription-based, where the customer pays a monthly fee for productivity tools, hosted databases, or workflow systems. It can also be based on transaction fees that are typical for online marketplaces, where — in exchange for the use of the software — the software vendor takes a cut of the money you make through the app. Uber, Airbnb, and Instacart are good examples of such marketplaces. Essentially, they offer nothing more than a well-designed mobile app and an online dashboard; but in exchange for using that app and dashboard, they take a substantial cut of the revenue from the small businesses that rely on their platform.
Of course, there are some SaaS providers that are still supported by advertising, Gmail being a good example. Gmail is both advertiser-supported for consumers and subscription-based for businesses, who pay for G Suite via the user subscription model.
With recent IPOs from top SaaS companies like Dropbox, DocuSign, and Smartsheet, it looks like the subscription-based SaaS model is the only model that will be successful long-term. When it comes to advertising-supported software, it is basically impossible to beat Google and Facebook in their ability to cheaply target audiences on the Internet. You can either use Google’s and Facebook’s tools as your advertising engine and be satisfied with a small cut, while they take the majority of your value — or you find your own advertising niche and lose access to the broad market.
Even for marketplaces, it seems like the transaction fees generated by the buyers are just not enough to cover the cost of running a modern, software-driven organization. Therefore, big marketplaces are spending billions of dollars and they’re still not able to turn a profit using a simple, location-based demand-matching app.
At the same time, subscription-based services are able to reinvest their margins, thus growing to encompass more and more of the customers’ needs, becoming increasingly crucial for their customers’ lives or business operations.
Customer Lock-In
The proliferation of SaaS happens for a good reason: It is very easy to start using this type of software, while it is very hard to stop using it. It is difficult to get out, because the data you create with the software only exists within the boundaries of that particular piece of software.
Software-as-a-Product doesn’t have this problem. You can create a word processor document with Microsoft Word, and 10 years later, you will still be able to open that document on any computer that has Microsoft Word installed. With Software-as-a-Service, the lock-in comes from the fact that your data resides within the software; so, any artifacts you have created will only remain accessible if you keep an active subscription.
Although this may seem similar to the business model of self-storage, where people rent storage units to store their possessions for a certain amount of time, SaaS comes with an additional drawback. In contrast to a storage unit, from which you can remove your things at any time, you can’t move your SaaS data to another service. The data model and the user interface differ so greatly from one SaaS provider to another that it is virtually impossible to migrate your data to a competing service.
Feature Silos
There’s another problem specific to SaaS. Each software you subscribe to has its own set of features, which tend to overlap between different apps, without enabling you to merge them in any way. Your accounting data could be in one app, while your employee data is in another one. Your conversation with your employees is happening in one app, while your chat with your customers is somewhere else. You have to know exactly which app to use to reach which person, organization, and team.
Besides, you need to constantly reassess what logins, what access rights, and what sharing rules apply to the tens if not hundreds of SaaS apps that are in use within most organizations. While there are tools like Zapier and Integromat, which could be triggered when data is updated in one SaaS system and invoked in another, those data connectors become just another software service you have to subscribe to; in the best case, this works like a bandage for the data-and-feature silos.
Subscription Fatigue
As SaaS apps become more and more aggressive about getting people to sign up, the overall cost of subscription-based SaaS is now catching the attention of CFOs. How many subscriptions should one company need for an employee? Many organizations spend thousands of dollars per employee for subscription-based software.
As a result, SaaS providers are trying to increase the scope of their service, by cloning competitors’ features and claiming that you can eliminate your other services if you switch all your needs to theirs. For example, Microsoft Teams is going after Slack, incorporating Slack-like features into their own app that is included in the Office 365 subscription. Similarly, Google promotes Google Meet on every calendar entry within the Google calendar, even if a Zoom link is already included in that entry.
It is not clear how all this will play out — whether the financial incentives for reducing SaaS costs will drive consolidation — but either way, the cost of SaaS is going to be a major concern as more software shifts to that model.
Privacy
SaaS requires you to store your private data on someone else’s computer. That is probably well-known to everybody. When you upload something to the cloud, the privacy of that piece of information is only as good as the security practices of the vendor who is offering the service. Companies with stringent security requirements are starting to get concerned about sharing computing resources; in many cases, this is about sharing the same database between different customers of the same service.
Bigger SaaS providers have greater compliance and privacy guarantees. But when it comes to smaller SaaS products, you should just assume that a support person or a developer from the team can see everything you create in their system. As companies use more and more SaaS products, any private data is going to be in hundreds (if not thousands) of databases and storage units that would make an IT security professional cringe.
Half-Life of SaaS
Ultimately, SaaS companies are financial entities that can get acquired by other companies or go out of business altogether. When a company gets acquired, the acquiring company will often shut down the service and just provide a few weeks (months at most) for users to access and migrate their stuff, before the company deletes all the content and data, plus the code that renders the user experience, from its servers.
Even big companies like Google would retire perfectly good software, just because they don’t want to devote their limited and expensive engineering resources to maintaining something that won’t be a billion-dollar business.
For the smaller SaaS players, the founders and core teams may get tired of running and maintaining their software; they may sell to a new generation of SaaS investors, who will milk every dollar out of the customer base — not offering any new features, let alone keeping up with the competitors, until there is nothing left that motivates the customers to keep their subscriptions. Given the pace of evolution for software, the half-life of SaaS is less than five years; which means it is very unlikely that a piece of software will outlast a photo you took four iPhones ago.
Even though the SaaS era is currently at its peak, this particular delivery and business model for software is revealing its limitations. So, let’s look at where software could go after the SaaS era, by analyzing some of the new trends in the broader tech market.
Software as a Tool
A hammer is a tool. You can use a hammer to build a piece of furniture. You can borrow a hammer, buy a hammer, or rent a fancy one from The Home Depot. Let’s say you use it to build a chair. Once you are done, you can sit on that chair without the hammer being present or nearby. Now, if you want a plastic chair, you’ll need more sophisticated industrial equipment, such as a PVC injection molding machine that creates your chair from melting and molding plastics. However, the result is the same. Once the chair leaves the factory, it does not require the industrial equipment to function.
If you look at SaaS through that lens, you see how ridiculous this method of software distribution is. With SaaS, you never quite own the chair; you just sit on the chair inside a hotel room you rented inside someone else’s hotel.
Software can certainly act more like a hammer or a screwdriver. A good example is the camera app on your phone, which is a very sophisticated piece of software that allows you to take and edit beautiful pictures. But the artifacts (the photos) the app creates can be viewed independently of that particular camera app. If you took the photo on your iPhone, but your friend has an Android phone, you can still be reasonably sure that you will be able to send that photo over to the other phone, where your friend can open it. Your friend may not be able to access the coolest features that are part of your photo (e.g. the live photo feature from the latest iPhone may not be compatible with a very old Android phone), but the photo will still show up.
This level of compatibility and resilience is slowly disappearing from people’s experience with software, as we turn these tangible tools into ephemeral services that only work as long as you remain friends and keep paying your bills. Interestingly, though, there is nothing inherent in the construct of software that prevents software (and the artifacts it creates) from exhibiting the same type of compatibility and physicality you get from your camera app and photos.
There is a transitional class of SaaS called “no-code software”, which is about turning software into tools to make other software (or digital artifacts). Two shining examples of software that feels more like a tool are:
Webflow, which allows you to make marketing websites with customized graphics and sophisticated navigation
Canva, which allows you to create attractive graphics design that can be shared in various social networks with different size and shape requirements
These tools have a unique characteristic that makes them similar to the camera app: They generate artifacts that do not require their service in order to be distributed. For example, once you have made a Webflow website, you can export it to the standard formats of HTML/CSS and host it wherever you want. With Canva, once you have created your graphics design, you can download the images to your computer and then upload them to whichever image hosting service, chat room, or social media platform you need to spread your marketing message.
These tools are not free. Usually, you need to subscribe to a certain tier before the export options are turned on and you can actually migrate your data. That’s because the lure of the recurring revenue from SaaS is too great; Web services have to try to get you to host your creation exclusively on their platform.
In fact, many other no-code tools, such as Glide (a mobile app maker) and Airtable (a database design service), allow you to create your own mobile apps and spreadsheets; but they may require you to host your creation on their server. Even Webflow — even though it started out as a hosted website creation tool — is introducing more and more features that are only available if you also choose to host your completed site on their platform, taking advantage of their forms submission service, their e-commerce shopping cart service, and their integration service for other SaaS products. Even Adobe — which pioneered the creation of powerful photo editing and illustration tools — is moving away from the model where you bought their Software-as-a-Product, replacing it with a model that requires you to subscribe to their desktop software (“Adobe Creative Cloud”) and pay a recurring subscription fee. The “Adobe Creative Cloud” allows you to store all your artifacts on their cloud; you can send out Lightroom links to your photo sessions on the Adobe domain versus sending the JPEG in an email or a text message.
This temptation to turn tools into rent-generating services is making the lock-in — which is inherent in the architecture of Software-as-a-Service — much more universal. Even software providers who never used to play lock-in via recurring subscriptions are giving in to the walled-garden business model of SaaS, as a way to please venture capitalists or Wall Street.
Let’s talk about the qualities of Software-as-a-Tool, and how you can tell if software is a tool or a service.
Defining qualities of Software as a Tool
In the future, a lot of tools will be delivered through the Web and priced like SaaS. That’s why we need a precise set of criteria to distinguish software that can be classified as a tool. Software-as-a-Tool must be…
Untethered: You are free to move the things you create to a different host or computing environment. In other words, you don’t depend on one specific service from a particular vendor. You don’t need that vendor’s service in order to view or interact with the artifacts you have created with the software tools. Substitutable: You can use different tools to create the same artifacts, due to the underlying compatibility of the file formats or data structures. The simplest example is a video editing tool. If you use two different video editing tools to create a video out of the same set of raw camera clips, your two videos will be basically the same. You can substitute one tool for another, as they can both fulfill the same job. Similarly (though this is a slightly more complicated example), you can use two different data analysis tools to process the same spreadsheet-like data structure and create a very similar chart. Composable: You can mix and match tools to create your artifact. In order to build a house, you need more than just a hammer; you need different types of hammers, screw drivers, drills, ladders, etc. Similarly, most digital artifacts require multiple tools before they reach their final form. Even for data processing, people use various data science and data analysis tools to process the data set and finally arrive at an analysis. Keepable: You own your artifacts and you can archive them safely forever. You won’t lose your creation just because the tool is discontinued or the software no longer gets updated. In other words: Software-as-a-Tool, like Software-as-a-Product, is something you can keep; while Software-as-a-Service is something you can’t keep (you can’t keep your Gmail data on your computer if you get banned from Google or your account is deleted). In that regard, Software-as-a-Tool is similar to Software-as-a-Product, because no third party can just take away your data. Neutral: You can use the tools in your toolbox in any way you see fit. If you have a hammer, you can use it in various ways, from building things up to knocking things down. Digital tools exhibit the same type of neutrality; the tool, by itself, is fully neutral. But this neutrality disappears as you turn the tool into a service — e.g. to create content, distribute data, run a business, or connect with others. Suddenly, you are subjected to certain censorship rules or privacy laws, depending on the jurisdiction you are in. What are you using it for? Whom are you interacting with? What is your intent? This may differ from place to place, from country to country, but it is part of the social norm.
Most SaaS apps fail to fulfill the above criteria, meaning that we can’t consider them as the tools to build our digital future. They simply have a different value system with different priorities. In contrast to Software-as-a-Tool, SaaS apps are proud to be
Centralized: One place for all your stuff — very convenient. Which also means that you can’t migrate your data anywhere else. Unique: They offer capabilities that you can’t find anywhere else. Which also means that there’s no substitute. Comprehensive: Their feature sets cover a lot. Which also means there’s no mixing and matching with other apps. Trusted: You trust them as your reliable partners. Which also means that you need to keep up that partnership (aka your active subscription) if you want to keep access to your data. Compliant: They make sure they’re compliant with the law. Which also means their services are limited. There are certain things they can’t do for you, because a service is never as neutral as a tool.
The consequence of those qualities is that users will always remain passive consumers of the software. They can’t be turned from passive consumers of these amazing services into active builders of their own digital spaces.
The US went through a do-it-yourself (DIY) movement when The Home Depot and other home improvement stores — each with a warehouse full of tools, parts, and materials — became a fixture in most suburban towns. People learned that many of the things they used to pay a professional for (to do the work for them as a service) turned out to be things they could do themselves; all they needed was a little bit of education and experimentation. This knowledge was incredibly empowering; not just because they were suddenly holding fancy power tools like drills in their hands, but because the waiting time disappeared. They no longer needed to wait for someone to do something for them; they were now able to do it themselves, so they replaced the broken mirror in their bathroom in one weekend on their own.
This process also demystified the thought of what it takes to build something from scratch. People started buying more tools, setting up workshops in their garages, and building whole swing sets themselves. Furthermore, it commodified the tools that now have a much larger customer base; so that, instead of selling tens of thousands of table saws to professional carpenters, manufacturers can sell millions of table saws to hobbyists, thereby driving down the cost of home improvement tools.
Look at the current software market. Behind the modern brands of SaaS companies are legions of software developers, spewing jargons and technical terms, as they talk about JavaScript, the cloud, and GitHub. That intimidates most regular people, including business owners who think, “I can’t do this software thing on my own; they are so much smarter than me.” But if we hand over the software in the form of tools that people can experiment with, they can start building things on their own. They will realize how this composable and untethered software enables them to create artifacts themselves — artifacts that outlast the feature list of certain SaaS companies.
Many of the no-code tools that already exist are beginning to address this desire of regular people, who want to construct software systems that will solve their problems without going through a development team that acts as an intermediary. However, most of these tools exhibit the negative characteristics that are typical for SaaS, as they lock their no-code builders into their platforms, unable to escape that platform’s business model. Fact is, if you are a house guest in someone else’s house, you play by their rules. And when you need to leave, e.g. because the business you created using their tools has grown, it turns out to be impossible. If you leave their platform, you can’t take your creation with you. Instead, you will find yourself needing to build your whole system again from scratch, using the regular development tools that developers use every day — which are untethered, composable, substitutable, keepable, and neutral.
How developers use tools
A lot of the qualities we need to define Software-as-a-Tool already exist in the developer tools market. Unfortunately, in order to use those developer tools, you need to know how to read and write code; you need to understand the nitty-gritty aspects, knowing how the software works behind the scenes. But behind all those intimidating command lines and technical jargons lies a very practical need for simple yet powerful tools — tools that can be used and reused to create artifacts (in this case software) quickly and reliably.
Contrary to the movies’ portrayals of genius hackers, programmers do not sit at their desks and invent new, world-changing concepts every day. By and large, programmers do what home builders do: They have the right tools in their toolbelt and they have the skill sets to glue things together; but most importantly, they know the catalog of parts and tools in The Home Depot of software.
These supply stores are called “package registries”. Every programming language has a different package registry, which collects useful bundles of reusable code. Developers can pull that code from the registry and incorporate it into their programs, so that they don’t have to write it from scratch.
For example, say a developer is building an HR system and needs a calendar widget, which allows the user to enter a birth date or pick it from a month/year control, which detects whether the birth date is valid or invalid, and which supports the different types of international date formats that would be expected in different geographic regions. It makes no sense for that developer to write an international calendar from scratch, given the time pressure he is under to deliver a working version of the HR software. Instead, a vast majority of developers will choose a mature, elegant, feature-rich calendar widget from these package registries and hook it up with the rest of the screens they are building, to get the job done as efficiently as possible.
In the past, those widgets were either part of the operating system, shipped with the software development kit (SDK) of the OS platform, such as Windows, Mac, or iOS; or they were part of commercially supported widget libraries, where developers could purchase them, which saved them time and therefore saved their company some money.
Since open source became the primary way for developers to share code with each other, most of these off-the-shelf modules have actually been shared as open-source code, packaged and distributed through package registries. The source code of these modules always has to be available; this way, in case there is a small error or bug in the calendar library, a developer can inspect the underlying code, make fixes for the main project, and then submit the changes back to the original author of the calendar widget as a contribution. The sharing of code and patches between developers, especially in these libraries and modules, has become a big part of the community-building and social-status-building process, enabling developers to raise their status within the open-source community.
Some developers may even go beyond submitting patches. They share elements of their own work as open-source packages. A developer who is working on HR software, for example, could build a great method for capturing people’s full names in all possible variations (name order, accents, suffixes, prefixes, etc.). He can start an open-source project for this library, title it “nameo”, and become known as a contributor within the open-source ecosystem. Another developer, who is working on a travel site project, declares a bunch of dependencies with different modules — which were contributed by thousands of developers and bundled together into one or more chunks. They are then uploaded to the Web and downloaded from your browser the first time you visit this travel site, which uses both the “nameo” module and the calendar unit among hundreds of other packages.
What the users see when they are working with this e-commerce software — whether it is monetized via advertising, subscriptions, or transaction fees — is actually an amalgamation of thousands of open-source packages, which are responsible for up to 90% of the lines of code that are running to deliver the end user experience. As little as 10% of the code is written by the development team of this site, capturing the unique requirements, architecture needs, branding, and look and feel for this particular application.
In the JavaScript developer ecosystem, which is used to create most user interfaces for SaaS apps, a lot of these modules are stored in a package registry called npm. That package registry was recently acquired by GitHub — a social coding community, where developers can share not only the open-source code they write, but also the proprietary code they create for their companies. npm is a largely free service, which can deliver gigabytes worth of third-party packages every time a developer starts working on a project that already incorporates hundreds, if not thousands of dependencies.
npm has a sophisticated versioning scheme, allowing developers to declare which version or range of versions of the package in the registry is needed or compatible with the code they are writing. Dependencies are both a blessing and a curse. They save you time, as you can build something using software that already exists; but they’re also responsible for headaches, when you have to manage the upgrade of packages, so as to take advantage of new features or bug fixes, while trying not to break the app you are currently building. If you have ever tried to update a version of a desktop app and weren’t able to open a file, you know how frustrating this can be.
Of course, it is still a net gain for developers to have access to these ever-growing collections of parts and tools, compared to building everything themselves. But when we look at the way developers manage the reuse of these prebuilt tools and packages, we see a glimpse of what a world built on top of Software-as-a-Tool will look like. We just need to extend the paradigm of open-source code sharing, registries of packages, and sensible dependency management between all the parts.
The goal is to give end users access to these powerful tools — like a calendar, a name field, an audio player, an application form, a survey form, or a shopping cart. Users should be able to pick these tools from a catalog and assemble software themselves — software that exhibits all the characteristics of Software-as-a-Tool, which distinguish it from its Software-as-a-Service counterpart.
This way, we can do for software building what the DIY movement did for home improvement.
This is not to say that professional engineers won’t be needed; they play a crucial role in creating the high-leverage components that populate the catalog. So, the key is to figure out how to compensate all the people who have contributed various parts to the end result — your website — when your business, which is based on your website software, becomes fabulously successful.
In the next section, we will look at the different business model options to compensate the tool makers, builders, and service providers who keep the software running, by rewarding them for their contributions.
Business model options
Bundling–Unbundling
Software-as-a-Tool, in a way, is an unbundling of all the features that make up multiple Software-as-a-Service products. Once unbundled in the technical sense, we can rebundle them in new and interesting ways.
One example of monetizing Software-as-a-Tool is charging a subscription fee for unlimited access to every tool in a catalog. This is similar to Spotify’s monetization of music; for one monthly subscription, you get access to the entire catalog of recorded music from around the world. On top of this, you could add multiple tiers or bundles, including premium add-ons; which is similar to the different plans and packages for cable TV that cable companies traditionally offer.
But you don’t have to charge upfront. You could also meter how often the tools are used. Then, you charge the operator — a hosting company (if the software is hosted by a third party) or the business (if they choose to host it themselves) — who will pay for the tools based on that metered usage. Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services bill for their services in a similar manner; but obviously, this will be harder to do with tools that are being used in all kinds of different environments, where tracking may not be possible or desirable.
This combination of techniques offers many possible ways to price the tools, so that the cost fits both the budget and the expectation of the customers. Here are a few examples:
Free to use: The tool is open-sourced, which is the norm in the developer community. The author only wants to gain some popularity and recognition, but doesn’t expect any monetary reward in return. Buy this tool for $2.99: Users purchase the tool like a product, acquiring a license for themselves (one person only) via their email address or business domain. Once they have licensed it, they can use it for all their needs, while every other person needs to buy his/her own license. Pay $0.10 per use: For tools that aren’t used regularly (e.g. generating a QR code with some special features), users can pay separately each time they use it. If they use it more often, they may get a special discount. Subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year: This is not all that different from Software-as-a-Service from the business perspective; except that, if users stop subscribing, they still have read access to all their data. E.g. an audio card would continue to let them play back the audio, while the editing tool that comes with it may no longer work. Pay $75 a month for the gold tier: A company may pay a subscription fee per user per month for a gold-tier bundle. An HR tool could be included in that tier, without collecting any additional payments, even though the provider of this tool may not be the same corporate entity as the organization offering the tiered plan. This approach requires a particular payment and accounting mechanism. Buy this tutorial with examples for $199: A particular tool (e.g. an app for creating marketing landing pages) is free to use. But users want to learn how to use it effectively, while getting some templates and samples as starting points. There is a big market for informational products on the Internet, which have some educational components and some digital-product components. Authors can sell those tutorials instead of selling the software itself; this way, they make enough money to maintain the software without having to offer it as SaaS. Buy premium themes and templates: There is a large market for themes and templates that are used by the WordPress community. A lot of those templates may be assembled from the packages in the catalog. They are basically bundles of pre-integrated tools, e.g. specific for the real-estate industry. Get this tool integrated with your back-end for $500: There is an opportunity for developers to offer productized services, similarly to Fiverr, where freelancers offer their services and e.g. draw you a logo for $20. A developer could sell the productized service to adapt a certain package to a user’s unique backend; which would cost much less than building an entire application from scratch. When users need a certain extension or integration, they can commission one of these packages via quote (possibly a fixed-price quote) and add the module to their environment. If they find this integration, which they commissioned and paid for, extremely useful, they may even offer it to other users through the catalog. View for free, pay to create something new: This is similar to Adobe’s method of splitting the creator and the reader for PDFs into two separate products. Adobe Acrobat Reader is given away as a free download, but the Creative Cloud, which is used to create and edit PDF files and forms (among many other things), is a paid service.
These types of business models will need much more distributed accounting and payment dispersion systems than the simple SaaS math done by Silicon’s Valley’s startup bank accounts. Many of these models require payment distribution across multiple parties. In order to make this work, some sort of digital money (aka an accounting ledger that can be manipulated in a purely digital form) will be a prerequisite. PayPal was one of the earliest forms of digital money. But in the future, blockchain and cryptocurrency are going to play an important role in capturing, dispersing, and converting different forms of payments, which allow contributors to get rewarded for making their software available as a tool.
Build vs Buy
Customers should be able to buy or license 90% of what they need to build their digital experiences from the catalog, using one of the business models suggested above. The remaining 10% will still need to be built as software, either through coding or through no-code configurations.
Organizations that adopt Software-as-a-Tool can hire staff or consultants to customize, extend, or integrate the off-the-shelf software with their existing business practices. They can keep these customizations as private as proprietary code and run the whole combined software stack in their own cloud account (whether that’s on Amazon, Google, or Microsoft Azure), so as to retain their competitive advantage and proprietary trade secrets.
Alternatively, organizations can decide to share their work with the world, publish their plugins to GitHub, and then push them to a package registry like npm. They could even put a price tag on those modules. This way, people who want a one-click install as part of their no-code experience can instantly incorporate those functionalities into their running environment as a dependency.
For personal use, you could add the missing features to your software toolbox by hiring someone to write certain scripts for you and deliver them to you as links, so that you can just add them into your running environment. In other words: The build portion of Software-as-a-Tool incorporates the flexibility to extend Software-as-a-Quote, without the limitations of Software-as-a-Product and Software-as-a-Service.
Content & Code
The ultimate goal of Software-as-a-Tool is that the tool is distributed with (but behind) the content. For example, when you encounter a video (which is content), the video player or video editor can be loaded if you have that tool in your toolbox. The software disappears behind the content, data, or asset that you are exchanging. Behind the scenes, the runtime is instantiating copies of those modules in your browser, while you encounter different types of content. Currently, this type of streaming instantiation only happens within the boundaries of each browser tab; but if there were a more modular delivery network, you could deliver the module within a content management system app whenever you encounter a new form of content, such as a 3D model play. However, that module would not be coming from YouTube or some sort of hosted service; it would be delivered from a curated software catalog without any terms of service (but perhaps with a licensing agreement, like an open-source license) attached. Remember, it is just a hammer.
Safety & Moderation
The Web platform — especially the Web browser — has a great track record when it comes to safety and reliability. It is very unlikely for something malicious to happen to you if you’re just browsing a Web page. This is the result of extensive engineering efforts to provide sandboxes for JavaScript code, ensuring that they cannot access data they are not supposed to access.
Still, if we want software to be distributed more easily and installed more automatically in various hosting environments, there has to be some form of moderation and curation for this shared module catalog; items that are included in the catalog have to be considered safe. Apple employs human reviewers for their proprietary app store. They interpret the app store’s policy and make more or less arbitrary decisions about whether your app (or the updated version of your app) can be pushed to the app store or not. That process is obviously uneven, because the result depends on the reviewer. And a recent incident shows how unfair it can be, e.g. when Apple’s financial interests conflict with the app developer’s interests (because Apple wants to collect 30% of the SaaS subscription revenue for a paid email product called “Hey”, but the developer refuses to pay that commission).
In the open-source world, the community relies on a different method to ensure that things are safe. They only trust software based on source code that is made available for public viewing. This way, other developers can audit your software, inspecting its internal logic, in case it is suspected of doing something shady.
Enterprises or bigger businesses want even more guarantees than just the idea of developers keeping people honest. They are willing to buy third-party validation, testing, support, and warranties as optional services; and they only trust software catalogs that have been certified by such a trusted party. This has happened in various open-source communities (e.g. Red Hat or Drupal), where there are many user-contributed modules, and a bigger company distributed pre-validated modules as part of a premium support package.
Some developers want to distribute their software without making the source code available; or they want to submit software to high-risk categories like cryptography or blockchain. In that case, the model of requiring a security deposit (also known as “staking”) creates a something-at-stake situation, where a penalty can be deducted from their deposit if a bad event occurs.
In general, Software-as-a-Tool will benefit from multiple methods of curation and ongoing feedback. This could include an alert list feature, where software that has been identified as malicious can be blocked across a global network of service providers. In order for this approach to work, it would have to be a safety requirement for all service providers (who run these tools) to subscribe to this alert feed, act upon it, and remove malicious apps from use immediately. The combination of these techniques will likely result in the same level of safety people depend on when they use app stores, while facilitating a much more open marketplace of ideas and monetization.
Conclusion
Software remains the most flexible artifact of human creativity, as it is only limited by imagination and has no inherent forms or limits. Just as software can do anything, it can also be distributed in many ways. In this article, we have discussed how software has evolved from a product into a quote into a resource into a service and now into a shareable tool.
It is possible to turn the qualities of Software-as-a-Tool, which already exist in the open-source software ecosystem, into user-accessible parts that allow users to build up a healthier, less extractive software ecosystem. But tools are only part of the solution.
We still need product designers who know how to combine these tools to build products that solve a set of problems beautifully. We still need service providers who are willing to host these tool-based products, providing reliable hosting services at a fair price, which can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere in the world. The Web pages containing all the data, content, and assets, which are hosted by these service providers, need to be viewable and hyperlinked as Web resources. This way, we can break the silos of these incompatible SaaS apps and return to the more open, interconnected vision of the World Wide Web that was initially intended, before the tech giants turned the Web into walled gardens.
We want software to be able to be extended in any way that can be described in words, by leveraging the custom-software industry to expand this catalog of possibilities with client-facing collaboration and problem solving. The software market always reconfigures itself around the limitations and the possibilities afforded to it in a particular phase of the technology world. If a CD-ROM can only store 650 MB of material, you know that some developers will find a way to use every single corner of that disk they deliver to the customer.
Now that the Internet connects every person and every computing device, there are no limits to what we can deliver. When we look back at the silos of SaaS in 20 years, we will think of SaaS as limiting and ridiculous, just like the boxes of software on the shelves of the computer stores.
The paradigm of streaming versus downloads will not only transform the content industry with Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify; it will also fundamentally change people’s relationship with the software that is eating the world. Once everything is software, you shouldn’t see it anymore. If software is everywhere, just like the air that surrounds us, it should just disappear from view. It should become a substrate of the digital life it permeates. | https://medium.com/cardstack/software-through-the-ages-7ae7b3debfd7 | ['Cardstack Team'] | 2020-06-30 16:33:30.042000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Features', 'Web3', 'Decentralization', 'SaaS'] |
Story Pointing, Explained. | 🎲. Agile emphasis estimating a story in Story Point instead of hours.
What is a Story Point?
Story points represent the relative sizing of the user story. It is a unit of estimation used by Agile teams to estimate User Stories.
When the product manager wants some features to be developed he/she desires to know how soon the team can complete the features and how many resources it will take to complete the work. From the developer’s perspective, it’s next to impossible to predict the exact time in which he/she can complete the work. The person can, however, give a rough estimate in terms of how much time it might take to complete the work. Note that instead of “will” the developer chose to use “might” because he/she is not absolutely “sure” about the time factor but “feels” it might take that much time. This is user story estimation in a nutshell.
You don’t give an exact number explaining how complex the story is and how long it’ll take to develop — you give a rough “estimate”.
We are good at comparing size, so estimating a story using a Fibonacci series sequence (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21, etc) gives more clarity of its complexity and relative sizing in terms of development. It is helpful to have a set of stories nearby to make a comparison and recommendation to set priority.
While estimating stories, Consider :
Complexity: Consider the complexity of the story.
Consider the complexity of the story. Risk: Consider the team’s inexperience with developing this story.
Consider the team’s inexperience with developing this story. Implementation: Consider the implementation factors.
Consider the implementation factors. Deployment: Consider the deployment requirements.
Consider the deployment requirements. Interdependencies: Consider other outside issues.
Advantages of using story points for estimating work
Story points are a measure of relative size and complexity.
Story points are unitless, meaning as a scale, they are only valuable to compare against each other within the same team.
Estimating in story points allows/encourages everyone, including business people to participate in the estimation process (using Planning Poker).
Estimating story points is fast and easy.
Story points initiate high-level discussions about everything that is involved in a project.
Earned points can be used to generate the teams’ velocity which can be used to predict future work capacity.
Story point estimation Cheatsheet
5 Steps to estimate stories
For each story to be sized, do the following as a team
1. Identify base stories
Identify one or multiple bases or reference stories against which you would do relative sizing of the backlog. This story is picked from the current product backlog or a different story that we have done earlier. But what is important is the understanding of this story is the same among everyone on the team. The team should be confident of this base story.
2. Talk through the detailed requirements
The product manager will answer questions and provide an explanation about what exactly this story entails.
3. Discuss and note down points
These can be bullet points on the story card or text in the “notes” section of a tool. This is best done by Scrum Master who can add these details as and when discussions are on.
4. Raise questions if any
During the discussion, the question may arise and must be clarified at the same time, Such as:
Requirement: Any doubt about the story requirement? Raise an alert. Ask the product manager to give more clarity.
Any doubt about the story requirement? Raise an alert. Ask the product manager to give more clarity. Technical Feasibility: Can a story be delivered using current technology? Any unforeseen technical challenges must be surfaced.
Can a story be delivered using current technology? Any unforeseen technical challenges must be surfaced. Acceptance Criteria: Team must clarify the checklist to be fulfilled to mark the story as accepted.
Team must clarify the checklist to be fulfilled to mark the story as accepted. Dependency: Does this story have external dependencies? If yes, that must be understood and resolved quickly.
Does this story have external dependencies? If yes, that must be understood and resolved quickly. Expertise: Do we have enough skills to deliver the story? The team must have internal skills to deliver the story otherwise delivery might be delayed or not done properly.
5. Agree upon the estimated size
Every team member must agree upon the estimated size decided on a story.
Story Estimation Methods
Planning poker is an agile estimation technique that makes use of story points to estimate the difficulty of the task at hand. Based on the Fibonacci sequence, the story point values that can be assigned are 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21, etc. Each of these represents a different level of complexity for the overall project.
is an agile estimation technique that makes use of story points to estimate the difficulty of the task at hand. Based on the Fibonacci sequence, the story point values that can be assigned are 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21, etc. Each of these represents a different level of complexity for the overall project. T-Shirt Sizes If you think about T-shirts, there are multiple sizes to choose from. More specifically — there is extra-small (XS), small (S), medium (M), large (L), and extra-large (XL). This technique uses these sizes as story points for the size of the project, and it is a useful way of thinking when estimation needs to occur.
If you think about T-shirts, there are multiple sizes to choose from. More specifically — there is extra-small (XS), small (S), medium (M), large (L), and extra-large (XL). This technique uses these sizes as story points for the size of the project, and it is a useful way of thinking when estimation needs to occur. Dot Voting sometimes it can be hard to order the items in the product backlog. This ranking method enables you to sort these items from highest to lowest priority, so you know where to focus your efforts. To do this, you need to select the most important user stories.
sometimes it can be hard to order the items in the product backlog. This ranking method enables you to sort these items from highest to lowest priority, so you know where to focus your efforts. To do this, you need to select the most important user stories. The Bucket System this method relies on placing different values on a table. We call the placements ‘buckets’, but you can just use cards. The values are generally 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21, etc — although these can be expanded if necessary.
this method relies on placing different values on a table. We call the placements ‘buckets’, but you can just use cards. The values are generally 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21, etc — although these can be expanded if necessary. Affinity Mapping firstly, silent relative sizing needs to occur. To prepare for this, place two cards on opposite sides of a wall. One should say ‘small’ and the other should say ‘large’. The leader (or product owner) needs to provide each estimator with a subset of items and should remain present during the process to clarify anything. Estimators then place the items on the wall, relative to each item’s perceived size. The size depends on the effort expected to complete them. There is no discussion at this point.
You might also like : | https://medium.com/@productmindset/story-pointing-explained-ee16a3b15aca | ['Product Mindset'] | 2021-09-06 17:39:12.944000+00:00 | ['Product Management', 'Product Development', 'Agile Methodology', 'Agile', 'Product Manager'] |
Getting Started in Motivational Speaking With Jeff Ber | When Jeff Ber beat his terminal testicular cancer diagnosis, he never imagined that he would one day share his survival story on a public platform. In addition to being a business management consultant and the VP of Operations at OneBall, Jeff Ber is also a motivational speaker. Hoping to reduce the stigma associated with talking about men’s health, he is now sharing his personal experiences with audiences across the United States. If you are interested in becoming a motivational speaker but do not know where to start, you have come to the right place. Jeff Ber is sharing his best-kept secrets to becoming an effective motivational speaker with little to no experience.
What is Motivational Speaking?
‘Motivational speaking’ is a very diverse profession, addressing everything from business management to strengthening interpersonal relationships. Every successful motivational speaker has a specific area of focus. Defining your message and target demographic is essential in understanding what to say and who to approach. Instead of imitating someone else’s tactics, strategies, and expertise, stay true to your own story and experiences — drawing from your own life is much more likely to leave a lasting impression on your audience. Jeff Ber shares the importance of understanding the overarching message you hope to instill. Is it time management? How to achieve any goal? Build better habits? Understanding your ‘mission statement’ will help you sell and build your brand.
Planning Your Speech
Once you have defined the topics, stories, and strategies you want to cover, it is time to write your speech. If you have ever watched a TED Talk or attended a public speaking engagement, you know how important it is to maintain the consistent focus of your audience throughout the talk. Jeff Ber encourages you to start by building an outline. Write and introduction, conclusion, and then organize all of your points into the body — playing with the order until you find a formula that feels right. Throwing in anecdotes, analogies, or stories can keep it fresh and exciting. You might even consider using a visual aid to further exemplify your point.
Trial and Error
Motivational speaking is like any other skill, it requires practice, trial and error, and patience to master. Jeff Ber suggests taking every opportunity you can to improve your public speaking skills. A great way to become comfortable with public speaking prior to performing in front of an audience is to practice your speech for loved ones. Another great way to practice is by recording your speech and studying the flow, mannerisms and habits (like saying ‘um’ too many times!). This might feel uncomfortable at first but over time you will become comfortable in front of an audience.
Get Real-Life Experience
One of the biggest obstacles you will face as a new speaker is securing paying jobs. To gain more experience, offer to speak for free. By reaching out to local organizations, conferences, and events that align with your content and message, you can quickly build your resume and network with potential clients. In addition to giving you real-world experience, Jeff Ber explains that it can provide you with valuable feedback before you start doing paid gigs. He encourages you to offer feedback surveys for organizers to fill out, providing you with valuable insight into what you are doing right and what you still have to improve.
When you are new to motivational speaking, building credibility is vital to securing paid jobs and instilling confidence in your clients and audience. A website is a great place to build an audience and share your mission and message. When you identify the social media platforms that best align with your mission and goals, drive all of the traffic towards your website. A way to achieve this is to build a newsletter that shares some of the tips and tricks you share in your speech. | https://medium.com/@jeffber/getting-started-in-motivational-speaking-with-jeff-ber-c1c9c64384dd | ['Jeff Ber'] | 2020-12-22 01:52:24.210000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Survival', 'Cancer', 'Healthcare', 'Diagnosis'] |
Introducing Slack-First Content to Drive Success from Anywhere | Introducing Slack-First Content to Drive Success from Anywhere
We’re launching new Slack badges right on Trailhead, empowering every department — from marketing to sales to service — to unite on one integrated platform, improving productivity and alignment across organizations. Chris Duarte Follow Jul 21 · 5 min read
As companies embrace and navigate the new hybrid workforce, Slack, the most innovative technology for transforming the way we work, is a critical tool for driving business forward in this new digital-first world of work.
Slack is a virtual headquarters that supports the way people naturally work together. Over 10 million people use Slack every day, with 87% of users saying the platform improves communication and organization in business.
With the Salesforce acquisition of Slack becoming official, we’re enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. Together, Salesforce and Slack are shaping the future of enterprise software, creating the business operating system to lead this historic shift in how companies work.
As the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360, Slack transforms how Trailblazers communicate, collaborate, and take action to drive success from anywhere.
And now, we’re launching new Slack badges right on Trailhead, empowering every department — from marketing to sales to commerce to service — to unite on one integrated platform, improving productivity and alignment across organizations.
Introducing Slack + Salesforce for the future of work
The Slack-First Customer 360 is the #1 CRM that connects customers, teams, and partners with conversations, apps, and data to power digital workflows for the new way to work.
Events happen in multiple systems throughout the day: A support agent logs a case, a hiring manager approves a job offer, or an executive at your prospect retires. Slack can bring events like these to your attention and — through automated workflows and integrated apps and tools — help you take action quickly on things that matter.
Together, Salesforce and Slack give companies a single source of truth for their business and a unified, modern platform, increasing transparency, accessibility, and engagement across the organization.
I’m thrilled to introduce the new Slack + Salesforce for the Future of Work badge where you’ll learn how Slack and Salesforce power a new way of working to grow your business.
No matter how or where you or your team works, you can use the Slack-First Customer 360 to scale across locations and time zones. With the combo of Slack + Salesforce, both workflows and customer success will grow.
Introducing Slack-First content
Together, Salesforce and Slack are creating the most open, interoperable ecosystem of apps and workflows in enterprise software.
Sales reps are now able to update opportunities from Slack, marketing professionals can manage more effective campaigns out of Slack, and service agents can supercharge customer service by accessing and closing tickets without ever leaving Slack.
This is Slack-first — simplifying teamwork for all departments by providing a myriad of ways to organize communications and endless options for integration with other apps, file sharing, and more.
Become Slack-first with three new Trailhead modules:
Slack-First Sales : Close deals faster with Slack.
: Close deals faster with Slack. Slack-First Service : Resolve cases faster and delight customers with Slack.
: Resolve cases faster and delight customers with Slack. Slack-First Marketing: Market smarter with Slack.
With a single shared view of your customer information available in a collaborative space, traditional silos and barriers are a thing of the past.
Communication and collaboration will improve across your organization, resulting in better business outcomes for your employees, customers, and partners.
Get started with Slack, your virtual HQ
If you’re new to Slack or just getting started, we’re here to show you that Slack is transforming work collaboration with a single channel. In fact, using the Slack app reduces emails by 32% and meetings by 27%.
Slack adds a new layer to the business technology stack where people can work together more efficiently, connect all their software tools and services, and find the information they need to do their best work. And everyone benefits from a collaboration hub that brings people, information, and tools together.
On Trailhead, there’s no shortage of resources on how to transform your team’s productivity and unlock workflows with conversations using Slack. Skill up with modules on:
Slack Basics : Discover the basics so you can get the most out of Slack.
: Discover the basics so you can get the most out of Slack. Slack Etiquette and Productivity : Boost productivity using recommended tools and actions in Slack.
: Boost productivity using recommended tools and actions in Slack. Slack Workflow Builder : Automate everyday tasks inside and outside of Slack without writing any code.
: Automate everyday tasks inside and outside of Slack without writing any code. Slack Connect : Speed up communication and work more securely with people outside your company.
: Speed up communication and work more securely with people outside your company. Slack Analytics: Use metrics and dashboards to gain insight into how your organization uses Slack.
With Slack, you can keep relevant conversations organized in one place, access important files quickly, and make it easy for everyone to get up to speed in a channel.
You can also make Slack work for you by customizing your notifications, reminding yourself about important messages, and organizing conversations in your sidebar. Now, you can get comfortable with Slack and focus on what matters to you.
As we look to the future, there are incredible opportunities for Slack + Salesforce innovation to empower you to do your best work — wherever you are.
Skill up with Slack
You can also skill up with the new Drive Success With Slack Quest.
Learn how to unify systems and align teams using Slack to drive success from anywhere.
Complete the trailmix by August 31, 2021, to earn an exclusive community badge, plus, enter for a chance to win* your very own Slackstro plush.
Check out the Salesforce Newsroom and the Salesforce 360 blog for more on our new Slack badges on Trailhead.
*Country of residence and other restrictions apply. See official rules at sforce.co/TrailheadQuests. | https://medium.com/trailhead/introducing-slack-first-content-to-drive-success-from-anywhere-f251f8222793 | ['Chris Duarte'] | 2021-07-23 14:05:59.473000+00:00 | ['Slack', 'Productivity', 'Collaboration', 'Trailhead', 'Salesforce'] |
We’re All In This Together? | We’re All In This Together?
No. Clearly we’re not.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A proclamation by the pigs who control the government in the novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell.
It was only back in February that home secretary for the UK, Priti Patel labelled any person earning less than £25,000 a year a “low skilled” or “unskilled” worker. Now, amid the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic, it is those workers who’re helping to prop up the country in lockdown.
Coronavirus is not some grand leveller: it is an amplifier of existing inequalities, injustices and insecurities.
The trite slogan ‘We’re All In This Together’ is simply bollocks. There’s no equality on display. The virus isn’t some grand leveler affecting everybody in society in the same way. In case you haven’t heard, old people are more susceptible than young. The weak are more likely to be infected. And those on the low-end of the poor scale, the social-economically deprived people feeding the trough of the rich, are even more likely to be exposed to the virus.
Are the super-rich, holed up in their bunker, really in it together? Is Gwyneth Paltrow really concerned for my well-being as her in-house chef whips up another batch of smashed avocado smoothie?
It’s time to debunk the myth.
‘Be Kind’ is what the governments are preaching. They need the populace to stay calm. They need the ‘workers’ now to be in the front-line in order to protect the system. They need you now more than ever.
Boris Johnson lavishes praise on a Kiwi worker. A woman who stayed by his bed all night long ensuring he didn’t succumb to the virus. By her side was a Portugese health worker. Two vital women that helps the National Health Service to tick over. The irony here being that both would have difficulty getting visas in the Uk’s Brexit future. Migrants help the system tick over.
Photograph: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock
The day Dominic Raab encouraged us all in the UK to clap for the workers who’re risking their lives to keep society going, the government restated that some of those same people won’t be allowed in the country come January 2021.
“Low-skilled” people would not be able to apply for a UK work visa.
In It Together until you’re no longer useful or needed. Who’ll take their place? Who among the wealthy are willing to step into their shoes? What will become of the the migrant care workers, hospital porters, bus drivers and cleaners who are keeping us safe and keeping society functioning.
Are the cleaners essential during a pandemic but non-essential when the pandemic clears? If recognising our common humanity is something we can do when Boris Johnson is admitted to intensive care, the same should be possible for all people, regardless of their immigration status. All migrants’ rights should matter. Not just in a crisis, but all the time. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/were-all-in-this-together-29ec713c7c69 | ['Reuben Salsa'] | 2020-04-13 22:59:44.711000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Salsa', 'Equality', 'Coronavirus', 'The Bad Influence'] |
gRPC with Java | gRPC is a high-performance universal RPC framework. gRPC has support for interoperability between several languages such as Java, C++, C#, Go, Dart, Kotlin, NodeJS, Objective-C, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and many more. gRPC has a schema for service definition and it can generate code based on that schema. gRPC also supports bi-directional streaming and authentication with HTTP/2 protocol. gRPC is battle-tested by Square, CoreOS, Cisco, CockroachLabs, Netflix, and many other companies. gRPC is also part of the CNCF project. Today I want to share a video made with gRPC and Java. So Let’s get started.
The Video
The Code
Cheers,
Diego Pacheco | https://medium.com/@diego-pacheco/grpc-with-java-be5432537d3c | ['Diego Pacheco'] | 2020-11-24 00:12:30.757000+00:00 | ['Microservice', 'Java15', 'Java', 'Backend', 'Grpc'] |
ABN AMRO differentiates its Omnichannel Customer Experience using Microsoft Teams | ABN AMRO differentiates its Omnichannel Customer Experience using Microsoft Teams
Innovation
Today, if you’re looking to buy property in the Netherlands, it’s likely you’ll encounter the Dutch bank ABN AMRO early in your online search. From a real estate company’s website, you can make an appointment to talk to an ABM AMRO mortgage advisor via a video call scheduled at your convenience. “We started using video technology to facilitate conversations between customers and mortgage advisors early, and it’s created a competitive advantage for ABN AMRO,” says Frank Verkerk, Chief Digital Officer at ABN AMRO. ”Until recently, we relied on Skype for Business to deliver this solution. But we have transitioned to Microsoft Teams and now the customer experience is even easier and better.”
“ABN AMRO has an ambition to be one of the best remote banks in the world. As we add more and more Teams meeting functionality to our video-enabled banking, we’re on the right track to achieve that goal.” Frank Verkerk: Chief Ditigal Officer ABN AMRO
Today, ABN AMRO enhances that competitive advantage by improving its digital client service model across all lines of business. Thanks to a recent investment in Microsoft 365, ABN AMRO uses Microsoft Teams to enhance its portfolio of omnichannel capabilities, including video banking, that customers can choose from. As Teams becomes an integral part of ABN AMRO’s digital banking platform for its largest segments, it will be easier than ever for customers to enjoy video appointments for more of their banking needs.
“Technology is a means to an end,” says Verkerk. “For us, that end is great customer service. Teams meetings operate flawlessly, with reliable, one-click video conferencing that delivers a delightful customer experience. Teams has the scalability to provide these effortless experiences as we grow our business. Today, nearly 100 percent of our mortgage transactions are conducted online.”
Cultural affinity with online experiences gives Teams an opportunity to shine
Dutch consumers have long embraced the internet, and it’s their comfort level with online transactions that provides the context for ABN AMRO’s digital channel strategies. For the first time since its founding in 1789, ABN AMRO is closing branches, as in-person visits decline, and people opt for the convenience of online banking.
However, customers always appreciate the personal touch. “For complex financial products, people appreciate personal advice, but they also want expedient service that fits their modern lives,” says Joeri Hartmans, Product Owner of Video Banking at ABN AMRO. “The combination of flexibility and personal advice is video banking’s appeal. Today, people rate video banking conversations with a higher Net Promoter Score than they do in-person conversations at the branch.”
So, what will Teams bring to the video banking experience? ABN AMRO has high expectations. “Teams provides a better customer experience — it optimizes video banking services in our internet and web banking platforms, and it’s an extensible platform for innovation at ABN AMRO,” says Hartmans.
Frictionless Teams meetings drive customer, advisor satisfaction
Using Teams for video banking means customers no longer require plug-ins to initiate meetings. If you ask Djawid Fatah, Advisor, Personal Banking at ABN AMRO, this was the number one drawback of the bank’s previous conferencing solutions. “The big difference, from my perspective as an advisor, is the ease and comfort of Teams,” says Fatah. “It’s that initial few moments of getting connected that set the tone for a good, easy video conference, and Teams meetings make that happen, especially for less tech-savvy customers.”
Fatah conducts three to five video banking appointments with international clients daily. Skeptical at first, he quickly saw that a Teams meeting can be as personal as a face-to-face conversation. “I thought you had to be in the same room to build client relationships,” he says. “But there is no difference in my ability to interact during a video banking appointment using Teams. I can ‘meet’ my clients anywhere, anytime. This is great for international clients in different time zones.”
Highly secure video conference environment
ABN AMRO vetted Teams as a collaboration platform before making it the bank’s cornerstone for video banking. “We are a trusted institution, and customers need reinforcement of that trust, especially with new services,” says Verkerk. “We worked with Microsoft to ensure that its cloud technology meets our expectations for security. Regarding video banking, Teams is a trusted platform in combination with our proprietary technology.”
Hartmans points to the added security of having customers wait in the lobby until an advisor agrees that the meeting goes ahead as one way to ensure that video banking in Teams complies with the bank’s security standards. “We are looking into compliance recording in Teams, so we can reproduce what is said during an appointment should we have to for legal reasons,” he says.
Teams enriches web and online customer experience
To enrich web and mobile banking features for customers, ABN AMRO takes advantage of the extensibility of its Teams solution. “Teams is the basis for evolving ABN AMRO’s video banking platform for the future,” says Hartmans. “When Microsoft will make web and mobile SDKs generally available, we can increase the integration of video banking within our internet experience and our mobile banking app — where customers are already logged in to a secured environment. We look forward to that.”
To improve the mobile banking experience, ABM AMRO plans on using the Teams mobile SDK to embed Teams meeting functionality in the branded ABN AMRO mobile app. Today, if customers want to launch video banking sessions on their phones, they must download the Teams mobile app. That’s about to change. “We’ll be adding to an already rich mobile banking experience when customers launch video banking sessions within our mobile app with just one click,” says Hartmans. “With everything you need in your video appointment right at your fingertips, you can have a smooth meeting with your advisor.”
An enriched experience also awaits customers using ABN AMRO’s online banking at home. The video banking feature already integrates with the online experience, and ABN AMRO added document sharing and digital contract signing. ABN AMRO is looking forward to using the Teams web SDK to embed the video tool in its video banking environment. “The customer and advisor can easily complete product or service applications in the Teams environment in one step,” says Hartmans.
A global health crisis proved the value of video banking
When COVID-19 arrived and companies initiated work-from-home mandates, it became clear that ABN AMRO’s video banking strategy has the potential to change banking behavior for the long term. With bank branches closed, suddenly a large group of customers discovered the value of the video banking solution — and many became converts. “COVID-19 accelerated the use of video banking across all our business lines,” says Verkerk. “Requests from advisors to use Microsoft video technology increased, and we onboarded other products and businesses. Now, we have 3,000 advisors using the solution.”
ABN AMRO is an innovator in virtual client service models, enabling geographically independent service, anywhere and anytime. This has only improved since the arrival of COVID-19. In the second quarter of 2020, 96 percent of ABN AMRO’s interactions with customers took place virtually. That represents an increase in video banking sessions of 32 percent. Closed loop feedback shows that 40 percent of customers even promote video banking after their first appointment.
Helping customers through the health crisis was a top priority for ABN AMRO, and the success of its digital channels, including video banking, drives customer loyalty and a competitive advantage. Despite the lockdown, 59 percent of its customers felt they could do their banking anytime, anywhere. “ABN AMRO has an ambition to be one of the best remote banks in the world,” concludes Verkerk. “As we add more and more Teams meeting functionality to our video-enabled banking, we’re on the right track to achieve that goal.”
Find out more about ABN AMRO on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
“We worked with Microsoft to ensure that its cloud technology meets our expectations for security. Regarding video banking, Teams is a trusted platform in combination with our proprietary technology.” Frank Verkerk: Chief Digital Officer ABN AMRO
Click here to go to the original text on Microsoft Customer Stories. | https://medium.com/abn-amro-developer/abn-amro-differentiates-its-omnichannel-customer-experience-using-microsoft-teams-22836e2d2079 | ['Abn Amro'] | 2020-09-11 10:36:59.070000+00:00 | ['Abn Amro', 'Microsoft Teams', 'Innovation', 'Beeldbankieren', 'Omnichannel'] |
BisaGo Design Guideline | Color
Color Palette for bisaGo
The main color that we used in the application is Green, White, and Black. Additional four more shades of green are for border or accent color, while the two shades of red are for the warning text and ‘Disabilitas’ button, and the other three colors, grey is for a placeholder text color, blue and purple are for ‘Disabilitas’ button. For colors, we store the hex number of it in ‘styles.dart’ so we can reuse it again and again.
Typography
Typography for bisaGo
Typography guidelines include rules on font use, font size, and font-weight. Two main fonts that we used are Comfortaa and Muli. We chose that font because we think that it’s easy to read from those two fonts, and Muli is a popular font to use.
Component
bisaGo Components
Our team has created components such as text field, button, dropdown, ‘special button’, icon, etc., which later on we can use in the application. The existence of this special button is for the ‘Tentang Disabilitas’ page, where use can choose between four disabilities to know more about that disability. As I’ve mentioned before, our goal of creating this components is for reusability. Therefore, we store this component in one place, in the utils directory.
For the usage of this Design Guideline itself, you can see through this image below.
Detailed Version
Material Design as Benchmark
In 2014, Google launched Material Deisgn. Material is a design system created by Google to help teams build high-quality digital experiences for Android, iOS, the web, and Flutter, yes Flutter since Google who also launched Flutter too. The base component of a Flutter project is actually a MaterialApp widget. By using that, we can access through different types of widgets. Therefore, it’s no question for us to benchmark to Material Design. Here are some of the result after doing a benchmark:
bisaGo and Material Design
As we can see, it’s more or less the same component. Like the App Bar, the icon is located at the left, and the title is centered. The same goes for buttons, has an outline-only button and a fill-in button.
Lesson Learned
Creating a design guideline really speeds up the application development process. We don’t have to continually declare which color we’re going to use since we can define a constant. We also don’t have to have a brainstorming session to pick what kind of button we should use. We can use the design guideline. Our team can strive for consistency among pages. Therefore, it can be aesthetically pleasing when routing from one page to another. Using a provided ‘special button’ helps us to develop the page for that button. We don’t have to go back and forth between Figma and Android Studio.
Struggles
One of the struggles is a longer time needed when coming up with a design guideline. We have to discuss everything from a color scheme, typography, and many more. It’s also exhaustive. Not only that but also we have to pre-defined a constant for all components in the design guideline. This again can be exhaustive and a very, very long time.
In conclusion, Design Guideline is very helpful when we’re trying to develop an application. We can strive for a consistency, faster-pace development process. For someone who works mostly on the front-end side, this guideline is very helpful, I just need to see the guideline without having a confusion.
Source: | https://medium.com/ppl-c/bisago-design-guideline-e2940a89d150 | ['Surya Nirvana'] | 2021-01-01 20:08:02.895000+00:00 | ['Guidelines', 'UI Design', 'Design', 'Material Design', 'UI'] |
Turkey’s Purge Victims Mourn Death of a Hero Professor | Turkey’s Purge Victims Mourn Death of a Hero Professor
Professor Haluk Savas is a symbol of the post-coup era while both alive and dead. The truth is that cancer did not kill him. The injustice and purge did.
Professor Haluk Savas. (Photo Credit: Stockholm Center For Freedom)
“I’ll not be drowned in Meric (Evrosa/Meritsa), I will die while screaming out in my country and everyone will know who persecuted (me).” (Professor Haluk Savas)
When he scrambled to spur the authorities into action to lift a travel ban imposed against him, Professor Haluk Savas, a psychiatrist who was summarily discharged from duty in the blanket post-coup purge in Turkey in 2016, uttered the words above. It was last year and he was fighting lethal cancer. The medical treatment he desperately needed was being provided only in a handful of countries such as Japan, the U.S. and Cuba.
But the professor ran headlong into a set of obstacles generated by a callous political climate where the most vulnerable was susceptible to the most heart-rending treatment by authorities.
“My expected life left is 39 months, 30 of which already passed. It seems that I’ll spend the remaining nine months by communicating with various departments of the state,” he lamented on Twitter last year.
Instead of an obedient submission, he chose to combat cancer as well as injustice with only tools available to him: civil disobedience, social media and personal resistance in a peaceful way. As his attempt hit a snag, he launched a campaign on social media and managed to sway the unmoving authorities.
The unflinching fight against injustice and all forms of persecution until his last breath became the defining mark of the professor, cementing his vanguard role for a generation of public servants who were sacked by the government without any semblance of due process.
The Meric annotation refers to the tragic death of people, who lost their lives during a risky endeavor over the river that demarcates the porous land border between Turkey and Greece, in a bid to reach the Greek land.
“I’ve nine months left,” Savas once conceded. A little more than nine months, the professor passed away on Tuesday, the last day of June in 2020. And as he promised, he laid out a memorable resistance against an oppressive regime currently governing Turkey until his last moments in the world.
His wife, also a doctor, announced the tragic news on Twitter.
“Let my hands touch someone, let me warm him if he is cold. So my warmth would not be wasted.”
This was the altruistic character of the man described by his wife who depicted a great human being with an angel heart who always lived with a mindset to help others at every possible moment.
Haluk Savas: Fighting For Justice
The professor won his long-lasting battle in court and was acquitted off all the charges last year. But a commission set up by the government to deal with the complaints of (nearly 150,000) sacked public workers did not restore him to his post at a prestigious university hospital in the southern province of Gaziantep. The commission, Savas contended, was designed to dodge reviewing and proper handling of the reams of files submitted by the dismissed servants. He even clamored for the complete shutdown of the seven-men commission, which did little good for the majority of the applicants but served as window-dressing to deflect international criticism. It also functioned to stymie efforts of Turkish citizens applying to the Strasburg-based European Court of Human Rights from within. Appalled by the torrent of so many Turkey-originated applications, the European court forwarded the Turkish citizens first to exhaust the channel of Commission infamously dubbed as “OHAL Commission.”
The professor was briefly detained in prison after the 2016 coup over politically-motivated charges of ‘terrorism and coup involvement,’ the same set of accusations that landed more than 50,000 people behind prison bars and briefly kept half a million in policy custody for varying amounts of time. There, in the filthy and cramped conditions of the jail, he was diagnosed with cancer, which eventually overwhelmed his frail body today.
The professor died but his name, reputation and rebel spirit remains very much alive. He has left a living legacy of resistance and struggle; he presented a portrait of a benevolent doctor who, even while battling cancer, still gave online sessions to console and treat people with mental problems. In prison, too, he voluntarily treated other inmates who suffered psychological and physical torture and who were on the verge of total mental breakdown.
Besides being a brilliant doctor, a soulmate and mentor for countless people, Haluk Savas was also a dedicated activist fighting for the rights of the persecuted on the front lines. Frustrated by the media blackout for the plight of the KHK community (KHK refers to the public workers who have been sacked in the post-coup purge), the professor took the lead of forming a Youtube Channel, KHK TV, to cover the tragedies of purge victims and to restore their rights back. As long as his health allowed, he served as editor-in-chief of the social media platform whose Youtube channel was banned by a Turkish court given its increasing appeal and widening reach to a growing audience.
Last year, I asked whether it was more difficult to combat Azrael (angel of death) or the Turkish bureaucracy. Overcoming the latter seemed more challenging, but in the end, Savas lost the battle to both.
When the symbol of the KHK people dramatically came to the end of his journey, there was a shared sense of grief, lamentation and a common vow to make his legacy alive and to honor his name by fighting for the rights of the wrongfully persecuted.
“We are all Haluk Savas” was a trending topic in Turkey soon after his death. It is a tribute to someone whose life story presents a microcosm to everything that defines a purge victim’s life, to all the things that characterize the suffering of an entire community of people and their tenacious fight for justice. It is a testament to the underlying respect for his personality and living legacy.
Rest in Peace, Professor… | https://abyasun.medium.com/turkey-purge-victims-mourn-death-of-haluk-savas-3b0799e08cbe | ['Abdullah Ayasun'] | 2020-07-01 03:55:43.815000+00:00 | ['Purge', 'Turkey', 'Justice', 'Cancer', 'Haluk Savas'] |
The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Doesn’t Believe in Bitcoin Being the ‘Currency of the Future’ | Throughout much of human history, physical money has evolved from tokens connected to goods at warehouses to precious metals to promissory notes and now into paper and plastic notes backed by central banks.
In a nutshell, any “legal tender” backed by faith can be labelled and used as ‘money’.
Ray Dalio, the co-CIO and founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates recently tweeted his thoughts on Bitcoin and as to why it may not be the “future of currency”.
Any “legal tender” that can be used to purchase or sell other goods is essentially what people can label as a currency but there are a few other things that constitute what money is.
According to textbook definitions, “ money needs to be divisible, represent a store of value as well as be a medium of exchange”.
The version of money being used nowadays is “electronic money” whereby you swipe your credit/ debit card and the person upfront gives you the good/service that you swiped your card for.
When you swipe your credit/debit card, your information is immediately sent for processing to a merchant bank, which in return sends this signal to the servers of Visa/Mastercard to check for any kind of fraudulent transaction and if the signal reciprocates in a positive manner, the customer’s query is then sent to the ‘customer’s bank’ which sets aside the funds from the customer’s account and sends this information back to Visa/Mastercard and then eventually to the merchant bank again, before the customer gets the chance to finally walk out of the store with the required items.
This entire process makes use of several intermediaries that cryptocurrencies don’t.
In essence, most cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are decentralized. Monetary transactions are governed through government-controlled currencies, which cryptocurrencies don’t fall under. Crypto transactions are dealt with through a digital ledger called a blockchain and is monitored through peer-to-peer transactions. There is technically no central authority that processes these transactions when it comes to cryptocurrencies.
Blockchain, bundles transactions into blocks which are then chained together and broadcasted to the nodes in the central network. This central network is better known as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
The public aspect of blockchains generally implies that anyone can use blockchain while serving as a validating node to the system. Anyone assigned as a node can in return, act as part of that blockchain’s governance mechanism. Thus theoretically, blockchains are decentralized and resistant to undue control or influence from any single party.
In contrast, a distributed ledger generally doesn’t enable most of these public features. It can impose restrictions on its users which is why it is often referred to as a “permissioned network”. It restricts who can operate as a node and in most cases, governance decisions are left to a single centralized party.
The conflict of interest between banks, big businesses, and the government should now appear to be crystal clear. If any particular government, wants to impose a “centralized digital banknote” system combining the permissioned network feature of DLT’s and the payment mechanism of blockchain, it would mean that there would be no need for banks to act as intermediaries!
If they fail to obtain deposits, they simply cannot issue any form of loans.
People would simply utilize blockchain for transaction purposes, without having to deposit their savings with commercial banks. Only the central issuer of the “digital banknote” monitoring the system, would have all the required data to facilitate for such transactions. In most cases, this would imply one large state-owned entity.
Thus, the need for banks as intermediaries would be eliminated, driving them out of business.
Thus, in essence, cryptocurrencies can be deemed to be safe, but unless it’s regulated most governments and corporations would not accept them as a “store of value”. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-worlds-largest-hedge-fund-manager-doesn-t-believe-in-bitcoin-being-the-currency-of-the-d17a1703208 | ['S I Ahmed'] | 2020-12-07 20:06:36.873000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Business', 'Investing', 'Economics'] |
Make the first interaction feel like a date | In the book The Power of Moments, there is a great analogy about the importance of the first moment. In my own words I would say it like this:
Imagine that the first time you meet your customer would be a first date. Would you treat your customer differently than what you do today?
This is a pretty strong analogy and question that can help service designers and service owners out there.
It should fell like a date
Often the first moments of a service are pretty administrative. Imagine if we did the same for our first dates:
I there, before we can go to the movies I need you to fill out these forms. Oh and you need to send them by mail within the next 24 hours.
What seems absurd for the start of a private relationship is often the norm in the customer experience.
So when it comes to designing the first moments of an interaction between your brand, product or service and your customer ask yourself: | https://service-design.co/make-the-first-interaction-feel-like-a-date-b99e921819d8 | ['Daniele Catalanotto'] | 2020-12-22 03:17:34.507000+00:00 | ['Moments', 'UX', 'Sales', 'Service Design', 'Customer Experience'] |
Who’s setting the requirements for the job postings? | Who’s setting the requirements for the job postings?
If it’s decided by HR, that’s WRONG.
If it’s decided by product owner, that’s WRONG.
If it’s decided by managers, that’s WRONG.
The job requirements should be part of the company’s culture. We hear a lot about DevOps culture and other cultures. The hiring process should be a culture. For example, the culture of hiring is to bring qualified engineers who can solve problems and are WILLING to learn. I believe that’s the key.
If you are hiring based on a set of technologies, that’s WRONG. Technologies come and go, and you will be left with a large group of engineers that will resist the change.
Most companies have onboarding process. I believe the onboarding process shouldn’t only focus on introducing the new hires to the company’s products portfolio, but it should also be used to bring the engineers up to speed with the technologies used to build the products.
Let’s call for a change to the hiring process. Let’s make it a culture. | https://medium.com/@zakbaani/whos-setting-the-requirements-for-the-job-postings-5d80b30ace3e | ['Zakaria Baani'] | 2020-12-17 15:11:20.358000+00:00 | ['Hiring', 'Onboarding Process'] |
Streamlining the Design x Engineering Partnership | Removing the Guesswork 🕵️♀️
A common pain point during a feature’s lifecycle often surfaces when the handoff of a design spec breeds assumptions from the designer and engineer alike. Design assumptions about feasibility or complexity can lead to questioning, debates, and overall time lost. Engineering assumptions about a design can lead to bugs, UX inconsistencies, tech debt-incurring workarounds. Fortunately, the introduction of Hook and WUI has alleviated a lot of the guesswork in both the design and engineering workflows.
Designers are now empowered to design with specific components in mind without worrying if the technical aspects are achievable or not. Loading, error, empty, and focus states are largely handled out of the box and just need to be wired up appropriately. Each state might not need to be detailed in a flowchart—a huge timesaver—because our components’ behaviors are consistent.
Here’s an example of how a traditionally tricky key-value input list handles itself in the context of a robust video detail page: | https://medium.com/jw-player-engineering/streamlining-the-design-x-engineering-partnership-9d2328cfff4f | ['Kim Hart'] | 2020-11-25 16:32:09.019000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Web Components', 'Frontend', 'QA', 'Design Systems'] |
An Exchange Wherein My Parents Haggle With My Kidnapper | An Exchange Wherein My Parents Haggle With My Kidnapper
Sharon, check what the usual price is on these things.
Photo by @lattefarsan on Creative Commons
Phones rings.
DAD: Hello, McMurtry residence?
KIDNAPPER (distorted voice): I have your daughter Megan. If you ever want to see her again-
DAD: Woah, you kidnapped our Meggie?
KIDNAPPER: Yes, and if -
DAD puts his hand over the receiver.
DAD: Sharon! Come here, somebody nabbed Megan.
MOM: Oh jeeze.
KIDNAPPER: Listen! If you ever want to see your daughter again, you need to get me three million dollars by midnight.
A pause.
KIDNAPPER: I said -
DAD: I heard you, it’s just…we’ll have to discuss that price, I think you’ve really overshot here.
KIDNAPPER: What?
DAD: Sharon, check what the usual price is on these things.
MOM: Ok, I’ll turn on the computer.
DAD: Hang on, buddy, we’re figuring out a better price.
MOM: Does the little apple mean it’s already on?
KIDNAPPER: Did you not hear me? I have your daughter. I like…have a gun.
DAD: Oh, I’m sure you’re very scary! And we love our daughter, but I think we both know she’s not worth three million dollars.
MOM: What’s the computer password again? Cheddar12?
KIDNAPPER: I did my research, ok? I know Megan was kidnapped as a child. You paid three million dollars for her then.
DAD: Look now, son, that was 1994! Meggie was leaving that adorable school production of Peter Pan that I missed. She was worth three million dollars in ’94, but, like my Cocoa Beach timeshare, her value has greatly depreciated since then.
MOM: Ok I’m using the Googler now.
DAD: See, when Megan was a little girl she had so much potential. People will spend a fortune to get that innocent budding future back. And of course we still love her, but I’m too financially savvy to be swindled like this, bud. Our Meggie’s 28 now! She’s unmarried, no kids, a joke of a career…
MOM: Trying to be a modern artist or something, it’s embarrassing!
DAD: Economically speaking, people really only have value when they’re too young to have done anything yet. But as soon as you’re old enough that people start expecting things of you, it’s just not worth the dough, my friend.
KIDNAPPER: So even though she’s the exact same human you once paid three million dollars for, she’s worth less now?
MOM: Ok, google says the average ransom price is $1.15 million.
DAD: Oh yeah, you way overdid it here, son. And $1.15 million is probably a child ransom price. Once you factor in her debt, student loans, that time she got into adult magic, we might actually be in the red.
KIDNAPPER: Wow, I never thought of it that way.
DAD: As a business model, you’d be much better off kidnapping youngins.
KIDNAPPER: Toddlers?
MOM: Oh, younger even.
DAD: I mean if it were possible to kidnap an embryo, that’d be quite profitable! People would pay big for that pure potential without any sense of inherent human shortcomings. I mean, when Megan was an embryo she didn’t call me “Fat Gary Johnson.”
KIDNAPPER: Embryos, huh?
DAD: As soon as a baby is born, you know, it’s screaming, it’s pooping, it doesn’t look as much like you as you thought it would, and immediately it starts to depreciate. But before the baby is even conceived it’s just the fun kooky concept of creating life, and that’s truly the most valuable part of the equation.
KIDNAPPER: You want me to kidnap a concept?
DAD: If you could kidnap that intangible dream of a perfect family you’d really be in the money.
MOM: Hun, don’t forget we have those Ruth’s Chris reservations in 30 minutes.
DAD: Oh boy, we’re gonna have to run, I don’t want to hit traffic -
MOM: He’s no good after 6 o’clock, out like a light!
KIDNAPPER: Wait, let me ask you a hypothetical. If Megan were pregnant, how much could I get?
MOM: Ohhh, that’s a good question.
DAD: Technically, Megan is still worth a negative number. But I think someone would pay a pretty penny for the fetus, so Megan could skate by on having to stick around to grow that fetus nice and strong.
MOM: Especially if that fetus is a boy.
DAD: True, that’s worth a lot more.
KIDNAPPER: Ok, what if I could convince Megan to find a nice guy and settle down, get you some grandkids? What could I get for that?
MOM: Good luck, she’s a tough one! I’m worried she might be a lesbian, her whole wardrobe is just pants.
KIDNAPPER: Why? An A-line dress would be more flattering on her!
DAD: Well buddy, we’d pay a pretty penny for a grandchild. If Megan decides she wants to have children I think we could get you that three million dollars.
MOM: But she has to be married. To a Christian.
KIDNAPPER: Oh of course, you two obviously only value people similar to yourselves.
MOM: You betcha.
DAD: Well we gotta run here, why don’t you hold on to Megan until you can sort out this baby thing?
KIDNAPPER: Oh no, I don’t want the liability of holding on to her. For now, I’ll just leave her where I found her, at that disturbing poetry reading.
DAD: Oh gosh…well feel free to call again for future business advice. We’re retired, so this kind of stuff is fun for us.
KIDNAPPER: Sounds great, talk soon you two! | https://medium.com/slackjaw/an-exchange-wherein-my-parents-haggle-with-my-kidnapper-1e783e1d8070 | ['Megan Mcmurtry'] | 2019-07-30 14:11:01.175000+00:00 | ['Kidnappings', 'Parents', 'Satire', 'Humor', 'Adult Children'] |
MNF PrizePicks-Dolphins at Saints | Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports
Man, Monday Night Football used to be the most exciting game of the week but has recently become background noise. The game has often been between two bad teams or just flat out boring. This week another potentially low scoring, not exciting matchup mired by covid protocols and a depleted roster is on tap when the Dolphins visit the Saints. To maintain some kind of interest I’m turning to PrizePicks where I have two player props I like during the game.
Ian Book O/U 169.5 Passing Yards — The Book on Ian in the NFL is currently blank as this will not only be his first ever NFL start but it’s also the first time even being active on gameday. The situation for his first career start isn’t exactly ideal with it being on somewhat short notice for an already poor passing team against a surging Dolphins defense. That Miami D has held 5 of it’s last 6 opponents to 304 total yards or less and their last 3 to an average of just 179 passing yards. Considering the Saints have thrown for just 164/gm in 3 of their last 4 and this game is slated to be very low scoring (total of O/U 38 as of now), I see no reason to think New Orleans expands it’s downfield attack with a rookie who has never even dressed for a game against one of the league’s hottest teams. We actually saw 5 different QBs go under this total yesterday and I fully expect Book to make it 6. Under 169.5 Passing Yards
Mike Gesicki O/U 38.5 Receiving Yards — Outside of a couple goose eggs and a game where he wasn’t needed against Carolina, Gesicki has been very consistent. The Dolphins TE has produced at least 41 receiving yards in 11 of the teams 14 games this season and could play a huge role tonight. The Saints will likely be down Malcom Jenkins and Demario Davis leaving the middle of the field vulnerable for Gesicki to exploit. With Jaylen Waddle and Devante Parker finally playing at the same time and being closely watched by the Saints corners, I think Tua continues to look toward Mike often (combined 19 targets over the last 2 games).
Over 38.5 Receiving Yards
If you want to join the PrizePicks party, and create a CBB entry, sign up and receive a 100% deposit match up to $100 by clicking the link below. | https://blog.fantasylifeapp.com/mnf-prizepicks-dolphins-at-saints-ddd450b9affe | [] | 2021-12-27 19:15:38.640000+00:00 | ['Sports Gambling', 'Sports', 'Prizepicks', 'NFL', 'Sports Betting'] |
Small things, Big team. We had the pleasure to listen to… | Last week lots of employees from JUST EAT got the opportunity to meet up from across the world. Our #data team lead by Alberto Rey Villaverde , Chloë Stubbins and Matthew Cresswell made the decision to fly the majority of the data team in from across the globe.
We had the pleasure to listen to Matthew Davies — The Trust Triangle, which was informative and entertaining. Although rushed, we faced some honest truths about how we work as a team. I for one appreciated this and reflected on how my team and I can be better.
Teams are not just 3 or 4 people you sit next to each and every day, but teams consist of individuals that cover lots of different positions and skills. They work together with their unique skills to achieve success.
Think about professional sporting teams. How there are specialists in Cricket (bowlers, wicketkeepers and batsmen). In NFL you have teams split by their main function (Offense, Defense and Special Teams). Baseball you have pitchers and fielders on defense. Each fielder is also a specialist in offense/batting, in some cases that is their primary skill and fielding is sacrificed.
The point is, no matter what your role is or how specialised you are, remember that you rely on the rest of your team to succeed. Sometimes this is on a small project only relevant to you, but can also be across whole departments.
I personally wanted to thank the leadership group for this and look forward to build on our success and improve our weaknesses.
My team are called DataViz.
Team DataViz
They are are an amazing group of people, of who I am incredibly proud, but equally demanding of. It’s my job to make sure they reach their potential.
Our vision statement is
To deliver data products to facilitate understanding and inform decision making across Just Eat. Through the use of consistent design and quality data, we build trust in our products and focus our users by making data easily discoverable and accessible. We support data delivery by communicating and educating, converting data into innovative and ergonomic visualisations. We want to be the vital bridge between data, people and decision making. We are taking the data out of data each day.
The get together was also a great excuse to get a team t-shirt done. A special treat and a bit of fun to give my direct team an identity. Apologies to the brand team for possibly not being fully brand compliant.
Why the Peacock? I hear you ask.
At the start of the year we spent a day brainstorming strategy and objectives. Part of this was an exercise about “what is our team spirit animal?”
I do this to get people to think about what are the characteristics we want to be demonstrating, but in a fun way. We draw our animal and then talk about what it does.
We had an interesting range of animals from squirrels (prepared — storing acorns over winter) to honey bees, who are so passionate they are willing to die for their team (hive).
Each trait from the animals is incorporated into our team charter. Each team member has contributed to this and can see their input and was discussed with the others.
The values for our team are:
1) Prepared (Squirrel) — planning for the future, we build solutions that are not disposable and can grow for the business and can be used for years.
2) Communication (Capuchin monkey) — actively communicating who we are and what we do with the rest of the business, we build trust in our products and champion the delivery of high quality data
3) Positivity (Lion) — Looking at every situation in a practical perspective. Knowing you have to deliver because people are depending on you. We find solutions and learning opportunities as well as thinking the best of everything and everyone.
4) Confidence (Peacock) — Being bold in decision making, having a flair for design and faith in our processes and standing behind our work with pride.
5) Awareness (Meerkat) — Vigilant and resilient. Always on the lookout for where there is danger and risk, but being able to raise the alarm and avoid any disaster.
6) Passionate (Honey bee) — Surrounding ourselves with others who share the same enthusiasm and dedication to the end goal.
By associating a team with a mascot, in this case a Peacock, we reinforce our values we created in our minds. It is also a conversation starter, lots of people we may not known or have worked with yet were able to easily ask about it. One of the important topics raised in our Trust Triangle session, creating opportunities for introverts to engage with others if they want to.
So a few t-shirts and some iron on transfer didn’t break the bank, but it made a difference to my team. Just the thought that I was thinking of them and wanted to do something nice for them. Small things like taking your team for a lunch, or coffee or a game of mini golf. I am a firm believer that these little things add big value.
What are you doing to let your team know that they are special? | https://medium.com/cmding-tableau/last-week-lots-of-employees-from-just-eat-got-the-opportunity-to-meet-up-from-across-the-world-f2382bf58af7 | ['Kris Curtis'] | 2020-03-02 22:00:00.152000+00:00 | ['Teamwork', 'Data', 'Dataviz', 'Team'] |
Capture clickstream data with Azure Application Insights | Raw clickstream data is a valuable data source in almost any analytics project. But it’s not always easy to capture. Free tools like Google Analytics often don’t expose raw clicks. And enterprise tools like Google Analytics premium or Adobe Analytics can be expensive, and in large companies often require a procurement process.
We discovered a nice feature on Azure where you can get these raw clickstreams in near-real-time, at an affordable price. It is part of a service called Application Insights, which can be used for much more than just website click data. But that is out-of-scope for this blog. It is a standard Azure service and thus part of your monthly cloud cost and so typically doesn’t require a separate procurement process. In this blog, we go through the steps needed to set this up. You can find more information in this quickstart from Microsoft. and on the github page for the javascript SDK of Application Insights.
Set up Application Insights
Well, that’s really simple. Go to your Azure Portal, search for Application Insights, and click New. You get something like this.
The important thing is the Instrumentation Key. That is unique. Next, you change the `xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx` in the following code snippet with that Instrumentation Key:
var appInsights=window.appInsights||function(a){
function b(a){c[a]=function(){var b=arguments;c.queue.push(function(){c[a].apply(c,b)})}}var c={config:a},d=document,e=window;setTimeout(function(){var b=d.createElement("script");b.src=a.url||"
}({
instrumentationKey: "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx"
}); var appInsights=window.appInsights||function(a){function b(a){c[a]=function(){var b=arguments;c.queue.push(function(){c[a].apply(c,b)})}}var c={config:a},d=document,e=window;setTimeout(function(){var b=d.createElement("script");b.src=a.url||" <a href="https://az416426.vo.msecnd.net/scripts/a/ai.0.js" class="fc hm" rel="noopener nofollow">https://az416426.vo.msecnd.net/scripts/a/ai.0.js</a> ",d.getElementsByTagName("script")[0].parentNode.appendChild(b)});try{c.cookie=d.cookie}catch(a){}c.queue=[];for(var f=["Event","Exception","Metric","PageView","Trace","Dependency"];f.length;)b("track"+f.pop());if(b("setAuthenticatedUserContext"),b("clearAuthenticatedUserContext"),b("startTrackEvent"),b("stopTrackEvent"),b("startTrackPage"),b("stopTrackPage"),b("flush"),!a.disableExceptionTracking){f="onerror",b("_"+f);var g=e[f];e[f]=function(a,b,d,e,h){var i=g&&g(a,b,d,e,h);return!0!==i&&c["_"+f](a,b,d,e,h),i}}return c}({instrumentationKey: "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx"}); window.appInsights=appInsights,appInsights.queue&&0===appInsights.queue.length&&appInsights.trackPageView();
</script>
Once you add this script to your website, you should see data coming in. Eg, on the side-panel, go to Users. You should see something like this:
Export raw data to blob storage
On that same side panel, you also see the item ‘Continuous Export’. There, you can, as you guessed, configure where to store all the raw data:
The important data types to export are Page View and Custom Event, if you use those. The result is a whole bunch of .blob files in blob storage:
Each blob is an ndjson file which means it’s very verbose and slow to query. but it does contain all the raw information you need. Plus, you can attach custom dimensions if you want to track additional information. The first thing we do, is turn all those thousands of blob files into a few parquet files. Parquet files take only very little storage space, have strongly typed fields and are super efficient to query.
Automate with Terraform
Clicking around on web UIs to build infrastructure is not cool anymore. We love Infrastructure as Code, so we’ve also automated the creation of Application Insights:
resource "azurerm_application_insights" "clickstream" {
application_type = "Web"
location = "${data.azurerm_storage_account.storage_account.location}"
name = "${var.resource_prefix}-app-insights-clickstream-${var.env}"
resource_group_name = "${var.resource_group_name}"
}
And then we output the instrumentation key so it can be used when building the website:
output "clickstream_instrumentation_key" {
value = "${azurerm_application_insights.clickstream.instrumentation_key}"
}
Note we didn’t automate the “Continuous Export” in Terraform, because it’s not available yet. Terraform support is not perfect on Azure. But we do prefer it over the very verbose ARM templates. Just like we prefer Terraform over AWS CloudFormation. Of course, in the end, you choose the tools that work best for your particular use case.
What are the costs?
To be honest, that was a bit unclear when we started it. But apparently, it costs 2.13 EUR/GB. For a relatively large Belgian website, that results in a monthly cost of about EUR 250. That’s not super cheap, but it is definitely not as expensive as some of the alternatives, which can be well over 100K per year.
But what if we’re not on Azure?
That is OK. We love all the clouds. We often import Google Analytics data from the Google Cloud into other clouds. You could do the same with Azure Application Insights. Just run this in Azure, and copy the blobs from Blob Storage to your favorite cloud provider. There is a cost to getting data out, but it shouldn’t be significant. That cost is often over-estimated. If it does become a concern, you can always zip all blobs before sending them over, or even already turn them into Parquet files on Azure. | https://medium.com/datamindedbe/capture-clickstream-data-with-azure-application-insights-7e0216f331ea | ['Kris Peeters'] | 2019-02-05 20:15:22.003000+00:00 | ['Azure', 'Analytics', 'Clickstream', 'JavaScript'] |
What I talk about, when I talk about riding my bike | My best friend has two wheels. Instead of lying, charging, next to my bed it is hanging majestically and colourful on a hook in the other end of my room. I do also have a smartphone; a Samsung Galaxy something smart. Black with a slightly incised screen which emits an annoying amount of light if you look at in the dark.
Every morning the three of us go to work together — together with the bike, I’m responsible for getting us there, some mornings fast, others slow. My phone is in my backpack.
Together we pass car drivers caught in the morning traffic jams, who scrolls annoyed through the news feed of the day on their smart phones with a half-eaten piece of bread in the other hand — often trying to squeeze in on the other side of the traffic lights if they can. Imagine what would happen if they didn’t make it in time…
In a fast developing world, the need for a free space is of crucial importance for me — and I think for most people. Constantly aware of our social networking and jobs through the internet, we are the generation who is the less bored of all time. Think about it. When is the last time you remembered staring out the window not knowing what to do for a longer time?
Some find boredom a negative thing, something ineffective. But let’s consider: Vacation and free space is ineffective as well. Or?
I find a close connection between boredom and free space. I can’t say I love boredom but it gives me time to reflect and relax. And it gives me a free space.
I find my free space on my bike. Whether it is commuting to work, training towards the coming season or racing national championships, I love the way I can use my intuition and creative senses: Making an attack on the last descent, social networking on long winter rides or simply just looking for potholes in the tarmac to train my bunny-hop skills.
To ride more for me does not necessarily mean that I have increase the amount of hours on the bike, but I find it inspiring the ‘more’ I get from riding. The nourishing feeling of arriving at work after the ride, the happiness of spending time together with friends or the relief of finishing a bike race in a good position.
Even though I feel the most ‘effective’ while being at work, the best ideas always pop up when I’m on the bike — and I find it a little ironic to the ‘effectiveness culture’ of today that these ideas always vanish the very same moment I open my computer or smart phone to find unanswered mails, chats and notifications.
Which brings me back to my morning commutes: I’m not saying that the biking give me philosophical skills on the level of Platon or Sokrates, but it gives me a small time of boredom where I don’t have the opportunity to check my Messenger-chats or mailbox. On the bike I can immerse into the day that has passed or the day that wait tomorrow. Or maybe simply into the fact that the leaves on the trees soon will return with warmer weather. | https://medium.com/@thomas-steinthal/what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-riding-my-bike-d92ab3fdf68c | ['Thomas Steinthal'] | 2021-01-07 15:40:51.569000+00:00 | ['Boredom', 'Effectiveness', 'Cycling'] |
Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions — Make New Month’s Resolutions Instead | Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions — Make New Month’s Resolutions Instead
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
Years are very long. They might not appear long — to me, 2020 feels like it has just begun, and it’s almost over already — but they absolutely are. If you don’t spend all your time playing video games, watching series, browsing social media or any other type of mindless consumption, it’s amazing how much you can discover, learn, and improve in a year. This means your future self will have way more knowledge than you. The question then becomes:
How can you set a goal that the more knowledgeable future you will certainly want to reach?
The short answer: you can’t. You never know what will happen, especially if you’re self-employed. One year ago my new year’s resolution was to create a YouTube channel, but somewhere down the line, I discovered that I just liked writing the scripts, not producing the videos themselves, so I switched to writing. This is not something I could have predicted last year. One year ago my new year’s resolution was to draw more, but after a few months of drawing, I came to the conclusion that while I liked the idea of drawing, I did not actually enjoy drawing. That’s something that I couldn’t have predicted.
Because life is unpredictable and ever-changing, it does not make sense to decide now what your goals will be 12 months from now. It’s fine to have long-term goals but remember that they may change and that that’s okay so you don’t end up imprisoned by your past aspirations.
I’ve tried to get back into drawing again many, many times because I felt like I was letting down my past self until I finally realised that my past self would not have wanted me to draw had he known what I know now.
The solution to this is to create new month’s resolutions instead of new year’s resolutions.
Months are short; short enough that you’re able (probably) to plan one month into the future. New month’s resolutions, because a month is so short, can dynamically change depending on what’s going on in your life. If you encounter a new opportunity, it will take at most 30 days until it is integrated into your plan, probably less. It seems, at least to me, that new month’s resolutions are superior in every way to new year’s resolutions.
But how do you create those new month’s resolutions? It’s quite simple, do what you would do to create a new year’s resolution but one-twelfth the size. That is self-evident, but here are some things to keep in mind:
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
Write down your new month’s resolutions.
This goes without saying. Your memory is fickle and prone to failure and anything which is stored only in your memory might not be stored at all. You will end up misremembering or forgetting goals so you won’t be able to tell if you reached them. Writing your goals down is especially important when you have a lot of small goals, as one tiny goal can quickly slip out of your mind never to be seen again. Write them down in a notebook, jot them down on a piece of paper, type them into your computer, it doesn’t matter how you store them as long as you store them.
Don’t underestimate yourself.
A day has 24 hours. If 8 of those are spent sleeping and 8 of those are spent working, that leaves you with 8 free hours every day. This means you have 240 free hours every month. One hour is just 0.42% of your free time every month. Take what you can do in a single hour and multiply it by 200. You can do all of that in a single month and still have ample time left.
Don’t micromanage your future self.
You don’t have all the information. You will find out new things about what it is that you’re doing while doing it. You don’t know exactly how long everything will take. It is better to have a few overarching goals and figure out the nitty-gritty on the go than it is to try to plan everything into the finest detail and inevitably fail.
Have a weekly moment of self-reflection.
Having a weekly moment where you look back at your week and reflect on what you did is good advice in general, not just for creating new month’s resolutions. However, the two can easily be integrated. At the end of every week, read through your goals and tick off those that you have completed. That'll let you know whether you’re on, ahead of or behind on schedule. This also makes it very obvious what goals were easy to reach and what goals took more time than expected, which is information you can use to improve your future new month’s resolutions. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/dont-make-new-year-s-resolutions-make-new-month-s-resolutions-instead-b9f72d1e3c94 | ['Djaro Donk'] | 2020-12-11 18:02:57.079000+00:00 | ['Planning', 'Goals', 'Self Improvement', 'New Year Resolution'] |
Why You Should Not Switch to Dvorak | Why You Should Not Use It
Non-standard keyboard layout
Despite having a good reputation and being one of the most popular of the non-standard keyboard layouts, it is not mainstream. You can configure a MacBook Pro and choose the keyboard layout on the Apple website. Dvorak is not an available option. You will have a hard time finding a keyboard with the Dvorak layout. Note that iOS doesn’t have a Dvorak keyboard layout in its settings either.
MacBook keyboard options
One solution is to get a mechanical keyboard with interchangeable keys and manually change the layout. This is a tedious task that you should have to do once eventually. On iOS, you can install a third-party keyboard application to change the keyboard layout and use Dvorak.
Keyboard shortcuts
Using Dvorak means you will touch-type and not have to look at your keys to type. So you might argue the previous section is not that big of a deal. But keyboard shortcuts are a bit different.
When using shortcuts, I often find myself looking down at the keyboard. I’ll look at a tutorial telling me how I need to press Crtl+W, and with my right hand taken by the mouse, I’ll try to push the keys quickly. But where exactly is W? Let me get back into a resting position to figure it out.
For that reason, you will need a mental map between the physical keys and the software/Dvorak keys — unless you switch your keys physically too.
Even if you have not used QWERTY for a long time, you probably have taken the habit of one of the most used keyboard shortcut combinations: Ctrl+C- Crtl+V. And if you take a look at the QWERTY keyboard, you will see C and V are just next to each other.
A few applications have designed their keyboard shortcuts to be as convenient as possible for the user, and they don’t have Dvorak users in mind. One solution is to remap the keys with an AutoHotKey script or a third-party application.
Pair programming
Typing can be cooperative. It is a required input method. When you are pair programming with someone, you will want to be able to collaborate. You will end up in a situation where you will not have access to a laptop with a Dvorak keyboard layout installed. So be prepared to ask your colleague to install it.
If you are in the same situation as me and never learned QWERTY before, you will slow down your teammates. Typing with a QWERTY keyboard is frustrating and can be embarrassing because you will type five times slower. If you want to help someone by typing a few commands, you will have to go back to your desk and send the commands by message.
Technical interviews
While established companies usually let you use your laptop, that isn’t always the case with startups. And one thing they do not anticipate is someone using something other than QWERTY.
If you have spent years typing in Dvorak and your QWERTY speed is at 20 wpm like mine, you have two choices during the interview:
Ask them to set up Dvorak on their laptop.
Type with QWERTY and let them be surprised by how poorly you can type on a keyboard.
I failed 100% of the interviews when I had to ask to change the keyboard layout on the spot. While I don’t think it was the main reason for those failures, it was definitely not a good part of the interview.
Interviews are a moment when you should be confident. It can be time-limited and you should be focused on your task. When you are given a MacBook Pro with Ubuntu and no one can figure out how to get Dvorak on it for more than five minutes, you are already in a bad situation.
Your solution is to ask about how the technical interview will proceed and if you will need a laptop. If they tell you a laptop will be provided, let them know it needs to be configured to have the keyboard layout on it. | https://medium.com/better-programming/why-you-should-not-switch-to-dvorak-6404d4b75f7b | [] | 2020-12-30 18:11:21.353000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Programming', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Development', 'Productivity'] |
Apply These 5 Secret Techniques To Improve Basics Of Bar Bending Schedule.. | BASICS OF BAR BENDING SCHEDULE
BAR BENDING SCHEDULE
Hai friends….,
Today in this Article i am going to discuss about bar bending schedule basics.
These bar bending schedule basics are very important for every civil engineer
but especially for quantity surveyor which are working on construction site.
so, let’s start……,
The first one is many student they are asking what’s the standard length of steel bar so that’s 12 meter OR 40 feet .
The second one is,
Weight of steel bar 1 meter = (D)2/162
Therefore length 1m and diameter 10mm = (10)2/162x1
Weight of steel bar 1 meter = 0.61kg.
For 12 meter length of steel,10 meter diameter
Weight of steel bar 12 meter = (10)2/162x12
=7.40kg
The Third one is,
Density of steel bar = 7850 kg per meter cube.
The Fourth one is,
BAR BENDING
Hook length, hook length we can find with the formula is = 9D
where D is diameter of steel.
Total length of stirrup = L + 2 (9D).
The Fifth one is,
BAR BENDING SCHEDULE
Bend length for column = 16D
D is diameter of longitudinal bars and column. if diameter is 12 millimeter so it will give us 16 multiply 12 right. So it will give us lengths of bend for RCC column.
So these are some useful tips especially for bar bending schedule basics so if you have any question about this so you must command I will try to replace your answer.
Thanks for read my article..,
Goodbye..!! | https://medium.com/@elakkiyacivilrocks/apply-these-5-secret-techniques-to-improve-basics-of-bar-bending-schedule-e7c780d6a083 | ['Elakki Elakki'] | 2020-05-14 05:08:07.681000+00:00 | ['Civi', 'Civic Engagement', 'Civictech', 'Civil', 'Civil Rights'] |
Ives’ Approach to Music | The American composer Ives has often been associated with experimental music. Indeed, his works include polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements and quarter tones. It is no surprise that the musician ventured into such territories, as the beginning of the 20th century was a fertile period for musical explorations and avant-gardism. As a matter of fact, his dates almost coincide perfectly with the ones of the leader of the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg.
Some of the composer’s most famous works include a symphony — A Symphony: New England Holidays — , depicting the four seasons through American holidays and celebrations, an orchestral set — Three Places in New England — and a piano sonata — the Concord Sonata — written after American writers. It is therefore no surprise that his work for chamber orchestra “Central Park in the Dark” revolves around American themes and places, and expresses some of his most forward thinking musical ideas.
“Central Park in the Dark”, composed in 1906, is considered as one of the most radical works of the 20th century. Ives describes it as “a piece purports to be a picture-in-sounds of the sounds of nature and of happenings that men would hear […] when sitting on a bench in Central Park on a hot summer night.”
The composer is well-known for his dissonances, however contrary to some other experimental musicians, with this piece it is a matter of exploration serving creativity. It is not so much a question of finding new sounds but rather accurately depicting existing ones. It is thanks to the concepts related to what would become atonal music that Ives is able to break the barriers of tonality in order to provide precision and detail.
By grouping and placing the instruments in three different and independent groups — all with their own tempi, keys and musical content — the composer creates a full sensitive picture. An under-layer is made of the strings that depict the sounds of the night, another layer of winds and percussion interrupts the tranquility through street parades, and one can even hear a ragtime piano in the apartment next door.
Descriptive — or programmatic — music in 1906 is nothing new. In fact, Vivaldi had been doing this two centuries before Ives; but it is a completely different approach that is taken by the American composer. While Vivaldi would not sacrifice traditional rules of harmony for sound accuracy, it is something that Ives not only does, but musically claims; it is how his music is built. A close study of the harmony of the piece reveals polytonality, clashing sounds and tone clusters. More than a musical work, it is a sensitive experience.
Of course, it is difficult not to relate to Messiaen too, who with his studies on birds songs would bend and rewrite the rules of music as much as needed in order to portrait the sounds that he heard.
Stravinsky said of Ives that “he quietly set about devouring the contemporary cake before the rest of us even found a seat at the same table”. Once one goes past the apparent difficulty of sonorities in the piece, one can only stand fascinated in front of this work, and its creator’s vision. | https://medium.com/@dougthomasofficial/ives-approach-to-music-9f11290bffee | ['Doug Thomas'] | 2021-01-05 12:19:17.190000+00:00 | ['Approach', 'Ives', 'Work', 'Music', 'Analysis'] |
IBF Net Joins FIKRA Accelerator for Its Impact Initiative | Impact investments in today’s world assume great significance as they come with an explicit intention by the investors to make a positive impact on the society. Conventionally, impact is measured in the context of the UN SDGs. Multiple organisations in the past have taken up the task to measure the impact of projects based on the SDG framework with varying degrees of results. While these initiatives among several others involve fairly elaborate exercises at measuring the impact of projects and companies on the people as well as on the planet, the results may or may not be very relevant from an Islamic perspective. Singapore-based IBF DigiLabs, a member of the IBF Net Group, is seeking to address this challenge through its latest initiative, titled Confluence. The project has been selected to participate in the FIKRA Islamic Fintech Accelerator Programme for Cohort 2021, jointly offered by the Securities Commission (Malaysia) and the UN Capital Development Fund.
Confluence: A Need of the Hour
IBF’s latest project measures the impact of project(s) from the standpoint of the goals (maqasid) of Shariah as well as the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs), given that there is a significant degree of alignment between the two and has been aptly named as Confluence, says Mohammed Alim, CEO-Designate of IBF DigiLabs.
IBF DigiLabs has conducted intensive research on the alignment or otherwise of the SDGs with the objectives of the Shariah. The findings from such academic research are being enhanced to develop a robust framework. A text analysis of relevant data and literature enables a process of identification of new metrics in the light of Shariah objectives and redesignation of some existing ones based on alignment or otherwise of SDGs with the former, according to Dr Mohammed Obaidullah, Founder of IBF Net Group. These solutions are being rolled out in two phases:
Islamic Value Analytics
In Phase I of the project, the IBF Platform would combine the metrics using an algorithm and produce a score and/or a classification scheme reflecting the impact of projects using the lens of Shariah objectives as perceived by the respective stakeholders — the project owner(s) and the market. IBF DigiLabs has entered into an agreement to set up a joint venture, Islamic Value Analytics PLT with Ethis Global in Malaysia to implement its go-to-market strategy.
“This AI-based Impact Scoring Platform, besides being a stand-alone destination for investors interested in obtaining an impact rating for projects, would also serve as a front-end application with crowdfunding platforms seeking to raise equity resources. It can provide valuable data for Islamic investors seeking to make a difference to the world while realizing their risk-return expectations”, says Umar Munshi, Founder of the Ethis Group and Strategic Advisor with IBF DigiLabs.
Green Cryptos
In Phase 2 of the project, given the availability of alternative tools for measurement of environmental impact (e.g. carbon footprints) and social impact, the IBF platform would identify and adapt a suitable method in the light of the goals of Shariah for measurement and conversion of such impact into green/social cryptos. Projects can earn/liquidate such cryptos representing both types of impact at an Exchange to alter their risk-return-impact profile in the market.
This Platform, a marketplace for trading such cryptos, is being developed using Algorand blockchain technology which is scalable, secure, decentralized and Shariah-compliant. Algorand provides immediate transaction finality while preventing forks, offers highly customizable smart contracts, and asset tokenization built directly in layer 1. Further, Algorand (unlike other protocols with heavy carbon footprints) maintains a carbon-negative position at all times. The IBF Net Group has a strategic partnership with Algorand Inc. for all its blockchain related initiatives.
Together, the two IBF Platforms are expected to promote the Shariah goals of comprehensive human development through the Islamic capital markets. The Platforms with a clear and sharp focus on impact would direct resources to projects that lead to economic growth with equity as well as ethics and morality. | https://medium.com/@ibfnet/the-future-of-islamic-investment-is-here-and-its-green-831292cfdd97 | ['Ibf Net'] | 2021-09-08 13:33:59.492000+00:00 | ['Impact Investing', 'Islamic Finance', 'Algorand', 'Impact Measurement', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
高山仰止 – 追思照因老和尚 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/zhaoyin1932/%E7%85%A7%E5%9B%A0%E8%80%81%E5%92%8C%E5%B0%9A%E7%95%A5%E5%82%B3ep-8-a99d00de4e8a | [] | 2020-12-21 13:18:09.008000+00:00 | ['Biography'] |
Immigration Detention in the Trump Era: A Timeline and Analysis | Abstract: Beginning with Executive Order 13767: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, the Trump Administration has made sweeping changes to the environment of immigration detention in the United States. This paper examines the timeline of this administration’s policy changes in this area through the utilization of executive power- including executive orders and administrative agencies- that increased detention frequency and spending, created new pathways to detention. This paper argues that these policies deepen the conditions of abuse in immigration detention, prolonging the “slow death” experienced by those attempting to enter the United States, especially through the Southern Border. What are the prima facie policy changes made by this administration, and what is the real effect have they had on the experiences of immigrants? What are the legal issues surrounding immigration detention during the Trump presidency? What direct action and community organizing is being done within activist organizations, and what have been the results of these actions? To contextualize and analyze these policy changes and social movements, this paper will also bring together discussions of immigration detention from scholarly sources and from social organizations such as the Detention Watch Network and La Resistancia.
Introduction
For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this country, be forewarned: This is a new era. This is the Trump era. The lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our immigration laws, and the catch-and-release practices of old are over. - Attorney General Jeff Sessions, April 11, 2017, public statement in Nogales, Arizona
In 2015, presidential hopeful Donald Trump released his first specific immigration plan, which called for the strict enforcement of immigration law, restriction of immigration pathways only to those which provided a domestic benefit, and the construction of a physical border wall on the Southern Border to be paid for by Mexico. While the latter received the most press coverage by far, once elected the Trump administration pushed to deliver on the first two promises as well, much to the detriment of migrants seeking to build a new life in the U.S. Donald Trump’s racialized immigration rhetoric was then and is now famously popular with his supporters, gaining fervent repetition particularly in now-banned forums like Reddit’s r/The_Donald, and in the president’s Twitter mentions.
Since his inauguration in 2016, The Administration’s policies have made good on the campaign’s promises, tightening the restrictions that send immigrants into carceral institutions and keeping them in cages longer and in worse conditions. This paper argues that these policies deepen the conditions of abuse in immigration detention, prolonging the “slow death” experienced by those attempting to enter the United States, especially through the Southern Border. For the purposes of this paper, I use legal scholar Stephen Lee’s framework of “slow death” in immigration law to conceptualize the human impact of immigration policy. The term “slow death” has been used by scholars to conceptualize the kinds of harms that build over time, that can not be as easily visualized as other types of state violence. Lee uses the example of climate change to quantify this term: the harms of pollution do not occur as a single event, and environmentalists are tasked with quantifying the errs of pro-polluting policy using a long-term framework, such as “slow death.” Family separation, a key feature of “Trump Era” immigration law, similarly enacts its greatest harms on a durational scale. Structural conditions that impose “slow death” on an axis of country of origin, race, and poverty, such as our immigration detention system, are often overlooked in discussions about border enforcement reform due to their longitudinal nature. Additionally, this paper will refer to “conditions of abuse” and simply “abuse” to describe the human impact of certain policies and practices. This refers to those conditions which represent a misuse of established legal or human rights norms, and those which exhibit cruel or violent treatment, which may deprive a subject of their dignity, health, wellbeing, liberty, or life.
To unpack this Trump Era immigration law regime, Part I sets out a detailed timeline of the explicit major policy changes from 2017 to 2020. Part II assembles legal analysis from scholarship on these policies’ neglect of due process rights, the conditions of confinement during this Era, and the domestic detention standards that the Trump administration has attempted to eliminate. Part III presents a picture of resistance to these policies, highlighting the work of grassroots movements against detention, and argues that these resistances have made a tangible impact on the state of immigration detention in the U.S. today.
In order to fully understand the policy changes made during the Trump administration, it is important not only to understand the legacy of immigration detention in the United States, but first to understand immigration detention as a part of what political scholars Katherine Beckett and Naomi Murakawa call the “shadow carceral state.” The expansion of the U.S. carceral state, due to political and economic circumstances that incentivised the creation of a prison industrial complex, most often is measured through its most visible element: mass incarceration. However, mass criminal incarceration in America’s prisons and jails only represents those elements of the carceral state which are officially organized into the criminal justice system. In contrast, Beckett and Murakawa call attention to those aspects of the punitive legal system which lie beyond the legal structure of the criminal justice system: those which represent the “annexation” of civil and administrative law and procedure into the shadow carceral state. Legal scholar Marie Gottschalk refers to this process as a “punitive revolution” in immigration policy, and notes that it has taken place over two decades through policies like Operation Streamline, a 2005 “fast track, zero-tolerance” prosecution program for border crossers. Immigration detention, which is governed by civil and administrative law rather than criminal law, has the same punitive function as criminal incarceration despite being situated outside of the state’s definition of punishment. Therefore, it is important to understand the expansion of immigration detention as part of the broader expansion of the prison industrial complex and the rapidly growing penal system in the United States.
Trump Era immigration policy operates within the greater legacy of immigration law in the U.S. For most of U.S. history, immigration detention did not exist. In fact, until the 1880s when the Chinese Exclusion Act was introduced, the U.S. had what many would refer to today as “open borders.” When immigration into America began to be more regulated by the state, illegal entry was very rarely addressed by the federal government, and when it was, the response was a quick and “painless” deportation. This regulation became increasingly racialized, as restrictions on the immigration of “undesirable migrants” began to exclude people on the basis of their country of origin. The Chinese Exclusion Act and the political nativism that led to its implementation created the framework for the exclusion of other “racially inferior” and “unassimilable” groups, including Mexicans as they became increasingly characterized as “foreigners” to the U.S. Civil and administrative law authorized the federal government to regulate immigration and carry out deportations, but it wasn’t until 1952 that criminal law would first become entangled into the organization of immigration law. White supremacist Coleman Livingston Blease proposed 8 U.S. Code Section 1325, which made illegal border entry a misdemeanor and reentry a felony, as a compromise between nativist calls for Mexican exclusion and agricultural labor demand. It is important to note though, that at this point in time and until recently, prosecutions of illegal entry under Section 1325 were not prioritized and generally were pretty rare. While the U.S. briefly operated it’s first immigration detention centers from the 1890s to 1950s on Ellis Island and Angel Island, the U.S.’ capacity for immigration detention began construction during the expansion of the carceral state under the guise of criminal justice reform in the 1980s and 1990s. It was then that Congress began expanding mandatory detention for both documented and undocumented immigrants through what the Clinton Administration would call “Prevention through Deterrance.” These policies laid the framework for the magnitude and character of immigration detention that would take shape through the Trump Era, and serve as important context for understanding not only how these policies fit into the U.S. immigration system, but also why the Trump Administration was able to create such an abusive political environment around immigration detention.
Part I: A Timeline of The Policies of the Trump Administration
We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them, but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are… These aren’t people. These are animals. - President Donald J. Trump, May 16, 2018, at a California Sanctuary State Roundtable
2017
The Trump Administration got to work implementing their immigration regime just five days after inauguration. On January 25, 2017, Executive Order 13767: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements was signed into law by President Donald Trump, marking the beginning of a tumultuous four years for immigration law in the United States. In keeping with the President’s rhetoric during the election, the order states that the Federal Government had previously failed to meet its “basic sovereign responsibility” to secure the nation’s borders. The order mandated two main changes to immigration law: firstly, a physical wall was to be built, and Federal funds allocated to this end, and secondly, new detention facilities were to be built, and the use of detention expanded across the southern border specifically. This second critical change to imigration detention is twofold: the order calls for the Federal government to detain more people from the area around the southern border, and build more cages to hold the new detainees. Additionally, the order called for more judges to be assigned to immigration detention facilities, five thousand more border patrol agents to be hired, and an end to “the practice commonly known as ‘catch and release,’” a goal consistent with the promises made by the president on the campaign trail in 2015 and 2016. In reality, the “catch and release” practice was ended by president George Bush II over a decade prior, but make no mistake: this order did mandate detention at an unprecedented rate. Another element of note in this executive order is the requirement that the Attorney General “accord a high priority to prosecutions of offenses having a nexus to the southern border.” This intentionally worked to intensify the criminalization of unlawful entry from specifically the Southern border, through the use of criminal prosecutions which had previously been applied discretionarily. This executive order was followed by a February 20, 2017 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Memorandum directing the implementation of the executive order. This memorandum specified some aspects of the practice expanding immigration detention through the authority of the order, removing detention exemptions for the disabled, elderly, and pregnant, and permitting release from detention only in limited circumstances. On May 18, 2017, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) released a “100 Days” report, which announced a 37.6 percent increase in arrests of individuals suspected of illegally being in the United States. The department claimed to have made over 400 arrests per day between January 22 and April 29, 2017, and that non-criminal arrests alone increased from 4,200 arrests in 2016 to over 10,800 in these first few months of 2017.
These statistics make clear the intention and effect of the Trump Administration’s first actions on immigration law: to use expanded immigration detention as a tool for promoting the Administration’s “tough on immigration” appeal that was used on the campaign trail. A White House statement in June proudly summarized the administration’s policy changes in the context of his campaign promises: “While running for President, Donald Trump promised the American people that he would bring law and order back to our broken immigration system.” In keeping with this promise, the Administration’s Department of Justice announced on July 25, 2017, that new conditions would be placed on the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Programs (“Byrne JAG”). Any jurisdiction receiving the Bryne JAG would now be required to “permit personnel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) to access any detention facility in order to meet with an alien and inquire as to his or her right to be or remain in the United States; and provide at least 48 hours advance notice to DHS regarding the scheduled release date and time of an alien in the jurisdiction’s custody when DHS requests such notice in order to take custody of the alien.” In September, the Department of Justice issued an Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) Policy, putting a gag order on immigration judges themselves. The policy requires all employees of the EOIR, including immigration judges, to have any public statements, even those not related to immigration law, approved through their chain of command. This intentional reduction of transparency must be remarked upon as the administration continues its pursuit of a dramatically more strict and punitive immigration system.
2018–2019
On March 6, 2018, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the State of California, alleging three state statutes (AB 450, SB 54 and AB 103) interfered with federal immigration authorities’ “ability to carry out their lawful duties.” In short, AB 450 (the Immigrant Worker Protection Act) and SB 54 (the California Values Act) limits employers and law enforcement officials, respectively, from releasing information about suspected immigration law offenders and cooperating in their capture by federal immigration authorities. AB 450 furthermore required employers to notify employees of upcoming I-9 inspections, and prohibited employers from “ verifying employment eligibility when federal law did not so require.”AB 103, or the Detention Review Act, authorized the State to inspect and review federal detention facilities within the State of California, which the DOJ alleges is de facto regulation of federal immigration detention from the State, in violation of the supremacy of the federal government. The result of this lawsuit was mixed. In July, a District Court dismissed the DOJ’s claims relating to SB 54 and AB 103, finding them to be “permissible exercises of California’s sovereign power.” However, the Judge also ordered that, while the notification provision of AB 450 was lawful, the supremacy clause of the constitution invalidated the statutes’ provision regarding verification of employment eligibility that prohibited employers from granting immigration officials access to employee records and nonpublic labor areas. An appellate court affirmed this decision, and the Supreme Court of the United States denied the DOJ’s petition for certiorari. Before these decisions had been announced, the Administration’s next move was already under way. On April 2, 2018, the Department announced a quota for all immigration judges, noting a backlog of 700,000 cases waiting to be heard. For each year from October 1st to September 30th, immigration Judges are now expected to complete 700 cases per year, while maintaining a remand rate of less than 15%. The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) made the following statement:
These unprecedented numeric quotas are so onerous that many judges will rush through cases to protect their own jobs. Decisions in immigration court have life or death consequences and cannot be managed like an assembly line. This policy adds another cog to the administration’s deportation machine that seeks to rapidly remove massive numbers of people at the expense of due process. This push to compel judges to complete cases is new and dangerous and is the latest example of why the courts need independence.
The court process leading to immigration decisions had already been widely remarked upon as rushed and unfair, and the new quota is highly controversial on the grounds that it deepens the due process issues facing detained immigrants. Judges that do not meet the quota could be subject to worse benefits and career stagnation, and those that repeatedly do not meet the quota could face termination.
In April 2018, the Trump Administration would attempt to radically change detention policy regarding children and families in an attempt to deter family migration. The United States government has long grappled with the issue of children crossing the border in a system where detention may be mandated. Since Flores v. Meese (1997), a case litigating the conditions of civil detention for minors, the United States has been required to provide “appropriate care and protection for their age and vulnerability.” Consequently, the United States does not detain minors in the same facilities as adults, and instead families would be placed as a unit into family detention centers, while unaccompanied minors (which critically includes any child that could not verify direct parentage with the people they were traveling with) would be housed in distinct facilities or placed with a “suitable sponsor.” On April 6, 2018, the Trump Administration’s Attorney General (“AG”) announced that the federal government would henceforth prosecute all adults crossing the border (including those seeking asylum) and separate all children from their parents with a new “zero tolerance” approach, intending to deter family migration and reduce asylum claims. The public response to this was justifiably extreme. Polls suggested that this was the most unpopular major policy change in decades.
Sides, John. “The Extraordinary Unpopularity of Trump’s Family Separation Policy (in One Graph).”
A House Judiciary Committee Report issued on October 29, 2020 revealed that the administration had begun pursuing family separation without a formal policy change a year prior to the AG announcement in April 2018 and had “discovered that it was unable to track separated family members in a way that would facilitate eventual reunification” during a pilot program in El Paso. The report also identified inconsistency in the policy across the various Border Patrol Sectors, mistreatment and abuse of minors in CBP or ICE custody, and a complete lack of preparation for the dramatic policy change within the administration’s immigration agencies. Though many of these details were unknown at the time, the public outrage surrounding family separations reached a fever pitch as protests raged. Laura Bush condemned the policy in an op-ed for the Washington Post, and officials from both parties called for an end to the practice.
Despite doubling down on Twitter two days prior, President Trump signed an executive order on June 20, 2018 that effectively ended the policy, preempting the resolution of numerous legal challenges. The executive order, titled “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation,” claimed that “Congress’s failure to act and court orders [had] put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law,” mandating immigrant families be detained as a unit “where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.” After the public backlash from the family separation policy, the Trump administration momentarily allowed US immigration policy to remain stable for a brief cooling off period. Then, on November 9, 2018, the Trump administration issued the “Presidential Proclamation Addressing Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United States.” This proclamation, colloquially referred to as “Asylum Ban 1.0” by the National Immigrant Justice Center, blocked migrants that entered through a southern port of entry without proper presentation for inspection from applying for asylum in the United States. Situating immigration policy as the administration’s focus once again, the President began tweeting in December 2018 amid conflict between congressional Democrats and Republicans regarding funding for the President’s border wall.
As promised in the President’s twitter statements, the United States federal government shut down on December 22, 2018, when an appropriations bill was not reached that met the administration’s demands for $5.7 billion in funding for the border wall. What followed was the longest federal government shutdown in history. After a thirty-five day stalemate on the appropriations bill, the shutdown was ended on January 25, 2019 when congress and the President approved a temporary funding measure that did not include border funding. On February 14, congress approved a full appropriations bill which only allotted $1.375 billion for the border wall. The next day, the President issued a “Presidential Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States,” attempting to utilize the National Emergencies Act to secure funding for the border wall by redirecting federal funds in an attempt to circumvent the congressional appropriations budget. Despite the President vetoing a congressional joint resolution to end the national emergency, the redirection of funds was blocked by a US district court injunction following legal challenges. The state of emergency, however, remains in place today, in tandem with the “National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak” and others.
2020
While the Trump presidency winds to a close, it is critical to note that hundreds of children remain separated to this day as a consequence of the Trump family separation policy. The October 29 Judiciary Committee Report called the administration’s reunification process “chaotic and disorganized.”
… Because of the Administration’s repeated missteps detailed above — including the insistence on rolling out the policy nationwide without first incorporating lessons learned from the pilot program, the secrecy and lack of cross-agency communication, and the conscious disregard of the welfare of affected families — those efforts continue to be hampered even today. As a result, some children — particularly those whose parents were deported before reunification could take place — remain separated from their parents.
On October 20, 2020, it was reported that 545 children had yet to be reunited with their families, 853 days after the Presidential Proclamation — a figure that was corrected to 666 by lawyers a few weeks later. The search for the families of these migrant children is being led by the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”), who reported on December 2nd that 38 children had been reunited with their families subsequent to the release of new information that had previously been withheld by the Trump administration. They reported that 628 children are still without their parents. After winning the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden announced on October 29, 2020 his intent to issue an executive order on his first day in office to create a federal task force to reunite the families.
Part II: Legal Analysis
While many of the Trump administration’s actions are clearly morally deplorable, the legality of these policy changes and executive actions has been the subject of scholarly critique. Immigration law, and especially that surrounding detention, is extremely complex. Academic considerations of Trump policies must consider the legal distinction between civil, administrative, and criminal law, and the diverse ways they factor into the legality and practicality of policy changes. While these considerations have practical limitations, they do open some dialectical avenues through which the basis of legal challenges have arisen. The Trump administration has faced numerous lawsuits challenging many different facets of their regime, not the least of which being their immigration policy. Scholarly analysis of these considerations, and of some of the legal challenges faced by the administration, illustrate the lengths to which the Trump administration has stretched the law to deepen the conditions of abuse within immigration detention.
Fifth and Sixth Amendment Rights
First and foremost, the Trump Administration’s policy changes raise deep legal questions about the neglect of due process in immigration detention. Any person under the jurisdiction of the United States is afforded the right to due process under the Fifth Amendment. To unjustly deprive a person of due process rights should be considered abusive, not only because it represents state cruelty, but because it represents the misuse of a foundational protection of Constitutional rights.
Judicial independence is foundational to the functioning of the United States government, and to the due process rights of those under the discretion of the judiciary. To what extent, then, does the president influence the judiciary’s decisions inside the courtrooms of detention centers? Legal scholars Catherine Y. Kim and Amy Semet first analysed the outcomes of 830,000 deportation proceedings decided between January 2001 and June 2019, finding that the presidential administration that appointed an Immigration Judge (“IJ”) was not statistically significant in determining the outcome of a given case- but that the administration in power at the time of the decision was. Concluding that this finding suggests “a sitting president may exert some measure of direct or indirect influence over IJs’ decisions to deport,” Kim and Semet then set out to determine whether this influence affected IJs’ decisions to detain defendants pending proceedings- analysing the outcomes of 780,000 bond proceedings for the same period of time.
We find that on every metric of bond hearings, noncitizens fared worse during the Trump Era than they did during either the Bush II or Obama Eras. Although rates of release on recognizance were extremely low throughout the period of study, they started at 2% of all cases decided during the Bush II Era, dropping to 0.23% during the Obama Era and then to 0.17% during the Trump Era. Similarly, while only 7% of custody hearings during the Bush II Era resulted in an outright denial of bond, that figure rose to 14% during the Obama Era and 18% during the Trump Era. Perhaps more telling, overall noncitizen win rates — release on, granting of bond when ICE denies bond, or lower bond amounts — indicate that all appointee cohorts were less likely to award relief to noncitizens during the Trump Era than during the Obama Era… Bond medians grew from $5,000 during the Bush II Era to $6,500 during the Obama Era, and then jumped to $8,000 during the Trump Era. Indeed, 43% of the bonds set by IJs during the Trump Era were $10,000 or higher, as compared to only 24% and 25% for the Obama and Bush II Eras, respectively. Again, breaking down these results by appointee cohort indicates that earlier-appointed IJs mostly issued higher bond amounts during the Trump Era than during preceding administrations.
While clearly there are many variables impacting a bond decision — only some of which could be controlled for in this data, this raises an important question about the nature of judicial independence in this particular system. Due process should mandate insulation from political interests. However, bond decisions are by law not subject to judicial review, and immigration judges in particular do not enjoy the same independence as judges in other courtrooms, since they are supervised directly by the executive branch, and subject to their employment decisions. Clearly, Kim and Semet’s findings suggest the sitting president influences IJ decisions in at least a statistical sense, as IJs generally have been seen to favor detention in a greater magnitude of cases during the Trump administration. It seems likely that the political messaging from the Trump administration, both to the public and in internal communications within the Department of Justice, has some influence on the decisions made by IJs. It is important to note that the Trump administration’s policies clearly work toward a decline in legal immigration into the United States, a trend identified by numerous social organizations discussed later in this paper. In total, the findings from this data work in tandem with explicit policy changes to illustrate the “big picture” of the expansion of immigration detention in neglect of due process under the Trump administration.
Due process rights also include the limitation that detention should only be used if a defendant is either a flight risk, or poses a danger to society if released. Neither of these circumstances are the case in a vast majority of immigration proceedings, and yet the Trump Administration has pushed for far more mandatory detention. According to ICE’s FY 2019 Enforcement and Removal Operations Report, “85 percent of those removed by ERO had spent time in ICE detention prior to their departure from the country.”
Graph Prepared by ICE for FY 2019 ERO Report
In 2001, Zadvydas v. Davis ruled that civil detention violates due process unless ordered “in certain special and ‘narrow’ ‘nonpunitive’ circumstances, where a special justification, such as harm-threatening mental illness, outweighs the ‘individual’s constitutionally protected interest in avoiding physical restraint.’” According to legal scholar Kara A. Naseef, immigrants generally pose neither threat of flight nor danger to society, and are detained anyways because “IJs do not consistently assess dangerousness and flight to meet the special justification requirement.” This is in clear violation of due process considerations under Zadvydas v. Davis and the Fifth Amendment. Taking into consideration that the proportion and number of migrants detained in the Trump Era is so dramatically increased from previous administrations, it is unsurprising that the standards leading to detention are being disregarded in this administration’s push for what can only be viewed as the legacy of “Prevention through Deterrence.”
Access to counsel within immigration courts is also fraught with legal controversy. The Sixth Amendment grants the right of any criminal defendant to have assistance of counsel, and this has been interpreted by the courts to be limited to those proceedings where incarceration may be the result. Proceedings leading to immigration detention, however, are technically civil proceedings, meaning the Sixth Amendment has been interpreted by courts to not prima facie support the right of counsel for non-citizens facing possible detention. At the same time, immigration reform for the last few decades has undergone a “punitive revolution” as part of a trend toward the criminalization of immigration offenses. It has been well argued that, in particular, the mandatory detention provisions of American immigration law are functionally criminal, not civil. While this punitive revolution has been in progress since the Bush II administration, this is also clear in the Trump administration’s regime. For example, the administration’s family separation policy was part of the administration’s push for “zero tolerance” prosecution of immigration law as criminal charges. This “crimmigration crisis” has created a system wherein defendants, including those without the appropriate legal knowledge to represent themselves including the disabled, elderly, and children, have no right to counsel when they face detention, which is of course a form of incarceration. Pro se litigants, especially those without the capacity to effectively represent themselves, are clearly at a substantial disadvantage, and are statistically much less likely to receive a favorable outcome. Assistance of Counsel should be provided in immigration court proceedings due to the criminalization of immigration law, and the fact that it can lead to incarceration, which in other contexts has been used to affirm that right. To disregard these considerations in denial of the rights of migrants constitutes an abuse of the Sixth Amendment.
Conditions of Confinement
I was placed in a cell that was about 15 feet by 20 feet … [T]here were about 30 to 35 people in the cell. We were like cigarettes stuffed in there…[T]he second station … was worse! The cell was a bit bigger but there were about 60 men in there or more. … The benches and the floor were covered with men sitting, standing or lying down. To get around you had to walk on the benches and jump from bench to bench to avoid stepping on people…Sleeping here was horrible. It was so crowded we just had to lay any way we could, sometimes on our sides, so we could fit more people. If you moved, someone else would take your spot. — C.V.J., former detainee. There was one sink in the cell but it did not work. There was also no soap or paper or cloth towels. It was impossible to wash your hands or clean yourself after using the toilet. — J.A.M.B., former detainee.
Simply put, the conditions inside of detention centers during the Trump administration have been abhorrent and inappropriate for their purported purpose. Detainees are deprived of their dignity by a system that confines them (for dubious causes) in conditions that leave them uncared for and unable to care for themselves. Basic supplies, such as soap and toothpaste, are often not provided. Facilities have been reported to provide inadequate food and water to those in custody. Medical care is poor and often not accessible- and in the case of medically vulnerable detainees, these conditions can have devastating effects. Yazmin Juárez testified before Congress in 2019 that she was forced to watch her “baby girl die slowly and painfully just a few months before her second birthday” due to the conditions and medical neglect they suffered in ICE custody. Similarly, pregnant women face unacceptable challenges in Trump Era detention. This administration’s push for zero-tolerance detention has resulted in far more pregnant women in ICE custody, and the inhuman conditions inside the facilities often result in stillbirth, miscarriage, and other serious health complications. Detainees are kept in “jail-like facilities under jail-like conditions,” often shackled (even pregnant women, to the detriment of their health), subject to body searches, kept in solitary confinement — all when over 70% of detainees have committed no criminal offense beyond illegal entry. Maxi Sopo, a man from Cameroon that was granted political asylum in the U.S. in 2004, served a three year sentence in a federal prison after being convicted of a crime completely unrelated to his immigration status. After his time was served, ICE transferred him to the Stewart Detention Center, where he remained for 20 months awaiting immigration processing: “to my biggest surprise… this place is actually worse than being in prison.” According to legal scholar Whitney Chelgren, these conditions of confinement “do not reflect the regulatory purpose of detention.” In short, immigration detention is preventative detention that has the same characteristics as punitive detention. The course that leads to punitive detention, however, includes due process protections, where immigration detention does not. When the conditions of immigration detention are either indistinguishable or worse than that of jails and prisons, it becomes even more clear that the due process rights afforded defendants in criminal contexts must be translated to immigration hearings as well, particularly bond hearings. These abusive conditions inside immigrant detention also exemplify the disregard for human dignity, care, and wellbeing endemic to the Trump Era.
Flores Settlement
The conditions defined above are not only unacceptable because they are morally reprehensible and by their nature conflict with due process rights, but also because established domestic precedent has set minimum standards for the detention of migrants, which the Trump administration is now attempting to eliminate. In 1997, a fifteen-year-old from El Salvador named Jenny Lisette Flores, and a number of other migrant children who were kept in similar conditions for similar causes, sued the then Attorney General Edwin Meese and the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”) over allegedly unsafe and unsanitary conditions and indefinite confinement related to immigration processes. The Flores Settlement Agreement (“FSA”) concluded the case after a year of litigation, and set standards for the care and custody of children in immigration officials’ custody for decades. Some of the critical features of these newly established standards include access to sanitary conditions, food and water, medical assistance, separation from unrelated adults, release (to parents or sponsors) without unnecessary delay, and the “least restrictive” environment appropriate for their age. The FSA also limited the custody of minors in DHS facilities to 20 days. On August 21, 2019, the Trump Administration’s DHS announced a “new rule to implement the [FSA]” titled “Apprehension, Processing, Care, and Custody of Alien Minors and Unaccompanied Alien Children” — a rule that lawsuits from the State of California and others allege actually work to negate the FSA. The State of California’s complaint lists two conflicts between the new DHS rule and the FSA’s protections: first, that the new rule allows for the “prolonged and indefinite” detention of minors, and second, that the rule replaces the FSA’s requirement for state oversight and inspection with that of the federal government. Preliminary injunction was ordered by the California Central District Court, preventing the DHS rule from taking effect and putting the case in inactive status pending the resolution of Flores v. Barr, a class action taking up the same argument against the enjoined regulation. Flores v. Barr is pending oral argument delayed by COVID19. The Trump Administration’s intent to eliminate the legal protections of the FSA is extremely telling. The Administration’s pursuit of the “prolonged and indefinite” detention of children without oversight is chilling, and can only be understood as an attempt to create a cruel and abusive environment that would affirm both campaign messaging leading into the 2020 election and the “Prevention through Deterrence” approach embraced throughout the Trump Era.
Part III: Resistance
The effects that this turbulent administration has had on the lives of immigrants cannot be overstated. The repeated and dramatic changes to immigration law have created a stricter, crueler system with less empathy- and this is exactly what the Trump administration intended. However, grassroots movements to resist this policymaking have been instrumental to the state of immigration law today. As seen throughout this paper so far, there have been numerous instances where the Trump administration was blocked from implementing some of the most egregious policy changes planned for this Era. Through legal challenges, congressional advocacy, and direct action, social movement organizations have been successful in thwarting some of these policies, with some vocal support from public opinion.
Public Opinion
While public perception is of course limited in its capacity to effect change on its own, it is important to note that the regime imposed by the Trump administration is not widely popular with the American people. After images of the inhumane conditions in detention centers went viral in 2018, one response dominated the social conscious: “this is not who we are.” The public response to the family separation policy is one key example, not only because of how stark the polls were on the issue, but because many theorize that public opinion was the cause of the administration’s reversal of the policy. Revealingly, President Trump denied blame for the policy during the 2020 presidential election debates, asserting that the previous administration was responsible. While this is partially true, since some family detention centers were constructed during the Obama administration, the Trump administration worked tirelessly to expand the detention of children in order to meet campaign promises popular with his supporters. His denial of responsibility, while not uncharacteristic for the President, indicates at least that the public reception of this policy remains on his mind almost two years later.
More generally, polls indicate that the Trump administration’s stricter immigration policies have been unpopular throughout his administration: it was reported in a March 2017 poll that only 41% of adults approved of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and in November 2020 43% of voters reported that the president’s immigration policies had made them less likely to vote for him. President Trump was of course unsuccessful in his reelection campaign, and it is clearly possible that this was in part due to the highly controversial immigration policies enacted by his administration since 2016. While certainly these policies have had their ardent supporters, the American public as a whole seems to reject this administration’s approach to immigration.
Organized Resistance
The heart of resistance to this regime is in organized resistance groups, which have worked tirelessly since this administration’s inauguration to challenge the expansion of immigration detention. The Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a grassroots organization founded in 1997 amid the expansion of immigration detention during the Clinton administration. Throughout the Trump administration, the DWN has increased its organizational capacity several times in order to efficiently operate its two main grassroots campaigns during this administration: DefundHate, which works directly with Congress to reduce funding to ICE and CBP, and Communities not Cages, which organizes a national framework to prevent the construction of new detention centers and shut down those currently in operation. The DWN also organizes a gathering for those affected by immigration detention called Healing Towards Liberation, launched in 2019, and has a grant program that provides $152,000 to support smaller projects around the U.S. These DWN programs have had significant success: in 2019 the DefundHate program successfully campaigned 75 members of Congress to vote against the FY2020 appropriations bill that did not meet DefundHate demands and the final bill did not appropriate funds to expand immigration detention. Furthermore, the Communities not Cages program prevented the construction of five new detention centers around the U.S. in 2019. The DWN now also advocates for the FreeThemAll COVID19 campaign, which organizes direct action with the goal of mass release. This centers on the extreme vulnerability of detainees to the infectious COVID19 pandemic, which has already claimed the lives of numerous migrants contained by ICE or CBP. This program in particular focuses on supporting mutual aid by providing national strategy and funding. This organization exemplifies the numerous social movement organizations that create a national framework for resistance, and without the work of the DWN, funding for immigration detention would likely have increased, and more detention centers would have been built.
In Tacoma, La Resistencia (formerly known as Northwest Detention Center Resistance) works on a much more local scale to close the controversial Northwest Detention Center (“NWDC”) and improve the conditions of confinement for those presently held there. The NWDC, originally built in 2004, has expanded dramatically in capacity over the last decade to keep in time with the expansion of the prison industrial complex in the U.S. According to legal scholar Angelica Chazaro, “there is no doubt that the NWDC is a prison, and that those held there are prisoners.” The NWDC is operated by the GEO Group, a for-profit private prison company that managed 60% of the private beds in U.S. carceral institutions in 2017. Calling for the closure of the NWDC, La Resistancia centers the leadership and experiences of those detained there, and works to improve their conditions through community organizing: particularly letter writing, near-weekly onsite demonstrations, and selective legal challenges. From inside the NWDC, imprisoned activists demonstrate through hunger strikes, which has reportedly been met with violence from the GEO Group guards. In December 2019, La Resistancia (listed in complaint as NWDC Resistance) filed suit against ICE, alleging ICE has targeted activist immigrants for surveillance, detention, and even deportation. So far this lawsuit has revealed numerous internal emails from ICE officers explicitly identifying and targeting activists working with La Resistancia. The emails, which are now available to the public, shine a light on the internal responses to La Resistencia activism from ICE employees. The emails refer to La Resistancia as “punks,” and “instigators of turmoil at the NWDC,” and discuss the possible deportation of a prominent leader within the organization, who is referred to as the “coach of the so-called hunger strikes.” While this communication is telling with regard to the conduct of ICE employees, it also shows that La Resistencia’s consistent demonstrations and pressures have been effective in that they are disruptive to the functioning of the NWDC. Last month, the District Court denied an ICE motion to dismiss the suit, so the case will continue. Legal challenges to the Trump immigration regime’s policies and practices, such as NWDC v. ICE, have been instrumental to preventing some of the worst abuses intended by the administration, so one can only hope that the Court’s denial of ICE’s motion to dismiss bodes well for the merits of the La Resistencia lawsuit.
Directly challenging the conduct and policy of the Trump administration has been one critical point of resistance, but has not so far been successful in securing guaranteed procedural rights within immigration courts. Since assistance of counsel has been regarded by courts to not be protected in immigration proceedings, pro bono legal assistance is also a key element to preventing some of the direct harms put forth by this administration. The Northwest Immigrants Rights Project (“NWIRP”) reportedly placed 238 cases with pro bono attorneys in 2019. Although the NWIRP also participates in impactful legal action against policies directly, some of their most influential work intends to ease the burden of the complex legal system for migrants that find themselves caught up in the enigmatic Trump immigration regime. In addition to providing direct representation at no cost, the NWIRP also works to provide free legal education to thousands of people each year through the administration of legal orientation presentations. Resultantly, due to the efforts of the NWIRP, countless immigrants have had a fairer experience through their immigration proceedings than they would have without this crucial intervention.
As organizations like the Detention Watch Network work with Congress to resist the Trump administration through legislature, local organizations like La Resistencia demonstrate to disrupt detention centers across the nation, and pro bono attorneys are connected with immigrants through organizations like the NWIRP, it is clear that the work of these organizations has been a thorn in the administration’s side as they have progressed their abusive immigration regime. These resistance movements have faced their obstacles, since they work against politically and economically powerful entities — and therefore it is all the more crucial to recognize their accomplishments in these last few years. As the Trump administration ends, and the Biden administration begins, it will remain crucial for these organizations to hold the next administration accountable for the conditions of abuse that have been established.
The Case for Decriminalization
Empathy demands we consider the effects of this regime on the human lives targeted by these policies. Lee’s “slow death” framework reveals the effect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy: migrants suffer through weeks, months, or even years of waiting in inhumane conditions to be processed through an unfair system that abuses their rights as persons under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Petra Albrecht, who spent fifteen months in ICE detention reports that “…they put me into segregation, abused and tortured me and compromised my physical integrity to a point that I was in need of a walking device and a wheelchair.” Albrecht’s unacceptable treatment is not dissimilar to other detained noncitizens, and the lasting physical consequences of ICE custody are common among voices from inside immigrant detention. As the oppressive conditions in detention become more highlighted in political discourse, especially through the work of social organizations with public outreach campaigns, weight is being given to discussions of possible solutions. One such conversation has turned to the decriminalization of border crossing. This discussion came into public focus in 2019 when the Democratic Party was holding debates to select their nominee for the 2020 presidential election, when primary candidate and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro called for a repeal of United States Code Title 8 Section 1325, the statute that makes unauthorized border crossing a misdemeanor. Distinct from the Immigration and Naturalization Act (“INA”), which is the statutory authority for most immigration processes, “Section 1325” allows for the referral of prosecutions of illegal entry claims to the Department of Justice. Under Sections 1325 and 1326, illegal entry is punishable by up to six months of incarceration, and illegal reentry is punishable by up to twenty years. This is where the Trump “zero-tolerance” policy fits in, as this policy called for the referral of all cases for prosecution without exception. A repeal of this section, then, would eliminate the criminal law component of immigration proceedings, allowing immigrants to navigate a civil immigration system instead. The introduction of this political agenda to the Democratic Party’s discussions on immigration law reform is promising in that it gives some indication that the status quo is being challenged by party leaders in the controlling executive party beginning in 2021, but it is critically important to note, that this proposed change would not definitively put an end to immigration detention. The most obvious practical result of this action would instead be an end to criminal sentences for immigration crimes, which is certainly one important goal that would ease some of the abuses of the system. However, the limitations of this proposal should not be overlooked: some of the worst violations of non-citizens’ dignity, care, and wellbeing occur in the absence of criminal charges under Section 1325. Therefore, while decriminalization is a clear, progressive goal for the Democratic Party, it is necessary for political goals to reach higher in order to fully resolve those conditions which impose “slow death” onto non citizens that come to America seeking safety and opportunity.
Conclusion
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, many immigrants were incredibly fearful of the years to come. Clearly, that fear was well warranted. The Trump administration used its time in power to dramatically expand immigration detention, making good on promises made using racialized rhetoric from the campaign trail in 2015 until today. The last four years of immigration policy have deepened the conditions of abuse within immigration detention and imposed a “slow death” on non-citizens whose only crime is the pursuit of a better life for their families. Thankfully, this administration will not be given more time to progress this abusive regime. On November 3, 2020, the American voting public ended the Trump Era, and ushered in a new one: the Biden Era. For many, the approaching Biden Era represents hope for positive change. For others, the Obama Era remains a painful memory- the Obama administration’s immigration detention policies indeed were outdone by the Trump administration, but they were a significant expansion compared to Obama’s Republican predecessor. President elect Joe Biden served as Vice President in the Obama administration, raising concerns about what the next four years will look like for immigration detention. Many take for granted that the Biden administration will spend its first days in office reversing the policymaking of the Trump Era. While that would of course be a welcome and progressive change, it would not go far enough to simply “erase” the last four years which have deepened the conditions of abuse. It is possible, and even likely, that the Biden Era will continue the American legacy of caging migrants.
That is why we need to make clear to this administration that now is the time to dismantle the system of abuse created to cage and dehumanize immigrants. The crucial work of social movement organizations, both national and local, must continue through the Biden Era. With the Democratic Party slowly embracing the decriminalization of border crossing, now is the time for the political work to be done to progress another critical goal: the abolition of immigrant detention. Examining the policies of the last four years within the context of the last few decades of prison expansion reveals that the immigration system of the U.S. is fundamentally broken, and predicated on principles that cause “slow death.” Therefore, a reimagining of American immigration law is overdue: a rethinking of the regulation of migration that respects and uplifts human dignity, care and wellbeing must emerge.
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Lind, Dara. “Why Julián Castro Started a Democratic Debate Fight over Repealing ‘Section 1325.’” Vox, June 27, 2019. https://www.vox.com/2019/6/26/18760665/1325-immigration-castro-democratic-debate.
Ramón, Cristobal, and Theresa Brown. “Decriminalizing Illegal Border Crossing: What Does It Mean? An Explainer of Civil vs. Criminal Immigration Enforcement.” Bipartisan Policy Center, January 15, 2020. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/decriminalizing-illegal-border-crossing-what-does-it-mean-an-explainer-of-civil-vs-criminal-immigration-enforcement/. | https://medium.com/@ariellewoods/immigration-detention-in-the-trump-era-a-timeline-and-analysis-922001a13354 | ['Arielle Woods'] | 2020-12-18 22:44:15.840000+00:00 | ['Biden', 'Family Separation', 'Trump', 'Immigration Detention', 'Immigration'] |
How To Find Peace In The Eye Of The Stress Storm Around You | We Can Get Away Without Going Away
“People try to get away from it all — to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful — more free of interruptions — than your own soul…An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquility.” — Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”, Gregory Hayes Translation
The words above are likely written in 180 AD, but the idea about “getting away” is often mouthed by a stressed worker in the present day. How many times have you wished you could get away? Ideas of a calm beach and umbrella drink may float in your daydreams. Likely ancient Romans did the same thing.
However, one thing the emperor couldn’t do was “get away” — his chaotic times and life allowed no time for a lavish vacation. As Donald Robertson explains in his book “How to Think Like A Roman Emperor”, Marcus dealt with nonstop stressful personal and job-related issues.
He lost 7 of his 13 children prematurely.
One of his friends attempted to dethrone him by armed rebellion and a letter from his own wife may have started the attempt.
The Antonine Plague ravaged the empire. It’s thought to have killed nearly 10% of Rome’s 75 million people at the time.
A “friendly” German tribe rebelled and attacked the empire, forcing Marcus to live most of his late and sickly life at Spartan-like battle camps.
Now, this is a stressful life. However, Marcus never turned into one of those horrific Roman tyrants you see portrayed in movies. So, how did he do it?
As Marcus himself points out in his journal, he found a way to get away into his own mind. The journal he carried, which became Meditations, was his get away. As he himself mentioned, it only took an instance to escape to “complete tranquility”.
While he didn’t leave a detailed explanation, the emperor shows he could escape his chaotic world without physically leaving. This is the ultimate discovery for us in the present day. We don’t have to jump on a plane and go somewhere to escape the ever-present stress. A peaceful get away and place for renewal is much closer than we can ever imagine. | https://medium.com/mind-cafe/how-to-find-peace-in-the-eye-of-the-stress-storm-around-you-f5db9fdfe298 | ['Erik Brown'] | 2020-12-26 14:54:39.962000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Philosophy', 'Mindfulness', 'Psychology', 'Self Improvement'] |
A PROFITABLE BUSINESS SOURCING STRATEGY IN MALAYSIA | It is extremely important for companies that have a rapidly-changing product portfolio to stay ahead of the game. This is usually done by evolving the plan for the sourcing services of Malaysia best sourcing marketplace during the time the product design time and actively seeking out potential suppliers that can best meet the projected demand. Since much of the technology can be very new, there needs to exist a supplier involvement from every early in the product development stage so that they can also deliver accordingly.
Because of the scale of operations in large companies, senior management from virtually all the functions need to be involved in the sourcing strategy development and implementation. This b2b business directory Malaysia ensures that the procurement function is more deeply integrated into the business strategy of the company.
Trademalaysia
Managing Quality and Supply Consistency Risks
It is vital that companies whose fortunes depend substantially on the success of their sourcing services have a very well-established system of supplier inspection and certification. The process needs to take into account multiple parameters such as the vendor’s financial strength, manufacturing capacity, and QC systems. The process from Malaysia fastest growing B2B marketplace also needs to continually track vendor performance so that deviations can be addressed even before they impact upon the supply chain.
Among the criteria used for vendor identification are its competencies, and ability to respond to disruptions in supply chain. An effective risk mitigation strategy is put into place that not only investigates and identifies issues but ensures backup for sustained supply chain management in the face of natural disasters or supplier insolvencies. Long term investment and cooperation programs nurture key relationships, while joint promotion of identified products reduces supply-variability risks.
The Ideal Supplier Profile
The complexities of global sourcing services for Malaysia fastest growing B2B marketplace have elevated the status of suppliers from mere vendors to business partners. This necessitates a sea change in the way their role is perceived within the company. It also necessitates an appreciation that supplier performance lies not only in cost-effectiveness but also in driving innovation and maintaining high standards of manufacturing and associated support.
Basically, you end up thinking the suppliers to be extended divisions of the company itself. Of course, this means that suppliers too have to gear themselves up completely and also undertake a radical change in their perception of the relationship with their principals. | https://medium.com/@friendhrm/a-profitable-business-sourcing-strategy-in-malaysia-bd4d689ba085 | [] | 2021-04-13 20:05:09.708000+00:00 | ['B2b Marketing', 'B2B', 'Businessdirectorymalaysia'] |
Meetup And Learn, A Case of Failure: Pinpointing A Problem for Correction — Tentamen Software Testing Blog | TL;DR
In the previous post, we gave a report on Taming the Quality Dragon by Jana Gierloff. Today we bring you a report on A Case of Failure: Pinpointing A Problem for Correction by Maaret Pyhäjärvi, the last session of Online Test Conf Autumn 2020 first day sessions. Maaret energy goes this time to thinking of our role as reporters of information to create change.
Takeaways
Thinking of our role as reporters of information to create change. What kind of information truly moves our colleagues and organizations and makes a difference, and when should we turn from information providers to full contributors on solutions?
Let’s Learn From Junior’s
Maaret is a great storyteller; I had the privilege to listen to her stories live during the European Testing Conference 2018 and 2020, and Testival 2015. And of course, on her blog, A Seasoned Tester’s Crystal Ball. Her story starts with junior software testers. They stuck with a problem. Robot Framework for Browser automation tests just stopped to work on their computer. The problem was caused by the new version of the Browser library upon which Robot Framework depends on. The problem’s root cause was identified in a conversation between three software testers, where one was just observing the conversation. Note observing, not just listening. Maaret noticed one common thing during root cause analysis conversations, and that is jump to conclusions. Remember the rule of three in such situations.
Let’s F.A.I.L.
FAIL is First Attempt In Learning Acronym. It means that it is ok to fail when you are learning something new because, during the process, you learn why you failed. Of course, as long as failure is not exploited for its own benefit. You still need to learn the topic. Maaret encourages Juniors to learn with FAIL.
Put Problems In Cynefin Model
Cynefin model helps us to learn by moving from Chaotic to Obvious. Maaret relates Cynefin quadrants with a “who build it” relation. For example, if we have a problem with something built by someone else, it is obvious how to solve it. Seek solution by asking the builder (this could be reading the documentation).
Software Testers Skill Growth
Maaret sets these stages of software tester’s skill growth:
How To Report A Problem
When we identify the problem, we need to report it. We usually call this bug report. These could be done unprofessionally, with headline Login page does not load, or professionally using RIMGEA acronym:
When you master RIMGEA, you will learn the following facts for excellent bug reports:
To replicate the bug, set variables in the state before the bug, then change them.
Which symptoms are important for the observed behavior
Write a report for super tired developer
Quote Alert
Canvas For Experiments
Maaret finishes with Canvas For Experiments. It is a test strategy for hunting the root cause problems. She gave examples of problems hunted with this canvas:
Change JIRA flow
Late Automation when developers do not test late change
Conclusion
The truth is that everybody is afraid of changes. But when you set a change experiment with upfront notice that even a successful experiment could be rejected, it is much easier to start the experiment in the first place. Experiments should be directed in information discovery, so software testers could also have enough information to make decisions. And of course:
You can learn a lot from juniors.
I agree with that. While instructing the BBST AST courses, I learned a lot (from BBST topic juniors) from student answers on BBST topics. It is always a good thing to get another perspective on software testing topics.
Q&A
Testivator Session Score
For this session, I was using the Testivator Mobile application. I took 23 notes and 7 screenshots.
Here are note types by duration. Till the end is 3.9 %, and it is the ratio of duration from last note to session end and session duration. | https://medium.com/@tentamen/meetup-and-learn-a-case-of-failure-pinpointing-a-problem-for-correction-tentamen-software-6c1210a27c9a | ['Karlo Smid'] | 2020-12-09 07:04:45.621000+00:00 | ['Software Testing'] |
Keeping Up with Deep Learning — 26 Nov 2020 | Keeping Up with Deep Learning — 26 Nov 2020
Deep learning papers, blog posts, Github repos, etc. that I liked this week
Photo by Sebastian Pena Lambarri on Unsplash
This is the second edition of my weekly update on deep learning. Every Thursday, I’ll release a new batch of research papers, blog posts, Github repos, etc. that I liked over the past week. Links are provided for each featured project, so you can dive in and learn about whatever catches your eye. If you missed last week’s edition, you can find it here. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Follow me or check back next week for more. Enjoy!
Very Deep VAEs
[ArXiv][Github]
OpenAI recently showed that Variational AutoEncoders can outperform other likelihood-based generative models at creating realistic 2D images. Although the authors don’t compare their results against adversarial models (e.g. StyleGAN or PGAN), it’s clear from the generated images that VAE can’t match the performance of GANs yet. But this is still really exciting research, because VAEs are much easier to train and understand than GANs. For that reason, I’m excited to see more research like this from OpenAI, because if VAEs ever match the performance of GANs, they will be highly preferred over adversarial models.
Images generated with VAEs. Source: https://github.com/openai/vdvae
End-to-End Object Detection with Adaptive Clustering Transformer
[ArXiv]
Adaptive Clustering Transformer is one of the first notable research papers to improve upon DETR. (DETR was a recent landmark paper for object detection using transformers. See here for more details.) DETR requires a large amount of training for good performance, but ACE reduces training time by about 30%. Personally, I’m surprised this paper hasn’t received more attention. DETR is an amazing development for computer vision, and we need research like this to advance the state of the art!
Obligatory photo of a Transformer… Photo by Arseny Togulev on Unsplash
Propagate Yourself
[ArXiv]
Propagate Yourself advances the state of the art for unsupervised learning on vision-related tasks. Unsupervised learning greatly reduces the amount of labeled data needed for deep learning, because it uses unlabeled samples to learn meaningful representations of the data. I’m a big believer in unsupervised and self-supervised learning, and I recently wrote an article on self-supervised learning with BYOL! Check it out for a thorough introduction to self-supervised training of neural networks.
Design Space for Graph Neural Networks
[ArXiv]
This is a survey paper of various architectures for graph neural networks. GNNs have grown tremendously in popularity over the past few years, because unlike other types of neural networks, they’re able to process irregular data types like 3D point clouds. They’re used in many 3D object detection applications, which in turn is used by most self-driving algorithms. The landscape for GNNs has changed a lot over the past couple of years, and I highly recommend this paper if you need a refresher.
NVIDIA DGX A100
[Webpage][YouTube]
NVIDIA recently released the DGX A100 — a small server with some serious GPU horsepower. Each DGX packs four A100 chips (fastest GPUs in the world at the time of writing) and up to 640 GB of GPU memory. Unfortunately, each DGX station costs a minimum of $200,000, which essentially guarantees that I’ll never use one. (Google Cloud now offers A100s in beta mode, which is much more appealing.) But it’s admittedly fun to marvel at the horsepower we’re able to pack into one server, compared to just 5 years ago.
Photo by Francesco Lo Giudice on Unsplash
Google Cloud MLE Certification
[Course][Blog Post]
I believe that online developer certifications are the way of the future. Too many ML Engineer positions currently require a graduate degree, plus multiple years of professional experience. In order to grow our field, we need an accessible, low-cost option to get qualified for ML-focused jobs. That’s exactly what the Google Cloud MLE Certification tries to accomplish. For the price of $200, you’ll learn many of the requisite skills to land a job in today’s ML Engineering landscape. (I have no affiliation with Google or their certification programs. This is purely a personal endorsement of online ML courses like this one.)
Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash
Conclusion
Research has slowed down slightly with Thanksgiving this week, but it’s still a very exciting time for deep learning. Expect to see a lot more papers involving transformers and self-supervised learning in the near future — both are extremely hot topics right now, and for good reason. (If you’re not familiar with those, check out my recent articles on Transformers from Scratch and Self-supervised Learning with BYOL.) If you enjoyed the article, follow me to get all future weekly updates and other technical articles. | https://medium.com/the-dl/keeping-up-with-deep-learning-26-oct-2020-6a5bedeb11b9 | ['Frank Odom'] | 2020-12-10 17:49:25.980000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Deep Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
Time Series Anomaly Detection With LSTM Autoencoders- an Unsupervised ML Approach | Artificial Intelligence and Anomaly Detection
Time Series Anomaly Detection With LSTM Autoencoders- an Unsupervised ML Approach
How to set-up an anomaly detection model
Image by Author
Anomaly here to detect that, actual results differ from predicted results in price prediction. As we are aware that, real-life data is streaming, time-series data etc., where anomalies give significant information in critical situations. In the detection of anomalies, we are interested in discovering abnormal, unusual or unexpected records and in the time series context, an anomaly can be detected within the scope of a single record or as a subsequence/pattern.
Estimating the historical data, time-series based predictive model helps us in predicting future price by estimating them with the current data. Once we have the prediction we can use that data to detect anomalies on comparing them with actuals.
Let’s implement it and look at its pros and cons. Hence, our objective here is to develop an anomaly detection model for Time Series data. We will use neural-network architecture for this use case.
Let us load Henry Hub Spot Price data from EIA. We have to remember that, the order of data here is important and should be chronological as we are going to forecast the next point.
import os
print(os.listdir("../input"))
import warnings
warnings.filterwarnings('ignore') print("....Data loading...."); print()
print('\033[4mHenry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price, Daily (Dollars per Million Btu)\033[0m')
def retrieve_time_series(api, series_ID):
series_search = api.data_by_series(series=series_ID)
spot_price = DataFrame(series_search)
return spot_price def main():
try:
api_key = "....API KEY..."
api = eia.API(api_key)
series_ID = 'xxxxxx'
spot_price = retrieve_time_series(api, series_ID)
print(type(spot_price))
return spot_price;
except Exception as e:
print("error", e)
return DataFrame(columns=None)
spot_price = main()
spot_price = spot_price.rename({'Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price, Daily (Dollars per Million Btu)': 'price'}, axis = 'columns')
spot_price = spot_price.reset_index()
spot_price['index'] = pd.to_datetime(spot_price['index'].str[:-3], format='%Y %m%d')
spot_price['Date']= pd.to_datetime(spot_price['index'])
spot_price.set_index('Date', inplace=True)
spot_price = spot_price.loc['2000-01-01':,['price']]
spot_price = spot_price.astype(float)
print(spot_price)
Raw data visualization
print('Historical Spot price visualization:')
plt.figure(figsize = (15,5))
plt.plot(spot_price)
plt.title('Henry Hub Spot Price (Daily frequency)')
plt.xlabel ('Date_time')
plt.ylabel ('Price ($/Mbtu)')
plt.show()
print('Missing values:', spot_price.isnull().sum())
# checking missing values
spot_price = spot_price.dropna()
# dropping missing valies
print('....Dropped Missing value row....')
print('Rechecking Missing values:', spot_price.isnull().sum())
# checking missing values
The common characteristic of different types of market manipulation is that, the unexpected pattern or behavior in data.
# Generate Boxplot
print('Box plot visualization:')
spot_price.plot(kind='box', figsize = (10,4))
plt.show()
# Generate Histogram
print('Histogram visualization:')
spot_price.plot(kind='hist', figsize = (10,4) )
plt.show()
Detecting anomalous subsequence
Here, the goal is identifying an anomalous subsequence within a given long time series (sequence).
Anomaly detection is based on the fundamental concept of modeling what is normal in order to discover what is not….Dunning & Friedman
Pre-processing
We’ll use 95% of the data and train our model on it:
Next, we’ll re-scale the data using the training data and apply the same transformation to the test data. I have used Robust scaler as shown below:
# data standardization
robust = RobustScaler(quantile_range=(25, 75)).fit(train[['price']])
train['price'] = robust.transform(train[['price']])
test['price'] = robust.transform(test[['price']])
Finally, we’ll split the data into sub-sequences with the help of a helper function.
# helper function
def create_dataset(X, y, time_steps=1):
a, b = [], []
for i in range(len(X) - time_steps):
v = X.iloc[i:(i + time_steps)].values
a.append(v)
b.append(y.iloc[i + time_steps])
return np.array(a), np.array(b) # We’ll create sequences with 30 days of historical data n_steps = 30 # reshape to 3D [n_samples, n_steps, n_features] X_train, y_train = create_dataset(train[['price']], train['price'], n_steps)
X_test, y_test = create_dataset(test[['price']], test['price'], n_steps)
print('X_train shape:', X_train.shape)
print('X_test shape:', X_test.shape)
LSTM Autoencoder in Keras
The sequence autoencoder is similar to sequence to sequence learning. It employs a recurrent network as an encoder to read in an input sequence into a hidden representation. Then, the representation is fed to a decoder recurrent network to reconstruct the input sequence itself.
Here, our Autoencoder should take a sequence as input and outputs a sequence of the same shape. We have a total of 5219 data points in the sequence and our goal is to find anomalies. We are trying to find out when data points are abnormal.
If we can predict a data point at time ‘t’ based on the historical data until ‘t-1’, then we have a way of looking at an expected value compared to an actual value to see if we are within the expected range of values for time ‘t’.
We can compare y_pred with the actual value (y_test). The difference between y_pred and y_test gives the error, and when we get the errors of all the points in the sequence, we end up with a distribution of just errors. To accomplish this, we will use a sequential model using Keras. The model consists of a LSTM layer and a dense layer. The LSTM layer takes as input the time series data and learns how to learn the values with respect to time. The next layer is the dense layer (fully connected layer). The dense layer takes as input the output from the LSTM layer, and transforms it into a fully connected manner. Then, we apply a sigmoid activation on the dense layer so that the final output is between 0 and 1.
We also use the ‘adam’ optimizer and the ‘mean squared error’ as the loss function.
Issue with Sequences
ML algorithms, and neural networks are designed to work with fixed length inputs.
Temporal ordering of the observations can make it challenging to extract features suitable for use as input to supervised learning models.
# history for loss
plt.figure(figsize = (10,5))
plt.plot(history.history['loss'])
plt.plot(history.history['val_loss'])
plt.title('model loss')
plt.ylabel('loss')
plt.xlabel('epoch')
plt.legend(['train', 'test'], loc='upper left')
plt.show()
Evaluation
Once the model is trained, we can predict using test data set and compute the error (mae). Let’s start with calculating the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) on the training data.
MAE on train data:
Accuracy metrics on test data:
# MAE on the test data:
y_pred = model.predict(X_test)
print('Predict shape:', y_pred.shape); print();
mae = np.mean(np.abs(y_pred - X_test), axis=1)
# reshaping prediction
pred = y_pred.reshape((y_pred.shape[0] * y_pred.shape[1]), y_pred.shape[2])
print('Prediction:', pred.shape); print();
print('Test data shape:', X_test.shape); print();
# reshaping test data
X_test = X_test.reshape((X_test.shape[0] * X_test.shape[1]), X_test.shape[2])
print('Test data:', X_test.shape); print();
# error computation
errors = X_test - pred
print('Error:', errors.shape); print();
# rmse on test data
RMSE = math.sqrt(mean_squared_error(X_test, pred_reshape))
print('Test RMSE: %.3f' % RMSE);
RMSE is 0.099, which is low, and this is also evident from the low loss from the training phase after 20 epochs: loss: 0.0749— val_loss: 0.0382. Though this might be a good prediction where the error is low but the anomalous behavior in the actuals cant be identified using this.
Threshold computation:
Objective is that, anomaly will be detected when the error is larger than selected threshold value.
Looks like we’re thresholding extreme values quite well. Let’s create a dataframe using only those:
Anomalies report format:
Inverse test data
Finally, let’s look at the anomalies found in the testing data:
The red dots are the anomalies here and are covering most of the points with abrupt changes to the existing spot price. The threshold values can be changed as per the parameters we choose, especially the cutoff value. If we play around with some of the parameters we used, such as number of time steps, threshold cutoffs, epochs of the neural network, batch size, hidden layer etc., we can expect a different set of results.
With this we conclude a brief overview of finding anomalies in time series with respect to stock trading.
Conclusion
Though the stock market is highly efficient, it is impossible to prevent historical and long term anomalies. Investors may use anomalies to earn superior returns is a risk since the anomalies may or may not persist in the future. However, every report metric needs to be validated with parameters fine-tuned so that anomalies are detected when using prediction for detecting anomalies. Also for metrics with different distribution of data a different approach in identifying anomalies needs to be followed.
Connect me here.
Note: The programs described here are experimental and should be used with caution for any commercial purpose. All such use at your own risk….by Author. | https://medium.com/swlh/time-series-anomaly-detection-with-lstm-autoencoders-7bac1305e713 | ['Sarit Maitra'] | 2020-12-14 04:22:09.827000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Neural Network Algorithm', 'Anomaly Detection', 'Stock Market'] |
Rings | Photo by Captain Tenneal
Stop searching for happiness in the same place you lost it. Change is not dismantling the old; it’s building the new.
— Harriet Tubman
Agates and trees build rings.
One paints from the outside in,
the other draws from inside out.
Both capture the cryptic art
of lines, balance, and shape
in narrative rings that broaden,
bend and turn with physics and fate
to tell their history in rings. | https://medium.com/sky-collection/rings-fe6bbaf76180 | ['Roy Reichle'] | 2020-12-06 12:06:36.762000+00:00 | ['Whole', 'Poetry', 'New', 'Rings', 'Trees'] |
Want To A Live Happy, Healthy and Colorful Life ? | Want To A Live Happy, Healthy and Colorful Life ?
Want to live a happy, healthy and colorful life!
There is a way by which you can live happy healthy and colorful life,just garden plants,and look after like your chlids.
They will make you healthy and happy whole day.With colorful flowers you will feel like that you life is full of happiness and colors.
But how Plants makes you happy?
ALLAH has given us many blessings in the form of its nature and its beauty.Plants with their fantastic green foliage make people happy. Flowers generate happiness and improve people’s moods.
Plants remove the anxiety and depression from us and gives a smiley life.They have ability to remove hurdles from our minds.
It will be a great moment when you wake up and see the beauty for nature.
So grew up Plants and make yourself happy.
But how Plants makes you healthy?
As we eat to live,but if we eat eat fresh and healthy food then we can live a healthy and happy life.
When you grow food plants in your home and use fresh food daily then you can live long,happy and healthy life.
You can grow daily usage food in home like beans,peas,mint,broccoli and lettuce.
How plants make our life colorful?
Flowers have different colors and beauty in them.Ones who love flowers is living a worry less life.Having flowers in our home is just like a fresh environment and makes your life colorful by loving and caring them.
REFERENCES:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Fbetter%2Fhealth%2Fwhy-more-millennials-are-buying-plant-parenthood-ncna935836&psig=AOvVaw0_aHaJPV54FDUg01IGhvnr&ust=1588494216649000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCKDUj6bglOkCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD | https://medium.com/@wardariaz/want-to-a-live-happy-healthy-and-colorful-life-d8f605c02ebe | ['Warda Riaz'] | 2020-05-02 08:29:26.014000+00:00 | ['Healthy Foods', 'Plants Online', 'Plants', 'Colorful Living Room', 'Happy Life'] |
Our investment thesis in Healthcare | Next we would like to introduce Kernal Biologics, an MA-based messenger RNA (mRNA) company that is developing COVID-19 vaccines and cancer therapeutics.
Our investment thesis
Reimagine therapeutics and vaccines with mRNA technologies
The central dogma of molecular biology was a demonstration of the flow of genetic information basically described as: DNA -> RNA -> protein.² It is the key link in the process of translating genetic information encoded in DNA into instructions that are used by cells to produce the proteins needed to carry out essential cellular functions. mRNA therapy is engineered to deliver mRNA encoding natural, functional proteins that replace defective or missing proteins. Simply put, it’s like a platform that instructs specific cells to naturally make their own medicine. With many years of development and refinement of RNA technology, mRNA-based therapeutics and vaccines are finally entering clinical stages.
Kernal is developing their proprietary platform that decreases immunogenicity upon existing mRNA technologies and enables cell-specific therapeutic protein expression. The two key challenges faced by current mRNA therapies could be solved by Kernal’s patented mRNA technologies:
1. Insufficient protein production for therapeutic benefit
Kernal’s patented stealth mRNA technology removes immunogenicity sequence features and leads to more abundant protein synthesis.
2. Expression is not limited to specific cells
To realize targeted expression, Kernal interrogated translatome data from normal and cancer cells, and discovered mRNA sequence features that enable cancer cell specific translation using deep learning algorithms.
We believe that Kernal’s proprietary platform with unique methods of codon-engineering and smart design would enable the company to stay in the forefront of mRNA medicine.
Kernal is looking at and beyond Covid-19
While the COVID-19 outbreak is now spreading rapidly around the world, leaving a path of devastation in its wake, mRNA treatment is a sector that might actually benefit from this pandemic. Moderna’s MRNA-1273³ and Pfizer’s and BioNTech’s BNT162b2⁴ both adopt mRNA-based approach mmunizing against SARS-CoV-2. The mRNA technology has shown advantages in speed and manufacturing in vaccine development. Benefited from these established players and their experiences, Kernal is also leveraging its technology against Covid and getting promising in-vitro experiment results.
Looking beyond Covid headlines, Kernal is also applying its technology to the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy for a more sustainable future. mRNA-based cancer vaccines and therapeutics can deliver custom-tailored medicine for individual patient. Initially going after acute myeloid leukemia (AML) which is associated with the lowest survival rates among all hematologic malignancie, Kernal is expanding into other cancer types with significant unmet medical need like lung cancer with its unique onco-selective mRNA approach.
The founders had been following the mRNA field closely
Kernal Biologics was founded by four young scientists with diverse background including synthetic biology, immune-oncology and deep learning. The Co-Founder Yusuf Erkul has been focused on cancer research since his undergraduate study at MIT. Before going back to medical school to become a physician, he joined Merck & Co.’s oncology department as a scientist and was focused on RNA based drug discovery there. The other co-founder Burak Yilmaz is also a scientist focused on synthetic biology as well as an entrepreneur. He founded Sentegen Biotech in 2010, which manufactures synthetic genes, oligonucleotides, and diagnostic probes, and later decided to establish Kernal with Yusuf.
Kernal’s mRNA technology is getting more and more recognition
Currently in MassBio’s MassConnect Program, Kernal was once a member of MIT Startup Excahnge and Y Combinator, winner of Amgen’s Golden Ticket, and was selected to join 2018 MassChallenge. These awards and experiences help Kernal accumulate resources and access to industry experts and veterans for mentorship and advice. | https://medium.com/scale-asia-ventures/our-investment-thesis-in-healthcare-170d483c61c6 | [] | 2020-09-23 16:07:04.736000+00:00 | ['Vaccines', 'Covid 19', 'VC', 'Ai In Healthcare', 'Mrna'] |
One Thing You Learn Reading Quotes From Seneca: Anger Is Not On Your Side. | One Thing You Learn Reading Quotes From Seneca: Anger Is Not On Your Side.
Reading quotes from Seneca has given me peace many times. Throughout the years he has been considered by many people as a source of wisdom for a better living. He is one of the most representative philosophers of the Stoic school, and among his many teachings and quotes, he makes great emphasis on not giving up to anger. Adrian Pablo Aug 20, 2020·6 min read
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman philosopher, who lived during the first decades of the Current Era. Séneca was born in the province of the Roman Empire known as Hispania. The city of Cordoba would be his cradle in what is now southern Spain. He was raised in the city of Rome from early childhood, where later he became a prominent politician and also a high-ranking financial clerk under the orders of the Roman emperor.
Seneca is a polemic figure, a great thinker and one of the most notable figures of Stoic philosophy. You can find quotes from Seneca on many themes, and none of them will leave you without a touch of stoic wisdom.
“Sickness comes, captivity, disaster, conflagration, but none of them is unexpected, I always knew in what disorderly company Nature had confined me” Seneca
He was advisor to a Roman emperor; nothingless but Nero, the same who ordered the great Roman fire. He was exiled a number of times, and finally condemned to a tragic death by Nero himself. But his life was not all tragedy, he was also very rich and hand to hand with power at the highest level. Among a number of things his life teaches us is that everything has a cost, including being congruent with one’s philosophy on life, and also that nothing is permanent, and life’s circumstances can change radically in a few days or months, that this time is enough to pass from being on the top feasting with the powerful, to barely eating the simplest of foods in an isolated island condemned to exile.
Seneca belongs to that special group of people whose thoughts and wisdom have transcended the centuries and geographies letting us have a better understanding of our human condition, and from this understanding, give shape to our aspirations to a better life experience in a time of crisis. When we wake up to days confronting us to a pandemic, violence, corruption; to a world that apparently moves too fast in a chaotic trajectory; it’s good to know we can still find peace if we just take a moment to look inside ourselves armed with the wisdom of the many quotes that Seneca gave us to cherish .
Very few other schools of Philosophy in our history have expressed in such a profound and at the same time understandable way a set of values and ideas suitable for a productive and well spent life as Stoicism. They taught the four great virtues as the core of what they considered a philosophy of life, these were: Wisdom, Justice, Courage and Temperance. It’s thanks to the teachings of Stoic thinkers like Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the great roman philosopher, that we can have a look inside this great school of thought with ideas that have been source of inspiration of such notable figures the size of Erasmus, Francis Bacon, Pascal, Montaigne; and even for Christianity. I think very few would object about how valuable these ideas are, and that they deserve to be present in the discussions and thoughts of the great public.
Among the many themes Seneca touches with his thinking and reflections about life, there is one that captures his attention and that he considers of special importance. This is the very human phenomenon of anger. A mental state that we all should avoid and constantly be aware of not falling into his traps as we cruise in our daily lives. Anger is a reaction that should never transform into a feeling, we should never foster it. Once we open the door to anger we can lose our minds very easily. So it is always better to stop it at once.
“Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.” Seneca
Stoics considered reason as the main compass in our lives. They gave our brain’s capacity for analysis, and our rational nature supreme importance for our well being. People as Seneca considered this unique characteristic of the human beings as the main indicative separating us from nature’s animals. We are not beings guided by bold instincts who can only react to stimuli making us, run, hide or fight. We can contemplate the stimuli, analyze what is provoking our reactions and decide what is the best course of action.
“Ungoverned anger begets madness.” Seneca
This is the basis of what Seneca recommends when dealing with anger. We should commit ourselves to be observers of our own reactions, and never let stimuli overshadow our rational capacity. As we go on living in a complicated world, life has never been easy for anyone in any age, there will be swarms of stimuli coming to us in many forms, and some of them will be specially bothering. A bad neighbor, a careless spouse, a crying baby, that stupid request from the clerk, a driver that cuts in our way, etc. All of them, things and situations with the potential to make us creak in anger if we are not careful enough to contain our initial reaction to these stimuli.
“No one keeps himself waiting; and yet the greatest cure for anger is to wait, so that the initial passion it engenders may die down, and the fog that shrouds the mind may subside, or become less thick.” Seneca
Considering this, we should have a strategy to deal with the common initial onsets of anger that we will encounter in practically all of our daily activities. As Seneca quotes, anger once unleashed will become a form of madness, so we must be very careful. This is why we must keep it at bay always. The best practice Seneca recommends is that of delay, once we become conscious that we are only reacting and not thinking we have won the first battle against anger. Then, if we wait for a few seconds before surrendering to a reaction coming from anger we would have won the second battle. There is even a recommendation in some cultures in those cases when one feels that anger starts to set in we should start “counting to ten” before having any reaction.
According to Seneca anger ranks in the highest spots for the vices. It deprives us of our rational mind, and turns us into crazy people with foul intentions, we wish the harming of others and not only of ourselves. We explode, we project our rage outward and once in this mood, things can very easily get out of control, anger has seized our behavior, and from that moment on anything can happen. Consequences will be obscured by our frenzy until we have regained our rational mind, often too late and usually with the ugly consequences in front of us.
A fiery reaction mounted on anger will never be a proof of character as some people still think. The control of anger by a rational mind is. Seneca knew very well when he recommended us to restrain anger and govern ourselves. This is never too easy, we all fail, but we must strive to be better next time. At the end, I think that’s what growing is all about, becoming a better self than the one we were yesterday.
30 Days Of Seneca: A Daily Gift Of Wisdom | https://medium.com/@adpablito/if-you-ever-read-quotes-from-seneca-you-know-anger-is-not-on-your-side-a0cb90440e3f | ['Adrian Pablo'] | 2020-09-06 04:22:09.357000+00:00 | ['Stoicism', 'Anger', 'Anger Management', 'Philosophy', 'Seneca'] |
Dehumanized Leadership | The Dark Side of Reskilling and a Potential Solution
Photo by wear adventurers/iStockphoto
There are many cogent and convincing arguments for reskilling. Many authorities believe that this is the mainstay of the future of work, or a real way to upgrade the future of low wage earners. Others argue that reskilling is also a tool to empower employees, or a way to prepare the workforce of the future. While all of these arguments make sense, they also have a dark side. They obscure the fact that humans are not circus animals, and that circus animals don’t work because they want or need a job. Though we all appreciate acquiring skills to make a living, making someone good at serving you is a double-edged sword. At best, it’s a dubious way to lead and akin to being a ringmaster or slave owner.
Ringmaster leadership: You might be clued-in to the questionable altruism behind “reskilling” and “ringmaster leadership” when you hear people at the tail-end of their careers complain that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. When applied to humans, the dark shadows of “training”, “reskilling”, and “upskilling” begin to emerge. Eventually, these words and idioms may make their way into what I call “the slavery lexicon”, and they lead people away from their own power and autonomy and toward a more masochistic, dependent, and disempowered way of being as well.
Altruistic or self-serving? There is something dehumanizing about talking about “reskilling”, as if the practical advantages of learning something new in order to retain a job outweigh the human desire for choice, inspiration, agency, self-driven learning and independence. Granted, psychologically speaking, humans have an ambivalent and complicated relationship with masochism and surrender, and we are horrendously prone to self-betrayal. Yet, this is all the more reason for pause. Teaching someone to be a good slave so that they can keep on earning a living, or reprogramming people like robots so that they can do what needs to get done is a questionable form of altruism.
Burnout: When leaders focus on “skills” or “jobs”at the expense of what is human, or when leadership gurus point out the simple practicality of people needing to learn new skills, it reinforces a power dynamic and ignores the resentment that grows. This attitude is what grows the cynicism in burnout even when it helps people become more effective. And it is bound to eventually kill off intrinsic motivation as well.
The power of choice: One potential approach to this dilemma of needing to stay relevant while also honoring agency and other human attributes may be derived from self-determination theory (SDT). SDT is a well-studied theory of how human beings can stay motivated. The key ideas are that we can remain intrinsically motivated by feeling competent, autonomous, and socially-related. The difference between the competence gained by reskilling and that of SDT is that when you choose what you want to learn, you feel more motivated.
A recent study in July 2020 demonstrated that when people are satisfied with their autonomy, they have greater levels of well-being and motivation. And businesses prospered too, in that there was a significant improvement in key performance indicators, and decreases in employee absenteeism as well.
Implementing SDT for reskilling: Rather than falling for ringmaster leadership and inadvertently dehumanizing people even more, at a time when the yearning for human connection could never be greater, leaders might implement some basic elements of humanized leadership by rethinking reskilling. To start, they could ask questions using the following framework described by the mnemonic AUDIT:
Autonomy: How do I provide an environment of choice?
Understanding: Do I understand what my employee/team needs?
Delegate: Can a machine do this better?
Intimacy: How do I get real (e.g. about the downsides of reskilling)?
Transformation: What would make this training transformative?
While this framework wil not solve all of the problems associated with reskilling, it will most likely humanize the training solution to elevate it to the inspired reality in which people prefer to live. | https://medium.com/@drsrinipillay/dehumanized-leadership-3aeb2ffc02f0 | ['Dr. Srini Pillay'] | 2020-12-23 17:56:36.765000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Motivation', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Resilience', 'Human Resources'] |
Think Energy Management Is Esoteric? Here’s How it Works in Everyday Life. | Photo by Jiayu Chan on Unsplash
This year my husband and I celebrated our 25th Wedding Anniversary. We’d always planned to do something special to celebrate, but it’s 2020 — ‘nough said.
We thought we’d at least go out to dinner at the fancy new restaurant recently opened at the beach near our house. When we made our reservations, they asked if we had any dietary restrictions. We said we were excited to try their new plant-based menu. The receptionist said they currently weren’t offering a separate vegan menu, but had options on the regular menu. Perfect!
We were really looking forward to this special dinner for a number of reasons:
• we don’t eat out often to begin with
• we’d been cooped up for months like everyone else
• it was our silver anniversary!
The big night finally arrived. We dressed up, donned our masks, and drove down to the new hotel at the ocean.
We were greeted, seated, and…disappointed. The only thing we could order from the entire menu was a pizza with cashew cheese, or a pasta, hold the cow cheese.
Oh geez, what to do?
We were famished! I knew my husband would have been happy with the vegan pizza. I also knew he would not want to cause a scene. It was his anniversary as much as mine.
I desperately wanted to make my discomfort go away. I was frustrated that we were told there were plant-based options on the menu when we’d made our reservations. I was angry that, yet another restaurant in Santa Barbara was clueless about the vast number of us choosing to eat plants instead of animals. I did not want to be labeled an obnoxious vegan by making a bunch of changes to the animal dishes. And on and on and on…all thoughts happening in split seconds.
I grounded out my upset, trying to regain my equilibrium. I released my discomfort, my expectations, my need to be nice and liked.
Wait! What?! I thought you did that 17 years ago with the contractor?
Yes, I did! But, just like yoga, meditation, deadlifting — it’s a practice. You build the muscles over time. Issues still arise, but you get faster and more adept in processing the energy in real-time.
I told my husband I would be happy to stay and just get the pizza, but I would prefer to leave and not pretend everything is fine. This was true, I would have made either work.
To my surprise, he sincerely agreed! We politely explained the situation to our server and discretely left. We walked out on air — proud of our shy selves for having the courage to act in accordance with our values despite the awkwardness that entailed.
We decided to go to Oliver’s, a local plant-based restaurant up the street. It was packed! We were immediately energized by the high vibe — a stark contrast to the staid, haughty energy of the “in” place we’d just left.
Then, as if on cue, the Universe gave us a special wink of approval. Every table was taken, except magically, the special table for two where the owner usually sits. We were promptly seated there, on the sunny deck, with a clear view of the sunset. We ordered a variety of delicious dishes to share and enjoyed every one!
There were two possible outcomes to this situation:
We could have stayed at the “in” place and faked our way through dinner, pretending we were having a good time, hiding our disappointment. We would have put the server’s comfort above our own, tipped as expected, etc. It would have been fine, but we would have left frustrated and resentful for having supported this business.
Instead, by owning our right to choose what was best for us, we had one of our best dinner experiences and a memorable highlight to our marriage story.
And, it gives me a great excuse to talk about two of my passions: Energy Management and the Environment!
Energy goes beyond the esoteric. Processing it in real-time, in real life, that’s Ascended Presence! | https://medium.com/@ascendedpresence/think-energy-management-is-esoteric-heres-how-it-works-in-everyday-life-558870ece55a | ['Susan Moe'] | 2020-12-19 14:03:42.762000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Growth', 'Personal Growth', 'Vegan', 'Grounding', 'Mindfulness'] |
Wine time in the oldest wine country of the world 🇬🇪 | The saying is Georgians don’t like to stop when driving. This literally means they will pass you even if there is an upcoming vehicle, you simply have to sway out of the way. If you don’t you might get fined — yes obstructing the vehicle to overtake.
To clarify these ain’t double lanes there’s only one lane going each direction and no “yellow line” or shoulder of the road either. Trucks pass trucks even if you can’t see ahead of you — by the look of the condition of their cars I get it now. The only positive thing they have going is no one speeds, they are very strict on that fact — police everywhere on the roads patrolling.
Somehow it works for them I haven’t seen or heard that there is a high vehicle accident rate. I call it irresponsible driving they call it excellent driving — which is what our driver said when he dropped us from the airport. 🤷♀️
Drivin’ me crazy 🚙
With this we rented a car — oh should I mention they also drive on the opposite side than South Africa — we drive on the left-hand side.
The morning of our first solo driving trip. We were totally amped for this adventure both fear and excitement combined.
The morning of the trip Daniel organised the Bolt that took us to the car rental place. He met with a lovely lady over Facebook who helped us with the rental and organised a wine tour for us. All the while she was sitting in Italy — on her voice note, you could hear the church bells in the background.
Of course, we first got a little lost and then we got into our car and we were ready to take off!
Daniel was the driver and I was the navigator. First stop gas station — they also have attendants so luckily we didn’t have to figure that out.
On the back roads of Tbilisi, we drove along the Tbilisi Sea (let’s just clarify this is an artificial lake) beautiful to see the city from this angle. It felt normal even though we were on a different side of the road. I also have to add that we had a right-hand drive instead of a left-hand drive (usually your steer would be the opposite side of your driving side) but hay we were ready for a challenge.
Outside the city it was breathtaking — green hills everywhere you look, sheep, cattle and poppies! As we almost reached our first destination we got pulled over by the cops. Yeah so that marks our first fine — what did we do wrong? We don’t know we can’t read the fine but after some googling seems we were obstructing the way. Remember when I mentioned that if a car wants to pass, you have to move to the side. So we assumed we didn’t give way to a car trying to pass — not sure but we will go with that for now. | https://medium.com/@wordsbyanina/wine-time-in-the-oldest-wine-country-of-the-world-7e5974d6ca37 | [] | 2021-05-19 10:34:53.192000+00:00 | ['Digital Nomads', 'Travel', 'Remote Working', 'Writing', 'Travel Blog'] |
Progressive web apps(PWAs) are coming to a Safari near you | Safari is finally adding PWA features.
For those of you who have no clue what a PWA is or are confused about how to begin developing a PWA or dont know about it’s importance please read this post on PWA before you proceed.
Safari/Webkit has finally started adding features that constitute a PWA. Before we proceed its important for us to understand what features constitute a PWA. At the core of it only three
Web App Manifest Service Worker Cache API
These are the must have PWA features. PWAs are web apps that can be added to homescreen. And it works like a app when opened from homescreen without the browser window. You may ask what’s works like a app. In any native app when you open the app, the shell is always available. It may also show you last time’s data when offline or when loading. In traditional web apps you see a white screen then HTML loads and if it was a SPA(single page application) the js loads which makes ajax calls and then loads data.
By making optimal caching strategy, you can eliminate the initial white page. But here you are at the mercy of the browsers Overall Cache size/limit. One way to overcome this was the offline cache manifest. This was a very cumbersome way to achieve the above. Thankfully it’s deprecated.
At the starting of last year support for PWA looked like this | https://medium.com/awebdeveloper/progressive-web-apps-pwas-are-coming-to-a-safari-near-you-216812aba5a | ['Prathik S Shetty'] | 2018-09-27 03:50:39.983000+00:00 | ['Mobile App Development', 'Progressive Web App', 'Mobile', 'Web Development', 'Html5'] |
Ontologies for Knowledge modeling in construction planning | Ontologies for Knowledge modeling in construction planning
Vito Getuli, University of Florence
Nowadays, there is an increasing recognition of the value of effective information and knowledge management (KM) in the construction projects. Infact, Knowledge-based Process modelling is used in many fields and even in construction to support various simulation tasks. In this field, ontology-based semantic modelling is seen as an important means of addressing this problem to construct robust knowledge-based systems. In parallel, the advancement of information technology in the AEC industry makes available in a construction project a richness of design information offered by Building Information Modelling (BIM) IFC-based.
The development of an ontological version of the IFC schema has been largely promoted and now the ifcOWL Ontology is available in the sector. But, in the construction planning and scheduling task, BIM has progressively shown limits in terms of semantic representation and efficiency of supporting scheduling processes and systems. Moreover, when we think of a process in any given domain, we generally figure it out as a series of actions that leads to a certain outcome. For a construction project, when it comes the execution phase, the process of site planning and activity scheduling can be assumed as what the planner does in the search for the solution of a complex and faceted problem whose variables are numerous (building design, site characteristics, boundary conditions, technology, materials, labor, etc.) and most of the times, if not unknow, at least highly uncertain.
As a matter of facts, the planner deals with this problem (process) on the base of his experience or, in other words, of the knowledge he owns about the problem. Furthermore, in the construction sector the overall project performance is strongly dependent on the site management activity. In this regard, process planning is well-known to play a crucial role and, despite the long-lasting efforts, most of the related issues still need to be fully addressed. In fact, project control is based on a specific project schedule determined considering beforehand numerous constraints such as resource availability, completion deadlines for tasks and budget limitations. Cost increases or delays can easily result from poor estimates, schedules or decisions related to tasks decomposition and choice of construction technologies. The planner, in turn, generally identifies constraints, evaluates interactions and solves the related conflicts on the base of the experience he acquired from previous projects.
This means that having available models and tools able to support construction managers and designers in the task of construction activities planning and scheduling strictly depends to make available a Knowledge Base which maps in a formal way and in machine readable way the construction planning and scheduling domain.
DOI: 10.36253/978–88–5518–184–6
Read Full Text: https://fupress.com/catalogo/ontologies-for-knowledge-modeling-in-construction-planning/4393 | https://medium.com/@universityofflorence/ontologies-for-knowledge-modeling-in-construction-planning-97e8adc4eb8e | ['University Of Florence'] | 2020-12-21 10:03:11.864000+00:00 | ['Planning', 'Modeling', 'Architecture', 'Ontology', 'Construction'] |
Indecent | Photo by Tom Pottiger
I’m watching it all fade away.
A pack of wolves biting at every piece of my clothing.
Ripped sleeves. Torn collar. Shredded like a cocoon till there’s nothing left.
Now everyone can see me.
Indecent.
A small part of me wants to pick up the pieces and arrange them to cover my skin. Instead I lift my head to the sky and place my palm on my heart.
Then I run.
Only my instinct knows where to go. The pack follow stride for stride.
I think this is freedom. | https://medium.com/cry-mag/indecent-38085d015aed | ['Kern Carter'] | 2019-12-17 11:49:51.103000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Life Lessons', 'Poetry', 'Freedom', 'Anxiety'] |
Is it normal? | If genius doesn’t follow the rules of morality, we are in danger of scientific progress
When I saw this statement, I first thought of the great scientist Nicola Tesla. We’ll talk about him a bit later.
This quote raises many questions. What is its meaning? How do people feel about scientists? Are they scared? What is morality? Are moralility and progress not comparable? Is progress a danger?
In all centuries, science has bordered on magic, because it revealed to people the secrets of the universe, told all the secrets of their origin. Obviously, the sciences were scary and they are scary now, while a lot of scientists used to be perceived as crazy or even possessed by the devil.
Morality — is accepted in society ideas about good and bad. And the rules of morality always limit the creator, making him observe the rules of society. He won’t create anything new, because, as I already said, any novelty in society is accepted very negatively. The moral is controversial, somewhere people eat people and consider it quite normal …
I believe that progress and morality can exist together. It does no harm to anyone. But people are selfish, they want to get ahead of their enemies, “have a trump card in the sleeve”, to be the best. Therefore, science can become immoral, and scientists are not to blame in it.
Let’s go back to Nicola Tesla. For me, he is the greatest scientist of all time. He discovered alternating amperage, an electronic motor, and many other things, thanks to which the industrial revolution took place in the 19th century. It is very important to note that his experiments were insane and dangerous. He sat in the room and watched the current that literally was everywhere around him, but he was not afraid of him.
Tesla invented more than 600 things, but destroyed half of them, because he was afraid that humanity would use them for personal gain.
In conclusion, I’d like to say that I fully agree with the statement, but the problem is not in scientists, it is in people. | https://medium.com/@deadoptimist228/is-it-normal-ac57bcffc1e0 | ['Людмила Советкина'] | 2020-06-03 19:38:56.462000+00:00 | ['Quotes', 'Questions', 'Tesla', 'Morality', 'Science'] |
Digital Securities: A Primer | Digital securities may be a new buzzword, but it makes sense when you think about it. In the past securities were paper, literally. Your ownership of a stock was written down on paper and kept in a warehouse somewhere. Now these securities are digital, and this is in itself is a huge step forward.
With digitization, a security now can have special properties, including the ability to track the owners of those securities digitally and the ability to trade those securities with minimal costs. In the past, you needed to wake the lawyer and pay legal fees in order to decide whether a security could be traded and, if so, to whom. Then you have to pay additional fees after a trading match is made, and then more fees after the trade. While these fees were great at keeping the legal profession healthy, these fees made most trades impractical, especially small ones under $50,000. Imagine spending $5,000 on a $10,000 trade. Then imagine spending $5000 on a $500 trade. The model just doesn’t work for investors wanting to trade small amounts of securities.
So how is this changed with digital securities? The simple answer is this: what the ATM did to the bank teller, digitization does to the broker, the lawyer, and everyone else in between the buyer and the seller. If a security is digitized, it is now possible to make a $500 trade in privately-held securities and come out ahead. Digitization gives small amounts of securities liquidity.
Why not pay $25 to a broker-dealer in order to buy or sell $500 worth of common stock or debt? You could argue that broker-dealers cannot live off $25 because the brokers have to pay expensive office rent for that view of downtown’s skyline and to maintain the ludicrous lifestyle of slick brokers. Fast cars, lobster, and cigars. Yachts, scotch, 3-acre homes, and a vacation cabin.
But if you pare down the excess, if you increase the raw number of trades, then it is possible for broker-dealers to run a business off these small fees. It is possible right now.
The future has landed.
So how does it work? A digital security is issued by a company or a broker-dealer and sold to investors when a company raises capital utilizing the JOBS Act. These are public offerings, and the securities can be sold to the general public, to thousands of investors should thousands of investors find the offering of worthy interest.
The company issuing the securities hires an intermediary who can write the smart contract on Ethereum or Stellar, two blockchains well-suited for this purpose, though there are certainly others. The smart contract is a token, a digital marker that will track the ownership of the security itself. It also has some other functions that we will get back to in a moment.
The next step in this process is issuance. To properly sell these digital securities to the crowd using the right exemption, investors have two options: Regulation A+ (often described as a mini-IPO, in which companies can raise up to $50M in a given year) or Regulation Crowdfunding (in which companies can raise up to $1.07M in a given year, but it is a leaner regulation and companies can launch faster and more cheaply than a Regulation A).
Then, the purchase. Once the investor has purchased digital securities through either a platform or a broker dealer, a transfer agent needs to record the transaction and then post it on the blockchain. This promotes transparency in the process as the general public can see how many securities exist, how many were issued, and which wallets own them. There is no privately identifiable information on the blockchain at anytime.
Trading securities is significantly easier because all of the information required to determine whether the trade is possible is located in the smart contract. When was that security issued? What exemption was used in its issuance? Is there a lock-up period during which that security can’t be traded, and if so, when does it end? Are there restrictions on who can buy the security? All of those questions are key to securities trading, and it’s possible to eliminate the attorney if the broker-dealer has confidence in the immutable and trusted information located on the blockchain.
Why is a broker-dealer involved? Securities laws are complex and designed to favor the use of a broker-dealer to handle transactions. Broker-dealers are companies supervised by FINRA, a regulator created by the SEC. FINRA’s job is to make sure those under their supervision are doing the right thing and providing accurate information to investors and only allowing legal trading, per the questions above and other restrictions. Add to this the complex regulations of 50 individual states when it comes to security transactions within their own borders, and you can now imagine why a broker-dealer is required. There is simply too much to keep track of.
However, the problem with broker-dealers is that traditionally they are heavy and expensive. This was true yesterday, but a new form of broker-dealer is emerging and getting their licenses. This new breed hails from the technology industry. Software is in their blood. They know how to automate everything and deliver shares for pennies instead of thousands of dollars.
Imagine a world where entrepreneurs can sell securities to consumers for very little costs, and those consumers can later sell them to others, either for a profit or a loss, but for very little costs in the actual transaction.
That world is coming, and digital securities are leading the way. Hello world.
StartEngine is a leading equity crowdfunding platform that has helped 250+ companies raise over $80M. We are also currently raising capital. Join the nearly 3,500 StartEngine Owners who have already invested in us. Invest in StartEngine here.
For more information, view our Offering Circular. | https://medium.com/the-mission/digital-securities-a-primer-c611d40cb572 | ['Howard Marks'] | 2019-03-12 19:25:56.601000+00:00 | ['Investment', 'Tokenization', 'Finance', 'Crowdfunding', 'Bitcoin'] |
#日記_2020年_12月_30日 | CREATING A BORDERLESS WORLD. Noah Coin is one of the cryptocurrency that supports economic growth through blockchain technology. [email protected]
Follow | https://medium.com/noahcoin/diary-30-december-2020-ja-c41ec606bd61 | ['Noah Coin'] | 2020-12-30 09:28:20.243000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Noah City', 'Noah Project', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Defi'] |
AWS threatens IIoT partner ecosystem | Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash
This past week, AWS has kicked off their reInvent conference; this year a 3 week virtual marathon. In the first week alone, AWS has made a remarkable 65 announcements of which 4 appeared to be relevant to IoT and Edge computing. These announcements make it clear that AWS is following a vertical integration strategy that leaves very little room for partners.
Let’s first look at the 4 announcements relevant to IoT:
In summary, AWS announced hardware and machine learning services that target some of the main use cases for industrial IoT: predictive maintenance and quality control through computer vision.
Up until now, AWS was growing an extensive partner network of hardware vendors and edge computing specialist that are targeting these use cases. Many of these vendors were happy to use AWS and AWS IoT as their cloud service and add value through specialized hardware and specialize machine learning models. Now that AWS has entered this market directly, the partner ecosystem around AWS IoT will likely be disrupted. AWS wants to own the entire value chain so they will work to displace many of these companies.
For many companies, especially small factory operations, a complete end to end solution will make sense. Many of these small factories do not have technologist on staff. They rely upon consultants to handle the technology requirements of operating their factories. These consultants will see AWS as being the cheapest and easiest solution to implement. Larger companies will have more advanced requiremetns and technology staff that will select the best solution available. The partner network of hardware vendors and ML vendors will continue to target the higher end but over time AWS will move up the value chaing to compete with these customers too. Eventually this will lead to industry consolidation over time.
AWS is proving to be a competitor through-out the entire IIoT value chain. In the long-term, I expect to see IIoT vendors looking for other IoT cloud solutions that they can offer to their customers to replace AWS IoT. It won’t make sense for these vendors to introduce their customers to AWS, if in the future AWS will attempt to replace their offering.
I see this as an opportunity for MQTT and Sparkplug to become even more important in the IIoT domain. A standard protocol and a standard payload definition allows for an ecosystem of equals amongst vendors to offer customers the best of breed solution that match their requirements. This is the vision we have at HiveMQ and are very excited to see the momentuem we are seeing with customers that want to embrace these open standards. Getting locked into an AWS end-to-end solution is not going to be a good long-term strategy for anyone, except AWS. | https://medium.com/@iskerrett/aws-threatens-iiot-partner-ecosystem-191d9eaee03b | ['Ian Skerrett'] | 2020-12-04 19:20:35.589000+00:00 | ['Mqtt', 'Aws Iot', 'IoT', 'Internet of Things'] |
Microsoft uses ‘blockchain’: but does it benefit anyone other than Microsoft? | Microsoft launches a new version of Ethereum blockchain on its Azure cloud servers. Its consensus model is based on Proof-of-Authority, the governance model that allows the network to be administered by a centralized owner.
That’s a corporate solution for those companies that don’t want to share their data on a public blockchain. A new blockchain can be deployed in a few clicks, making it an easy option for DLT integration into any business.
Okay, let’s agree on this, it’s not a blockchain. How is this different from an old good database, if you have it stored somewhere on third party servers, in this case, Microsoft, and has someone who can do practically anything, modify, or even delete it? We can call it corporate databases, but this blockchain thing has gone too far. You can’t just slap ‘blockchain’ on everything.
If a company doesn’t want to use a decentralized network it doesn’t need blockchain then. The greatest advantage of blockchain is its decentralization and immutability, secured by thousands of miners. It’s understandable that Microsoft, being one of the leaders, wants to keep its position, introduces new products, and it doesn’t care how its products are called, is it blockchain or not, the most important here is to get companies to use Azure Cloud Servers, that’s it. No doubt, someone will use it, just to make a headline ‘Company X now uses blockchain’. But does it benefit anyone other than Microsoft? | https://medium.com/finrazorcom/microsoft-uses-blockchain-but-does-it-benefit-anyone-other-than-microsoft-8bc9960790af | ['Finrazor Team'] | 2018-08-20 12:34:49.121000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Ethereum', 'Fintech', 'Blockchain', 'Microsoft'] |
Big Data’s Role in Creating Customer-Centric Business Intelligence | Customer experience has been one of the top focus areas for CIOs, and CMOs in recent years. A key requirement for improving customer experience is understanding the customer: their past and current interactions inside and outside the company, their preferences, demographic and behavioral information, etc…
The big data phenomenon has introduced the ability to obtain a much deeper understanding of customers, especially bringing in social media data. With the volume and different types of data we have now available companies can run more sophisticated analysis, in a more granular way leading to a change in the size of customer segments. It is shrinking down to one, where each individual customer is offered a personalized experience based on their individual needs and preferences.
This notion brings more relevance to the day-to-day interactions with customers and basically takes customers satisfaction and loyalty to a new level that was not possible before. Instead of relying on yesterday’s data, which may not be pertinent anymore, the solution should analyze the latest information and turn them into a deeper understanding of that customer. With that knowledge, the company can formulate real opportunities to drive higher customer satisfaction.
Article source is from the book: “Unlocking Your Empire — Keys to enable your social media-powered business”, by Tullio Siragusa
Know the numbers, know your business!
Numbers are the fundamental language of business. The bottom line on the income statement is a number. The business plan is expressed specifically as numbers on the operating budget, numbers that may derive largely from statistical projections of revenues and costs.
Decisions to invest in assets that can accelerate the growth of the business are usually based on numbers that reflect the expected profits and risks of each alternative use of invested funds.
Success or failure of the business or any of its parts typically comes down to numbers. It has been well established that quality is the key to long-run growth in revenues. However, measuring quality is not enough.
Controlling the quality of productions in a manufacturing plant or the quality of customer service by inspecting and measuring goods and customer satisfaction does not eliminate the need for commitment-to-excellence programs, thorough training of production and service personnel, and preventive maintenance of equipment.
Regression analyses and moving average methods of time series analysis are two of the most commonly applied forecasting tools used in business, largely because they are robust yet easy to use. Other forecasting techniques range from qualitative approaches, such as juries of expert opinion, and subjective estimates of the sales staff, to highly sophisticate statistical methods of time series analysis, such as the Box-Jenkins and spectral analysis method.
They are important in strategic planning to project consumer demographics that can prove critical in your ability to anticipate future consumption patterns. They are useful in marketing to estimate the effects of changes in pricing policy on sales volume and market share.
No matter how you look at it, effective management is much more than just a matter of working with numbers. The successful manager relies on common sense and intuition; sensitivity to human factors that defy quantification, and creativity that transcends the numbers. When the numbers send up a red flag, the successful manager looks beneath them to find out what is going on. Most successful managers also know that the business cannot thrive without close attention to the numbers and that tools designed to work with the numbers can be indispensable.
Social Media started a revolution
Today there are other numbers to consider derived by social media reach, influence, sentiments, and tone; all which need to be measured, and put into the call for action operating model. Today’s successful manager understands that quantitative methods can be powerful agents for solving the problems of human institutions and in some cases human beings.
In capitalist economies such as that of the United States, Canada, and the Western European countries, managers of firms are continuously faced with numerous choices. Managers of firms are assumed to have certain objectives, such as the maximization of profits of shareholder wealth, or the minimization of the cost of producing a given level of output.
Because managers and consumers are pursuing their own private interests and decisions are made in a decentralized manner, rather than by a central planner, a very important question concerning the coordination of economic activities arises. This long-debated problem has been solved today with the explosion of access to real-time data that can be derived out of social media, and big data. Yet there are a few ways to manage this further, one is microeconomics, which seeks to provide a general theory to explain how the quantities and prices of individual commodities are determined.
The development of such a theory will enable us to predict the effects of various events, such as industry deregulation and oil price shocks, on the quantity and price of output. One of the most important properties of the competitive market equilibrium is that the quantity produced is the socially efficient quantity. The cost of producing the last unit of output just equals consumers’ marginal willingness to pay for it.
The supply-and-demand framework enables us to analyze or predict the effects of various events and government policy changes on the price and quantity of goods. Social media sentiment allows us to tie into it, real-time consumer opinion. The other way to manage the economics, is macroeconomics, this approach is concerned with the issue of how the quantity and price of output of individual firms or industries are determined. In contrast, macroeconomics addresses the determination of the entire economy or aggregate output and price.
The most widely used measure of aggregate output is the gross national product (GNP Index); the market value of all final goods and services produced in an economy within a given time period. One of the aspects of macroeconomics is the fluctuation of the existence or lack thereof, of the trade-off between unemployment and inflation. However in the 1990s the trade and investment flow between the US and other economies increased, there is another variable of great concern to business people and policymakers: the exchange rate. This can change substantially by a few percents in a single day.
Then there are interest rates; one important practical implication of the interest rate parity equation is that increases in the US interest rate cause the dollar to appreciate. US macroeconomic experience of the early 1980s provides a graphic, though somewhat painful, an illustration of the link between interest rates and exchange rates. On the other hand, under fixed exchange rate regimes, one country usually assumes the role of lead country, and the other countries act as followers.
The ability of two countries to chart their own courses, or to pursue distinct, possibly even contradictory, macroeconomic goals is much lower when those countries attempt to maintain a fixed exchange rate. This may be a blessing or a curse. When exchange rates are fixed, and investors expect them to remain so, and interest parity conditions retract, interest rates must be equal in the two countries. The central bank of the follower country relinquishes its ability to control interest rates and thereby achieve macroeconomic objectives such as reducing unemployment. In the case of social media, it only showcases the consumer’s state of being right now, but it does not help predict market conditions which will influence that consumer, derived from micro or macro-economic concerns as described above.
Big-data, on the other hand, can triangulate all these moving pieces, and with the right analytics, and decision algorithms could solve the biggest question companies always face: What to sell now, and tomorrow to maintain consistent growth and profits.
The evolution of marketing and the consumer, a marriage is in order
Before the development of the marketing concept as a management philosophy in the 1950s, marketing was defined essentially as selling. The traditional view of marketing up to that time was that marketing was responsible for creating demand for what farms; factories, forests, fishing, and mines could produce.
Marketing has also been viewed in the past as the function responsible for creating a satisfied customer and for keeping the entire organization focused on the customer. Marketing is one of the functions that must be performed by the management of any organization, amongst other functions such as manufacturing, finance, purchasing, human resources, sales, R&D and accounting.
The most effective marketing concept considers more carefully how the company can match up to its distinctive competence’s with a relatively undeserved set of customer needs and offer superior value to those customers. Market segmentation, market targeting, and positioning, ideas that were developed as part of the original marketing concept, become even more important strategically under the new concept.
The value proposition, matching up customer needs and wants with company capabilities, becomes the central communication device both for customers and for all members of the organization. This is all possible today due to social media, and big data.
Focusing attention on the company’s strategy for the delivery of superior value to customers is crucial. Superior marketing defined as customer-focused problem solving and the delivery of superior value to customers is a more sustainable source of competitive advantage than product technology per se in the global markets of the 1990s.
Marketing is not a separate management function; rather it is the process of focusing every company activity on the overriding objective of delivering superior value to customers. It is more than a philosophy; it is a way of doing business.
In the final analysis, only the customer can decide whether the company has created value and whether it will survive in the hyper-competitive global marketplace; more reason to tune into what consumers want and value, a social media-enabled company, along with the adoption of big-data can do that very effectively today.
Listening to the consumer is not enough, tracking behaviors is not enough, enabling the consumer to have a voice is not enough, enabling the consumer to be at the helm is not enough. Predictive modeling of trends among social groups to identify life values, and developing the business intelligence approach to integrating such data across all business functions to properly develop, market, and retain relationships will be the marriage that’s missing today.
Big-Data is nothing without new algorithms needed to match consumers to values. Forget psychographic, demographic, and life stage data — that’s not enough. Those models work in a verticalized market and were part of the industrial revolution assembly line methodology. What’s needed is to identify consumer values, as in what matters to that individual at the core of who they are — only through social media, and big-data tied into a centralized business intelligence engine can a segment of one strategy be accomplished.
Imagination (CMO) married to sustainability (CIO)
During the past two decades, the general view of the role of IT in business has shifted significantly from its traditional back-office functional focus toward one that fundamentally pervades and influences the core business of an organization.
However, many managers entered the 1990s with a high level of skepticism regarding the actual benefits of IT. The productivity gains from IT investments have been disappointing, hence why the CIO is constantly tasked with cutting costs, vs. driving innovation. This is because IT was primarily expected to enhance operational efficiency (blue-collar) and administrative efficiency (white-collar).
More recently, the dominant business competence appears to be business flexibility with significant competence brought together within a flexible business network of inter-organizational arrangements such as joint ventures, alliances and business partners, long term contracts, technology licenses and marketing agreements; this is why the cloud is growing so fast, because it allows companies to be nimble in changing the moving parts sort of speak in an efficient way and with agility.
Undoubtedly, IT functionality will have a more profound impact on businesses than its effect this far, when it begins to focus on market convergence. Nevertheless, successful businesses will not treat IT as either a driver or the magic bullet for providing a distinctive strategic advantage, until marriage can occur. This marriage is between the CIO and the CMO, its’ “imagination tied to sustainability”. CMOs are often looking for better ways to position the brand’s viability in the market, and CIOs are always tasked with making sure the approaches are sustainable, scalable, and won’t break the bank.
In many ways, these two CXOs have conflicting agendas, until now. With big data, it is becoming more realistic for this partnership to work, and CEO’s not driving it, are doing their companies a huge injustice.
“CEOs who don’t understand social media, and big data will become extinct within 10–15 years, and sadly so will their companies.”
The management challenge is to continually adapt the organizational and technological capabilities to be a dynamic alignment with the chosen business vision and more importantly with the consumer at the helm. Hence for strategists, IT is not simply a utility like power or telephone, but rather a fundamental source of business scope reconfigurations to redefine the rules of the game through restructured business networks. When the efficiency-enhancing business process redesign is pursued, the boundary conditions specified by the current strategy are considered fixed and given.
The most challenging thing is for managers to implement the strategy for business network redesign in a coordinated way. However using IT applications for enhanced coordination and control is both efficient, and effective for carrying out the business processes. This challenge is difficult because the choices involved in exploiting the present and building the future confront managers with a complex trade-off.
The conflict between the demands of the present and the requirements of the future lies at the heart of strategic management for at least three reasons:
1) The environment in which tomorrow’s success will be earned is likely to be quite different from the environment that confronts the organization today;
2) To succeed in the new environment of tomorrow, the organization itself must undergo a significant and sometimes radical change;
3) Adapting to change in and around the marketplace during a time of significant internal change places an extremely heavy burden on the leaders of any organization.
The choices made in business scope, and competitive postures, are made to achieve purposes or goals. There are two central questions that need to be answered:
1) What does the organization want to achieve in the marketplace?
2) What returns or rewards does it wish to attain for its various stakeholders, stockholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and the community at large?
It is no accident that some organizations successfully adapt to an environment and initiate new ventures in a number of related product areas while others never seem able to repeat a single success. In short, what takes place within the organization makes a difference.
Winning in the marketplace is heavily influenced by how well the organization makes and executes its choices of where and how to compete. It has become commonplace to note that one of the hallmarks of today is change. It is our constant. Good management and the management of change is the same thing; how to make sure that what you have in place today will meet the challenges you will face tomorrow.
Flexibility and quickness will count as much as vision and patience. As economies mote to an information age complex technologies heavily influence by social media, big-data, global markets, intense competitions, and turbulent constant change, managers everywhere are struggling to cope with failing organizations.
Recently, the rise in environmental complexity has accelerated with revolutionary advances in computerization, with the introduction of social computing. An explosion of knowledge, a unified global economy, the ecological crisis mounting social diversity, and other global trends, are almost certain to blossom into a far more complex world.
Major corporations comprise economic systems that are as large as some national economies, yet most executives and scholars think of them as firms to be managed with centralized controls. Moving resources about like a portfolio of investments, dictating which units should sell which product at which prices and setting financial goals.
Today’s and tomorrow’s corporations are becoming more and more automated and mobilized. Rather than the traditional organization of permanent employees working 9–5 within the fixed confines of some building, the virtual organization is a changing assembly of temporary alliances among entrepreneurs who work together from anywhere using the worldwide grid of global information networks and social media.
The interface between organization structure and IT systems has become one of the most crucial issues in management, yet it is so poorly understood that we usually allow the inexorable force of IT to ramble through organizations unguided, with powerful unintended consequences.
It is almost as if robust ivy were growing over a building, destroying its aging mortar and old bricks, and leaving only the vine as a supporting structure. A business will not be able to use IT effectively without a sound working model of the modern organization, and that model seems to be the market paradigm or lines of business approach aligned around consumer values. IT is the major reason for the replacement of hierarchies to enterprise models in today and tomorrow’s corporations. The challenge is enormous but the stakes are also enormous.
Managers can best prepare for this coming upheaval now by learning to make a mental shift from hierarchy to an enterprise. We are witnessing not only a dramatic increase in the need for leadership but also a transformation in what we call leadership. This turbulence is, in turn, changing where leadership is practiced.
For example, hierarchies collapsing into flatter pyramids to respond to faster-paced markets are pushing leadership further and further down into the organization. Today’s flatter organizations mean that most of us will have to manage across more functions and be sitting on more project teams throughout our management careers.
Big-Data is enabling the business intelligence of brands of the future
It’s clear there are too many moving pieces for all the decisions to sit with either the CIO, or the CMO. Both need to work together to properly leverage all the components that make up today, and tomorrow’s an ever unpredictable consumer. What will such data reveal, once properly analyzed, synthesized, and put into a decision engine?
1) First of all, how we track data must change, we are too verticalized to properly make sense of it
2) Second, the education system was built on the assembly line concept, to support verticalization, this will not serve the needs of the future brand — it’s too limiting
3) Third, companies who are not engaging with consumers at all — will cease to exit within 10–15 years, no matter how big they are today
4) Branding, marketing, and consumer engagement will need to be realigned around values
Values?
Yes, values, as in understanding that a group of consumers may value connecting with other people, more than a group of consumers who values escaping from reality by being entertained. A consumer who values connecting with others will want you to be able to provide him/her all that goes into that, as in telecom, transportation, social networking, and events.
These groups of consumers, who value connecting with others, are being served by multiple brands today, which use multiple strategies, which are all competing for a voice with them. I am proposing that ultimately the focus needs to be around a segment of one.
“The future “value-based” brands, will be able to understand, through data science, how to properly align M&A activity, people training, R&D, sales and marketing strategies around the consumer. Such brands will need to break out of the verticalization mold, train its own people, because the educational system will simply not be ready, and start hiring cross-industry executives who can cross-pollinate the organization beyond verticalization, embrace virtualization, and a segment of one strategy”.
In order to effectively accomplish this, the first and foremost step will be a marriage between the CMO and CIO, and a closely sponsored relationship from the CEO, with goals that align around the consumer, and providing value to the consumer not by vertical, but by segmentation, specifically values based data segmentation of one.
In this new world of brands, the relationship of skilled workers will change also, you will see a huge spike in freelancers, and independent contractors doing projects, and a new respect for resources who can provide aligned values, without the concerns of long term contracts, or employment issues related to outdated skills. In markets like Europe, organizations that can provide for hire staff will see a huge win due to the restrictive labor laws in those markets.
The biggest winner? You and me, where our own individual values will be served with some sense of uniformity, and cohesiveness, from possibly one brand that we will build relationships with because they serve our needs better than those talking at us, as it’s done today. Tomorrow’s brand will not need to market, sell, or advertise, tomorrow’s brand will be a data science integrated company whose approach to market will be so refreshingly simple with the consumer at the helm, that cross-selling will simply be the norm, not a major effort as it is today.
“Tomorrow’s brand will not be limited to verticals, or specialization, but rather provide consumers solutions based on their values, with a total focus to a segment of one strategy.”
Take a company like AT&T, in this new world, they would be in the telecom, transportation, PR, advertising, and social networking business serving the consumer values of “people who like connecting with other people”, and as markets evolve that will take shape into whichever way those consumers wish to connect, perhaps even teleportation (someday). Either way, the brand of the future will shape its strategy around data science, vs. trying to fit data science into its current strategy.
Follow me on Twitter and stay tuned for my next article, focused on financial services segment of one centralized big data customer intelligence. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/big-datas-role-in-creating-customer-centric-business-intelligence-afa32283215e | ['Tullio Siragusa'] | 2019-06-24 20:36:50.143000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Business', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'Big Data'] |
My Needy Never Nude | I thought I was weird about having my clothes off, but this kid is another level. Years of being a woman in a very body shaming society has made me exceptionally hard on my appearance, so naked has never been my favorite outfit. Then add being post baby, where the physical changes are, confusing. I’m supposed to feel empowered. I’m supposed to feel like a warrior goddess who just performed a miracle. I’m supposed to worship at the alter of my body. At least these are the things my feminist colleagues assert. But I do not feel these things.
I mostly feel like I’ve started a book with no context. Like every page is a devastating plot twist, but no matter what, I cannot put the book down. I’m glued. Hooked. In it. I also feel like I’m reading this book naked in front of a class of people, hunched over a stool so every roll is perfectly stacked on every other roll. Or I feel like I’m on the Truman show, and every ridiculous instance of being pooped on or spit up on is on display for millions of eager viewers all waiting for me to make a mistake. I do not disappoint. Viewership is up. The network is happy. Me? Eh, I’m doing okay. I’d like to be getting paid more, or at all, but I digress.
My little guy is a needy never nude. Tobias Funke anyone? Although he does not wear a pair of cut off jean shorts under all his onesies, see Arrested Development, he rarely ever has more than half of his body exposed to the air at one time. When he does, it’s chaos. You’d think I was burning his beloved binkie, and simultaneously forcing him to do tummy time while I laughed maniacally at his screams of bloody murder. This aversion led me to create a changing system. The trick, placing his new onesie under his dressed body, unzipping and removing his legs, putting his legs into the new onesie, partially zipping, removing his arms from the old onesie, and finally inserting his arms into the new onesie and completely zipping it up. Voila. A masterpiece of clothing change. A veritable Houdini routine, worthy of an audience. Okay, so it’s not that special. Lengthy? Kind of. Worth it? Totally.
What led me to determine this song and dance was worth the effort you ask? I knew early on that naked was not his thing, but I learned how not his thing one brisk January day. The wind was nipping outside, my eyes were heavy with the sleep I did not get from the night before, and the dog was licking to my ankles nervously. My angel blew his diaper out, audibly. It is what it sounds like. All his back was covered in his own mess and his onesie was done-zo. As he screamed, I frantically ran him into his room, tripping over the dog in route to his changing table. I hadn’t quite figured out how to get a plastic changing pad under him yet, and was in no right state to think it through. I placed him down and speedily stripped him. Louder screaming. I got the diaper off, with a fresh one ready and waiting to hit the front lines, wiped him clean, and closed the new diaper. Louder screaming. In an effort to ease his irritation, I grabbed the nearest blanket and quickly wrapped him it, then pulled him close. In return for the sweetness I’d shown him and deliberate care of agility, he promptly grabbed my hair with both hands, drew my face close to his, and shrieked at the top of his lungs. I was shook. I was gagged. I was so… Angry!
It’s crazy what that sound can do to your nervous system. I have found myself screaming into pillows, slapping walls, because punching just seems dangerous, and angry crying into my dog. The sounds can just make your brain go haywire, and your body in response shut down all reasonable actions. That was the last time I let him be naked not prior to bath time, the last time. And not that that has ended the sounds, but it was a lesson at how to avoid at least one of his triggers. These sounds can still be heard when he’s too tired, too hungry, too wet and merely too annoyed for his own good. I am getting better at coping, but I have my moments. I just make sure that I’m not holding him when I’m having one. A wise woman once told me to put him in a safe location and exit the room until you recover your sanity. Sage advice. | https://medium.com/@TheMediocreMama/my-needy-never-nude-f9160f593773 | ['The Mediocre Mama'] | 2020-05-16 23:59:36.122000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Mommy Bloggers', 'Arrested Development', 'Change', 'Moms'] |
Theological Observations | In my pervious article, I laid out my cards regarding some of the key issues related to Covid. Primarily, those were opinions — informed opinions, I think, and opinions that I believe are sensible, but just that: opinions. There are cases to be made for other approaches.
In this essay, I lay out a few theological observations — ideas that I’ve pondered from the point of view of a pastor. These thoughts — representing nothing but my own convictions on these matters — reveal something about the human condition — fallen, and in need of rescue, and about a world longing for, and moving towards hope.
In part I, I began by stating that this season stated there that this season has been tough on pastors — as it has on just about everyone. A primary reason is owing to the strife disagreements have stirred up between members of our churches. I’ve known of marriages that have been strained, and relationships in extended families damage. Churches have groaned under the tension over how, when, and to what extent to submit to government, enforce mandates, or promote vaccines. What are the theological issues in play?
Persecution? First, your religious liberties are (mostly) not under attack. Early in the pandemic, churches were among the organizations required to suspend in-person meetings and some viewed this as curbing religious freedoms. I wrestled with that and I must say that I understand the argument. But my response is that all gatherings were included: sporting events, schools, restaurants, retail businesses and the like. So, religious organizations weren’t targeted, and the state was not “persecuting” churches. One could argue the effectiveness (or not) of stay-home orders, and that’s a spirited debate (and, I tend to think that the effects of non-gathering were actually minimal) but in most cases, I fail to see the strength of the religious persecution argument. Don’t cheapen the reality of persecution that many in other parts of the world experience by comparing face masks and other restrictions to their life-or-death persecution. Now, one big caveat: As businesses were allowed to reopen, there were cases where churches were not yet permitted to open (as they were considered “non-essential”) while casinos and other such venues were; this is a case that gets a lot closer to — if not directly into — “discrimination” territory. In such cases, Christians should oppose this with whatever means available to them.
Related to this, the arguments over wearing masks in church has been one of the most, if not the most contentious issue of all. In our state, Oregon is back to requiring masks for all indoor gatherings. I said before that I’m quite sure masks won’t prevent the wearer from getting Covid (and, I’ve argued that enacting and enforcing mask-wearing is better left to private entities), but suppose the odds are 60–40 in favor of masks mitigating against the spread of the virus to someone else. Considering this, wearing masks is a way to love your neighbor, even if by showing your concern for their well-being. Maybe a way to get at this issue is to ask — “As you’ve weighed whether or not to wear a mask, is your primary concern for your personal liberties, and personal comfort, or is it for your neighbor’s well-being?” As Christians, our calling is to consider our neighbor’s well-being as much as we look out for our own.
Some have chosen not to come to church because a mask is required. Again, I respect the differing convictions on this, but I struggle to make sense of those won’t attend church because a mask mandate is in effect. In my experience, these are often folks who are mindful of not wanting government overreach, and if they have to follow what is judged to be an unnecessary and over-reaching rule, they’d rather not attend. Fair enough, except that by not attending church, you’ve actually allowed the government to prevent you from gathering for worship. And, I’ve wondered — what do they do when shopping at Home Depot? Fred Meyer? There are two courses of action that people I know have taken: mask-up, or make someone else do your grocery shopping. This, in turn, raises more questions. If you are making someone else do your shopping, you are falling into the trap of wanting your cake and eating it too — the freedom of choice, and the freedom from your responsibility because someone else is now bearing your burden. But if you are sucking it up and wearing a mask into Home Depot, the question is, “Why will you roll your eyes, and put on a mask in a place like that, but not do the same for something as important as church?”
An Epidemic of Self-Righteousness I was standing in line to get my first dose of the vaccine at the state fairgrounds where I live. The line was outside, and along the fence that bordered a major street in the city. This allowed for all those waiting in line to be seen by the passing motorists, and as it turned out, for people in the passing cars to ridicule people in line. The general theme was that those in line for a vaccine were lemmings, mindlessly surrendering to a massive government conspiracy. (Okay, so they didn’t shout all that, but snippets of that is what came across.) On the other hand, there are those who judge those harshly who don’t get vaccinated as “non-Christian” for their decision.
Theologically, there is a danger (for those on all sides of these issues) of making our positions into something close to our righteousness. We start to feel superior, or more enlightened, or more loving towards our neighbor than those who take a different position from us. The vaccinated look down on the unvaccinated as uncaring of others; the unvaccinated condemn the vaccinated as ignorant folks who don’t see “what’s really going on.” Those who wear masks pat themselves on the back for doing a better job of loving of their neighbors with the mask; those who refuse the mask feel righteous because they aren’t letting the government, or big pharma, control their lives. This is the textbook definition of self-righteousness. Our beliefs, and the actions that flow from them become the means by which we judge ourselves worthy, knowledgeable, and vindicated by what we do.
From there, it’s a short move into identifying ourselves with “our” group: anti-vaxxers, the masked, those who follow the mandates, and those who defy them — and we emotionally “join forces” to attack those with whom we disagree. The net result is the polarized culture that we are all living in. As Christians, we acknowledge that our worth, our righteousness, isn’t attained by our positions on such issues and our resulting actions, but in Christ. This allows us to treat those with whom we disagree with humility and gentleness — it allows us to acknowledge that we may be mistaken on these matters, and that we treat those with whom we disagree with respect. I urge believers, on whatever side of these issues you land, to remember that your worth and your identity is not found in the positions that you take, but in Christ. If you can’t engage someone who thinks differently on these matters with humility, respect, and kindness, but instead label, condemn, and view with an air of superiority, something is wrong.
Pride of knowledge: The amount of misinformation and even outright dishonesty that has spread concerning the virus is alarming to me. Social media has facilitated the spread of ideas that have absolutely no basis in fact; from the idea that the virus is being spread through the contrails of jets to theories of microchipping, false information spreads quickly. This is a spiritual issue, as Christians, we are to be people who not only speak, but represent the truth. Unfortunately, we have been guilty of spreading information without taking the time to question our own assumptions. Jonathan Haidt has described (in his book “The Righteous Mind”) how we often come to conclusions rather quickly — and then search for information that reinforces our conclusions rather than being open to ideas that contradict our opinions.
My challenge for people of faith is twofold. First, stop spreading information on social media that is not true. Don’t assume that just because something is online, it must be true. I can’t tell you the number of articles that I’ve seen passed around by Christians that are demonstrably false. Second, and related, do your homework. Start by setting aside your own convictions for a moment, and open yourself up to the fact that you might be wrong. Go seeking after the truth, and not after evidence to support your point of view. Pay attention to how knowledge is tested — peer-reviewed journals, for example; credentialed experts; research that stands the test of time. Not bearing false witness means that we treat every word we speak (or share on social media) as though we are speaking it in the hearing of God himself. Speak — and share — carefully.
Fear: I have a theory that I’ve not tested, but I’d be curious to see if there is any way to do so. My theory is that the rise of secularism has a corresponding effect on the increase in fear. As secularism has increased, fear has also. It’s not that Christians don’t get anxious, or afraid, or worried — they most certainly do. But we’ve seen what seems to me to be a considerably high rate of fear permeating our culture. It’s not just fear of death, but fear of contracting the virus, fear of children getting sick, fear of restrictions coming back too soon… and the fear that we see appears to be more than a healthy caution that leads to appropriate protective and preventative measures, but a high-level anxiety that is almost paralyzing for some. Again, this isn’t to throw shade on those who experience this — this is merely an observation that the level of fear is high.
Christian theology finds a balance between recognizing the frailty and vulnerability of our world, and an acknowledgement that a sovereign God, who holds all things in His hands, can be trusted to care for us each day. The pandemic has stripped away some of our grandiose visions of our invincibility, and has rather crudely reminded us that this world is far more vulnerable than we’d like to admit. Yet, as Christians, we can indeed embrace the promise that is made over and over again in the bible — “Do not be afraid.” For some of us, our fears expose the honest realities that are good and appropriate to face; fear can be a good things if it alerts us to dangers that threaten us. Yet, for the Christian, we may have the confidence that the very worst thing to happen to us — death — becomes, through the gospel, the very best thing that can happen to us.
As a Christian, there are reasons to be hopeful, I think. This pandemic, and all of its related matters, has been painful, and even destructive. It has revealed parts in all of us — our pride, our vulnerability, our limitations — that we’d perhaps not paid much attention to before. The Christian gospel says that God often leads us through discomfort, and even pain, but always with a purpose — namely to build back up again into something better. This pandemic can hold that potential. Through it, we can be forced to seek strength outside of ourselves, we can be humbled out of our pride, we can learn what it is to trust in God more fully, seek Christ more fervently, and surrender ourselves more completely to God. | https://medium.com/@robtoornstra/theological-observations-130d75239d71 | ['Rob Toornstra'] | 2021-09-16 15:00:53.092000+00:00 | ['Fear', 'Hope', 'Theology', 'Righteousness', 'Covid 19'] |
Your Song | Your Song
Photo copyright Michelle Lane, 2020
You left your sandals behind for the short walk
To the well with your earthen pitcher,
Small billows of dust with every step
A song arose as you returned
Lovely whole notes; you sang,
Filling the wide dome of air around you
Water dampening the ground
The vessel, spilling over,
You are incandescent
With your heart song
You step over
The threshold’s pounded earth,
Pass into soft light within,
Set your pitcher on the table,
Turn toward the window,
Near the cool brown of the wall,
A shimmering flame,
An utterance of light saying:
Do not be afraid . . .
Full of Grace . . .
You quake, yet feel substantial,
You say:
Here am I. . . Let it Be
A luminous word, your simple yes, alive
In the room, in your song; your bare feet
Firmly on the earthy floor . . .
************************************************
This poem is my envisioning of the Annunciation, the account in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1:26–38) of the angel Gabriel coming to Mary and announcing that she will bear the Christ Child of God and will name him Jesus. She is a young woman, unmarried but engaged to an older man named Joseph. In the poem I intentionally painted a young Mary who was in the fullness of her self, and free.
Mary’s virginity is a topic of both reverence and controversy. The common understanding of the word “virgin” is a woman who has not had sex (males and gender-queer people may be given this label as well, but traditionally it is ascribed to females). But this word can be much more expansive than this conventional meaning. The word, “virgin” in its deepest essence means “unattached,” or “one in oneself.” It may be understood as a state of freedom from attachment.
Rather than focusing on the idea that Mary became pregnant without having sexual intercourse with a man, perhaps we might note that Mary agreed to respond to the angel’s invitation and then to participate in the birthing of someone who was extraordinary in this world. A beautiful gift.
We might consider that each of us is capable of responding to what wants to be born within us and then to “give birth,” or bring into being, something that is a gift to the world. What we need to do is to listen within, be open to possibilities, and become self-possessed — not in a self-focused way, but in a way that one is free to give oneself away.
As we come to know ourselves more deeply, we may be inspired to change something in our life or to create something new. Perhaps there is something you have always wanted to engage in, a deep urge or gift that is unrealized. It may be scary or unsettling to accept the inspiration or yearnings that arise within you. It will take courage to free yourself to say “yes” to this spark within and take the risk of allowing it to consume you.
What kinds of “holy mysteries” might be asking to come alive within you? | https://medium.com/@berrywoman08/your-song-5f68f1465a8e | ['Michelle Berry Lane'] | 2020-12-25 18:52:30.104000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Spirituality', 'Advent', 'Poetry'] |
Columbo episode review — 12.1 — It’s All in the Game | Original air date: October 31, 1993
Director: Vincent McEveety
Writer: Peter Falk
Rating: 7/10
Columbo ends up kind of dating his main suspect in this odd episode. Faye Dunaway plays Lauren Staton, socialite and co-murderer of her lover, along with her daughter, Lisa Martin (Claudia Christian). As time passes throughout the investigation, she actually starts to enjoy her time with Columbo, and while she attempts to seduce him out of a desire to control him, she does have genuine feelings for him as well.
Dunaway is quite good in her role, and she makes the conflicting feelings her character feels quite convincing. It’s also a bit of a departure from how most murderers in the show feel towards Columbo, as they’re genuinely very annoyed, and just trying to hide it by being polite. Here, she’s not annoyed, and likes him quite a bit.
It’s a fun episode even if it doesn’t compare to the classics. I like how Columbo claims his first name is Lieutenant. I know that’s been part of the show’s lore for a long time, but I believe this is the first time it’s been vocalized. | https://medium.com/as-vast-as-space-and-as-timeless-as-infinity/columbo-episode-review-12-1-its-all-in-the-game-20fdbaafc79c | ['Patrick J Mullen'] | 2020-05-16 23:01:00.777000+00:00 | ['Drama', 'Columbo', 'Mystery', '1990s', 'TV'] |
[Pennyworth] Serie [2] ; Episode [3] * Full Stream On Epix | ❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream identifies the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, instead of the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies particularly to telecommunications networks, as almost all of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, music CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks satisfactory bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real-time much as live television broadcasts content over the airwaves with a television signal. Live internet streaming takes a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio tracks interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is.
Streaming is an option to file downloading, a process where the end-user obtains the entire file for this content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The word “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONTENT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[1][2][3][4][5] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][7][8] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][9][10][11][12] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[13]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[14]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 100 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[5] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[15]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[1] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[2] Credit is extended by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
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