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Thriving to Dark Diving. | Hello readers, and welcome to my blog.
I don’t consider myself much of a writer, but I‘m here as a way to help with my sanity, and I hope one day, I may get an actual reader who understands the emotion in my words and feels my pain, or happiness, whatever the mood.
This is when I explain a little about who I am. I’m not going to bore you with a 3 page resume (you can see my LinkedIn for that, lol), instead, I will try to write a brief summary of myself and why I’m here right now, in a single sentence. Here goes:
I’m a twenty-something y/o sagittarius-surfer-travelling English teacher, born and raised in Durban, South Africa, striving to become the best version of myself and spread eternal love and happiness to everyone in my life.
I do understand how this can sound super cheesy, but it’s true.
In July 2019, I set off to Phuket, Thailand to become an English teacher. In my life I have been a graphic designer, web designer, Google Adwords manager, photographer, videographer and a few other things in between. But nothing has ever come close to the fulfilment that I have experienced through teaching abroad.
2020 has been tough in many ways. I came back to South Africa after 9 months of teaching in Thailand, and it was the worst decision of my life. I was the happiest I’ve been in Thailand, so full of optimism, positivity and confidence. I saw the best version of myself I’ve ever seen and the unlimited opportunities at my fingertips, just ready to be leaped on. I came back to hell on earth and immediately fell into the deepest, darkest depression of my life. Here I am, an entire year later, still stuck in SA, hoping there’s someone out there who will understand my pain, and join me on my journey to fulfilment.
Well, I think that’s enough waffling for now. As I said, I’m not much a writer. | https://medium.com/@smyliekylie/thriving-to-dark-diving-601b6692790f | ['Smylie Kylie'] | 2021-03-08 20:09:20.472000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Depression', 'Thailand', 'Covid 19', 'Teaching English'] |
Heterogeneous Database Replication to TiDB | Heterogeneous Database Replication to TiDB
Author: Tianshuang Qin (Principal Solutions Architect at PingCAP)
This article is based on a talk given by Tianshuang Qin at TiDB DevCon 2020.
When we convert from a standalone system to a distributed one, one of the challenges is migrating the database. We’re faced with questions such as:
Should I migrate full or incremental data?
Should I perform an online or offline migration?
Should I use a ready-made data replication tool or develop a new one?
When it comes to data migration, users are often faced with many options. At PingCAP, we’ve probably tried most of them. Over the years, we’ve migrated many heterogeneous databases between different database platforms and application scenarios. Today, I’ll save you some time by sharing with you the approaches that worked best.
A typical database migration process
1. Application adaptation development
Almost all early TiDB users have gone through this step. In version 3.0 or earlier, TiDB supports optimistic concurrency control and Repeatable Read (RR) isolation level, and its transaction size is limited to about 100 MB. Given these features and capacity, users need to put a lot of effort into adapting their applications. In contrast, TiDB 4.0 supports pessimistic concurrency control, Read Committed (RC) isolation, and large transactions with a maximum size of 10 GB. Users can adapt their applications to TiDB at a much lower cost.
2. Application verification testing
There are two ways to perform application verification testing. You can combine the two methods to effectively verify your application.
Application verification
The first method is to test your application with production data. To do this, you must first use database replication technology to replicate the data from the production database to TiDB. Then, you use a testing application to perform a stress test. To stress TiDB and ensure that it will be stable in your production environment, apply a workload 10 to 20 times higher than your real production traffic. One of the advantages of replicating data from the production database to TiDB is that you avoid wide variations between test data and production data, which may cause many problems. For example, an SQL query, which has been tuned in the testing environment to achieve its highest performance, may become a slow SQL query in the production environment if the data is not replicated to TiDB for testing.
The second way to verify your application is to test it with production traffic. In this case, you must adopt a service bus similar to the enterprise service bus (ESB) for banks or message queuing technology. For example, you can use the Kafka message queuing mechanism to implement the multi-path replication of production traffic. Whether an application can successfully run in the production environment depends on the main path of the existing production database. There is also a bypass for the application. We can load an application that has been adapted to TiDB on the bypass and connect the application to TiDB for application verification.
3. Migration testing
Migration testing mainly involves verifying operations completed during the maintenance window. For example, you must follow the migration activity specified in the migration manual in advance to verify that the manual is correct and to determine whether the migration maintenance window is long enough to perform the migration. You also need to perform rollback testing, because if your deployment to production fails, you may need to roll back to the previous database.
4. Data migration and production database switch
Your applications may run 24/7 or you may only have a short maintenance window to switch over databases, so you must migrate your data before the maintenance window ends. To do that, you must use heterogeneous database replication technology. During the maintenance window, you can stop all running applications, replicate incremental data to the secondary database, perform a comparison to ensure that the secondary database is synchronized with the primary database, and then verify applications. Once the application verification testing is completed, database switchover starts. If the switchover is successful, TiDB will run as a primary database in the production environment.
Application scenarios of database replication
Migrating data
We’ve talked about this application scenario in the previous section.
Creating a disaster recovery database
If you use Oracle as the primary database, you can use TiDB as its disaster recovery database. If you’ve just deployed a TiDB database in the production environment without sufficient verification, you can use an Oracle database as the disaster recovery database for TiDB. That way, if the TiDB database suddenly crashes, you can promptly migrate the data back to the original production database.
Creating a read-only or archive database
First, let’s look at the application scenario of building a read-only database. This is applicable to some bank clients. A bank’s core services run in a closed system, and it may be impossible to migrate them to an open platform or a distributed database in a short time. However, some read-only applications, such as querying account details, bills, or monthly statements on the app client, can be completed without accessing the core production database, which only processes real transactions. Therefore, we can use database replication technology to replicate such read-only application data from the production database to the TiDB database and perform the read-only operations only in the TiDB database.
Another scenario is building an archive database. If you use a traditional standalone database for production and its capacity is limited, but your application data is growing quickly, the data cannot be migrated to a distributed database in a short time. A solution is to save data in the production database for a specific period (for example, 30 or 40 days), delete expired data from the production database, and store the deleted data in TiDB. That is, the deletion operation is performed only in the production database, and TiDB is used as an archive database.
Aggregating data from multiple sources
You can use TiDB as a data hub. You might run multiple applications in Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) databases and want to use the database replication technology to aggregate data from multiple sources to one TiDB database. Then, you can perform in-depth analysis on or read-only queries in the TiDB database. The main challenge for multi-source aggregation lies in the cross-database query after data is successfully aggregated to the TiDB database. The data may come from heterogeneous databases. It is impossible to create database links among them as database links can only be created among Oracle databases. To solve this problem, you can use heterogeneous database replication and use the TiDB database in a role similar to a widely deployed operational data store (ODS) for aggregating data.
Replicating heterogeneous databases
This section discusses some commonly used heterogeneous database replication methods.
Data transfer via interface files
This method is widely used when transferring data between OLTP and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems. As the data transfer involves two different systems, it’s difficult to connect two database networks. Databases belong to backend systems. For security reasons, it is not suitable to directly connect them.
A comma-separated values (CSV) file is a typical interface file. The interface file here refers to the file generated by an application, based on the predefined format and rules for adding delimiters and line breaks. After receiving a generated interface file, the receiving end parses the interface file based on the agreed format, converts the file into an INSERT statement, and inserts it into the target database.
The advantage of this method is that it applies to any database. As long as the upstream and downstream databases support standard SQL interfaces, you can transfer data through an interface file.
However, this approach has several disadvantages:
It requires additional development in your application code. For example, if the application was originally developed in Java, you need to add more programming logic. If you add logic to the upstream database code that generates an interface file, you also need to add logic to the downstream database code that imports the interface file. Moreover, to improve performance, you may need to control the concurrency of the file import.
Interface files are only useful for full refresh and append write operations. It is difficult to obtain data changes generated by UPDATE and DELETE operations through an interface file.
and operations through an interface file. Data may not be timely. As 5G technology gradually rolls out, terminal devices require lower latency. For example, banks are gradually changing from the traditional T+1 analytics to T+0 or even near real-time analytics. When you transfer data using an interface file, it’s hard to ensure that the data is timely. This is because the interface file triggers file loading at a specific time with low frequency and efficiency.
When data is exported, the upstream database must be scanned extensively to access the data through the SQL interface. This may affect performance. Therefore, as a common practice, the upstream application will open an SQL interface in the secondary database for exporting a read-only file to the downstream database.
Developing an ETL job and scheduling the job for data transfer
You can develop an extract, transform, load (ETL) job and schedule the job on a regular basis to transfer data. This method is commonly applied to data transfer and processing between OLTP and OLAP systems.
If you need to run ETL jobs for a long time, you may take a long time to obtain the incremental data and write it to the target database. This requires the ability to schedule ETL jobs, which involves additional development.
Using an ETL job has the following advantages:
Just like an interface file, an ETL job uses SQL interfaces and is applicable to any database. As long as the upstream and downstream databases support SQL standards, you can use ETL jobs.
Additionally, you can process data during the ETL job. If the upstream and downstream databases have different table schemas, or if you need to add logic to the table schema, ETL jobs are the best choice.
The disadvantages of an ETL job are similar to those of using an interface file:
An ETL job requires additional development. You need to create a set of independent SQL jobs and build up a scheduling system.
The data changes incurred by UPDATE and DELETE operations are difficult to obtain via ETL jobs. Compared to using an interface file, the timeliness of ETL may be slightly better, but it depends on the scheduling frequency. However, the scheduling frequency is actually related to the processing time required by the job after each scheduling. For example, when data is imported each time, if a job requires 5 minutes for processing, the delay may be as long as 5 to 10 minutes.
and operations are difficult to obtain via ETL jobs. Compared to using an interface file, the timeliness of ETL may be slightly better, but it depends on the scheduling frequency. However, the scheduling frequency is actually related to the processing time required by the job after each scheduling. For example, when data is imported each time, if a job requires 5 minutes for processing, the delay may be as long as 5 to 10 minutes. To access the data through the SQL interface, extensive scanning of the upstream database is required. This may affect performance.
Using a CDC tool
We recommend that you use change data capture (CDC) tools to replicate heterogeneous databases. There are many CDC tools, such as Oracle GoldenGate (OGG), IBM InfoSphere CDC, and TiDB Data Migration (DM).
The following table summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of using CDC tools. As you can see, there are far more advantages.
AdvantagesDisadvantagesYour application requires no additional development.
CDC tools can obtain all DML changes, like DELETE and UPDATE .
Because the workload is distributed through the day, these tools have higher performance.
CDC tools bring low latency and near real-time replication.
Upstream data is obtained by reading redo logs, which does not impact the SQL performance.
CDC tools are mostly commercial products, and you need to purchase them.
Most CDC tools only allow a specific database as an upstream database. If you have multiple types of upstream databases, you need to use multiple CDC tools.
Best practices for heterogeneous database replication in TiDB
I’d like to offer some best practice tips for heterogeneous database replication in TiDB:
Tips based on replication tasks:
If you want to replicate incremental changes incurred by operations such as UPDATE and DELETE , a CDC tool is your best choice.
and , a CDC tool is your best choice. If you want full data replication, you can use lightweight ETL tools dedicated to data migration such as Kettle or DataX. You do not need to purchase CDC tools or build other architectures to complete the replication. Instead, you only need to ensure that the ETL tool can access the upstream and downstream databases simultaneously and perform ETL jobs to do the full data replication.
Tips based on scenarios:
If you are creating a disaster recovery database, creating a read-only or archive database, or aggregating data from multiple sources, we recommend that you use a CDC tool for data replication. If you use ETL jobs in these scenarios to obtain all DML changes, the development costs will be very high.
If your upstream database is a MySQL-like database or a MySQL-based database (such as Amazon RDS on the public cloud, including Aurora and some sharding products developed based on MySQL), you can use the TiDB DM tool for data transfer. For more information about DM, see TiDB Data Migration Overview.
If you have any questions on any of the topics we covered today, you can join our community on Slack, and send us your feedback. | https://medium.com/swlh/heterogeneous-database-replication-to-tidb-c10478d11b29 | [] | 2020-08-10 13:59:00+00:00 | ['Distributed Systems', 'Database Replication', 'Best Practices'] |
Evolving E-commerce — A Global Era of Online Shopping | Today consumer has a choice to buy from thousands of available online options with a convenience to get it delivered next day at their doorstep in a more cost-effective manner. It has made challenging and competitive for retailers to sustain the clients and influence their shopping choices when they are shopping anytime in any part of the online world. However, advancement of technology, increased usage of apps and smart phones have been re-shaping the clients’ needs and experiences. Clients are more informed and knowledgeable today; client is a king is not a theory of the past anymore.
Online retailers like Amazon, Costco, and Alibaba with advanced chatbots and AI have ability to influence the client needs by suggesting products based on their shopping and spending habits, giving them 24 x 7 customer service and providing lucrative reward programs to sustain the clients. It is creating a fierce competition among online retailers who have to compete with the technology advantaged retailers. But the good news is due to accelerated growth in innovation around the world, it will not be as expensive as capital borrowing is; to open a retail store in the centre of a big city. | https://medium.com/@giabawa/evolving-e-commerce-a-global-era-of-online-shopping-5034b7e81383 | [] | 2020-12-26 23:04:50.232000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce', 'Product', 'Online Business', 'Web Development', 'Online Shopping'] |
You Haven’t Earned The Right To Be A Basic B*tch Just Yet Day | Noone wants to wear five dollar leggings and generic Uggs and spend three hours touching all the display cases at a Super Target more than I do right now. These characteristics are what one might call those of a “basic bitch”:
The basic bitch — as she’s sometimes called because it’s funnier when things alliterate, and because you’re considered a poor sport if you don’t find it funny — is almost always a she. In more sophisticated renderings, her particularities vary by region and even neighborhood, but she is almost always portrayed as utterly besotted with Starbucks’s Pumpkin Spice Latte. It is the setup to nearly every now-familiar punch line about a basic bitch, her love for the autumnal mass-market beverage. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are “mall.” They reveal a girlish interest in seasonal changes and an unsophisticated penchant for sweet. (Noreen Malone, “What Do You Really Mean When You Say ‘Basic Bitch’?” (The Cut)
I have strong basic bitch tendencies. I embrace that. But, as a Black woman, I am not exactly what we mean when we refer to basic.
Definitionally “basic” is generally used to describe a white woman because the concept is built on a type of white woman performance.
Basic is about a kind of consumption. It is the mindless intake of tepid cultural tastes. Basic isn’t really about the Pumpkin Spice Latte or the cottagecore home design or the Hallmark Christmas movies. Those are just signifiers. Basic is about the cultural production and consumption of an apolitical relationship to the everyday world that inocculates the basic from being offended — and perhaps most importantly — from being offensive to others. A basic bitch is, above all, safe.
Times have been wild. We want to feel safe again. The last 24 hours have been especially wild and exceptionally offensive. As of five minutes ago, almost 68 million people in this country who experienced four years of Donald Trump’s irascible, sociopathic administration voted for him again. Biden and Harris may eventually win this thing but they will not have won a clear mandate. And, they may not be able to govern with the basic mandate they’ve won.
Never have we needed the mindlessness of basic cultural consumption more. But we haven’t earned it. Well, some of us haven’t earned it. Since basic is about a certain type of white womanhood, let’s talk about white women and this election.
Image for post
Data from The New York Times dashboard
Looked at another way:
Image for post
Data visualization from CNN.com
White women…this you?
Seriously, there is a lot to be said about how and why white women’s support for Donald Trump actually outperformed (however slightly) 2016. Maybe it’s religion. Maybe it’s internalized sexism. Maybe it’s uncut racism. Whatever it is, it is a political problem no matter who ends up winning this election.
After four years of pink hats and hashtag resistance and bemoaning 2016’s 53%, we continue to have a white woman problem.
At this point, this is a family conversation. There is nothing that Black books about feminist rage can do for you now. There is no shortcut through Black lives. White people are going to have to work this one out for themselves. The wellbeing of the rest of us kind of depends on it.
I do know that until you work it out, you have not earned the right to retreat into basicdom. The comfort of banality should not be yours until you figure out how to deprogram that 55% or how to make them irrelevant. Mindless consumption is partly how we got into this mess. Those “Live/Love/Laugh” signs were clearly secret political warfare on the hearts and minds of white women across this nation. What the hell was happening in those organic wine clubs, exactly?
Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I just need white women to know. I need you, white women, to figure it out. And until you do, you can go to Target but you cannot be of Target.
Being a basic bitch is a privilege, not a right. White women haven’t earned it yet.
a
Noone wants to wear five dollar leggings and generic Uggs and spend three hours touching all the display cases at a Super Target more than I do right now. These characteristics are what one might call those of a “basic bitch”:
The basic bitch — as she’s sometimes called because it’s funnier when things alliterate, and because you’re considered a poor sport if you don’t find it funny — is almost always a she. In more sophisticated renderings, her particularities vary by region and even neighborhood, but she is almost always portrayed as utterly besotted with Starbucks’s Pumpkin Spice Latte. It is the setup to nearly every now-familiar punch line about a basic bitch, her love for the autumnal mass-market beverage. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are “mall.” They reveal a girlish interest in seasonal changes and an unsophisticated penchant for sweet. (Noreen Malone, “What Do You Really Mean When You Say ‘Basic Bitch’?” (The Cut)
I have strong basic bitch tendencies. I embrace that. But, as a Black woman, I am not exactly what we mean when we refer to basic.
Definitionally “basic” is generally used to describe a white woman because the concept is built on a type of white woman performance.
Basic is about a kind of consumption. It is the mindless intake of tepid cultural tastes. Basic isn’t really about the Pumpkin Spice Latte or the cottagecore home design or the Hallmark Christmas movies. Those are just signifiers. Basic is about the cultural production and consumption of an apolitical relationship to the everyday world that inocculates the basic from being offended — and perhaps most importantly — from being offensive to others. A basic bitch is, above all, safe.
Times have been wild. We want to feel safe again. The last 24 hours have been especially wild and exceptionally offensive. As of five minutes ago, almost 68 million people in this country who experienced four years of Donald Trump’s irascible, sociopathic administration voted for him again. Biden and Harris may eventually win this thing but they will not have won a clear mandate. And, they may not be able to govern with the basic mandate they’ve won.
Never have we needed the mindlessness of basic cultural consumption more. But we haven’t earned it. Well, some of us haven’t earned it. Since basic is about a certain type of white womanhood, let’s talk about white women and this election.
Image for post
Data from The New York Times dashboard
Looked at another way:
Image for post
Data visualization from CNN.com
White women…this you?
Seriously, there is a lot to be said about how and why white women’s support for Donald Trump actually outperformed (however slightly) 2016. Maybe it’s religion. Maybe it’s internalized sexism. Maybe it’s uncut racism. Whatever it is, it is a political problem no matter who ends up winning this election.
After four years of pink hats and hashtag resistance and bemoaning 2016’s 53%, we continue to have a white woman problem.
At this point, this is a family conversation. There is nothing that Black books about feminist rage can do for you now. There is no shortcut through Black lives. White people are going to have to work this one out for themselves. The wellbeing of the rest of us kind of depends on it.
I do know that until you work it out, you have not earned the right to retreat into basicdom. The comfort of banality should not be yours until you figure out how to deprogram that 55% or how to make them irrelevant. Mindless consumption is partly how we got into this mess. Those “Live/Love/Laugh” signs were clearly secret political warfare on the hearts and minds of white women across this nation. What the hell was happening in those organic wine clubs, exactly?
Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I just need white women to know. I need you, white women, to figure it out. And until you do, you can go to Target but you cannot be of Target.
Being a basic bitch is a privilege, not a right. White women haven’t earned it yet.
a
Noone wants to wear five dollar leggings and generic Uggs and spend three hours touching all the display cases at a Super Target more than I do right now. These characteristics are what one might call those of a “basic bitch”:
The basic bitch — as she’s sometimes called because it’s funnier when things alliterate, and because you’re considered a poor sport if you don’t find it funny — is almost always a she. In more sophisticated renderings, her particularities vary by region and even neighborhood, but she is almost always portrayed as utterly besotted with Starbucks’s Pumpkin Spice Latte. It is the setup to nearly every now-familiar punch line about a basic bitch, her love for the autumnal mass-market beverage. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are “mall.” They reveal a girlish interest in seasonal changes and an unsophisticated penchant for sweet. (Noreen Malone, “What Do You Really Mean When You Say ‘Basic Bitch’?” (The Cut)
I have strong basic bitch tendencies. I embrace that. But, as a Black woman, I am not exactly what we mean when we refer to basic.
Definitionally “basic” is generally used to describe a white woman because the concept is built on a type of white woman performance.
Basic is about a kind of consumption. It is the mindless intake of tepid cultural tastes. Basic isn’t really about the Pumpkin Spice Latte or the cottagecore home design or the Hallmark Christmas movies. Those are just signifiers. Basic is about the cultural production and consumption of an apolitical relationship to the everyday world that inocculates the basic from being offended — and perhaps most importantly — from being offensive to others. A basic bitch is, above all, safe.
Times have been wild. We want to feel safe again. The last 24 hours have been especially wild and exceptionally offensive. As of five minutes ago, almost 68 million people in this country who experienced four years of Donald Trump’s irascible, sociopathic administration voted for him again. Biden and Harris may eventually win this thing but they will not have won a clear mandate. And, they may not be able to govern with the basic mandate they’ve won.
Never have we needed the mindlessness of basic cultural consumption more. But we haven’t earned it. Well, some of us haven’t earned it. Since basic is about a certain type of white womanhood, let’s talk about white women and this election.
Image for post
Data from The New York Times dashboard
Looked at another way:
Image for post
Data visualization from CNN.com
White women…this you?
Seriously, there is a lot to be said about how and why white women’s support for Donald Trump actually outperformed (however slightly) 2016. Maybe it’s religion. Maybe it’s internalized sexism. Maybe it’s uncut racism. Whatever it is, it is a political problem no matter who ends up winning this election.
After four years of pink hats and hashtag resistance and bemoaning 2016’s 53%, we continue to have a white woman problem.
At this point, this is a family conversation. There is nothing that Black books about feminist rage can do for you now. There is no shortcut through Black lives. White people are going to have to work this one out for themselves. The wellbeing of the rest of us kind of depends on it.
I do know that until you work it out, you have not earned the right to retreat into basicdom. The comfort of banality should not be yours until you figure out how to deprogram that 55% or how to make them irrelevant. Mindless consumption is partly how we got into this mess. Those “Live/Love/Laugh” signs were clearly secret political warfare on the hearts and minds of white women across this nation. What the hell was happening in those organic wine clubs, exactly?
Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I just need white women to know. I need you, white women, to figure it out. And until you do, you can go to Target but you cannot be of Target.
Being a basic bitch is a privilege, not a right. White women haven’t earned it yet.
a
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https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/bowyn-morgan-vs-tim-tszyu-live-stream-fight-hd.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/gallen-vs-hunt-live-stream-au-free-tv.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/hunt-vs-gallen-live-au-hd.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/mark-hunt-vs-paul-gallen-live-stream-au-tv.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/morgan-vs-tszyu-live-stream-au-free-tv.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/paul-gallen-vs-mark-hunt-live-stream-fight-espn.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/sydney-super-fight-live-stream-au-tv.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/the-sydney-super-fight-live-stream-au-hd.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/tim-tszyu-vs-bowyn-morgan-live-stream-boxing-tv.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/tszyu-vs-morgan-live-stream-au-hd-tv.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/bowyn-morgan-vs-tim-tszyu-live-fight.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/gallen-vs-hunt-live-au-free.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/hunt-vs-gallen-live-au-hd_0.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/mark-hunt-vs-paul-gallen-live-au.pdf
https://careerservices.howard.edu/sites/careerservices.howard.edu/files/webform/morgan-vs-tszyu-live-free-hd.pdf
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https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/bowyn-morgan-vs-tim-tszyu-l-ive-fight-hd.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/gallen-vs-hunt-l-ive-au-free-tv.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/hunt-vs-gallen-l-ive-au-hd.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/mark-hunt-vs-paul-gallen-l-ive-au-tv.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/morgan-vs-tszyu-l-ive--au-free-tv.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/paul-gallen-vs-mark-hunt-l-ive-fight-espn.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/sydney-super-fight-l-ive-tv.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/the-sydney-super-fight-l-ive-hd.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/tim-tszyu-vs-bowyn-morgan-l-ive-boxing-tv.pdf
https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/webform/202012/tszyu-vs-morgan-l-ive-hd-tv.pdf
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https://dpaste.org/Gih1
https://friendpaste.com/3ZFamqDNehNQ4lG9tgzA7i
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https://pastebin.com/mNtbNj59
https://paiza.io/projects/t_26FRabdsD1TWNNr9e-9Q?language=php
https://notes.io/MDV9
http://officialguccimane.ning.com/photo/albums/gfhgfhgfh-hghgfhgf
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http://summerschooldns.ning.com/profiles/blogs/hjghgjhgj-fdfgfdgf
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http://divasunlimited.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gfhghgf-hgh-hghf
https://0paste.com/116999
https://notes.io/MDVg
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https://jsfiddle.net/g730ekuv/
Noone wants to wear five dollar leggings and generic Uggs and spend three hours touching all the display cases at a Super Target more than I do right now. These characteristics are what one might call those of a “basic bitch”:
The basic bitch — as she’s sometimes called because it’s funnier when things alliterate, and because you’re considered a poor sport if you don’t find it funny — is almost always a she. In more sophisticated renderings, her particularities vary by region and even neighborhood, but she is almost always portrayed as utterly besotted with Starbucks’s Pumpkin Spice Latte. It is the setup to nearly every now-familiar punch line about a basic bitch, her love for the autumnal mass-market beverage. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are “mall.” They reveal a girlish interest in seasonal changes and an unsophisticated penchant for sweet. (Noreen Malone, “What Do You Really Mean When You Say ‘Basic Bitch’?” (The Cut)
I have strong basic bitch tendencies. I embrace that. But, as a Black woman, I am not exactly what we mean when we refer to basic.
Definitionally “basic” is generally used to describe a white woman because the concept is built on a type of white woman performance.
Basic is about a kind of consumption. It is the mindless intake of tepid cultural tastes. Basic isn’t really about the Pumpkin Spice Latte or the cottagecore home design or the Hallmark Christmas movies. Those are just signifiers. Basic is about the cultural production and consumption of an apolitical relationship to the everyday world that inocculates the basic from being offended — and perhaps most importantly — from being offensive to others. A basic bitch is, above all, safe.
Times have been wild. We want to feel safe again. The last 24 hours have been especially wild and exceptionally offensive. As of five minutes ago, almost 68 million people in this country who experienced four years of Donald Trump’s irascible, sociopathic administration voted for him again. Biden and Harris may eventually win this thing but they will not have won a clear mandate. And, they may not be able to govern with the basic mandate they’ve won.
Never have we needed the mindlessness of basic cultural consumption more. But we haven’t earned it. Well, some of us haven’t earned it. Since basic is about a certain type of white womanhood, let’s talk about white women and this election.
Image for post
Data from The New York Times dashboard
Looked at another way:
Image for post
Data visualization from CNN.com
White women…this you?
Seriously, there is a lot to be said about how and why white women’s support for Donald Trump actually outperformed (however slightly) 2016. Maybe it’s religion. Maybe it’s internalized sexism. Maybe it’s uncut racism. Whatever it is, it is a political problem no matter who ends up winning this election.
After four years of pink hats and hashtag resistance and bemoaning 2016’s 53%, we continue to have a white woman problem.
At this point, this is a family conversation. There is nothing that Black books about feminist rage can do for you now. There is no shortcut through Black lives. White people are going to have to work this one out for themselves. The wellbeing of the rest of us kind of depends on it.
I do know that until you work it out, you have not earned the right to retreat into basicdom. The comfort of banality should not be yours until you figure out how to deprogram that 55% or how to make them irrelevant. Mindless consumption is partly how we got into this mess. Those “Live/Love/Laugh” signs were clearly secret political warfare on the hearts and minds of white women across this nation. What the hell was happening in those organic wine clubs, exactly?
Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I just need white women to know. I need you, white women, to figure it out. And until you do, you can go to Target but you cannot be of Target.
Being a basic bitch is a privilege, not a right. White women haven’t earned it yet.
a | https://medium.com/@amandag-salaams/you-havent-earned-the-right-to-be-a-basic-b-tch-just-yet-day-36f853e44043 | ['Amandag Salaams'] | 2020-12-16 08:23:53.739000+00:00 | ['White Women', '2020 Presidential Race', 'Basics', 'Consumption'] |
LIGHT & SHADOW | LIGHT & SHADOW
(Note: These images & writing may take a few moments to load & become clear in the Medium.com environment) | https://medium.com/@howcandinoserve/light-shadow-1e79c8280bb1 | [] | 2020-12-20 17:55:28.597000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Growth', 'Spirit', 'Spirituality', 'Spiritual'] |
Data + Design — A Winning Combination | How Appnovation Does It — Agile Data Design Thinking Framework
We approach reporting and analytics in the same way we do designing user experience and start with assembling the right team. When working with clients, we form a team that has strategy, design and engineering/technology to ensure that our deliverables don’t fall short on one of those success elements.
However, throwing people together and asking them to collaborate doesn’t always work (even here!), so we created a process that harnesses the best of Design Thinking and the expertise of each contributor. We call it the Agile Data Design Thinking Framework. It has 4 stages:
Stage 1 — Discover and Understand
At the start, we focus on understanding what the client needs are, where they are today and what success looks like. We also learn everything we can about the context of this challenge, including speaking to end users who will be using the solution.
Stage 2 — Design and Create
Based on Stage 1, we start to turn needs/wants into specific KPIs, business rules and logic for how the data will be used to uncover insights. Designers translate journeys and needs into visuals, information architecture and a look/feel that meets the users needs. Technology team members evaluate what is needed and how it’s to be delivered against what is available. This is a critical step to ensure that we avoid over promise/under-deliver.
Stage 3 — Refine and Deliver
There will be gaps between what clients want and what can be delivered. In this phase, those gaps are surfaced and resolved, either by adjusting requirements, providing different solutions or changing designs. There is no one size fits all — it requires iterations, communication and deep client involvement. We’re transparent with clients at the beginning that this stage will require their involvement, and they should expect to see work-in-progress as a way to clarify and bridge needs.
Stage 4 — Deploy and Learn
Now we send the report/dashboard into the wild and see how it’s used. Does it answer those key questions we identified at the outset? Are we getting questions back for enhancements? Is it feeding into decision making? Can we scale up and add more users? No report/dashboard is ever really done, so we build this into the project to ensure that it’s adopted. | https://medium.com/inspiring-possibility/data-design-a-winning-combination-8d1695683f7b | ['Kevin Coombs'] | 2020-12-14 17:35:51.770000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Analytics'] |
My life with nightmares: A mental health personal essay. | Nightmares have plagued me ever since I was a little girl. Awful dreams through every stage of life made events even harder to deal with. The level of clarity throughout my dreams makes them terrifyingly real and difficult to escape, even after waking. I often recall my dreams fluently, right after getting up, and the feeling I take from them is not easy to shake.
At times, I haven’t been able to tell reality from my dreams. I’ve gotten confused as to whether something truly happened or not, anxiety rising when I couldn’t get things straight.
When this happens, it takes time for me to go over what I had dreamt and assure myself that it’s not possible I had really lived through what I remember, in order to get on with my day.
I tell myself that I shouldn’t let bad dreams get to me. After all, they’re not real… but the resulting emotion from them is.
Nightmares have caused me guilt and shame.
I’ve asked myself tough questions because of nightmares, such as: What are my nightmares trying to tell me? Am I doing something wrong in my life? And how much attention should I pay to these unsatisfying delusions until I am just feeding into them? The answers are never satisfactory.
When I was 18, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.
Like other mental health topics, nightmares are not talked about often, especially among adults.
The two primary disorders resulting in recurring, vivid nightmares are: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Nightmare Disorder, the latter usually associated with anxiety or depressive disorders, according to an article published in 2018 by the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (JCSM).
According to the same article, Nightmare Disorder is a parasomnia which is associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and affects 4% of all adults in the United States.
According to The Lancet Neurology, a parasomnia is “a sleep disorder characterized by abnormal or unusual non-stereotyped movements, behaviors, emotions, perceptions, and dreams during sleep or at the transition between wakefulness and sleep; there are non-rapid eye movement sleep parasomnias and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep parasomnias.”
According to the article, Sleep Disturbances in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, traumatic experiences are associated with nightmares in up to 70% of adults. During a study on nightmares in adult psychiatric inpatients it was found that individuals who have suffered through interpersonal trauma, such as domestic or sexual assault, are more likely to have nightmares than those who have gone through noninterpersonal trauma.
Nightmares can also be seen as the brain playing out “perceived threats.” From this angle, I could theorize that the nightmare I depicted in the beginning of this piece was the result of a subconscious fear that I would drunkenly unleash a mortifying display of dissatisfaction. Oddly, this perspective gave me solace since it determines that my brain is just preparing for the very worst case scenario and not foretelling an inevitable misfortune.
From this perspective, I could even laugh at the nightmare that once had my heart in my stomach.
There are multiple proposed treatments available for adults with nightmares depending on the severity and if there is a coexisting disorder. For PTSD-induced nightmares or those with Nightmare Disorder, Image Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) has become the “first-line” treatment, according to a panel for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM).
According to the AASM, patients practicing IRT are encouraged to create a more positive outcome for their dreams and play it through mentally for about 10–20 minutes every day.
In conclusion, although nightmares can be terrifying, they should not consume you. There could be many causes of nightmares in adults, some of them associated with other mental health disorders, and some not. There are also treatments that exist.
If you have a nightmare, don’t be afraid to open up about it. They normally seem much less scary when you say them out loud. But at the very least, for the adult with nightmares, just know you’re not alone. | https://medium.com/under-the-sun/my-life-with-nightmares-a-mental-health-personal-essay-f3415803facf | ['Jenna Wilson'] | 2020-12-15 02:18:08.846000+00:00 | ['Personal Essay', 'Mental Illness', 'Sleep Disturbances', 'Sleep Disorders', 'Mental Health'] |
Is there a God problem? | Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash
Stop trying to put God in a box
I remember reading an article a while ago in which an economist predicted that economic growth going forward would be limited. The reason for this prediction was based upon his argument that all the major inventions had already been thought of — there were no paradigm shifts coming up to drive future economic growth.
This analysis bothered me for two reasons. First, I tend to be an optimist. I remember sitting in a Congressional hearing in the early 1990s where business leaders testified that the United States was falling behind Japan and there was nothing we could do about it. That was right before the go-go internet boom of the 1990s in the U.S., and right before Japan started its long economic nightmare. Now, nobody would say that the U.S. has to fear Japan’s ascendancy. So when I choose optimism, it is based upon real world experience.
Secondly, in my opinion, this analysis is fundamentally flawed because as people, we cannot know what is coming. We are limited in our thinking by our constrained minds. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, nobody could anticipate the rise of the internet. Nobody could imagine Japan’s economy slumping into deflation. But the fact that we couldn’t imagine it didn’t make it reality. Saying that all the inventions have been done reveals a lack of humility, an arrogant belief that there is no incredible invention just around the corner that is about to change all our lives. You know, like the internet did.
You might ask what this story has to do with God. Now I’ll tell you.
Last week, Peter Atterton wrote a column in the New York Times arguing that we westerners have a “God problem.” According to Atterton, a professor of Philosophy at San Diego State, the idea that we westerners talk about when we talk about God, all-knowing and all-powerful, is logically flawed. After all, if God is all powerful, why does God allow evil? Why does God allow suffering?
This question has challenged Western philosophers almost since Jesus’s time. Saint Jerome argued in the fourth century that God was too important to be bothered with trivial information. Blaise Pascal abandoned logic to focus on faith, and indeed, when I questioned my faith in my teens and early 20s, a number of friends and family-members suggested that I needed to understand God with my heart, not my head. That suggestion always bothered me. After all, why would God have given me reason if God didn’t want me to use it?
Indeed, an entire branch of philosophy has developed to resolve this conundrum. Called theodicy, its founder, Michigan philosopher Alvin Pantinga argued that “[t]o create creatures capable of moral good, [God] must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.”
This is the standard approach most philosophers use to explain the existence of evil: to be good, we need to be able to choose good. If we can choose good, then we must also be able to choose evil. Thus God must allow evil to give us the opportunity to choose good.
By the way, Eastern philosophy does not struggle with this problem. To them, the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful, person-like God is absurd. The Buddhists, for example, speak little of God, focusing instead on the nature of suffering. The Hindus have a complex array of spiritual forces in constant competition. Overall, however, most Eastern philosophy focuses on getting in touch with the unseeable, unknowable universal power that connects us all. That’s the basis for meditation, for example. Easterners don’t bother to try to anthropomorphize God the way we do.
Like the economists predicting arrogantly that no new life-changing inventions are imminent, western philosophers who try to put God in the box of our limited language are guilty of the same hubris. As the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 2 (verse 11), “ [f]or who knows a person’s thoughts within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
Inherently, we are creatures of our culture. Logic, like math and language, are all creations of our limited human mind. All of us have experienced the problem of having a thought we had trouble expressing with words. Imagine how much harder it must be to express the unknowable Almighty? Our capabilities are simply not up to the task.
Rather than argue that the logical conundrums of philosophical inquiry suggest there is a God problem, perhaps we should instead consider that there might be a people problem. Perhaps we need to consider the possibility that our minds are simply not up to the task. Maybe we need to approach the idea of God with a little humility.
Perhaps the description we have of God as an all-knowing, all-powerful father (or mother) figure is nothing more than an analogy to help us understand the incomprehensible. I believe that after we die we will be reconnected with the Infinite, that which connects us all. We may call it God, others may call it Karma, or Yahweh, or something else entirely. But these are just human names for something that is completely beyond our experience.
All scholars have had the experience of realizing how little you know. Indeed, the more you learn, the more you realize how limited your knowledge is. Astronomers see no conflict between making scientific observations of the universe while harboring a sense of wonder at its power and beauty and a sense of humility before its infinite nature. Perhaps philosophers seeking to explain God with our limited human tools need an injection of the astronomers’ senses of wonder and humility. They are certainly appropriate in any consideration of the Almighty.
By the way, Ecclesiastes Chapter 8 verse 7 says “[s]ince no man knows the future, who can tell him what is to come?” This is a verse the economists predicting the end of innovation should keep in mind.
If you liked this post, you might also like: | https://greinerou.medium.com/is-there-a-god-problem-73e08583ead4 | ['Michael Greiner'] | 2019-04-05 01:34:57.005000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'History', 'Theology', 'Christianity', 'God'] |
Predictive Equipment Failures | Predict down hole or surface failure in pump jacks
Table of content:-
1: Introduction
2: Detailed Business Problem
3: Existing Solution
4: My approach
5: Details of data
6: ML Formulation of business problem
7: Data per-processing
8: Exploratory Data Analysis
9: Performance Metric
10: Challenges
11: Feature Engineering
12: Feature Selection
13: Modelling
14: Result
15: What worked and what didn’t worked
16: Best Model In Production
17: Conclusion and Future work
18: Learning
19: Reference
20: GitHub repository
21: LinkedIn Profile
1: Introduction:-
We would be predicting equipment failure of pump jack(Mechanical system used for crude oil extraction), using data provided by sensors.
In USA 80% of wells are stripper well(Oil producing well, that produce 10 to 15 barrel oil per day),
Companies use these stripper wells for earning high profit , because they need less investment and give high returns.
These wells account for 19% oil production of USA(Source:- https://nswa.us/stripper-wells/)
Image Source:- Wikipedia
Please refer this video for more information(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Dpd52pfp0)
2: Detailed Business Problem:-
Company named ConocoPhillips has posted a kaggel problem (https://www.kaggle.com/c/equipfails/overview) . In this they have given us data of 107 sensors .
When ever there is failure of any equipment in down hole or on surface, company has documented sensors data along with region of equipment failure(done hole or surface)
Using these sensors data we have to predict, the region of failure. If failure has happend on surface then workers could solve the problem on surface, if failure has happend in down hole then, workers can pull the down hole equipment to surface and solve the problem.
This prediction would help workers in quickly identifying , where has the failure occurred and without wasting time in diagnosing both down hole and surface, they could directly reach to the problematic area.
This in turn safe time and would increase oil production.
3: Existing Solution:-
In existing solution for this problem, XgBoost performs the best with
0.9937 f1 score.
4: My approach:-
This competition has been closed, we can’t get result from test data set.This is why we can not compare the result in this blog to result in kaggle competition.
I will do detailed EDA, Feature Engineering ,Feature selection and will use all the metrics that is helpful in this type of problem
I will be using many ML model like logistic regression, KNN , SVM , Naive bayes , Decision Tree, Random Forest, GBDT and Stacking Classifier.
5: Details of data:-
They have given data of 107 sensors
100 of them is static sensor
7 of them is dynamic sensor, these sensors contains 10 histogram bins
total features = 100(static sensor) + 7(dynamic sensor)*10(bins) = 170 features
Using these features we need to predict that where the equipment failure has happened, under ground(down hole) or on surface
Down hole failure is signified by target value = 1
Surface failure is signified by target value = 0
6: ML Formulation of business problem:-
This is a binary classification problem.
Problem statement:- We need to predict , where the equipment failure has happened , down hole or on surface
Real word constraints:-
We do not have strict time constraint, but our model should not take more than few minutes to give result.
If probabilistic value is given then good, else it is not very necessary
Cost of miss-classification is high, because if miss-classified time would be wasted in wrong place, and this will decrease the profit of company
Interoperability is not important at all.
7: Data per-processing:-
Instead of np.nan values, data have “na”, so we will replace it
It have use less columns like “id”, we will remove it.
Mostly columns are of object type, we will make them float
Raw data
Cleaned data
8: Exploratory Data Analysis:-
Data is highly imbalanced , 1.67% down hole failure, rest is surface failure.
Data Distribution
Using box plot we could see that , data is some what separable , but there is lot of outliers
Univariate analysis of highly correlated feature to target
Using Pair plot we could observe that many features are highly inter-correlated
Pair-Plot of highly correlated feature to target
Using 3d plot of all the feature, we found that if we use all features ,then model will not be able to Separate both the target.
We might need to create new features to make data set more seperable
3D plot using all the features
By looking at the nan value distribution in both the classes we, could find that there is some information in nan values also. So in feature engineering we would be using these nan values also
%age nan distribution {“Green” : Down-hole , “Orange” : Surface , “Blue” : Total}
Here we could see that , features that are highly correlated with class, they are correlated with themselves also.
We need to remove highly correlated features, because these features do not help in prediction of class
Heat map of highly correlated feature to target
Here few features are highly correlated, few features have very less correlation, and few are negatively correlated with each other. Which is good for model.
Heat map of randomly selected data
9: Performance Metric:-
Since data set is highly imbalanced, so accuracy would not be good metric to use.
We would be using F1 score because it take account of both precision and recall.
10: Challenges:-
There is problem of outliers in the data set.
Too many nan values.
Features are inter-correlated
Highly imbalanced data-set
11: Feature Engineering:-
For each feature create new feature, that tells presence of nan, because nan values also contains some information.
If nan value is there then insert 1.0 , else insert 0.0, in corresponding nan feature of original feature.
nan feature ,corresponding to original feature
Replace nan value with median , because, features have either very low value or very high value.This is why replacing with mean is not sensible.
We have 100 simple sensor, and 7 time based sensor. Here we will extract min, max and mean from those time based sensors.
Featured, time based sensors
We are not removing outliers, because most of the values of class 1 (Down-hole) lies in outliers only.
Box plot of features
12: Feature Selection:-
Remove all the features which are least correlated to our feature(This is simple)
Remove all the inter-correlated feature(This is little complicated)
Function for removing inter-correlated feature
Algorithm of this function:-
Let we have 10 features and 1 target,
2. It will first select highly correlated feature to target, let corr(feature10,target) = 0.95
3. Not it will remove all the features that are highly correlated to feature10, let corr(feature10,feature9) ≥0.9 #Here 0.9 is threshold, but you can change it . corr(feature10,feature8) ≥0.9, similarly corr(feature10,feature7) ≥0.9. then we will remove feature9, feature8, and feature7 from data frame
4. Now repeat step 2nd to 3rd, but this time we, will consider 2nd most correlated feature, and will not touch 1st most correlated feature.
5. Repeat this step until all the features are not considered.
Now in this 3d plot we could see that data is little separable, i.e. more separable than before. Still it is not completely separable, but in higher dimensions, it will be separable.
3d Plot after feature engineering and feature selection
13: Modelling:-
Since we know that our data is highly imbalanced, so we will be using both Random Up-sampling and SMOTE
We Used grid search CV on Gaussian NB, Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Gradient Boosting DT on both data-set i.e. Random Up-sampled and SMOTE.
Gaussian NB and Logistic regression had given worst result on validation set, even after using grid search CV. So we dropped those models from stacking classifier.
In order to get the best result, we used 1 Decision Tree and 2 GBDT in classifier, and used GBDT as meta classifier of Stacking Classifier.
Use best model in Stacking classifier, and get result.
14: Result:-
Train F1 Score = 1.0
Validation F1 Score = 0.8125
Test F1 Score = 0.8222811671087533
ROC curve with AUC scores
Train precision Score = 1.0
Test precision Score = 0.8659217877094972
Train recall Score = 1.0
Test recall Score = 0.7828282828282829
Confusion Matrix
Precision Matrix
Recall Matrix
Just using 70% of total data, we managed to get F1 score of 0.82. Which is pretty good.
15: What worked and what didn’t worked:-
Creating new features from time based sensors, improved the model performance.
Using nan distribution , improved the performance.
No model worked on test data, but GBDT worked on.
Using all model in stacking classifier, degraded the model performance.
Using Probabilistic value of classifiers in stacking classifier didn’t worked at all.
Using features in stacking classifier , improved performance of model.
GBDT meta classifier worked best.
16: Best Model In Production:-
Download the template file, fill the values, then upload that file.
Model in production, upload csv file
Click on “Upload & predict” to get result.
Model in production, with result
17: Conclusion and Future work:-
Thank you soo much for reading till end, I hope you liked my work.
For source code please go to my github code.
For more information or any suggestion please contact me on linked in.
We could improve its performance by following below mentioned techniques.
Use 90% data for training , instead of 70%
Replace nan values using inter-correlated feature, instead of replacing nan with median.
Use LSTM on time based sensors.
try using dense layers network on other features.
Try using create more features from time based sensors, i.e. rate of change of data, number of times mean crossed , checking frequency etc.
18.Learning:-
We have learned how to utilize nan distribution in the data-set.
We learned how to improve model performance from small data, using Stacking Classifier.
We learned how to handle imbalanced data-set
We learned how to Select best feature and how to create new feature from existing feature.
We learned how to analyze 3D plot to see if any model would work on that data or not.
19: Reference:-
20: GitHub repository:-
21: LinkedIn Profile:- | https://medium.com/@shivam.jds/predictive-equipment-failures-525f7570daff | ['Shivam Srivastava'] | 2020-10-11 10:06:58.455000+00:00 | ['Kaggle', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Visualization', 'Imbalanced Dataset'] |
Three simple steps to maximize your job find results! | Struggling to find a job?? Heartbroken because of your current position or paycheck? Take a minute & go through the below.
“98% of job seekers are eliminated at the initial resume screening and only the “Top 2%” of candidates make it to the interview. Fixing the employment market requires helping job seekers become “Top 2% Candidates” who can meet employer’s rigorous requirements and easily hit the “bulls-eye” of employer needs to ensure they don’t make bad hires” says Robert Meier, President of Job Market Experts.
Finding a job can get frustrating with the current increasing demand in the market. But what if you could hire someone to apply for opening jobs for as low as 10$??
You are three steps away:
RESUME/CV: Make sure your resume is up-to-standard to increase your chances for job interviews. Experts are here to help for as little as 10$. Job Search: You might find it easy throwing your CV all over the network pursuing your dream job. But tons of people are doing just the same. Market experts conduct your job search in a way different strategy. They use their referrals and connections to ensure you get to the next level of a job interview. And do not be scared of the bill… It is far cheaper than you expect. Job Interview: Never go unprepared to a job interview, even if it was on call on video call. You need your answers ready and structured to impress your interviewer. One of the common cons of a job interview is the stress you face that block your knowledge and speech when you most need it. Search the Web, and train to master any upcoming interview or else more, get experts help. Professional help is highly recommended to overcome your evaluation. Search the Web, and train to master any upcoming interview or else more, get experts help.
Click the links above for what you require first and join simply with your Facebook or Google account. Good Luck!!
Disclaimer: The goal of this article is to be a helpful resource for job searchers but yet do not hold any guaranteed results as per the viewers expectations. | https://medium.com/@elb-hani/three-simple-steps-to-maximize-your-job-find-results-3a84141c0b4 | ['Hani El Baba'] | 2020-12-15 12:42:45.509000+00:00 | ['Resume Writing', 'Job Search', 'Job Interview', 'Job Interview Preparation', 'Jobsearchstrategy'] |
9 Qualities of a Reputable Digital Marketing Agency | As far as reputation is concerned, not all virtual advertising corporations are at the identical stage. As a rely of reality, if you don’t hire a good enterprise, you could now not be capable of attain your preferred results. Digital advertising is of paramount significance in your online presence. Therefore, we suggest that you search for a sincere company to cowl your wishes. Read on to find out greater.
1. Great People
Every authentic business enterprise has a excellent group of professionals. They have specialists in numerous fields, together with income, analytics, social media, copywriting, pay-according to-click on, seek Engine Optimization, programming, and web design, simply to call some.
2. Good Communication
Open conversation is quite vital for a healthful partnership. A appropriate service company constantly continues in contact with their customers so as to speak about the information of work. Therefore, we suggest which you hire a company that offers terrific communique.
3. Flexibility
The international of virtual advertising has been converting with the passage of time. Therefore, we recommend that you companion with an employer that remains tuned to the cutting-edge traits. In different phrases, make certain that the carrier issuer is acquainted with the brand new technology. This manner the advertising organisation will be capable of defend and reply to the modifications.
4. Creativity
Good virtual marketing companies constantly welcome sparkling and unique ideas. Therefore, you want to work with a partner that believes in putting trends, not just following the present tendencies. In other phrases, the provider issuer have to be progressive with regards to social media campaigns, search Engine Optimisation, and net layout.
5. Ability to Execute
Although it is the detail of creativity that enables a service provider stand out, we cannot deny the significance of the ability of executing the ones thoughts. Therefore, it’s far vital which you ask the business enterprise how lots time they require to deliver on their promises.
6. Problem-Solving Skills
Without any doubt, troubles may surface every now and then. But if the carrier provider is solution-orientated, coping with these problems could be less difficult for them. In different words, they could fast pick out capacity issues and discover answers.
7. Analytics Tools
A precise virtual advertising and marketing employer includes out competitive analysis and keyword research. Therefore, they realize a way to use Google Analytics information with the intention to discover regions that require development. Apart from this, they make certain that the patron is aware of what those strategies will do to their enterprise.
8. Measurable Results
Every digital advertising agency does the whole lot to achieve the favored effects. Before you associate with an agency, make sure you recollect testimonials and case research to discover how they help their customers acquire fulfillment.
9. Online Presence
Make positive that the website of the virtual advertising enterprise is often up to date. The agency has to have a good ranking in seek consequences. After all, you can’t rent an corporation for managing your Facebook page if their Facebook page does no longer exist.
Long tale short, we suggest which you look for these traits when hiring the offerings of an amazing virtual advertising business enterprise on your commercial enterprise. | https://medium.com/@digitalthousend/9-qualities-of-a-reputable-digital-marketing-agency-e9439517f288 | [] | 2021-12-25 03:27:38.592000+00:00 | ['Blog', 'Digitalthousend', 'Digital Marketing', 'Digital Marketing Agency'] |
Ask a pro: “Which programming language should I learn?” | In job ads, technologies are mentioned to give an idea of what kind of software development is being conducted. So, jobs ads don’t directly answer the question of what you “should” learn.
The industry has learned that programmers, ideally, are communicative problem solvers and quick to learn. Our suggestion is: pick a modern language suitable for what you want to do, and learn this language well. Then you can tell a recruiter that you’re a skilled user of that particular tool. Such skills and understanding of programming fundamentals likely give you the capability to adapt to other tools.
Java and Python are widely used languages. They’re commonly taught at trade schools and universities alike. If you learn one, we dare to say that it’ll be easy to pick up the other. There are lots of beginner friendly resources available for both and you can get offered a junior developer position with either.
Never stop learning
So, you know Java or Python. What’s the next stepping stone? We think that could be JavaScript, which has little to do with Java, other than bizarre branding decisions made in the 90s.
Nowadays, JavaScript is an industry standard for in-browser apps and server side backends, which can help bring a sense of unity to complex codebases. However, JavaScript hands beginners numerous fine opportunities to shoot oneself in the foot.
JavaScript is being developed at a breakneck pace, and it can be tough to find learning materials that are both good and up to date. The opposite is true for more stable languages, like Java and Python.
What’s more, JavaScript is versatile and offers several ways to do things, especially when compared to Java. Useful as this is, it can be confusing for beginners, which endangers the goal of always understanding what code and examples thereof are trying to accomplish.
Know when it’s time to get the latest toys
Say you know a few languages. At this point, the next step to broaden your horizons is to try out different paradigms computer science has to offer. In other words, start taking advantage of the clever tricks specific languages have up their sleeves.
We’re talking about techniques like object-oriented programming, in which data is defined as objects and can be manipulated with methods and functions, and functional programming, when a function is fed input, and then outputs something. Examples of functional languages are Haskell and Clojure.
Languages offer different paradigms, and it’s not always feasible to say that one is superior to another. On the contrary, it’s advantageous to understand how computation can be performed in vastly different ways.
Conclusion
To sum things up: whichever language you pick first, stick with it for a bit. Put your mind towards really grasping the fundamentals of programming and then some. You can save a lot of trouble by picking up a second language that’s similar to your first.
When you truly are productive with your first tools, look for new things. JavaScript is a good candidate thanks to its wide use on the market. But remember, any single language in itself isn’t what really sets your CV/resume apart in the long term. The industry changes rapidly and employers looking for capable programmers want people who like learning new tools and solving hairy problems.
When you’re fluent in two or three languages, it’s time to approach them with an analytical approach. What are their differences? Which distinguished techniques are offered by each language? The internet is jam-packed with information and discussions about programming. Checking up on that talk is as important for programmers as medical journals are for physicians.
That’s it! Good luck, and remember to have fun.
This question was answered by Jan, Jussi, Herkko and Juhis.
“Ask a pro” is a blog series in which Kodan’s experienced developers and designers answer your questions. Want to pick the brains of the people digitizing the world around us? Submit your question here. | https://medium.com/the-kodan-blog/ask-a-pro-which-programming-language-should-i-learn-fc8bcebe55d | ['Ville Yli-Knuutila'] | 2018-05-29 14:20:36.884000+00:00 | ['Information Technology', 'Development', 'Software Development', 'Programming'] |
How to get started with Data Science in 2020? | When one wants to start learning Data Science, the first thing that comes to one’s mind is how to get started? This blog addresses this very question and as the saying goes,
A good start is half done.
One can have the following questions in their head when starting to learn Data Science:
Do I need to learn to code?
How much mathematics should I learn?
Which language to choose — Python or R?
This blog will help you with answering these questions and get started with Data Science.
Overview of Data Science
1. Choose a Language and stick to it
A difficult question which one faces in getting hands-on is which language should you choose?
This would probably be the most asked question by beginners.
The gist is that you start with the simplest of languages or the one with which you are most familiar with. If you are not as well versed with coding, you should prefer GUI based tools for now. Then as you get a grasp on the concepts, you can get your hands-on with the coding part.
Python and R are both great choices as programming languages for data science. R tends to be more popular in academia, and Python tends to be more popular in the industry, but both languages have a wealth of packages that support the data science workflow. We generally recommend Python.
You don’t need to learn both Python and R to get started. Instead, you should focus on learning one language and its ecosystem of data science packages. If you’ve chosen Python (our recommendation), you may want to consider installing the Anaconda distribution because it simplifies the process of package installation and management on Windows, OSX, and Linux.
Google Colab is a great resource for beginners to start coding in Python. Besides delivering us from all the installation blues, it provides great computing power and that too for free.
2. Maths
Let me put this in the most direct way possible: no matter how much time and effort you devote to it, you can never know enough math to read through all the Data Science literature. Different parts of Data Science use a variety of esoteric math.
Our advice is to do it the other way around (top-down approach), learn how to code, learn how to use Python (Pandas, sklearn, Keras, etc..), get your hands dirty building real-world projects. A beginner’s way to learn math for Data Science is to learn by “doing stuff.” So we’re going to tackle statistics, linear algebra or calculus by using them in real algorithms!
THEN, you’ll start to see the bigger picture, noticing your lack of theoretical background, to actually understand how those algorithms work, at that moment, studying math will make much more sense to you!\
3. Join a peer group
Why is this important? This is because a peer group keeps you motivated. Taking up a new field may seem a bit daunting when you do it alone, but when you have friends who are alongside you, the task seems a bit easier.
The most preferable way to be in a peer group is to have a group of people you can physically interact with. Otherwise, you can either have a bunch of people over the internet who share similar goals, such as joining a course and interacting with the batchmates.
4. Take up a Course and Complete it
There are hundreds of courses out there which make things even worse as one finds it very difficult to choose the best one.
NEVER dive into a course simply because of the fancy and catchy titles. The main objective should be whether the course clears your basics and brings you to a suitable level, from which you can push on further. Once you’ve shortlisted a few courses that suit your needs, check out their respective reviews (very important!) by others before you pull out your wallet and get enrolled.
When you take up a course, go through it actively. Follow the coursework, assignments and all the discussions happening around the course. Now you have to diligently follow all the course material provided in the course. This also means the assignments in the course, which are as important as listening to the lectures. Only doing a course end to end will give you a clearer picture of the field.
Hope you find it useful.
If this blog helped you in any way, then do Follow and Clap👏, because your encouragement catalyzes inspiration for and help to create more cool stuff like this. | https://medium.com/international-school-of-ai-data-science/how-to-get-started-with-data-science-in-2020-56aeeeb90401 | ['S Satya Venkatesh'] | 2020-01-08 05:20:01.391000+00:00 | ['Getting Started', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
Why $ ERRROR? | “ Legend has it that some developers, tired of continuous scams, wanted to create a token to scam others in return, but something went horribly wrong …
During the deployment a big mistake occurred and the token became irreversibly honest and fair. OMG!
It was too late for the evil developers, as they had already renounced the ownership and burned the whole LP, so $ ERRROR was now driven by the community.
For ever and ever. “
$ ERROR was born from the desire for redemption. To date, the BSC has become a lottery for even the most experienced investors, for noobs is actually more like a wishing well.
Scams are becoming the norm and we hear more and more people saying
phrases like “I lost everything, it was scam, what a bad luck”.
They are resigned to this as if everything is normal.
For us it is not at all. It’s not about “bad luck”.
We are born as a token aimed at creating a tokenomic base to be used as the final goal for the creation of an advanced web platform that combines human skills and abilities with the power of an algorithm in order to identify a potential scam with a user friendly interface and in a therefore simple way.
This will be possible by crossing social data, keeping a history of scam-wallet and their interactions and solidly verifying contracts to identify obvious vulnerabilities such as honeypots and directly hard-coded scams.
$ ERRROR works like a classic speculative token but with the intention
of retaining holders for a greater purpose. In addition, an intermediate step could include a public help and sharing group for novice crypto investors and more, which provides the skills of expert figures always with the aim of minimizing scams.
ERRROR Dev team | https://medium.com/@errror/why-error-7d350a2275d8 | [] | 2021-06-08 08:18:13.129000+00:00 | ['Token Economy', 'Bsc Token', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Bsc', 'Errror'] |
The inhabitants of the Colonoscopycolony share one more great feat: the visit of a camera team to… | The inhabitants of the Colonoscopycolony share one more great feat: the visit of a camera team to their intestines. I recommend abstinence of sedatives. Accept the invitation to watch the show. Your colon is only 80 cm long, but it looks like a labyrinth of several miles. Oh, the glorious moment(s) the team discovers a mushroom, throws a lasso around its stem and rips it out! It can be painful, but the magic of watching the scan of your Bora Bora pays off. And remember: Osama is dead. | https://medium.com/@chriscoolsma/the-inhabitants-of-the-colonoscopycolony-share-one-more-great-feat-the-visit-of-a-camera-team-to-7db943073329 | ['Chris Coolsma'] | 2020-12-19 07:45:24.238000+00:00 | ['Fun', 'Bora Bora', 'Colonoscopy', 'Humor'] |
Design & the military: a love story | Collage by Vittoria Casanova.
By Vittoria Casanova
We usually don’t ask ourselves many questions about the objects surrounding our lives. Aside from the simple function and aesthetics, we don’t think about the object’s history or why products and services, which we use every day, have been designed in the way that we know them. When you think about design, you wouldn’t initially associate it with war. But, looking back at the history of design and invention, it seems that war is the main and most important catalyst for the research, discovery, and implementation of many new solutions and technologies.
The reason might be found in the large amount of funding that governments allocate to military and defense departments. Just to give you an idea, the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), responsible for the development of emerging technologies for military use, has an average annual budget of three billion USD. Yes, three billion per year!
Here are a few intriguing stories about common products and services that have been catalysed by war.
The grandmother of the Internet was called ARPA, short for Advanced Research Projects Agency. Its initial purpose was to enable researchers to communicate and share knowledge and resources between university computers over telephone lines.
ARPA was born during the Cold War when the US was worried about the Soviet Union destroying their long-distance communications network. The US urgently needed a computer communications system without a central core that could be used wirelessly and remotely. Which would, therefore, be much more difficult for enemies to attack and destroy.
ARPA then started to design a computer network called ARPANET, which would be accessible anywhere in the world using computing power and data. “Internetworking”, as scientists called it, presented enormous challenges as getting networks to ‘talk to each other’ and move data was like speaking Chinese to someone who can only understand Turkish. The Internet’s designers needed to develop a common digital language to enable data sharing but, it had to be a language flexible enough to accommodate all kinds of data, even for the types that hadn’t been invented yet.
The Internet seemed like an extremely far-fetched idea, near impossible to design. But, in the spring of 1976, they found a way. The Internet went from being an obscure research idea to a technology that’s now used by over 4.2 billion people. And, it took less than forty years.
The Global Positioning System, commonly known as the GPS, also has its origins in the Sputnik era.
The idea for the GPS emerged in 1957 when American scientists were tracking the launch of the first satellite, a Russian spacecraft called Sputnik, to orbit Earth. They noticed the frequency of the radio signal from Sputnik got gradually higher as the satellite got closer, and lower as the satellite moved away. This was caused by the Doppler Effect, the same effect that makes the ambulance siren increase or decrease as it moves away or towards an observer. This provided great inspiration: satellites could be tracked from the ground by measuring the frequency of the radio signals they emitted, and, in return, the locations of receivers on the ground could be tracked by their distance from the satellites.
Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, are another great example. These are aircraft with no onboard crew or passengers, which can be either automated or remotely piloted. The initial idea first came to light in 1849 when Austria attacked Venice with balloons that were loaded with explosives. While few balloons reached their intended targets, most were caught in change winds and were blown back over Austrian lines. From there, it was clear that better aerial technology, which could be controlled remotely, was desperately needed.
Last, but not least, a simple item that we use very often: tape. Duct tape was originally invented by Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical division during WWII for the military. The soldiers specifically needed a waterproof tape that could be used to keep moisture and humidity out of ammunition cases. This is why the original duct tape only came in army green.
Many more examples can be found in various other mundane products: microwaves, digital cameras, superglue, canned food, and penicillin, just to name a few.
It’s also interesting to see that these military-born technologies can even be found in three of our INDEX: Award 2017 winners: Ethereum — a decentralised digital network, commonly referred to as Internet 2.0; what3words — a new GPS system using three-word address; and Zipline — a medical supply delivery chain using drones. But, let’s hope that in the future we won’t need to rely on war for more great solutions to emerge. | https://designtoimprovelife.medium.com/design-the-military-a-love-story-99dd58b8b40f | ['The Index Project'] | 2018-11-28 08:56:35.429000+00:00 | ['War', 'Technology', 'Design'] |
Washing Machine Buying Advise | Washing machines have become as inevitable part of our household appliance and selecting the right one for yourself can be a task.
Getting to select a washing machine in India will depend on your ability to analyze some factors and things to consider before a buying machine
Best Washing machine comparison which are below ₹20,000/- shared Brief Info is shared below to help you take decision buy best Washing machine which suites your budget and family.
Washing machine best company are recommended are LG, Samsung and IFB
1. Washing machine company name is LG
LG 7 kg 5 Star Inverter Fully-Automatic Top Loading Washing Machine (T70SKSF1Z, Middle Free Silver, TurboDrum)
₹17,490.00/- To Buy Click Here or Click https://amzn.to/3eekRMK
a) Fully-automatic top load washing machine: Affordable with great wash quality, Easy to use
b) 5 Star Energy Rated Model : Best in class efficiency
c) Capacity 7.0 Kg : Suitable for families with 3 to 4 members
d) Manufacturer Warranty: 2 years on product and 10 years on motor (T&C)
e) 700 RPM: Higher spin speeds helps in faster drying
f) Wash Programs: Normal, Pre Wash+Normal, Gentle (Wool/Saree), Quick Wash, Strong (Jeans), Tub Clean/Aqua reserve
g) Also included in the box: 1 Washing Machine, 1 Anti Rat cover, 1 Owner’s manual, OT Hose, Drain Hose, QRG, Detergent Powder(200gm Packet)
h) Smart Inverter Technology: an energy saving technology and it’s revolutionary water proof motor doesn’t corrode and is the most durable one in its league
i) Spl. Feature: TurboDrum, Tub Clean, To sterilize the inner and outer tub for preventing unpleasant smell of tub, Smart Cleaning, Child Lock, Smart Diagnosis, Normal Pulsator, 3-Step Wash
Fuzzy Logic Control, Stainless Steel Inner Tub, Cold Water inlet, Memory Backup, Auto Balance System, Auto Restart, Standby Power Save
2.Washing machine company name is Samsung
Samsung 7 Kg 5 Star Inverter Fully-Automatic Top Loading Washing Machine (WA70T4262GS/TL, Imperial Silver, Wobble technology)
₹18,490.00/- to Buy Click Here or click https://amzn.to/3H0Tou3
a) Fully-automatic top load washing machine: Affordable with great wash quality, Easy to use
b) Capacity 7.0 Kg: Suitable for families with 3 to 4 members
c) Energy Efficient Model comes with 5 star rating
d) Product Warranty: 3 years on product, 12years on motor
e) 680 rpm: Higher spin speeds helps in faster drying
f) Number of wash Cycle -6
g) Pulsator, air turbo, monsoon, super clean, soak
h) Also included in the box: 1 Washing Machine, 1 Anti Rat cover, 1 Owner’s manual, 1 OT Hose, 1 Drain Hose
i) Special features: digital inverter technology, wobble pulsator, magic filter, eco tub clean, diamond drum
3.Washing machine company name is IFB
IFB 7 Kg Fully-Automatic Top Loading Washing Machine (TL RES Aqua, Light Grey, Smart Sense,3D Wash Technology)
₹17,990.00/- To Buy Click here or Click https://amzn.to/3Fh6QcZ
a) Fully-automatic top load washing machine: best wash quality, energy and water efficient
b) Capacity 7 Kg: suitable for a family with 3 to 4 members
e) Energy rating: 5 star — best in class efficiency
f) Warranty: tri shield protection: 4 years complete machine warranty, 10 years motor warranty,10 years spare part support
g) 720 rpm : higher the spin speed, lower the drying time
h) Wash programs: 8 wash programs
i) Drum / Pulsator type : Triadic Pulsator — 3 Vane
j) Key features: 3d wash system, lint tower filter, Aqua Energies
Special features: aqua energies, 3d wash system, load sensing, auto imbalance system, program memory backup, high low voltage protection, child lock
Conclusion :
LG : ₹17,490.00/- To Buy Click Here or Click https://amzn.to/3eekRMK
Spl. Feature: TurboDrum, Tub Clean, To sterilize the inner and outer tub for preventing unpleasant smell of tub, Smart Cleaning, Child Lock, Smart Diagnosis, Normal Pulsator, 3-Step Wash
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Follow and Like my Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/fashionable_beauty_world/ | https://medium.com/@khadbhai/washing-machine-buying-advise-3f84c19a9ffa | ['Zrtech Global'] | 2021-12-21 10:39:16.732000+00:00 | ['LG', 'Samsung', 'Washing Machine', 'Washing Machine Review', 'Ifb Washing Machine'] |
Joe Biden Did It! The Era of Divisive Politics is Over! | Joe Biden Did It! The Era of Divisive Politics is Over! TaraElla Follow Nov 7 · 3 min read
Welcome back to TaraElla TV. The news is in: Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the 2020 US Presidential election by basically all the major media outlets. Congratulations are streaming in from around the world, from leaders in Canada, Britain, Australia, India, and more. In other words, Biden did it! Biden won, like I told you he would!
You see, I sort of see this as a personal vindication. The story goes back to 2017. Back then, Trump’s victory had created a crisis of worldview among many people. Seriously, that’s where it got to for many people, I’m not even exaggerating. I mean, I never liked Trump, but some people’s response was way over the top. Anyway, Hillary loss somehow led some people to be convinced that the Western world we knew was coming to an end, and that some kind of extreme response was needed. I remember telling people back then that Biden would represent the Democrats in 2020, and he had a very decent chance at winning. After all, Hillary ran an embarrassing campaign, she ran on identity politics that turned off many everyday working people, and these were weaknesses that Biden wouldn’t have. Anyway, my friends, as well as people out there on the internet, wouldn’t believe me. They thought they had to produce something like a big counter-response to Trump, something that would almost certainly be just as shocking and divisive as Trump himself.
Fast forward to the beginning of the Democratic primaries in 2019. Out of the 25 options, Andrew Yang was my favorite, but Biden was definitely in the top 3 or 4. But while people would be interested in me talking about Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie, or even Pete Buttigieg, they often got turned off by Biden, to the point that I had to sort of avoid talking too much about him. You know, all I wanted was a uniter. By that point, I had seen too much division and polarization, and I was seriously committed to being above the whole left vs right thing. Saving the social fabric was the first priority, because only that way would Enlightenment liberal values be preserved. I thought that, if the Democrats produced another divider, it would be worse than just having Trump, because instead of just one divider there would be two dividers. And if one divider was already causing so many headaches, two dividers would be unimaginably bad. So I would only support a uniter. The uniters in the field included Yang, Gabbard, Buttigieg, Booker, Bernie Sanders, and yes, Joe Biden. I remember thinking that Kamala Harris was divisive back then, but she has since improved a lot, and I like that.
Anyway, I remember that people on the Left, in particular, were saying how Biden couldn’t win. He was too old-fashioned. His politics of consensus was so 20th century. He didn’t have all the exciting big plans like Elizabeth Warren. He didn’t speak well. It turns out that they were wrong. They were out of touch. Biden always led in the polls, and while the expected landslide didn’t come, Biden got a pretty decent victory, rebuilding the Blue Wall in the midwest as well as potentially taking out red states like Arizona and Georgia. Where Hillary failed to connect with the common working family, Biden succeeded. That was what was most important. Everyday working families don’t like dividers, after all. Many people who tuned out of the 2016 race, because both Trump and Hillary were dividers, finally found a candidate they like this year, in the uniter Joe Biden. | https://medium.com/taraellas-liberal-conversation/joe-biden-did-it-the-era-of-divisive-politics-is-over-c409d7d10461 | [] | 2020-12-24 16:07:44.338000+00:00 | ['2020 Presidential Race', 'Politics', 'Joe Biden'] |
Build Twilio Autopilot Chatbot for SMS and Whatsapp using Python | Autopilot is a conversational AI platform offered by Twilio to build, train, and deploy artificially intelligent chatbots, Conversational IVRs (voice-driven phone menus), and Alexa skills using natural language understanding and machine learning.
This blog contains a step-by-step tutorial to create your first virtual assistant with Twilio Autopilot.
Prerequisites:
1) You need to sign up for a Twilio account or sign into your existing account. You can sign up for a free Twilio trial account here.
2) Install Flask, you can install it using the following command:
pip install Flask
3) Install ngrok.
1) Create a bot
Once you have logged in to the Twilio, and if it’s your first time, you need to select few things including the programming language(select python), then it will take you to the Twilio console (i.e. dashboard), select the three dotted circle from your left hand as shown in the figure.
Now select the AutoPilot option from the menu as shown below.
Click on “Build a bot” option from the left panel as shown below.
Trending Bot Articles:
You will see some pre-trained templates on the screen, you can even use those templates to build your project if it fulfills your requirement Here we will create a bot from scratch, for that scroll down, and select the “start from scratch” option.
Provide name to the bot and select the “create bot “ option.
2) Create task for your bot
Once you have created a new bot, you will see the below like screen, which has some predefined task. We will create a new task, for that click on the “Add a task” buttons.
Provide the task name and then click on the “Add” button to create a new task.
Now we will add the training phrases, for that click on the “Train” option of the booking task, as shown in the figure.
Add the training phrases which the user can use to invoke the task, add minimum 8 to 10 sample data as shown in the figure.
3) Unzip the package
Now unzip the package in some folder and run the following command in the terminal
Open new terminal and run the ngrok on port 5000
ngrok http 5000
Now copy the https url from the ngrok screen as shown below.
4) Changes in the bot and code file
Go back to the Twilio, select the “program” option of the booking task as shown in the figure.
Now remove the default code and copy and paste the below code over there as shown in the figure.
Where “https://ae54546f.ngrok.io” is the ngrok address, you need to paste the address which you get on your terminal with /dynamicsay.
Once you have changed the code, now “Save” it and then “build” the model.
You need to make change in the code file named “dynamicsay.json”, change the ngrok URL in that file with your ngrok address as shown below.
Stop the flask app and again run it using the following command
Testing
Now come back to the Twilio, and select the “Simulator” option from the left-hand side menu.
Initiate the conversation using “Hello” followed by the “booking”, bot will continue to ask you some questions.
Twilio Programmable SMS
1) Go to your Console Phone Numbers page.
2) Now buy or select the phone number you want to use for your Assistant, we already had a number, hence we have selected it. If you don’t have a number you can select on the “+” icon to buy a new number.
3) Once you click on the number, you will see the below like screen.
4) Now scroll down the page to the Messaging Section as shown below. In Messaging Configuration select Webhooks, TwiML Bins, Functions, Studio, or Proxy option, and fill the URL in the following format https://channels.autopilot.twilio.com/v1/<ACCOUNT_SID>/<ASSISTANT_SID>/twilio-messaging.
If you are not been able to find the URL see step 5 & 6, otherwise continue with step 7.
5) Go to your Autopilot bot, Select the “Channels” tab from the Assistant menu, From channels select the “Programmable SMS” option.
6) You will get the Messaging URL, copy that, and paste it in the URL section.
7) Once you have entered the Messaging URL, now SAVE the setting as shown below.
8) Now send the SMS from that number, you will get the response.
9) If you face this error “Permission to send an SMS has not been enabled for the region indicated by the ‘To’ number:” then please enable the relevant permissions on your account using the Messaging Geographic Permissions page.
10) If you face this erorr “ The ‘to’ phone number provided is not yet verified for this account.” then please add that number in the Verified caller IDs from this page.
Twilio AutoPilot with WhatsApp
First, we need to set up the sandbox:
Set up the Sandbox
1) Follow these step-by-step instructions for setting up your Sandbox of the WhatsApp console menu. When you click on the link you will see the below like screen. Save the number in your cell, and send the code as a whatsapp message on that number.
2) Once you send the code as a message in the whatsapp you will see “Message Received” on the screen.
3) Once configured, you can see all the configuration details in the Sandbox page of the WhatsApp menu. You’ll need these for the next set of steps.
Connect Autopilot to the Sandbox
Once you have successfully configured your Sandbox, you’ll need to connect it to your Autopilot Assistant.
1) Go to the Autopilot menu in the console and click into the Assistant you want to connect to WhatsApp.
2) Go to the Channels tab in the Assistant Menu and select WhatsApp.
3) Copy the URL displayed in the Configuration tab. This is the callback URL used to send incoming messages to your Assistant.
4) Go back to the Sandbox page in the WhatsApp console menu. Paste the callback URL where it says ‘When a message comes in’.
5) Now scroll down to the page and Save it.
Test
Now that you have WhatsApp configured it’s time to test!
1) Open the WhatsApp app
2) Tap into the chat window with your WhatsApp bot
3) Send your first message, you should get a response from Autopilot, as shown below.
Feel free to comment your doubts/questions. We would be glad to help you.
If you are looking for Chatbot Development or Natural Language Processing services then do contact us or send your requirement at [email protected]. We would be happy to offer our expert services. | https://chatbotslife.com/build-twilio-autopilot-chatbot-for-sms-and-whatsapp-using-python-4808dc9a90d8 | ['Pragnakalp Techlabs'] | 2020-12-29 15:46:00.178000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Chatbots', 'Bots', 'Chatbot Development', 'Dialogflow'] |
OMNI Whitelist on Apollo-X | OMNI Whitelist on Apollo-X
The Apollo-X team is excited to announce that the OMNI IDO whitelist event opens at 1 pm UTC on Wednesday, July 14! We know the community is fired up for this launch, but you’ll have to be quick — the whitelist staking event is only open for 24 hours.
The whitelist event is less than 24 hours away, so let’s run through the essential details of the inaugural whitelist staking event on Apollo-X.
Key Details for the OMNI Whitelist Event:
Whitelist staking event commences — 1 PM UTC on Wednesday, July 14
Whitelist staking event closes — 1 PM UTC on Thursday, July 15
Number of $OMN tokens available — 10,000,000
Token launch price — $0.02
Combined offering value — $200,000
Initial circulating market cap — $189,700
Once you’ve staked your PAID tokens in the appropriate pool, you have a chance to join the whitelist. Staking occurs on Ethereum, and the staked tokens are locked for 14 days, so you can’t use them to participate in other Apollo-X or Ignition pools during that time.
$OMN tokens are issued on Binance Smart Chain, and payment for the IDO occurs during the OMNI Launch Party on July 16th at 1:30 pm UTC. Pools open during the launch event, so make sure you attend the event to secure your token allocation.
The only form of payment accepted is $BNB, so you’ll need to fund your associated Binance Smart Chain account to participate in the sale.
If you stake $PAID but miss the launch event, your tokens remain staked for 14 days. Once the whitelist is confirmed, you still need to join the OMNI Launch Party before the $OMN token listing to pay for your tokens, or you’ll miss your allocation.
Make sure you KYC by July 14th at 1 PM UTC, or you will not be able to join the IDO.
If you are KYC’d for Ignition, your KYC will work on the Apollo-X platform. If you haven’t completed the KYC, you can sign-up over at PAID Network.
About the Staking Pools
Users can only participate in one pool per event, and pools are filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. Duplicate KYC’s or attempting to circumvent the rules may lead to disqualification from this or other subsequent events.
Here are the pools:
X-traterrestrial: Any wallet/user that stakes at least 1500 $PAID tokens will be eligible to enter into this pool. This pool will contain a total of 2 million tokens. 500 dollar allocations will be available for this pool.
Any wallet/user that stakes at least 1500 $PAID tokens will be eligible to enter into this pool. This pool will contain a total of 2 million tokens. 500 dollar allocations will be available for this pool. X-ponential: Any wallet/user that stakes at least 750 $PAID tokens will be eligible to enter into this pool. This pool will contain a total of 5 million tokens. 350 dollar allocations will be available for this pool.
Any wallet/user that stakes at least 750 $PAID tokens will be eligible to enter into this pool. This pool will contain a total of 5 million tokens. 350 dollar allocations will be available for this pool. X-ploration: Any wallet/user that stakes at least 500 $PAID tokens will be eligible to enter into this pool. This pool will contain a total of 3 million tokens. 250 dollar allocations will be available for this pool.
The pools open at the same time and close when each pool is filled. We will announce on our social channels as this unfolds.
About Vesting
The public sale will be vested.
Participants receive 34% of their tokens on TGE on July 16th
An additional 33% directly from OMNI one month after TGE
And the final 33% directly from OMNI two months after TGE
OMNI IDO Summary
IDO Staking Event Launch: July 14, 2021, at 13:00 UTC
IDO Whitelisting Event Launch: July 15, at 13:00 UTC
IDO Launch Party: July 16th, 2021 at 13:30 UTC
Staking Pool Chain: Ethereum
Token Issue Chain: Binance Smart Chain
Allocations to be paid in BNB
Ticker: $OMN
$OMN tokens available for sale: 10,000,000
Price per $OMN: $0.02
Allocation sizes per ticket: $250, $350, and $500
Vesting: 34% on Redeem on Apollo-X, then 33% monthly for 2 months directly from OMNI.
Step 1 — Sign up and stake your tokens
We recommend you sign up on Apollo-X ahead of time, so you can be logged in with your wallet connected before the staking pool opens.
Simply go to apollox.paidnetwork.com and click to sign up:
2. Fill in the required information and submit the form
3. Verify your email address
Just before the launching of the Staking on Apollo-X, when the staking pools open, participants must:
Log in, if you haven’t already Connect your Metamask ERC-20 wallet and ensure “Ethereum Mainnet” is selected in your Metamask as your primary network. This must be your account where you are holding your Ethereum PAID Tokens.
3. Navigate to the project launch page by clicking on the project’s box on the homepage.
4. Choose your pool and click “Stake PAID” button
5. The Staking Pool pop-up will appear — The appropriate amount of PAID tokens you would like to send to the staking contract will appear as indicated by your pool selection. Next, click “allow Apollo-X to use your PAID”
6. A transaction will appear asking you for permission for Apollo-X to spend your PAID. Confirm that transaction and wait for it to complete.
7. Once that transaction is complete, you will have to stake your PAID. Staking your PAID does not guarantee you will be whitelisted. Once staked, you will not be able to change your tier. Tokens remain staked for 14 days. You must be present at the time that the whitelist opens to secure your allocation. Click “Stake PAID.”
8. Metamask will prompt you to confirm the transaction. Confirm, and you will see your status change to “staked.” This is not the last step. You must return when the countdown stops to ensure you are whitelisted.
Step 2 — Confirm your Whitelist Position.
1. When the pools open up, and the timer expires, return to your dashboard and sign in with your account and the Ethereum account from which you hold your tokens. Click on the pool you joined in the staking event previously.
2. Once the timer has expired, click join whitelist and confirm the transaction.
3. Once you join the whitelist your metamask will ask you to sign the transaction. THIS IS NOT an onchain transaction and will not require gas, it is a simple security check for our system
4. Once whitelisting is confirmed, you will be able to see your confirmation, and you will be ready to pay for your allocation when the window opens during the launch party on July 16th at 1:30 PM UTC. The exact time will be announced during the event.
Step 3 — Pay for your tokens during the launch event
When the launch event goes live, everyone will have a chance to pay for their tokens. The exact time will be announced at the event. You have secured your allocation at this stage but must make payment before the listing on PancakeSwap, or you will not be able to participate in the event or purchase tokens.
Make sure this time you sign in to your Binance Smart Chain Wallet associated with your PAID Ethereum wallet. Ensure you have $BNB in your wallet for the associated payment amount at the time of the IDO. If you are unsure how to add Binance Smart Chain to your Metamask, you can follow this article to learn more.
1. Return to the pool page and click “Join Pool”
2. Next, enter your allocation size into the window and then simply click “Join Pool.”
3. Confirm the transaction. Do not attempt a double transaction. If your transaction is taking a while, speed it up through your Metamask as required. Initiating a second transaction may cause a double spend, neither PAID Network or Apollo-X will be held responsible for any costs incurred.
4. After the listing and the announcement, you can return to the platform to claim your tokens.
IDO launch on Apollo-X FAQ
We want everyone to be able to participate in each Tier-1 IDO on the platform successfully, so here are a few things PAID token holders should remember:
Make sure to sign-up on the Apollo-X Platform before the IDO or any subsequent staking or payment events. The moment the whitelist lottery opens, you will be asked to stake your tokens. These tokens will remain locked-up for the duration of 14 days and will not be available for other pools or the Ignition platform. You may only join one pool. This process is first-come, first-serve. Once you have secured your spot by staking, you cannot join another pool from the same project launch. You are encouraged to continue HODLing your tokens. Whitelist opportunities will appear on Apollo-X all the time, don’t miss out, HODL those PAID tokens. You will be given ample notice before the 1st pool opens. Please ensure you follow our social media and Telegram Announcement Channel. Make sure you have your PAID tokens in your account well ahead of the launch event. Pools will likely fill up quickly. Make sure you have Binance Smart Chain Setup with your Metmask and ensure that you have adequate BNB to make your purchase.
IMPORTANT
*For applications to be considered valid, all applications must pass PAID Apollo-X’s KYC process, and adhere to each project’s specific KYC requirements and country restrictions which vary per project on a case-to-case basis. OMNI restricted KYC countries include The United States of America.
**Please note we will strive to meet our expected pool opening times, however, should any changes occur we will update all Golden Ticket holders and the community well in advance. Please follow our Twitter or Telegram Announcement Channel closely. Thank you!
***There will be no financial compensation offered to any user who experiences a double pay issue with their IDO participation. Any double pay incidents will not be reimbursed by the IDO project or PAID Apollo-X. Please use caution when submitting transactions on the Apollo-X platform to avoid this issue., taking care to send only one transaction per participation pool.
****Please note that for any unforeseen difficulty or failure on the part of the third-party provider Synaps to provide timely KYC services is solely the responsibility of Synaps, and not PAID Apollo-X or its IDO projects. No compensation of any kind will be offered for errors or difficulties with using the Synaps platform. Please prepare your KYC well in advance, to minimize the chance of unforeseen issues.
About OMNI
OMNI is Not Just an App. It’s a Mega App: A social media platform that encompasses all the best features of the top social media platforms that are already in existence. Features such as short-video sharing on TikTok, content sharing on Facebook, photos sharing on Instagram, e-commerce on Shopify, messaging and calling on WhatsApp, and channel creating on Youtube.
OMNI is an all-in-one platform that brings together all the unique features of the top social media platforms in one place. OMNI users will also get the opportunity to earn rewards as they increase engagement on the platform. The rewards will be provided in the form of OMNI Coins, which can further be used for various purposes. OMNI will be a mega app that is full of world-class tools and features.
Connect with OMNI on:
Website | Twitter | Medium | Telegram
About Apollo-X
Apollo-X is a featured product of PAID Network, operating as a decentralized swapping protocol that allows blockchain-based token projects to offer their private and public auctions. The platform features Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and here shortly, Polkadot functionality.
Apollo-X is different from other auction platforms in that it properly vets and selects only top-tier cutting-edge projects. Its multi-level incentivization mechanisms for participants of published projects will encourage HODLing that supports both the project founders and the community. It isn’t just a trading platform, it FUELs projects and takes fundraising to the next level.
Apollo-X brings quality projects, fixed swaps, and equitable lottery participation to the PAID community.
PAID Apollo-X Platform : Apollox.PAIDNetwork.com
For any questions for Apollo-X, please feel free to reach out to us on:
About PAID
PAID Network seeks to redefine the current business contract, litigation, and settlement processes by providing a simple, attorney-free, and cost-friendly DApp for users and businesses to ensure they #GetPAID wherever they are in the world.
PAID technology leverages Plasm to operate on both Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems. PAID makes businesses exponentially more efficient by building SMART Agreements through smart contracts in order to execute DeFi transactions and business agreements seamlessly.
For any questions for the PAID network, please feel free to reach out to us on: | https://medium.com/@apollo-x/omni-whitelist-on-apollo-x-60f5e02640d4 | ['Apollo X'] | 2021-07-15 08:18:02.310000+00:00 | ['Ido', 'Creators', 'Creator Economy', 'Blockchain', 'Investing'] |
Black Moon Lilith and Being Too Much | Black Moon Lilith and Being Too Much
Understanding and unleashing this astrological archetype.
Photo by Jonas Zürcher on Unsplash
Astrology is an ancient school of thought running deeper than Sun signs and horoscopes. There are many aspects, celestial bodies, and archetypes to explore. My favorite symbolism to explore is Black Moon Lilith. Discovering her energy was a total game-changer for me. Lilith’s symbolism runs deeper than just astrology. She’s present in various myths, legends, and mystical teachings. Let’s explore what exactly is Black Moon Lilith, her story, and how we can unleash this energy.
Technically Speaking
From a technical perspective, Black Moon Lilith is the Moon’s apogee, which essentially means she’s the Moon’s orbit’s farthest point from the Earth. Essentially Black Moon Lilith isn’t a celestial body. Instead, she’s a point in the sky, and she’s the deepest distance the Moon travels from the Earth.
In western astrology, the Moon represents our feminine nature. It’s connected to the water on our planet and governs the water within us. These are our emotions, feelings, and intuitions. Black Moon Lilith represents where we have pushed those aspects away.
She’s the Moon’s farthest point from Earth. She represents the repressed divine feminine energy on this planet and within each of us.
Lilith is the one we call “too much.” In our societies, we witness many ways that being a full expression of ourselves invites in shame or exile. Too big. Too skinny. Too fat. Too loud. Too promiscuous. Too uncovered. Too confident. Too wild. Too much. Too powerful. -Excerpt from Analogies, Energies & Celestial Bodies
Setting Her Free
Throughout history, patriarchy and masculine energy have dominated humanity. However, recent astrology transits are re-writing the story.
This year Mars retrograde connected with Black Moon Lilith, symbolizing an unleashing and reclamation of our personal power. In Spring 2021, Black Moon Lilith will align with Uranus, the planet of revolution, illumination, and evolution. These transits are unleashing Black Moon Lilith’s energy and bringing change on a massive scale. We are all invited to reclaim the power of our innate feminine natures, regardless of our gender.
Black Moon Lilith is no longer forced to stay tucked away behind bars. Now is the time for her to get loud and proud. Black Moon Lilith is our primal force, she’s creation itself. Anyone who has given birth knows how messy it can be.
Black Moon Lilith doesn’t want to stay neat and tidy. She gets her hands dirty and feels all that life has to offer. She wants us to embrace all of our emotions, feelings, and intuitions; because the sensitivities the world has taught us to shut off are turning back on.
As we connect to our emotions, we receive fuel that can propel us forward. Black Moon Lilith is that primal force of creation, and she wants to move through each of us.
Where are we holding her back?
Where are you holding yourself back?
Where are we hiding our feelings and emotions?
Where are you stopping yourself from feeling?
Now is the time to proudly pour those emotions out.
When we acknowledge our feelings and validate ourselves, we are no longer looking to others to fulfill our needs. Black Moon Lilith’s symbolism is sovereign. She follows her instincts and trusts herself. That’s why she is a threat to the systems of Earth. She doesn’t trust the external world because it’s shut her away for so long. Instead, she lives in the hearts of the fearless, including those who are brave enough to admit they are scared.
She doesn’t need us to be perfect; she loves a hot mess when she sees one. For centuries Black Moon Lilith has been told that she’s too much, too loud, too big, too skinny, too open… the list goes on and on.
If you’ve ever been told you’re too much, now is the time to know this was never your fault.
Black Moon Lilith is the archetype that has been erased from the mainstream narrative because she shakes up the status quo. She’s the one who is angry, chaotic, and even volatile. At times she wants revenge because of all that she’s experienced.
More than anything else, she is here to tell you to bring all of yourself to this world. That you are not too much, you are more than enough. She loves your intensity, and she wants to support you through your grief. She invites us to feel it all and realize that those emotions are fuelling our passions.
According to Black Moon Lilith, being “too much” is a good thing, and getting messy is worth celebrating.
To find out your Black Moon Lilith style, look up what sign she was in when you were born here. | https://medium.com/making-sense-of-the-universe/black-moon-lilith-and-being-too-much-a53d735fd411 | ['Shannon Hugman'] | 2020-12-30 15:08:18.615000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Self', 'Mindfulness', 'Self-awareness', 'Astrology'] |
JS Shorts — Bind | The bind() method creates a new function that, when called, has its this keyword set to the provided value followed by the arguments of the function.
In simple words, if we want to provide a value for this keyword to any function tied to an object or a class, we use bind() . If these functions are called without binding them to a scope, they would be called in a global context, ie the window object.
Syntax:
let boundFunc = func.bind(thisArg[, arg1[, arg2[, ...argN]]])
Consider the below snippet,
The above code produces undefined as an output. This is because setTimeout receives person.getName as a callback function. The callback is executed in a global scope after the timeout hence the value of this.name is missing.
One way to fix this problem is to pass in a separate function as a callback and invoke person.getName() inside it, so that the getName function is called with person as a scope.
The other way to fix this problem is to simply use bind with getName and assign the person scope to it.
Both these approaches work because we are providing a scope to the getName function. Both of these snippets produce John Doe as an output.
This was function bind in its most basic form. We can also use this to invoke methods of one object with other simply by binding it.
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
— That’s all for today | https://medium.com/@iamprakharjaiswal/js-shorts-bind-993ead31fd6f | ['Prakhar Jaiswal'] | 2020-11-14 12:29:11.935000+00:00 | ['Bind', 'JavaScript', 'Javascript Development', 'Javascript Tips'] |
Christmas 2020 | I hate this month like a dumped ex-lover who’s still completely in love
ID 60452853 © Photopassjonata Dreamstime.com
I hate this month.
I hate it like a dumped ex-lover who’s still completely in love
Like I hate desserts when I’m on a diet
Like I hate everyone who was invited to the party when I wasn’t.
I hate this month with its mock social calendar of virtual events
That I fake my way through (with background Zoom tree)
Smiling and laughing
Part of an online party when I’m really alone
And I can’t get that out of my head.
What I DO get out of my head as quickly possible is each day
Carefully scraping weeks and months out of my memory as I go
Through this year that has surpassed all the other years I believed were the worst.
I hope to remember nothing of 2020.
But as awful as this whole year has been I hate this month
Because December is my very favorite and contains all my favorite things
Except for now.
If I’m among those who live another year, I’ll celebrate next December
with all the friends I didn’t get to see
and all the food I didn’t get to eat
and all the decorations I didn’t have the heart to put up
and all the joy I don’t feel now,
If 2021 gives me that chance. | https://medium.com/@reginarm/christmas-2020-2e187ade06cc | ['Regina Rodríguez-Martin'] | 2020-12-22 21:32:56.313000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Coronavirus', 'Loneliness', 'Christmas', 'Depression'] |
3 Ways To Get A Little More Life Out Of Your Computer | 3 Ways To Get A Little More Life Out Of Your Computer
Putting a little structure around the tech in your business can have a huge impact on productivity and profitability.
TECH STRETCH ARMSTRONG
There are many reasons why you might want to get a little more life out of your computer.
You’re in a cash crunch.
You’re trying to be nice to the environment.
Or, you’re just not ready to upgrade your computer.
Whatever your reason, here are 3 ways to get a little more life out of that computer of yours.
CLEAN THAT DISK
One way to bring some life back into your computer is to clean up your hard drive.
It’s a simple do-it-yourself process that doesn’t require you to downloading any weird apps from the internet.
Safety tip — Don’t ever download a cleaner app from the internet. (never ever!)
Now on Microsoft Windows 10, there’s a built-in tool named Disk Cleanup.
You can run it as is or jump to the More Options section and do more stuff like deleting old restore points and remove applications.
Next, take a look at the list of programs you have installed on your computer.
If it’s an app you don’t use anymore or just used once.
I’d recommend that you get rid of it.
Now on to the next step.
CLEAN THAT COMPUTER
Yes, even computers need cleaning.
Dust build-up can do things like cause your computer to run hotter.
And running hotter means running slower.
Depending on your skills you may want to take your computer to shop to clean or if you’re a DIY kind of person, grab yourself a can of compressed air from your local hardware store and while you’re at it, grab a vacuum cleaner.
If you have a desktop computer, remove the case cover and carefully vacuum out any dust and build-up you see.
Then finish it off with some compressed air.
Make you’re doing this in a well-ventilated area — like outside.
If you have a laptop, grab that compressed air and blow out the blow-holes.
And while you’re at it, blow out all that dead skin under the keyboard.
And last but not least.
KICK IT UP A NOTCH
I hesitate to recommend this last step but what the heck.
Another way to get a little more life out of your computer is to upgrade it.
The 2 things you should consider upgrading are the hard drive and memory.
If your computer has an older hard drive you’ll want to upgrade to a solid-state hard drive.
Obviously, there’s a cost involved in upgrading the hard drive but if it gets you another 12 to 18 months of life that would help.
The other item would be to add some memory.
Memory is fairly inexpensive and can be popped in or swapped out fairly quickly.
THE LAST MILE
If these 3 options don’t work for you then it’s likely time to suck it up and buy a new computer.
One last thought for you and this is the Big Think.
Ideally, if you’re managing the tech in your business effectively you’ll have a Life Cycle Replacement Plan in place.
With a Life Cycle Replacement plan in place, you’ll ideally have new expenses budgeted.
And if all of the stars are aligned, you’ll be replacing your computers as they round that last mile of life.
Of course, all this takes a little planning and forethought.
Putting a little structure around the tech in your business can have a huge impact on productivity and profitability.
The key is having the right technologist in your corner.
Happy computing!
🌴 | https://medium.com/getyourtechright/3-ways-to-get-a-little-more-life-out-of-your-computer-677efaf249ef | ['Rob Leon'] | 2020-11-30 18:02:41.383000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Computers', 'Get Your Tech Right', 'Small Business', 'Managed Service Provider'] |
Let us Discover Why Logo And Branding Are Two Different Things | We have always seen this debate in the marketing world over the same issue repeatedly. People often consider logos and branding to be the same thing. They are pretty different and have their separate existence in the context of marketing. They are indeed pretty closely related but have their own distinctive working process. A custom logo design has to be the first thing that the customers see in a business, and this is why it has to be designed flawlessly.
On the other hand, a brand does not have an image. It is the thought that people have in their minds regarding a business or company. How do they think about it, and how do they see it? This is what a brand is called. A logo only helps the branding to be effective because it can be visually seen and memorized, something that a brand can not do.
For us to better understand the concept regarding a custom logo design and a brand, we must comprehend what they mean individually.
The Definition Of Logo
It is a graphical aspect of a company that the customers can easily recognize. It helps them distinguish a business from its competitors in the market and appear unique. We have typography, imagery, colors, and symbols gathering together to make a logo. How it can convey the right message to the customers is pretty impressive. Also, it is pretty memorable if made using the aspects that portray what it stands for.
People remind themselves of the businesses and companies with the help of their logos. Also, a logo is always created after researching the market to ensure a fine outcome. Every aspect of a logo is responsible for portraying its connection with the business.
The Definition Of A Brand
When someone mentions a business that we have already heard about, we often create an image related to us in our minds. That image does not exist in real life, but we do have one because of how we view that business. Anything that the business does from its services and products creates an idea of what type of brand it is.
Many people create an emotional connection with the business, and it triggers every time they come across it. Here it is essential to know one thing that the business or the company we think about must have a pretty good personal recognition in the market. If enough people do not know about a business, it can never be considered a brand. Everyone has a different picture of what do they consider a brand is, but it is so necessary that most people know about it. Depending on how they view the entity, they can even get a sense of luxuriousness or elegance.
How Are Logo And Brand Two Different Things
A logo designing is a process where the logo designers design the logo according to the customers and business requirements.
Branding is what we know to build a brand from scratch. Here the strategies are made where it is seen how the customers can learn about a company. What the company does, what it sells, why it is special, and why you must prefer it over others. The branding focuses on reaching more customers and getting them to learn more about the company. There are many to build a brand, all those falls under the big umbrella of branding.
There are various ways of how a business can build its brand and make it quite popular with the customers. Once the brand is made, it always helps the company or the business stay at the top, only if they continue to maintain quality. Here are some of the core ways of building a brand.
• Advertisements and Communication in the market through magazines, TV, radios, websites, outdoors, and ads.
• The design and packaging of your products.
• The sponsors of the company and its partners.
• How well are your prices compared with the market?
• The in-store experience counts.
• How good is your customers’ service?
Why Logo Is Considered Such An Essential Aspect For The Branding Purposes
A logo is one of the elements for branding, but still, it is the most involved aspect when it comes to the customers and stakeholders dealing with your business. It glares back at your customers through your uniforms, stationery, websites, stores, products, and brochures.
It is undoubtedly one of the top-notch graphic elements that instantly empower customers to memorize the business. This is why it often becomes the only thing that the customers use to identify any business in the market. This is another reason why people so many times confuse it with the company’s brand.
Below, you will realize why and how a well-designed logo is so crucial for the business’s branding.
• With the help of a well-designed logo, the customers can easily recall your brand.
• The fact that the logo is a strong visual element of your business makes it more apparent to create an emotional attachment with the customers.
• It makes the business looks professional and credible to the customers. This is one of the essential aspects of branding. A professional logo is always more trustworthy and helps the customer identify the business as a reliable entity.
• Today there is tough competition in the business, and with the help of a great logo, you can have your business distinguished. This way, it becomes easy for your customers to identify you to draw towards the business you have.
The instant people have a look at your custom logo design, they must understand what it is that it does. This way, the logo becomes pretty effective in portraying the role of the business in the market.
Conclusion
You may want to consider getting the services of a logo animation company to have an animated logo. These days they are sky-rocketing in the market, and they are pretty appealing. The importance and value of a well-designed must never be underestimated. It can do wonders beyond what we imagine. | https://medium.com/@patriciaberry333/let-us-discover-why-logo-and-branding-are-two-different-things-3e2ff931dea3 | ['Patricia Berry'] | 2021-12-10 14:21:29.144000+00:00 | ['Animation', 'Logo', 'Design', 'Logo Design', 'Custom Logo Design'] |
Why The Pitch Deck Can Make or Break Your Deal | Spoiler alert, the pitch deck has more to do with what you say vs what you show and there are a few ways to get your prospect to remember what you say.
Your marketing team has spent countless hours developing your company’s pitch deck. There are awesome graphics, custom-designed slide templates, the thought leadership slide, problem/solution statement slide, etc., and even a special architecture slide tailored to how your solution works. While all that is table stakes, the unfortunate reality is your prospect has seen some variation of this type of deck every single day for the last two weeks. So how can you be impactful and stand out at the same time?
It’s typically best to kick off with the industry trend slide. This allows you to provide your point-of-view on the problem and gives you an opportunity to engage with the prospect to better understand if they agree with your perspective on the emerging trend. If they do, you’re headed in the right direction. If they don’t, you have a lot of education ahead of you but now you know where you stand so you can navigate appropriately moving forward.
The problem slide is typically next. This is pretty boilerplate in terms of the content but this is usually your first opportunity to pepper in what I like to call “seed planting” statements. Basically, it’s the concept of dropping in very specific, very targeted subliminal messages that you can circle back on towards the end of the presentation to ensure the prospect is understanding the message you are trying to deliver and thread the message together in a cohesive and logical manner. Below is one example as it relates to your competition within the problem slide but you’ll want to compose such statements throughout your presentation.
My favorite method for combating an internal build is a seed planting statement like “while eliminating the pain associated with this is important, it’s not a competitive advantage.” Most everyone studied the advantages of specialization in economics 101 so it’s easily relatable and most often, it’s a logical conclusion. This sounds like a statement you’d make during the competition slide but you actually want to make it during the problem slide. By planting this seed early, you can revisit it later in the competition slide. When you reach that part of the presentation, you can say “remember when I said it’s not a competitive advantage” and then expand on this train of thought with “therefore you shouldn’t build and manage this yourself. You should outsource this to a specialist; whether us or not.” That triggers the prospect to mentally revisit the earlier slide in their head and now draw a connection to why they shouldn’t even consider building this internally and consider you. The trick with these “seed planting” questions is subtlety. If you go for the jugular early in the presentation, you run the risk of a typical salesperson on a typical sales call. But if you take your time and thread logic with rational conclusions, then you’re tying everything together in one cohesive story.
Now, around this point of the presentation, you either show a slide of how your solution works or jump into a demo. This is the ideal time to drop in “seed planting” statements. It’s important to note, I’m not referring to questions here; questions are essential of course and are part of the presentation but for the context here we’ll focus on statements.
Here is where you make declarative statements about your solution or company. You want to highlight specific features that either you do super well or you know your competition doesn’t do at all. Not only will this help focus the prospect on one of your superpowers but it’ll plant the seed for when that eventual question comes toward the end of your meeting, “so, how are you different than XYZ company.” Now, you can reference back to something you showed during the demo which makes it much more tangible and real vs a spatted off list of features you have logged in your head.
Here’s a favorite of mine, during the demo highlight a feature that is unique to you and drop the statement “as you can see, we’ve built a lot of functionality in here over the years and this is only possible because we focus 100% of our time on this and will continue to do so.” Not only are you telling the prospect that you’re specialized in this area of expertise but your subliminally suggesting that your product will continue to improve year over year with or without you as a customer. Now your prospect is asking themselves, “do I want to hitch my cart to a wagon that will grow and get better independent of me or not.” Most of the time they do want to hitch their wagon to the company growing the fastest and improving their product quicker than anyone else in the market.
I hope these few examples were helpful. Again, the idea here is you want to drop in statements that allow you to circle back towards the end of the presentation and during the Q&A to tie everything together. You’re not doing this to trap your prospect or set them up but instead using this tactic to bring logic and cohesiveness to the overall presentation. If you can successfully do this, not only have you clearly communicated why your solution is the best — you’ve also won the respect of your prospect as someone they want to do business with. Thus, why the pitch deck can make or break your deal.
Bonus tip: always send a draft agenda to every confirmed person for the meeting ~24 hours beforehand to solicit feedback on the agenda and give them permission to change or add to that agenda. Make sure this is a one-to-one (vs one-to-many) communication. You want to do this for two reasons. A) it helps to understand what each individual cares about and gives you an opportunity to prepare for such topics and B) it allows for feedback and that is a signal they’re interested. | https://medium.com/@csurdi/why-the-pitch-deck-can-make-or-break-your-deal-c62f4ba00734 | ['Chris Surdi'] | 2020-12-18 03:35:21.041000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Sales', 'Silicon Valley'] |
Abortion In America: The Facts | Abortion In America: The Facts
There is a great deal of opinion on abortion and the recent restrictive Alabama law. My goal here today is to shove these opinions to the side and simply look at the science behind reproduction, consciousness, and what constitutes life. I’m not focusing on religion because religion is subject to interpretation and therefore subjective. I will lay out the facts here. Let’s begin.
First Some Definitions:
Embryo- An unborn or unhatched offspring in the process of development, in particular a human offspring during the period from approximately the second to the eighth week after fertilization (after which it is usually termed a fetus).
Fetus: An unborn offspring, from the embryo stage (the end of the eighth week after conception, when the major structures have formed) until birth.
Life- An organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction
Consciousness- The state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought
The Facts On Human Reproduction
These are the essential characteristics of human reproduction according to Brittanica, “ 1)liberation of an ovum, or egg, at a specific time in the reproductive cycle, (2) internal fertilization of the ovum by spermatozoa, or sperm cells, (3) transport of the fertilized ovum to the uterus, or womb, (4) implantation of the blastocyst, the early embryo developed from the fertilized ovum, in the wall of the uterus, (5) formation of a placenta and maintenance of the unborn child during the entire period of gestation, (6) birth of the child and expulsion of the placenta, and (7) suckling and care of the child, with an eventual return of the maternal organs to virtually their original state.”
The female germ cells are located in the ovary. The male germ cells are located in the testes. Gestation occurs in the uterus of the female. During copulation spermatozoa passes the vagina through the uterus to the Fallopian tube to fertilize the ovum.
The human body develops from a single cell produced by the male and female gamete. There are three stages to prenatal development. The pre-embryonic stage lasts for two weeks and involves cell division and cell maturity. The embryonic period lasts from the third to eighth week of development. During the fetal period the maturation of organs and tissues occurs and the body experiences rapid development. | https://medium.com/@darrianbroom/abortion-in-america-the-facts-9b523483267f | ['Darrian Broom'] | 2019-06-03 03:16:48.844000+00:00 | ['Statistics', 'Politics', 'Facts', 'Medical Science', 'Abortion'] |
The VPN Epidemic | The VPN Epidemic
Predatory Advertising in Tech
All my tech-savvy readers and YouTube using colleagues, of course cringe, whenever they accidentally end up on a video with a VPN sponsoring. A sponsoring usually not in the form of an traditional ad, but as a spoken endorsement by the creator himself, so my god damn adblocker can’t block it.
And it’s become so many, basically all medium sized youtubers who need to make some money on the platform since the YouTube-adpocalypse, have, at some point, gone down the VPN shilling route. But this is not only a lesson about the problems of having individuals with no formal education in journalistic ethics, oversight or knowledge selling magic beans, but also on how unbelievably uneducated and sheepish the general populous must be, when it comes to technology in general and information security in particular.
So sit down boys and girls, let me be the first and hopefully the last person to explain to you, why VPNs only have very specific use cases and that you shouldn’t even have used it to illegally download Game of Thrones in 2018, let alone to protect your privacy from the government.
What is a public hotspot/your ISP actually able see?
When VPN promoters — excuse me — VPN shills say, a VPN could protect your passwords or the data within web-forms, they are flat out lying to you. It is not the 2000s any more, HTTPS is everywhere. No, and I mean absolutely no serious websites, especially not payment providers or banks have unencrypted websites.
If your connection to a website is encrypted with HTTPS, the amount of data any attacker can see, already drops to almost zero. Leaving out some more sophisticated side-channel attacks, which a VPN won’t protect you against either, realistically, the only thing your garden-variety ISP/VPN Hotspot can see, especially without stepping into some massive legal dark-grey areas, is the IP and Server Name Identification of the server (SNI) you are connecting to. The SNI is probably the more interessting information, since most major websites have a multitude of servers serving their content and an IP address alone therefore doesn’t really tell you much.
The Server Name Identification in a URL
Using a VPN will hide this specific information from your ISP or local WLAN hotspot, but the important problem is…
You are only shifting trust
This is an essential problem with any VPN provider or even hosting your own VPN, just because you start using a VPN, information about your internet usage doesn’t just disappear, the only difference is: Now your VPN provider has it, instead of your ISP or local hotspot.
Information is always “somewhere”
So the question is: Do you really trust some random, unregulated VPN provider more than your ISP? If you are living in an EU country, you are probably infinitely better off trusting your ISP and even if you live in the US or other countries, you are insanely naive if you think there won’t be logs. There are always logs, there is always an disgruntled employee somewhere, always a leak eventually, always some insecure server, switch or appliance, which got stuck on some stupid update without the monitoring catching it. You can’t trust your VPN provider, because, to put it dramatically: Information cannot be destroyed.
What about DNS-Poisioning?
It used to be common practice of ISPs, to redirect non-existing pages (or even existing one, though much less common), to advertising pages of the ISP itself, by manipulating DNS responses. Also some sites may be DNS blocked for legal reasons — some of them for reasons of moral ambiguity like SciHub in Germany. But again folks, it’s not 2010 any more, DNS over HTTPS is at the gate, DNS Sec adoption is gradually growing and in case of simple DNS blocking: Just use another DNS Server, than the one your ISP suggests to you. Almost any major browser or device has the option to change this. While this might be a trigger for the especially paranoid among you, just use 1.1.1.1 (cloudflare) or 8.8.8.8 (google) with HTTPS and you’re going to be fine for all intents and purposes.
Firefox settings for safe DNS
A VPN won’t protect you against government surveillance, especially not from the US Government
I mean did everybody just forget Lavabit? Back in 2013, Lavabit was a security and privacy conscious mail provider, and when the NSA wanted some data about one customer and realised the only way they could do it, was by spying on all of their customers, they, of course, didn’t do it.
Oh wait, they did, they literally grabbed the company by the balls twisted them a few times, dragged them to a secret court hearing without legal representation and threatened the owner with fines of $5000 per day and jail time — funny the things you forget.
The NSA monitored the phones of European heads of state like Angela Merkel, what exactly makes you think, they couldn’t or wouldn’t listen in on some VPN provider, just because it has its seat in Geneva? Besides, it doesn’t even matter, because most government surveillance is actually done at big internet hubs. For example at the DE-CIX in Frankfurt, the German secret service literally wants to put hardware in place, to split the signal within the fibre cables itself, with one stream continuing on their way and the other one going into analysis. The DE-CIX still fights this in German courts, and while there is light on the horizon, the overall outcome remains uncertain.
The BND has officially stated, that it does share this data with its partners (e.g. the US) for non-German citizens, though many in academia have pointed out that reliably making this distinction is likely impossible.
The Ways of your HTTPS-request
An armor won’t protect a monkey
We are all monkeys at our core. Most of the data you leak on the internet and which may potentially be used against you, doesn’t actually stem from the technical aspects of the underlying connections (when using HTTPS).
Ad Networks can track you with cookies, browser exploits don’t care if you have a VPN. VPNs can’t (thankfully) read contents of encrypted pages, meaning they can’t protect you from malicious content. If you download a cracked game and run it, there is a chance it just installs the latest ransomware and contacts its handlers right through your VPN.
There is so much more to online security than Transport Layer Security. You are much better off in terms of privacy, using Firefox with its security settings at maximum and much, much better off using Tor if you actually want to be safe from surveillance.
Advertising Laws in Germany
Let’s come back to where we started, the massive increase in VPN advertisements on YouTube. It’s hard to imagine the usual VPN advertising on YouTube in the old media - in my country anyway, especially in the form in which it is presented on YouTube. And that is because it’s probably violating German law.
Whoever advertises in a misleading manner with the intention of creating the […] appearance of a particularly favourable […] offer through false information will be punished with imprisonment of up to two years or a fine. — Law against malicious competition, Germany
And let’s not get started on Guidelines like 2005/29/EG which forbids advertisement masquerading as information. So the next time your favourite content creators says something like:
Are you like me concerned about people doxing you and stealing your identity? Then you should use the SuperVPN-3000, it protects your online data, detects malware and stops government surveillance!
You tell him:
You shouldn’t, it doesn’t, it can’t and it won’t. Use Tor.
I respect the desire to work on your passion and understand that everybody needs to make money somehow, but false advertising is wrong and can actually be a crime in many countries. Aside from people being juked out of their money, this kind of misinformation can do real harm, when people get lured into a false sense of online security. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-vpn-epidemic-290d5d970e5e | ['Yannik Schmidt'] | 2020-12-18 04:53:57.685000+00:00 | ['Youtube Advertising', 'Information Security', 'False Advertising', 'Online Privacy', 'VPN'] |
Marc Elias — A 21st Century Democratic Carpetbagger | By: Jeffrey Winograd
Post-American Civil War history teaches us that carpetbaggers were northerners who came to the devastated south to reap private gain under reconstruction governments.
Marc Elias is the 21st century version of a carpetbagger who, instead of being vilified, is being touted by the adoring news media and lapdog Democrats as one of America’s foremost election law attorneys.
Make no mistake, Elias fits the dictionary definition of a carpetbagger as an outsider, especially a nonresident who seeks private gain from an area by meddling in its politics.
For those who need reminding, Marc Elias also was the paymaster behind the “Steele dossier” and the architect of the “Vote By Mail” corruption of American electoral values and law. He knows how to bring the big Democratic bucks into a law firm.
Elias Says Facts Don’t Count
Earlier this month, Elias hit the airways via CNN to lambast President Trump for saying the election results were still not final.
“No, [Trump’s] comment is not true and it’s important for the American public to understand this,” Elias said, adding that it is “well past time for Republican leaders to tell the president and the public” that it is over.
“There is no dispute,” declared Elias, who boasted that the Trump campaign has already lost more than 50 lawsuits.
He then lambasted 18 state attorneys general of the Republican persuasion who have been supportive of Trump’s court battles. “This is shameful in a way we have just not seen in our history in recent years,” pronounced Elias.
“There is only one factual side … [and to say otherwise] is a lie through and through,” he said.
However, the very next day a Wisconsin court boldly stated that there are important facts Elias denies exist.
Wisconsin High Court Sets The Record Straight
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in a December 14 ruling on a lawsuit (Mark Jefferson and the Republican Party of Wisconsin v. Dane County, Wisconsin and Scott McDonell, Dane County Clerk) challenging the legal authority of officials in Dane county (home of the city of Madison) and Gov. Tony Evers to allow voters to declare themselves homebound and “indefinitely confined,” thereby evading the statutory requirement of providing photo identification to receive an absentee ballot.
The lawsuit was filed on March 27 and oral argument was held on September 29.
The court concluded that Wisconsin election law holds that only an individual elector — not a municipal, county or state official — can declare himself “indefinitely confined.” In addition, the governor’s Emergency Order #12, which was a response to COVID-19, did not render all Wisconsin electors as “indefinitely confined.”
The respondents in the case, Dane county and the Dane county clerk, argued that the issue presented was moot, in part because the election occurred and Emergency Order #12 had expired.
The court rejected this, stating:
However, even in cases where an issue is moot, we may nevertheless reach the merits of the dispute. We may do so when “(1) the issue is of great public importance; (2) the situation occurs so frequently that a definitive decision is necessary to guide circuit courts; (3) the issue is likely to arise again and a decision of the court would alleviate uncertainty; or (4) the issue will likely be repeated, but evades appellate review because the appellate review process cannot be completed or even undertaken in time to have a practical effect on the parties.”
It should be noted that there were no outright dissents among the seven justices, only two dissents in part. The court majority prevailed.
Judicial Finaglers
So, having clearly stated that what occurred in the state was outside the bounds of lawful conduct, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, also on December 14, ruled in another lawsuit that the results of the vote tabulation cannot be changed.
In a 4–3 ruling, the court turned thumbs down on Trump’s attempt to toss out some 220,000 absentee ballots cast in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the state’s most Democratic strongholds. Declared the majority of justices:
The challenges raised by the Campaign in this case, however, come long after the last play or even the last game; the Campaign is challenging the rulebook adopted before the season began. Election claims of this type must be brought expeditiously. The Campaign waited until after the election to raise selective challenges that could have been raised long before the election.
The chief justice, who dissented, voiced his frustration, stating:
“[The majority] does not bother addressing what the boards of canvassers did or should have done, and instead, four members of this court throw the cloak of (timing) over numerous problems that will be repeated again and again, until this court has the courage to correct them.”
It would seem that in the Jefferson v. Dane County lawsuit, the initial filing was back in March and with oral arguments in the Wisconsin Supreme Court held on September 29, an expeditious ruling would have overcome the claim that the Trump campaign did not file expeditiously.
Facts See Light Of Day
The Epoch Times, a conservative-leaning, staunchly anti-Chinese Communist Party publication, has been doing yeoman’s work in covering the election dispute,
In early December, the newspaper published an “Election Fraud Allegations: Infographic” which contained a litany of allegations that have never seen the light of day in any courtroom, a situation which has immeasurably tarnished the American judiciary at every level.
Extremely disturbing allegations cited in the infographic ranged from batches of pristine ballots in Georgia that were 98% for Biden to ballots counted multiple times in Michigan to backdating of ballots in Detroit.
However, the infographic was just a primer on electoral abuses compared to a document that was recently released.
The Navarro Report
On December 17, Peter Navarro, director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, published a report titled “The Immaculate Deception: Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities.”
The report examined six dimensions of alleged election irregularities in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
As described by Navarro, “Evidence used to conduct [the] assessment includes more than 50 lawsuits and judicial rulings, thousands of affidavits and declarations, testimony in a variety of state venues, published analyses by think tanks and legal centers, videos and photos, public comments, and extensive press coverage.”
A matrix outlining the six allegations as they relate to the six battleground states “indicates that significant irregularities occurred across all six battleground states and across all six dimensions of election irregularities,” the report said.
Elias Unleashes Unprecedented Nationwide Legal Onslaught
As previously reported, Elias, acting under the guise of a lawyerly do-gooder, is the person behind an operation called Democracy Docket.
The website provides a roadmap to its activities, which appear to be funded by the Democratic National Committee and various unidentified deep pockets,
Elias’s name appears on numerous motions to intervene in lawsuits involving 2020 elections in battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Among the names of law firms appearing along with Elias as an intervenor in various state court cases is Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP. Rather impressive as is one of the leading names frequently cited as an intervenor — Seth Waxman, former solicitor general of the United States under President Clinton. There are no indications that he and various associates are participating pro bono. How much do these guys get per hour?
Quite striking is the appearance of an article on the Democracy Docket website titled “How Georgia Went Blue” and authored by none other than the infamous Stacy Abrams, the failed candidate for Georgia governor in 2018. Wrote Abrams:
Legislation and litigation, including lawsuits by the indefatigable Marc Elias, began to chip away at the superstructure of suppression. Consent decrees created cure options for voters who sought to vote by mail. Legislative changes neutered “exact match” and slowed the purges for the time being. Other suits improved voter access and education.
Community investment led to drop boxes in 80% of Georgia counties — a direct rebuke to the weaponization of the U.S. Postal Service. Organizations heralded the best practice of making a plan to vote and then helped Georgians make those plans real.
Chutzpah To An Extreme
Bearing in mind that Marc Elias was the paymaster for the Steele dossier, which he has admitted under oath that he could have stopped in its tracks, he probably didn’t even blush when, on December 21, he published an article titled “Profiles in Cowardice.”
Playing off JFK’s “Profiles in Courage,” Elias mocked 17 of the state attorneys general who participated in the lawsuit brought to the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as 126 GOP members of Congress who supported the lawsuit, labeling them, in Yiddish, “schlimazel” (meaning extremely unlucky or inept).
“[They] were like court jesters, just there to bow and scrape in front of Dear Leader for his amusement,” he wrote.
This comes from a guy who prostrated himself at the feet of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the failed Democratic candidate for president in 2016, and who was a key provider of the funding for the Steele dossier.
Among those who have displayed political courage, wrote Elias, were local election workers and officials “who took pride in the work they did and the elections they ran. They are the real heroes of this election.”
How blessed American democracy would be if Marc Elias were to take his carpetbag full of dirty political and legal trickery and head off. into the sunset.
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This article originally appeared at Un-American Activities — Democrats, Deep Staters & The Fourth Estate (un-american-activities.com) | https://medium.com/@un-american-activities/marc-elias-a-21st-century-american-carpetbagger-53cfdd2cd54 | ['Jeffrey Winograd'] | 2020-12-25 17:21:04.063000+00:00 | ['Trump', 'Democrats', 'Election Lawsuit', 'Election 2020'] |
Zoe | Evening fell hard that night, its blackness descending almost in an instant while I struggled to balance my overdrawn checking account.
I didn’t write that sentence in one shot. I backed up and embellished it several times before it was done. First sentences are important. I hope it grabs you.
The night-chatter of frogs and hum of insects rose in the dark. I didn’t feel their presence until, about an hour after sunset with an orange gibbous moon rising in the east, I pushed back from my computer, ran my hand through my hair, and gave up. I was grateful for their unseen companionship. I had moved out here to the middle of nowhere, Montana to get away from people, but sometimes when the night closed in I could wish for someone to talk to.
I’m ready to set aside the word list. I’ve only used two of its entries, but I don’t need it anymore. I have a character now, not well-developed but reasonably intriguing, and I think I can run with him. I still need the theme, though, to make something happen to our protagonist. A couple of influences come into play here. One is my interest in astronomy. I like to incorporate astronomical notes in my works. The description of the moon is accurate. A moon rising in the east shortly after sunset will be just past full — a waning gibbous — and can appear yellow or even orange depending on the state of the atmosphere. A second influence is a work I’m currently reading in which, near the beginning, a group of friends in a remote cabin are menaced by some strange intruders.
When I first came here, it seemed an idyllic existence. I had no family left, no real friends, not even any colleagues I particularly liked. A failed law student, for twelve years I’d shuffled papers and appointment calendars for a modest law firm in Denver. It paid well enough. If only I hadn’t ended each day feeling like I’d been run over several times by a sixteen-wheeler. Finally I realized the insanity of contenting myself with discontent. I chucked it all — job, condo, everything — and came here to make a living off the internet.
No, I didn’t go off half-cocked. I planned it. I knew what I’d sell, how I’d reap the rewards of placing ads on my websites, even wrote up a business plan. I just hadn’t realized how hard it was to translate plans into reality. And now? Insolvency loomed as large as the rising moon. What I needed, I thought with some desperation, was for some guardian angel to show up at the door.
Yes, I actually thought that. And immediately, the hammering on the door began, followed by a woman’s voice, filled with desperation, calling, “Is anybody home?”
All of this pretty much flowed out. In revision I might change or move some of it, as it strikes me it might be a bit slow. We’ll see what happens. The newcomer was, of course, planned based on the theme, “Stranger at the Door.” I hadn’t originally figured the stranger to be a woman, though. I made her female only when she showed up. One might expect a menacing figure to appear out of the night, but I like to contradict my own expectations from time to time, just to see what happens.
The coincidence was too much. After my initial startle reaction, I stared at the door during a lull in the pounding and only rose when it resumed. I flipped on the porch light and, without removing the chain, opened the door a crack. I’m not sure what I expected to see. A tall, ethereal beauty affixed with white billowing wings, maybe. In fact she was rather small, only five foot five including the thick brown hair she wore in a pony tail. Her dark eyes blinked at me in astonishment or fear. Dressed in a short green skirt and white blouse, she clutched a little white purse before her with both hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”
Feeling like an idiot scared of his own reflection, I undid the chain and eased the door open. “For what?”
“Do you have a land line? I can’t get any reception out here.”
I peered into the night but couldn’t see a vehicle. She must have had car trouble out on the road, I supposed. My cabin was set a quarter mile up a gravel drive. Nobody would walk up here in the dark by choice.
I had to stop there to take my wife for cataract surgery. Seriously, I did. Life doesn’t stop just because you’re writing a story. Later that evening, I continued…
“Yeah,” I told her. “Come on in.” I held the door for her and closed it behind her. While she looked around my spartan one-room, I redid the chain. “Car trouble?”
“Ran out of gas. Stupid of me, but I really thought there would be a gas station somewhere.”
I gave the room a once-over, too, fearing it might be too messy for visitors. The kitchen in the back corner wasn’t exactly choked with dirty dishes, but I hadn’t cleaned it up today. My bed in the opposite corner — a queen because I liked having the space to flop around — was unmade, but didn’t look too disreputable. As it was a warm summer night, I hadn’t lit a fire in the tiny stone fireplace, but uncleaned soot and ash had accumulated there, it’s smell suffusing the air.
“You live here alone?” she asked.
It should have been obvious. “Yeah. Here’s the phone.” I led her back to the kitchen and snatched the device from the table.
She took it and studied it as though she’d never seen one before. “I don’t even know who to call.”
“Family?” I suggested. “A friend?”
She shrugged. “Don’t have any.”
“Me, either.” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. I had no interest in forming bonds, however tenuous. “I don’t suppose you’re a triple-A member?”
There was that shrug again. “I’m pretty hopeless, I guess. I don’t suppose you’d have any gas, like for a lawn mower?”
“Afraid not.” I didn’t bother telling her lawn mowers were of little use in a forest.
She pulled out a chair and sat, sighing heavily. “I guess I’m just stuck.”
Time to quit for the night. Can you tell where this is going yet? Neither can I!
“Don’t worry. I can find emergency service for you online.” My laptop was at the table, too, along with the uncleared dishes from dinner. And lunch. And breakfast. I pushed as much of it aside as I could and sat around the corner from her. “Sorry about the mess.”
Again that little shrug. “I don’t suppose it seems so important when it’s just you.”
“Depends on the day.” I entered the search terms into the computer and got a list of one, a place over thirty miles away. “Here we go. It’ll take them a little while to get here.” I turned the computer so she could see the number.
“Thanks.” She punched the number into my phone and waited. “Hi, I ran out of gas. Could you send someone out?” She listened, then gave our location, then listened some more before signing off with a resigned, “Okay, thanks.” She handed me the phone back. “Three hours.” She glanced at the door, then at the darkness beyond the kitchen window.
I didn’t want company. I came out here to get away from people. Why, I wondered, did she have to run out of gas in front of my place? But I couldn’t send her out into the dark on her own. “You can stay here,” I offered. “I’ll walk you to your car when the time comes.”
She smiled gratefully while objecting, “You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s okay.” Which it wasn’t, not exactly, but strangely I found her presence less of a burden than I would have expected. If nothing else, I’d have an excuse to ignore my financial mess for a few hours. “You want something? Coffee? Tea?”
“Coffee would be nice.” Again the smile, which I found myself returning. “But really, I don’t want to be a bother.”
“It’s no bother.” I got up, flipped on the coffee maker, and took a pair of mugs from a cupboard.
“But you don’t like people, do you? I’m an unwanted intrusion.”
I felt myself flush. Was it that obvious? “I’m a bit of a loner, I guess.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Dead. Their house burned down. Faulty wiring, the fire inspector said.” As the coffee dripped through the machine, I turned to face her. Why was I telling this to a complete stranger? “What’s your name?”
She gave me a coy smile. “What’s yours?”
“I asked first.”
“So you did. No brothers or sisters, I guess?”
I shook my head and turned away. I should have been irritated, but I couldn’t manage it. All I could feel was a deep hollow in the pit of my stomach, an emptiness that had probably been there for more years than I cared to admit.
“No woman in your life?”
“Thankfully not.”
She laughed. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em, right?”
The coffee finished brewing. Forcing a few breaths to steady myself, I poured and brought the steaming mugs to the table. “They can’t seem to live with me. Best you don’t even think about it.”
“Hmm.” She took the mug in both hands and seemed to melt in its warmth. “I’m not thinking anything. You’re the one who called me.”
I watched her drink the whole mug in one long swallow, steam curling about her face, her eyes never leaving mine. “What’s your name?” I asked again.
“Take your pick. I have so many. ”
The encounter had to turn strange at some point, otherwise it would have no interest. Now that it has, I need to take a small break. When I come back, I expect the end will materialize.
She held out her mug as if to ask for more coffee. I hadn’t touched mine yet, so I pushed it to her. “Your real one will do.”
With a nod of thanks, she wrapped her hands around the mug and lifted it to her lips. “Zoe.”
I laughed. “Like the second Doctor Who’s companion? You don’t look a thing like her.”
“She was named after me.” Zoe drank down her second mug in one long gulp, then delicately wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Who do I look like?”
I didn’t know, but something about the shape of her face and the turn of her mouth reminded me a little of my mother. A fragment of anguish rose in my throat and tried to choke me. I forced it back down. “I have a strange feeling you know.”
She held out the mug. “I don’t want to impose, but . . .”
I got up and gave her a refill, which she downed as quickly as the first two. Then, setting the mug gently on the table, she rose. “I should go. If I stay, I’ll run you out out of coffee.”
“Go where? You’re out of gas.”
“Nah, I just said that to get you to open the door.”
I watched her cross the cabin and undo the chain on the front door, then rushed after her. “Wait! I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know what you are!” Reaching her, I put my hand on hers to keep her from turning the knob.
“Oh, so now you want me to stay.”
Her words jarred me as though she’d slapped my face. “Well . . .”
She smiled and enfolded my hand in hers. “For now, that’s enough.”
A moment later, I was standing alone, not remembering when or how she had slipped through the door, or even if she had. She might have dissolved into mist and floated up the chimney for all I knew.
A lot of this was written while feeling my way toward the end. If you think I planned it all, you’re wrong. And I’m still looking for the finish. I know about what it is now, but not the form.
I thought about her a lot in the coming days. I even looked for her online, but with only a first name it was a fool’s quest. Thinking she might live in a town nearby — relatively speaking — I forced myself to go out looking, but to no avail. I talked with servers in mom and pop restaurants, gas station attendants, even a couple of librarians. Nobody had ever heard of Zoe or anyone quite fitting her description. Not with her thirst for coffee, anyway.
Strangely, the further I ventured, the less I craved my solitude. Not that I wanted to abandon it, but I began to discover — or rediscover —that connections had some value after all. I began to wonder if maybe I didn’t need the world at least a little, and if just possibly the world needed me in return.
In short, thanks to Zoe, I’m rediscovering life. It would be hard not to. She isn’t just any woman. I’m convinced of that. She’s . . .
Oh, look it up for yourself.
The end? Yes and no. The end of the first draft. Along the way I’ve done a bit of rewriting, but not so much as I usually do. Normally, I’d rework the story several times before showing it around. What you’re seeing is therefore rough around the edges. I’ll post the final version later, so you can see what changes.
Addendum: The final draft of “Zoe” is now available on Lit Up. You might like to compare it to this first draft. | https://lehket.medium.com/zoe-51989ed3fe63 | ['Dale E. Lehman'] | 2018-08-08 14:28:03.836000+00:00 | ['Writing Prompts', 'Writing', 'Short Fiction', 'Fiction', 'Short Story'] |
Another Facebook Data Dump | The Filipinos are not unfamiliar with their personal data being made freely and publicly available on the internet, and we have the Commission on Elections to thank for that (remember COMELEAKS?). What can you do when the one who is held responsible has gone into hiding with extraditing is not a priority?
Filipinos’ data were also compromised, this time by Facebook, with their Cambridge Analytica partnership. Anybody knows if someone was sanctioned on this scandal? Did Filipino Facebook users get compensated or something? This happened in 2013 and our RA 10173: Data Privacy Act was approved in 2012, but the implementing rules and regulations were only done in 2016 — to my lawyer friends, is this covered by RA10173?
Anyway, this time, Facebook messed up again. A 2019 security breach allowed hackers to collect 533 million Facebook user accounts, of which around 880,000 belong to Filipinos. This data has been made available as of April 4, 2021, for everyone to download… for free! The data contains full name, declared gender, mobile phone number, at the very least — with others having their email address, birthdate, employment details and more. This, for sure, falls within the purview of RA 10173.
I was able to query the data and found the Facebook accounts of family, colleagues, friends and acquaintances. I was able to verify this when I checked their mobile phone numbers in my address book or by asking them (them knowing that they did not give their numbers to me) if their numbers are valid.
There is no easy way to find if your Facebook account is part of the huge data dump, but if your email address is part of it, checking it on haveibeenpwned.com (HIBP) is the best way to check. Unfortunately, if your email address is not part of the data dump, HIBP won’t be able to help you. Just some note, of the 533 million accounts, less than 3 million have email addresses.
If the mobile number you used on Facebook is a publicly available number, i.e., published on your public website or company website, then there is not much to worry. However, if you kept that mobile number available to only a select few, then this is a huge concern. More so, if the mobile number is used for two-factor authentication (2FA) and mobile banking. To add to the complexity, if the mobile number is a postpaid number, then replacing it won’t be that easy. Unfortunately, once the data is out there, there is no way to get it back. (Facebook is not even sorry that this happened, stating that it is an old, 2019, breach anyway).
As of writing, the National Privacy Commission (NPC) has started investigations. One thing is evident — those I have contacted to verify if the data belongs to them were not informed by Facebook in 2019! If I remember correctly, the law specified the number of days that users need to be informed that their data has been compromised, which clearly Facebook violated. Let’s see how NPC will handle this case (will they just slap Facebook’s hand and call it a day, another breach, ho-hum?). If your data is part of the data dump, then file a complaint at NPC to pressure them to take care of you. I jested that if the NPC will penalize Facebook with US$50/account, of which $40 goes to the data owner and US$10 goes to the government, that should give the government USD8.8M, which can buy a lot of vaccines for Filipinos! | https://rom.feria.name/another-facebook-data-dump-d18f5f68b1ad | [] | 2021-04-06 00:08:41.182000+00:00 | ['Philippines', 'Privacy', 'Facebook', 'Npc'] |
Losing Friends Over George Floyd — and Now, Jacob Blake | Losing Friends Over George Floyd — and Now, Jacob Blake
From Instagram Stories featuring unmasked boat parties to grids with black boxes — but no action — Black Americans are developing a clear understanding of who their friends are
Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A week after George Floyd’s death, I took it upon myself to call out my closest White friends who had yet to say anything publicly about the tragedy. By this time in late May, my favorite French band Ofenbach had posted a GoFundMe link for the Floyd family, and Timothée Chalamet was spotted at protests in California. While I’m not impressed by White people deciding to take action in the fight for social justice, I was disturbed by my White friends doing little to nothing, especially since celebrities who never displayed their views before started to showcase them so openly.
Most of my friends just needed a push and to be made aware of how their lack of support and concern made me feel. But others gave me pushback, and I quickly forgot them. It had never been so clear to me that many I once viewed as progressive and caring were complacent and unbothered, causing me to reassess my friendships and romantic interests.
I’m not alone: The death of Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement’s resurgence have provided a new sense of clarity to the Black community about our social circles. Black people have found themselves having tough conversations about advocacy and activism, and gaining new insight into how their friends, peers, and co-workers view their community’s well-being.
Braedon Montgomery, a 25-year-old stylist in Dallas, Texas, told his White friends he didn’t want to talk to them about George Floyd. He was overwhelmed by Floyd’s brutal death and the protests that followed; he wanted space to process everything.
Several friends responded to his request with resentment, and one outright ignored it. This friend attended a protest and insisted on talking to Montgomery about the experience, which was new for him, but not for Montgomery.
“I’m telling him, as a Black person, this is triggering for me,” Montgomery said. “This is a lot for me. I don’t want to talk to you about this. And then it turned into, ‘Well, you’re racist because you don’t want to talk to me because I’m White and I’m out here fighting for you.’”
So Montgomery did something he’s done several times since the 2016 presidential election: He cut ties with the friend.
We have a romantic view of friendship that it can withstand all things, and that “politics” shouldn’t get in the way of a long-term friendship.
“I’ve cut off so many people from high school onward who weren’t in support of movements like Black Lives Matter that, this time around, it was easy,” he said.
As Montgomery recognized, it is valid for Black people to believe that they do not owe their friends, co-workers, and peers anything when it comes to education about race. With resources available online, hundreds of documentaries and films that focus on the Black experience, and lists of books by Black authors populating social media feeds, it is effortless to self-educate.
But, as friends often do, many Black people initially take this form of educating upon themselves with hopes that their ignorant friend will be receptive. Unfortunately, those conversations are not always well received. Cutting off these friendships is understandable and necessary. We have a romantic view of friendship that it can withstand all things, and that “politics” shouldn’t get in the way of a long-term friendship. But racial justice isn’t political — it’s human. And friendship rests on a shared respect of the other’s humanity.
Caroline Joyner, 27, is an account executive in Brooklyn, New York, who grew up in a mostly White town in Massachusetts. Her college was also predominantly White, resulting in a largely White friend group from childhood throughout adulthood. Still, as a biracial Black woman, Joyner has always been openly passionate about social justice. She believed her friends felt the same way since they never had a problem with her speaking up before.
Yet she describes this period of reckoning as feeling different.
“I started to realize that the closer I am to Whiteness, and the more I erase my Blackness, and the quieter I am about these things, the more accepted I am by those communities at large,” she said.
When Joyner reached out to her extended community for support, she was surprised to encounter people trying to rationalize incidents like Floyd’s death and Amy Cooper’s phony cop call.
“I started to feel disconnected from a lot of people. I didn’t feel like I had community in the same way as I believed I did before,” Joyner said.
Frustrated by the lack of understanding and support, Joyner started to use social media to post stories about injustices happening in the Black community and share ways to get involved. But she was disappointed again when she noticed most of the people in her circle did not jump on board.
“A lot of my friends just posted a black square and then didn’t post anything or do anything to begin with, and are continuing on with their lives,” she said.
Since she started using her platform to talk about racial justice, Joyner has noticed she’s been unfollowed by a lot of people who she thought she was close with. Other friends have accused her of being too harsh.
Joyner hasn’t entirely cut off a close friend, but she’s had serious conversations that would have damaged relationships if the feedback hadn’t been received well. When it comes to acquaintances and people in her wider social circle, she is quicker to drop friendships now.
“If you’re saying you care but not really doing anything or actually being open to reflecting on the way that you live, then there’s really no point in us being friends,” she said.
Shasta Nelson, a friendship expert based in New York City, defines a healthy relationship as one where both people feel seen safely and satisfyingly.
According to Nelson, people can bond with those who hold different beliefs and whose lifestyles are completely opposite. But if those beliefs are leading to not feeling seen in a safe and satisfying way, damage will occur.
Black Lives Matter and other social justice issues, she said, are “not even a political thing. It’s actually somebody’s identity in a deeper way than even a political standing, and that’s where we are seeing so many relationships being frayed.”
One 27-year-old New Yorker felt the same way when it came to deciding whether to cut off her dad. Sarah*, who is White, and her dad always disagreed on race and politics, but it wasn’t until the racial revolution during the pandemic that she realized her arguments with him were a lost cause.
“Here’s someone who treats Black people, Latinx people, and queer people differently — I wouldn’t tolerate this from anyone else, so why does my dad get a pass? When the fear, hatred, self-centeredness, and misinformation is so deep-seated, it seems like there’s no hope for education or him to see past his own experience and put himself in someone else’s shoes, so I decided to cut it off,” she said.
Like Sarah, I’ve had to come to terms with letting go of people who once held important roles in my life. The realization that some of the men I’ve dated and friends I spent weekends traveling with are not nearly as progressive as I imagined is not only upsetting but startling. It proves that my vetting skills need improvement; evaluating friends based on whether they are supportive of racial justice efforts is crucial in maintaining healthy, authentic relationships. The only silver lining I can recognize during this movement is the lucid view it created in social circles that were merely surviving off trivial similarities — and thankfully, I’ve learned how to avoid these relationships in the future.
*Name changed to protect anonymity | https://momentum.medium.com/losing-friends-over-george-floyd-and-now-jacob-blake-cfc23ecba497 | ['Brianna Holt'] | 2020-08-26 17:53:38.992000+00:00 | ['Racism', 'Relationships', 'Friendship', 'Race', 'Social Media'] |
Containerize a Go Web Application | Go is getting more and more popular as the go-to language to build web applications. With this post, I hope to show you how you can containerize a web application written in Go.
The App
web application home page
I’ve written a go web application called IP Location Mapper which helps find the location of any IP address. It performs an API call to ipstack.com to fetch the location of the IP address. ipstack.com provides 10,000 API requests free per month.
Once the API request is made, the response is stored in a redis cache with a TTL of 24 hours for faster retrieval and thereby avoid the expensive API call (also remember, we have only 10,000 free requests).
You can clone the repository here.
Get a free api key from ipstack.com
We would need an API key from ipstack.com for this application. You can sign up for free here. Your API key will be available in the dashboard.
Not don’t be cheeky and try to use my api key, I’ve already reset.
Dockerfile
The Dockerfile for the application has comments in each line stating their intent. Run the below command inside the project to build an image tagged as jeshocarmel/ip_location_mapper.
docker build -t jeshocarmel/ip_location_mapper:latest .
The ‘ . ‘ at the end of the command indicates that you are building the image from the current directory. So make sure you are inside the project folder when you run the command.
Compose
Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications.
redis service
line 3 — create a service named redis .
. line 4 — pull a redis image from docker hub.
from docker hub. line 5 — Run a one-off command on the pulled redis image. Here we pass the command to start the redis server with a password from a .env file (explained later).
on the pulled redis image. Here we pass the command to start the redis server with a password from a .env file (explained later). line 6,7 — open port 6379 for application access.
for application access. line 8,9 — pass environmental variable required for this service.
line 10 — run the container with name as ‘ip_location_mapper_redis’.
app service
line 11 — create a service named app.
line 12 — the build represents that this service an image to be built from the current directory (.)
represents that this service an image to be built from the current directory (.) line 13 — the image which has been built to be tagged as ‘jeshocarmel/ip_location_manager’.
line 14, 15 — this service depends on the earlier redis service.
service. line 16, 17 — open port 8080 for web access.
for web access. line 18 — environmental variables for this service are listed line by line here.
line 19 — The redis host which the application needs to store/retrieve data is listed here. In docker-compose you can reach a service by simply mentioning the service name.
line 20 — Pass the redis password we used to start the redis service. This will be loaded from a .env file (explained later). The app will use it for authentication with the redis service.
line 21 — Pass the API_KEY from ipstack.com. This will be loaded from a .env file (explained later).
from ipstack.com. This will be loaded from a .env file (explained later). line 22 — run the container with name as ‘ip_location_mapper’.
.env file
By default, the docker-compose command will look for a file named .env in the directory you run the command. So create a .env file in your project directory and copy lines from the file below. Replace the IPSTACK_API_KEY with your API key from ipstack.
Running the application
docker-compose up --build
Thats all you need to start the application. Go to http://localhost:8080 on your local machine browser and you should be able to see the application up and running.
search result for an ip address
run docker ps in your command line and you should be able to see two containers running.
Next steps
In the next post, I’ll write on how to deploy the application in kubernetes with minikube. | https://medium.com/swlh/containerize-a-go-web-application-2cb2b96527a5 | ['Jesho Carmel'] | 2020-09-29 05:27:22.992000+00:00 | ['API', 'Web', 'Docker Compose', 'Golang', 'Docker'] |
Turn Amazon S3 into a spatio-temporal database! | Turn Amazon S3 into a spatio-temporal database!
OK, full of promise that title, what exactly is possible with S3? Quite a bit, as it turns out. In fact, this article describes how to search n-dimensions using S3. David Moten Jul 2, 2019·8 min read
S3 for storage
S3 is Amazon’s virtually unlimited storage offering. You can store files of any size in S3 Buckets and they will be stored redundantly on multiple devices across multiple facilities in a region. For files that you want to interact with frequently standard storage costs are about 3c (US) per GB per month. If you mark your data for storage in S3 Glacier then the cost is 0.4c per GB per month and you can bring it back to standard status in a few hours if required.
I store vessel movement data from a big chunk of the world’s surface in S3, and I configure older data to move to Glacier automatically. One day may have as many as 27 million records and in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format take up 2.4GB. In fact I store the raw data (AIS NMEA) in S3 and a Java Lambda trigger creates a CSV version.
Random access to S3
One of the things I love about cloud services is discovering sweet spots in terms of cost and capability and I wondered if I could quickly and cheaply query this data set in S3.
It turns out that files in S3 are randomly accessible. I can specify a byte range using a Range HTTP request header and that’s all that will be returned (without a latency penalty).
Random access enables index lookups. If I know approximately where in a file my records are by using an index then I can grab only that chunk of the file and extract the information I want.
How do GIS systems perform spatial queries?
A window query in 2, 3 or more dimensions is a search for data within a box of the same number of dimensions. For example if I have spatio-temporal data for the whole US then a window query might be to find records in a particular suburb of Chicago over lunchtime on a particular day.
Fig 1. A spatio-temporal window query (researchgate.net)
How do GIS systems perform window queries on 2D spatial and spatio-temporal data?
Spatial queries are commonly done with R-Trees which is a reasonably complex data structure. Searching tree structures represented in flat files can mean making a number of random access reads as the tree is traversed. More importantly the reads are serial in nature in that I don’t know the next read location till I’ve completed the previous read. More discrete serial reads means more delays especially if I’m reading a flat file in S3 and experience latency with each read.
Mapping 3 or more dimensions to the Hilbert Curve
At 3 or more dimensions a popular technique for indexing is to map the multi-dimensional region to a single dimension using a space-filling curve. One good choice for that space-filling curve is the Hilbert Curve. Chop your 3D domain up into a regular grid of 1024x1024x1024 cells then a Hilbert curve made up of a single wiggly line will visit all 1m points.
As an interlude, here are a couple of 2D examples of that wiggly line called the Hilbert Curve.
Fig 2. 2D Hilbert Curve, 4 bits
Fig 3. 2D Hilbert Curve, 8 bits
Here’s a 3 dimensional animation of the Hilbert Curve:
The Hilbert curve has some nice locality properties because it makes no big jumps, the next value on the curve is only ever one unit away. This means that if two points have indexes that are close to each other then they will be geometrically close to each other as well. The converse is not guaranteed.
A sparse index
Now that all the data points are mapped to one dimension I can sort them in that dimension and then use simple one-dimension database index lookup techniques. When you index a column in a database table you end up with the ability to find the exact rows in each table corresponding to a value in that column. However, there can be as many entries in the index as rows in the table. If you use what’s called a sparse index then you have the positions of some rows but you might have to do a bit of extra reading after them to find others. A sparse index can be much smaller than a full index, say 0.1% of the size of a full index.
I’m beating around the bush here, so let’s get to the punch line. If I sort my 27 million records (2.4GB of CSV) in ascending value of a Hilbert index with one million points (10 bits) and then create a small sparse index file (440K) I’ve got the ability to do fast window queries via random access on my data. I can even do the search in parallel because I know in advance where my records are (approximately). Ideally I’ve got queries in mind that are quite small in space and time though I found queries unconstrained in time can work pretty well too.
A library to help
There are some curly issues to deal with here in terms of translating a search box into ranges on the Hilbert curve (perhaps coarsening the ranges if there are too many of them) and from there to accessing byte ranges pointed to by the index. Fortunately these issues are handled for you by a java library called sparse-hilbert-index which I knocked up and published on GitHub.
Let’s try an example. My CSV input data looks like this:
mmsi,messageId,time,lat,lon,speedKnots,heading,course,navigationStatus,rateOfTurn,source,specialManoevreIndicator,timeSecondsOnly,isUsingRAIM,class
4124607775,18,1543283257000,-66.97455333333333,33.95234833333333,8.7,67.3,67,,,NORAIS2,,35,N,N,
4124607775,18,1543283257000,-66.97455333333333,33.95234833333333,8.7,67.3,67,,,NORAIS2,,35,N,N,
538006789,1,1543283259000,-39.57300333333333,33.18371833333333,12.7,85.1,84,UNDER_WAY_USING_ENGINE,-13,NORAIS2,0,39,Y,N,A
...
I create a sorted data file and a Hilbert index by running this code (with thanks to commons-csv):
Viewing search statistics
13 minutes later on an i5 laptop the sort of 27 million CSV records is complete and the index file is created.
I then deploy input-sorted.csv (2.4GB) and input-sorted.csv.idx to an S3 bucket and try querying the data like below. First I’ll count the number of records in the Sydney region for an hour. I’m going to make things easier and suppose the data is in a publicly accessible bucket so I don’t need to authenticate (but only do this if your data is not sensitive).
Load the index file (which you can cache locally if you want):
Perform a search:
Loading the index file (440K) took 500ms.
The search above found 2389 records in 169ms over a not-very-zippy corporate internet connection. 3347 records were read (a hit ratio of 0.71). Some level of wasted effort is a consequence of the sparse index but of course we don’t need a GIS system on the server!
Interestingly enough if we query the dataset for the Sydney (Australia) region for the whole time dimension (24 hours) then the performance is still reasonable: 6720ms to return 36940 records with a hit ratio of 0.55. 37 chunks (sections of the S3 object pointed to by index entries) were read (partially) with an average time to first byte (TTFB) of 114ms (thus the latency of our internet connection is responsible for 4200ms of the elapsed time). Being closer to S3 (say in EC2 or Lambda) can offer a significant time saving but another trick up our sleeve is to read concurrently from S3.
Use concurrency!
In the above search command you’ll see that the concurrency parameter was set to 1. I’ve found that an optimal number over a mediocre internet connection for this dataset on S3 is 8; that is, 8 chunks are retrieved simultaneously, parsed, filtered and merged. The query that took 6720ms (mainly because of the unconstrained time dimension) now takes 839ms!
Search from AWS
I did test runs from EC2 (t2.large) as well and as expected the time to first byte came down, to about 50ms. With concurrency the the all-day query went down to 380ms. With latency down I presume seek times start to play a stronger role and the sweet spot for the concurrency level seems to be about 4.
Streaming API
The api used to retrieve records from searches offers streaming functionality via the RxJava library.
Other formats
Bear in mind that CSV is not the most efficient method of storing and retrieving data. More targeted binary formats may make your queries many times faster.
Tuning
The number of entries in the sparse index has a large effect on the hit ratio ( a measure of how many records you read to find what you requested). If you can cache index files locally or put them on faster storage then you may go for a larger number of entries in each index file. Experimentation is the way to go. Create multiple indexes for the same file of various sizes and see what suits your querying patterns best.
Generally speaking if your queries are tailored so that they don’t return a lot of records then your response time should be of the order mentioned above. Searching with unconstrained dimensions (like time in the query earlier) may work but I’d suggest having only one dimension unconstrained.
Viewing search statistics
When you perform a search you can specify the withStats option to view various metrics about the search:
index
.search(bounds)
.withStats()
.concurrency(1)
.url(url)
.last()
.forEach(System.out::println);
Produces:
WithStats [elapsedMs=169, recordsFound=2389, recordsRead=3347, hitRatio=0.7138, bytesRead=392261, timeToFirstByteMsTotal=94, timeToFirstByteMsAverage=94.0000, chunksRead=1]
What about 2 dimensions?
I’ve run through an example with 3 dimensions but a sparse Hilbert index will work well for 2 dimensions as well. So S3 can become your 2D spatial database as well.
Not just S3
Note that Azure Blob Storage and Google Cloud Storage also offer random access via the HTTP Range header. You can use those storage options as well with the sparse-hilbert-index library.
What about Athena?
That’s a good question! Especially as AWS offer Athena on CSV files (and other formats) in S3 buckets that can can do a full scan of a 2GB CSV file in 1.5 seconds!
The sparse-hilbert-index approach may appeal when you consider the costs of running many many indexed searches across a lot of data compared to full scans. Athena costs are low ($US5/TB data scanned for queries) but may become significant at some scale. In some cases the consequent power consumption from doing a lot of full scan searches may also be ethically challenging (and also rather hard to calculate). I think it’s hard to compete with Athena on big file search but there may be some edge cases that favour sparse-hilbert-index!
To add fuel to the fire, Athena supports the Parquet format which can be indexed such that every page has min-max statistics. If you sort the data on the field you want to query (in our case we would add a calculated Hilbert index column) then Athena can in theory do indexed lookups itself (untested). Athena still has to look at the statistics for every page (1Mb by default) so it’s not quite as efficient theoretically as sparse-hilbert-index that knows exactly what pages to search. Note that as of June 2019 Athena does not support indexed Parquet formats for faster access (1). When or if support arrives it will be worth experimenting with!
The take home | https://towardsdatascience.com/turn-amazon-s3-into-a-spatio-temporal-database-40f1a210e943 | ['David Moten'] | 2019-07-03 12:40:31.651000+00:00 | ['Search', 'Geospatial', 'Java', 'Programming', 'S3'] |
10 Tips and Tricks to Boost Your React App’s Performance in 2020 | 2. useState Lazy Initialization With Function
There are times when we need to set the initial value of the state from some variable or from a function that returns a value.
Let’s take a look at the example below:
const initialState = someFunctionThatCaluclatesValue(props) const [count, setCount] = React.useState(initialState)
Since our function is in the body, every time a re-render happens, this function is getting called even if its value is not required (we only need it during the initial render).
Let’s see how to lazy initialize useState with a function:
const getInitialState = (props) => someFunctionThatCaluclatesValue(props) const [count, setCount] = React.useState(getInitialState)
Creating a function is very fast. React will only call the function when it needs the initial value (which is when the component is initially rendered). So even if the function is taking a lot of time, it will be slow on the initial render only. This is called “lazy initialization.” It’s a performance optimization.
Let’s look at this GIF to get an idea of what that looks like:
Lazy function vs. ordinary function
To play around with the example above: | https://medium.com/better-programming/10-tips-and-tricks-to-boost-your-react-apps-performance-in-2020-9388159f6ebf | ['Harsh Makadia'] | 2020-08-31 17:24:17.501000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'JavaScript', 'Reactjs', 'React', 'Nodejs'] |
7 Enjoyable Apps You Should Keep Using in 2021 | So here I’m going to share with you the 7 smart phone apps that I recommend using in 2021:
Socializing
These two apps deliver a creative idea of connecting with other people worldwide in an organized way.
1. Slowly
Have you had a pen-pal before the telephones and the Internet came to life? Or if you watched green book you’ll get the idea when Tony tip took tips from Don to write a heart-touching message to his wife.
This app delivers a similar idea. Where you set up your profile avatar with a simple description, the main interests you like and languages you know. Then it will suggest some pen pals to contact according to your interests.
Alternatively, you can browse pen pals manually From the region you want. The app supports voice messages and sending up to 5 photos per message. But remember, The farther the country the more the message will take to be delivered. So make sure to write a good message with all thoughts that you want to share.
Slowly, Photo by Author
This app helped me to improve my writing. It also taught me that creating a valuable friendship takes time. I made a wonderful friendship and learned about new cultures from the United States. Turkey, Russia, Norway, Greece and other countries in Latin America and the Middle East. | https://medium.com/technology-hits/7-enjoyable-apps-you-should-keep-using-in-2021-923adb102c12 | ['Ibrahim K'] | 2020-12-18 09:07:31.424000+00:00 | ['Advice', 'Technology', 'Social Media', 'Creativity', 'Apps'] |
Story — Bright Blue Stone Price. Entirely educated sadhu Maharaj had… | Entirely educated sadhu Maharaj had gone to a city, many lowered, miserable and upset individuals began coming to him to get his benevolence. One such miserable, helpless man came to him and said to Sadhu Maharaj, ‘I am poor in Maharaj, I have an obligation as well, I am vexed. Offer me a few courtesies’.
Sadhu Maharaj gave him a brilliant blue stone and said that this is a valuable stone, go get it as much as could be expected under the circumstances. The man left and went to a natural product merchant he knew and needed to know the estimation of the stone by indicating it.
The natural product dealer stated, ‘I think it is blue glass, the Mahatma has offered it to you, yes it looks lovely and splendid, you offer it to me, I will give you 1000 rupees.
Baffled, the man went to another colleague who was a ceramics trader. He indicated that stone to the trader as well and needed to realize its incentive to keep away from it. The vendor of utensils stated, ‘This stone is an uncommon diamond, I will give you 10,000 rupees for it. The man began feeling that its cost would be significantly higher and he began thinking from that point.
Read Also — Good Morning Images For Whatsapp, Free Download HD Wallpaper, Pictures, Photos Of Good Morning
The man currently demonstrated this stone to a goldsmith, the goldsmith saw that stone cautiously and said that it is truly important, I will give you Rs. 1,00,000.
The man presently comprehended that it was inestimable, he thought why not show it to the jewel trader, imagining that he went to the greatest precious stone shipper in the city. At the point when that jewel trader saw that stone, he continued looking Gaya, careful demeanors began showing up all over. He applied that stone from the temple and asked, where did you bring it from. This is precious. Regardless of whether I sell my whole property, I can’t address its cost.
Learn from the story
How would we rate ourselves? Is it true that we are the ones who structure conclusions about ourselves? Your life is invaluable, nobody can purchase your life. You can do your opinion about yourself. Keep in mind the negative remarks of others.
Friends, I hope you have liked today’s post if you like this post of mine, then you like and share this post of mine. Do not forget to comment. | https://medium.com/@imagesking/story-bright-blue-stone-price-cbe2c21091f | ['Images King'] | 2020-12-26 08:45:10.964000+00:00 | ['Motivational', 'Stories', 'Storytelling', 'Motivation'] |
Buying.com Announces July 14th Token Sale on TrustSwap Launchpad | Buying.com, the team that founded the on-demand delivery platform and order management system, announced today that they will collaborate with TrustSwap to aid in the execution of their token offering on July 14th, 2021 at 9:00 AM PST.
Buying.com caters to businesses looking to upload products to its native platform and offer 1-hour delivery. The Buying.com delivery infrastructure is currently available in 22 US states in which hundreds of retail outlets are using the platform to make thousands of deliveries every day.
At a macro level, Buying.com is a hyperlocal micro-distribution network fulfilling last-mile delivery within 1-hour, and the $BUY token is used to facilitate transactions in this ecosystem that involves Manufacturers, Distributors, Delivery Companies, Distribution Centers, Consumers, and more.
Buying.com is rolling out in phases starting with a focus on Food Order Fulfillment. In this ecosystem, the Buying.com platform will be used by restaurants for internal orders, online orders, and order fulfillment for orders placed through major apps such as Doordash, GrubHub, UberEats, Postmates, and more.
Later phases will expand upon this model with more upgrades and features including:
Consumer Incentives: Consumers placing orders through the BUY app will receive tokens as Loyalty rewards. These tokens can be redeemed at participating retailers. Social Group Buying: Consumers willing to participate in Social Group Buying to receive economies of scale from manufacturers to meet Minimum Order Quantity(MOQ) requirements. The BUY token will be used by such Buying Groups to purchase products. Distribution Centers: Similar to AirBnB, Buying.com enables any consumer or retailer with excess space to convert their garage or storage facility into a Distribution Center. Such facility owners would receive BUY tokens as payment for their services. Distribution Centers will need to stake tokens to participate in the network. Delivery Companies: Similar to Uber, Buying.com enables any consumer or business to do deliveries as part of its Hyperlocal Microdistribution Network. Delivery operators will receive BUY tokens as payment for their services. Delivery Companies will need to stake tokens to participate in the network. Supply Chain Management: Retailers and Distributors can place orders through the Buying.com app. To participate, Distributors and Retailers would need to stake tokens. The Buying.com network’s smart contracts will also optimize order deliveries as part of reducing the Carbon Footprint (CF) of e-Commerce. Order optimization will involve encouraging Supply chain participants to enter Social Group Buying for MOQ and CF reasons. BUY Tokens will be used as incentives for participants to be active in group orders.
The 4 Pillars of the Buying.com Ecosystem:
1. Loyalty
The BUY token creates loyalty across its platform for everyone from businesses to individuals. Some aspects of Buying.com’s loyalty program for businesses include rewards for using Buying’s hyperlocal micro-distribution infrastructure. Businesses can also use the BUY token to offset fees owed to Buying.com for delivery fulfillment.
All order details are stored on the Buying.com blockchain and a final reward calculation is carried out at the end of the day based on the number of delivery orders placed. At the end of a month, when the final settlement between the business and Buying.com takes place, the business can redeem the BUY token to offset payments for deliveries.
The BUY token will be used as a Platform Loyalty Token for incentivizing retailers to participate in the program by placing delivery orders with buying.com.
2. Payments
Businesses face a challenging dilemma when it comes to embracing a wide range of payments. They are often forced to pay exorbitant fees to accept certain transaction types. This trickles down to the bottom line price for customers so these expensive payment fees affect consumers as well. To avoid this, BUY presents an attractive alternate exchange of value for businesses and customers.
The use of the BUY token is an attractive option when it comes to:
Micropayments where the transfer of funds to/from fiat is prohibitively expensive
Transaction fees levied by banks and others make transferring funds to fiat incur at a minimum 2–3% if not more in transaction fees.
Discounts off of products and services
There are a wide range of ways for stakeholders to use BUY for payment. Those include:
Hyperlocal Delivery participants
Hyperlocal Storage participants
Retailers participating in the Buying.com marketplace
Consumers using the BUY App
Businesses using the Buying.com Hyperlocal Delivery or Storage services.
3. Staking
Participants wanting to play the role of a Delivery Partner and Storage Partner (and possibly other roles in the future) will need to Stake Tokens. Staking involves the stakeholder purchasing a set amount of tokens, (e.g. 10,000 BUY tokens) and leaving that as a deposit in their wallet. This reduces the velocity and increases hold time of the token.
4. Governance
Buying.com is enabling stakeholders to participate in governance. These stakeholders may be token holders, delivery partners, storage partners, retailers and more. These stakeholders may collectively vote on decisions such as rate of burning tokens, rewards % for consumers etc.
Meet the Buying.com Team
Buying.com Token Offering Details
Secure Launch Process
To ensure a smooth launch, Buying.com has agreed to:
1) Have their domain fully SSL certified one week prior to launch date.
2) Have their domain protected by Cloudflare and share proof with TrustSwap one week prior to launch date.
3) Disclose the vesting schedule of all tokens, including team, strategic investors, private presale, influencers, etc.
4) Add no less than $200,000 of ETH liquidity on Uniswap immediately upon listing.
5) Distribute tokens to launchpad participants within one hour of DEX/CEX listing using a token distributor like disperse or multisender.
6) Lock liquidity within 3 hours of listing for no less than 60 days at http://team.finance/.
7) Provide the timeline for token distributions, and distribute tokens within a one hour window of the agreed upon time.
8) Lock 75% or more of team & dev fund tokens for a minimum of thirty days on http://team.finance/ within 6 hours of funding liquidity on Uniswap.
9) Have at least one community moderator on each social platform (Discord, Telegram, etc.) actively available 24 hours a day for the first 7 days following the launch on Uniswap.
Participation and Allocation
Anyone, including those outside the TrustSwap ecosystem, are eligible to apply to participate in the $BUY token offering granted that individuals (and entities) meet jurisdictional restrictions. Take note that application does not guarantee an allocation and that the $BUY token uses the Algorand blockchain.
If the $BUY token offering becomes over-subscribed (due to pledges exceeding the $1.5M hard cap), priority will be given to the TrustSwap community based on total staked SWAP and SwapScore as follows:
Step-By-Step Guide
1. On July 14th, 2021 9:00 AM PST the application window will open and remain open for 24 hours. During this time, go to the TrustSwap Launchpad at https://dashboard.trustswap.org/app/launchpads to apply. Make sure you have an Algorand wallet. For example https://wallet.myalgo.com/.
2. Complete all of the steps listed, including uploading all of the necessary KYC documents.
3. The portal will close after 24 hours. Following its close, there will be a waiting period of up to 48 hours as the Buying.com team finalizes internal processes.
4. Upon the success of your application, you will receive an email confirming the maximum amount you are allowed to contribute to the token offering. Within 24 hours, you have the opportunity to send these funds in to get your $BUY tokens. However, after 24 hours hours, your position will be given to the next in line and you will lose it.
5. This offering is on Algorand blockchain and requires an Opt-In to receive the $BUY tokens, stay tuned for our manual!
What should I do to prepare for the token offering?
Based on the requirements set for a guaranteed allocation, stake your $SWAP tokens here before the deadline mentioned above. Take a photo of your government issued ID card (Passport, Drivers License, or any other form of government issued ID card that has your photo in it). (This is not required if you have an active registry with Sekuritance KYC.) Take a selfie of yourself holding the ID card along with a note that reads: “Buying.com 14th July 2021”. (This is not required if you have an active registry with Sekuritance KYC.) Create an Algorand wallet in case you don’t have one yet.
For example: https://wallet.myalgo.com/ Make sure to follow the TrustSwap Announcement channel for updates and confirmations. Submit your details and documents at any point during the 24 hour window at https://launchpad.trustswap.org/.
Where Can I Learn More About Buying.com?
Website: https://www.buying.com
Telegram: https://t.me/buyingcom_official
Medium: https://medium.com/buying-com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/buying_com?lang=en
Who can participate in the Buying.com Token Sale?
Anyone not domiciled in the USA or UN sanctioned countries can participate in the Buying.com token sale.
*The eligible countries list is selected by Buying.com . If your country is not listed, this does not mean you are ineligible for future TrustSwap Launchpad projects.
** Launchpad dates are subject to change. This is not an endorsement, partnership or an offer for investment by TrustSwap. Buying.com is using the TrustSwap Launchpad as a customer, with specific requests as to how they need their launch to operate. TrustSwap is a provider of non-custodial, smart-contract-based software services. Digital assets carry a high level of risk. Participation is performed at your own risk. Exercise caution and conduct your own due diligence. | https://medium.com/@trustswap/buying-com-announces-july-14th-token-sale-on-trustswap-launchpad-8e8fc0eddf1b | [] | 2021-07-14 04:12:31.028000+00:00 | ['Launchpad', 'Logistics', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Artha India Ventures invests in Kredily, leads Pre-Series A round | Kredily is a one-stop platform for managing employees digitally while enhancing their engagement and supporting high-quality data. It streamlines the HR workflow by offering services like data management systems for employees, payroll management, attendance management, video conferencing, and remote working support for its customer base.
After identifying a gap in the HR and Fintech industry, Kredily aims to be the most significant workplace platform that integrates the HRMS and Fintech ecosystems for employees. Kredily offers a digital workplace platform to SMEs and MSMEs through a freemium product. Kredily caters to around 140 million salaried employees in India in a space where the existing HRMS platforms do not cater to 90% of the market.
The decision to invest in Kredily by AIV is backed up with its unique partnership-driven model of offering a full-stack HRMS platform and building revenue from the financial products on the platform. The partnership-driven distribution model ensures a zero CAC (customer acquisition cost) and a zero-member sales team, in comparison to a high CAC and low retention rate prevalent in the HRMS industry. Kredily has also integrated the HRMS platform with the Fintech market, making it a highly scalable model.
The revenue model of Kredily is built on a long-term investment vision and engages with employees beyond HRMS and payroll management. It manages various other heads for its customers’ employees like credit, insurance, and investing.
Devendra Khandegar, Founder & CEO, Kredily said, “We are delighted to have Artha India Ventures on board along with other marquee investors like Rainmatter Capital & Fosun RZ. They bring to the table a deep understanding of Consumers & Businesses in Fintech & SaaS spaces. Kredily has disrupted the HRMS Industry in India by offering a Freemium HRMS & Payroll Platform. This is highly relevant in the current lockdown, where companies are trying to cut down costs & manage remote working. Kredily offers companies an HRMS, Payroll & Payout Platform along with communication & collaboration tools to achieve best in class user engagement.”
Commenting on the investment Ashok Kumar Damani, Director, Artha India Ventures said, “Kredily’s SMB offering is the need of the hour as we restart the world’s 5th largest economy. I believe every employee and employer would want to be on Kredily — not just locally, but globally! We now have a fintech portfolio with companies like Tala and Lenden Club that are cumulatively valued at approximately USD 1 Billion. This is helping our portfolio work with a huge amount of synergy and grow exponentially with internal experience and connections.”
AIV envisions Kredily to develop into one of the most trusted marketplaces for financial products in India with a full-stack HRMS platform offering a complete digital suite of products catering to over 2 lakh SMBs. | https://medium.com/artha-india-ventures/artha-india-ventures-invests-in-kredily-leads-series-a-bridge-round-313163281121 | ['Aiv Pr Team'] | 2020-10-14 08:00:44.061000+00:00 | ['Hrtech', 'Startup', 'Funding', 'Venture Capital', 'Investors'] |
Overwhelmed With Compassion | Today I am overwhelmed, but not with doubts, nor with fears. I am overwhelmed with compassion for those who do everything in their power to better themselves, everyday. Who take no days off from allowing growth to happen through the situations they confront and the people put in their path.
Truth be told (and please, excuse my language) this shit is hard. Our plate is full of responsibilities that come with adulthood, be them financial or personal. On top of that, we’re bombarded with information every millisecond of the day and our minds are overly stimulated.
As if that isn’t enough, we all carry emotional baggage from the past that makes us highly sensitive and self defensive. Some of us may even (consciously or unconciously) absorb other people’s emotions like sponges, adding to our internal turmoil. No matter how positively we generally view life, we ought to admit that sometimes it all seems downright chaotic!
Therefore, all my compassion goes out to you. Pat yourself on the back for being so committed to evolution and for being so damn resilient. Your struggles are heard, your hurts are felt. Your voice, although shaky at times, is listened to in a loving and understanding way.
Virtual hugs to you. | https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/overwhelmed-with-compassion-e4337dbade20 | ['𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊.'] | 2020-12-11 12:17:41.430000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Compassion', 'Prompted', 'Energy', 'Writing'] |
4 key things to consider when choosing a shelving unit | Our design projects are thought out to the smallest details, therefore interiors, made in our unique style, are the representation of luxurious beauty.
A well-chosen rack in your living room, office or in the bedroom would not only organically emphasize the space, but also allow you to diversify the interior with the collection of decorative items, books, and souvenirs.
We would like to present our top 4 solutions for choosing the most perfect shelving that will decorate your room.
You can always check out the details of any particular design-project in our Portfolio.
1.Individual approach for creative individuals
The high price of modular shelving could be explained by the fact that you’re getting the opportunity to “create” your own structure, choose the desired colour of wood, the overall size and number of sections. Furthermore, racks can be used not only as a storage tool but also as a zoning element (if it is an island rack).
If you’re looking for a large and spacious shelving unit, we advise you to pay special attention to the colour of the shelves and the material quality. Design matters, for sure. Glass shelves will add some lightness and elegance to the structure.
“Biblia” shelving unit by Store 54 | https://medium.com/@studia-54/4-key-things-to-consider-when-choosing-a-shelving-unit-c1b36e64e55b | [] | 2020-11-17 09:34:11.513000+00:00 | ['Interior Design', 'Luxury', 'Furniture', 'Design', 'Design Thinking'] |
Obama’s Gang is Back in Town | As President Trump weighs which course he may walk as his White House days grow short, he’s considering two paths.
The first is to watch from a distance, and not interfere with the incoming Biden administration. Biden’s early appointees, namely Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alexander Mayorkas and phony-baloney climate envoy John Kerry are Obama-era retreads. Given that eight years of the Obama administration — which prominently included Klain, Mayorkas and Kerry — helped elect President Trump, the president’s thinking may be that Biden’s agenda will play out favorably for the 2024 GOP candidate. The president’s second option would be to issue a slew of Executive Orders designed to keep his America First policies alive and kicking for as long as possible.
Option One is President Trump’s wisest course. Klain, Mayorkas and Kerry have track records that will not create national unity, no matter how vigorously Biden calls for Americans to join together in his support. Klain was a Silicon Valley and tech monopoly lobbyist who at the outset of the pandemic condemned President Trump’s China travel ban and disparaged Americans who have “needless fears” about the disease — wrong and wrong again.
In retrospect, Klain’s remarks are staggeringly partisan and cataclysmically misinformed. In 2016, Klain joined TechNet, one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful lobbying groups. Klain will push to end employment-based visa caps, especially on the H-1B, a long-time goal that Google, Microsoft, Apple and other tech titans have sought to further displace U.S. workers.
The last thing that America needs, but will soon get, are powerful America Last lobbyists at Biden’s side. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that at least 40 Biden transition team advisors were or are, like Klain, registered lobbyists. Represented on Biden’s team are Uber, Visa, Capital One, Airbnb, Amazon and the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation executives. In 2019, lobbyists lavished nearly $3.5 billion on behalf of expanding foreign labor, more than twice their 1999 outlay.
Mayorkas is infamous for creating deferred action for childhood arrivals, DACA, an Obama-era program that without congressional approval grants affirmative benefits to unlawfully present aliens. In a 2017 PBS interview, Mayorkas proposed expanding DACA from its current 800,000 to an unspecified total that could reach into the millions.
From 2009 to 2013, Mayorkas oversaw U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency responsible for legal immigration. Mayorkas also intervened on behalf of connected Democrats to secure EB-5 citizenship-for-sale visas for wealthy international investors. A DHS Inspector General’s report found that Mayorkas intervened “outside the normal adjudicatory process,” and “in ways that benefited the stakeholders.”
Finally, perhaps for comic relief, Biden will add Kerry to his team. A failed U.S. Senator, a 2004 presidential loser and an inept Secretary of State, Kerry is an incessant climate nag whose actions belie his preaching. Kerry’s estimated net worth exceeds $3 billion, a fortune that enabled him to purchase a $12 million, 18-acre Martha’s Vineyard ocean front mansion not far from the Obama’s estate. Although Kerry labeled climate change as “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction,” his preferred personal travel mode is private jets, limos and luxury yachts.
Above all else, Biden, Klain, Mayorkas and Kerry share a commitment to increasing legal immigration from the current 1 million-plus annually, granting amnesty and encouraging illegal immigration. Biden’s policies will add millions of work-authorized persons to the labor pool and create a hiring bonanza for cheap labor-addicted employers. Millions of American voters rejected President Trump, but they’ll be surprised at the transformed America that Biden’s presidency is guaranteed to create.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. | https://medium.com/@pajoeguzzardi/obamas-gang-is-back-in-town-b9b01a8885e9 | ['Joe Guzzardi'] | 2020-12-04 11:17:57.438000+00:00 | ['Obama', 'Biden', 'Trump', 'Kamala Harris', 'Silicon Valley'] |
Jesus: A Democrat? | by Kenneth Capps
Would Jesus vote Democrat? An article in the Stanford Daily written in December would suggest so. The author, Miles Unterreiner, argues that conservatives are “taking the Christ out of Christianity” while the political Left knows that Jesus was “so profoundly liberal a figure.”
As a fellow Christian, I find the pride and naïveté of this statement hard to stomach, and I feel obliged to address these harsh claims to try to provide an alternative view.
Would Jesus be an American Liberal? The article claims that the Right has an “ideology that so blatantly favors the rich.” On the contrary, conservatives know that their economic policies would be far better for the poor than those policies of the Liberals.
Free-market economics is based on the growth of businesses, especially small-businesses, which are obliged to grow and hire more people in order to compete with other businesses. Jobs are created and the poor can make a living. Regulations and government hindrances, of which the Liberals are so fond, only serve to disrupt the natural flow of economic growth and, as history has shown, create higher unemployment rates. Fortunately, here at Stanford and across the country the general trend is an increased interest in fiscal conservatism. We see it in voting results and political agendas regarding economics in both parties.
The Daily article states that “Jesus was no trickle-down economist, no free-marketeer; he harbored no sympathy with or allegiance to the wealthy. ‘It is easier,’ he said, ‘for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’ (Matthew 19:23–24).”
Are we not supposed to work for money, to have ambitions, to try to be successful, to try to grow wealthy, for love of our children at least? Do we not want the poor to be wealthy? Or should we all try to be poor and allow our nation to fall into complete decay? By his logic, the author seems to be suggesting that, since the rich will not be going to heaven, it would be better for us all to be impoverished; helping the poor become richer must be an atrocity. As a fellow Christian I love the words of Christ, and it is our duty to try and understand and follow His precious Word as well as we can. This involves interpreting it correctly.
I do agree with the Daily article about the issue of war. However, Jesus did say, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). Jesus would not support war, unless it be a just war, but Christians must be careful about using certain lines from the Gospel, taken out of context, to support their political claims.
Also, this point about war does not fit with the Democratic stance, because President Obama, our commander-in-chief, until recently of course, initially beefed up the war effort in Afghanistan, and he was behind the drones, and much of the recent war efforts. Jesus would not approve of either Republicans or Democrats regarding the issue of war
And here I would agree again with the article in that Governor Perry’s use of Christian principles and prayer is not in its proper medium. As Christians we must allow our beliefs to help us choose what and who to vote for, but we must not get carried away and find ourselves simply quoting passages from the Bible instead of applying them correctly.
Most importantly of all, however, was the fact that the author of the Daily article failed to address the social side of the spectrum. Here is where his argument really runs into trouble. Liberals are the advocates for such practices as abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research and human cloning; they orchestrated the Obamacare fiasco and are completely irresponsible with other people’s money, with crazy spending despite the incomprehensible debt.
Sadly, the only Americans nowadays who seem to be socially conservative are Catholics who stand by the church’s teaching, and devout Christians who know their Bible, as well as many of the Mormons and some other people both religious and non-religious. For the most part, as at Stanford and across the country, social conservatism is hard to come by. And this makes sense: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15:18).
Christians must expect to be supporting things that the world does not; it is a thoroughly Christian idea and a pretty sure sign that one is following in the footsteps of Christ. Jesus was much more invested in social work; all he had to say about economics was “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Mark 12:17). And so if one were to try and decide how Jesus would vote, it would be likely that He would choose a candidate that followed His social teachings the closest.
Finally, the idea of Jesus voting Democrat becomes especially laughable when we take into account the growing movement of Liberals to remove Christian symbols and words from all aspects of public life. Every few days we hear about a judge ruling that a certain Christian symbol in a school is unconstitutional, or we hear that the recitation of the pledge of allegiance is offensive because it has “God” in its text. Does this sound like Jesus? No, He died because He stood up to a culture that rejected Him. Christians have a duty to follow Jesus, not to conform to the godless ideology supported by the Democrats.
Christians should absolutely form their political stances based on their beliefs, just as secular people base theirs off their beliefs. But they should be wary of associating too much with the beliefs of popular culture and be ready to bring the change that society needs, through Christ our Lord.
Kenneth Capps is a Junior majoring in History. Please email him with questions or comments at [email protected]. | https://medium.com/stanfordreview/jesus-a-democrat-be72d1616dbd | [] | 2016-12-09 07:06:39.615000+00:00 | ['Christianity', 'Religion'] |
BURGER KING AND GOOGLE TEAMING UP?! | Have you heard about Burger King’s new integration with Google?
I’m covering it in my latest video. Check it out here; I’ll see you there! | https://medium.com/@noellehartt/burger-king-and-google-teaming-up-3c8ce537949a | ['Noelle Hartt'] | 2020-12-23 18:06:12.049000+00:00 | ['Mobile Marketing', 'Digital Transformation', 'Digital Marketing', 'Fast Food', 'Mobile Apps'] |
Until Death does us Apart | Until Death does us Apart
When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly.
She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead, she asked me softly, why? I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her!
With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake in my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Jane so dearly. Finally, she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me, her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.
The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Jane. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again.
In the morning she presented her divorce conditions. She didn’t want anything from me but needed a month’s notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month, we both try to live as normal a life as possible. Her reason for this conditions was simple. Our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage.
This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that everyday for the month’s duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy. Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request.
I told Jane about my wife’s divorce conditions. She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully.
My wife and I hadn’t had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mommy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don’t tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office.
On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn’t looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young anymore. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her.
On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn’t tell Jane about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger.
She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily. Suddenly it hit me. She had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head.
Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it’s time to carry mom out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last-minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly, it was just like our wedding day.
But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn’t noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to the office and jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind. I walked upstairs. Jane opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Jane, I do not want the divorce anymore.
She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Jane, I said, I won’t divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn’t value the details of our lives, not because we didn’t love each other anymore. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death does us apart.
Jane seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away. At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, “I’ll carry you out every morning until death does us apart”.
That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run upstairs, only to find my wife in the bed — dead.
My wife had been fighting cancer for months and I was so busy with Jane to even notice. She knew that she would die soon and she wanted to save me from the whatever negative reaction from our son, in case we push through with the divorce. At least, in the eyes of our son — I’m a loving husband.
Moral: The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property, the money in the bank. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse’s friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. And have a real happy marriage. | https://medium.com/@sureshchandak/until-death-does-us-apart-4caa2f4d1c09 | ['Suresh Chandak'] | 2020-05-22 11:46:34.783000+00:00 | ['Stories', 'Love', 'Lovestory', 'Morals Stories', 'Moral'] |
Safeguard Integrity in reporting | It is one of the important formal and rigorous process that independently verify and safeguard the integrity of the corporate reporting.
What is corporate reporting?
Corporate reports comprise of Corporate Plan, Annual Report including the director report remuneration report, corporate governance statement, Financial report and regulation.
How one will verify the corporate report?
Corporate report can be verified by the three-process described below:
(a) Internal Audit: During reporting period the company implement additional internal control to ensure the integrity of corporate reporting system. The corporate report before release to public are verified by Management, Audit and Risk Management Commitee and lastly approved by the board. So, this process helps to ensure that:
i. Corporate reports are accurate
ii. Comprehensive
iii. Provide adequate information to shareholder to make informed decision.
(b) External Audit: Company appoint external auditor for auditing the financial statement as the compliance with the performance standards as per the law. The External auditor, attend the company AGM and available to answer question about the conduct of the audit.
(c) Declaration by the CFO and CEO: The CEO and CFO respectively provide assurance to the board in writing that the financial record of the entity has properly maintained and financial statement are true and fair.
Case Study of Kendallville Bank of USA:
The audit and risk management committee found out some problems in respect to corporate governance and they have pointed out the following points to ensure integrity in reporting:
separation of chairman and CEO duties at the top
election of an independent chair to lead the board of directors
skilled enhancement programmes for the directors
committee staffing with independent and skilled directors
introduction the nomination, remuneration and ethics committees
division of responsibilities between management and oversight function
regular evaluation of directors and executives by the board
enforcement and promotion of the code of conduct
introduction and oversight of safeguards for the external audit
awareness enhancement of whistleblower system in place and whistleblower protection
Other factors:
a) Policies: Regular reviews of the appropriateness of accounting policies, internal controls and key risks will enhance confidence as will a well-resourced internal audit function and disciplinary procedures for misleading reporting.
b) Information: Accounting policies should be kept up to date and clearly documented and it will be helpful to share to the fullest extent possible lessons learned, for example as a result of internal audit work or reporting lapses.
c) Culture: Appraisal and reward systems should encourage high quality reporting rather than exerting pressure to ‘make the numbers’. | https://medium.com/@legalproclivity/safeguard-integrity-in-reporting-61fa510c32ec | ['Legal Proclivity'] | 2020-11-26 16:34:02.922000+00:00 | ['Csr', 'Corporate Governance', 'Corporate Culture', 'Equity', 'Civil Rights'] |
Understanding Consumer Behavior During COVID-19 | Understanding Consumer Behavior During COVID-19
PurchaseLoop Research Insight Study March 2020
By Ryoji Iwata via Unsplash
Introduction
While the events of COVID-19 have been transforming the world, LoopMe has been staying on top of consumer sentiment. By using our proprietary PurchaseLoop Research platform, LoopMe (one of our portfolio companies) surveyed 8,000 people within the LoopMe audience pool across 8 global markets for the week ending March 27, 2020.
We then analyzed that global sentiment data against our DMP across 320 dimensions of data produce — insights that are shaping our new ecosystem.
In this report, you’ll find the key findings from those cross-sections to help you understand consumer sentiment today within an ever-changing landscape.
The four areas of sentiment explored by the PurchaseLoop Research survey are the following:
Media consumption index — What kind of media are you consuming most of the week?
Buying index — thinking about your total purchases this week, how did your spending compare to last week?
Aspirational index — what do you aspire to do when the COVID-19 crisis is over?
Outlook index — what is your current outlook around COVID-19?
LoopMe data analysis
In addition to the market research surveys, we took a look at the data within the LoopMe DMP to reveal the growth in consumer behavior with devices now that most areas have adopted a stay at home restriction.
Over the last two weeks of March, LoopMe’s audience platform has grown significantly as more people are increasing their screen usage and TV consumption. We are seeing more global scale, more activity, and more net new profiles to reach. Furthermore, we’ve seen a decrease in devices that are leaving our audience platform, showing consistency in increased reach figures.
LoopMe has seen a 9% increase in reach, showing an increased total scale of 2.4B devices.
LoopMe has seen an 11% increase in reach against active devices, which are devices we’ve seen at least twice in 30 days. This shows that not only the reach is increasing, but it’s increasing against actively targetable devices.
LoopMe has seen a 20% increase in net new devices (over 114M), showing a more unique scale.
LoopMe has seen dormant devices decrease by 16%, which are devices we don’t see for 30–60 days. This points to sustainable growth of net new and current devices.
Media Consumption Index
LoopMe asked respondents what type of media they were consuming the most this week: Gaming, News/Social Media, Movies, TV Shows, or Reading. We looked at this data holistically by age, and by country, to help us understand any changing trends in media consumption, both home and abroad, across various demographic sets.
Not surprisingly, News/Social Media is the highest channel media consumed. Looking at News/Social Media is the highest channel of media consumed. Looking at News/Social consumption by country, Singapore (38%) topped the list and France (20%) rounded out the list, though all geographies showed this as a top form of media consumption.
Additional expected media consumption trends present themselves, with Gaming and TV Shows indexing high globally. While reading popped most with older demographics, it did index as the lowest preferred media vertical globally. This supports the pre-COVID-19 trend of increased time in front of screens.
At LoopMe, we’re expecting the current media trends to continue to see growth, such as increased video viewing & gaming engagement, rather than disruption among consumer media consumption patterns, but we’ll keep an eye on this as the weeks roll on.
Buying Index
LoopMe asked respondents how their total purchases for this week compared to last week to understand their buying sentiments. The possible responses were more, less, or the same. Regardless of country, age or gender, one trend loomed over the rest: overall spending is down.
Where certain sectors like CPG/FMCG/OTC-Pharma and other daily-life essentials are flying off the shelves, general spending is down. Discretionary spending isn’t a priority for most of the globe, mirrored by dipping financial markets, store closings, unemployment rising, and possible pending economic recession. We haven’t seen any areas where people reported spending more week over week.
Brands that work with LoopMe are noticing the same trends, and are acting on it. We're seeing brands mirror these consumer trends across our platform, shifting from product-based messaging to brand-based awareness campaigns. KPI’s are shifting from in-store foot traffic and towards attitudinal metrics.
As seen throughout past economic downturns, maintaining brand awareness while consumer spending is down has been proven successful for brands in driving performance when spending picks back up. We encourage clients to engages with our team about attitudinal goals that can help elevate your brand from the noise during this unprecedented time.
Aspirational Index
LoopMe wanted to know what our respondents were aspiring to do after the events of COVID-19 resolve and we re-emerge back into society as we had before. Response options included purchases of high (car, house, etc.) or medium value (phone, television, etc.), returning to socializing outdoors, travel, or not to change the lifestyle they knew a few months back.
Overwhelmingly and surprisingly, across most markets the top choices include:
Return back to their lifestyle: United States survey respondents (50%) topped the list for this option.
Spend more time socializing outdoors: Italy (52%) and France (49%) topped the list for this option.
The more notable insights we uncovered here include the global aspirations around travel and buying behavior.
Globally, all respondents aspire to travel ahead of making a purchase. Wanderlust is setting in as people are in lockdown.
The UK, US, and Canada were the most conservative in terms of aspirational buying intent compared to EMEA and APAC.
APAC regions surveyed have the highest aspiration to travel and buy medium and large ticket items.
Outlook Index
LoopMe wanted to not just include media consumption and purchase behaviors in this study, but also look at the psyche of our global respondents to see how optimistic they felt around the globe. Depending on their current phase in the COVID-19 pandemic will help uncover how sentiment is changing as various parts of the world are impacted. Through basic responses of Good, Bad, Neutral Opinion, we uncovered the following insights around that topic.
While globally the unanimous outlook was pessimistic, some countries with early prevention measures and strong political measures have shown more optimism than others. For example, Germany had a higher positive response than a negative one.
Comparatively, the US, UK, Canada, Singapore, and France all showed +20% difference favoring a negative outlook.
Hong Kong was a focal point of the virus spread but now shows under 50% of respondents with a negative outlook. Conversely, Singapore has become more recently affected and is showing 8% points higher in negative response rates. This could point to people returning to confidence after weathering the anticipated worst of the storm. To further illustrate this trend, US, Canada, France, Singapore, and UK are also leading the way in a negative outlook as the pandemic has reached their shores ate later dates. All are above 50% in a negative outlook. Those countries that are under 50% in negative outlook are Germany, Italy and Hong Kong.
In Conclusion
Media Consumption is Now a Cross-Screen World
Now more than ever media is being consumed in households at staggering rates. News, social media and gaming are on the rise, with device usage growing.
The ‘Stay At Home’ mandate is forcing businesses and consumers’ lives to adapt to an always-connected, virtual, online world. Marketers need to shift messaging to adapt to this new reality.
There is a great opportunity to learn more about consumers in the home like never before and smart brands will tap into the audience insights now.
Purchasing Behavior is a Now an Uncharted Course
Yesterday’s purchasing behavior doesn’t matter in our new reality. While overall spending is down, how and what consumers are looking to buy –– or what they are able to obtain –– changes by market and by day.
Real-time data is critical to understand audiences buying intent and current purchase data.
Outlook and Aspirational Goals Vary by Market
In countries that have better control around COVID-19, we have seen more positive outlooks from consumers –– as we’ve seen in Germany –– whereas in countries or regions where the surge is coming sentiment was less positive.
Marketers have an opportunity to lean into purpose-driven messaging to calm uncertainty among their consumers. Authenticity will help maintain relationships with their consumers.
Additionally, while the travel industry saw an immediate impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, our survey reveals that aspirationally, consumers would like to travel as soon as they can, providing an important indicator for this vertical. | https://medium.com/dataseries/understanding-consumer-behavior-during-covid-19-af078596e656 | [] | 2020-04-10 12:12:13.281000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Marketing', 'Consumer Behavior'] |
5 Things To Do Instead of Hating Tents | There has been an alarming rise of “anti-tent” petitions, social media campaigns, and organizing around the City in response to the rise of visible homelessness due to the pandemic. Here at CVHA, we like to refer to this sentiment as Anti-Tent Energy or ATE.
Let’s be very clear here: Focusing on tents does absolutely nothing to address our homelessness crisis besides unfairly (1) blame and vilify unhoused people; (2) prioritize the concerns of housed people over the needs of the people most impacted by homelessness; (3) lead to the disproportionate criminalization and police harassment of unhoused people; and (4) direct city resources to reducing the visibility of homelessness rather than the real harms. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot more people on the streets due to COVID-19. Many people can no longer crash on couches and SF’s shelter bed capacity was reduced by 76%. During the day, people cannot hang out at libraries, on public transportation, or other places where they typically go. Tents provide a little extra safety and stability during these awful and frightening circumstances. Targeting tents without acknowledging these realities and without fighting for both immediate and long term solutions is just blatant (and unproductive) animosity towards unhoused people. Remember, you can’t spell hate without ATE.
Below is a list of five tangible things you can do to redirect your Anti-Tent Energy to actually address the homelessness crisis.
For more information about CVHA, please visit our website at www.colevalleyhaightallies.com. | https://medium.com/@cvha/5-things-to-do-instead-of-hating-tents-567142ff29de | [] | 2020-10-05 03:24:19.524000+00:00 | ['Affordable Housing', 'Harm Reduction', 'Eviction Moratorium', 'Homelessness', 'Mutual Aid'] |
Living with my mental health issues | Most days it’s hard for me to just pick out, well I’m depressed or if it’s another issue causing the depression. For me my depression, borderline personality disorder, anxiety and fibromyalgia are usually intertwined all the time. Most of the time I have a difficult day then I’m usually experiencing all of these things at once it’s not like I can say okay well today I’m just depressed, or today I’m very anxious, or even today I’m personalizing things way too much which is one of the symptoms of borderline personality disorder. With that being said and living with the symptoms intertwined everyday all the time I can better tell you what life is like for me. How I learned to cope with and deal with the daily stressors that happened, whether they be good or bad.
I have learned ways to allow the feelings to happen but not let them ruin or control my mood for the rest of the day. Not that I’m very good at it and some days they do ruin my whole day and put me in a sour mood or just throw my whole day off. I usually know within the first few minutes how my day’s going to go. I usually have about a half an hour to an hour that I would be able to work myself into a better mood by doing some of the things that would put me in a better mood. There have been times where I just wake up grouchy and some days it’s hard to get out of that grouchy feeling. I often warn my family when I’m in one of these grouchy moods so they know to just leave me alone, because I have the tendency to explode or at least feel like I’m going to explode. The worst thing I could do is explode on my family so that’s how I’ve learned to give them a warning so they know to just let me be until I am ready. Oftentimes I can put on some headphones and listen to music or affirmations or even just my playlist to help improve my mood.
Even though I have had the past few weeks or months of nothing but fantastic days. Where I feel fantastic and I’m in a great mood and just doing things that make me happy, being productive, staying busy and keeping on top of tasks that need to be done. There are still times where it just takes one small thing to send me into a frustrated, irritated, depressed mood. The thing I have learned is the longer I allow myself to feel those feelings and be in that mood the harder it is for me to come out of it. I have been working on something that my counselor has talked to me about, which is allowing myself to feel those feelings and then to let them go push them aside and move on with my day. When she first told me this I told her it was easier said than done and I was right. However she was also right because I can’t let the little things that don’t go my way ruin the life that I want to live. So now onto the good stuff that I do in a day to keep me from being a moody, grouchy, irritated, depressed person. The first thing I do when I get dressed. I apply makeup to make myself look as good as I can so that I can feel better about my appearance. I often check my emails, send happy texts to my sister telling her to have a happy day, I’m put on YouTube and I either put on something right now it’s Christmas music because it’s happy that plug in the Christmas lights. I put on the morning affirmation which puts me in a good mood and gets my positive energy flowing. By the time I get done with all of that it’s time for breakfast. After breakfast I start working on my various projects and my to do list which I’m constantly tweaking throughout the day. All of which require lots of my time but also allow me to be creative. I am just learning to do editing on my videos most of my videos that I have posted so far have been just raw videos and I haven’t really edited them at all. I then work with Creative Cloud on some kind of creative something-or-other seems like lately I’m running out of ideas on what to do to be creative about. I often get up about every hour and a half and move around the house picking up trash or tidying things up just to stretch my legs and get the blood flowing again to sitting for too long really bothers my back. I listen to music everyday on my playlist. I do watch YouTube videos everyday. My favorite ones to watch are clothing haul videos for clothing by watching a few gals who are around the similar size.I don’t really watch a lot of TV because I find that I get bored and more depressed. Sometimes it is difficult to stay out of bed and function like a normal person should. This is my struggle with depression and other health issues. | https://medium.com/@royalrubyroses/living-with-my-mental-health-issues-598c07802a9a | ['Joni Webber'] | 2020-12-23 14:49:39.590000+00:00 | ['Mental Illness', 'Anxiety', 'Depression', 'Mental Health', 'Borderline Personality'] |
I Didn’t Care for Boobs When I Started to Grow Them | I was maybe Eight or Nine when my breasts began to grow. I’ll say I was younger because by Primary 5, I already wore bras and bra tops and they were necessary. I was only Nine when I ran out of the bathroom after my mother had just bathed me and sat on the bed waiting for her to get me my underwear, only to stand up and see a puddle of blood on the sheets.
I remember the confusion on my mother’s face as she reached for sanitary towel and put it on my underwear. By this time, I hadn’t even been taught what menstruation was in Primary school. I only knew what it was because after my elder brother had been taught the previous year and he had asked me if I had ‘started mine’.
What followed after that awkward Sunday were a series of heart stopping painful cramps that came at least once every month. It’s truly been a while that I’ve been going through this pain. I remember writhing in pain in the middle of the night during my first episode. I had no idea what was going on and I thought I was going to die. I didn’t die though.
Anyway, where I’m going is here; while I watched my friends in Secondary School get excited about getting their periods and their first bras, I did so in envy because I was never excited about growing. I didn’t like the fact that I had to wear a bra when my friends could just throw on a singlet — or not and get out. I hated that I had to include sanitary towels in my list of provisions right from JS1 and have my roommates open packets and pour Ribena on them to ‘see how they worked’. I absolutely loathed having to go and buy sanitary towels and have the seller look at me weird. Now that I think about it, the weird stares I noticed were probably in my mind. I also was very uncomfortable with the fact that while we were being taught about menstruation, my friends looked at me and giggled weirdly. So weirdly that my teacher had to ask me if I had ‘started menstruating’ in front of all my classmates, including the boys.
I also hated having ‘the talk’ so early in my life. My brothers had pressed their ears behind my mother’s locked door as she told me that I could get pregnant if any man’s sperm came close to my vagina. What really was that? I was only Eight or maybe younger when I started to get attention from boys and men. One time, in JS 1, my male classmates cornered me after afternoon prep and kept running into me. I was so confused at the time but as I grew older, I figured they were trying to ‘tap current’.
I didn’t care for having to worry about things that most people my age didn’t need to worry about. I think back and remember how much I wanted to look my age. I didn’t want to grow as fast as I did and I especially didn’t like the attention that came with it. | https://medium.com/@blossom-folutile/i-didnt-care-for-boobs-when-i-started-to-grow-them-70dc8fc358d4 | ['Blossom Deji-Folutile'] | 2020-12-12 07:33:17.191000+00:00 | ['Maturity', 'Growing Up', 'Teens', 'Coming Of Age'] |
Chatting with a Data Expert From Google, Christina Stathopoulos! | Chatting with a Data Expert From Google, Christina Stathopoulos!
A Googler, Adjunct Professor at IE Business School, guest lecturer, public speaker, and thought leader!
Image provided by Christina
Introduction
The same way that I write articles to share my advice and opinions for others to learn from, I personally like to reach out to others to hear about their story, advice, and wisdom to learn from them as well!
Christina Stathopoulos is actually one of the first few people that recognized my writing and shared one of my articles back in March! Since then, she has selflessly provided me with guidance and support around my career and data analytics in general.
And so, I thought it would be extremely valuable to give Christina an opportunity to share some of her experiences and wisdom with the rest of you!
If you want to learn more about Google, data science, data science AT Google, or some invaluable career advice, keep reading.
With that said, I introduce to you a Googler, Adjunct Professor at IE Business School, guest lecturer, public speaker, and thought leader, Christina! | https://towardsdatascience.com/chatting-with-a-data-expert-from-google-christina-stathopoulos-fd375823ece4 | ['Terence Shin'] | 2020-12-14 01:03:07.386000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Google', 'Interview', 'Data Science', 'Careers'] |
Managed VPS Hosting and its Advantages | Virtual Private Server Hosting (VPS Hosting) is one of the most sought-after options when businesses outgrow their Shared Hosting space. The reason being your business now has a large customer base and the traffic count too has increased significantly. These two reasons impact your website by improving the visibility and revenue of your business but also, resulting in slower website loading speed. And while the former is a positive impact, the latter can affect your business and its brand value. It is thus important to switch to a hosting plan that accommodates your growing traffic, as well as, improves the website loading speed, and VPS Hosting fits the bill.
First off, let us understand what a Virtual Private Server is. In Virtual Private Server, there are several servers sharing the same server space, however, all are isolated from each other. To understand this better let us consider an example of an apartment building. Say you have a 4-floor apartment building, and each floor has 3 flats. The residents of the building share some common resources like water supply, staircase and elevator, however, they each live separate isolated lives each having a different number of people staying, interiors and consumption of resources and other such things, with no interference to the other flat owners. Here, the apartment building will be the main VPS server and, whereas, the apartments are the isolated server space each user is allocated.
Now, that we’ve seen what is a Virtual Private Server, let us move on to understand its type. There are two types of VPS Hosting available, namely, Managed VPS Hosting and Unmanaged VPS Hosting. In this article, we’ll help you understand what Managed VPS Hosting is and how it helps your business.
What is Managed VPS Hosting?
As the name suggests, Managed VPS Hosting is a managed service where you need not worry about anything related to server management. In Managed VPS Hosting, your service provider takes care of server maintenance like updating the core, software installation, backup, security and more. Thus, as a business owner, you need not worry about server management and can invest your time and concentration on growing your business further.
Managed VPS Hosting can be chosen by any business owner, irrespective of you having any technical experience or not, as it eases your work.
Advantages of Managed VPS Hosting
Full root access
VPS Hosting is a combination of Shared and Dedicated Server Hosting, thus, providing the ease and advantage of both. Since your managed server is isolated from other servers you can modify it based on your needs and having full root access allows you to do so. Ease of management
With your server management and maintenance being taken care of by your web hosting provider, you can now easily concentrate on building your business and managing the brand side of it, whereas, the technical aspect is taken care of by the web host. Instant resource provisioning
Server resources like OS, RAM and CPU are instantly allocated as soon as your server is set up. Moreover, as your traffic grows you can easily scale these resources depending on your needs. Cost Saving
Since the maintenance of your website’s backend is taken care of by your web hosting provider, you need not hire an additional technical administrator to manage your website. Even though Managed VPS Hosting may seem costly to you at the start, however, when you compare it with paying a dedicated resource it is economical and cost saving to invest in a managed virtual server. Performance
The performance of your server depends on the hard drive used. There are two types of drives viz. SSD and HDD. And most businesses these days opt for SSD based VPS Hosting as it is better as compared to HDD in terms of performance. One of the most important advantages of SSD is that it improves the website load speed thus, improving the Google search ranking and performance. Still confused about SSD and HDD? Read all about SSD vs HDD VPS Hosting here! Security
Website security is of utmost importance. With managed virtual server hosting even though all the websites share the same physical space, the IP addresses are unique to each server owing to the Dedicated Hosting feature of isolation.
Should you go for it?
If you are a growing business whose goal is to increase your customer base and incoming traffic, then it is implied that you would be spending your resources and time planning the marketing and development activities to engage your customers better. At such a time, it would be a wise decision to choose Managed VPS Hosting, as it allows you to concentrate on the business aspect while the service provider takes care of the technical aspects of running your business website.
I hope this article helped you gain a better understanding of what managed VPS hosting is and its advantages, and if you as a business owner should opt for it. If you have any questions or queries, feel free to visit our website about all the web hosting details as a blog. | https://medium.com/@akshayraveendran210/managed-vps-hosting-and-its-advantages-bd7bb2c8bc61 | ['Akshay Raveendran'] | 2021-12-30 04:11:34.397000+00:00 | ['Vps Hosting', 'Web Hosting', 'Website', 'Web', 'Hosting'] |
A brief description of iPhone 11 Pro Max: | Apple has released a new iPhone in the past 12 years. Some of them are with massive improvements that show a clearer step than what the company or industry has done. Others have identified interior improvements without changing anything on the outside, and some look like fresh paint. While the Apple iPhone 11 Pro Mac may seem like an upgrade over the iPhone XS Max, it brings some significant changes. There is now a triple camera that lets you choose between wide-angle, ultra-wide and telephoto lenses.
Apple released the new iPhone 11 Pro Max in September 2019 with the following specifications:
SPECIFICATIONS
· Screen: Super Retina XDR 6.5 (OLED) (458ppi)
· Processor: A13 Bionic of Apple
· RAM: RAM 4GB
· Storage: 64GB / 256GB / 512GB
· Operating system: with iOS 13
· Camera: Triple rear cameras of 12MP with OIS, front-facing camera of 12MP
· Connectivity: LTE, WIFI 6, Lightning, Bluetooth 5, NFC, Ultra-Wideband and GPS
· Dimensions: 158 x 77.8 x 8.1 mm
· Weight: 226g
The phone has a bright camera, water resistance, night mode, wireless charging, good battery life, Face ID, better performance, bright screen, long-term support of software but it is hard to grip as it is heavy, no headphones adapter in the box, no headphone socket, no fingerprint scanner, super expensive, low starting storage.
Why I purchased iPhone 11 Pro Max?
Actually, many of us do have a stake in Apple, I am using IOS since a couple of years and will never go back to android, currently using iPhone 11 pro max and definitely this phone is the best device I’ve ever had, never experienced any lag or any other problem and I am very excited for the Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max. There’s nothing bad with the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Its screen is great, the gameplay is smooth, and the versatile triple-camera system and efficient, but what impressed me utmost was the life of a battery.
The influencer behind the purchase of iPhone 11 Pro Max:
It’s because they make the consumer feel like they are the better person for having the product.
I purchased Apple iPhone 11, Pro Max because it fulfils the desire to be acknowledged for it by my family and peers. The reason why the most important influencer in the purchase of iPhone 11 Pro Max were my family members, friends and colleagues as they strongly contribute to me in the choice of mobile phone. The other reason is that of peer pressure; as I bought the handset because everyone else is getting it and talking about it.
The Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max:
Maslow’s hierarchy is a motivational theory of the psychology of need. Maslow’s needs hierarchy includes five important human needs to be full filled.
When applying Maslow’s needs hierarchy in the workplace, you must have to understand requirements and how they affect motivation. Each need builds on the latter, making the person feel more fulfilled.
The five needs are s follow:
· The Physiological
· The Safety
· Love and belongingness.
· Self-Esteem
· Self-actualization.
It is important to establish a connection between Maslow’s theory of hierarchical requirements and modern consumer motivation to use their smartphone devices. The main reasons for using our mobile devices may be self-efficacy, self-esteem, love/rights, security and physiological. Physical needs must be met first and have traditionally been important to human existence. While I don’t say that my iPhone 11 Pro Max over air and water, while the use of my mobile devices for ordering food has increased significantly.
There is a relation between smartphone use and psychological behaviours such as self-esteem, I can mention that with the purchase of iPhone 11 Pro Max satisfied my Esteem need because I have a desire to be accepted and appreciated by others who can demonstrate social behaviour as well as hobbies and aspirations. With this mobile, I appeal to esteem by positioning iPhone 11 Pro Max as a symbol of my status.
The five-stage Decision-Making Model:
The buyer’s decision-making process is a series of steps that a buyer must follow before making a final purchasing decision.
1. Need Recognition
My buying decision process has begun when I realize that I have a need for new update smartphone. I have a need to update a branded mobile that can satisfy my need for self-esteem. As most of the family member and my peers have the most updated and expensive mobiles which realized me to buy a new smartphone.
2. Information Search
So, at the next stage, I started to gather information about the new update mobile phone in the market that suits me perfectly. I knew that there are lot of smartphones to fix my need but was not sure about the smartphone is best for me. So, I spoke to my family members and friends about the possible solution, also surf the Internet looking for suitable smartphones.
3. Option Evaluation
In the next stage, the initial information search is complete, I started reflecting on what I learnt. Most efforts in buying decisions come at a time when you need to make a choice from the options available. Through the internet, it is the best way to explore about smartphone because most of the website provides the facility to compare different mobile at a time according to their specifications. I also visited the local cellphone store and speak to the sales staff for better help.
4. Purchase Decision
All the hard work was done now it’s time for the buying decision, I was ready to pull the trigger and make a purchase. I have made the decision about the best smartphone iPhone 11 Pro Max for me which I selected to purchase among all the possible option.
5. Post-Purchase Evaluation
In the post-purchase evaluation whereby, I have found that the positive experience with the iPhone 11 Pro Max and this smartphone is going to satisfy all my needs. I am very pleased with the iPhone 11 Pro Max; I will tell my friends to decide to buy an iPhone 11 Pro Max. | https://medium.com/@ziakhankust/a-brief-description-of-iphone-11-pro-max-aa963874a129 | ['Zia Ullah Khan Marwat'] | 2020-12-26 08:58:55.904000+00:00 | ['iPhone', 'Iphone Pro Max', 'Product Reviews', 'Article Writing'] |
2 Pineapples, 6 Ways | “2 Pineapples, 6 Ways” by © Renée E. Winfield, 2021
Score the top, slice, stop,
going in this with doubt,
boring down though is
much like slicing cheese
a bit therapeutic, ease.
***
score 1/6: crown and body,
separate and combine,
rapt in feeling success.
Score bottom, slice, drop,
and take a first bite into
a juicy base handful of
green rubbery buttons
and yellow, soft spikes.
***
score 2/6: now, (the big picture)
sink in your teeth and tear in
a pineapple bottom and it’s
pure-pleasure, feeds.
Slice the side, pull, break,
amidst a metamorphosis:
polyhedral geometry,
slick texture, faded yellow.
***
slice 3/6: balance an organic weight,
glistens it’s full measure
Slice quarters, all around,
segment-task repeats.
***
slice 4/6: the simple forms the
complex parts or maintains
simplicity held by one and
each later to core; a second,
pineapple is removed from a
box, sliced at top and bottom.
Core by cutting center, push/pull
pineapple core; a procedure goes
faster, a mindless task requiring
nothing more than going through
the previous motions except that
this time you slice the outer skin,
and segment the fruit — later and
core now.
***
core 5/6: push/pull in action.
Pull core, pull core down.
remove and dispose core;
if eaten, the core has a strong, burning
sensation without permanent, harm.
***
pull 6/6: a core removal.
____
Note: Surprisingly, easier
if and when one may pare
than done above, it’s said:
handle it with best of care.
w/Thanks to: Reader/s
— r.e.w. | https://medium.com/rhymes-with-pick-ones-brains/2-pineapples-6-ways-bb5faa42cd5d | [] | 2021-04-09 00:45:52.008000+00:00 | ['Slice', 'Coring', 'Poetry', 'Cutting', 'Pineapple'] |
7 Tips For Internet Marketing | Time is money in any kind of a business but when you are talking about an internet marketing business, it can really cost you a good bit of money if you do not take the time to plan. The following tips and advice were written to help you in your internet marketing venture.
1. Keep it simple
If you’re using email marketing, don’t go overboard with images and fancy designs. With people constantly on the move, they may be reading your emails from their cell phone. And with the small screens on cell phones, if your email has a lot of fancy formatting, it may be difficult to read. You should keep cell phones in mind when designing your emails.
2. Have an open mind
Admit your shortfalls. Don’t attempt to deny that your website does not have its own pitfalls, because every website does. Take note when someone complains to you about an issue, acknowledge the problem and make steps to fix it. Allowing the customer to know you understand them, without getting defensive, is a good way to not only fix site issues, but also, to gain visitor trust.
3. Engage with readers
If you’re looking to increase visibility for your own blog, you need to begin making the investment now in commenting on other people’s blogs. Every time you post a blog comment, it links back to your own blog and will lead people back to your own page. By commenting actively, not only are your own comments boosting your online profile, you’re becoming more engaged and encouraging others to do the same for you.
4. Post new updates
When website owners have good news, they ought to share it online. This is a savvy internet marketing strategy. Posting news updates generates fresh content for a website, gives regular visitors to the site something new to think about and increases the site’s standing with search engines. Regular bits of good news also keep a website positive and upbeat, which enourages visitors to trust the site.
5. Flow with trends for momentum
As a beginner you should flow with trends as opposed to fighting against them. Allowing current trends in market momentum to guide your positioning gives you a better foundation to build upon. When you go against the trends you run the risk of gambling your capital away quickly and efficiently.
6. Analyze your traffic
Knowing where your visitors are coming from and how much traffic your site attracts, will help you to optimize your site to attract even more customers. There are many free and easy to use tools that can analyze your traffic and show you exactly who is visiting your site and why. Use these tools to improve your site and bring in more traffic.
7. Treat it like a Normal business
One of the best things you can do when it comes to internet marketing is treat it like a normal business. This means that you need to set aside a separate account for the finances, income and bills related to this. This helps you to keep your personal and professional lives independent.
Taking the time to read this article was a very wise decision. You are sure to find many ways to incorporate the information that is in it to your business. Use the time that you have spent reading this article to make profits that you may have otherwise missed out on.
Launch Your BRAND NEW Internet Business Before You Go To Bed Tonight..click here | https://medium.com/@redroopan/7-tips-for-internet-marketing-e25b6b153fb1 | ['Andrew King'] | 2020-12-24 18:13:23.664000+00:00 | ['Internet Marketing', 'Affiliate Marketing', 'Tips Internet Marketing', 'Online Business', 'Business'] |
Stop Selling Me Empty Writing Promises | Obviously, one of the appeals of platforms like Medium is the chance, however small, to make money writing. Yet many must, like me, quickly realize that isn’t the real value here for us. What I have found here are people to read what I write, and, once in a while, encourage me to keep going. I don’t anticipate that someone like me will get many followers, or make more than a few cents (which is why I no longer put posts behind the paywall).
People reading what I write is huge for me. I’ve never been able to share my writing like this before.
The thing is, when I first came here, I read a few of those “how to make money writing” posts. Who wouldn’t want to make some change doing something they love? But, at a certain point I tried to stop. I had noticed some of these posts are truly empty of quality and insight. I unfollowed several publications that seemed dominated by such posts.
You know, the ones that promise to teach you how to write 10 million words a day, or whatever nonsense, “market” myself, game the system, make a ton of money by selling this or that thing tangentially related to writing.
There are absolutely posts that offer real help and tips to people trying to start or maintain writing as a career. Some of these posts are absolutely amazing, and contain valuable insights.
But it’s clear to me that some of these people are just out to make money, here or elsewhere, off of writers, by writing about how to make money writing.
I’d be interested to see how many top earners on these platforms are those claiming to be helping beginning writers. Because, in this case, the more they dominate publications and are promoted, the less there is for the beginner writers themselves.
Also, you may have noticed: Some of these are super manipulative!
I don’t know who exactly needs to hear this. You probably know who you are, (if you ever read this, which I doubt):
Stop using the marketing tricks you are pretending to teach me, on me. Stop exploiting that side of me as though you are actually interested in “solving my problem”. You are hustling. You are manipulating. You know it, because you brag about it in these posts.
I am just here to write and read. If you are here to offer sincere help, that’s great. If you are here to manipulate those of us who love to write, or are eager to improve, I’ll say this: | https://medium.com/the-haven/stop-selling-me-empty-writing-promises-6874423e7e87 | ['Erica Ball'] | 2020-12-22 18:21:32.498000+00:00 | ['Writers On Writing', 'Humor', 'Rant', 'Writing', 'Writing Tips'] |
Understanding Important Features in Marketing Campaign Analysis | This morning I encountered an article about marketing campaign data analysis using “correlation funnel”, which is basically a plot(visualization) that lists important(highly-correlated) variables to understand/predict a target variable.
[source: xkcd]
To use correlation funnel, you have to go through some data wrangling process and perform binary correlation analysis using R; anyhow, the plot shows all the correlated variables from the highest correlation to the lowest in a single chart, the major benefits could be:
Speeds Up Exploratory Data Analysis
Improves Feature Selection
Gets You To Business Insights Faster
And I downloaded the same dataset and compared the correlation funnel chart with HEARTCOUNT’s difference analysis chart:
[R correlation funnel plot vs. HEARTCOUNT difference analysis] | https://medium.com/heartcount/understanding-important-features-in-marketing-campaign-analysis-7929b232488d | ['Sidney'] | 2019-08-11 01:37:18.721000+00:00 | ['Eda', '데이터분석', 'Heartcount', 'Data Science', 'Statistics'] |
In Moment of Despair, Turkey’s Opposition Finds New Synergy and Unity | In Moment of Despair, Turkey’s Opposition Finds New Synergy and Unity
The decision for the rerun of Istanbul vote rattled Turkey. But it also reinvigorated the opposition, paving the way for the steady rise of a new leader — Ekrem Imamoglu.
Former Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu joined a family in Istanbul’s Sultanbeyli district for first iftar dinner of Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
“Everything will be fine.”
Hours after Turkey’s election authority ruled for holding a new election in Istanbul, this has become the defining motto of Turkey’s fragmented but emboldened opposition.
It was a morale boost to reinvigorate the opposition dispirited by the annulment of opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu’s hard-won and deserved win in Istanbul in local elections. And the remarks came from the new (or former) mayor himself.
“Everything will be fine,” the mayor said, rejecting to allow himself to be overtaken by grief and despair. And he enabled a diverse set of people — celebrities, writers, journalists and people from all walks of life — to coalesce around a passionate cause to claim what was stolen from them — Istanbul, the largest city of Turkey and the major political battleground that could shape the country’s political future.
They joined the call from Imamoglu who urged people to speak without fear. Everybody, celebrities, artists and businessmen must speak as a patriotic duty. “If not now, when?” he asked when he denounced the Supreme Election Council’s (YSK) “act of theft.”
The mood, as we can glean from social media, turned from resignation and despair to a newfound enthusiasm buoyed by a sense of righteousness and victimhood. For a while, the opposition part of Turkey has never been this loud or effective.
Artists were on the front line on social media, leading the emerging public resistance. “Everything will be fine” suddenly has become the symbol of new-age civil disobedience, expressed in peaceful and pacifist mode on social media. It espouses juxtaposition of diverse emotional and psychological elements, hope and firm belief. It also contains elements of determination, will and endurance.
IYI (Good) Party leader Meral Aksener whose support was vital in Imamoglu’s election described the YSK decision as a civil coup, an intervention to disregard public will in Istanbul.
The reaction from the outside world was indignant as well. EU’s Turkey Rapporteur Kati Piri expressed her disbelief. | https://abyasun.medium.com/in-moment-of-despair-turkeys-opposition-finds-new-synergy-and-union-22ebd3fba2f4 | ['Abdullah Ayasun'] | 2019-06-28 00:11:24.630000+00:00 | ['Chp', 'Ekrem İmamoğlu', 'Local Elections', 'Turkey', 'Erdogan'] |
How Crowdfunding Technology Is Solving Homelessness Through Skills Training | In episode 31 of the Disruptors for Good podcast, I speak with Alex Stephany, the founder of Beam, on solving homelessness using crowdfunding and technology.
Beam is a crowdfunding platform that enables new career opportunities for homeless men and women. Beam uses technology and global citizens to help fund skills training and education to homeless individuals. With the Beam platform, you can help someone start a new career and leave homelessness for good.
The platform works like this. Each person on the platform is referred to Beam by an established homeless charity or their local council. They receive a dedicated support specialist — a Beam employee who supports them all the way into their new career! The support specialists conduct basic security checks to make sure the referred person is mentally and physically ready to enter full-time employment. After that they help each person develop a tailored career plan, building on their unique strengths and interests.
Once approved to be on the Beam platform, we as global citizens, can choose to help fund one person’s training or fund everyone equally. You can choose support once or monthly. You’ll get an email introducing you to a new person you’re supporting every month and learn more about their individual story.
The founder of Beam, Alex Stephany, was inspired to build Beam after getting to know a homeless man at his local Tube station in London. The man had spent decades out of work. Alex would buy him cups of coffee and pairs of socks, but could see his condition going from very bad to even worse.When the man had a heart attack, Alex asked himself: “What could we do to make a real difference to that man’s life?” The answer lay in giving him the skills to support himself. Alex knew that’d cost much more than a coffee. But what if everyone chipped in?
Before Beam, Alex ran the parking app, JustPark, which he grew from 2 to over 40 people and still support as a Board Advisor. At JustPark, he had his first experience with crowdfunding when he led a record-breaking equity crowdfunding round — what was the largest crowdfunding round for a startup in history.
He is also the author of a book on the sharing economy called The Business of Sharing, and also advised the city of Seoul as part of the Mayor’s Sharing Economy Advisory Panel. | https://medium.com/@causeartist/how-crowdfunding-technology-is-solving-homelessness-through-skills-training-9c2efdd9e1ea | [] | 2019-11-20 18:10:54.932000+00:00 | ['Crowdfunding', 'Social Impact', 'Social Enterprise', 'Homeless'] |
Quantum Neural Networks | This article outlines the investigation, progression and perspectives of quantum neural networks — a flourishing new field which arranges classical neurocomputing with quantum computation. It is fought that the examination of quantum neural networks may give us both new cognizance of brain work similarly as marvelous possibilities in making new structures for information processing, including dealing with classically ardent problems. At the end of this paper, I will be implementing quantum neural networks (QNN), partial classical neural networks, and classical neural networks (CNN) to train simple MNIST classification and see how QNN performs.
Classical neural systems can order transcribed digits. The model originates from the MNIST informational index which comprises of 55,000 preparing tests that are 28 by 28 pixilated pictures of written by hand digits that have been marked by people as speaking to one of the ten digits from 0 to 9. Numerous early on classes in AI utilize this informational collection as a testbed for examining basic neural systems. So it appears to be normal for us to check whether quantum neural system can deal with the MNIST information. There is no undeniable method to assault this logically so I resort to recreation. The impediment here is that I can just effectively deal with state 16 piece information utilizing a traditional test system of a 17 qubit quantum PC with one readout bit. So I utilize a downsampled form of the MNIST information which comprises of 4 by 4 pixilated pictures. With one readout bit I can’t mark ten digits so all things being equal I pick two digits, state 7 and 9, and lessen the informational collection to comprise of just those examples named as 7 or 9 and inquire as to whether the quantum system can recognize the information tests.
The 55,000 preparing tests break into gatherings of approximately 5,500 examples for every digit. Yet, upon closer assessment we see that the examples relating to state the digit 7, comprise of 797 unmistakable 16 piece strings while for the digit 9 there are 617 particular 16 piece strings. The pictures are hazy and in actuality there are 197 unmistakable strings that are marked as both 7 and 9. For my digit qualification task I chose to lessen the Bayes mistake to 0 by evacuating the questionable strings. Returning to the 5,500 examples for every digit and evacuating vague strings, leaves 3,514 examples that are marked as 7’s and 2,517 that are named as 9’s. I join these to make a preparation set of 6,031 examples As a fundamental advance I present the named tests to a classical neural system. Here I run a tensorflow classifier with one interior layer comprising of 10 neurons. Every neuron has 16 coefficient loads and one inclination weight so there are 170 parameters on the interior layer and 4 on the yield layer. The old style organize experiences no difficulty discovering loads that give short of what one percent arrangement mistake on the preparation set. The Python program additionally takes a gander at the speculation mistake however to do so it picks an arbitrary 15 percent of the info information to use for a test set. Since the information collection has rehashed events of a similar 16 piece strings, the test set isn’t absolutely concealed models. Still the speculation blunder is short of what one percent.
I presently go to the quantum classifier. Here I have little direction with respect to how to plan the quantum circuit. I chose to limit my toolbox of unitaries to comprise of one and two qubit administrators of the structure. I take the one qubit Σ’s to be X, Y and Z following up on any of the 17 qubits. For the two qubit unitaries I take Σ to be XY, Y Z, ZX, XX, Y and ZZ between any pair of various qubits. The main thing I attempted was an arbitrary choice of 500 (or 1000) of these unitaries. The irregularity relates to which of the 9 door types are picked just as to which qubits the entryways are applied to. Beginning with an irregular arrangement of 500 (or 1000) edges, subsequent to introducing a couple hundred preparing tests, the all out blunder settled in at around 10 percent. However, the example misfortune for singular strings was commonly just a piece beneath 1 which relates to a quantum achievement likelihood of a little more than 50 percent for most stings. Here the pattern was the correct way yet I were planning to improve.
After some playing around I took a stab at confining my entryway set to ZX and XX with the second qubit continually being the readout qubit and the first qubit being one of the other 16. The inspiration here is that the related unitaries viably turn the readout qubit around the x course by a sum constrained by the information qubits. A full layer of ZX has 16 parameters as does a full layer of XX. I attempted a variation of 3 layers of ZX with 3 layers of XX for a sum of 96 parameters. Here I found that beginning from an arbitrary arrangement of points I could accomplish two percent straight out mistake in the wake of seeing not exactly the full example set. The achievement here is that I showed that a quantum neural system could figure out how to group certifiable information. In fact the informational index could without much of a stretch be grouped by an old style arrange. Furthermore, working at a fixed low number of bits blocks any conversation of scaling. Yet, my work is exploratory and absent a lot of exertion I have a quantum circuit that can arrange certifiable information. Presently the assignment is to refine the quantum neural system so it performs better. Ideally I can discover a few standards (or just motivation) that manages the decision of door sets.
Implementation
Imported Dependencies
Imported Dataset
Filter the dataset to keep just the 7s and 9s, remove the other classes. At the same time convert the label, y , to boolean: True for 7 and False for 9 .
Downscale the images
An image size of 28x28 is much too large for current quantum computers. Resize the image down to 4x4:
Remove Contradictory examples
Filter the dataset to remove images that are labeled as belonging to both classes.
The resulting counts do not closely match the reported values, but the exact procedure is not specified.
It is also worth noting here that applying filtering contradictory examples at this point does not totally prevent the model from receiving contradictory training examples: the next step binarizes the data which will cause more collisions.
Encode the data as quantum circuits
To process images using a quantum computer, Farhi et al. proposed representing each pixel with a qubit, with the state depending on the value of the pixel. The first step is to convert to a binary encoding.
Quantum Neural Networks
Since the classification is based on the expectation of the readout qubit, Farhi et al. propose using two qubit gates, with the readout qubit always acted upon.
This following example shows this layered approach. Each layer uses n instances of the same gate, with each of the data qubits acting on the readout qubit. Start with a simple class that will add a layer of these gates to a circuit:
Now build a two-layered model, matching the data-circuit size, and include the preparation and readout operations.
Build the Keras model with the quantum components. This model is fed the “quantum data”, from x_train_circ , that encodes the classical data. It uses a Parametrized Quantum Circuit layer, tfq.layers.PQC , to train the model circuit, on the quantum data.
To classify these images, Farhi et al. proposed taking the expectation of a readout qubit in a parameterized circuit. The expectation returns a value between 1 and -1.
Second, use a custiom hinge_accuracy metric that correctly handles [-1, 1] as the y_true labels argument. tf.losses.BinaryAccuracy(threshold=0.0) expects y_true to be a boolean, and so can't be used with hinge loss).
Train the quantum model
Using fewer examples just ends training earlier (5min), but runs long enough to show that it is making progress in the validation logs.
Classical neural network
While the quantum neural network works for this simplified MNIST problem, a basic classical neural network can easily outperform a QNN on this task. After a single epoch, a classical neural network can achieve >98% accuracy on the holdout set.
In the following example, a classical neural network is used for for the 3–6 classification problem using the entire 28x28 image instead of subsampling the image. This easily converges to nearly 100% accuracy of the test set.
The above model has nearly 1.2M parameters. For a more fair comparison, try a 37-parameter model, on the subsampled images:
Comparison
Higher resolution input and a more powerful model make this problem easy for the CNN. While a classical model of similar power (~32 parameters) trains to a similar accuracy in a fraction of the time. One way or the other, the classical neural network easily outperforms the quantum neural network. For classical data, it is difficult to beat a classical neural network.
Reference
Farhi et al.
Quantum MNIST Tutorial. | https://medium.com/@esobimpe/quantum-neural-networks-9fce2566315d | ['Eniola Sobimpe'] | 2020-12-24 04:09:42.251000+00:00 | ['Quantum Computing', 'Physics', 'TensorFlow'] |
Traditional Polish Babka Recipe | Babka is a sweet bread that originated in Poland and Ukraine’s Jewish communities. The Eastern European babka draws its name from its tall, stout, fluted sides formed in a traditional pan and reminiscent of a grandma’s skirt. Baba or its diminutive babka means grandmother in Polish. Although typically served at Easter, this Polish babka recipe is festive enough for any holiday table.
Ingredients
Babka
1/2 cup milk, lukewarm
Three large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
4 tbsp butter softened
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup candied or mixed dried fruit, diced
Rum Syrup
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp rum
Icing (optional)
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
Pinch of salt
2 tbsp rum
Method
Babka
Place all ingredients except the fruit in a mixing bowl, and beat at medium speed until cohesive. Beat on high speed for an additional 2 minutes.
Add the fruit and beat gently until well combined.
Cover the bowl, and let the dough rise/rest for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Spoon the batter into a greased bundt pan. Cover the pan, and let the dough rise/rest for another 30 minutes.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until the center’s internal temperature reaches 190°F.
Rum Syrup
Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, bringing the mixture to a boil. Stir the liquid in the pan until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat.
Gently poke babka all over with a fork, and slowly pour the syrup over the entire surface of the babka.
Allow the syrup to absorb fully (approximately 20 minutes), loosen the babka’s edges, gently remove from the pan, and place on a wire cooling rack.
Dust babka with confectioners’ sugar or drizzle with icing if desired.
Icing (optional)
Prepare icing by mixing all of the ingredients, stirring until smooth. Drizzle over utterly cool babka. | https://medium.com/the-cookbook-for-all/traditional-polish-babka-recipe-17772855fcda | ['Lana Kiossovski'] | 2020-11-23 05:53:20.691000+00:00 | ['Pastry', 'Cooking', 'Bread', 'Recipe', 'European'] |
Building a Big Data Pipeline With Airflow, Spark and Zeppelin | “black tunnel interior with white lights” by Jared Arango on Unsplash
In this data-driven era, there is no piece of information that can’t be useful. Every bit of data stored on the systems of your company, no matter its field of activity, is valuable. Maximizing the exploitation of this new black gold is the fastest way towards success, because data offers an enormous amount of answers, even to questions you still haven’t thought of yet.
Luckily for us, setting up a Big Data pipeline that can efficiently scale with the size of your data is no longer a challenge since the main technologies within the Big Data ecosystem are all open-source.
No matter which technology you use to store data, whether it’s a powerful Hadoop cluster or a trusted RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), connecting it to a fully-functioning pipeline is a project that’ll reward you with invaluable insights. One pipeline that can be easily integrated within a vast range of data architectures is composed of the following three technologies: Apache Airflow, Apache Spark, and Apache Zeppelin.
First, let Airflow organize things for you
Apache Airflow is one of those rare technologies that are easy to put in place yet offer extensive capabilities. The workflow management system that was first introduced by Airbnb back in 2015 has gained a lot of popularity thanks to its powerful user interface and its effectiveness through the use of Python.
Airflow relies on four core elements that allow it to simplify any given pipeline:
DAGs ( Directed Acyclic Graphs ): Airflow uses this concept to structure batch jobs in an extremely efficient way, with DAGs you have a big number of possibilities to structure your pipeline in the most suitable way
( ): Airflow uses this concept to structure batch jobs in an extremely efficient way, with DAGs you have a big number of possibilities to structure your pipeline in the most suitable way Tasks: this is where all the fun happens; Airflow’s DAGs are divided into tasks, and all of the work happens through the code you write in these tasks (and yes, you can literally do anything within an Airflow task)
this is where all the fun happens; Airflow’s DAGs are divided into tasks, and all of the work happens through the code you write in these tasks (and yes, you can literally do anything within an Airflow task) Scheduler: unlike other workflow management tools within the Big Data universe (notably Luigi), Airflow has its own scheduler which makes setting up the pipeline even easier
unlike other workflow management tools within the Big Data universe (notably Luigi), Airflow has its own scheduler which makes setting up the pipeline even easier X-COM: in a wide array of business cases, the nature of your pipeline may require that you pass information between the multiple tasks. With Airflow that can be easily done through the use of X-COM functions that rely on Airflow’s own database to store data you need to pass from one task to another
Having an Airflow server and scheduler up and running is a few commands away and in a few minutes you could find yourself navigating the friendly user interface of your own Airflow web-server, which is quite easy to master:
The Airflow UI
The next step consists of connecting Airflow to your database / data management system, fortunately Airflow offers a pretty straightforward way to do that through the UI:
Connecting Airflow to your data management system
And that’s literally all you need to do to have an up and running Airflow server integrated within your data architecture. Now you can use its powerful capabilities to manage your data pipelines by conceiving your pipelines via Airflow’s DAGs system.
Then, let Spark do the hard work
Spark no longer needs an introduction, but in case you’re unfamiliar with the distributed data-processing framework that took the world by storm since it was open sourced in 2013, this 15-minute tutorial by Simplilearn will surely get you up to speed.
As long as you’re running it on a cluster adequate to the size of your data, Spark offers ridiculously fast processing power. And through Spark SQL, it allows you to query your data as if you were using SQL or Hive-QL.
Now all you need to do is to use Spark within your Airflow tasks to process your data according to your business needs. I strongly recommend using the PySpark module and then using Airflow’s PythonOperator for your tasks; that way you get to execute your Spark jobs directly within the Airflow Python functions.
I also recommend relying on helper functions so that you don’t find yourself copy-pasting the same bits of code within different tasks.
Spark SQL offers equivalents to all of the operations that may be present within your queries, so the transition will definitely be seamless. Use PySpark to restructure your data according to your needs and then use its immense processing power to calculate multiple aggregations, then you could store its output on your database, through the Airflow hook.
Finally, enjoy the results through Zeppelin
Apache Zeppelin is another technology at the Apache Software Foundation that’s gaining massive popularity. Through its use of the notebook concept it became the go-to data visualization tool in the Hadoop ecosystem.
Using Zeppelin allows you to visualize your data dynamically and in real-time, and through the forms that you can create within a Zeppelin dashboard you could easily create dynamic scripts that use the forms’ input to run a specific set of operations on a dynamically specified data-set:
Forms within a Zeppelin note
Thanks to these dynamic forms, a Zeppelin dashboard becomes an efficient tool to offer even users who have never written a line of code an instant and complete access to the company’s data.
Just like Airflow, setting up a Zeppelin server is pretty straightforward. Then you just need to configure the Spark interpreter so that you can run PySpark scripts within Zeppelin notes on the data you already prepared via the Airflow-Spark pipeline.
Additionally, Zeppelin offers a huge number of interpreters allowing its notes to run multiple types of scripts (with the Spark interpreter being the most hyped).
After loading your data, visualizing it via multiple visualization types can be instantly done via the multiple paragraphs of the note:
Data visualization with Apache Zeppelin
And with the release of Zeppelin 0.8.0 in 2018, you could now extend its capabilities (like adding custom visualizations) through Helium, its new plugin system.
To integrate Zeppelin within the pipeline, all you need to do is to configure the Spark interpreter. And if you prefer to access the data calculated with Spark using your database instead, that’s also possible through the use of the appropriate Zeppelin interpreter.
That’s it!
That’s all you need to do to have an up and running Big Data pipeline that allows you to extract and visualize enormous amounts of information from your data.
Start by putting in place an Airflow server that organizes the pipeline, then rely on a Spark cluster to process and aggregate the data, and finally let Zeppelin guide you through the multiple stories your data can tell.
For any questions or if you need some help with one of these technologies, you could email me directly and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by + 378,907 people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here. | https://medium.com/swlh/building-a-big-data-pipeline-with-airflow-spark-and-zeppelin-843f31ef220c | ['Mahdi Karabiben'] | 2018-10-16 12:59:41.510000+00:00 | ['Zeppelin', 'Airflow', 'Spark', 'Big Data', 'Tutorial'] |
Learning the ABCs of Allyship | Did you know that someone proposed a new “Alphabet Song”? One that rids us of the famed LMNOP (read “ellemenopee”) in favor of each letter getting its shine in the song.
Of the few things that brought me joy this 2020, watching people on social media mourning the loss of LMNOP and questioning life’s cruelties over this change was pretty high on my list.
While I was squarely in the camp of the outraged who felt like a part of their childhood was taken away, it did make me think — what a perfect analogy to allyship.
What are the ABCs we are practicing and have internalized when it comes to showing up as an ally? Maybe we have developed a routine so familiar that we can recite it without thinking and practice it on autopilot. However, if there is a different way, a better way, that someone proposes, it sparks a visceral reaction.
It’s not easy to change. We are creatures of habit and change can be ugly, especially when we are confronting the uncertainty that comes with new decisions. In addition to that, I think opening up to change also means confronting who we currently are and accepting that we aren’t where we could be, or worse, where we thought we were. Regarding allyship, I think many of us take pride in our commitment to helping and showing up for others and feeling accomplished when we “do good”; however, these feelings of affirmation are limiting us in some ways, keeping us from pushing to a place where we are acknowledging our blind spots, thinking about where we still may be biased, where our privileges remain unchecked and harmful to others, and where our silence on issues functions as reinforcement of unfair outcomes.
We are so caught up in the song we sing ourselves sometimes that we don’t make room for the song we probably need to hear. We tell others we are allies or own it as a badge of honor, but aren’t actually aware of how others may perceive our commitment when it counts. We may support the ideas that everyone deserves respect and psychological safety; however, our interaction with our environment is very individualized and narrowly focused on how the environment impacts us, rather than how we impact the environment. We may show up for the cause, but not show up in our everyday environment to consistently challenge the status quo.
There are clear ABCs in the allyship journey, but the allure of singing to our own cadence is a strong one. If we are serious about showing up for others, then we have to be focused on awareness, behavior change, and consistency. How we sing the song matters; how many of us would have grasped L,M,N,O,P, more quickly if we had given those letters the space to breathe? How much more effective can we be showing up for others if we root ourselves in the right cadence of practice rather than embracing our own? How much more reliable can we be by acknowledging what it takes to grow and committed to it daily?
Considering singing this one along with me.
Education is important. Some wise person somewhere said that we can’t address problems that we do not know exist. We should do the work to increase our awareness of what could change around us that would improve things for someone else if we are trying to be an ally. What we don’t want to do is replace awareness with assumptions here: that because we know what we would want, we could reason out what someone else would want. This reminds me of the golden rule, and also how shortsighted it can be — treating others how we want to be treated is a baseline to ask people to identify a modicum of humanity in other people; treating others how they want to be treated is truly seeing someone and showing up for them. We can’t do that if we aren’t willing to invest the time to learn something new.
This learning can take place at the intra, inter, and systemic levels.
Intra: do you know what you truly believe? Can you articulate it? Have you internalized a set of expectations about the environment or a person you expect to be true most of the time? What assumptions do you make about the world around you?
do you know what you truly believe? Can you articulate it? Have you internalized a set of expectations about the environment or a person you expect to be true most of the time? What assumptions do you make about the world around you? Inter: do you know the people around you? Have you invested the time to build trusting relationships with friends, coworkers, family, the barista, the store clerk? Have you taken the time to learn someone’s story?
do you know the people around you? Have you invested the time to build trusting relationships with friends, coworkers, family, the barista, the store clerk? Have you taken the time to learn someone’s story? Systemic: do you know your history? Have you looked at events in history from multiple angles? Have you experienced a culture other than your own? Have you learned about the rules, laws, and expectations that define your code of conduct?
Challenge yourself to grow as an ally by increasing knowledge of self, your relationships, and your environment. These questions help point you in the right direction
🎤 B is for Behavior Change 🎤
Engaging in learning should rewire something for you. This is where behavior change comes in. If you think about any representation of a change in nature — chemical, biological, physical, geological — change is catalyzed by a force or the introduction of something new to inspire something better. The process can be volatile, vulnerable, and sometimes unpredictable. That doesn’t stop it from happening and shifting behaviors and compositions.
Showing up for others as an ally is no different. In order for us to truly transform, we have to introduce something new and embrace the ride that follows. Though that may feel unsettling and even daunting, showing up as an ally is about getting comfortable with the discomfort — of not knowing the outcome, of not predicting every consequence.
If it hasn’t become clear yet, allyship is a risk. There is a chance that someone will disagree with you, challenge you, hate you for your stance. We should take a moment to pause and honor that acts of allyship are not insignificant or small choices because the stakes are high. Now consider that if allyship is risky, speaking up in the world as the historically marginalized, underrepresented, or disadvantaged community is that risk multiplied by centuries of pain and struggle and millions of stifled voices. This is why allyship can be powerful. Allies have the positioning, influence, or authority to speak in spaces that others cannot; to stand up when others are forced not to because the risk profile looks different. Put positively, allies have a social and relational capital that makes the same messages of resistance, fairness, change, and equity, more palatable in spaces historically not occupied by minority communities.
Allies have to make a conscious decision to use that capital differently to truly show up as allies.
🎤C is for Consistency 🎶
What is a habit? We generally talk about them as something automatic and difficult to change. We learn these ways of being and normalize them, many times without intentionality. I really appreciate the way that Charles Duhigg talks about habits, breaking them down into parts we can start to analyze and understand: the cue, the routine, and the reward. When it comes to moments where we are compelled to be an ally, what are our triggers, motivations, and responses to the moment?
Focusing on the routine is the more obvious part — I need to do X instead of Y. However, any of us that have ever made a New Year’s resolution can attest to the fact that simply knowing what we would do our how we want to respond is not enough. We build consistency by thinking about and reframing the value we derive from being an ally or expanding the cues that prompt us to think about allyship.
For instance, maybe we challenge ourselves to check-in and validate more moments where we could be allies. Not just moments where the conversation trends toward justice, like professing that “black lives matter”, but also those everyday moments where someone else could or would willingly explain it away as “no big deal”, like microaggressions.
We should also think about what being an ally actually means to us. Do we derive pleasure from the act of showing up for others? Does it validate our sense of self, confirming that we are good, caring, and compassionate people? Deriving some intrinsic value is not necessarily a bad thing, however, if the act of allyship is only serving our needs for validation, then when the moment calls for sacrifice, risk, or doing something simply because it’s the right thing to do, showing up for others may feel out of reach or impossible to commit to.
Once we learn the song, singing it is easy. The application can be harder. Without practice and commitment, we fall into the trap of doing what is easiest rather than doing what is most effective.
The more I’ve hummed the new ABC song, the more it’s grown on me. And the more we integrate with these ABCs of allyship, the more it will feel like a core part of who we are. | https://medium.com/@coreytponder/learning-the-abcs-of-allyship-5da459a19edb | ['Corey Ponder'] | 2020-12-29 18:14:03.807000+00:00 | ['Behavior Change', 'Allyship', 'Awareness', 'Consistency', 'Diversity'] |
Enssu Baby Hair Trimmer And Clippers For Baby Kids Children Electric Removable Blades With Babies Haircut Kit Set Hair Shaver Silent Watergroof Cordless Rechargeable | Enssu Baby Hair Trimmer And Clippers For Baby Kids Children Electric Removable Blades With Babies Haircut Kit Set Hair Shaver Silent Watergroof Cordless Rechargeable Airpurifierforsmoking Sep 27, 2019·4 min read
From:https://www.gzenssu.com/products/enssu-baby-hair-trimmer-and-clippers-for-baby-kids-children-electric-removable-blades-with-babies-haircut-kit-set-hair-shaver-silent-watergroof-cordless-rechargeable/
Enssu Baby Hair Trimmer And Clippers for Baby Kids Children Electric Removable Blades With Babies Haircut Kit Set Hair Shaver Silent Watergroof Cordless Rechargeable.
Feature:
Enssu waterproof muffler, from the German technology.
Fine teeth ceramic knife head safe and secure, super-quiet 7 waterproof, multi-function and more protection.
It adopts the high-hardness hair clipper blades.
Fit for baby and kids.
Cutting the hair just like combing the hair, quickly, easily and safe.
Great gift to kids, parents, friends, lover.
Cordless Use:
Comes with an USB charging cable, this baby hair clipper can be charged by desktop, laptop, portable source, etc.
No More Fears and Tears:
This ultra slient baby hair clipper has a low working noise which is less than 45db, making the babies no fear to the hair-cut. Also, the cordless capacity is so wonderful for the haircut and it will not wake babies up even when they are sleeping.
Safe Ceramic Blade:
The sharp and clean ceramic blade is designed for 0–12 years old baby. Easily to cut the hair without snagging or pulling of the hair. With 0.5mm gap to the skin offers full protection to avoid getting hurt.
Function:
Waterproof ultra-quiet, so that the baby barber more secure.
Applicable age: 0–12
Material: ABS+ Electronic originals
Rated voltage: 4.2v
Charging time: 3hours
Working time: 60 minutes
Package Included:
1 x Hair Clipper
1 x Charger
2xProtected Combs
1xSponge puff
1 x Cleaning Brush
1 x lubricant
1 x English User Manual
Product Images:
Product Detail:
About Enssu:
We design, develop, manufacture and sell baby nursing & feeding electric appliances such as Baby Hair Clipper/Trimmer, Baby Feeding Bottle Warmer, Baby Thermostat, Baby Feeding Bottle Sterilizer, Baby Electric Nail Polisher, etc.
We have our own Research & Development team with top structural and electronic engineers, together with top industrial design staff and cooperative partners, which is able to create marvelous products for our clients. We have aquired dozens of technical patents.We also have 6 product assemble lines in our own factory with a manufacturing capacity of over 10,000 pieces of baby hair clipper per day.
We apply higher quality of materials and accessories to achieve a better quality of products. Our factory has the following certificates including but not limited to CE, RoHS,FDA, UL, FC, ISO, CCC, CQC, etc.
We have been serving clients all over the world. Brands from the U.S., Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia, Hongkong and Mainland China.
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Web: https://www.gzenssu.com | https://medium.com/@Airpurifierforsmoking/enssu-baby-hair-trimmer-and-clippers-for-baby-kids-children-electric-removable-blades-with-babies-751deebe0fef | [] | 2019-09-27 07:08:43.809000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Baby Products'] |
Location Referencing: TMC, Alert-C | Location Referencing: TMC, Alert-C
The case of pre-coded locations and the need of radio broadcasting traffic information
Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash
In a prevoious post I introduced different ways in which geospatial information can be shared between different persons. Now I will focus on the case where we use pre-coded locations. Let’s remind that we are dealing with a situation where the actor A wants to communicate an information related to his map to anoter actor B having a different map. The strategy we are going to describe is to share a common predefined set of locations that each actor can relate to his map. In that way any data referred to such set can be transmitted between the two actors unambigously.
The most common used system of pre-coded locations is the RDS-TMC using Alert-C as defined by the standards ISO 14819–1:2013, ISO 14819–2:2013, ISO 14819–3:2013, ISO 14819–6:2006.
The ALERT-C protocol is designed to provide mostly event-orientated road end-user information messages. RDS-TMC messages are language-independent, and can be presented in the language of the user’s choice. The ALERT-C protocol utilises a standardised Event List of event messages with their code values, which also includes general traffic problems and weather situations. ALERT-C defines two categories of information within messages: basic and optional items. In principle, basic information is present in all messages. Optional information can be added to messages where necessary. Standard RDS-TMC user messages provide the following five basic items of explicit, broadcast information:
Event description, giving details of road event situation, general traffic problems and weather situations (e.g. congestion caused by accident) and where appropriate its severity (e.g. resulting queue length).
Location, indicating the area, road segment or point location where the source of the problem is situated.
Direction and Extent, identifying the adjacent segments or specific point locations also affected by the incident, and where appropriate the direction of traffic affected.
Duration, giving an indication of how long the problem is expected to last.
Diversion advice, showing whether or not end-users are recommended to find and follow an alternative route.
In addition to such basic information there are also optional ones, and among them we can find:
Road class and road number
Road segment
Area, region and country
Pre-assigned diversion advice
In the ISO 14819–1:2013 standard all these information are fully described and you can find exactly the binary content of the message bit per bit. While the ISO 14819–2:2013 standard defines the “Events List” to be used in coding the messages. Such list is composed by carefully selected English phrases for describing many type of events, and the corresponding translated phrases in other languages are officially available from the TMC Forum website. All listed events are identified by a numerical code to which correspond the phrase describing the event. The Event List also contains several predefined combinations of single phrase events and they are not always word for word identical to the corresponding phrases used in the single events. Binding words or small changes to the wording are necessary.
The basic messages are grouped in the following classes (with an example in brackets, and its code) :
Level of service (stationary traffic — 101)
(stationary traffic — 101) Expected level of service (queuing traffic expected — 114)
(queuing traffic expected — 114) Accidents (all accidents cleared, no problem to report — 141)
(all accidents cleared, no problem to report — 141) Incidents (rescue and recovery work in progress — 397)
(rescue and recovery work in progress — 397) Closure and lane restrictions (emergency lane closed — 637)
(emergency lane closed — 637) Carriageway restrictions (tunnel blocked — 27)
(tunnel blocked — 27) Exit restrictions (slip roads restrictions — 409)
(slip roads restrictions — 409) Entry restrictions (entry blocked — 473)
(entry blocked — 473) Traffic restrictions (smog alert — 1332)
(smog alert — 1332) Carpool information (police directing traffic via the carpool lane — 1963)
(police directing traffic via the carpool lane — 1963) Roadworks (new road layout — 811)
(new road layout — 811) Obstruction hazards (spillage on the road — 903)
(spillage on the road — 903) Dangerous situations (heards of animals on roadway — 1068)
(heards of animals on roadway — 1068) Road conditions (oil on road. Danger — 1057)
(oil on road. Danger — 1057) Temperatures (heavy frost — 1115)
(heavy frost — 1115) Precipitation and visibility (visibility reduced to < 50m — 1320)
(visibility reduced to < 50m — 1320) Wind and air quality (tornadoes — 1201)
(tornadoes — 1201) Activities (cricket match — 1457)
(cricket match — 1457) Security alerts (terrosit incident — 1478)
(terrosit incident — 1478) Delays (delays up to one hour — 1604)
(delays up to one hour — 1604) Cancellations (normal public transport services resumed — 1660)
(normal public transport services resumed — 1660) Travel time information (current trip time up to 25 minutes— 1695)
(current trip time up to 25 minutes— 1695) Dangerous vehicle (objects falling from moving vehicle — 1710)
(objects falling from moving vehicle — 1710) Exceptional loads/vehicles (convoy cleared — 1770)
(convoy cleared — 1770) Traffic equipment status (variable message signs operating — 1842)
(variable message signs operating — 1842) Size and weight limits (temporary width limit lifted — 1852)
(temporary width limit lifted — 1852) Parking restrictions (special parking restrictions in force — 1887)
(special parking restrictions in force — 1887) Parking (70% full — 1894)
(70% full — 1894) Reference to audio broadcasts (alarm set: new information will be broadcast between these times in normal programme — 1910)
(alarm set: new information will be broadcast between these times in normal programme — 1910) Service messages (rail information service resumed — 1965)
(rail information service resumed — 1965) Special messages (nothing to report — 2041)
One or more pieces of information can be appended to any message within the standard Event List, using codes contained within a list of supplementary information. They detail the message for what concerns:
Diversions, Vehicles
Warnings
Speeds
Instructions
Lane usage
Positions
Places
Reasons
Winter driving
Suggestions
Qualifiers
Directions
Courtesy
And forecast messages have their own status being coded separately and describing the following classes:
Level of service forecast
Weather forecast
Road conditions forecast
Environment
Wind forecast
Temperature forecast
Delay forecast
Cancellation forecast
While the standard ISO 14819–6:2006 describes how to properly encrypt the messages, the standard ISO 14819–3:2013 is entirely dedicated to the description of the locations. | https://medium.com/swlh/location-referencing-tmc-alert-c-6490c25dfd7 | ['Alessandro Attanasi'] | 2020-10-15 12:05:12.714000+00:00 | ['Alert C', 'Location Reference', 'Traffic', 'Rds Tmc', 'Maps'] |
A Reflection On Hatred | ”Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they.” Yoda
Photo credit @martinadams on Unsplash
The events of the recent days have provided ripe material for reflection. What could motivate someone to bring guns to a place of worship, and open fire upon unarmed worshippers, repeatedly reloading until they are satisfied? What would possess someone to fire upon a tram in a peaceful city? These are but the most publicized of the atrocities that are going on around the world, perpetrated by those who used to be ordinary peaceful folk.
Reading the manifesto of the New Zealand terrorist, I got the impression that this was a man of sound mind who honestly believed in a threat that was facing him and those he regards as his people. He did the thing he believed was right, and in the process decided it was right to gun down unarmed civilians in the name of his cause.
This outcome of radicalization is strikingly similar to those people he purports to hate. That same violence, that same fanaticism, that same sense of self-righteousness. I wonder what a radicalized individual’s younger self would think of what they would eventually become. Would they recoil in terror and disgust?
The strange effect of hatred is it can blind oneself such that one is incapable of self-reflection. The implied threat is that we are likewise vulnerable to similar manipulation, bringing an individual stepwise into the clutches of radicalization.
It is especially crucial in this era of information overload and nuance-free messaging that we constantly review our own values against that of those who are not like us, to break free of the echo chambers of our own construction.
Norms are not absolute, and can only be evaluated against what is deemed to be fashionable at the time. Something is normal only relative to the practices and beliefs of those you are in contact with and can be influenced by. It then follows that retreating from discourse into favorable safe spaces will tend to lead to a desynchronization from societal and global norms. This is the effect of the echo chamber. It is comfortable, and insidiously so. The desynchronization of the echo chamber can allow deadly hatred to coexist with camaraderie, creating a bizarre and toxic chimera.
Yet, ideals can be used to inform direction, against which the current trajectory of norms can be measured. There are myriad philosophies to explore, many of which conclude that one should pursue the interests of good things which extend beyond the limited view of the self.
This is the origin of a set of social ideals, a form of a code of ethics. It follows that the pursuit of goodness should ideally not result in harm to others, especially not for selfish reasons. It can then be said that hatred can be valid as a personal emotion, but it is unethical to channel that hatred to inflict harm upon others.
It is easier said than done, and therein lies the cognitive dissonance. If it is satisfying to exercise that hatred, and in doing so reinforces it, at some point the feeling of empowerment will threaten to overwhelm and hijack the moral compass. This makes us all vulnerable, for the righteous anger at someone else’s offenses can serve to create a new wave of hatred and polarization.
We need to be prudent and constantly on guard against spreading the poison of hatred that is being spewed, yet maintain the balance in righteously denouncing the violence. How have you battled with hatred today? | https://medium.com/@Nickole.Li/a-reflection-on-hatred-f419c1b34a0d | ['Nickole', 'Everythinkelse'] | 2019-03-19 00:20:34.090000+00:00 | ['Terrorism', 'Anger', 'Sadness', 'Hatred', 'Fear'] |
Adenovirus Based Virotherapy Market 2021 Current Trends, Segmentation, Key Players and Analysis 2030 | Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic | Adenovirus Based Virotherapy Market 2021 Current Trends, Segmentation, Key Players and Analysis 2030 | Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic Jorden Sid Jun 8·3 min read
Research Nester published a report titled “Adenovirus Based Virotherapy Market: Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity Outlook 2030” which delivers detailed overview of the global adenovirus based virotherapy market in terms of market segmentation by pipeline therapy, application, treatment, and by region.
Further, for the in-depth analysis, the report encompasses the industry growth indicators, restraints, supply and demand risk, along with detailed discussion on current and future market trends that are associated with the growth of the market.
The global adenovirus based virotherapy market is expected to garner a large revenue by growing at a robust CAGR throughout the forecast period, i.e., 2022–2030, owing to the increasing occurrence of cancer globally and growing number of clinical trials in developed nations to formulate efficient oncolytic virotherapy. Furthermore, rising number of R&D activities regarding adenovirus and high demand for vector-based therapies are also estimated to fuel the expansion of market in the coming years.
The market is segmented on the basis of pipeline therapy, application and treatment. By treatment, the imlygic segment is anticipated to grow at a considerable rate during the forecast period in view of the efficacy of this treatment to infect cancer cells by stopping their growth and generating a systematic immune response. Additionally, based on application, the solid tumors segment is expected to gather the largest revenue in the coming years ascribing to the increasing number of cases of breast, lung and prostate cancers.
Regionally, the global adenovirus based virotherapy market is segmented into five major regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is expected to observe the highest growth in the market during the forecast period, which can be attributed to the accelerated approvals of Asian cell and gene therapy, growing healthcare needs of the people and rising investment to develop regenerative medication in the region.
Request For Full Report: https://www.researchnester.com/sample-request-3118
Growing Number of Cancer Cases Worldwide to Drive Market Growth
One of the biggest risk factors of cancer is growing age. More than three-fourths of the people diagnosed with cancer are 60 years or older. As the geriatric pollution of the world is increasing at an extremely rapid pace, the prevalence of cancer is also rising. Moreover, growing population of alcohol and tobacco consuming population is also growing. These factors are projected to boost market growth in the forthcoming years.
However, high cost of the virotherapy is expected to operate as key restraint to the growth of the adenovirus based virotherapy market over the forecast period.
This report also provides the existing competitive scenario of some of the key players of the global adenovirus based virotherapy market which includes company profiling of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Amgen Inc., Vibalogics GmbH, Oncolytics Biotech, Inc., Transgene SA, PSIOXUS THERAPEUTICS LIMITED, Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc., Targovax ASA, Lokon Pharma AB, Genelux Corporation, and others. The profiling enfolds key information of the companies which encompasses business overview, products and services, key financials and recent news and developments. On the whole, the report depicts detailed overview of the adenovirus based virotherapy market that will help industry consultants, equipment manufacturers, existing players searching for expansion opportunities, new players searching possibilities and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to the ongoing and expected trends in the future.
“The Final Report will cover the impact analysis of COVID-19 on this industry (Global and Regional Market).”
Download Sample of This Strategic Report: https://www.researchnester.com/sample-request-3118
About Research Nester-
Research Nester is a leading service provider for strategic market research and consulting. We aim to provide unbiased, unparalleled market insights and industry analysis to help industries, conglomerates and executives to take wise decisions for their future marketing strategy, expansion and investment etc. We believe every business can expand to its new horizon, provided a right guidance at a right time is available through strategic minds. Our out of box thinking helps our clients to take wise decision in order to avoid future uncertainties.
Contact for more Info:
AJ Daniel
Email: [email protected]
U.S. Phone: +1 646 586 9123
U.K. Phone: +44 203 608 5919 | https://medium.com/@marketinsight/adenovirus-based-virotherapy-market-2021-current-trends-segmentation-key-players-and-analysis-90a0a02f9941 | ['Jorden Sid'] | 2021-06-08 13:27:35.144000+00:00 | ['Press Release'] |
What You Should Know About The World’s Largest Bitcoin Fund | What You Should Know About The World’s Largest Bitcoin Fund VOREM Jul 6·3 min read
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is currently the most talked-about bitcoin fund in the entire crypto industry. Since the beginning of institutional adoption, Grayscale has reputedly acquired a large amount of BTC in its fund with an unmatched buying power.
The crypto industry has proposed an era of a financial revolution that large institutions are taking full advantage of. It turns out that Grayscale is one of the public companies racing towards leading a wave of a financial system not centered around an entity.
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is more or less a financial platform that enables investors to invest their fortunes in trusts that in turn hodl large amounts of BTCs. As the price of BTC fluctuates due to market volatility, shares in these trusts follow the value of the digital asset. Several benefits are embedded in investing in BTC in this way for investors.
Over time, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust has posed a novel type of fund mining deep into the value of Bitcoin. Since 2013 when it was initially launched as the Bitcoin Investment Trust, the fund has grown immensely. Currently, the fund gives investors access to BTC private trust that trades directly on the U.S. stock market.
According to analysis and reports as of April 2021, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust holds over 650,000 Bitcoin. This represents approximately 46% of the total Bitcoin held by publicly traded companies.
Grayscale is a renowned authority on digital currency investing and cryptocurrency asset management and its Bitcoin Trust – GBTC is the largest bitcoin fund in the world.
The GBTC was launched with an orientation towards opening up investment opportunities to as many people as possible. However, there is a way it works.
Grayscale invites a lot of interested wealthy investors to fund the trust with cash. This money is then used to acquire more Bitcoin. Grayscale, after this, places the fund on different public stock exchanges for anyone to buy and sell shares.
The value of the fund tags along with market price fluctuations. This suggests that every investor or anyone initially invited to make contributions to the fund during its first round gets a direct return on reselling their shares.
While price fluctuations might take a while to reflect in prices of the GBTC and the up-front cost which is on the high side, investing in the GBTC comes with its benefits.
There are a number of reasons why one would purchase shares in GBTC rather than buying BTC directly.
It is noteworthy, in this case, that storing Bitcoin securely can be tasking hence, the need for the GBTC for some investors. In addition, filing taxes for gains made on shares — such as those from investing in GBTC — is much less complicated than the tax regime that applies to crypto holdings.
In conclusion, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust gives investors exposure to the Bitcoin marketplace in a way that streamlines taxes and storage. Although investors need to take funds like GTBC seriously, the average investor is more likely to make only small investments into stock market BTC tracker funds. | https://medium.com/@Voremcrypto./what-you-should-know-about-the-worlds-largest-bitcoin-fund-9f38208ec518 | [] | 2021-07-06 04:59:27.019000+00:00 | ['Cryptonote', 'Bitcoin News', 'Cryptonews', 'Grayscale Investments', 'Grayscale'] |
What is a MySQL Database? What is it used for? | Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
According to Wikipedia, “ MySQL is an open-source relational database management system. Its name is a combination of “My”, the name of co-founder Michael Widenius’s daughter, and “SQL”, the abbreviation for Structured Query Language. “ To put that in laymen’s terms, that means it is a system to store information so that you can grab and display it on your website.
These databases are not only used for websites, you can use them for Discord Bots, Applications, offline storage and more. You can think of databases as “the cloud”. The same place where you store your files like Google Drive, iCloud Drive, etc. Those are run by a version of database that stores your files so computers can read it. It is very complicated but to keep it simple, that’s what a database is and used for.
If you want to know more about MySQL you can go to their website here: https://www.mysql.com/ | https://medium.com/@dudethatserin/what-is-a-mysql-database-what-is-it-used-for-258b8e927ad7 | ['Erin Skidds'] | 2020-12-19 17:45:45.232000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'MySQL', 'Wikipedia', 'Learning', 'Learning To Code'] |
Time Series Data and Machine Learning-Part 2: Time series as inputs to a model | The easiest way to incorporate time-series into your machine learning pipeline is to use them as features in a model. This chapter covers common features that are extracted from time series in order to do machine learning.
Classification and Feature Engineering
Using raw timeseries data is too noisy for classification
We need to calculate features. An easy start is to summarize statistics of your audio data, removes the time dimension and give a more traditional classification dataset.
Here is the process: for each timeseries, we calculate several summary statistics. These then can be used as features for a model.
print(audio,shape)
→#(n_files, time)
→(20, 7000)
means = np.mean(audio, axis=-1) #last column/dimension maxs = np.max(audio, axis=-1) stds = np.std(audio, axis=-1) print(means.shape)
#(n_files,) array of numbers, one per time series
→(20,)
In summary, we’ve just collapsed a 2-D dataset (samples x time) into several features of a 1-D dataset(samples)
We can combine each feature, and use it as an input to a model
If we have a label for each sample, we can use scikit-learn to create and fit a classifier.
from sklearn.svm import LinearSVC
#Note that means are reshaped to work with scikit-learn
X = np.column_stack([means, maxs, stds]) y = labels.reshape([-1, 1]) model = LinearSVC() model.fit(X,y)
Scoring your scikit-learn model
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score
#Different input data
predictions = model.predict(X_test)
#Score our model with % correct manually
percent_score = sum(predictions == labels_test) / len(labels_test)
#Using a sklearn scorer
percent_score = accuracy_score(labels_test, predictions)
Heartbeat data Example
Some recordings are normal heartbeat activity, while others are abnormal activity.
Two dataframes, normal and abnormal, each with the shape of (n_times_points, n_audio_files) containing the audio for several heartbeats. Also, the sampling frequency is loaded into a variable called sfreq. A convenience plotting function show_plot_and_make_titles() is also available in workplace
fig, axs = plt.subplots(3, 2, figsize=(15, 7), sharex=True, sharey=True) # Calculate the time array
time = np.arange(len(normal)) / sfreq # Stack the normal/abnormal audio so you can loop and plot
stacked_audio = np.hstack([normal, abnormal]).T # Loop through each audio file / ax object and plot
# .T.ravel() transposes the array, then unravels it into a 1-D vector for looping.
for iaudio, ax in zip(stacked_audio, axs.T.ravel()):
ax.plot(time, iaudio)
show_plot_and_make_titles()
As you can see, there is a lot of variability in the raw data, let’s average out some of that noise to notice a difference.
A common technique to find simple differences between two sets of data is to average across multiple instances of the same class. This may remove noise and reveal underlying patterns (or it may not).
# Average across the audio files of each DataFrame
mean_normal = np.mean(normal, axis=1)
mean_abnormal = np.mean(abnormal, axis=1) # Plot each average over time
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 3), sharey=True)
ax1.plot(time, mean_normal)
ax1.set(title=”Normal Data”)
ax2.plot(time, mean_abnormal)
ax2.set(title=”Abnormal Data”)
plt.show()
There we could see a noticeable difference between the two. Maybe, it’s quite noisy. Let’s see how we could dig into the data a bit further.
Build a classification model with raw data
from sklearn.svm import LinearSVC # Initialize and fit the model
model = LinearSVC()
model.fit(X_train,y_train) # Generate predictions and score them manually
predictions = model.predict(X_test)
print(sum(predictions == y_test.squeeze()) / len(y_test))
→0.5555555
Note that the predictions didn’t do so well. That’s because the features you’re using as inputs to the model (raw data) aren’t very good at differentiating classes.
Next, we’ll explore how to calculate some more complex features that may improve the results.
we’ll smooth the data to calculate the auditory envelope. The envelope throws away information about the fine-grained changes in signal, focusing on the general shape of the audio waveform.
To do this, we’ll need to calculate the audio’s amplitude, then smooth it over time. First, we’ll remove noise in timeseries data by smoothing it with a rolling window. Instead of averaging over all time, we can do a local average. It removes short-term noise, while retaining the general pattern.
Calculating a rolling window statistic
#Audio is a pandas dataframe print(audio.shape) #(n_times, n_audio_files) →(5000, 20) #Smooth data by taking the rolling mean in a window of 50 samples window_size = 50 windowed = audio.rolling(window=window_size) audio_smooth = windowed.mean()
Calculating the auditory envelope
audio_rectified = audio.apply(np.abs) #so all data are positive audio_envelope = audio_rectified.rolling(50).mean()
The result is a smooth representation of how the audio energy changes over time.
Feature engineering the envelope
#calculate several features of the envelope, one per sound envelop_mean = np.mean(audio_envelope, axis = 0) envelop_std = np.std(audio_envelope, axis=0) envelop_max = np.max(audio_envelope, axis=0) #create training data for a classifier X = np.column_stack([envelope_mean, envelope_std, envelope_max]) y = labels.reshape([-1,1])
Cross Validation for Classification
cross_val_score automates the process of
1) splitting data into training/validation sets
2) fitting the model on training data
3)scoring it on validation data
4) repeating this process
from sklearn.model_selection import cross_val_score model = LinearSVC() scores = cross_val_score(model, X, y, cv=5) #split data into 5 print(scores)
→[0.60911642 0.59975305 0.61404035 … …]
print(np.mean(scores))
→ 0.598476
Auditory features: The Tempogram
We can summarize more complex temporal information with timeseries-specific functions. librosa is a great library for auditory and timeseries feature engineering. The tempogram estimates the tempo of a sound over time. We can calculate summary statistics of tempo in the same way that we can for the envelopment.
import librosa as lr audio_tempo = lr.beat.tempo(audio, sr=sfreq, hop_length=2**6, aggreate=None)
Note that librosa functions tend to only operate on numpy arrays instead of DataFrames, so we’ll access our Pandas data as a Numpy array with the .values attribute.
# Calculate the tempo of the sounds
tempos = []
for col, i_audio in audio.items():
tempos.append(lr.beat.tempo(i_audio.values, sr=sfreq, hop_length=2**6, aggregate=None)) # Convert the list to an array so you can manipulate it more easily
tempos = np.array(tempos) #（60，138） 60 lists and each list has 138 data # Calculate statistics of each tempo
tempos_mean = tempos.mean(axis=1)
tempos_std = tempos.std(axis=1)
tempos_max = tempos.max(axis=1)
#HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF MEAN()
# Create the X and y arrays; the first three column are from the former step: for each timeseries, we calculate several summary statistics.
X = np.column_stack([means, stds, maxs, tempos_mean, tempos_std, tempos_max])
y = labels.reshape([-1, 1])
# Fit the model and score on testing data
percent_score = cross_val_score(model, X, y, cv=5)
print(np.mean(percent_score))
Note that your predictive power may not have gone up (because this dataset is quite small), but you now have a more rich feature representation of audio that your model can use. | https://medium.com/@haizhuolaojisite/time-series-and-machine-learning-part-2-time-series-as-inputs-to-a-model-d289f4eed0ff | ['Yixuan Zhou'] | 2020-09-05 02:14:25.811000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Feature Engineering', 'Machine Learning', 'Time Series Analysis', 'Scikit Learn'] |
How Trump Really Wins Next Year | Jim Glassman’s 1999 book can win the election for Trump. Read below.
Friday’s New York Times ran an op-ed by neoconservative Bret Stephens about how President Donald Trump could win re-election in 2020. As a neocon, Stephens focused on the “deeper problem” of the left, rather than on a proactive strategy by Trump himself. Stephens ate up column-inches talking about right-wing populism across the world, and ended with left-bashing.
But Stephens’ op-ed is sign of how far off-base both the left and the neocons are about Trump. Like the pointy-headed intellectuals on the left, Stephens is wildly overthinking the question of re-election, if he thinks it has to do with “the ideology of them before us” or that the left is winning “the contest of ugly.” It’s really a lot simpler than that.
The roadmap to Trump’s re-election in 2020 begins in 1999, but it’s stunningly simple after a little history.
In 1999 the economics guru James Glassman co-authored a book with American Enterprise Institute scholar and former Fed economist Kevin Hassett entitled Dow 36,000.
Backstory on Glassman: he was born in Washington, DC just six months after Donald J. Trump arrived on the scene in Queens. Glassman has the proper Sidwell Friends and Harvard pedigree to be part of the meritocracy. He was managing editor of the Harvard Crimson and his journalism career soared to the top in the 1980s and 1990s as editor, publisher or vice president of several notable magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News & World Report (when it was still a news magazine). This success translated into media attention, with Glassman making regular appearances on PBS and CNN programs during the 1990s. More recently, Glassman has been a G.W. Bush appointee and now is founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute at SMU.
As the Clinton boom kept booming with its Goldman Sachs captain Robert Rubin steering the ship, Glassman saw nothing but more boom times ahead. And so, with Hassett, he confidently published Dow 36,000. The central claim of the book, as indicated in the title, is that the Dow would more than triple in value, from a little over 10,000 points when the book hit the shelves in October 1999, to 36,000 by early 2005.
This turns out to have been one of the more spectacularly wrong forecasts in the dismal forecasting history of the dismal science of economics. The weekly average for the Dow the week the book debuted was 10,649.76. Instead of tripling-or-better to 36,000 by early 2005, the Dow was at 10,568.70 the last full week of September in 2005. The Dow didn’t triple. It stayed flat over that six-year stretch. (OK, it lost almost 100 points over those six years. But who’s counting?)
It’s hard to overstate how bad Glassman’s forecast was. The public likes to shame weather forecasters for “busts” in which, instead of multiple high-end tornadoes, there were merely severe storms and a few lower-end tornadoes. For meteorologists to screw up as badly as Glassman and Hassett, the National Weather Service would have to forecast sunny skies and dry weather for Noah’s Flood. (I know; I have a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences and I’ve won awards in international weather forecasting competitions.)
Now, 20 long years after that forecast, the Dow is still only less than 60% of the way from October 1999 values to Glassman’s chimeric 36,000 goal.
It gets funnier. After recanting his 36,000 prediction in the 2000s, after it didn’t come close to coming true, Glassman reverted course and wrote an article in 2013 saying 36,000 was within reach within another decade.
Right. Like those predicting the Second Coming of Jesus, all you have to do is stick to your forecast, keep moving the goalposts, and hope people have short memories or short lives, or both. Jesus 36,000 is always just around the corner!
All of this spectacular failure didn’t seem to harm Glassman’s career too much. According to Wikipedia, “Glassman is one of 21 members of the Investor Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission.” That’s like making the Punxsutawney Phil the director of the National Weather Service.
Can you think of anyone else in American society who has risen so high and so far on a mountain of utter bullshit, moving goalposts, and still more bullshit?
Well, of course you can.
Cue “Hail to the Chief.”
And so this is how Donald Trump can win re-election in 2020 — by crossing the two streams of utter bullshit, his and Glassman’s. It’s not that hard.
Memo to POTUS
Recipe for Re-election for Trump: | https://medium.com/@johnknox-uab88/how-trump-really-wins-next-year-25cb49c75561 | ['John Knox'] | 2019-05-25 19:20:04.165000+00:00 | ['Trump Administration', 'Trump', 'Bullshit', 'Politics', '2020 Presidential Race'] |
I Have Been Downsized | I’ve had the same job for nearly nineteen years. Though there has never been any opportunity for advancement or pay increase, I knew that when I took the position. It has been a good job.
Now, however, the job has changed and my position has changed, as well. It’s been downsized and, while this hasn’t come as a surprise, it is still an adjustment.
The Backstory
You see, for the past nearly nineteen years, I’ve been a Stay-At-Home-Mom. This is one of those positions that is seen by some as a glorious luxury and by others as an absolute nightmare.
Personally, I don’t like to label it. This just happens to be the way I chose to take on raising my son. I do feel fortunate that my husband and I agreed, and that we were able to make it work for us. It seemed the best route for our family.
Your mileage may vary.
At any rate, Stay-At-Home-Mom has been my official job title for quite a long time now. There have been years of exercise classes, play groups, basketball leagues, year-round swim lessons, summer swim teams, tennis lessons and teams, chess lessons and teams, and on and on.
My duties were not limited to actions related to rearing my son. I also took on tasks associated with the well-being of his school and our church. In other words, I volunteered. A lot.
I served as a homeroom parent, sat on a district advisory committee related to Title I programs, sat on the Continuing Improvement Team for a public elementary school, served four years on a School Advisory Board for a private elementary school (which included three years as an officer), helped establish a parent-based development committee for that same school, and volunteered in a handful of roles at our church.
The position must evolve.
My duties have changed as my son has grown. Play groups are long gone and elementary school parent committees are, likewise, relegated to the past. Other parents have stepped into those roles, which is exactly as it should be.
The biggest change, however, took place over this past weekend.
We moved our son into his dorm at his new university.
In another city.
Two hours away from home.
The object of my nearly-two-decade job is trying out some independence. Exactly as it should be.
However, this means some fairly significant changes in my role.
Opportunities abound.
Of course, I am a mother forever. That’s the way this works. There will never be a time when my role as parent will ever entirely disappear.
The way in which I am a mother is what changes.
Just as I don’t serve up pureed peas or change diapers anymore, I won’t be supervising homework any longer. I won’t be setting out the weekly list of chores (well, maybe during summer break).
What I will do, however, is try out some entirely new duties.
Perhaps writing will take a much bigger role in my day to day life than it has previously. Maybe my volunteer hours will shift to a native bird rescue organization. I might try a return to teaching as a volunteer at the local zoo.
It’s even possible that I will try an entirely new career that I have yet to consider.
The options are so numerous and it’s tempting to try them all. The biggest challenge will be to keep from running wildly from one new activity to another.
So, now what?
With all these choices before me, how in the world will I decide what I’ll do next?
I think I’ve decided not to decide. At least, not yet. Maybe, not ever.
There isn’t any particular reason to commit to any single thing right now. I know I would like to give my writing some serious attention to see what will happen. That seems a reasonable place to begin.
From there, I may branch out into some other things. Before a nasty car accident a couple of years ago, I had taken up archery and was just beginning to be serious about it. It might be time to take that up again.
I admit, it would be pretty great to go back to earning a paycheck. Writing gets the chance to do that, first. However, there are other ways of achieving this particular goal and I’m not going to ignore opportunities that may present themselves.
There won’t be regret.
I won’t lie. I’m going to miss my son enormously. I’m going to talk and write about him often. I’m going to spend a lot of energy wondering if he is eating well and getting enough sleep and getting to his classes and his job on time.
After all, as I said before, I’m still his mother and I always will be.
I find, however, that I’m not as unhappy over my change in position as I expected to be. Instead, there is a feeling of accomplishment. We sent a young man to college who was ready to be there, ready to take on the new responsibilities, and ready to find his own place in the world.
I’m looking forward to taking some of my energies no longer required for the role of Mom and diverting them to whatever new thing captures my interest.
I never regretted my choice to stay at home to be a mother. It was what worked for me and my family. It was a good decision. It has led me to this new place, rich with new opportunities.
I’ve been downsized, but I really can’t be unhappy about it.
Want to hear more from S. J. Gordon? | https://medium.com/because-life/i-have-been-downsized-df209212f23e | ['S. J. Gordon'] | 2019-08-27 20:24:39.516000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Self', 'Parenting', 'Life Lessons', 'Life'] |
The Q — Astronaut James B. Irwin | This is the latest in an occasional series of posts about history of The Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls.
Local reporters seemed more interested in mystery than science when NASA astronaut James B. Irwin spoke July 18, 1979 at The Queensbury Hotel.
“Asked if he thought there was any other intelligent life on other planets,” Irwin answered, “Probably not,” The Post-Star reported the next day.
“Questioned on having seen any UFOs, he said he had, but thought most were ‘space junk,’ and if there were any such things they were probably of ‘earth origin,’ and he hoped they belonged to the United States.”
About 250 people attended the dinner that Glens Falls Mayor Edward Bartholomew hosted to commemorate the tenth anniversary man walking on the moon.
Irwin, who flew on the Apollo 15 mission, Irwin’s wife, and Jack Wyrtzen, director of Word of Life in Schroon Lake, spoke.
Irwin advocated for increased funding and public support for NASA.
Bartholomew gave Irwin a plaque, and Irwin gave Bartholomew a photograph of the astronaut placing a United States flag on the moon.
Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series. | https://medium.com/@writermaury/the-q-astronaut-james-b-irwin-7fa24a05496a | ['Maury Thompson'] | 2020-11-02 23:07:11.083000+00:00 | ['The Queensbury Hotel', 'NASA', 'Space Flight', 'History', 'Glens Falls'] |
Blockchain-Based Governance: A Paradigm Shift | The emergence of a new organizational paradigm
Nowadays, the environment in which organizations operate has witnessed a significant change. The variety of driving forces such as globalization, climate change, and a fast-paced technological advancement has led to workers’ diversity in terms of values, perspectives, and expectations. A reduction in communication and transaction costs has also led to more efficient communication and circulation of information, strengthening public consciousness, and demanding from organizations a more socially responsible attitude towards society at large.
As a result, businesses are required to explore new organizational paradigms to be more sensitive, flexible, and adaptable to stakeholder demands and expectations. Many organizations are abandoning the traditional top-down structures to move towards more “organic” and fluid forms. [10]
This post intends to discuss how blockchain technology may become an enabling tool for a new breed of decentralized governance structures, such as the Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). DAOs represent a new form to organize work within a given professional community of interest. These are innovative forms of business organizations, based on decentralization and autonomy. In traditional business, governance focuses on the balance between the risks and the opportunities for decision making. Companies’ hierarchical management structure reflects the struggle in power and interests between the principal -the owners or shareholders of a corporation- and the agent -the decision-makers. Managers lead the business in their best judgment and are responsible both for positive and negative outcomes; owners are concerned with keeping managers’ interests aligned to their own through incentive schemes, i.e., stock options. Decision-makers face different kinds of risks, such as reputational, professional, and financial. In exchange, they are repaid with a higher income; when this balance is disturbed, moral hazards arise.
This scenario is problematic for blockchain-based businesses, as it presents a series of issues. On the one hand, large hierarchical structures show significant limitations in terms of flexibility, adaptation, response time, loss of relevant information across the hierarchical layers, and the presence of political conflicts. On the other hand, such organizational structures allow minimizing the communication effort necessary for the circulation of information within a company. In such contexts, there is a high level of disintermediation between the owners of the business and the decision-makers: this causes exclusion and disengagement of people from important matters that may directly affect their interests [1].
Lastly, the need for third-party authorities used to guarantee and supervise economic exchanges becomes superfluous: DAOs are self-regulating and decentralized, the blockchain ensures the security protocols for safe transactions, thus providing for new entities that rely on security standards and not on trusting the work of external regulating authorities.
In this context, new governance models should focus on simple, flat organization, avoid hierarchy and disintermediation, have a defined set of rules, and focus on efficient and easy ways to let all stakeholders participate in the decision-making process. This new kind of organization can be described in two terms: decentralized and autonomous. Decentralized refers to the fact that it runs on a decentralized infrastructure with no central repository for data. Autonomous refers to the organization’s ability to self-actualize the rules it abides by and that it does not need a trusted third-party authority to validate its operations [2].
For an organization to be autonomous, a set of clear, pre-written rules must be defined. Such rules allow for transparency and un-changing terms and conditions: whoever may want to participate in the organization will know in advance what effort, investment, conditions, and future return the organization offers. A public set of rules also allows for total transparency, both in governance and for the transactions made. Transparency builds trust among the community’s components, as the organization’s mission is clearly stated, and pre-written rules avoid conflicts due to misunderstandings or wrong interpretations to arise [3].
Blockchain-enabled Governance
The introduction of an alternative governance structure without hierarchies needs to face new coordination problems among many participants willing to collaborate for either their common or personal interests. Participants in decentralized governance cannot ignore their ideological perspectives, despite their role in the shared contribution efforts. The legitimacy of their decisions depends on how the different individual realities combine correctly. [4]. The elimination of the hierarchical judgment and these necessities opens for a new scenario where the trust model is a shared consensus protocol, which defines the conditions, permissions, and rules to govern the shared assets, roles, and processes belonging to the organization.
The advent of DLT, and its first implementation (blockchain), has pushed the capabilities of designing and implementing new forms of trust to a new so far unreachable level. We note that blockchains are politically (no one controls them) and architecturally (no central infrastructural point of failure) decentralized. However, they suffer from logical centralization where there is one joint agreement on the shared ledger’s state, and the system behaves like a single computer [5].
A Decentralized Organization (DO) can be shaped like a set of humans interacting with each other according to a shared and transparent protocol specified in code and enforced on the blockchain using smart contracts. A smart contract is the simplest form of decentralized automation, which enforces a transparent and immutable set of rules and agreements through its code, which can be executed by sending transactions to the network. The characteristic of logical centralization of the blockchain is a point of strength due to the necessity of coordination among many individuals when implementing a DO: it works as an organization, but decentralized, leveraging the human component as the only one having decision-making ability [6].
The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) relies on the organization making decisions for itself, pushing the human component to the edges, as we explained in our third article of the OverTheBlock DeFi Series “Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) in Decentralized Finance (DeFi).” A DAO lives and exists autonomously on the internet but heavily relies on hiring people to perform tasks infeasible from the automation perspective (e.g., making decisions on protocol changes). The hired individuals must be rewarded and incentivized to perform those activities, so, unlike the DO, the DAO has an internal capital that is, in some form, valuable [6].
The process regarding the creation of a DAO can be summarized as follows. A group of people with a common interest write the smart contracts to run the organization protocol (e.g., voting, multi-signature, etc.). Next, a token sale period is launched, usually starting an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The funding period enables individuals to fund the DAO by purchasing tokens representing ownership or stake (some newly DAOs or DACs, such as Vigor, do not do any form of the token sale, and the DAO platform and tokens are immediately usable within them) [11]. Finally, when the token sale funding period is over, the DAO begins to operate [7].
A fundamental issue faced by groups of people is to make decisions over situations that involve a community, which determines specific rules enabling individuals to express their opinions. A flat organization can efficiently decide through voting, allowing universal participation, relatability to decision-making, and a new declination of meritocracy and efficiency. The casted ballot can be identified as representing the individual’s preference over the proposed options. The community’s components can be seen as equals from a decision-making perspective since the final decision must consider everyone’s opinion, at least in democratic political systems. However, this cannot be implemented in corporate environments since hierarchical organizational structures generally characterize them.
As mentioned in the first paragraph, blockchain technology’s application to organizational structures creates DAOs that can pursue profit-making purposes by maintaining equality and independence, in decision power terms, among the organization’s components. In a DAO, a corporation composed of individuals organized in a decentralized fashion can contemplate the possibility of applying voting rules to make internal decisions regarding the submitted proposals. Tokens play a fundamental role in the blockchain infrastructures as we mentioned in our first article of the OverTheBlock Tokenomics Series, “Tokens are all about decentralized trust,” where a token is described “as a socio-economic dummy tool to promote the coordination of the actors in a regulated ecosystem towards the pursuit of a network objective function, through a set of incentive systems.”
We can think of DAOs as digital interaction environments where the community’s components act voluntarily (so they are free to leave and join at will) and share their incentives to grow the platform. These actor categories are nodes within a graph, as depicted in Figure 1. The arrows which connect nodes represent in and out interactions among them (i.e., elementary operations). Figure 1 shows an exceptional case in which all the elementary operations are carried out, and so, there are no nodes with more central roles within platforms than others. The arrows also identify the communicative burden that each node bears in decentralized ecosystems. Therefore, as decentralized organizations allow to solve some typical problems of centralized realities (e.g., misalignment among stakeholders), they still have limitations (e.g., scalability), which require careful consideration of the choice of governance that each organization makes.
Figure 1: Example of a fully decentralized graph with 4 actor categories (nodes)
This representation allows us to understand the categories of actors that act within the platform, its activities, and its degree of decentralization. We can identify the degree of decentralization using the degree of cooperation as a proxy, which tells us the engagement degree of nodes within the platform. Figure 2 shows a graph in which node C covers a critical function within the platform, making it less decentralized concerning the example presented in Figure 1.
Figure 2: Example of a partially decentralized graph with 4 actor categories (nodes)
The graphs show that voting rules can be applied in contexts where individuals are equal and independent in terms of decision power, to have a business organization that can contemplate the application of such rules. The actor interactions map must be of the type presented in Figure 1. We reach the highest degree of decentralization (i.e., equal to 1 on a scale between 0 and 1), representing the “perfect” DAO: a profit-making organization characterized by maximum resilience and fungible actors.
Blockchain contribution in DAO voting contexts
DAOs have digitized and automated several existing forms of governance, mimicking the process but revolutionizing its effectiveness. In the early stages of DAOs, founders can control all corporate decision-making power, behaving like typical startups. As classic hierarchical organizations like Linux Foundation, W3C, and many more, some DAOs can elect an elite council to oversee the governance, decentralizing the control away from founders towards core developers (e.g., Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, and more). However, the most widespread form of governance is a representative democracy. The individuals have the right to elect a group of officials to make decisions and form policy on their behalf, resulting in a direct or delegated (proxy) form of representatives voting mechanism. DAOs, which have adopted this form of governance, confer voting power to individuals through the ownership of governance tokens, which grant governance rights (e.g., Maker (MKR), Compound (COMP), and more). This kind of mechanism can also be implemented to manage an entire blockchain’s governance, as we can see in the Delegated Proof of Stake (BFT-DPOS) consensus mechanism, currently used in the EOS blockchain. The EOS.IO software enables blocks to be produced in rounds of 126 (6 blocks each, times 21 producers). At the start of each round, 21 unique block producers are chosen by the preference of votes cast by token holders either directly or through proxies[12]. Shortly, DAOs governance structures still mirror the forms of shareholder governance used by most public corporations [8].
Blockchain technology improved the efficiency and coordination of these classic governance mechanisms’: the paradigm shifts from centralized to decentralized, while not contributing to new forms or variations of the voting process itself. Nonetheless, The DAO, a completely decentralized blockchain-based association, shows that the lack of a centralized authority can create a sub-optimal situation. Despite The DAO’s failure, the blockchain offers new possibilities to facilitate the relationship between stakeholders, thereby creating trust and transparency [7].
This technology allows for instantaneous vote delegation, which democratizes proxy delegation services, significantly improving the entire proxy voting process. Proposals can be issued on a particular matter whenever people want to propose changes to stakeholders, eliminating the burden of requesting a mandate, and mitigating stakeholders’ disinterest. Once a specific proposal is placed in the blockchain, stakeholders who hold tokens can exercise their voting rights during the voting process’s predefined duration. The voting results become instantly available after the process deadline. These advantages guarantee the process’s consistency, auditing, fair, and transparent permission mechanisms along the entire DAOs lifecycle [9]. Also, the issues regarding the transparency of votes, verification of the process, availability of the protocol, and correct identification of stakeholders and their stakes, are directly linked to the advantages of blockchain technology and the concept of smart contracts (i.e., implementation of on-chain rules, law specifications, access, and voting rights).
As we have seen so far, the blockchain seems to be an irreplaceable technology for a DAO’s operations. How this technology advances the governance processes for a DAO needs to be further investigated. This series will continue by analyzing how existing voting mechanisms apply in a DAO context. | https://medium.com/overtheblock/blockchain-based-governance-a-paradigm-shift-976f79cfbc00 | ['Roberto Moncada'] | 2020-12-04 11:43:41.533000+00:00 | ['Governance', 'Blockchain', 'Innovation', 'Token', 'Dao'] |
How 2020 Was the Year I Got My Life Back | Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash
As 2020 comes to a close, there’s a lot to look back at and think about. We all had to make major unforeseen life adjustments and many had to deal with tragic loss and heartache.
And while I think everyone wants to look back at this year as the worst year on record, I can’t help but think about how this year gave me a new chance at life.
I think about the following lessons I learned and realize that, in many ways, 2020 was truly a blessing in disguise.
1. Gratitude
Photo by Nicholas Bartos on Unsplash
I started 2020 still dealing with debilitating symptoms caused by an autoimmune arthritis condition that first showed up over two years ago. Since that time I had been in and out of the doctor undergoing test after test and trying many different medications, but to no avail and no specific diagnosis.
It wasn’t until right before the quarantine lockdown that I finally got the medicine I needed to get relief from the persistent pain and swelling that had kept me from living a normal life.
Then COVID forced us all to stay home. What started out as two weeks turned into a much longer time and completely ruptured everyone’s view of “normal life.” The uncertainty alone brought on high anxiety and fear of what things would look like and how we were all going to adapt to such isolation.
And while it was difficult at first, people quickly adapted, including myself. Looking back, I feel extreme gratitude for how quarantine played out and for many reasons.
Firstly, I am grateful to those who put their lives on the line each and every day to serve and protect those of us who had the luxury of working from home. We owe those people a world of gratitude for their sacrifice.
This includes teachers, a profession I left just last year as a result of my arthritis diagnosis and feel extremely thankful that I did. Instead, I listened with horror and sadness to my teacher friends as they shared how things at school were going.
The worst part was hearing how leaders (from school administrators all the way to the U.S. president) were handling the situation. Not only did many leaders implement botched plans for how to re-open safely, but they also showed little appreciation for the hard work and dedication of those putting their lives in danger on the frontlines.
Yet despite the stupidity at the top, there was so much hope coming from people doing the right thing, protecting themselves and others, and lifting each other up along the way.
I will never forget those heroes and their actions as the bright side of 2020.
Secondly, I am grateful for the expansion of work-from-home opportunities. 2020 taught us that technology really can re-shape the modern lifestyle. This has many benefits and opens up many opportunities for people, including those of us with health conditions that limit our ability to lead “normal” everyday lives.
For me, working from home gave me the opportunity to heal from my chronic illness. It took six months for the new medicine to take full effect and put my arthritis into remission, but I finally feel back to normal. Working from home took away the stress of hiding my symptoms from people and of managing through the pain when some days I didn’t want to get out of bed.
Now, I have energy again for the first time in two years. I am finally able to work out and that’s helping me re-gain not only the physical strength, but also the emotional strength that I had lost. I’m grateful to be able to jump out of bed in the morning and once again be the annoyingly cheery person with my high energy and enthusiasm for life.
In this way, 2020 truly saved my life.
Lastly, I am thankful for the progress that humanity has made in 2020. Although there’s still a long way to go, there were positive milestones throughout this year that showed me how much people care about each other and how much people can positively effect change.
I became immensely grateful for so many people — for the frontline workers, the researchers and vaccine developers, the mask wearers and human rights activists, the political campaign supporters and poll workers, as well as the social media entertainers (because laughter is truly the best medicine).
2020 showed me the compassion and determination of humanity to come together and support each other through some of the biggest challenges we’ve ever faced.
So while many people may look back and remember 2020 as a terrible year, I’ll look back and think of it as the year people overcame tremendous obstacles. And I want to thank each and every one of them for doing so.
The most important lesson of 2020: We can’t choose what life will throw at us, but we can choose to be grateful for whatever life we have.
2. Connection
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
Being stuck in isolation makes you appreciate new ways of connecting. I’m not talking about how we all learned how to have virtual hangouts and happy hours as a way to connect during the two-week lockdown.
Because even once the world opened back up, we still had to live under permanent COVID conditions. The new normal became checking to make sure you had a mask with you at all times, limiting hangouts with friends, and avoiding long, socially-distant lines everywhere you went.
With all of the typical social venues closed down and limits on the number of people allowed to gather, trying to truly connect with people started to feel like a draining chore. When I spent my whole day on the computer in virtual meetings, the last thing I wanted to do was see my family or friends through a screen (Zoom fatigue is real).
There was one place, however, that was still safe to travel, always open for visitors, and provided relief from the stress and eyestrain of virtual interactions.
2020 was the year that I got back to nature and found real connection by distancing myself from the virtual world COVID imposed on me.
I spent time camping for the first time ever. I went on countless walks and even scheduled them as a midday break from work. On the weekends, I hiked and hammocked, sunbathed and read outdoors. And more than ever before, I just sat outdoors with family and friends.
I had always been a fan of nature, sure, but 2020 showed me the important role that nature plays in how humans function.
There’s actually scientific evidence to prove that nature not only relieves stress, but literally resets our brains from the constant barrage of modern-day distractions and the noise that internet and cell service have created.
While these are beneficial tools, I think it’s safe to say that most of us overuse these technologies as a way to feel “connected,” but this kind of connection only leaves us feeling dissatisfied and alone.
When we spend more time staring at screens than enjoying our surroundings, it prevents us from enjoying the present moment. Suddenly, we fill all of our time with these fake distractions and lose our sense of connection, whether to each other or to nature or both.
Spending time outdoors in 2020 has allowed me to unplug from social media, slow down, forget about my to-do list and email, and re-connect with the present moment and the people I’m enjoying it with.
This year reminded me that while technology and human innovation are there to provide convenience and comfort, that’s not how humans were made to live. We should understand this, because there is clear evidence of how our modern lifestyles are actually destroying our natural environment through pollution and climate change.
2020 brought this human impact to light when we saw that by shutting down and staying home there were positive side effects on the environment.
This fact alone should give us all pause as we consider how we’re treating the very home we need to survive and yet tend to avoid in favor of our modern conveniences.
2020 taught me this second important lesson: nature isn’t just a fun getaway spot; it’s a necessary part of everyday life that we must not only respect, but cherish with undivided attention.
3. Growth
Photo by Tonik on Unsplash
When you have to completely re-think your daily routine and adjust to new ways of living, it forces you to step out of your comfort zone.
We all initially reacted to the pandemic by panicking and resisting the changes (some still resist wearing a mask, in fact).
But the biggest lesson for me came in realizing that no amount of complaining was going to change reality, so I might as well figure out how to adapt. Once I started to embrace the reality of COVID, I learned so much about myself and unlocked incredible new possibilities.
I learned, for example, how lucky I am for the job that allowed me to work from home and for the treatment I got to help heal my arthritis. I gained a grateful outlook and vowed never to take for granted the extra time I now have back in my schedule because of the convenience the pandemic gifted me.
And then, virtual meetings taught me just how much time I spend in front of screens all day. When my mental health started to suffer, I learned to cut off my screen time and make my days more meaningful by spending them outdoors with people I love and not on my phone.
I started using my extra time to reach out to others who didn’t have the luxury of staying home or who felt isolated and alone during quarantine. I learned that this should have always been a part of my life, whether or not there was a global pandemic happening, because helping others truly does bring joy and meaning to one’s existence.
Don’t get me wrong, I also made plenty of mistakes in 2020 and felt frustrated and defeated many times. I kept wanting life to be back to “normal” and to go out and let loose in crowded social events. There were many days I didn’t want to talk to people, because I hated connecting with them virtually when I really wanted to see them in person.
But all of this taught me about self-care and emotional expression. I was never one to talk about how I feel or open up to others, but this became impossible in 2020 as we all felt the weight of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear of COVID every single day.
When will this end? Who will get sick next? When will the vaccine be ready? How will life look even if we get the vaccine? Would things ever go back to the way they were before the pandemic?
It took a lot of reflecting, reading, spending time outdoors, and writing to understand my own feelings and how to express them. What I realized in 2020 is that I hadn’t overcome my two-year journey of dealing with my arthritis diagnosis and switching from a career I loved so much into one that I had to start all over again.
In general, I realized that I am the type of person who is either stuck worrying about the future or lamenting the past, but never fully enjoying the present moment.
2020 helped me learn how to identify and overcome these tendencies. It pushed me to recognize my behavior, shift my mindset, and find joy in the here-and-now.
The old me would’ve ended this by saying something like “let’s see what 2021 will bring”, but it honestly doesn’t matter. What matters is being grateful for each and every day, feeling connected in the present moment, and using all of life’s lessons as an opportunity to grow.
While 2020 may have shut down the world and changed life forever, it opened my eyes to new ideas and new possibilities for the future.
And that gave me my life back. | https://medium.com/curious/how-2020-was-the-year-i-got-my-life-back-8af61a4e9440 | ['Steven Hopper'] | 2020-12-31 15:54:45.179000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Life Lessons', 'Motivation', 'Life', 'Growth'] |
From data to data-artwork | Since April 2018, Wild Mazzini has produced thirteen exhibitions, showing to about 3,000 people over 120 works of art and design, inspired or based mainly on complex data and information.
The production of these exhibitions — solo and group — almost all of them very experimental, and the dialogue with the authors allowed me to sharpen the curatorship.
So, what are I and my partners looking for in a piece that we decide to show?
Adriano Attus | Neometrie — 2018 | Ph. Andrea Macchia
From representation to transfiguration. The data and information contained within the artwork rather than being represented are transfigured.
While representation aspires to objectivity, and for this reason reduces to a minimum the elements to interfere with the direct understanding of information, the work of transfiguration tends to open the interpretative spectrum, attributing a specific weight to the different parts, in order to restore the complexity of the subject.
Valentina D’Efilippo + Miriam Quick | OddityViz — 2018 | Ph. Andrea Macchia
Give a tone of voice to the data. Several people often collaborate in the creation of an artwork: craftsmen, curators, producers of materials who work alongside the artist. The data-art is no exception: isn’t unusual that the designer deals with analysts and other designers, developers and experts on field.
However, the transition from designer to artist is recorded when the author includes himself in the work, or rather attributes what we like to call “poetics”.
This can be found in the perspective that the author takes when observing the data, from specific aesthetic solutions (shapes, colors, materials) or in some cases from the choice of theme (close to his own personal experience or interests).
These factors will tend to be recurrent in the artist’s work and to emerge over time in an increasingly clear and recognizable way. | https://medium.com/wildmazzini/from-data-to-data-artwork-d32fa48bcf | ['Dave Fuschi'] | 2019-09-16 17:12:16.090000+00:00 | ['Wild Mazzini', 'Complexity', 'Data Art', 'Encode19', 'Data Visualization'] |
A Good Friend | Good friends should be treasured.
Good friends are hard to find.
Don’t be angry with them for telling you the truth.
Be thankful for they are the only ones who truly care. | https://medium.com/an-idea/a-good-friend-5d1d4afd05b2 | ['Nancy Ann'] | 2020-12-13 03:12:35.473000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Poetry', 'Friends', 'Poem', 'Friendhship'] |
Three Myths about Honest Security | Today at Kolide, we published our guide to Honest Security. It’s our North Star for Kolide and represents our vision of the future for the endpoint security and device management.
Honest Security focuses on the following five tenets:
The values your organization stands behind should be well-represented in your security program. A positive working relationship between the end-user and the security team is incredibly valuable and worth fostering. This relationship is built on a foundation of trust that is demonstrated through informed consent and transparency. The security team should anticipate and expect that end-users use their company owned devices for personal activities and design their detection capabilities with this in mind. End-users are capable of making rational and informed decisions about security risks when educated and honestly motivated.
Listen to the podcast about Honest Security at Hacker Valley Studio.
While much of the free guide we posted focuses on what Honest Security is and how it should work mechanically, I imagine there are many IT and security practitioners out there that might be automatically shut off to something like this due to previous bad experiences.
After chatting with a few folks who have read the tenets, I’ve noticed there are already some common misconceptions forming about the Honest Security approach. As we launch Honest Security, I thought I would author a supplementary post that dispels some of the myths behind the methodology.
Myth #1: Honest Security is incompatible with Device Management
Many folks believe Honest Security advocates for an approach that is fundamentally incompatible with device management like MDM. You could hardly be blamed if you do; I have been advocating strongly against blanket device management since the inception of Kolide. Since 2019, our thinking has evolved.
In the chapter six Achieving Compliance Objectives, we acknowledge that education isn’t enough to move the needle towards acceptable levels of adherence to the company’s objectives. To that end, we suggest generating predictable and proportionate consequences that can be applied to end-users who are not heeding the important recommendations of the security team. We go on to describe the concept of Opt-in Management.
While this process is effective, there are just some people who will continually find themselves always on the brink of the consequence activating (or worse, serial offenders). In some situations, these users may do much better with the recommendations they regularly fail to implement on time if the security team could just do it for them. This is where Honest Security can allow the users to opt-in to traditional device management solutions (where applicable) and not have to worry about getting locked out of critical services or accounts.
We feel so strongly about this, we are working on an Honest MDM solution for our customers. The MVP is almost complete!
Myth #2: Honest Security blinds security teams in the name of privacy
Critics of Honest Security approach often get defensive about its strong push away from blanket collection of data that might be useful later. Many folks I deeply respect remind me that if it were not for a certain piece of data they weren’t sure they should gather, they would have never been able to detect <insert really bad thing>.
While Honest Security definitely advocates for being mindful and intentional about the data you collect, it primarily champions for an informed-consent and transparency based approach. If the security team really does think a piece of data is important, then we should be up-front about it. If that data could be dangerous or extremely personal (like GPS coordinates), then informed-consent is the best option.
The best summary of his position is in Chapter 4. Collecting Data Honestly.
Do you know if your organization looks at your web browser history? I want to clarify that I am not asking them whether or not the company collects web browsing history. I am asking them whether they know, with 100% certainty, whether the security team is or is not. It is one thing to know whether your organization canview your browsing history, and another to know if they do. Also notice I didn’t ask them if the organization usually looks. One person, looking once because they were curious, is looking. After making these clarifications, it is my experience that there are three camps of people who can still emphatically answer “yes.” […] The third camp are the folks who can answer “yes”, because they know exactly what tools are installed on their devices and what the tools are capable of collecting. More importantly, they know they can independently verify how the security and IT team is using these tools in practice. They know if the security team is looking at their web browser history because the tools the security team uses require them to know. These are people who work for companies that practice Honest Security.
Myth #3: Honest Security hurts Insider Threat detection and deterrence
Many folks think the quality of their insider threat defense strategy is inextricably tied to the act of obfuscating exactly how the endpoint security team performs its detection mission. We address this myth directly in the fourth chapter, Collecting Data Honestly. In there you will find a section aptly titled, “The Insider Threat”. (reproduced below) | https://blog.kolide.com/three-myths-about-honest-security-8ca1b6c32770 | ['Jason Meller'] | 2020-12-08 21:42:03.462000+00:00 | ['Mdm', 'Privacy', 'Mac', 'Endpoint Security', 'Osquery'] |
Flare Network’s FTSO : Voting, Delegation, Rewards and WFLR | Flare Network’s FTSO : Voting, Delegation, Rewards and WFLR
Oracle and Flare Network’s FTSO
In DeFi world, including stable coin protocols, getting the exact price of cryptocurrencies is very important. The price of cryptocurrency is usually brought from off-chain to on-chain through an “oracle” system. Untrusted price information may cause vulnerabilities such as flash loan attacks. And this makes DeFi, which relies on Oracle, to not work. In this article, you can see how FTSO (Flare Time Series Oracle) works, the price oracle mechanism of the Flare network.
TL;DR
FTSO is the price oracle mechanism of the Flare Network.
In the FTSO, the price is determined based on the values submitted by FLR and F-Asset token holders.
A weighted median method is used to determine the price.
The actual right to submit prices is reserved for WFLR token (and F-asset as well).
FLR and F-Asset token holders can delegate their voting powers to other price providers through WFLR’s delegation feature.
Price Providers are delegated authority from the token holders to submit price information on their behalf.
In FTSO, price submission uses a commit and reveal scheme.
The basic mechanism of FTSO
In the FTSO of Flare Network, FLR and F-Asset token holders submit estimated prices for each asset. For the sake of brevity, this article only covers the case where FLR token holders submit prices to FTSO.
After FLR token holders submit prices, the submitted estimates are aggregated to create a “weighted estimate distribution”. In order to remove outliers, the 25% low prices and 25% high prices are truncated from the distribution.
With the price remaining after truncation, a weighted median is calculated to determine the oracle price. Token holders (submitting a price between the top 25% and bottom 25%) will be rewarded for their contribution to price determination.
The reward rate for FTSO participation (and for participation as data provider) is initially set as 10% of the annual circulation of FLR tokens. This reward rate can be changed through governance voting.
An example of FTSO mechanism
Let’s take a simple example for better understanding.
Alice : with 10 voting power(FLR), submit price as 3
Bob : with 20 voting power, submit price as 4
Charlie : with 30 voting power, submit price as 5
Eve : with 20 voting power, submit price as 6
First, a weighted estimate distribution is created with the submitted prices (left side of the figure). Since the voting power involved in the price submission is 80 FLR in total, the 20 FLR of the top 25% and the 20 FLR of the bottom 25% are truncated. The gray area in the picture above corresponds to the truncated area.
The Oracle price is calculated from the remaining price after truncated (green in the figure). 10 FLR out of 40 FLR voted for price 4, and 30 FLR voted for price 5. So we can calculate the oracle price like this:
The median of the distribution = 5
As 20 FLR voted for price 4, Bob’s voting contribution (10 FLR) is equal to 50%. And as 30 FLR voted for price 5, Charlie’s voting contribution (30 FLR) will be 100%. According to the formula in the white paper, FTSO rewards will be divided as follows:
Alice: No reward (All votes are in the bottom 25%)
Bob: 33.3% of the total FTSO Rewards (Contribute only 50% of the votes)
= 0.5 / (0 + 0.5 + 1.0 + 0)
= (10/20) / {(0/10 + 10/20 + 30/30 + 0/20)}
of the total FTSO Rewards (Contribute only 50% of the votes) = 0.5 / (0 + 0.5 + 1.0 + 0) = (10/20) / {(0/10 + 10/20 + 30/30 + 0/20)} Charlie: 66.6% of the total FTSO Rewards (Contribute 100% of the votes)
= 1.0 / (0 + 0.5 + 1.0 + 0)
= (30/30) / {(0/10 + 10/20 + 30/30 + 0/20)}
of the total FTSO Rewards (Contribute 100% of the votes) = 1.0 / (0 + 0.5 + 1.0 + 0) = (30/30) / {(0/10 + 10/20 + 30/30 + 0/20)} Eve: No reward (All votes are in the top 25%)
Once you understand the basics of how FTSO works, let’s move on.
Wrapped FLR (WFLR) token for voting & delegation
In the above, FTSO voting was described using the FLR token, but the token that has voting power is the WFLR token (and F-asset token as well).
The WFLR token is a generic ERC20 token. Moreover, WFLR token has the following features:
FLR and WFLR will always have a 1:1 ratio
WFLR is required to participate in FTSO voting
1 WFLR has 1 voting power
Another feature of WFLR is the ability to delegate voting power. This means that while holding WFLR, a holder can just delegate voting powers to other price providers. A WFLR token holder can delegate voting power by percentage to a limited number of addresses, currently 3.
The features of WFLR can be summarized as shown in the figure above. Through deposit and withdrawal of FLR, 1:1 exchange with WFLR is possible. And it has the inherent ability to delegate voting powers to other addresses while holding WFLR tokens.
FTSO Provider
FTSO price submissions should occur every few minutes. A transaction signing is required for every price submission. It is very difficult to sign a transaction manually once every few minutes. (Unless the token holder is a machine)
So it is needed to delegate voting power to the FTSO price provider who keeps submitting Oracle prices. In this case, the delegation feature of the WFLR token can be used.
How to submit the price for FTSO
Price submission in FTSO uses a “commit and reveal” scheme. The reason for using this scheme is to prevent a provider who see the other provider’s price submitted first and then tries to submit based on the other provider’s price to get more rewards.
Here’s how it actually works. Only submit the hash value of the price first(commit). Then submit the actual price after all price providers have submitted the hash value. If the submitted price does not match the hash value submitted earlier, it will be rejected as an invalid price submission.
An example of FTSO price submission and delegation
Finally, let’s summarize it with an example.
Alice has 10 FLR, she has no voting power which is delegated to her. Alice exchange her 10 FLR to 10 WFLR. She now has 10 voting power. Bob has 30 WFLR so he has 30 voting power. Bob decides to delegate 50% of his voting power to Alice. Now Alice has 25 voting power and Bob has 15 voting power. Bob receives 20 more WFLR tokens. Now Alice has 35 voting power and Bob has 25 voting power.
As shown in the example above, when a token holder who delegate voting power receives additional WFLR tokens, the smart contract automatically updates the voting power according to the delegated percentage. It is also important to note that delegation is handled on a percentage basis, not on a quantity basis.
Conclusion
We briefly explored how FTSO works and the WFLR token for voting power delegation as well. Hope this article to help you in understanding more about Flare Network. :)
Unlocking Value!
References | https://medium.com/dcentwallet/flare-networks-ftso-voting-delegation-rewards-and-wflr-4ce45fcc9cfa | ['Minho', 'Yoo'] | 2021-07-15 11:24:29.438000+00:00 | ['Flare Network', 'English', 'Oracle', 'Wflr', 'Ftso'] |
How Autonomous Vehicles Can Help Fight Climate Change | How Autonomous Vehicles Can Help Fight Climate Change
It’s important that we pursue a car-free future. Autonomous vehicles can help to bridge the gap to that future in a sustainable way.
In 2019, transport was the sector with the highest levels of carbon dioxide emissions in the UK, with a 34% share of the UK’s total emissions. That’s more than even energy supply, which stood at 25% of the UK’s emitted CO2. It’s clear that, if we’re going to make any kind of progress towards the net-zero emissions target, then how we travel will have to be radically re-thought over the coming years.
Energy supply has already largely been diversified in the UK, with coal being virtually entirely phased out. Nuclear and renewables accounted for 54% of the UK’s energy supply last year, explaining some of the big drop in energy emissions over the last few years. More efficient technology is constantly being developed too, reducing the need for energy and electricity, and while we should be looking to rapidly quicken the pace, energy emissions are declining promisingly.
As mentioned, nuclear energy has been a big part of that emerging trend. It accounts for roughly 18% of the UK’s energy, helping to reduce emissions. It is not often argued that nuclear is a long-term solution, both because people are acutely aware of the many risks involved concerning meltdown and the storage of waste, and because nuclear fission uses uranium and plutonium, which we only have a finite amount of. Nuclear energy is very efficient, of course, but even with that, it is predicted that uranium supplies will run out in 200 years if we continue using it at the current rate — i.e. if we became dependent on it, it would run out within a couple of generations.
Nuclear fission, therefore, is a bridge fuel: not the end solution, and likely to be fully phased out before long (indeed, Germany is already phasing out all its nuclear reactors in the next few years, following in the footsteps of Italy, and France plans to cut its dependence on it, though not entirely). It is helpful because it allows us to cut high-emissions sources of energy like oil, gas, and coal in the short-term while we improve technological efficiency and our renewable capabilities.
Just as the energy sector has bridge fuels, so too does the transportation sector have bridge transport.
The ultimate aim of policymakers, innovators, and society in general is to bring about a world in which the transportation sector contributes zero net emissions. We are, as the emissions breakdown shows, very significantly far from that world.
Where progress with energy has been more rapid, with the coal mines being forced to shut and many renewable forms of energy proving better value even considering the carbon externality which puts them at a disadvantage, progress with transport has not been particularly quick. And, as I wrote recently in this piece, the pandemic may have semi-permanently changed behaviour, with people preferring private vehicles to undistanced public transport. Given that public transport is usually far better for the environment, this is a worrying trend.
Policymakers have, thus far, failed in their duty to revolutionise the transport sector. A new £27bn package for road-building was recently announced, and even if we decide to let the government off on this count due to the impact of the pandemic on transport habits, there has never been a concerted effort to build infrastructure for electric cars, significantly boost public transport to allow it to replace cars, and equalise the market by introducing carbon pricing.
The aforementioned electric cars are one type of bridge transport: they are not ideal, primarily due to storage issues for the lithium-ion battery waste, but they will help to plug gaps over the coming decades and reduce emissions while satisfying demand. Electrifying planes may also prove possible in the next decade, which will massively reduce emissions from the most polluting mode of transport there is.
But autonomous vehicles are perhaps the best transport innovation we have in to bridge the gap between the status quo and the future we should be aiming for.
In this piece, I set out a more-than-slightly ambitious vision for the future of autonomous cars, as an interconnected network of vehicles which could replace most private transportation, and also replace traditional public transport in some places, operating as a government-owned (or, probably more unpopularly, franchised) network.
The big advantage which autonomous vehicles can offer us in reducing transport emissions is their efficiency. Because they can be connected in a network and communicate with each other and tracking systems in real time, autonomous vehicles will be able to keep fuel efficiency to a maximum and pick the best routes for avoiding congestion, which is particularly damaging to the environment.
Moreover, the sheer number of vehicles which have to be manufactured could be reduced if a network of autonomous vehicles largely replaces private cars, as private cars tend to lay dormant on driveways and roadsides, and in garages, for the vast majority of the day. By contrast, an autonomous network would enable every car to be used for longer each day, leading to a small, but not insignificant, reduction in demand for vehicles, in turn reducing emissions.
We won’t solve all our climate woes by developing a network of autonomous, electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles. But we can bridge the gaps in demand in the short-term, improve efficiency, and pave the way to a future where cars play a minimal role in transportation.
We’ll need a huge effort to revolutionise not just intranational, but also international transport, both for passenger and freight travel. There are no easy solutions, but by developing ways of bridging the status quo to the future, we’ll buy time to find, fund, and implement long-term solutions. | https://medium.com/discourse/how-autonomous-cars-can-help-fight-climate-change-4f25efbdf27e | ['Dave Olsen'] | 2020-12-17 03:26:49.146000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Climate Change', 'Environment', 'Transportation', 'Autonomous Cars'] |
$500 Billion 🚗 | Tesla stock has been on a wild ride over the past few years. After being the first publicly traded car company to reach a $100 billion valuation and its recent introduction to the S&P 500 scheduled for December 21st, it’s crazy to think what could be next for the company. On Tuesday, the company passed a major milestone with Tesla’s market capitalization breaching $500 billion for the first time ever.
This news has taken Bill Gates out of the number 2 spot of richest people in the world and cements Elon Musk as being one of the most powerful billionaires on planet earth. Compared to a year ago, Tesla shares are up over 730% and they are up over 550% year to date.
Back in October, Tesla broke another company record. It was the fifth consecutive profitable quarter for the company with revenues coming in at a monster $8.77 billion. Simultaneously, Tesla had delivered 139,300 vehicles in the quarter which was also a new record for the carmaker.
At this point, the question is this: “How much more is there to go for Tesla?” “Do you believe it’s valuation could hit $1 trillion?” As it keeps smashing through previous records, along with a brilliant leader like Elon Musk- the sky could be the limit for this company over the long term.
Keep in mind, many other carmakers are pushing towards electric as well so there will be some serious competition on the horizon.
I am not a financial advisor and my comments should never be taken as financial advice. Investments come with risk, so always do your research and analysis beforehand. | https://medium.com/invstr/500-billion-c843335c7113 | [] | 2020-11-25 09:50:13.393000+00:00 | ['Tesla', 'Business', 'Electric Car', 'Elon Musk', 'Stock Market'] |
Movie Review: Better Watch Out (2016) | Ooh boy, what do I say about this movie in a review? First off, it’s quite good. But I really don’t want to say much more, because the movie is very unpredictable, and it’s probably best viewed the way I viewed it — knowing virtually nothing about it.
As far as Christmas horror movies go, this is one of the least Christmas-y. I mean, sure, it has the look with Christmas decorations and a few carolers gonig around, but really this story could have taken place at any time of year. That’s not a complaint, just an observation.
I really don’t want to say much more specifically, but this does something that I really admire in one of my least favorite subgenre of horror, as it’s truly a unique take. And I guess I’ll leave it at that.
Rating: 7/10 | https://medium.com/as-vast-as-space-and-as-timeless-as-infinity/movie-review-better-watch-out-2016-96f2c6e90039 | ['Patrick J Mullen'] | 2020-12-24 14:01:14.250000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Movie Review', 'Australian', 'Horror', 'Home Invasion'] |
Style Guide for Scala | Reading Scala code is easy once you get used to it. However, it is always good to have a well defined set of guidelines so that the code which is readable for an individual is also readable by the other person as well as maintainable by the client. At Knoldus, we strive to write code which is clean and beautiful. At one of the Knolx sessions, we collected the information pertaining to clean code, much of the contributions coming from Daniel Spiewak and David Copeland. You can find the details here as well.
[slideshare id=13883688&doc=scala-style-guide-120806035949-phpapp02] | https://medium.com/knoldus/style-guide-for-scala-7d1954671379 | ['Knoldus Inc.'] | 2018-02-08 18:29:16.499000+00:00 | ['Style Guide', 'Clean Code', 'Readability', 'Scala'] |
How to Read a Lot More and Make Sure You Get The Most Out of Reading | How to Ignore the World and Just Read More
Reading is a habit like any other.
So if you want to read more and you feel stuck, take the same steps you’d use to get into a new diet or exercise routine:
Start small, set achievable goals, don’t berate yourself too much if you miss a day.
But there are also some reading-specific ideas that worked great for me. I hope some of them can help you become the diligent reader that you want to be.
1. Pick a Book That Will Help You Solve a Problem
“Learn both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.” — Leo Tolstoy
People are natural problem solvers. It brings us a thrill and a sense of accomplishment.
If you can think of reading as a problem-solving activity, you’ll be less likely to get distracted while you read.
That’s how I got into reading in the first place.
After I decided to run an online business remotely, I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It answered all the questions that were troubling me, and it opened my eyes to new possibilities.
From there, I moved on to various business books, self-help books, and philosophy was the natural next step. At the same time, I looked into the writers I liked as a teenager and worked up a bigger appetite for fiction.
When the lockdown hit, my beloved Stephen King books were a great distraction. But I also found solace in Stoic philosophy. It gave me the answers I needed at the time.
2. Or: Pick a Book That Someone Else Loves
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Maybe you just don’t feel like solving problems in your free time.
Fair enough! Reading should bring you pleasure of some kind, and I understand needing a break from your worries.
One of the best ways to get in the mood for reading: listen to someone else get enthusiastic about a book.
Sure, the recommendations you receive won’t always match your taste. But your reading slump might disappear if you try out new genres or authors you’ve never heard of.
If the love of literature isn’t enough to hold your attention right now, try to rely on curiosity instead.
3. Or: Start With the Classics
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” — Henry David Thoreau
If you read one book per week starting today, you will be able to read maybe 2000–3000 books in your lifetime.
When you consider the vast number of books written each year, you may get disheartened. If there are so many books you’ll never check out, what’s the use of reading anything?
If you’re prone to that kind of nihilism, I strongly suggest that you skip the latest NY Times hit and focus on the classics first, for two reasons:
These books have stood the test of time. Most classics are genuinely great, and they can teach you something about yourself. The essential truths about life haven’t changed over the centuries.
Most classics are genuinely great, and they can teach you something about yourself. The essential truths about life haven’t changed over the centuries. Reading isn’t a competition. Getting too caught up with the bestsellers list is counterproductive. You might end up planning to read a bunch of highly-praised, alluring things but by the time you get around to it, something else is trending. This leads to book FOMO and it won’t actually fuel your desire to read.
4. You Don’t Have to Finish Every Book
“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” — Mortimer J. Adler
It’s okay to put a book away if you don’t like it or if it’s putting you to sleep.
I recommend sticking with it for roughly the first 100 pages. That’s enough time to find out whether the magic is going to happen. If not, snap it shut and reach for the next book.
There’s no reason to get stuck, and you won’t win a prize if you force yourself to go through a book you hate. Your time will be better spent on reading something else.
5. Vary the Length of What You’re Reading
It’s important and useful to read longer books. Experts say that book immersion improves your ability to focus, and many of the world’s most captivating books are very long. Great stories need time to unfold.
But don’t discount the power of a good article (or Medium post) on a topic you care about. And remember: short stories can be more life-changing than novels.
You can stay mentally fresh if you vary the length of your reading material. Don’t go straight from one dense, fact-packed non-fiction book to the next. Instead, zoom through something shorter in the intermission. If you prefer fiction, check out some short story anthologies or poetry collections.
6. Arrange Your Schedule Around Reading, Not the Other Way Around
To go into deep reading mode, I need at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted time.
When I first started reading, I would leave this to chance. Whatever, right? I must have 30 minutes of free time somewhere in my day.
This led to many abandoned reading sessions, and it made it difficult to focus on the book in my hand. Getting interrupted all the time turns reading into a frustrating experience instead of the joy it’s supposed to be.
Deliberately give yourself uninterrupted reading time, and put those reading sessions into your calendar if necessary.
Once you have committed to your reading time, pick a quiet place where you know you won’t get disturbed. Don’t keep your phone next to you, or at least switch it to airplane mode.
You may prefer to read in silence, while others like to put on some music or soothing background noises. This could even become a part of your depth ritual.
7. Read Multiple Books Simultaneously
This piece of advice may be unorthodox but it worked great for me.
I usually keep 3–4 books on rotation. I like to read philosophy in the morning to fuel some profound thoughts. I prefer business or self-help books in the afternoon to inspire me. In the evening, I’ll crack open some fiction or a biography. This is part of my evening routine and it helps me set aside the worries of the day.
Mix it up to avoid burnout or boredom.
Challenging books make reading worthwhile, but you need time to process them fully. After you finish something heavy, pick up some pure entertainment.
8. Go Wild With a Pen in the Margins
… And this one is even more unorthodox. There’s probably a reader out there who got an eye-twitch the moment I implied you should besmirch your book by writing in it.
I respect books a great deal. But ultimately, the physical form of the book is just a tool for transferring ideas. While reading, I will happily highlight a passage, or fold the top or bottom corner of the page and write down my thoughts or ideas.
Here’s how Maarten van Doorn explains it in his guide to effective reading:
‘Marginalia’ are when you mark out thoughts, questions, and connections to other ideas’ in the margins. The goal behind doing this is to digest what you are learning and make it your own — make associations, draw connections, play with it, hold it in your mind.
Note-taking can be an exercise in creativity, and it helps you retain more of what you read. Plus, if you’re the type to fidget while you’re trying to focus, the pen might help satisfy your need to multitask.
9. Keep a Reading Journal
“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
For some, reading is an experience in frustration because they can’t take in much of what they read. As much as they want to pay attention, the words simply don’t leave much of an impression.
Books are only fun if you let them leave a mark on you.
Journaling can help with many of life’s problems, including this one.
Consider writing down your thoughts and feelings about each book you finish, even if you don’t keep a personal journal. You can also scribble down your thoughts as you read, or start your own quote collection.
Google Keep is a fine app to use for this. You can also use something like Postepic, which lets you photograph a physical book and share a quote with others.
Personally, I prefer the old-fashioned handwriting approach. If a good sentence stands out to you, why not write it down? When you revisit those notes later, you might discover something new about yourself.
10. Make it Ridiculously Easy to Reach Out and Grab a Book
“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall.” — Roald Dahl
I’m not one to complain about changing times, but we can’t deny that TV and the internet replaced books in many lives.
There are various reasons for this, but one we don’t talk about enough is convenience.
Life is full of little moments when you’re not doing anything important. If you’re waiting at the doctor’s office, or you want to rest after a hard day’s work — well, it’s easier to grab your phone and just start scrolling.
The solution? Cut down on the preparation you need to do before you can start reading.
I know this sounds silly, but the most enduring habits start with small adjustments.
Always keep a book (or an ebook reader) with you when you leave the house. Also, consider adding the Kindle App to your phone. Short story collections, quote collections, etc. are a great choice for this.
“Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.” — Dr. Seuss
Seriously — the more books you have lying around your home, the more you’ll be tempted to dive in. Keep one on your nightstand, one next to your couch or favorite armchair, one in the bathroom next to the tub…
Use bookmarks in every book. Don’t overthink this. A scrap of paper will do.
Invest in a good bedside lamp.
These details will make a big difference at first. Once you’ve gotten into the habit of reading, it will be much easier to just keep going whatever the circumstances. In my experience, one book will always lead to another. | https://medium.com/publishous/how-to-read-a-lot-more-and-make-sure-you-get-the-most-out-of-reading-dcd0f7c88530 | ['Eric Sangerma'] | 2020-07-06 20:50:35.653000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Learning', 'Self Improvement', 'Reading', 'Books'] |
“Expose yourself to both information and people that keep your fire lit” with Christina Lampert — Fem Founder™ | Christina Lampert is a sustainable: content creator, NYFW model, and entrepreneur. Known as The Sustennial, she founded the Sustennial Network, which is an online celebration of the sustainable millennial lifestyle. She’s attending Columbia University in the fall to obtain her Masters in Sustainability Management. Her channel focuses on an enviro-friendly, plant-based diet, and sustainable fashion lifestyle strategies. She also writes a sustainability business newsletter that goes out 2x a week.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I was interning in the Lilly Pulitzer marketing department when my sustainability journey began in 2016. My coursework, in tandem, was focused heavily on using business as a force for good. I naturally began studying the impacts of fashion on our planet and wasn’t necessarily thrilled, more so shocked, with all that I found in my research. Since then, I’ve been questioning the norms of not only fashion but our diet, lifestyle, and business practices as they relate to the environment.
What inspired you to start your business?
The more I used this information to implement sustainable practices into my own lifestyle, the more I felt like an “outsider.” Sounds crazy now, however, I was laughed at multiple times for walking away to recycle a plastic bottle or asking the waitress to leave out the straw when ordering a drink. I came to a point where I knew that there had to be like-minded millennials out there however, I wasn’t connected with them. It inspired me to create an online community where this newfound sustainable lifestyle could be celebrated and appreciated rather than shamed.
Where is your business based?
My business is based in New York City, although I’ve since fled to Scottsdale, Arizona to enjoy the outdoors for a bit! I’ll be back in October for grad school in the fall.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
My business is primarily focused on providing facts and information to my community that I wish I had previously known to make more informed decisions. In learning all that I have from my own research, it has driven me personally to make more sustainable decisions in the way that I live my own life. My hope is that it enables others to do the same within the Sustennial Network community.
From there, as the basis of the content I began sharing, I started to receive requests from brands who were a fit as part of those “newfound sustainable lifestyle” decisions. I began to promote them, quite genuinely, as sustainable alternatives, and found that they were willing to provide monetary compensation.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
I would say word of mouth and collaborating with other bloggers. There’s a ton of sustainability influencers out there who buy followers however I feel that’s it’s somewhat against the point of “influencing” for positive change. If sustainability comes up in a peer to peer conversation, I hypothesize that my followers will mention my channel as something that they might be interested in. I’ve also teamed up to execute giveaways with other sustainability bloggers which have been successful in connecting with people I never would have otherwise.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
My biggest challenge has been well, myself. On social media, it’s easy to wonder if you are providing content that your followers are actually interested in. Instagram, especially, because you put so much out there with little feedback as to whether or not followers enjoyed consuming the message. It’s challenging to value your work in terms other than likes and comments.
I’ve since screenshotted every message where followers have told me that they love what I’m doing and that it’s enabled them to make a sustainable change in their own life. I’ve had boatloads of followers tell me that they’ve purchased bamboo reusable wipes after I posted a tutorial on how to use them. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking that content creation is a one-sided thing however gathering and saving these messages to reflect on when they do arrive is crucial.
How do you stay focused?
Morning coffee. And also prepping half of my deliverable task the day before. For example, I uphold myself to send out two sustainability business newsletters per week. While you never know what the day is going to throw at you, I often ensure that I complete the research for the piece I’m doing the day before (the most strenuous part) and then write the actual newsletter the following day. Breaking it up is key and does help me stay focused.
For women like myself who typically run their business out of passion, it’s easy to stray the course and take action only when that fire is lit within you. Sometimes it dies, and that’s normal, however, it’s helpful to keep up with to-do lists and rely on content calendars for when that inspiration fire feels low or is nonexistent.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
The Sustennial Network celebrates every step of the sustainable millennial lifestyle journey. Most of my followers are coming from a place of status quo (right where I was four years ago) where they haven’t yet been exposed to the same information that I have from knowing what to research. My social channel is a place to explore this information, discover sustainable alternatives, and identify which you’d like to remain in your life that elicits more convenience and less negative impact.
I’m also very open about small steps. For example, in posting about the reusable bamboo makeup wipes, I mention in my caption that I likely will still keep disposable makeup wipes in store for those late nights coming home after a night out on the town. I think people relate to that vs. feeling the need to be 100% all-in for sustainable change. It’s a journey, it’s a process, and it all needs to be celebrated.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
It’s been helpful to actively reach out and begin establishing relationships with brands that I’m fond of from a consumer perspective. Not only do they appreciate the love of someone who is in their target market, but they also start to explore your channel and offer to work together. This happened with a wonderful, female-founded brand called Semaine. They had targeted me from an advertisement and I reached out, letting them know I was happy they “found” me. Since then, they’ve asked me to become a commission-based ambassador for their plant-based period supplement offering.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Expose yourself to both information and people that keep your fire lit. There are days when you’ll wonder if anyone is getting value out of your efforts however the fire will keep you going until the point when it’s clear that they are. Whenever I’m feeling down, I think about all of the messages where my community has let me know about the changes that they’ve been making, and I continue to celebrate them. I think about all of the brands that are doing so much good — that I’ve been able to introduce into a new group of people that they might have not reached otherwise.
In short, never stop reflecting and absorbing your small wins to keep your fire going. For soon, they will become big wins.
What’s your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
My favorite app is Spotify. My “Zone” playlist helps me to pump out work when I need the motivation most.
My favorite blog is Dining with Skyler. Although it’s not sustainability-focused, I’ve learned a lot from Skyler with regard to keeping content consistent, engaging, and personal.
My favorite book (is this cheesy?) is The Fault in Our Stars. Reading that book has never made me appreciate my life and health more. While yes, the teen love romance was mushy, sad, and happy, the takeaway for me was that we cannot take this life for granted. Might as well do something we love, right?
What’s your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Canva. While I always regret not taking a photoshop class, Canva allows for anyone to become a graphic designer. It’s been crucial in my content strategy and keeping my brand consistent.
Who is your business role model? Why?
My business role model is my mother. She’s a Certified Financial Planner with clients in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia area. Ever since I was a little girl, she’s shown me what it takes to truly develop a trusting and genuine lifetime relationship with someone. While I may show up through a screen to most people in my online community, I often try to replicate her ability to connect in a heartfelt way.
How do you balance work and life?
It’s so tough to shut off your brain once you close your computer as an Entrepreneur. I, like many, feel guilty when I’m not working on content in some way, shape, or form. I’ve recently found myself balancing work and life by leaving my phone upstairs and taking a book outside to read.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
I’d like to say yoga but sometimes by attention span doesn’t last for longer than thirty minutes. I do however set up my yoga mat every day after work and stretch in a leisurely manner. No agenda, no time set, no noise.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
I’ll be officially starting grad school at Columbia University studying for a Masters’s degree in Sustainability Management this fall. I’m mostly excited about the next level of information and science that I’ll be absorbing in the coursework. I cannot wait to share my studies and deliverables with the Sustennial Network community.
I also have a lineup of sustainable fashion designers that I’ll be interviewing. A lot of the New York (Sustainable) Fashion Week will be online so it’ll be interesting to report on how that goes and the different looks.
How can our readers connect with you?
Feel free to follow me on Instagram, visit my website, or sign up for my sustainability business newsletter which is delivered to your inbox 2x a week. | https://medium.com/fem-founder/expose-yourself-to-both-information-and-people-that-keep-your-fire-lit-with-christina-lampert-ed9c84a75c74 | ['Kristin Marquet'] | 2020-12-21 15:27:32.436000+00:00 | ['Female Entrepreneurs', 'Founder Stories', 'Founders', 'Female Founders'] |
Somalia: ‘I love working with dedicated teams who want to make a positive change in this world’ | Somalia: ‘I love working with dedicated teams who want to make a positive change in this world’
To mark World Humanitarian Day, Ali Yackub, a WFP Logistics Officer in Somalia, talks about what makes him tick
Ali, right, checking relief items in Beletwyne — one of the worst flood-affected areas of Somalia. Photo: WFP/Ali Yackub
“I’ve been stationed in some of the remotest regions of Somalia, but I’m currently working in Mogadishu, the capital, helping coordinate for the Logistics Cluster, supporting the transportation of critical cargo, on behalf of our humanitarian partners. I joined WFP in 2007.
“My day usually begins on the runway. I get to the airside office at 07:30 to activate the day’s plan for cargo movements. It’s often extremely hot. During the past few months when floods and COVID-19 response were at their peak, I’d work from dawn until dusk with little or no break.
“Unprecedented heavy rains caused devastating flooding and have displaced over one million people. We have also experienced the worst desert locust upsurge in 25 years — they’ve destroyed farmland and thousands of livelihoods.
A plane is loaded at Mogadishu airport. Photo: WFP/Ali Yackub
“When coronavirus broke out, humanitarian needs soared. Some call it a ‘triple threat’ emergency. Needs were urgent. Many roads were made impassable by the floods. Air transportation was quickly identified as the best way of shifting relief supplies.
“Lockdown at Mogadishu airport caused delays in getting cargo and passengers onto the planes. Those days were non-stop. I would be on the phone, out in the baking sun, following up with transporters, airline operators, the airport authorities and the partners themselves and rushing between offices and the warehouse.
“For the flood response, we moved sandbags for the Government to help populations affected by the devastating flooding earlier in the year. We are also supporting the World Health Organization and the Somali Ministry of Health in transporting vital medical equipment and supplies, such as hospital beds and oxygen tanks.
Ali starts his day on the airstrip at Mogadishu airport. Photo: WFP/Ali Yackub
“A major challenge can be when cargo doesn’t arrive on time, and passengers don’t show up for the flights we have organised. Other issues can arise when there are delays landing clearance at smaller airports. You can plan an entire flight, load up the cargo and get ready to go, only to be told you can’t land at your destination because some paperwork is missing. As the cargo we are moving is so critical, this aspect of the job can be quite stressful.
“After nearly three decades of instability, Somalia is now on a positive trajectory, following the re-establishment of the Federal Government in 2012. However, the country continues to struggle with recurrent food and nutrition crises, widespread insecurity, political instability, underdeveloped infrastructure, and climate shocks such as drought and floods.
“World Humanitarian Day has made me reflect on why I am working in this sector. I love working with dedicated teams who want to make a positive change in this world.” | https://medium.com/world-food-programme-insight/somalia-i-love-working-with-dedicated-teams-who-want-to-make-a-positive-change-in-this-world-fe3e46c1493e | ['Amelia Stewart'] | 2020-08-18 12:10:20.534000+00:00 | ['United Nations', 'Logistics', 'Somalia', 'Hunger', 'Humanitarian'] |
The 8-Days of Hanukkah | As the sun trickles down
and the prayers lift up
the candles of Hanukkah
are lit
one by one.
Jewish families gather
to remind us
where there’s light
there’s also shadow
inside the circle of
love and hope. | https://medium.com/the-pom/the-8-days-of-hanukkah-60ff0abbb1e0 | ['Carolyn Riker'] | 2020-12-10 23:39:53+00:00 | ['Hanukkah', 'Jewish', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Holidays', 'Poetry'] |
Silver Vs Gold — Historical Performance | Silver and Gold metals differ from each other in some ways. In this topic, we will cover Silver vs Gold — Historical performance, price, ratio between the two, top 5 highest and lowest years for the spot ratios. This will help to define the historical performances of these two precious metals, all the differences, pros, and cons of each metal.
Silver vs gold — historical performance and overview
All through history, individuals made use of both gold and silver in the sense of cash by creating cash coins from these two unique and valuable metals.
That created the silver-gold price ratio, an essential part of data in regular life. Any significant move apart from more common levels could charge you more if you considered silver instead of gold cash coins for payment. Or it could offer you a surprise benefit when the ratio abandoned its average value!
Amid the Middle Periods and the beginning of the 20th century, the historical point of the ratio for gold-silver increased from 12:1 in the Western part of Europe to over 16:1, with big changes over time. Big rifts also started with the ratio in bullion indices areas like India, which dealers could use for profit.
Sending gold to where it was much valued provided a considerable return in silver metal. It also assisted in closing these geographic breaks in the gold-silver ratio — a method known by current fiscal traders as arbitrage — by adjusting the scale of demand and supply in every regional market.
When we compare silver vs gold — historical performance, both gold and silver were broadly utilized as coins worldwide until 1900. Gold which was then modified to the yellow gold metal turned into a key financial metal to the extent of the Gold Standard, which was then driven from London (UK) by the British Federation. To fix the worth of money, gold gradually disappeared from the regular currency, which had changed to paper banknotes, and was secured inside state vaults.
Silver coins continued in the 1950s and 60s in the UK and the US. But the value of the metal had no stance on the value of cash, becoming only a symbol such as coins of copper or nickel.
The ratio timeline for silver vs gold
Five highest years for the gold-silver spot ratio
The five highest years for gold-silver ratio were: 1941–101.4, 1939–100, 2020–99.3, 1940–98.6, and 1990–93.2.
Five lowest years for gold-silver spot ratio
The five highest years for gold-silver spot ratio were 1967–15.4, 1919–15.7, 1862–16, 1872–16.3, and 1874–16.6.
In silver vs gold — historical performance, the gold-silver ratio is one of the oldest and constantly followed exchange-rate in the past. This ratio is generally pursued because gold-silver prices have a well-developed link and are rarely varied from each other.
The spot ratio for gold-to-silver is a direct and relevant measurement. It shows the number of silvers unciae worth one uncia of gold. Since gold and silver prices may vary, the spot ratio shows the comparative worth of these 2 metals.
For approximately thirty years after the American Civil War, silver and gold prices were stationary related to each other. But, by 1900, with the Standard Act of Gold, the ratio had over two-folded from 16 to 34.5.
The 20th century then carried more unstable gold-silver ratios, going as high as 132.4 and pushing a four-day banking weekend in 1933 throughout the Huge Depression. After World War II, this ratio fell, finally approaching a low value of 17.9 in 1970. After a year, President Nixon finished the exchangeability of USD into gold.
When Nixon finished the Gold Standard in the year 1971, the spot ratio for gold-silver has been on a higher curve. In 1986, the Mint of the United States launched the coins of American Eagle Silver and Gold, letting shareholders own the valuable metals straight. Although it is yet to approach its Huge Depression figure of 132.4, its most current number from May 2020 keeps it at 91.5. This creates enough sense for some diverse reasons.
With joblessness going towards points earlier seen in the Big Depression and the share market challenging gravity in place of the original hit to the market, silver and gold prices return to unclear financial facts, same to everything else.
Stockholders might also be eager to keep riskier bets and follow the gain out of apathy and replace the need for sports. We do not understand what will happen to prices in the prospect. But there is a possibility that they will proceed to alter since the market either feasibly gets better or proceeds to decline.
5 years historical ratio comparison of silver vs gold
Though not confirmed, the ratio would generally grow all through valuable metals bear markets. This would indicate the break between their values increases and drops all through bull markets, signifying that gold turns out less precious in connection to silver. This is due to silver being a more unstable metal in comparison to gold. Thus, its cost would get radical variations based on the type of market.
The five years from 2011 to 2016 are an ideal instance of this. Since 2011, when the price of silver rose, the ratio had over two-folded. In April 2011, gold’s one ounce was valuing over thirty-one times above a silver’s ounce, and as of February 2016, that ratio has gone approximately 80: 1. Whereas the cost of both precious metals had fallen since then, silver had dropped to approximately a third of its 2011 worth, dropping from all over £29 for each ounce to only over £10 for each troy of an ounce in 2016.
To keep the present ratio into view, it was likely to own over 70 x 1kg bullion bars of silver for a similar sum of cash as a 1kg bullion bar of gold. The unpredictable quality of the silver price was the key cause behind the ratio’s inclination to vary to such a vast extent.
Whereas this was not the most crucial the ratio had always been, the silver value was rarely very low compared to gold. This created silver, a very effective investment metal in 2016. Since its price was meagre compared to gold, it created and engaged more in 2018, with the gold-silver ratio the most extensive since 2008.
Based on past inclinations, it is probable that valuable metals can undergo an extra boom. The price of silver could rise, stretching the ratio in a significant way.
Factors that affect the ratio of gold and silver
Silver and gold prices usually shift similarly day after day, but the amount of their changes differs much.
In the recent half-century, gold has equated a regular shift of 0.5% high or low in USD terms. But silver has shifted over 0.9%. This is because silver has a very small market compared to gold via value, about 1/10 the dimension. Thus, similar cash flow, in or out, would affect silver prices very hard. Also, that would shift its gold prices ratio to low or high.
Due to the silver market’s volume and volatility, risky trading in the metal is much bigger than gold.
Through its record high of summer 2019, the size of wagering on silver prices by options and Comex futures was equal to 175% of yearly mine production worldwide. It has also equated to 117% over the recent decade. For gold, in reverse, the recent 10 years’ common open credit in Comex derivatives compared to only 65% of 1 year’s international mine yield. Even initial 2020’s latest record growth in extensive gold interest has caught it alone to 109%.
Summary of historical performance — silver vs gold
Silver and gold are very volatile assets, and investing in them is not for everybody. They are not commodities that you may trade on regularly, and the sharp price changes involved with these metals can frighten anybody. So, you should always trade these metals in the long term. But if you have previously traded gold for seven years or more, then you are well on your part.
The same is valid for silver since it’s still not as popular among the predominant investors. When we compare silver vs gold — historical performance, we can then say that owning gold and silver can be a valuable hedge next to financial change. This can as well assist in balancing your portfolio, particularly in the sense of dollar uncertainty. | https://medium.com/@hristo-h/silver-vs-gold-historical-performance-2b24b86efa3b | ['Scope Markets'] | 2021-07-06 10:24:45.832000+00:00 | ['Gold', 'Economic History', 'Commodities', 'Silver', 'Investing'] |
An Introductory Guide to BirdSend, the New Email System for Bloggers | BirdSend Review — Features & Functionality
In no particular order, these are some of the features and functions I love (and hate) about BirdSend.
Send a test email
Many email marketing systems allow you to send a test email to yourself before sending the broadcast to your list. If you’ve never used this functionality before, I’d recommend you begin with it. It’s the perfect way to catch any problems with your email before it hits your subscriber’s inbox.
BirdSend offers a ‘send test email’ functionality, but what I most like is it’s found within the regular steps you complete to send an email. Unlike some other systems where you have to go out of your way to find this option, BirdSend allows you to send a test email from the same page where you schedule your email.
Image Source: BirdSend
A/B testing of headlines
Every time you send a broadcast email, you click through a page that gives you the option to split test your email headline. This feature is available on all accounts (including free trials), and you can use it for all or none of the emails you send.
To split test a headline, check the ‘Split Test (A/B Test)’ box and add a subject line variation.
Image Source: BirdSend
You also have the option to set an automatic winner so you don’t have to return to check the results and send the winner to the remainder of your list. Instead, during setup, check the ‘Automatic winner’ box. You have a number of criteria to choose from, including:
Higher Earnings
Higher # Sales (Conversion)
Higher Open Rate
Higher Click Rate
You also have the ability to set the duration of the test and identify how much of your list you’d like to use for the control and variation emails.
Finally, you can also resend the A/B test winner to people who haven’t opened the email by checking the “Resend winner to Unopens” box and selecting a timeframe to wait until the email is resent.
Image Source: BirdSend
Resend to unopens
As discussed above, you can resend the winning email to people who haven’t opened an email during a split test. However, you also have this functionality for every email you send. Simply set a timeframe, and your email will be re-sent to people who haven’t opened the initial email. You can also choose a new subject line if you wish.
HTML and CSS emails customisation
BirdSend allows you to customise emails using HTML, which allows for simple changes to headlines, paragraphs, and the introduction of buttons in your emails. However, they only allow inline style, which means every single line of your email has to be coded if you wish to change it from the default (e.g., to change the font). Unfortunately, BirdSend doesn’t currently offer CSS customisation, which would reduce the difficulty of this coding, but I’m hoping they introduce this option in the future. Regardless, I still send emails that look like the image below with limited use of HTML.
Image Source: Tara Fitness
Footer customisation
Along with customising your email body, you also have the option to customise your footer for every email you send. If you don’t customise the footer, it will contain the following content:
“This email was sent to you ([subscribers_email_address]) because you opted in on our website and indicated you’d like to receive emails from us. If you no longer wish to receive such emails, please unsubscribe here. To ensure you receive our emails, please add [sender_email] to your address book. Our postal address: [sender_address].”
Image Source: BirdSend
Integrations
BirdSend integrates with all of the major systems you’re likely to use for lead generation, including Google, Lead Pages, ClickFunnels, PayPal, ThriveLeads, and WooCommerce. Where integrations don’t currently exist, you can connect BirdSend to 1000+ other platforms using Zapier.
Image Source: BirdSend
Conversion/sales tracking
Disclaimer: I don’t currently use conversion or sales tracking so I cannot attest to how well it works. However, BirdSend does provide automatic tracking as part of their platform. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/an-introductory-guide-to-birdsend-the-new-email-system-for-bloggers-ebadc0ad8a5f | ['Tara Fitness'] | 2020-02-18 23:17:27.672000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Freelancing', 'Blogging', 'Email Marketing', 'Startup'] |
The Twilight Zone (2019) episode review — 1.3 — Replay | Original release date: April 11, 2019
Writer: Selwyn Seyfu Hinds
Director: Gerard McMurray
Rating: 5/10
The episode starts in a diner, with Nina Harrison (Sanaa Lathan) and her son, Dorian (Damson Idris), about to head off to college. She films him on an old camcorder, and a state trooper, Officer Lasky (Glenn Fleshler) enters. When she rewinds the tape to film over her son accidentally squirting ketchup on himself, she apparently rewinds time.
When they’re driving to Uncle Neil’s house, Dorian jokingly picks up the camera and starts filming. He gets pulled over, and the police officer freaks out when he realizes it’s recording.
Nina reaches to turn it off, and accidentally hits rewind.
She feels uncomfortable, and demands that Dorian pull over, even though he has no idea anything has happened. The cop pulls over behind them. Dorian tells the officer that he needs to get his mother to the hospital, but first the cop demands that he move his vehicle. Dorian speaks up and the officer pulls a taser, so Nina, now understanding what her camera can do, hits rewind.
They end up back at the diner, and Nina demands that they leave now. Nina drives instead of her son, and takes a different route. She brings up the idea of finding a hotel and not going to college until the next day, and Dorian agrees. When they’re watching lottery numbers get announced, Dorian mentions something about “particles unfolding the way they’re destined to,” and things happening “the way they should.” She rewinds and tells him that if she guesses the lottery numbers, he has to promise to visit her when he’s in college. He’s amazed when she’s right, of course, and that police officer shows up at their hotel room.
He demands to see their ID’s (he’s there for a noise complaint or something), and he gets angry when he notices the camcorder. She rewinds just as he pulls a taser out.
They’re back at the diner again, and Nina tries to figure out a way for the state trooper to go away. She decides to introduce herself to the officer, and buy him a slice of apple pie. She talks about how her son is so important, anticipating him coming after them, I guess. The officer is standoffish at first, but seems to be friendly enough, even after she mentions his wife, who is apparently dead.
When she and her son go to leave, the officer asks her about her car, and demands to see her ID and proof of ownership. This time she gets angry at the officer, but her son says that he has a picture of the pinkslip on his phone. After he goes and gets it out of the car, he gets shot when he holds up his phone to the officer. When she’s at the morgue, Nina rewinds to go back to the diner.
They leave just as the officer enters, but she comes off very suspicious when he sees her. When they’re on the road, Nina pulls over and explains things to her son. She needs him to help her figure out how to end it.
They finally get to Uncle Neil’s (Steve Harris) house. She tells Neil everything, and he says he believes her. He tells her where to hide, and takes them to this old underground tunnel thing.
They take it, and end up at the college, but the officer stops them on campus and pulls a gun. More police officers show up and a crowd gathers behind them at this HBCU. Dorian tells her to rewind it, but she instead films. The crowd behind her pulls out their phones to film. Officer Lasky backs down after Nina makes a speech.
Ten years later, she now has a granddaughter, who ends up breaking the camcorder. Dorian tells his mother to let it go.
I have some mixed feelings with this episode. The premise is very Twilight Zone, and the racial allegory sort of is, too. However, the ending is pretty bad. I think it’s disingenuous to the state of the world today, considering there are plenty of videos of cops killing black people that haven’t resulted in any kind of justice. And it’s a little disingenuous to the series, as well.
It’s an ending very much not in the spirit of the original Twilight Zone. Peele’s closing narration reveals that by looking to her past, Nina was able to save the future. That’s what literally happens, of course, as going to her old home, her brother is able to help her. But her past makes up like one line of the episode before they go there; it just doesn’t feel like a fair ending. | https://medium.com/as-vast-as-space-and-as-timeless-as-infinity/twilight-zone-2019-episode-review-1-3-replay-4d07fd5c8135 | ['Patrick J Mullen'] | 2019-05-21 10:16:01.120000+00:00 | ['Drama', 'Allegory', 'Fantasy', 'Twilight Zone', 'TV'] |
Roku Publishing Made Easy. | Now available at www.mediarazzi.com
New Book Reveals All the Secrets to Publishing a Profitable Roku Channel
By Mediarazzi Staff
It goes without saying, with video marketing at its highest point ever, Roku and Connected TV channels are, “the new website.” At least, according to Mediarazzi founder/CEO Phil Autelitano they are. In his new, “Publish Your Own Roku Channel” book and program, he reveals all the secrets he’s learned over nearly a decade of publishing profitable Roku TV Channels.
If you’re one of the five people left in this world who’s never heard of Roku, you should check out their website before reading any further — www.roku.com
If you know Roku, then you know it’s the future of television. The Connected TV industry, led by Roku, over the past ten years has EXPLODED from just a few thousand active viewers in 2008–9 to tens of millions now. And it’s STILL growing strong! Every day, millions of viewers tune into Roku for everything from TV and movies to music, sports, news, weather, politics, food, and a host of other exciting content. Roku has become a household name in many homes across the nation, and has cemented it’s place as the platform of choice for streaming television viewers.
That said, with all those viewers, content creators are coming out of the woodwork to develop their own Roku “channels” to distribute and profit from their content in ways they just can’t on other platforms or online with sites like YouTube. There’s never been a better time in history to distribute your content to millions of viewers, quickly, easily — and downright inexpensively — than now. Roku has dropped the barrier-to-entry for television viewership down to the ridiculous, and because advertisers are quickly catching on, there’s never been a better time than now to PROFIT the most from your content. Of course, it all starts with creating (publishing) a Roku Channel…
In his “Publish Your Own Roku Channel” book and program, Phil Autelitano takes you step-by-step through the process of designing, building, monetizing and publishing your Roku Channel live to millions of Roku users nationally and worldwide. He simplifies the process to the point ANYONE with reasonable computer and Internet skills can do it — with zero coding knowledge or experience required. Heck, you don’t even have to have CONTENT, because he tells you where to get that, too, by offering dozens of sources for free and easy-to-acquire content for your channel.
There’s never been a more comprehensive instruction manual to publishing a Roku Channel than now. “Publish Your Own Roku Channel” includes absolutely everything you need to do it:
Comprehensive Roku-building instructions
Easy-to-use graphics templates
Pre-built JSON channel feed template
Free Content Sources
Monetization Sources (for making money with your channel)
Easy-to-follow coding guide
Hands-on instructions
Ongoing advice and guidance
And more!
“Publish Your Own Roku Channel” is more than just a “book” — it’s a complete program, or course, better yet, a virtual “Roku Channel-in-a-box.” And it’s not just for beginners. The advice, strategies, tips, tactics and techniques Phil Autelitano reveals in this program will benefit even the most advanced Roku developer or publisher. He’s literally taken out all the stops and revealed EVERYTHING he’s learned over nearly a decade of developing and publishing Roku Channels for clients that include major brands and celebrities like Paula Deen and boxing legend Oscar de la Hoya, and more.
There’s no argument Phil Autelitano has earned his place as one of the foremost experts on Roku publishing and monetization, and in this book/program he proves it. It’s a value at ten times the price and it’s available exclusively at www.mediarazzi.com.
And if the book and program aren’t enough, Phil is now offering hands-on instructor-led training and one-on-one Roku coaching programs. He works with clients small and large to develop and produce quality, revenue-generating Roku Channels.
Before you spend ONE DIME on Roku development, you need to read “Publish Your Own Roku Channel” by Phil Autelitano. It will give you the knowledge, insights and even the skills you need to create a professionally-designed Roku Channel that MAKES MONEY for you.
Learn more at www.mediarazzi.com. | https://medium.com/business-marketing/roku-publishing-made-easy-e5c857d4d2f9 | ['Phil Autelitano'] | 2018-11-19 07:44:55.543000+00:00 | ['Video Marketing', 'Roku', 'Content Marketing', 'Marketing', 'Branding'] |
Para kazanma | in The Lives of Writers | https://medium.com/@shahbazpoor2020/para-kazanma-14f15c97f0d1 | [] | 2020-12-20 17:34:20.655000+00:00 | ['Writer', 'Money', 'Blogger', 'Para', 'Yazarlık'] |
That ‘scientific study’ that makes you hate your race | That ‘scientific study’ that makes you hate your race
Brown-skinned girls, look past racism to own your beauty
Photo credit: Create Her Stock
Update on October 18, 2019: Cosmetic surgeon Dr Julian De Silva is back to creating delusional and racist studies about the most attractive women again. To no one’s surprise, the top 10 list looks about as predictable and un-Afrocentric as the previous one from 2016 (written about below). At least Beyonce made the list this time, especially considering she proudly claims her “Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils.” She got points taken off for that when it came to nose dimensions.
I was raised by family members who were adamant about embracing multiculturalism — confident men and women who embraced African-American history, literature and features.
I’m a proud HBCU graduate who also did (college) time for two years in Marquette, Michigan. And although there were countless moments of culture shock for me in the upper peninsula, one conversation with a college friend still sticks out in my mind years later.
Photo credit: Askar Ulzhabayev/Unsplash
A Japanese friend of mine was complaining about her wavy hair, her fuller cheeks and the larger shape of her eyes. She told me: “Monnie-chan, people always think I am Hawaiian, anything but Japanese.”
I shrugged and said, “What’s wrong with that? There are plenty of pretty Hawaiian women. That’s not an insult.” And my homegirl was very pretty.
She looked at me with the “tsk-tsk” face and said, “You just don’t understand Asian beauty.”
She looked at me with the “tsk-tsk” face and said, “You just don’t understand Asian beauty.”
That comment was jarring for me. I kept thinking how miserable I would be if I was constantly comparing myself to somebody’s made-up standard of beauty that I would never reach. It seemed counterproductive, especially considering I think plastic surgery is almost always an absolute waste of money and I skip makeup 90 percent of the time (hey, Alicia Keys). “Embrace your face” is my motto.
Photo credit: Cassandra Hamer/Unsplash
However, a “scientific” study from Harley Street physician Dr. De Silva proved just how easily people can fall into this trap. The study claims to identify “the world’s most beautiful face” by using the ancient Greek beauty ratio Phi to make a determination. The top 10 list is full of the usual suspects found on the covers of pop magazines: Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Moss, Kendall Jenner and Selena Gomez.
Judging from the list and the requirements to make the list, women with African features would be hard-pressed to qualify.
Photo credit: Chris Murray/Unsplash
Although it’s no surprise that they’re on the list (and I agree that they’re pretty women), the more troubling factor is how their beauty was measured: A certain size lips and nose, the distance from lip to mouth or eyes to nose, and even foreheads. Judging from the list and the requirements to make the list, women with African features would be hard-pressed to qualify.
Jaw-dropping women such as Gabrielle Dennis, Janelle Monae, Kelly Rowland, Tika Sumpter, Angela Bassett, Regina Hall and King, Queen Latifah, Meagan Good, Phylicia Rashad, Joy Bryant, Jennifer Hudson, Lupita Nyong’o and Mary J. Blige probably wouldn’t make the cut. And these are women I find to be just as stunning as those top 10.
Photo credit and edits: Asterio Tecson/Wikimedia Commons
Studies that depict people’s beauty based on these tactics successfully marginalize certain groups so they’ll never make the quota. When Beyoncé says “I like my Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils,” studies like these basically respond back with “You shouldn’t.” (And who in their right mind would argue Beyonce’s not gorgeous?)
When Beyonce creates songs like “Brown Skin Girl,” studies like these leave some perplexed. They’re wondering what in the world “black girl magic” is. That’s on them.
Now does the study make me personally feel insecure? No. I was told one too many times as a child, teenager and adult that I was pretty. Nowadays, if someone tells me I’m not, my response would be to “take that up with your optometrist.”
So why does this study matter? Because there are still entirely too many women of color who are going under the knife, packing on makeup, getting surgical eye color changes, moisturizing with skin lightener and photo-editing their own pics to try to meet someone else’s standard of beauty — not for themselves.
Studies like these continue to perpetuate the stereotype that makes some women feel “perfect” while others feel perfectly less than. So to women who worry about meeting someone else’s standard of beauty, consider reevaluating that.
Don’t diminish your pretty trying to keep up with petty “scientific” studies.
The original version of this edited post was published on Blavity. | https://medium.com/i-do-see-color/that-scientific-study-that-makes-you-hate-your-race-d49c949ecd6a | ['Shamontiel L. Vaughn'] | 2020-02-08 14:04:21.350000+00:00 | ['Beauty', 'Black Women', 'Black Girl Magic', 'Racism', 'Prejudice'] |
Finding the Class of 2027 | Although I initially thought we would have more than one month to select children for this year’s admission to the Carmel Convent School, our timeline has been shortened dramatically. Over the next few days, we will search for, gather, examine, select, register, enroll, and begin preparing fifteen 3.5 to 4.5-year-old girls for the first day of school in their family’s histories.
The Patel Nagar slum, home to 25,000 people
Last year, we scoured this slum of 25,000 residents for the most talented and deserving children we could find without much regard for their age. Although our first class of students is thriving in and out of the classroom, it has taken a tremendous amount of work on their part and ours to get them caught up with their classmates. When our students began first standard classes 10 months ago, they were already nearly 3 years behind other students. The wide age range of our students has also turned out to be an issue with accreditation and overseeing agencies, thus necessitating a new approach this year.
Rani, who has been studying at the Carmel Convent School for the past 10 months
A young girl waiting in the slums for help
This year, the sisters have generously decided to provide us with 15 seats in Lower Kindergarten (LKG), the youngest class. This way, our students will receive the same education as other students from day one. As I have mentioned numerous times in previous posts, female infanticide and male favoritism are still realized as substantial problems in Indian culture. This year’s theme of the Carmel Convent School is “Save the Girl Child.” To balance the ratio of males to females in their school and make a poignant statement about the importance of saving and educating female children, the sisters have decided that this class of 15 will be comprised solely of females. These girls must be of impoverished backgrounds and have birth certificates, caste certificates, and government-issued ration cards, among many other forms of documentation. They must also be between the ages of 3.5 and 4.5, thus narrowing our selection criteria dramatically.
Volunteer Amy Bergam walking with current students Poornima, Pooja, and Neha
Volunteers Amy Bergam and Caitlin Rulien with Neha and Gudiya, respectively
Every day, generous and caring volunteers from around the world join me on my journey into the slums in support of our current students and search for new ones. The process is incredibly emotional, especially to the volunteers who have not been involved in such life-changing work before. However, I can certainly sense my own maturation over the past year. I feel very much at home in the slums now. Nearly everyone knows me or at least has an idea who I am. Although I will never be comfortable with the poverty and squalor, I am now accustomed to it and am rarely surprised by the powerful sights or pungent odors.
Madhu hugging her mother after school
Last year, I had to convince families in the slum why they should send their kids to one of the best schools in town. Madhu, shown above, would never have attended a day of school in her life had we not spent many hours with her family discussing why Madhu should take advantage of our unique offer. Her mother originally denied our support but changed her mind at the very last moment. Their expressions in this photo are indicative of their opinions now.
Lata’s family refused our support
Rahul’s parents also denied us the ability to help him
Both Lata and Rahul were selected to join Squalor to Scholar last year. They are both highly intelligent and driven. Although I tried many times to convey the importance of education to their families, both families turned down these opportunities of a lifetime. This week, I went back to the place I had met Lata and Rahul last year. They were still there, trudging through life in the slums. These two wonderfully talented and handsome individuals will never attend a formal day of school. They will likely live in slums and in poverty for the rest of their lives.
This is a prime example of the types of challenges we must overcome here. Nearly all of this slum’s residents have migrated here from Bihar, a state generally believed to be the poorest, most corrupt, and most educationally backward state in India. They are also members of the lowest castes and are used to people treating them as such. Therefore, the adults here have developed a rather strong distrust of others.
However, the success of Squalor to Scholar and our continued presence here over the past year has earned the trust and respect of many families. Everyone in the slum knows about our students and sees them walking to and from school every day. With their bright, immaculate uniforms, they are still beacons of hope and opportunity to everyone around them. I am still stunned, however, by the lack of jealousy toward our students.
After the selection and enrollment of these new students, I will return to the families of Lata and Rahul to offer them one more chance.
Ankit is, like Ajeet, now one of the top students in his class
Enjoying being reunited
Checking on our students/families and searching for new ones
Maintaining the Squalor to Scholar “family”
Verifying documentation and eligibility of candidates with Mithlesh
Meeting and teaching potential students
Tracking students and organizing further evaluation
Discussing expansion with local officials and social workers
I have certainly hit the ground sprinting here in India. In only two weeks, we will have accomplished what took nearly two months last year. As I continue to learn from our mistakes and challenges, my goal is to streamline our work so that it is scalable and replicable far beyond the borders of New Delhi or even India.
There is tremendous potential ahead. I’m not sure what the future holds, but I have a good feeling about our rapid progress. What an amazing year this has been. This time last year, I had still not even met the sisters or known anything about their renowned Carmel Convent School. | https://medium.com/squalor-to-scholar/finding-the-class-of-2027-4f9b721565be | ['John Schupbach'] | 2017-06-30 16:05:52.963000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Charity', 'Squalor To Scholar'] |
Fixing Happiness — Happily ever after, and why you are not. | I want to write about some reasons as to why we are unhappy most of the time and why we will stay that way, and what you can do given that fact.
To put it bluntly, it is quite simple on the base level: You will never live happily ever after because you are an animal, and an animal brain — such as yours, simply lack the hardware to run the software you are asking for.
Happiness, as I have written about a bit before, is something we get to every once and a while, but doing so is most of the time more luck than a result of striving. Sure, we might be able to be happier in the future, you know, when we have invented nanobots that can hack and tweak our system to create an endless source of new serotonin, dopamine, and the other feel-good neurotransmitters; or when we just get a better understanding of our biochemical makeup and are able to inject some precursors to these neurotransmitters so we have an endless amount in a more natural way. But based on my knowledge of neuroscience and our bodies at large, it won’t be that simple, at all; Darwin, God, and the rest of the gang that invented evolution and our biology made sure to make it all complicated as fuck, and they also made sure to hardcode homeostasis into every last detail — So if you tinker with one thing, the rest usually goes haywire at first and resets after a while, if you are lucky, or if unlucky we might just get stuck with the haywire. For now you, therefore, have to accept that any sense of permanent happiness is not achievable based on our neurology.
But for those that feel like only talking about the brain is a bit reductionistic, as I do, let’s zoom out a bit and look at one simple fact that makes happiness a pipedream when trying to find it in more psychological terrain as well: You will never be happily ever after because you have associated happiness with stupid ass things. You think that you will be happy if you were to go on a holiday to the Bahamas, have a room with a perfect pool, a photo model partner, and a perfect sangria, or whatever those nice drinks are called. The reason you believe this is because a lot of people make money out of these believes, and they do so because they, in turn, think that making money in order to buy these same things will make them happier — and around the donkey goes. But getting these things and experiences is not the solution as things and experiences do not make you happy, a ton of people that have tried the path this will attest to. Sure, they might for a while, and I for one would say that experiences are a heck of a lot better than things, but the happiness they bring about still fade, and if you do not believe this, please go get that money, go there and come back to continue to read some more afterward.
For those that stayed, let us continue to zoom out even one step further, from psychology to sociology to look at the interpersonal aspect of why happiness is not a feasible state to chase: You will never be happily ever after because we are in the majority of the time happy in relation to others. While this might sound all well and good, people that are chasing happiness through a bigger house, paycheck or car will most likely always run into people with bigger and better versions of these things as well, and as the rule dictates, you will not be happy unless you have the best and the biggest. Once again, kind of the same situation as before, more struggle, but no more happiness.
At the most zoomed-out view, lasting happiness is naive is because of the structure of our cosmos: You will never be happily ever after because you forgot to account for the fact that your happiness goals are predicated on static things and events while the reality is occurring in an ever-changing world. See, you might seem to have it all, and then just as you were about to cross the finish line and enter into that eternal happy bliss, your trip gets canceled by new flight restrictions, she or he breaks up, your crypto savings plummet or someone dies. These things happen, all the time - and they usually mess up that happiness big time when they do.
To sum it up, long-term happiness is a sales trick and a mythological state of fairytales, but it is NOT a reasonable aim for any rational person.
Instead of aiming to be happy, you should aim to be contempt with what you have, you should aim to be resourceful in order to be at least somewhat able to handle whatever the world throws at you, and you should aim to be helpful in the longterm to everyone around you.
There is likely a whole lot of other things that are also worth aiming for, but if you start out with these three, as they are some of the most important, I assure you that things will get a whole lot better — and as a bonus, you will most likely end up feeling a little less shitty after doing so as well. | https://medium.com/@axelhansers/happily-ever-after-and-why-you-are-not-13980bed1ab8 | ['Axel Hansers'] | 2021-02-22 21:32:10.034000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Happiness', 'Life Lessons', 'Stoicism'] |
7 ways shopping will get better by 2020 | Entrance to the Innovation Lab
7 ways shopping will get better by 2020
It’s not just voice and robots. Here’s the cool tech you haven’t heard about yet that’s ready to change the way you shop.
Walking around the National Retail Federation’s annual convention and expo provides thousands of examples of retailers “improving the customer experience.” It’s a nice line, but what does that really mean for all of us consumers? NRF’s Sarah Neale Rand reports from the “Retail 2020” exhibit in the Innovation Lab at NRF 2018: Retail’s Big Show, where some of the coolest emerging tech that will shape the near-future of retail is on display.
It’s my lucky 13th trip to Retail’s Big Show, and retail looks a lot different than it did in 2006. But things look different for me, too: In addition to working full-time for NRF, I’m back in grad school and a mother of two. A great shopping experience for me is all about efficiency and convenience, so when NRF’s Vice President of Technology Jason Hoolsema and Tusk Ventures’ Managing Director Seth Webb agreed to give me a tour of the Innovation Lab at Retail’s Big Show, I wanted to see what upcoming technologies were going to make shopping faster and easier for me.
The grocery store experience
Five Element’s DASH Robot Shopping Cart
These days, with two kids under six distracting me, I’m lucky if I only have to crisscross the grocery store twice in a trip. Five Element’s DASH Robot Shopping Cart maps out the most effective route, leads me around the store and stops at the items on my list (no more crisscrossing for me). I pay at the cart (no lines!). Then it follows me to my car and returns to the store all by itself. Sign me up.
Comparing features and exploring products
Spacee’s simulated reality demo
When it comes to buying technology for my home, I could spend days reading reviews, watching demos or looking at products in stores. Spacee and June20 are going to make all that research so much easier. Spacee’s simulated reality uses light projection to make any surface a 3D interactive experience — I can “demo” a Nest thermostat that’s actually just a piece of plastic or touch a table top to interact with information.
June20’s sliding tablet
June20 brings physical and digital displays together with an informative sliding tablet that lets the customer move between products, call up the right information about each product and effectively compare their features. I won’t admit how much time (or how many trips to the store) I spent buying a smart lock a few years ago, but I bet this would have limited my shopping research to 20 minutes. Pluses for retailers: reducing shrinkage, reduced inventory display costs and a content-rich online experience in store.
Take the trip out of the equation
Starship Technologies’ delivery robot
Whether it’s a quick trip to the grocery store for milk or that lunch I didn’t have time to run out and buy, Starship Technologies’ robots are making local delivery easier than ever. I can order last-minute groceries for tonight’s family dinner, and follow the robot online as it navigates to my office. The win for retailers: Packages can be delivered for a fraction of the cost a more traditional delivery service would require.
The right fit — the first time
Volumental’s shoe-fitting solutions
The last time I needed a new pair of boots, I ordered FIVE pairs — multiple styles and sizes — to make sure at least one fit. And of course, I returned four pairs. Volumental is solving that problem. Their fast and accurate 3D foot scanning system and advanced AI ‘Fit Engine’ can recommend a pair of shoes based on individual foot shape, size and preference. Say goodbye to wasted time and energy trying on shoes that aren’t going to fit anyway. The win for retailers: shoe returns decrease 25 percent.
Chris Baldwin, CEO of BJ’s Wholesale Club visits the Volumental booth
Completing the outfit
A cute blue and brown skirt has lived in my closet for (at least) the last year, with no tops to match. It’s all I could think about at FINDMINE and Slyce’s booth. FINDMINE’s machine leaning platform and Slyce’s image recognition tech come together for a “Complete the Look” tool that would let me take a picture of that lonely skirt and see a complete outfit to keep it company. The win for retailers: Both FINDMINE and Slyce’s tools are increasing engagement and conversions.
EverThread’s technology shows products in every possible color
I once made the rookie parent mistake of furniture shopping with a toddler. I was only able to focus on all the options around me for the five minutes I convinced her to run laps around a display couch, and I left empty-handed in the end. Now when I need to buy a couch and want lots of options, I can — from the comfort of my soon-to-be-old couch — turn to a retailer using EverThread and its visualization software. EverThread’s technology takes photoshoots out of the process and lets retailers show products (like the couch I now need) in every possible color. While I’m at it, I might try out a new rug and curtains to match. The win for retailers: Since multiple product views increase sales by 58 percent, this is sure to give conversions a bump. And if I want to make sure my new couch and rug look good and fit properly in my living room (so I don’t have to worry about returning any furniture … no time for that!), ecommerce visualization platform Tangiblee will take care of that.
My mall assistant
Satisfi Labs’ AI conversation platform
These days my trips to the mall are intensely purposeful. I know exactly what I need to accomplish, though that doesn’t mean I don’t need help. Satisfi Labs’ AI conversation platform can be that help. Its chatbot might help me find deals, answer questions about stores carrying certain products and help me navigate right to a cookie shop at the end. The win for retailers (and malls): bringing customers back with a unique experience.
The supply chain that delivers
I’m in awe of my mom and every other woman in history that raised children without the ability to order diapers online, often at 3 a.m., and know it will arrive that day — or at least in the next two days. Add in the days I forgot to buy a textbook before the new semester started or the mitt my 4-year-old needs for tee-ball practice, and some days it feels like magic that the thing I absolutely need shows up on my doorstep. That’s why I was so enamored with Locus Robotics’ warehouse robots. They work alongside people to more than double human productivity. That means the pipe cleaners I need for this week’s science fair are headed my way that much faster. Bonus for merchants: Retailers are already seeing a reduction in operating costs by 30–40 percent.
Locus Robotics’ warehouse robots
I used to think of 2020 as far in the future, but it’s almost here. Most of the Retail 2020 exhibitors I talked to are already working with retailers. That means all the cool technology that makes shopping more convenient and efficient is accessible now. I’m looking forward to all the time I’ll save — maybe I can find room for just one more commitment in my life. Or maybe I’ll just take a nap. | https://medium.com/nrf-events/7-ways-shopping-will-get-better-by-2020-d90ef650cfb | [] | 2018-02-01 17:59:34.970000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Retail', 'Innovation', 'Trends', 'Future'] |
Living Through the Horrors and Aftermath of War Through the Works of Phil Klay | Living Through the Horrors and Aftermath of War Through the Works of Phil Klay Zach Strayer Follow Apr 25 · 4 min read
Photo by Rob Pumphrey on Unsplash
A soldier pre-deployment and a soldier turned war veteran are two completely different people; even if they’re the same person leaving and coming home. The mental tattoos that the horrors of war engraves into a soldier are something that you’d have to be blind to oversee the existence of. Yet society will never fully be able to understand the damage that it inflicts beneath the surface.
Phil Klay is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. Who shines light through a small window into the depths and trepidations of war. While some authors pound out story after story seeking nothing but monetary gain, Klay chooses to publish a dollar rather than one hundred pennies; publishing only two collections of short stories thus far, receiving countless and highly aspired awards. The “Redeployment” collection brings into perspective the disconnect from soldiers and civilians following their time in combat and the struggles of everyday life once a veteran. While his collections of short stories “Missionaries” and “Left Behind” are more centered around the imperfections of the United States’ support for their troops.
The “Redeployment” collection of short stories brings the readers directly to the front lines of the war in Iraq, challenging the readers to attempt to understand what happens during and after events that take place. In these stories, the themes of survival, helplessness, guilt, and fear are evident throughout the brutally honest short story and it puts a whole new perspective on the intricacies of the mental turmoil of combat. It begins when Sargent Price, a Marine Corps sergeant, and his platoon is burdened with the unavoidable shooting of dogs who are eating human corpses. He reflects on his experiences collecting remains — of both U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. The story then develops into Sgt. Price as he tries to settle back into a normal lifestyle post-deployment in a suburban area. He transcribes the difficulties that his relationship with his wife went through and was damaged possibly beyond repair. Although they attempt to heal the relationship, their efforts only seem to be having the effect a bandaid would have on a bullet wound. He portrays the guilt of a soldier and the effect that war has on relationships back home. It almost seems to depict these tribulations in a justifiable way, but in reading his works you learn that nothing will ever be able to capture the true experiences overseas. It’s an emotionally heavy piece of work that quickly captivates its audiences through the brutal honesty that bleeds through in his writing style. The way that Klay describes the events that take place, there is no buffer between the horrors and the pages. What happened is what is written. Klay makes no effort to desensitize his experiences for his readers. Doing this, it has allowed him to be a very captivating and successful writer. The readers are easily susceptible to engrossment in the short stories with the raw and unfiltered writing style, being brought to a place that isn’t even shown in movies.
Klay’s debut novel and newest publication “Missionaries” was released in October of 2020. A group of Columbian soldiers prepare for a mission to infiltrate a drug lord’s safehouse along the Venezuelan border. The novel begins with four soldiers and their experiences in war. It then delves into tactics and what is found in battle. This fictional novel is much like Klay’s previous works of “Redeployment” but instead of the storyline being centered around the tribulations of war itself, it’s centered around the ideologies and support from the countries behind the soldiers. It examines the globalization of violence and war through the stories of four characters, two American soldiers and two Columbian, and their experiences in combat that will define their lives forever. “Missionaries” is not the only publication that Klay has made that has pinpointed the issues of the U.S. diminishing support for troops on the ground and overseas either.
In his works of “Left Behind” he delves even further into the issues pertaining to the U.S. government and their support and actions behind the soldiers. The short stories dive into the diminishing morale of U.S. soldiers and how little justification there is within the U.S. government as to why they’re sending troops where. He explains that even though support is easily found through meaningless materialistic objects throughout the general society, there is a vast lack of moral support. Klay writes, “If the courage of young men and women in battle truly does depend on the quality of our civic society, we should be very worried.” In the depths of “Left Behind” the reader is given a glimpse of the horrors that lie within the battlefields, much like “Redeployment” has much success in doing. The reader is shown what it means to be “brothers through war” and how the soldiers put aside their personal differences to work together as a collective unit. Klay assesses the changes that soldiers go through during and after war, and how much of the U.S. government needs improvement through a soldier’s point of view.
Many experiences that soldiers go through in battle can only be experienced primarily and never recreated through words. The mental turmoil and emotional changes that they go through can only be understood by those who have gone through it first-hand. This being said, the challenge of transcribing these events and feelings for an audience, a majority of whom will never begin to feel the weight of such trials and transformations that occur, is near impossible. But Klay’s efforts in doing so don’t go unjustified and he succeeds in tackling this challenge for us all to experience and learn from. His works are more than worth your time to get lost within the words. The different perspectives and outlooks on life that it brings to the reader are second to none. Not only are his works enjoyable, but also very mind-opening. | https://medium.com/zach-strayer/living-through-the-horrors-and-aftermath-of-war-through-the-works-of-phil-klay-64202d773255 | ['Zach Strayer'] | 2021-07-17 14:53:43.564000+00:00 | ['Mental', 'Veterans', 'Review', 'Short', 'War'] |
Why Do Qualified Women Spur Suspicion? | Women are frequently told that, if they work twice as hard as men, then they will be just as respected and admired. This notion — that individual women can and must assume the burden of combating sexism by doubling the amount of work they perform — is problematic for a number of reasons, but I think the most glaring issue is that, in practice, it simply doesn’t appear to work. Its ineffectiveness is exemplified by the faltering campaigns of two of the most qualified, competent, lively, and inventive presidential candidates ever — Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton — both of whom were ultimately yielded to old white men.
Were they too competent? Was that it? And on what planet is being exceedingly competent a problem?
For men — I don’t think this is even a question — there isn’t such a thing as being too competent. A man with knowledge is brilliant. He is genius, and in American culture the male genius is often elevated to a godlike status, allowing him to easily elude all forms of discipline — even at the expense of the women he may silence or abuse. But when the knower is a woman, she’s often treated like a criminal; how dare she acquire the knowledge that has so long been withheld from her?
Women are forced to walk a very thin line: the line between being, in the eyes of men, too weak or sensitive or timid for the job and being so qualified and equipped to succeed that they garner — or steal — the attention and admiration that is supposed to belong to men.
Think about it. In 2016, American voters on both the left and the right were disproportionately suspicious of Hillary Clinton, who — whether or not you agree or disagree with her political positions — was indisputably one of the most qualified presidential candidates in American history (President Obama himself said she was THE most qualified, period). I doubt any of us forget Donald Trump and his followers referring to her only as “Crooked Hillary,” or the infamous debate moment when a resentful Trump turned to Clinton, who had spoken eloquently and thoughtfully all night, and called her a “nasty woman.” And then there are the Sanders supporters. Although they were insistent that they were not biased against Clinton, many of them never hesitated to deem her — albeit without solid proof — corrupt, greedy, entitled, callous, shrill, selfish, and even bloodthirsty, or to launch misogynistic attacks against her, often in the form of the #BernTheWitch hashtag.
Similarly, throughout her 2020 presidential campaign, Elizabeth Warren endured misogynistic attacks from certain groups of Sanders supporters, who frequently called her a snake, which really means that they viewed her as a deceitful backstabber because she dared to tell the truth about her perception of her interactions with Sanders. Other Democrats leveled similar criticisms against Warren, deeming her unlikable, condescending, and a know-it-all. MSNBC commentator Donny Deutsch said her “kind of high-school principal demeanor” made her too unlikable to defeat Trump. A New York Times article features a variety of readers’ perspectives on why Elizabeth Warren’s campaign faltered, one of whom says, “She suffered from the same flaws as Hillary Clinton — most fundamentally, the belief that if only a woman works harder than anyone else, she will get rewarded with the presidency. The belief that the election is a contest over who has prepared the most elaborately detailed plans.” Elizabeth Warren had a plan for everything, even when her competitors didn’t — and, with the help of misogyny, male candidates were framed as the vulnerable victims of an over-prepared Warren’s malicious narcissism and egomania.
“Misogyny primarily targets women because they are women in a man’s world.”
Many have claimed that misogyny was not the cause — or even a cause — of the Warren campaign’s decline. I would argue that this standpoint arises from the seemingly perpetual misunderstanding of what misogyny entails. In her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, feminist philosopher Kate Manne theorizes that misogyny is not merely hatred for all women, explaining that defining it as such is often unproductive in that it allows virtually anyone to deny being a misogynist (i.e. to make claims like I can’t be a misogynist if I love my mother/wife/daughter etc). Instead, Manne suggests that misogyny functions to police women’s behavior and enforce patriarchal gender roles; in other words, “misogyny primarily targets women because they are women in a man’s world.” Manne argues that misogyny often consists of a system of punishment and reward in which women who fulfill their patriarchal role as “human givers” — such as “loving mothers, attentive wives, loyal secretaries, ‘cool’ girlfriends, or good waitresses” — are rewarded for their conformity, while women who disobey the patriarchal order are punished or put in their place.
A significant amount of the attacks on Warren certainly seemed to have the goal of policing her behavior, or putting her in her place. For example, Obama administration officials referred to her as “sanctimonious” and “a condescending narcissist” because she wanted to be put in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which she proposed in 2007. Asking to be in charge of one’s own proposition seems perfectly reasonable to me, but, for a woman, this was apparently asking for too much — she had to be put in her place, and that place was not as the head of the CFPB.. Perhaps the disproportionate criticism Warren faced for miniscule actions, such as whether or not she lied when referring to her father as a janitor instead of a maintenance man, were also efforts to put her in her place. What leads me to think so is the fact that, while Warren was receiving constant media criticism for such trivial matters, more significant issues pervading the history of her male competitors, such as Bernie Sanders’ alarming record on gun control — which remained more or less unchanged until 2016 — were largely ignored.
When Super Tuesday arrived and Warren did not perform as well as expected in her home state of Massachusetts, I found myself reminiscing about the night Donald Trump was elected president. Then I found myself vaguely recalling the numerous liberals who made use of the infamous I would vote for a woman, just not that woman claim, citing Elizabeth Warren as an example of a woman they would vote for (as opposed to Clinton). The fact that so many liberals resorted to this claim to justify their not voting for Clinton, and then, come 2020, used a variation of the same claim to justify not voting for Warren, is further proof that a woman’s immense qualification and competence simply isn’t enough to counteract America’s misogyny. In a 2016 Houston Press article on liberals’ repeated claims that they would vote for Warren but not Clinton, Jef Rouner articulates my own thoughts perfectly when he says, “[Warren is] the perfect female candidate for president in 2016 in that she isn’t actually running, and thus her danger to the patriarchal power system is just a thought exercise rather than the reality embodied in Clinton.” In 2020, his claim rings painfully true; when voting for Warren was a mere hypothetical, it was strikingly easy for liberals to use her in their justificatory claims, but when she ran for president in 2020, not even close to enough voters materialized to match the previous rhetoric. When the abstract idea of a Warren presidency became the reality, suddenly all that really mattered was that she was a threat to the patriarchal order.
Elizabeth Warren had a plan for everything. She was passionate, prepared, and tremendously qualified. She was also fiercely and disproportionately scrutinized, and ultimately written off on behalf of two elderly white men. The election of a woman for president of the U.S. is long overdue — 59 other countries have already done so — but it would mean severely disrupting the patriarchal power system. This type of big, structural change — having the first woman president — appears to be something most Americans still aren’t ready to embrace, regardless of how qualified, innovative, and prepared she may be. | https://medium.com/feministly/why-do-qualified-women-spur-suspicion-6ac1fe9fd9ca | ['Faith O. Potts'] | 2020-04-29 21:21:12.277000+00:00 | ['Sexism', 'Patriarchy', 'Feminism', 'Politics', 'Misogyny'] |
5 Things Happy People Almost Never Do | Obsessing Over Productivity
Let me guess. You’ve read all the lists about the things productive people do. You know to plan your day in the evening, create an environment that works for you, and do your deep work in the morning.
But productivity doesn’t lead to happiness.
From 2017 to 2019, I obsessed over my morning routine. I took a cold shower, did some breathing exercises, meditated, and journaled. And while these habits can help, they become an anti-dote to unhappiness if you treat them as dogma.
Productivity habits can be great. But like almost anything in life, they have a marginal point of utility. At some point, any additional piece of productivity doesn’t make your life better but even decrease your happiness.
A zero inbox at 6 PM can be great. But if you always prioritize your inbox over your life’s playfulness, your inbox will make you feel unhappy. Productivity can enhance your lives, yes, but obsessing over it is toxic.
Obsessing over productivity is a fast track to unhappiness. Do too much of anything, and you’ll feel drained. Or, as my grandma said,
“Moderation in all things is the best policy.”
What to do instead:
Take a step back and look at the role of productivity in your life. Does it still serve you, or have you reached the point where it lowers your wellbeing?
If you’ve deprived your life of all pleasure and sensuality, you should pull the brake.
Faster is not always better. You won’t find the happiest people sitting in a corner office in NYC or watching the number on their bank accounts rise.
Genuinely happy people value playtime as much as their productivity. Don’t trade seeing your friends on Friday night for a larger paycheck. Stop chasing optimization and start treasuring what you already have.
Break your self-made productivity shackles. Even if other people claim it to be working for them, it will not always work for you. Only keep the habits you really like. Allow yourself to engage and enjoy activities that don’t feel productive. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/5-things-happy-people-almost-never-do-9beb236b33f0 | ['Eva Keiffenheim'] | 2020-12-12 16:03:00.761000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Relationships', 'Advice', 'Habits', 'Happiness'] |
Setup MERN (MongoDB, Express JS, React JS, and Node JS) environment and create your first MERN stack application. | Setup MERN (MongoDB, Express JS, React JS, and Node JS) environment and create your first MERN stack application. Manish Mandal Follow Dec 10 · 8 min read
So are you also confused like most of the MERN beginners on how to create your first MERN project? and also how to setup the environment for your project? Even I was also confused when I created my first MERN project. I wanted to setup everything locally on my computer but there was hardly any tutorial for setting up the MongoDB locally everyone was using MongoDB atlas. But in this tutorial, I will cover how to use MongoDB locally and also how to structure our project.
We will first start with installing Node js on our machine. Visit node js official website here and download the latest version of node and install it on your machine. It’s available for your Linux, Mac, and Windows machine. I am using a Windows environment so all setup and configuration will be as per this environment. I have downloaded the Windows Installer (.msi) 64-bit version for my computer. After completion of download open the software and then it will ask for accepting the agreement and blah blah just click on next and after that, it will prompt you with this screen.
There is one checkbox to install Chocolatey on your machine. This is optional but still, I’ll recommend you to check this box as Chocolatey will help you to update your node in your machine easily in the future. After that click on install. After the installation has been completed you will be prompted with another screen to install python and visual studio build tools required for node native modules. Press any key to install all those required things.
We have successfully installed node in our machine now it’s time to install MongoDB in our machine. Visit MongoDB's official website to download the community version of MongoDB. The current version of MongoDB while writing this tutorial is 4.4.2. It can vary in the future but I guess the step would be the same. So I have downloaded MongoDB v4.4.2 Platform windows and Package MSI. After downloading follow the below animated steps to install MongoDB.
Note: I have also checked to install the MongoDB compass. MongoDB Compass will show your Database and its structure through an intuitive GUI.
After successfully installing MongoDB your MongoDB services will be running automatically in your windows services and the database data will be stored in Data Directory we have selected while installing the MongoDB software.
ctrl + shift + ESC open task manager and then go to the services tab
But by any chance, your MongoDB service is not listed you have to manually configure mongod for the command line and create a data directory for the database.
Optional if MongoDB service is not listed: If you type mongod to start your MongoDB connection you will be receiving an error like ‘mongod’ is not recognized as an internal or external command , this may be because our environment is not recognizing the command mongod . To fix this we need to add our MongoDB bin folder to the Environment variable. On your machine search for environment variable and open the Environment Variable dialog box and then edit the path variable and add your MongoDB installation bin folder to the box and click Ok.
Note: My current version is 4.4.2 that’s why the path contains a folder of 4.4. This may vary for your installation
Optional if MongoDB service is not listed: Now you will be able to run mongod command to start the database. But it will stop because there is one more thing we have to do is to create a data folder in our C drive. So go to your C drive and create a directory with the name data and inside that directory create another directory with the name db. This directory will hold all our database and its setting. Now you can run mongod command in your terminal to start MongoDB.
Note: The data directory we selected while installing MongoDB and the data directory we created in C drive manually hold different database so do not get confused that why your database is not listed or your collections are not showing. If mongodb services is running in your windows services do not run mongod command in terminal.
Now we can open MongoDB compass which we have installed simultaneously with MongoDB to create our Database and collections.
So we have successfully installed Node js and MongoDB on our Environment. Now it’s time to structure the boilerplate for the project.
Create and enter into the project directory and then inside that directory create a directory name backend and also one file name server.js. This server.js is the main file that you can use to call your database configuration and all your APIs routes. After that open terminal inside the root directory and run
npm init -y
This will create a package.json file in the project directory. Alternatively, you can use npm init for setting up the name or keywords for the project but that’s up to you.
Note: You can use require to import modules but I prefer using import to load node modules in files. To allow the node to use import add the below line to your package.json file
"type": "module"
2. Now we will install the required modules for our backend setup. Run the below command inside the terminal to install the required modules.
npm install express mongoose --save
3. After that we will config mongoose to connect with our MongoDB. Create a config directory inside the backend directory and then inside the config directory create a db.js file. This file will contain our database connection configurations. Paste the below code in the db.js file.
Note: Replace databasName with the name of your database.
4. Now import this db.js file to your server.js file and run node server.js in your terminal. It will log Database connected : 127.0.0.1
5. Now we will create a users collection in our database and its schema using mongoose. Create a models directory inside the backend directory and then inside the model create usersModel.js file and paste the below code.
6. Now just import the users model to the db.js file and it will create the users collection in your database with the schema. Open MongoDB compass to view the collection.
7. Now we will create some dummy users detail in our users collection. Open MongoDB compass and import below dummy data.
8. Now it’s time to create the controller which will be responsible for returning the response of the request. Create a controllers directory inside the backend directory and inside controllers create userController.js file.
9. Now in this file we will create two methods to retrieve all users and users by id but before that install, a module to act as a middleware for handling exceptions inside of async express routes.
npm i express-async-handler --save
10. Now paste the below code into the userController.js file.
11. Now we will create a route for the user. Create a routes directory inside backend directory and inside routes create userRoute.js file.
12. Paste the below code into the userRoute.js file.
13. Now it’s time to create our API but before that, I will install dotenv module to create a .env file in our project and then calling that into our server.js file. This .env file will help us in declaring our environment variable. We can save our credentials or keys here.
Install
npm i dotenv --save
Import
import dotenv from 'dotenv' dotenv.config()
14. Create a .env file in our project root directory and paste the below text to declare some variables.
15. Now will create user API using the express use method. We will also declare our PORT so now paste the below code into your server.js file.
16. Now run node server.js in your terminal to start the server on port 5000 and then open localhost:5000/api/users on your browser to get the list of all users.
We have successfully created our API using express js, node js, and MongoDB. Before moving into the React part I would like you to install the nodemon module and also make some changes to the package.json file.
npm i nodemon --save-dev
Now add this line under the scripts object inside the package.json file.
"start": "nodemon backend/server"
Now re-run your server using npm start in your terminal and this time, nodemon will monitor each change in your project and restart the server automatically.
Note: if you have used npm init -y to generate the package.json file please change "main": "index.js", to "main": "server.js" in your package.json file else nodemon will throw an error.
In most of my tutorials, I have covered how to use Axios to fetch data from the API to React. You can read my previous tutorial on the Simplest way to use axios to fetch data from an api in ReactJS. I won’t go much into detail like the above-mentioned tutorial but I will cover the basic part. So now go to the root directory of the project and follow the below-mentioned steps.
17. Create a react project with the name frontend.
npx create-react-app frontend
18. Install Axios into your react application.
npm install axios --save
19. Now replace all the code from the app.js file with the below-mentioned code.
Before starting our react application add the below line inside the package.json file of the react project or else you will receive a CORS error in your project.
"proxy": "http://127.0.0.1:5000",
20. Now start the application npm start and refresh the browser to see changes.
So now we have successfully built our first MERN project.
Tip: Instead of running node and react separately we can install a module to run them concurrently just install the concurrently module to your root project and add some lines mentioned below in your root package.json file.
npm i concurrently --save-dev
Now all you need is to run npm run dev from the terminal and both will start concurrently.
Below I have shared the GitHub repository for reference. | https://medium.com/how-to-react/setup-mern-mongodb-express-js-react-js-and-node-js-environment-and-create-your-first-mern-7774df0fff19 | ['Manish Mandal'] | 2020-12-10 19:47:00.522000+00:00 | ['React', 'Mongodb', 'Expressjs', 'Reactjs', 'Nodejs'] |
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